A silent witness
trying to sit him up, and had thrust the corner of a folded newspaper
between his teeth to prevent him from biting his tongue when a
constable arrived on the scene; upon which, as the officer bore on his
sleeve the badge of the St. John’s Ambulance Society, I gave him a few
directions and began to back out of the crowd.
At this moment, I became aware of a pressure behind me and a
suspicious fumbling, strongly suggestive of the presence of a
pick-pocket. Instantly, I turned to the right about and directed a
searching look at the people behind me, and especially at a bearded,
nondescript person who seemed also to be backing out of the crowd. He
gave me a single, quick glance as I followed him through the press and
then averted his eyes; and as he did so, I noticed, with something of
a start, that his right eye came to rest with a peculiar, rapid
up-and-down shake. He had, in fact, a right-sided nystagmus.
The coincidence naturally struck me with some force. A nystagmus is
not, as I have said, a very common condition; one-sided nystagmus is
actually a rare one; and, of the one-sided instances, only some fifty
per cent. will affect the right eye. The coincidence was therefore
quite a notable one; but had it any particular bearing? I had a
half-formed inclination to follow the man; but he had not actually
picked my pocket or done any other overt act, and one could hardly
follow a person merely because he happened to suffer from an uncommon
nervous affection.
The man was now walking up the street, briskly, but without manifest
hurry; looking straight before him and swinging his stick with
something of a flourish. I watched him speculatively, as I walked in
the same direction, and then suddenly realized that he was carrying
his stick in his left hand, and carrying it, too, with the
unmistakable ease born of habit. Then he was left-handed! And here was
another coincidence; not a remarkable one in itself, but, when added
to the other, so singular and striking that I insensibly quickened my
pace.
As my acquaintance reached the corner of the Euston Road, an omnibus
stopped to put down a passenger. It was about to move on when he
raised his stick, and, following it, stepped on the footboard and
mounted to the roof. I was undecided what to do. Should I follow him?
And, if so, to what purpose? He would certainly notice me if I did and
be on his guard, so that I should probably have my trouble for nothing
and possibly look like a fool into the bargain. And while I was thus
standing irresolute at the corner, the omnibus rumbled away westward
and decided the question for me.
I am not, as the reader may have gathered, a particularly cautious man
or much given to suspicion. But recent events had made me a good deal
more wary and had taught me to look with less charity on chance fellow
creatures; and this left-handed person with the nystagmus occupied my
thoughts to no small extent during the next day or two. Was he the man
whom I had seen in the tram? Apparently not. The latter had been clean
shaven and dressed neatly in the style of a clerk or ordinary City
man, whereas the former wore a full beard and was shabby, almost
beyond the verge of respectability. As to their respective statures, I
could not judge, as I had seen the one man seated and the other
standing; but, superficially, they were not at all alike, and, in all
probability they were different persons.
But this conclusion was not at all inevitable. When I reflected on the
matter, I saw that the resemblances and differences did not balance.
The two men resembled one another in qualities that were inherent and
unalterable, but they differed in qualities that were superficial and
subject to change. A man cannot assume or cast off a nystagmus, but he
can put on a false beard. A left-handed man may endeavour to conceal
his peculiarity, but the superior deftness of the habitually used hand
will make itself apparent in spite of his efforts; whereas he can make
any alterations in his clothing that he pleases. And thus reflecting,
the suspicion grew more and more strong that the two men might very
well have been one and the same person, and that it would be discreet
to keep a bright look-out for a left-handed man with a right-sided
nystagmus.
During all this time I had seen nothing of my new friend Miss Sylvia.
But I had by no means forgotten her. Without wishing to exaggerate my
feelings, I may say that I had taken a strong liking to that very
engaging young lady. She was a pleasant, easy-mannered girl, evidently
good-tempered, and very frank and simple; a girl--as Mr. Sparkler
would have said--“with no bigod nonsense about her.” Her tastes ran
along very similar lines to my own, and she was clever enough to be a
quite interesting companion. Then it was evident that she liked
me--which was in itself an attraction, to say nothing of the credit
that it reflected on her taste--and, in a perfectly modest way, she
had made no secret of the fact. And finally, she was exceptionally
good-looking. Now people may say, as they do, that beauty is only skin
deep--which is perfectly untrue, by the way; but even so, one is more
concerned with the skins of one’s fellow creatures than with their
livers or vermiform appendices. The contact of persons, as of things,
occurs at their respective surfaces.
From which it will be gathered that I was only allowing a decent
interval to elapse before repeating my visit to “The Hawthorns”;
indeed, I was beginning to think that a sufficient interval had
already passed and to contemplate seriously my second call, when my
intentions were forestalled by Sylvia herself. Returning home one
Friday evening, I found on my mantelpiece a short letter from her,
enclosing a ticket for an exhibition of paintings and sculpture at a
gallery in Leicester Square, and mentioning--incidentally--that she
proposed to visit the show on the following morning in order to see
the works by a good light; which seemed such an eminently rational
proceeding in these short winter days, that I determined instantly to
follow her example and get the advantage of the morning light myself.
I acted on this decision with such thoroughness that, when I arrived
at the gallery, I found the attendant in the act of opening the doors,
and, for nearly half an hour I was in sole possession of the premises.
Then, by twos and threes, other visitors began to straggle in, and
among them Sylvia, looking very fresh and dainty and obviously pleased
to see me.
“I am glad you were able to come,” she said, as we shook hands. “I
thought you would, somehow. It is so much nicer to have someone to
talk over the pictures with, isn’t it?”
“Much more interesting,” I agreed. “I have been taking a preliminary
look round and have already accumulated quite a lot of profound
observations to discharge at you as occasion offers. Shall we begin at
number one?”
We began at number one and worked our way methodically picture by
picture, round the room, considering each work attentively with
earnest discussion and a wealth of comment. As the morning wore on,
visitors arrived in increasing numbers, until the two large rooms
began to be somewhat inconveniently crowded. We had made a complete
circuit of the pictures and were about to turn to the sculpture, which
occupied the central floor space, when Sylvia touched me on the arm.
“Let us sit down for a minute,” said she. “I want to speak to you.”
I led her to one of the large settees that disputed the floor-space
with the busts and statuettes, and, somewhat mystified by her serious
tone and by the rather agitated manner, which I now noticed for the
first time, seated myself by her side.
“What is it?” I asked.
She looked anxiously round the room, and, leaning towards me, said in
a low tone:
“Have you noticed a man who has been keeping near us and listening to
our conversation?”
“No, I haven’t,” I replied. “If I had I would have given him a hint to
keep farther off. But there’s nothing in it, you know. In picture
galleries it is very usual for people to hang about and try to
overhear criticisms. This man may be interested in the exhibits.”
“Yes, I know. But I don’t think this person was so much interested in
the exhibits. He didn’t look at the pictures, he looked at us. I
caught his eye several times reflected in the picture-glasses, and
once or twice I saw him looking most attentively at this crucifix of
mine. That was what really disturbed me. I wish, now, that I hadn’t
unbuttoned my coat.”
“So do I. You will have to leave that crucifix at home if it attracts
so much undesirable attention. Which is the man? Is he in this room?”
“No, I don’t see him now. I expect he has gone into the next room.”
“Then let us go there, too; and if you will point him out to me, I
will pay him back in his own coin.”
We rose and made our way to the door of communication, and, as we
passed into the second room, Sylvia grasped my arm nervously.
“There he is--don’t let him see us looking at him--he is sitting on
the settee at the farther end of the room.”
It was impossible to make a mistake since the settee held only a
single person; a fairly well-dressed, ordinary-looking man, rather
swarthy and foreign in appearance, with a small waxed moustache. He
was sitting nearly opposite the entrance door and seemed, at the
moment, to be reading over the catalogue, which he held open on his
knee; but, as he looked up almost at the moment when we entered, I
turned my back to him and continued my inspection with the aid of the
reflection in a picture-glass.
“He is probably a journalist,” I said. “You see he is scribbling some
notes on the blank leaves of his catalogue; probably some of your
profound criticisms, which will appear, perhaps to-morrow morning,
clothed in super-technical jargon, in a daily paper.”
Here I paused suddenly, for I had made a rather curious observation.
The reflection in a mirror is, as everybody knows, reversed laterally;
so that the right hand of a person appears to be the left, and vice
versa. But in the present case, no reversal seemed to have taken
place. The figure in the reflection was writing with his right hand.
Obviously, then, the real person was writing with his left.
This put a rather different aspect on the affair. Up to the present, I
had been disposed to think that Sylvia had been unduly disturbed; for
there are plenty of ill-bred bounders to be met in any public place
who will stare a good-looking girl out of countenance. But now my
suspicions were all awake. It is true that left-handed men are as
common as blackberries; but still--
“Can you tell me, Miss Vyne,” I asked, as we worked our way towards
the other end of the room, “if this man is at all like the one who
frightened you so in Millfield Lane?”
“No, he is not. I am sure of that. The man in the lane was a good deal
taller and thinner.”
“Well,” said I, “whoever he is, I want to have a good look at him, and
the best plan will be to turn our attention to the sculpture. Shall we
go and look at that rather remarkable pink bust? That will give our
friend a chance of another stare at you, and, if he doesn’t take it,
I will go and inspect him where he sits.”
The bust to which I had referred was executed in a curious rose-tinted
marble, very crystalline and translucent, a material that suited the
soft, girlish features of its subject admirably. It stood on an
isolated pedestal quite near the settee on which the suspicious
stranger was sitting, and I hoped that our presence might lure him
from his retreat.
“I don’t think,” I said, taking up a position with my back to the
settee, “that I have ever seen any marble quite like this. Have you?”
“No,” replied Sylvia. “It looks like coarse lump sugar stained pink.