“I would not have you think, sir,” he added, “that I am an habitual toper. I have latterly been much upset by— domestic worries, and— er— ” He emptied his glass at a draught. “Surely, Mr. Knox, you are going to replenish? Whilst you are doing so, would you kindly request Mrs. Wootton to extend the same favour to myself?”
But at that moment Mrs. Wootton in person appeared behind the counter. “Time, please, gentlemen,” she said; “it is gone half-past two.”
“What!” exclaimed Mr. Camber, rising. “What is that? You decline to serve me, Mrs. Wootton?”
“Why, not at all, Mr. Camber,” answered the landlady, “but I can serve no one now; it’s after time.”
“You decline to serve me,” he muttered, his speech becoming slurred. “Am I, then, to be insulted?”
I caught a glance of entreaty from the landlady. “My dear sir,” I said, genially, “we must bow to the law, I suppose. At least we are better off here than in America.”
“Ah, that is true,” agreed Mr. Camber, throwing his head back and speaking the words as though they possessed some deep dramatic significance. “Yes, but such laws are an insult to every intelligent man.”
He sat down again rather heavily, and I stood looking from him to the landlady, and wondering what I should do. The matter was decided for me, however, in a way which I could never have foreseen. For, hearing a light footfall upon the step which led up to the bar-parlour, I turned — and there almost beside me stood a wrinkled little Chinaman!
He wore a blue suit and a tweed cap, he wore queer, thick-soled slippers, and his face was like a smiling mask hewn out of very old ivory. I could scarcely credit the evidence of my senses, since the Lavender Arms was one of the last places in which I should have looked for a native of China.
Mr. Colin Camber rose again, and fixing his melancholy eyes upon the newcomer:
“Ah Tsong,” he said in a tone of cold anger, “what are you doing here?”
Quite unmoved the Chinaman replied:
“Blingee you chit, sir, vellee soon go back.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Mr. Camber. “Answer me, Ah Tsong: who sent you?”
“Lilly missee,” crooned the Chinaman, smiling up into the other’s face with a sort of childish entreaty. “Lilly missee.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Camber in a changed voice. “Oh.”
He stood very upright for a moment, his gaze set upon the wrinkled Chinese face. Then he looked at Mrs. Wootton and bowed, and looked at me and bowed, very stiffly.
“I must excuse myself, sir,” he announced. “My wife desires my presence at home.”
I returned his bow, and as he walked quite steadily toward the door, followed by Ah Tsong, he paused, turned, and said: “Mr. Knox, I should esteem it a friendly action if you would spare me an hour of your company before you leave Surrey. My visitors are few. Any one, any one, will direct you to the Guest House. I am persuaded that we have much in common. Good-day, sir.”
He went down the steps, disappearing in company with the Chinaman, and having watched them go, I turned to Mrs. Wootton, the landlady, in silent astonishment.
She nodded her head and sighed.
“The same every day and every evening for months past,” she said. “I am afraid it’s going to be the death of him.”
“Do you mean that Mr. Camber comes here every day and is always fetched by the Chinaman?”
“Twice every day,” corrected the landlady, “and his poor wife sends here regularly.”
“What a tragedy,” I muttered, “and such a brilliant man.”
“Ah,” said she, busily removing jugs and glasses from the counter, “it does seem a terrible thing.”
“Has Mr. Camber lived for long in this neighbourhood?” I ventured to inquire.
“It was about three years ago, sir, that he took the old Guest House at Mid-Hatton. I remember the time well enough because of all the trouble there was about him bringing a Chinaman down here.”
“I can imagine it must have created something of a sensation,” I murmured. “Is the Guest House a large property?”
“Oh, no, sir, only ten rooms and a garden, and it had been vacant for a long time. It belongs to what is called the Crayland Park Estate.”
“Mr. Camber, I take it, is a literary man?”
“So I believe, sir.”
Mrs. Wootton, having cleared the counter, glanced up at the clock and then at me with a cheery but significant smile.
“I see that it is after time,” I said, returning the smile, “but the queer people who seem to live hereabouts interest me very much.”
“I can’t wonder at that, sir!” said the landlady, laughing outright. “Chinamen and Spanish men and what-not. If some of the old gentry that lived here before the war could see it, they wouldn’t recognize the place, of that I am sure.”
“Ah, well,” said I, pausing at the step, “I shall hope to see more of Mr. Camber, and of yourself too, madam, for your ale is excellent.”
“Thank you, sir, I’m sure,” said the landlady much gratified, “but as to Mr. Camber, I really doubt if he would know you if you met him again. Not if he was sober, I mean.”
“Really?”
“Oh, it’s a fact, believe me. Just in the last six months or so he has started on the rampage like, but some of the people he has met in here and asked to call upon him have done it, thinking he meant it.”
“And they have not been well received?” said I, lingering.
“They have had the door shut in their faces!” declared Mrs. Wootton with a certain indignation. “He either does not remember what he says or does when he is in drink, or he pretends he doesn’t. Oh, dear, it’s a funny world. Well, good-day, sir.”
“Good-day,” said I, and came out of the Lavender Arms full of sympathy with the views of the “old gentry,” as outlined by Mrs. Wootton; for certainly it would seem that this quiet spot in the Surrey Hills had become a rallying ground for peculiar people.
Chapter 8 THE CALL OF M’KOMBO
Of tea upon the veranda of Cray’s Folly that afternoon I retain several notable memories. I got into closer touch with my host and hostess, without achieving anything like a proper understanding of either of them, and I procured a new viewpoint of Miss Val Beverley. Her repose was misleading. She deliberately subjugated her own vital personality to that of Madame de Stämer, why, I knew not, unless she felt herself under an obligation to do so. That her blue-gray eyes could be wistful was true enough, they could also be gay; and once I detected in them a look of sadness which dispelled the butterfly illusion belonging to her dainty slenderness, to her mobile lips, to the vagabond curling hair of russet brown.
Paul Harley’s manner remained absent, but I who knew his moods so well recognized that this abstraction was no longer real. It was a pose which he often adopted when in reality he was keenly interested in his surroundings. It baffled me, however, as effectively as it baffled others, and whilst at one moment I decided that he was studying Colonel Menendez, in the next I became convinced that Madame de Stämer was the subject upon his mental dissecting table.
That he should find in Madame a fascinating problem did not surprise me. She must have afforded tempting study for any psychologist. I could not fathom the nature of the kinship existing between herself and the Spanish colonel, for Madame de Stämer was French to her fingertips. Her expressions, her gestures, her whole outlook on life proclaimed the fashionable Parisienne.
She possessed a vigorous masculine intelligence and was the most entertaining companion imaginable. She was daringly outspoken, and it was hard to believe that her gaiety was forced. Yet, as the afternoon wore on, I became more and more convinced that such was the case.