Eh?’

Through all this long and arduous harangue, consciousness, like the
gradual light of dawn, had been flooding that other brain. And the face
that now confronted Mr Bethany, though with his feeble unaided sight he
could only very obscurely discern it, was vigilant and keen, in every
sharp-cut hungry feature. A rather prolonged silence followed, the visitor peering mutely. The
black eyes nearly closed, the face turned slowly towards the window,
saw burnt-out candle, comprehensive glass. ‘Yes, yes.’ he said; ‘I’ll send for Simon at once.’

‘Good,’ said Mr Bethany, and more doubtfully repeated ‘good.’ ‘Now
there’s only one thing left,’ he went on cheerfully. ‘I have jotted
down a few test questions here; they are questions no one on this earth
could answer but you, Lawford. They are merely for external proofs. You
won’t, you can’t, mistake my motive. We cannot foretell or foresee what
need may arise for just such jog-trot primitive evidence. I propose
that you now answer them here, in writing.’

Lawford stood up and walked to the looking-glass, and paused. He put
his hand to his head, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘of course; it’s a rattling good
move. I’m not quite awake; myself, I mean. I’ll do it now.’ He took out
a pencil case and tore another leaf from his pocket-book. ‘What are
they?’

Mr Bethany rang the bell. Sheila herself answered it. She stood on the
threshold and looked across through a shaft of autumnal sunshine at her
husband, and her husband with a quiet strange smile looked across
through the sunshine at his wife. Mr Bethany waited in vain. ‘I am just going to put the arch-impostor through his credentials,’ he
said tartly. ‘Now then, Lawford!’ He read out the questions, one by
one, from his crafty little list, pursing his lips between each; and
one by one, Lawford, seated at the dressing-table, fluently scribbled
his answers. Then question and answer were rigorously compared by Mr
Bethany, with small white head bent close and spectacles poised upon
the powerful nose, and signed and dated, and passed to Mrs Lawford
without a word. Mrs Lawford read question and answer where she stood, in complete
silence. She looked up. ‘Many of these questions I don’t know the
answers to myself,’ she said. ‘It is immaterial,’ said Mr Bethany. ‘One answer is—is inaccurate. ‘Yes, yes, quite so: due to a mistake in
a letter from myself.’

Mrs Lawford read quietly on, folded the papers, and held them out
between finger and thumb. ‘The—handwriting...’ she remarked very
softly. ‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ said Mr Bethany warmly; ‘all the general look
and run of the thing different, but every real essential feature
unchanged. Now into the envelope. And now a little wax?’

Mrs Lawford stood waiting. ‘There’s a green piece of sealing-wax,’
almost drawled the quiet voice, ‘in the top right drawer of the nest in
the study, which old James gave me the Christmas before last.’ He
glanced with lowered eyelids at his wife’s flushed cheek. Their eyes
met. ‘Thank you,’ she said. When she returned the vicar was sitting in a chair, leaning his chin on
the knobbed handle of his umbrella. He rose and lit a taper for her
with a match from a little green pot on the table. And Mrs Lawford,
with trembling fingers, sealed the letter, as he directed, with his own
seal. ‘There!’ he said triumphantly, ‘how many more such brilliant lawyers, I
wonder, lie dormant in the Church? And who shall keep this?... Why, all
three, of course.’ He went on without pausing. ‘Some little drawer now,
secret and undetectable, with a lock.’ Just such a little drawer that
locked itself with a spring lay by chance in the looking-glass. There
the letter was hidden. And Mr Bethany looked at his watch. ‘Nineteen
minutes,’ he said. ‘The next thing, my dear child—we’re getting on
swimmingly—and it’s astonishing how things are simplified by mere
use—the next thing is to send for Simon.’

Sheila took a deep breath, but did not look up. ‘I am entirely in your
hands,’ she replied. ‘So be it,’ said he crisply. ‘Get to bed, Lawford; it’s better so. And
I’ll look in on my way back from Witchett. I came, my dear fellow, in
gloomy disturbance of mind. It was getting up too early; it fogs old
brains. Good-bye, good-bye.’

He squeezed Lawford’s hand. Then, with umbrella under his arm, his hat
on his head, his spectacles readjusted, he hurried out of the room. Mrs
Lawford followed him. For a few minutes Lawford sat motionless, with
head bent a little, and eyes restlessly scanning the door. Then he rose
abruptly, and in a quarter of an hour was in bed, alone with his slow
thoughts: while a basin of cornflour stood untasted on a little table
at his bedside, and a cheerful fire burned in the best visitors’ room’s
tiny grate. At half-past eleven Dr Simon entered this soundless seclusion. He sat
down beside Lawford, and took temperature and pulse. Then he half
closed his lids, and scanned his patient out of an unusually dark,
un-English face, with straight black hair, and listened attentively to
his rather incoherent story. It was a story very much modified and
rounded off. Nor did Lawford draw Dr Simon’s attention to the portrait
now smiling conventionally above their heads from the wall over the
fireplace. ‘It was rather bleak—the wind; and, I think, perhaps, I had had a touch
of influenza. It was a silly thing to do. But still, Dr Simon, one
doesn’t expect—well, there, I don’t feel the same man—physically. I
really cannot explain how great a change has taken place. And yet I
feel perfectly fit in myself. And if it were not for—for being laughed
at, go back to town, to-day. Why my wife scarcely recognised me.’

Dr Simon continued his scrutiny. Try as he would, Lawford could not
raise his downcast eyes to meet direct the doctor’s polite attention. ‘And what,’ said Dr Simon, ‘what precisely is the nature of the change? Have you any pain?’

‘No, not the least pain,’ said Lawford; ‘I think, perhaps, or rather my
face _is_ a little shrunken—and yet lengthened; at least it feels so;
and a faint twinge of rheumatism. But my hair—well, I don’t know; it’s
difficult to say one’s self.’ He could get on so very much better, he
thought, if only his mind would be at peace and these preposterous
promptings and voices were still. Dr Simon faced the window, and drew his hand softly over his head. ‘We
never can be too cautious at a certain age, and especially after
influenza,’ he said. ‘It undermines the whole system, and in particular
the nervous system; leaving the mind the prey of the most melancholy
fancies. I should astound you, Mr Lawford, with the devil influenza
plays.... A slight nervous shock and a chill; quite slight, I hope. A
few days’ rest and plenty of nourishment. There’s nothing; temperature
inconsiderable. All perfectly intelligible. Most certainly reassure
yourself! And as for the change you speak of’—he looked steadily at the
dark face on the pillow and smiled amiably—‘I don’t think we need worry
much about that.