LITMIR.BIZ

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      All human beings are egotists, but there is no egotism to compare with the egotism of the very young.

      Bealby was so much the centre of his world that he was incapable of any interpretation of this shouting and uproar, this smashing of decanters and firing of pistol shots, except in reference to himself. He supposed it to be a Hue and Cry. He supposed that he was being hunted—hunted by a pack of great butlers hounded on by the irreparably injured Thomas. The thought of upstairs gentlefolks passed quite out of his mind. He snatched up a faked Syrian dagger that lay, in the capacity of a paper knife, on the study table, concealed himself under the chintz valance of a sofa, adjusted its rumpled skirts neatly, and awaited the issue of events.

      For a time events did not issue. They remained talking noisily upon the great staircase. Bealby could not hear what was said, but most of what was said appeared to be flat contradiction.

      “Perchance,” whispered Bealby to himself, gathering courage, “perchance we have eluded them. … A breathing space. …”

      At last a woman’s voice mingled with the others and seemed a little to assuage them. …

      Then it seemed to Bealby that they were dispersing to beat the house for him. “Good-night again then,” said someone.

      That puzzled him, but he decided it was a “blind.” He remained very, very still.

      He heard a clicking in the apartment—the blue parlour it was called—between the study and the dining-room. Electric light?

      Then some one came into the study. Bealby’s eye was as close to the ground as he could get it. He was breathless, he moved his head with an immense circumspection. The valance was translucent but not transparent, below it there was a crack of vision, a strip of carpet, the castors of chairs. Among these things he perceived feet—not ankles, it did not go up to that, but just feet. Large flattish feet. A pair. They stood still, and Bealby’s hand lighted on the hilt of his dagger.

      The person above the feet seemed to be surveying the room or reflecting.

      “Drunk! … Old fool’s either drunk or mad! That’s about the truth of it,” said a voice.

      Mergleson! Angry, but parroty and unmistakable.

      The feet went across to the table and there were faint sounds of refreshment, discreetly administered. Then a moment of profound stillness. …

      “Ah!” said the voice at last, a voice renewed.

      Then the feet went to the passage door, halted in the doorway. There was a double click. The lights went out. Bealby was in absolute darkness.

      Then a distant door closed and silence followed upon the dark. …

      Mr. Mergleson descended to a pantry ablaze with curiosity.

      “The Lord Chancellor’s going dotty,” said Mr. Mergleson, replying to the inevitable question. “That’s what’s up.” …

      “I tried to save the blessed syphon,” said Mr. Mergleson, pursuing his narrative, “and ’e sprang on me like a leppard. I suppose ’e thought I wanted to take it away from ’im. ’E’d broke a glass already. ’Ow—I don’t know. There it was, lying on the landing. …”

      “ ’Ere’s where ’e bit my ’and,” said Mr. Mergleson. …

      A curious little side-issue occurred to Thomas. “Where’s young Kicker all this time?” he asked.

      “Lord!” said Mr. Mergleson, “all them other things; they clean drove ’im out of my ’ed. I suppose ’e’s up there, hiding somewhere. …”

      He paused. His eye consulted the eye of Thomas.

      “ ’E’s got behind a curtain or something,” said Mr. Mergleson. …

      “Queer where ’e can ’ave got to,” said Mr. Mergleson. …

      “Can’t be bothered about ’im,” said Mr. Mergleson.

      “I expect he’ll sneak down to ’is room when things are quiet,” said Thomas, after reflection.

      “No good going and looking for ’im now,” said Mr. Mergleson. “Things upstairs—they got to settle down. …”

      But in the small hours Mr. Mergleson awakened and thought of Bealby and wondered whether he was in bed. This became so great an uneasiness that about the hour of dawn he got up and went along the passage to Bealby’s compartment. Bealby was not there and his bed had not been slept in.

      That sinister sense of gathering misfortunes which comes to all of us at times in the small hours, was so strong in the mind of Mr. Mergleson that he went on and told Thomas of this disconcerting fact. Thomas woke with difficulty and rather crossly, but sat up at last, alive to the gravity of Mr. Mergleson’s mood.

      “If ’e’s found hiding about upstairs after all this upset,” said Mr. Mergleson, and left the rest of the sentence to a sympathetic imagination.

      “Now it’s light,” said Mr. Mergleson after a slight pause, “I think we better just go round and ’ave a look for ’im. Both of us.”

      So Thomas clad himself provisionally, and the two man-servants went upstairs very softly and began a series of furtive sweeping movements—very much in the spirit of Lord Kitchener’s historical sweeping movements in the Transvaal—through the stately old rooms in which Bealby must be lurking. …

§ 8

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      Man is the most restless of animals. There is an incessant urgency in his nature. He never knows when he is well off. And so it was that Bealby’s comparative security under the sofa became presently too irksome to be endured. He seemed to himself to stay there for ages, but as a matter of fact, he stayed there only twenty minutes. Then with eyes tempered to the darkness he first struck out an alert attentive head, then crept out and remained for the space of half a minute on all fours surveying the indistinct blacknesses about him.

      Then he knelt up. Then he stood up. Then with arms extended and cautious steps he began an exploration of the apartment.

      The passion for exploration grows with what it feeds upon. Presently Bealby was feeling his way into the blue parlour and then round by its shuttered and curtained windows to the dining-room. His head was now full of the idea of some shelter, more permanent, less pervious to housemaids, than that sofa. He knew enough now of domestic routines to know that upstairs in the early morning was much routed by housemaids. He found many perplexing turns and corners, and finally got into the dining-room fireplace where it was very dark and kicked against some fire-irons. That made his heart beat fast for a time. Then groping on past it, he found in the darkness what few people could have found in the day, the stud that released the panel that hid the opening of the way that led to the priest hole. He felt the thing open, and halted perplexed. In that corner there wasn’t a ray of light. For a long time he was trying to think what this opening could be, and then he concluded it was some sort of back way from downstairs. … Well, anyhow it was all exploring. With an extreme gingerliness he got himself through the panel. He closed it almost completely behind him.

      Careful investigation brought him to the view that he was in a narrow passage of brick or stone that came in a score of paces to a spiral staircase going both up and down. Up this he went, and presently breathed cool night air and had a glimpse of stars through a narrow slit-like window almost blocked by ivy. Then—what was very disagreeable—something scampered.

      When Bealby’s heart recovered he went on up again.

      He came to the priest hole, a capacious cell six feet square with a bench bed and a little table and chair. It had a small door upon the stairs that was open and a niche cupboard. Here he remained for a time. Then restlessness

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