“Oh, no!” And then, “You didn’t say anything about me-”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know that I should have spoken to him, but he looked straight at me and waved a hand. I thought he recognized me. The gas-lamp out in the street was quite bright when he went away at three o’clock in the morning, and he could have seen me by it, but as it turned out, he was just being matey and didn’t know me from Adam. By the time I had tumbled to this I had already addressed him as Professor MacPhail, and he was busy swearing me to secrecy.”
“Why?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea. There must have been quite a lot of whisky in that cocoa, because the tears were running down his face. He said it was a matter of his professional reputation, and got off quite a piece about the unguarded tongue, and discretion being the mother of safety. ‘Twa strangers in a fog, and how was it possible to suspect that I was to come across either of them again! The tongue of truth has aye been mine-except in the way of my professional career. And what would hinder that truthful tongue from giving the name with which I was borrn-and not one to be ashamed of. No, no-a decent name and a decent family, the MacPhails. But-’ here he buttonholed me and diffused a cloud of whisky-‘but, for prrofessional purposes the name is Regulus Mactavish-Prrofessor Regulus Mactavish. And for the hoardings and the theatre bills The Great Prospero!’ ”
The imitation was very well done. Ione should have laughed, but there was no laughter in her. She felt a cold horror, and she had turned so pale that Jim Severn stretched out his hand across the table and said,
“What is it-is anything wrong?”
“I don’t know-”
He left his seat and came to sit beside her.
“My dear, what is it?”
She put a cold hand into his warm one.
“I’ll tell you-in a minute. I’m probably being silly.”
He filled up her coffee-cup and pushed it over to her with his free hand.
“You’d better drink this whilst it’s hot.”
When she had drunk the coffee she said,
“Jim, I don’t want to stay here-I don’t want that man to see me-I don’t want him to know I’m here. I’ll wait in the ladies’ room while you settle up and get the car. I won’t come downstairs until I see you in the hall, and if the coast is clear you can nod your head and then go straight out to the car. I don’t want him to see us together.”
The next few minutes went as slowly as any Ione had known in all her life. When she came to the head of the stairs, Jim Severn was not in sight. A little man with a bald head came out of one of the side doors and tapped the large old-fashioned barometer which hung in the hall, after which he plunged down a dark passage and was seen no more. A woman in a streaming mackintosh pushed the swing-door at the entrance and came in in a very hesitating manner. She stood and dripped impartially upon the strip of red carpet and the shabby brown linoleum on either side of it, shifting her position from time to time and looking about her in a depressed and helpless manner. After some three or four minutes she appeared to lose heart altogether and wandered back through the swing-door into the rain.
There was one of those times which are probably not so long drawn out as they appear. Ione had begun to have a dazed impression that nothing was ever going to happen again, when Jim Severn came quickly in through the swing-door, looked up, nodded briefly, and turning on his heel, went out again.
With the vaguely startled feeling that she had roused suddenly from a brief uneasy sleep she began to descend the stairs. She was within two or three steps of the bottom, when a door at the end of a passage running away from the stairs to the back of the house was thrown open and a man came out. He was away out of Ione’s sight, and she had no inclination to turn her head, but he emerged upon a rich tide of song, and she could not have an instant’s doubt as to his identity.
“And was’na he a roguey, a roguey, a roguey,
And was’na he a roguey,
The Piper o’Dundee?”
It wasn’t one of the songs he had sung in the fog, but she would have known the rolling voice if she had come across it in China or Peru. A quiet coldness came upon her, and without hastening her step she crossed the hall and went out through the swing-door. It fell to behind her, and the Piper of Dundee was blotted out.
Jim was drawn up just short of the entrance. She got into the seat beside him and said,
“Quick! He was behind me as I came out!”
As they slid away over the wet road, he said,
“Did he see you?”
“Not my face-and anyhow I don’t suppose he ever did see that. I could only have been someone who was crossing the hall.”
He turned into a side street.
“Oh, he saw you that night. You were asleep, and the light of the street-lamp was shining in clear through the glass over the door. He had a good look at you before he went, and he said you had a bonnie face.”
She made a sound of pure exasperation. Jim Severn laughed.
“He was perfectly respectful. There really wasn’t anything for you to resent-just an involuntary tribute.”
She said in a low voice,
“You don’t understand. And we can’t talk here. Let’s get away from all these houses and things and find a country road where you can stop the car.”
They did not have to go very far. No more than two miles out of Wraydon the village of Ring has a charming green approached by broad grass verges and centering upon a pond complete with ducks. Off the road and in the lee of a hedge they could talk as privately as they chose and for as long, with the rain blurring the windscreen and the sound of trees lashing in the wind. Now that it had come to the point, Ione was wondering just what her story was worth. Seen in retrospect, the whole thing partook of the vagueness, the insubstantiality of the fog which had been its setting.
Jim Severn turned towards her and said,
“Well-what is it?”
“When I ran into you in the fog that night and asked you to say I was with you-”
He interrupted her.
“That isn’t quite what you said. You wanted me to say you had bumped into me a little way back.”
“Yes-I didn’t want him to know I had been following him.”
“Why?”
“I had better tell you the whole thing from the beginning. The fog had come up suddenly, and I was lost. I went on, because there was always a chance of getting somewhere. What I did get to was one of those streets where the houses stand a little way back with steps going down to an area and a stone balustrade across the front. It’s terribly difficult to walk quite straight in a fog. I’m one of the people who bear to the right, and all at once I found myself clutching at a gate which swung away from me. As a matter of fact, I hit it pretty hard with my knee, and the next thing I knew I was falling down the area steps. I landed on some horrid wet flagstones-that is where I collected the green slime-and I was quite glad to keep still for a bit and make sure I hadn’t got any broken bones. And the next thing that happened was that someone came out of the house by the front door and stood there talking to the person who was letting him out. There were steps running up from the street, and neither of them had any idea that I had just fallen down into their area.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because of what they said. The one who came out was the Professor, Robert MacPhail-Regulus Mactavish-The Great Prospero-whatever he chooses to call himself. The other was just a whisper. I don’t really know that it was a man. I just took it for granted, the way the Professor was talking-offhand, you know, and not troubling about being polite. Of course I can only give you his side of the conversation, because I never got a word of what the other creature said.”
“All right, what did you get?”