When It Was Dark Part 8

CHAPTER VI

THE WHISPER

Robert Llwellyn paid the cabman outside the main gateway which led into the courtyard, and dismissed him.

The Court Mansions were but a few hundred yards from the British Museum itself, though he never visited them in the day time. A huge building, like a great hotel, rose skyward in a square. In the quadrangle in the centre, which was paved with asphalt, was an ornamental fountain surrounded by evergreen plants in tubs.

The Professor strode under the archway, his feet echoing in the stillness, and pa.s.sed over the open s.p.a.ce, which was brilliantly lit with the hectic radiance of arc lamps. He entered one of the doorways, and turning to the right of the ground-floor, away from the lift which was in waiting to convey pa.s.sengers to the higher storeys, he stopped at No. 15.

He took a latch-key from his pocket, opened the door, and entered. It was very warm and close inside, and very silent also. The narrow hall was lit by a crimson-globed electric lamp. It was heavily carpeted, and thick curtains of plum-coloured plush, edged with round, fluffy b.a.l.l.s of the same colour, hung over the doors leading into it.

He hung his hat up on a peg, and stood perfectly silent for a moment in the warm, scented air. He could hear no sound but the ticking of a French clock. The flat was obviously empty; and pulling aside one of the curtains, he went into the dining-room.

The place was full of light. Gertrude Hunt, or her maid, had, with characteristic carelessness, forgotten to turn off the switches.

Llwellyn sat down and looked around him. How familiar the place was! The casual visitor would have recognised at a glance that the occupant of the room belonged to the dramatic profession.

Photographs abounded everywhere. The satinwood overmantel was crowded with them in heavy frames of chased silver. Bold enlargements hung on the crimson walls; they were upright, and stacked in disorderly heaps upon the grand piano.

All were of one woman--a dark Jewish girl with eyes full of a fixed fascination, a trained regard of allurement.

The eyes pursued him everywhere; bold and inviting, he was conscious of their mult.i.tude, and moved uneasily.

The dining-table was in a curious litter. Half-empty cups of egg-sh.e.l.l china stood upon a tray of j.a.panese lacquer inlaid with ivory and silver; a cake basket held pink and honey-coloured bon-bons, among which some cigarette ends had fallen. Two empty bottles, which had held champagne, stood side by side, cheek by jowl, with a gilt tray, on which was a miniature methyl lamp and some steel curling tongs.

The arm-chairs were upholstered in pink satin. On one of them was a long fawn-coloured tailor-made coat, hanging collar downwards over the back.

A handful of silver and a tiny gun-metal cigarette case had dropped out of a pocket on to the seat of the chair.

The whole place reeked with a well-known perfume--an evil, sickly smell of ripe lilies and the acrid smoke of Egyptian tobacco. A frilled dressing jacket covered with yellowish lace lay in a tumbled heap upon the hearth-rug.

The room would have struck an ordinary visitor with a sense of nausea almost like a physical blow. There was something sordidly shameless about it. The vulgarest and most material of Circes held sway among all this gaudy and lavish disorder. The most sober-living and innocent-minded man, brought suddenly into such a place, would have known it instantly for what it was, and turned to fly as from a pestilence.

A week or two before, a picture of this den had appeared in one of the ill.u.s.trated papers. Underneath the photograph had been printed--

"THE BOUDOIR OF ONE OF LONDON'S POPULAR FAVOURITES.

MISS GERTRUDE HUNT AT HOME."

Below had been another picture--"Miss Hunt in her new motor-car." Robert Llwellyn had paid four hundred pounds for the machine.

The big man seemed to fit into these surroundings as a hand into a glove. In his room at the Museum, on a platform at the Royal Society, his intellect always animated his face. In such places his personality was eminent, as his work also.

Here he was changed. Silenus was twin to him; he sniffed the perfume with pleasure; he stretched himself to the heat and warmth like a great cat. He was an integral part of the _mise-en-scene_--lost, and arrogant of his degradation.

A key clicked in the lock, there was a rustling of silk, and Gertrude Hunt swept into the room.

"So you're come to time, then," she said in a deep, musical voice, but spoilt by an unpleasing c.o.c.kney tw.a.n.g. "I'm dead tired. The theatre was crammed; I had to sing the _c.o.o.n of c.o.o.ns_ twice. Get me a brandy-and-soda, Bob. There's a good boy--the decanter's in the sideboard."

She threw off her long cloak and sank into a chair. The sticky grease-paint of the theatre had hardly been removed. She looked, as she said, worn out.

They chatted for a few moments on indifferent subjects, and she lit a cigarette. When she took it from her lips, Llwellyn noticed that the end was crimsoned by the paint upon them.

"Well," she said at length, "somehow or other you must pay those bills I sent on to you. They _must_ be paid. I can't do it. I'm only getting twenty-five pounds from the theatre now, and that's just about enough to pay my drink bill!"

Llwellyn's face clouded. "I'm just about at my last gasp myself," he said. "I'm threatened with bankruptcy as it is."

"Oh, cheer up!" she cried. "Here, have a B. and S. I do hate to hear any one talk like that. It gives me the hump at once. Now look here, Bob.

You know that I like you better than any one else. We've been pals for seven or eight years now, and I'd rather have you a thousand times than the others. You understand that, don't you?"

He nodded back at her. His face was pleased at her expression of affection, at the kindness of this dancing-girl to the great scholar!

"But," she continued, "you know me, and you know that I can't go on unless I have what I want all the time. And I want a lot, too. If you can't give it me, Bob, it must be some one else--that's all. Captain Parker's ready to do anything, any time. He's almost a millionaire, you know. Can't you raise any 'oof anyhow? If I'd a thousand at once, and another in a week or two, I could manage for a bit. But I _must_ have a river-house at Shepperton. That cat, Lulu Wallace, has one, and an electric launch and all. What about your German friend--the M.P.? _He's_ got tons of stuff. Touch him for a bit more."

"Had a letter from him this afternoon," said Llwellyn, "with a demand for about fourteen thousand that I owe him now. Threatens to sell me up.

But there was something which looked brighter at the end of the letter, though I couldn't quite make out what he was driving at."

"What was that?"

"The tone of the letter changed; it had been nasty before. He said that I could do him a service for which he would not only wipe out the old debt, but for which I could get a lot more money."

"You'll go to him at once, Bob, won't you?"

"I suppose I must. There's no way out of it. I can't think, though, how I can do him any service. He's a dabbler, an amateur in my own work, but he's not going to pay a good many thousands for any help in _that_."

"Let it alone till you find out," she said, with the instinctive dislike of her cla.s.s to the prolonged discussion of anything unpleasant. She got up and rang the bell for her maid and supper.

For some reason Llwellyn could eat nothing. A weight oppressed him--a presage of danger and disaster. The unspeakable mental torments that the vicious man who is highly educated undergoes--torments which a.s.sail him in the very act and article of his pleasures--have never been adequately described. "What a frail structure his honours and positions were," he thought as the woman chatted of the _coulisses_ and the blackguard news of the _demi-monde_. His indulgent life had acted on the Professor with a dire physical effect. His nerves were unstrung and he became childishly superst.i.tious. The slightest hint of misfortune set his brain throbbing with a horrid fear. The spectre of overwhelming disaster was always waiting, and he could not exorcise it.

The two accidental and trivial facts that the knives at his place were crossed, and that he spilt the salt as he was pa.s.sing it to his mistress, set him crossing himself with nervous rapidity.

The girl laughed at him, but she was interested nevertheless. For the moment they were on an intellectual level. He explained that the sign of the Cross was said to avert misfortune, and she imitated him clumsily.

Llwellyn thought nothing of it at the time, but the meaningless travesty came back afterwards when he thought over that eventful night.

Surely the holy sign of G.o.d's pain was never so degraded as now.

Their conversation grew fitful and strained. The woman was physically tired by her work at the theatre, and the dark cloud of menace crept more rapidly into the man's brain. The hour grew late. At last Llwellyn rose to go.

"You'll get the cash somehow, dear, won't you?" she said with tired eagerness.

"Yes, yes, Gertie," he replied. "I suppose I can get it somehow. I'll get home now. If it's a clear night I shall walk home. I'm depressed--it's liver, I suppose--and I need exercise."

"Have a drink before you go?"

"No, I've had two, and I can't take spirits at this time."