III

IN passing from the dining-room to his snuggery at the back of the house, Dudley Leicester brushed against his tall hat. He took it from the rack, and surveyed distastefully its ruffled surface.

“Saunders,” he called, “take this round to Tang’s. They’re to put a band on it a half-inch deeper, and to iron it. I hate a hat that’s been ruffled.”

“It does mark a man off, sir,” Saunders said from the dining-room door.

Saunders had been considering with his master the question of dark shades in trousering, and the colloquial atmosphere seemed to remain in the air.

“Now, what the devil do you mean by that?” Leicester asked. “Do you mean it would help you to track him?”

“It helps you to place him, sir,” Saunders answered. He brushed the hat with his sleeve, and surveyed it inscrutably. “If a gentleman doesn’t know that his hat’s ruffled, it means that he’s something on his mind. I mean, sir, it means that he belongs to the professional or merchant class, or below that. It’s only gentlemen of leisure who can think of their hats at all times.”

Dudley Leicester laughed.

“What an odd fish you are, Saunders,” he said. “Get along, man, with the hat at once. I’m going to Mrs. Langham’s with your mistress just after lunch.”

He lounged towards his snuggery, smiling to himself at the thought that Katya Lascarides had again refused Robert Grimshaw, though he and she, and Ellida and the child had been staying a week or more at Brighton together.

“A funny job—what?” he said. He had developed the habit of talking to himself whilst Pauline had been away. He looked at himself in the rather smoky mirror that was over the black marble mantel of a gloomy room. “What the deuce is it all about? She loves him like nuts; he’s like a bee after honey. Why don’t they marry?”

Looking at himself in the mirror, he pulled down one of his eyelids to see if he were not a little anæmic, for he had heard the day before that if a man were at all anæmic, the inner flesh of the eyelid was pale. A careful survey showed him that his eyelid was very red, and his eyes watering. He muttered: “Cobwebs! That’s what it is! Cobwebs in the brain....” He dropped himself into a deep, dark saddle-bag chair. In twenty minutes it would be time for him to take his exercise. “Umph! cobwebs!” he said. “Yes, I’ve had some of my own, but I’ve broken through them. Poor old Robert! He hasn’t, though.”

He suddenly realized that he was talking aloud, and then the telephone-bell rang at his elbow. He gave a grunt, swore, and switched off the connection, so that it would ring in the butler’s pantry. And when he had got over the slight shock to his nerves, he sat for some time in silence. Suddenly he exclaimed: “What rot it was!”

He was thinking of what he called his cobwebs. It had all been a trifle, except that Etta was a devil. He would like to flay her hide with a whip. But he realized that it was impossible that Pauline should have heard of it. At least, it was unlikely. If she had been going to hear of it, she would have heard by now.

He stretched his arms behind his head, and rested his crown upon his hands.

“Never felt so fit in my life,” he said, “never.”

Saunders—if Saunders knew—he wouldn’t go and blab to Pauline. What good would it do him? Besides, Saunders was a decent sort; besides, too, the fellow who had recognized his voice, probably he was a decent sort, too. After all, blackmailers were not in his line. He doubted if he had ever spoken to a real bad hat in his life for long enough to let him recognize his voice.... And perhaps the whole thing had been a trick of his nerves. He had certainly been nervy enough at the time.

“All cobwebs,” he said, “beastly cobwebs!”

Then all the dreadful fears that he had felt ... they were all nothing! It would have broken Pauline’s heart.

“She’s had such rough times, little woman,” he said, “such beastly rough times.”

But though his cobwebs had been imbecile enough, the remembrance of the pain made him wince.

“By Jove! I was nearly mad,” he said.

He had felt insane desires to ask strangers—perfect strangers in the street—whether they were the men who had rung up 4,259 Mayfair.

“By Jove!” he repeated again, “by Jove! And now it’s all over.”

He leaned back luxuriously in his chair; he stretched his long legs.

“Never so fit in my life,” he said; and he extended his long hand to take from the desk at his side a little carved box that Pauline had bought of a Japanese to hold his nail-scissors.

He had observed a little speck of dirt beneath the nail of his forefinger. And in the pleasant well-being of the world he half dozed away, the box held nearly to his nose. It exhaled a faint musky odour, and suddenly his eyes opened as he jerked out of his day-dream.

“Etta!” he said, for the box exhaled the scent that Etta Hudson always had about her—a sweet, musky, cobwebby odour....

“By God!” he said; and he crossed himself as he had learned to do in St. Andrew’s, Holborn, where his wife worshipped.

The lines of his face seemed to decompose; his head fell forward; his mouth opened. Pauline was closing the door after her silent entry. It was a long, dusky slice of the rear-house, and he watched her approach, wide-eyed and panic-stricken, as if she held an animal-trainer’s whip. The little smile was about her lips when she stood over his huddled figure in the light of the stained-glass window that had been put in to hide the dreary vision of house-backs.

She held out her little gloved hand; her face was quite tranquil.

“She knows all about it,” he said, “Good God!”

“Dudley, dear,” she said, “I know all about it.”