Then come back
direct to me, up here. I don’t think, Ada, your mistress believes much
in Critchett; but I have fully explained what I want. He has made me up
many prescriptions. Explain that to his assistant if he is not there. Go at once, and you will be back before she is. I should be so very
much obliged, tell him. “Mr Arthur Lawford.”’

The minutes slowly drifted by. He sat quite still in the clear
untroubled light, waiting in the silence of the empty house. And for
the first time he was confronted with the cold incredible horror of his
ordeal. Who would believe, who could believe, that behind this strange
and awful, yet how simple mask, lay himself? What test; what heaped-up
evidence of identity would break it down? It was all a loathsome
ignominy. It was utterly absurd. It was—

Suddenly, with a kind of ape-like cunning, he deliberately raised a
long lean forefinger and pointed it at the shadowy crystal of the
looking-glass. Perhaps he was dead, was really and indeed changed in
body, was fated really and indeed to change in soul, into That. ‘It’s
that beastly voice again,’ Lawford cried out loud, looking vacantly at
his upstretched finger. And then, hand and arm, not too willingly, as
it were, obeyed; relaxed and fell to his side. ‘You must keep a tight
hold, old man,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Once, once you lose
yourself—the least symptom of that—the least symptom, and it’s all up!’
And the fools, the heartless, preposterous fools had brought him one
volume! When on earth was Ada coming back? She was lagging on purpose. She was
in the conspiracy too. Oh, it should be a lesson to Sheila! Oh, if only
daylight would come! ‘What are you going to do—to do—to DO?’ He rose
once more and paced his silent cage. To and fro, thinking no more; just
using his eyes, compelling them to wander from picture to picture,
bedpost to bedpost; now counting aloud his footsteps; now humming;
only, only to keep himself from thinking. At last he took out a drawer
and actually began arranging its medley of contents; ties, letters,
studs, concert and theatre programmes—all higgledy-piggledy. And in the
midst of this childish strategem he heard a faint sound, as of heavy
water trickling from a height. He turned. A thief was in one of the
candles. It was guttering out. He would be left in darkness. He turned
hastily without a moment’s heed, to call for light, flung the door open
and full in the flare of a lamp, illuminating her pale forehead and
astonished face beneath her black straw hat, stood face to face with
Ada. With one swift dexterous movement he drew the door to after him,
looking straight into her almost colourless steady eyes. ‘Ah,’ he said
instantly, in a high faint voice, ‘the powder, thank you; yes, Mr
Lawford’s powder; thank you, thank you. He must be kept absolutely
quiet—absolutely. Mrs Lawford is following. Please tell her that I am
here, when she returns. Mr Critchett was in, then? Thank you. Extreme,
extreme silence, please.’ Again that knotted, melodramatic finger
raised itself on high; and within that lean, cadaverous body the soul
of its lodger quailed at this spectral boldness. But it was triumphant. The maid at once left him and went downstairs. He heard faint voices in
muffled consultation. And in a moment Sheila’s silks rustled once more
on the staircase. Lawford put down the lamp, and watched her
deliberately close the door. ‘What does this mean?’ she began swiftly, ‘I understand that—Ada tells
me a stranger is here; giving orders, directions. Who is he? where is
he? You bound yourself on your solemn promise not to stir till I
returned. You... How can I, how can we get decently through this
horrible business if you are so wretchedly indiscreet? You sent Ada to
the chemist’s. What for? What for? I say.’

Lawford watched his wife with an almost extraneous interest. She was
certainly extremely interesting from that point of view, that very
novel point of view. ‘It’s quite useless,’ he said, ‘to get in the
least nervous or hysterical. I don’t care for the darkness just now. That was all. Tell the girl I am a strange doctor—Dr Simon’s new
partner. You are clever at conventionalities, Sheila. Invent! I said
our patient must be kept quiet—I really think he must. That is all, so
far as Ada is concerned.... What on earth else _are_ we to say?’ he
broke out. ‘That, for the present to _everybody_, is our only possible
story. It will give us what we must have—time. And next—where is the
second volume of Quain? I want that. And next—why have you broken faith
with me?’ Mrs Lawford sat down. This sudden and baffling outburst had
stupefied her. ‘I can’t, I can’t make head or tail of what you say. And as for having
broken faith, as you call it, would any wife, would any sane woman face
what you have brought on us, a situation like this, without seeking
advice and help? Mr Bethany will be perfectly discreet—if he thinks
discretion desirable. He is the only available friend we have close
enough to ask at once. And things of this kind are, I suppose, if
anybody’s concern, his. It’s certain to leak out. Everybody will hear
of it. Don’t flatter yourself you are going to hush up a thing like
this for long. You can’t keep _living_ skeletons in a cupboard. You
think only of yourself, only of your own misfortune. But who’s to know,
pray, that you really are my husband—if you are? The sooner I get the
vicar on my side the better for us both. Who in the whole of the
parish—I ask you—and you must have the sense left to see that—who will
believe that a respectable man, a gentleman, a Churchman, would
deliberately go out to seek an afternoon’s amusement in a poky little
country churchyard? Why, apart from everything else, _that_ was
absolutely mad to start with. Can you really wonder at the result?’

Probably because she still steadfastly refused to look at him, her
memory kept losing its hold on the appalling fact facing them. She
realised fully only that she was in a great, unwarrantable, and
insurmountable difficulty, but until she actually lifted her eyes for a
moment she had not fully realised what that difficulty was. She got up
with a sudden and horrible nausea. ‘One moment,’ she said, ‘I will see
if the servants have gone to bed.’

That long saturnine face, behind which Lawford lay in a dull and
desperate ambush, smiled. Something partaking of its clay, some reflex
ghost of its rather remarkable features, was even a little amused at
Sheila. She returned in a moment, and stood in profile in the doorway. ‘Will
you come down?’ she remarked distantly. ‘One moment, Sheila,’ Lawford began miserably. ‘Before we take this
irrevocable step, a step I implore you to postpone awhile—for what
comes, I suppose, may go—what precisely have you told the vicar? I must
in fairness know that.’

‘In fairness,’ she began ironically, and suddenly broke off.