“He wants something. What is it?”
“—Oh, Caroline . . .”
Mr. Pinkerton started and turned quickly around. Mrs. Scott Winship, frail and wan, had come from the adjoining room and was there in the doorway, her worn quilted dressing gown huddled about her. Her nostrils were pinched with cold, and the drooping querulous lines of the perpetual invalid robbed her of all the delicate beauty that she may once have had. Looking at her was like looking at an image of her daughter reflected in a tarnished mildewed mirror in a darkened hallway, all the vitality and youthful loveliness faded and withered by the killing frost of years and dependence.
“Please don’t be so cross, Caroline. Perhaps Mr. Pinkerton doesn’t know. You really mustn’t let yourself get so worked up and irritable.”
Caroline Winship had never had her sister’s beauty, but she had all the concentrated passion and vitality the other lacked.
“I’ll deal with this in my own way, Louise,” she said shortly. “Go back to your fire. You’ll catch cold in here.”
She turned to Mr. Pinkerton. “What did that man want?”
“He—he wanted to know if Mr. Winship had ever come back.”
Mr. Pinkerton had not intended to say it; it had just popped out of his mouth, somehow, as he saw Mrs. Winship draw her robe more tightly around her frail body and start to obey her sister’s command to go back to her room. It had just popped out, and in some terrible and inexplicable fashion remained, undissipated, the words as tangible as if they were solidly created objects, visibly formed and frozen.
“Oh, dear!” Mr. Pinkerton thought with a mute and horrified gasp. “What have I done now!”
As well he might. It was as if he had by chance stumbled onto a magic formula that turned everything in the room into stone or lifeless clay. The two women stood motionless, petrified into speechless silence, life suspended. There was something so ghastly about the whole atmosphere of the room and the unutterable quiet of both of the women there, that small beads of icy pricking perspiration broke out all over him.
“He—just asked. That’s all,” he managed to say. “He just asked me if I knew.”
His voice sounded hollow and very loud, as if he was screaming in an empty room.
Then Miss Caroline spoke. “Go to your room, Louise.” Her voice was so low and so deathly quiet that Mr. Pinkerton took an involuntary step backward and put his hand out, trying to reach the door.
“Stay where you are, Mr. Pilkington. Don’t go. Come over here. Come over and sit down.”
Mr. Pinkerton was not sure how he did it. He was aware of Louise Winship somehow fading away and the solid white door filling the place she had stood in. He was aware of himself sitting bolt upright on the extreme edge of the chair that Miss Caroline’s thick knotted hand had indicated. And of her hooded brown eyes level with his own, veiled and intent, fixed steadily on him.
“Mr. Pinkerton . . .” Her voice was still low, hardly above a whisper, with none of a whisper’s forced or sibilant quality. “Mr. Pinkerton—Scott Winship has not come back. He can’t ever come back. Scott Winship is dead. Do you understand that? He’s dead. He’s been dead for a great many years. He is dead— and his name is never mentioned in this house.”
Mr. Pinkerton swallowed. He nodded his head mutely. He was shaking so that he couldn’t have spoken if he had wanted to. He nodded again. Miss Winship was rising. He rose too.
“You understand, Mr. Pinkerton?”
Mr. Pinkerton nodded again, hastily. “I do. I—I understand, perfectly.” He managed to get control of his voice. “And I’m terribly sorry. I—I didn’t mean to upset everybody. And it’s— it’s none of my business anyway, Miss Winship.”
Miss Caroline Winship was moving with him toward the door. He retrieved his hat and clutched it tightly in his trembling hands.
“How very correct you are in saying so.” She reached out and opened the door for him. “It is no business of yours whatsoever. I hope you’ll remember and not forget it. My sister is an invalid. I have no intention of allowing her to be disturbed. I’d be happy if you’d remember that too. Good afternoon, Mr. Pinkerton. Thank you for coming.”
She closed the door. Mr. Pinkerton’s knees were as weak as tepid water. He leaned against the wall and pulled at his narrow celluloid collar that was like a constricting iron band round his throat.
“Oh, dear me!” he whispered. “Dear, dear, how dreadful.”
He started to close his eyes, and blinked them abruptly open. As he leaned against the wall the angle of his vision brought into view a small segment of the staircase that otherwise he could not have seen—nor would he in all probability have noticed it then if his ears had not caught the clink of a heel on one of the brass rods securing the thick carpet at the base of each riser. It was a stealthy clink, and as Mr. Pinkerton looked quickly he saw the brush of white across the narrow segment of staircase—Arthur Pegott’s white shoulder, his head bent forward to conceal his presence as he slipped down the stairs.
Mr. Pinkerton straightened up, his heart curiously still. Pegott had been listening at the door. He knew it as perfectly as if he had seen him there, or seen the imprint of his pointed shoes on the figured carpet. But why? What had he hoped to hear that would make him, after waiting in the lower hall, insolently watching Mr. Pinkerton come up the stairs, nip up behind him and risk his job to listen to? Unless . . . Mr. Pinkerton steadied himself and glanced at the solid ivory-painted door panel. How much had he heard? He listened now himself, to see if Pegott could have heard at all. The sisters would certainly be talking, whether Scott Winship’s name was ever mentioned in the house or not.
Miss Caroline Winship’s voice was muted but quite distinct. “. . . American must have seen him. That’s all I know. You’d better come at once, Sidney. I think he’s here. In London.”
Mr. Pinkerton heard the faint click of the bell as the telephone was replaced, and the scrape of a chair being pushed back and stopping sharply, as if Miss Caroline Winship had become aware of something. Of him, possibly—of his heart pounding against his ribs. For a paralyzed fraction of an instant Mr. Pinkerton stood rooted there, unable to move. Then an indefinable terror gave his feet a sudden power of speed and silence he did not know they could possess, and he was down the stairs and out the front door into the twilit security of the Square with an almost fantastic sense of relief. It died as quickly as it had come as he looked up at the first-floor window and saw Miss Caroline’s solid figure looming darkly against the light behind her.
She was holding the curtain to one side, looking down at him, heavy and motionless. She knew he had been listening to her. The same intuitive awareness that had spoken to him from Pegott’s stealthy movements on the stairway told him that. He quickened his steps until at the end of the road he found he was almost running and quite out of breath.
There was something frightening about the whole thing that was more frightening because it seemed to have an intensity entirely out of rational bounds. Mr. Pinkerton stopped to get his breath and his bearings. Scott Winship was not dead, of course; Miss Caroline Winship knew he was not. But it was more than that. Mr. Pinkerton had not believed he was dead, for the simple reason that she had been so determined to force him to believe it. At least, Scott Winship was not physically dead. Mr. Pinkerton had started to take off his brown bowler to wipe the perspiration off his meagre forehead.
