The mysterious Mr. Quin
"Listen. I will put a case to you. A man comes to a certain place--to
commit suicide, shall we say? But by chance he finds another man
there, so he fails in his purpose and goes away--to live. The second
man has saved the first man's life, not by being necessary to him or
prominent in his life but just by the mere physical fact of having been
in a certain place at a certain moment. You take your life today and
perhaps, some five, six, seven years hence, someone will go to death or
disaster simply for lack of your presence in a given spot or place. It
may be a runaway horse coming down a street that swerves aside at sight
of you and so fails to trample a child that is playing in the gutter.
That child may live to grow up and be a great musician, or discover a
cure for cancer. Or it may be less melodramatic than that. He may just
grow up to ordinary everyday happiness."
She stared at him. "You are a strange man. These things you say--I have
never thought of them."
"You say your life is your own," went on Mr. Satterthwaite. "But can
you dare to ignore the chance that you are taking part in a gigantic
drama under the orders of a divine Producer? Your cue may not come till
the end of the play--it may be totally unimportant, a mere walking-on
part, but upon it may hang the issues of the play, if you do not give
the cue to another player. The whole edifice may crumple. You, as
you, may not matter to anyone in the world, but you as a person in a
particular place may matter unimaginably."
She sat down, still staring. "What do you want me to do?" she said
simply.
It was Mr. Satterthwaite's moment of triumph. He issued orders. "I
want you at least to promise me one thing--to do nothing rash for
twenty-four hours."
She was silent a moment or two and then she said, "I promise."
"There is one other thing--a favor."
"Yes?"
"Leave the shutter of the room I came in by unfastened, and keep vigil
there tonight."
She looked at him curiously, but nodded assent.
"And now," said Mr. Satterthwaite, slightly conscious of anticlimax, "I
really must be going. God bless you, my dear."
He made a rather embarrassed exit. The stalwart Spanish girl met him in
the passage and opened a side door for him, staring curiously at him
the while.
It was just growing dark as he reached the hotel. There was a solitary
figure sitting on the terrace. Mr. Satterthwaite made straight for
it. He was excited and his heart was beating quite fast. He felt that
tremendous issues lay in his hands. One false move--
But he tried to conceal his agitation and to speak naturally and
casually to Anthony Cosdon.
"A warm evening," he observed. "I quite lost count of time sitting up
there on the cliff."
"Have you been up there all this time?"
Mr. Satterthwaite nodded. The swing door into the hotel opened to let
someone through, and a beam of light fell suddenly on the other's
face, illuminating its look of dull suffering, of uncomprehending dumb
endurance.
Mr. Satterthwaite thought, _It's worse for him than it would be for me.
Imagination, conjecture, speculation--they can do a lot for you. You
can, as it were, ring the changes upon pain. The uncomprehending blind
suffering of an animal--that's terrible._
Cosdon spoke suddenly in a harsh voice. "I'm going for a stroll after
dinner. You--you understand? The third time's lucky. For God's sake
don't interfere. I know your interference will be well-meaning and all
that--but take it from me, it's useless."
Mr. Satterthwaite drew himself up. "I never interfere," he said,
thereby giving the lie to the whole purpose and object of his existence.
"I know what you think--" went on Cosdon, but he was interrupted.
"You must excuse me, but there I beg to differ from you," said Mr.
Satterthwaite. "Nobody knows what another person is thinking. They may
imagine they do, but they are nearly always wrong."
"Well, perhaps that's so." Cosdon was doubtful, slightly taken aback.
"Your life is your own," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Nobody can alter
or influence the use you mean to make of it. Let us talk of a less
painful subject. That old villa, for instance. It has a curious charm,
withdrawn, sheltered from the world, shielding heaven knows what
mystery. It tempted me to do a doubtful action. I tried one of the
shutters."
"You did?" Cosdon turned his head sharply. "But it was fastened, of
course?"
"No," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "It was open." He added gently, "The
third shutter from the end."
"Why," Cosdon burst out, "that was the one--"
He broke off suddenly, but Mr. Satterthwaite had seen the light that
had sprung up in his eyes. He rose--satisfied.
Some slight tinge of anxiety still remained with him. Using his
favorite metaphor of a drama, he hoped that he had spoken his few lines
correctly. For they were very important lines.
But thinking it over, his artistic judgment was satisfied. On his way
up to the cliff, Cosdon would try that shutter. It was not in human
nature to resist. A memory of twenty-odd years ago had brought him to
this spot; the same memory would take him to the shutter. And afterward?
"I shall know in the morning," said Mr. Satterthwaite, and proceeded to
change methodically for his evening meal.
* * * * *
It was somewhere round ten o'clock that Mr. Satterthwaite set foot once
more in the garden of La Paz. Manuel bade him a smiling "Good morning,"
and handed him a single rosebud which Mr. Satterthwaite put carefully
into his buttonhole. Then he went on to the house. He stood there for
some minutes looking up at the peaceful white walls, the trailing
orange creeper, and the faded green shutters. So silent, so peaceful.
Had the whole thing been a dream?
But at that moment one of the windows opened and the lady who occupied
Mr. Satterthwaite's thoughts came out. She came straight to him with
a buoyant, swaying walk, like someone carried on a great wave of
exultation. Her eyes were shining, her color high. She looked like a
figure of joy on a frieze. There was no hesitation about her, no doubt
or tremors. Straight to Mr. Satterthwaite she came, put her hands on
his shoulders, and kissed him--not once but many times. Large, dark,
red roses, very velvety--that is how he thought of it afterward.
Sunshine, summer, birds singing--that was the atmosphere into which he
felt himself caught up. Warmth, joy, and tremendous vigor.
"I'm so happy," she said. "You darling! How did you know? How _could_
you know? You're like the good magician in the fairy tales."
She paused, a sort of breathlessness of happiness upon her.
"We're going over today--to the Consul--to get married. When John
comes, his father will be here. We'll tell him there was some
misunderstanding in the past. Oh! he won't ask questions. Oh! I'm so
happy--so happy--so happy."
Happiness did indeed surge from her like a tide. It lapped round Mr.
Satterthwaite in a warm, exhilarating flood.
"It's so wonderful to Anthony to find he has a son. I never dreamed
he'd mind or care." She looked confidently into Mr. Satterthwaite's
eyes. "Isn't it strange how things come right and end all beautifully?"
He had his clearest vision of her yet. A child--still a child--with her
love of make-believe--her fairy tales that ended beautifully with two
people "living happily ever afterward."
He said gently, "If you bring this man of yours happiness in these last
months, you will indeed have done a very beautiful thing."
Her eyes opened wide--surprised. "Oh!" she said. "You don't think I'd
let him die, do you? After all these years--when he's come to me. I've
known lots of people whom doctors have given up and who are alive
today. Die? Of course he's not going to die!"
He looked at her--her strength, her beauty, her vitality--her
indomitable courage and will. He too had known doctors to be mistaken.
The personal factor--you never knew how much and how little it counted.
She said again, with scorn and amusement in her voice, "You don't think
I'd let him die, do you?"
"No," said Mr. Satterthwaite at last, very gently. "Somehow, my dear, I
don't think you will."
Then, at last, he walked down the cypress path to the bench overlooking
the sea and found there the person he was expecting to see. Mr. Quin
rose and greeted him--the same as ever, dark, saturnine, smiling and
sad.
"You expected me?" he asked.
And Mr. Satterthwaite answered, "Yes, I expected you."
They sat together on the bench.
"I have an idea that you have been playing Providence once more to
judge by your expression," said Mr. Quin presently.
Mr. Satterthwaite looked at him reproachfully. "As if you didn't know
all about it."
"You always accuse me of omniscience," said Mr. Quin, smiling.
"If you know nothing, why were you here the night before
last--waiting?" countered Mr. Satterthwaite.
"Oh! that--"
"Yes, that."
"I had a--commission to perform."
"For whom?"
"You have sometimes fancifully named me an advocate for the dead."
"The dead," said Mr. Satterthwaite, a little puzzled. "I don't
understand."
Mr. Quin pointed a long lean finger down at the blue depths below. "A
man was drowned down there twenty-two years ago."
"I know--but I don't see--"
"Supposing that, after all, that man loved his young wife. Love can
make devils of men as well as angels. She had a girlish adoration for
him, but he could never touch the womanhood in her--and that drove him
mad. He tortured her because he loved her. Such things happen. You know
that as well as I do."
"Yes," admitted Mr. Satterthwaite. "I have seen such things--but
rarely--very rarely."
"And you have also seen, more commonly, that there is such a thing as
remorse--the desire to make amends--at all costs to make amends."
"Yes, but death came too soon."
"Death!" There was contempt in Mr. Quin's voice. "You believe in a life
after death, do you not? And who are you to say that the same wishes,
the same desires, may not operate in that other life? If the desire is
strong enough--a messenger may be found."
His voice trailed away.
Mr. Satterthwaite got up, trembling a little. "I must get back to the
hotel," he said. "If you are going that way--"
But Mr. Quin shook his head. "No," he said. "I shall go back the way I
came."
When Mr. Satterthwaite looked back over his shoulder, he saw his friend
walking toward the edge of the cliff.
HARLEQUIN'S LANE
Mr. Satterthwaite was never quite sure what took him to stay with the
Denmans. They were not of his kind--that is to say, they belonged
neither to the great world, nor to the more interesting artistic
circles. They were Philistines, and dull Philistines at that. Mr.
Satterthwaite had met them first at Biarritz, had accepted an
invitation to stay with them, had come, had been bored, and yet
strangely enough had come again and yet again.
Why? He was asking himself that question on this twenty-first of June,
as he sped out of London in his Rolls Royce.
John Denman was a man of forty, a solid, well-established figure,
respected in the business world. His friends were not Mr.
Satterthwaite's friends, his ideas even less so. He was a man clever in
his own line but devoid of imagination outside it.
_Why am I doing this thing?_ Mr. Satterthwaite asked himself once
more--and the only answer that came seemed to him so vague and so
inherently preposterous that he almost put it aside. For the only
reason that presented itself was the fact that one of the rooms in the
house (a comfortable, well-appointed house) stirred his curiosity. That
room was Mrs. Denman's own sitting room.
It was hardly an expression of her personality because, so far as Mr.
Satterthwaite could judge, she had no personality. He had never met