Ermyn L’Estrange, sir,” was the instant answer.
Even in the wilds of Wyoming one grasps the significance of certain classes of names. For instance, not even the rawest tenderfoot would expect “One-eyed Pete” to turn out to be a parson.
“I mean the lady who died here,” said David.
The porter stopped the lift. “Your floor, sir,” he said. “I’ve only bin in these ’ere flats a matter o’ two months, sir.”
“Good egg!” cried David. “Have a cigar, porter. You are a man to be depended on. But surely there is no harm in telling me the poor girl’s name. It must have appeared in all the newspapers.”
The attendant tickled his head underneath his hat. The new tenant of No. 7 seemed a nice gentleman, anyhow. He looked up and down the stairs, of which two sections were visible from the landing where they stood.
“I ’ave ’eard,” said he, “that a young lydy used ter live ’ere of the nyme of Miss Gwendoline Barnes.”
“Ah, that sounds more like it. Good-night.”
“Good-night, sir.”
Harcourt, fumbling over the intricacies of the lock, heard the rattle of the lift as it reached the basement. On his landing were two doors, his own and that of No. 8; and light shone from his neighbor’s dwelling. That was companionable. The stairs, too, were well lighted.
At last he gave the key the right pressure, and the latch yielded. He passed within and closed the door noiselessly. The electric switch governing the hall-lamp was on the wall beyond the short entrance-passage. He removed his overcoat and hat in the semi-darkness; the sheen coming through the corrugated-glass panels of the outer door did not so much as cast a shadow.
All at once he detected a fragrance of violets, faintly, but distinctly. This was puzzling! He knew that it was almost impossible for that scent to have been there earlier in the evening when he was at home, without being marked by him. Even now not one man in a thousand in London that night would have caught the subtle perfume; but David retained the hunter’s senses. As he stood in suspense, a feeling peeped and grew up within him that the odor carried with it a suggestion of death; his muscles grew taut, ready to fight, to defend himself against this world or the next.
The next instant he smiled, thinking: “Nonsense! It must have been here before. Each time I came in I was smoking; the air is frosty, too.”
He groped inward for the switch, turned on the light, and, without deigning to give another thought to the smell of violets, turned to the left along the main corridor, which was rectangular to the entrance-hall. Passing the drawing-room door, he entered the dining-room. Opposite the latter was the kitchen and servants’ apartments. Around the other end of the main corridor were disposed three bed-rooms and a bath-room. The light he had turned on illuminated entrance and corridor alike.
In the dining-room he found the fire still burning. That was good. The coal-scuttle was not by the fireplace, but in a corner. He went to get a shovelful of coal; and as he stooped, again came to him the fragrance, thrilling, bringing with it a picture of a girl whom he had once seen lying in funereal state, surrounded by flowers, and clothed in the last white robes of earth.
David stabbed the coals with the shovel. “What’s wrong with me?” he half laughed. Yet his eyes sought the crayon drawing of Gwendoline Barnes.
Presently he lit a cigar, unfolded an evening paper which he had bought in the streets, and tried to take an interest in the news of this new-old world into which he was new-born.
But his mind wandered. Without he heard the distant rumble of traffic; hansoms were beginning to arrive in the street beneath; he heard doors slam; the jingling of bells on head-stalls; feet pattering across the pavement; a driver’s tongue-click, and away would jog a horse, to be stirred, perhaps, into sudden frenzy by two shrills of a far-off whistle.
A contrast, these sounds, to the twig-snapping and grass-rustling of a night on the plains! There, lying by the camp-fire embers, he had heard the coyote slinking past in the dark, while the tethered horses suspended their cropping to hearken. Here men and streets made a yet stranger wilderness. He sat over the hearth absorbed by it, already yielding his tribute to the greatness of the outer ocean of life.
But prairie or city, man must sleep. David rose and went to the sideboard for a decanter. A certain graceful slowness characterized his movements. Town-bred men might have been deceived thereby, might reason that he was lethargic, of strapping physique, certainly, yet a man who could be hit three times before he countered once. It is this error of judgment which leads to accidents when town-dwellers encounter the denizens of the jungle. Harcourt’s hand was outstretched for the decanter when he became aware that he was not alone in the flat. The knowledge was derived from neither sight nor sound. It was intuitive, a species of feeling through space, an imperative consciousness that he shared his suite of apartments with another distinct, if intangible, being. Many men might not have had it, but Harcourt had it clearly.
Instantly he was rigid. This time he was weaving no fantasy round a whiff of violets. The sense of nearness to other presences is really inherent in man. Residence in settled communities dulls it, but in David Harcourt it was a living faculty. He stood motionless, waiting for some simple proof of his belief.
The door, veiled by a portière, was not closed, but sufficiently closed to prevent any view of the corridor, which, otherwise, it commanded throughout. The flat was carpeted so thickly that movement was silenced. But David fancied that a woman’s dress did brush somewhere against wall or floor. That was enough. He was about to spring forward and pull the door open to see, when he heard, or thought that he heard, the switch of the light outside click, as if it had been carefully raised. And on the instant, without hesitation, he pushed up the switch in the dining-room, and hid himself in darkness. There are wolves, too, in the London desert.
Now, like a bush-cat, he crept to the door, opened it, and peeped out. Certainly the light which he had left burning had been extinguished by some hand; the corridor was in darkness.
Nerves, as commonly understood, did not much enter into Harcourt’s scheme of things. But his heart beat quicker. The speed of thought cannot be measured. Many questions, and one doubt, one question, flitted through his brain. He stood in deep gloom; near him, he was convinced, was something in the guise of woman. The face in chalks on the mantelpiece seemed to crowd the dark, the face of the woman who had been hovering on the verge of his consciousness ever since the agent had mentioned her to him.
CHAPTER II
A SIGNATURE WITH A FLOURISH
He was collected enough, though the blood was rather cool in his veins, and there was an odd sensitiveness at the roots of his hair. “Who is there?” he asked in a matter-of-fact voice.
There was no answer, and now he had a feeling that the presence was drawing nearer.
He was unarmed, of course. The inseparable six-shooter of the West lay at the bottom of a cabin-trunk in his bed-room. But his faculties were exerted to an extent hardly possible to men who have not lived close to wild nature. He conceived that his safety demanded the exercise not only of pluck, but of artifice. So he stepped softly to the corner by the entrance to the servants’ apartments, and, standing there, sought a loose
