Читать книгу Fancy Dress Ball - J. Jefferson Farjeon - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Henry Brown had never been in a taxi before, and it was unfortunate for him that his initiation should occur in a fog. He had looked forward to the ride with exaggerated keenness. He had anticipated a journey of nippy speed, of cutting round corners, of passing things; instead, the taxi crawled at pedestrian pace, cheating him of the mildest thrill and giving him more time than he desired for thought. He did not want to think. Thought showed one up! He wanted to plunge rapidly into his adventure, to be caught up quickly into the current that would carry him into the centre of it. He wanted to find himself lost in a maze of light and colour and movement in which there was no responsibility, and from which there was no escape. But here he was, creeping forward at a snail’s gait, stopping, going on again, stopping, going on again, stopping. And every time the taxi stopped he was given the opportunity to put his head out of the window and instruct the driver to return.

He had even been unlucky in his taxi. It was old and worn, with a cracked window and a hard seat. “Why don’t they let us choose?” he grumbled. The next one on the rank had been a beauty. One of the newest type, with curved glass windows. He would have been quite happy in that. But apparently there was no question of personal choice. When he had mumbled his preference, he had nearly had his head bitten off! And then, after nearly having his head bitten off, the driver of the taxi that was forced upon him had winked at him. He was quite sure the driver of the superior taxi would not have done that. The driver of the superior taxi had been a superior man, with shiny black leggings and a smart cloth cap. His own driver was as old and as worn as his cab, and he sat on his seat sideways, with hunched shoulders. No style whatever about the fellow! Worse still, he called out rude remarks to other drivers, and was once reprimanded for something by a policeman. It was foul luck.

But presently, as they progressed westwards through the fog, new sensations began to percolate through Henry, changing his mood. He forgot the cab, and concentrated on himself. Sometimes the sensations were pleasant, sometimes they were not. In confusing succession he passed from tingling excitement to warm delight, from warm delight to chilly fear, from chilly fear to nausea. The nausea alarmed him. At one terrible moment, when the taxi stopped with a sharp jolt and he thought he had arrived, he really believed he was going to be sick. But he controlled himself with a herculean effort, the danger passed, and the taxi lurched on again.

“Now, look here,” he admonished himself, very earnestly, “this won’t do!”

Through smeared windows he watched great clusters of lights that looked like approaching night-cities and materialised into ordinary motor-buses. Lamp-posts grew out of nothing, and vanished back into nothing. Now he was alone in a great dark region. Now he was surrounded by sudden illumination. A car at right-angles abruptly blocked their way. “Whew, that’s had a skid!” he thought. It appeared to be aiming straight for a wall. A moment later it moved on without turning, and apparently glided right through the wall.

“That’s funny!” thought Henry. “Am I wonky?”

The question was answered when his taxi began moving backwards. Actually it was not moving at all, but the next taxi was moving forwards. A very posh car glided up, taking the place of the taxi that had moved on ahead. It stopped beside his. A face appeared at the window. A girl’s face. “Whew!” muttered Henry. “She’s staring right in!” He pressed himself back in his corner. He hoped his beret was lost among the shadows. She smiled. The smile sent a pang through his heart. Whew!

Then the face disappeared, and another was substituted. Henry did not believe his eyes. It was a gold face. “Here, don’t be silly!” he thought, startled. The gold face almost frightened him, and he closed his eyes. When he opened them the gold face was gone and his taxi was moving again.

He decided not to remember the gold face. It hadn’t been nice. He remembered instead the girl’s face. That had been nice. And the girl’s face, moreover, had been real. Was it going to the ball? Yes, it must be going to the ball, for now everything seemed to be going to the ball, and there was a sense as of a slow current sucking all the vehicles in one direction. He no longer felt lonely. A face he knew would be there. He would search for it, if he had to search all night. For the entire seven hours. (He knew it was seven hours, because he had worked out the cost per hour and it was exactly four and six, or just under a penny a minute.) He was bad at remembering faces, and frequently recognised the wrong people or failed to recognise the right, and he had already forgotten exactly what this girl’s face was like; but he was sure he would recognise it when he saw it again, and the conviction brought him a strange warmth and happiness.

Hallo! Things were happening! His taxi had entered a sort of covered way, and it had stopped again, and the driver was gesticulating at him through the window. “Move along, there!” cried a policeman. In a panic Henry opened the door and leapt out. “Where do I go?” he asked the person he leapt into. It was one of the countless touts who haunt the outside of the Albert Hall on big occasions, trying to pick up easily-earned sixpences.

“Foller me, sir,” replied the tout. He spoke with a hectoring, semi-official air, exuding the impression that Henry would be imprisoned if he were disobedient. “White ticket? This way.”

He seized Henry’s arm, lest Henry should escape and part with sixpence to somebody else.

“Hi! Where’s my fare?” bawled the taximan.

“Move along, there!” cried the policeman.

Henry wrenched his arm free and turned back to the cab.

“Thought you were goin’ to get away with it!” grinned the taximan good-naturedly.

But in his super-sensitive condition Henry mistook the good-nature for sarcasm, and he replied, in a shrill squeak:

“What do you mean, do you suppose I’d play a dirty trick on a person like that?”

The too-heated defence lacked the intended dignity. People turned their heads and smiled. He cursed himself. Why had he spoken so loudly? To prove that he did not mind he spoke more loudly still. “What’s the fare?” he cried.

“Three-and-six,” answered the taximan. “On the clock.”

The addition meant that three-and-six on a clock did not mean three-and-six to a gentleman. Henry thrust two half-crowns at him and hurried away, aghast at himself. He no longer thought of his voice. He thought of those two half-crowns. Five bob! That made a hole! But he had to get away, and to start afresh. Fortunately the Albert Hall was a large place, and perhaps he would never meet any of these people again. And others would not know.

The tout was still at his elbow. He had sized the incident up, and he stuck like a leech. Henry found his arm seized once more.

“This way, you foller me,” said the tout.

Henry did not like the look of the fellow. By comparison, the taximan was almost lovable. Why should he follow him? In spite of the tout’s disturbingly insistent manner Henry was convinced that he was not actually an official or anything. If a small cinema could afford uniforms, it was obvious the Albert Hall could!

“Come on!” barked the tout, as Henry hesitated.

“Yes, but wait a moment,” murmured Henry.

“What for—you wanter git in, doncher?” retorted the tout, his tone suggesting that to get in was going to be terribly difficult. “White ticket, that’s the Main Entrance, come on.” And then he made a psychological mistake that cost him his sixpence. “Do as I tell yer!” he threatened.

Up to a point he had read Henry correctly. Henry was a weak man; a weak man who was confused, wavering, self-conscious. He would dread a scene. But Henry was also in that sensitive condition that may carry even a weak man into a temporary semblance of strength. He had made a bad start when he had got out of the taxi. He was not going to confirm this horrible sense of inferiority by a second bad move now. The group of people who had witnessed his first disgrace and whom he devoutly hoped he would never encounter again had flowed away from him, and he was now in the middle of another quite different group. If he allowed himself to be hectored before these new people, also, the number of potential plague-spots within the hall itself would be doubled! But, quite apart from them, Henry Brown had to get right with himself.

He stopped walking. The tout had been pulling him along. Two massive men behind him nearly strode into his back, separated abruptly like a large divided germ, sprayed round him, and joined again beyond. They weren’t being led by anybody!

“Now, then, you listen to me,” said Henry, in a voice surprisingly firm. “I don’t want you, see? You’re not going to get anything out of me, not a thing. Go away at once, this minute, or I’ll call a policeman. See?”

Then he walked on again, and to his relief the tout fell behind. But the disappointed guide called after him. He called him a bloody little something. Henry reached the main entrance scarlet but triumphant.

He joined a little swirl and was carried by it up some wide steps to an open glass door. An official—a genuine official this time—took his ticket. “Oh—you take the whole of it?” jerked Henry. The official did not answer, being busy taking the whole of somebody else’s ticket. Henry hoped it was all right. With the complete ticket gone he now had nothing to show that he was entitled to supper. Perhaps you got a special ticket for supper inside. He would have to keep his eyes open. He must be careful not to ask silly questions. Very likely he would see a sign somewhere saying: “Supper Tickets.”

Strangely-dressed human beings were ahead of him. Others, behind, pressed him forward into a large vestibule. Some of the costumes were fully displayed, some gleamed from beneath expensive overcoats. Suddenly Henry got in a panic about his own overcoat. It was worn and shiny, and half an hour’s steady brushing had increased the shine. He must get rid of it as soon as he could. He supposed there was a cloak-room somewhere about. He spotted the two massive men who had nearly barged into his back. He followed them. He went down a wide, curved staircase. A girl, coming up the stairs, smiled at him.

“My God!” thought Henry, and stopped as abruptly as though he had been shot.

For his was not a derisive smile. It was a friendly smile. He could not quite believe it. He multiplied its importance by one million. Perhaps he did not look so horrible, after all? Here, among all these others? Perhaps he would “pass.” Warmth surged through him, followed by sharp despair. He had not smiled back!

He turned. She was out of sight. “Damn!” he muttered.

He continued down the stairs, and caught the two massive gentlemen up as they were handing their coats across a counter. They were now wonderful red generals. There was a saucer on the counter, its pattern obscured by silver coins. No copper ones. Pity. He watched the generals to see how much they put in. Sixpence each. He felt relieved. Now he need not put in more than sixpence. “Programme, sir?” inquired a voice in his ear. “Eh? No,” he answered, from force of habit. He hardly ever bought programmes; you could nearly always snip an announcement or advertisement out of a paper, or get a squint at somebody else’s programme. But the programme-seller paid no attention to his negative, thrust a programme into his hand, and demanded a shilling. “Of course, he’s right, I don’t know what I was thinking about,” reflected Henry, hypnotised into becoming worth a shilling less. A shilling, to Henry, was a complete lunch. “Naturally, one needs a programme.” Now the man behind the counter was taking his overcoat. The two red generals were standing by, lighting cigarettes. Henry felt in his trouser-pocket. Oh, of course, he hadn’t got any trouser-pockets. He groped in his wide velvet-jacket pockets. All the money he had in the world was in his overcoat and his shoes.

He asked for his overcoat back. He received it back, while somebody behind him commented, “This chap’s in for an all-night job.” He rescued three silver pieces, two florins and one half-crown. Nothing smaller. “Whew!” he thought. “Can one take change?” If one could, it needed more courage than Henry possessed with people pressing against his back. He threw the half-crown into the saucer. He had meant to throw in one of the florins, but had missed.

“Your ticket, sir,” said the man behind the counter, without even thanking him.

He took the ticket mechanically, and mechanically noticed that the number was 789. Then, with fingers itching and finance tottering, he turned away. He did not remember till long afterwards that he had left his programme on the counter.

He took out a cigarette, to steady himself. One of the red generals paused in the operation of blowing out his match and offered it. Henry immediately felt better. It almost made him wish he’d entered the army. “Thenks,” he said, as he accepted the light. “Thenks.”

It was bewildering. Hell one moment, and heaven the next! Which would win? The world was topsy-turvy! Would everybody accept him like this? Red generals, girls on stairs, everybody? For the entire seven hours that stretched ahead of him like a magnificently impossible adventure? This was worth four-and-six an hour, this was! No matter what happened. He’d come every year. He’d even cut his summer holiday short, if necessary. To think that this had been going on regularly, year after year, and he had never realised it!

He searched for a looking-glass before ascending the stairs. He found one in a lavatory. He regarded himself. That was a mistake. But he reflected as he walked hastily away that one couldn’t really judge one’s own face, could one? He knew he had read that somewhere. If he had looked to those red generals as he looked to himself, he would never have been offered that light!

He returned to the staircase. He joined a little throng that bore him upwards. As he passed the spot where the girl had smiled at him—he had now entirely forgotten the girl who had smiled at him from the posh car—he stared at it. It held a little thrilling memory. But many bigger thrills lay ahead of Henry Brown.

Now he was at the top of the staircase. Now he was crossing a big space. Now he was in a wide curving corridor. There were doors in the curved inner walls. Most of the doors were closed, but some were ajar, and a few were open, yielding tantalising glimpses of neat private boxes with elegant chairs and tables and flowers. At regular intervals the curved walls were interrupted by passages. He drifted into one of the passages. On each side of the passage, standing like a sentinel, was a tall beef-eater. He walked between them. He stopped dead, and caught his breath.

Before him was the ballroom. Unbelievably vast, unbelievably dazzling, unbelievably colourful. He found himself in an entirely new world, a world of blatant joy and garish, almost frightening fascination. In the distance, beyond the moving forms of uncountable dancers, was a great orchestra, and beyond the orchestra were, surely, the golden clouds of heaven itself. He had never seen such gold. He had never pictured such immensity. And balloons—thousands of balloons, festooning down from the dizzy ceiling like bunches of enormous, many-coloured grapes....

Things he did not know of stirred within him.

“Enjoying it?” asked Harold Lankester, as he danced by with Dorothy Shannon.

“Lovely!” she answered. “Are you?”

“Of course,” he replied. “But isn’t the whole thing mad?”

“Then why did you come?”

“Because I’m as mad as the rest. Or perhaps to escape from another form of madness. I’ve been talking politics all the afternoon, and I’m supposed to be at a political conference to-night.”

“Sorry I’m keeping you from your duty, Massine! Or are you Idzikowski?”

He smiled.

“You kept quite a number of people from their duty, Madame du Barry,” he said. “Even political duty.”

“Oh, let’s switch off politics,” she sighed. “Father’s been going potty with them lately. What do you think of his costume? Between you and me, I fancy he rather likes himself! And Conrad—there he is, with mother, bumping into that girl undressed as a Hawaiian Venus. I say, some of the dresses are rather absent, aren’t they? What do you think of Conrad?”

“Unique.”

“Let’s hope he is! But don’t you think mother’s rather sweet?”

“She’s delightful.”

“Tell her so. It’ll please her. Oh, look!” she exclaimed suddenly. “Isn’t he wonderful!”

Lankester turned his head and followed the direction of her eyes. They were resting on an imposing figure standing in one of the entrances to the dancing floor. It was the figure of a Balkan Prince. He had just arrived, alone. Near him stood a less impressive figure wearing a velvet jacket, loud check slacks, and an enormous beret.

“By Jove!” murmured Lankester, no less interested.

“You’d think it was the real thing,” said Dorothy, “but, of course, it’s not. It’s some actor or other. Oh, and look at that funny little fellow almost beside him. I saw him from our car on our way here.”

Then they flowed on in the roundabout.

The man who ought to have told Mrs. Shannon that she looked delightful, but who had failed to do so, sat by himself in Box 12, watching.

Mr. Shannon was glad to be alone in the box. He hoped, little realising what lay ahead of him, that he would be alone most of the evening. That was why when the girl who was to have been the sixth member of their party had suddenly contracted measles he had discouraged any eleventh-hour attempt to secure a substitute. Now Conrad would have to dance with his mother, and Mr. Shannon himself would be released. This might be bad luck on Conrad. Mr. Shannon was rather depressingly aware that youth calls to youth. But since Conrad was young he had plenty of flings ahead of him, and to-night Mr. Shannon wanted a fling of the only kind he himself had left—a fling into the glorious orgies of audacious imagination.

He was fond of his wife, but he could dance with her any night he chose to the wireless or the gramophone. Much pleasanter now, he decided as he sat well forward in his box, to be alone so that he could imagine himself partnering these other women with their unknown bodies and tempting skins—to imagine, in fact, that he actually was Charles II., possessing the royal prerogative to smile at whom he willed, to dance with whom he willed, and to take home whom he willed. He had the list of Charles’s paramours by heart. Lucy Walter, “beautiful, bold, but insipid”; Catherine Pegg; the magnificent Lady Castlemaine; Mrs. Stewart; and above all, and most famous of all, provocative Nell Gwynn, Sweet Nell of Old Drury ...

As Mr. Shannon’s mind dwelt on a picture he had recently studied of Nell Gwynn with more than æsthetic interest, he smiled dreamily and vapidly from his box; and when Nell Gwynn smiled back at him, he thought at first that he was the victim of some pretty trick of fancy. Enjoying the trick, and in no hurry to end so charming an illusion, he augmented his smile ... and then suddenly discovered that this was no fancy, and that Nell Gwynn was actually smiling at him from the outskirts of the dancing-floor.

His heart jumped. He felt like a caught criminal. But even while his forehead became damp, he found a fearful delight in his criminality, and for a fatal instant—for the instant that is one instant too long—he hung on to the smile, praying that no one apart from Nell saw him, and that his wife was at the farthest end of the hall.

That should have been the end of it. As matters eventually transpired, it was only the merest beginning of it. The materialised vision of Seventeenth Century loveliness stopped outside his box. She appeared to have dropped something, and her partner, a coster in a marvellous costume of pearl buttons, stooped at her murmured command to regain it. In that moment Charles II., alias Mr. James Shannon, received a very definite wink.

Then the pearly king rose with a fan, and the couple danced away.

“You look hot, my dear,” observed a placid voice behind him.

Mrs. Shannon had returned, with her gilded son in tow.

“Do I, dear?” answered Mr. Shannon carefully. He wiped his forehead with his lace handkerchief. “So I am. These wigs are like ovens.”

“If you sat in the back of the box, you could take it off,” suggested Mrs. Shannon.

“Gold, too, hath its heat,” murmured Conrad. “I think next year I shall be a sun-bather. Or Gandhi. ’Strewth, that’s a brain-wave! Gandhi!”

“Then you won’t be dancing next year with your old mother,” retorted Mrs. Shannon. Turning back to her husband, she added, “Have you seen that sunbathing couple, Jim? I know we’re modern and all that, but personally I call it disgraceful!”

“Eh? No,” answered Mr. Shannon. Actually he had seen them, and when they had passed his box his eyes had nearly left their sockets to follow them. “Disgraceful, are they? I wonder it’s allowed.”

“Hush, not before the children!” whispered Conrad, as Dorothy and Lankester entered.

The music had stopped. A queer, momentary heaviness hung in the air. The figure of the Balkan Prince strolled slowly by, with easy grace.

“Aren’t we all silent?” said Conrad.

They all began talking.

“Well, you ’aven’t lost no time,” grinned Sam.

“I haven’t got any time to lose,” replied Sally.

“Bah, you can ’ook ’im before midnight,” retorted Sam. “The perishin’ sop!”

They were sitting on one of the sofas in the outer corridor. They had it to themselves. Later, the sofas would fill up, when the dancing had lost its glamour and couples preferred to sit and whisper, but now the outer corridor was comparatively deserted.

“You don’t think much of him?” inquired Sally.

“Think much of ’im? I don’t think nothing of ’im,” said Sam. “If that simperin’ old fool is like King Charles II., they make ’em better now!”

“Just the same, he’s not a fool—excepting in the way I’m going to make him.”

“That’s right, Sall! It’s all You with a capital letter! Leave me out of it!”

“He’s boss of a pretty big business.”

“Oh? And wot’s the business?”

“Munitions.”

“Wot, bombs?”

“I expect so. That sort of thing, anyway.”

Sam whistled softly. Without moving his head he moved his eyes, and looked at her out of the corner of them.

“On to real big stuff, eh?”

“Well, it’s not small stuff.”

“Corse, it’d be a pity to tell me anything, wouldn’t it?”

“The less you know, the sounder you’ll sleep.”

“Gawd, think I’m a suckling!” he muttered disgustedly. “Yus, and ’oo taught yer that, anyway?”

“You did, Sam. See what a good pupil I am?”

“Good pupil be blowed! Where’s the gratitood?”

“You’ll have twenty pounds worth of gratitude in your pocket to-morrow, if you’re a good boy,” she reminded him.

“I’ll ’ave a bit more than that by to-morrow, don’t you worry!” he reminded her back. “You make the rest of ’em ’ere look sick!”

Now he turned his head, and looked at her directly. She smiled back coolly, but she was thinking, “I’ll have to find some way of getting rid of him when we’re through.”

“So it’s them bombs, is it?” said Sam, after a little pause. “I ’ope ’e ain’t got one in ’is little pocket!”

“Well, you’ve got something in your little pocket,” answered Sally.

“That’s right, so I ’ave,” he grinned. “I’ll bomb ’im!” Then suddenly the grin vanished, and he looked dark. “Yus, and if ’e gets fresh with you. I’ll give ’im something else ’e won’t ferget!”

He spoke with feeling. With equal feeling Sally retorted:

“What’s the matter with you? Are you going daft? He’s got to get fresh, hasn’t he?”

Sam glowered.

“Now, listen, Sam,” she went on, and her voice grew hard. “There’s to be no nonsense, do you hear? You’ll do your job, neither more nor less, and if that’s not clear, you can quit right now!”

Sam did not respond for a few seconds. Then he shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll do my job, don’t worry,” he said. “And get full payment for it. If you think——”

He paused. Someone was passing slowly. He waited.

“ ’Oo was that?” he muttered, when the figure had strolled leisurely by. “The blinkin’ Prince o’ Rooreytania?”

“Oh, come along!” snapped Sally, jumping up nervily. “Let’s have a drink!”

Warwick Hilling sat alone inside a saloon car as it drove away from the Albert Hall, and he pondered.

“I have been through many interesting experiences in my life,” he thought. “I have acted before Foreign Kings and I have been the hind legs of a horse.” (Only he and the front legs of the horse had ever known that he had been the hind legs of the horse.) “I have been in an aeroplane crash. I have travelled first-class with a ’bus ticket. I have—I regret—known Mademoiselle from Armentieres. On the other hand,” came a swift white-washing reflection, “I have refused a greater gift from a good woman. I have stuck a bayonet into the chest of a fellow-creature—‘Foul-drugged with Duty, I have watched his pain, and with a shudd’ring laugh have thrust again.’ ” He reviewed these ghosts of the past with dispassionate interest, seeing himself as a player of parts. Then, swinging back to the present as the saloon car slid round a corner, he concluded, “But have I ever—I ask, I do not state—have I ever encountered an incident which, for unusualness, transcends—this?”

Hilling usually thought in actual words. He believed in clear enunciation of the mind as well as of the tongue, and he found that, in thought, his words were invariably effective. But now he leaned back against the immense comfort of well-sprung cushions and reviewed, not in words but in a series of pictures, the events of the last half-hour.

The little chauffeur, whose back Hilling could see as a dark smudge pressed against the dividing glass, had been correct in his forecast. The landlady had been waiting in the front hall, pretending unnecessarily that she was merely putting pictures straight. “Dear me, these picture-frames!” she had even murmured as Hilling and the chauffeur had descended the stairs. “ ’Ow they get shook about beats me!” She had sprung to the door to open it. She had simpered with appreciative respect as Hilling, who really looked impressive, strode by her wordlessly and descended the cracking stone steps to the street. Her eyes had remained glued on him while he descended, while he reached the splendid car, while he paused for an instant, and while he opened the polished door. And then, suddenly, she had started, wincing at an abrupt pain in her foot.

“But pardon!” cried the chauffeur’s voice in her ear.

She had turned angrily to meet the smiling apology of the careless fellow who had trodden on her foot. He had not looked very contrite, but her just anger was quelled by the very quality of his composure. There was something in it that froze her.

“I make to pass, Madame. Permit me, yes?”

She had stood aside. He had passed out on to the cracking stone stairs. Then, suddenly realising that this annoying man was cheating her a second time, she had clapped her eyes again upon the car. Too late! Her lodger, who a week ago had been anathema but who was now healing balm, was in the car, and was to be seen no more.

The chauffeur took his seat at the wheel, and the car glided off.

Inside the saloon was darkness. The little glass globe set snugly in the roof gave no light. It showed dimly, palely, like the ghost of itself. Something else showed dimly and palely, also, in the farthest corner. Hilling knew it was a face. A face resembling his, and therefore even more like a ghost. But he did not look at it. He had an idea he was not supposed to, and he certainly did not want to. It merely came for a brief instant into the range of a corner of his eye. Yes, it was unpleasantly like a ghost, completely shrouded saving for the face. Hilling fought a nasty sensation that he was dead.

The fog outside the window assisted the disturbing illusion giving him a suffocating feeling. It was like thick yellow earth.

The journey through the fog was silent; stiflingly monotonous. Hilling’s ghost did not break it, and so he assumed he was right not to break it himself. He had read every book on regal etiquette and he knew that conversation was royalty’s prerogative. Speak when a king speaks to you. The same with a prince. A Balkan Prince, anyway. Not necessarily an English Prince. English Princes sometimes fraternised. Good chaps, English Princes ...

The slow and painful journey was broken by only one incident. It was an incident that suggested a Balkan Prince could fraternise, also, if he wanted to. But suddenly, unconversationally. All at once Hilling became conscious of something small and white and thin before his nose. A cigarette!

It appeared to be suspended in mid-air, and thus carried on the ghostly attributes of everything inside that car. He did not know that, a few seconds previously, an entire case of cigarettes had been held before his glazed, unseeing eyes, and that the single cigarette had subsequently been extracted by the donor as, possibly, a more effective way of attracting his attention. His fingers rose to the cigarette convulsively. At least, he supposed they were his fingers, but they seemed to have been attracted up to the cigarette by a will not his own. They touched the cigarette and held it. Then a small light glowed before his face. It glowed above a little gold lighter. Mechanically he put the cigarette between his lips and lit it. The light vanished. Ahead of him now was a wisp of curling, grey-blue smoke.

Even if the cigarette had been drugged he would have puffed it. But only Hilling’s mind was drugged. Drugged with the strangeness of the occasion.

That had been all, until at last the car had completed its journey and had stopped at its destination.

The sense that everything had been planned and worked out to its final detail was increased by the fact that, when the car stopped, Hilling found himself in the corner farthest from the pavement. He was convinced that this was not accidental. He did not have to move, or to show himself. He was as secure from eyes in his corner as, when he had entered the car, the Balkan Prince had been in his. The Balkan Prince slipped out of the car. The door closed. The next instant the car moved on again. Now Hubert Hilling was alone with his thoughts....

“And what happens next?” he wondered, after he had relived all these incidents in his mind, and the great hall in which he was supposed to be had been blotted out behind him by the fog. “Am I driven home? Or what?”

A study of the geographical position suggested that he was not being driven home, although it was not easy to study geography through the yellow haze. Home lay east, and the car appeared to be travelling west. Not straight west. Zigzag west. Why west? And, even more interesting, why zigzag?

“We might be trying to shake off a snake!” reflected Hilling.

The reflection put a startling idea into his head. Perhaps they were!

Now left, now right, now straight for a block, now left. And, surely, at an unnecessary speed? Too fast for a fog? He bent close to the window and peered out. A panel of the glass dividing him from the chauffeur slid aside, and the chauffeur’s voice came through.

“Not that!” called the chauffeur.

His voice was quiet, but authoritative.

“Why not?” demanded Hilling.

“And ask no question,” answered the chauffeur. “Please to sit back.”

Hilling obeyed, but he felt a little ruffled. His own voice had annoyed him as much as the chauffeur’s. Because it was so long since he had used it, it had been thick and unimposing. He cleared his throat softly, then inquired with dignity:

“Am I not to know where we are going?”

“You know some time,” came the retort.

“You are too kind!” murmured Hilling.

“Good, so!” smiled the chauffeur.

Hilling saw the smile in the windscreen, and realised then how the chauffeur had seen him at the window.

“I hope it will prove good, so!” observed Hilling, after a little pause. “You must admit I am patient.”

“Like, as you say, the monument.”

“And trusting.”

“To trust, it is good when you can.”

“There, sir, I am with you,” replied Hilling, and cleared his throat again softly to add, “ ‘Shed without shame each virtue, an you must, If it shall leave inviolate your trust.’ But sometimes one’s trust is put to a severe strain. And this, undoubtedly, is one of those times.”

“To talk and to drive together, it is forbid,” answered the chauffeur. “So, the accident.”

He slid the glass panel to as he spoke. But Hilling was not in a mood to be dismissed in this peremptory fashion. He liked the chauffeur. It was odd, but he did. The liking had been increased by the quaint, spontaneous little outburst just before they left his room. But Hilling’s soul remained his own, and if it wavered he only had to think of the philosophy of Polonius.

Therefore he performed an audacious act. He bent forward and slid the glass panel open again.

“This much I insist on knowing!” he exclaimed. “Are you taking me home?”

“No,” said the chauffeur, and slid the panel to again.

They travelled on. For how long? Hilling lost all count. He also lost all recognition of locality. The twisting and turning, which continued throughout the journey, the fog, and the confused state of his own mind, played ducks and drakes with time and space. They might be travelling north, or south, or east, or west. He had no idea. They might have been journeying for minutes or hours or months. He had no idea. It dawned upon him that he was probably intended to have no idea. In which case, he reflected gloomily, where was that precious thing called trust?

He was just beginning to resign himself to a condition of eternal transit when he found that the car had stopped. He did not remember it stopping—it must have done so very softly—and he only knew it had stopped by the abrupt discovery that it was no longer in motion. This was followed by the discovery that the chauffeur’s back was no longer visible ahead of him. The next instant the door of the car opened, and the chauffeur’s head popped in.

“Now come,” he whispered.

Hilling rose, rather majestically.

“But, a moment, first,” continued the chauffeur, keeping his voice very low. “Lift the top of the silver ash-tray by your window. There is a key. Take it. It will open the door of the house. So open it. Go in. Close it. Wait. It is clear, yes? No, say nothing till you are inside, even when I speak. Nod or shake!”

Hilling nodded.

“Good, so! Now walk with quietness. No haste, no worry, but as you would at the Albert Hall, the great prince! Upright! Magnificent! All so fine and wonderful!”

“Damn the fellow, does he think I do not know my part?” fumed Hilling to himself, while secretly grateful for these definite instructions.

He found the key and stepped out on to the pavement.

The fog seemed thicker than ever. He could hardly see a yard ahead of him. But he made out an iron railing and an iron gate. As he strode towards them, with all the magnificence required, the chauffeur accompanied him to the gate, and made a little speech. The speech was in a foreign language, and he did not understand a word of it. He nodded, however—the flowing tide had caught him again, and he could only flow with it—and the exaggerated, over-elaborate motion of his head gave him, he thought, a momentary glimpse of another figure somewhere. Somewhere in the fog. Ten yards away? No, it could not be that. A foot? He could not say. It was gone almost before he saw it. If he had seen it at all! Perhaps he had not. Perhaps it had been merely imagination....

Hallo! What had happened to the chauffeur? He had stiffened suddenly. Where was he? Ah, there he was! No, he wasn’t! ... Gone!

Hilling stifled an impulse to call after him. It would have been the normal thing to do in normal circumstances, but the circumstances were very far from normal. A startling instinct of self-preservation kept Hilling mute.

Perhaps the chauffeur had only returned to the car. Assumedly he would have to garage it somewhere. But why such abruptness? And why that sudden rigidity? Now Hilling could see nothing. The figure or figures had vanished. The car, even at this short distance, was blotted out.... Yes, he could see something. The open iron gate, waiting for him to pass through. And faintly beyond, a door. The door of which he held the key.

If you had asked him, he would have said that his pause lasted ten seconds. Actually it lasted two. But in those strange two seconds the adventure into which he had been so amazingly projected took on an entirely new aspect. Unadmitted and shadowy fears began to gather around him, and to assume a terrifying substance.

He advanced to the door. That, also, grew into substance. All he could see was the door. Above it and on either side of it lay invisibility. He raised the key and inserted it in the lock. As he pushed the door inwards, a brooding glow widened, and he found himself in an illuminated hall. The illumination came from a red-shaded lamp.

Suddenly the lamp cracked and went out. Stark horror gripped him. Leaping aside, he slammed the door to, and as he did so the outside wood was struck by a vicious, spitting, metallic plop!