Valentine smiled, rather mirthlessly.
‘Are they full-size—life-size, as it were?’
‘The two things aren’t quite the same,’ said Bettisher with a grin. ‘But there’s no harm in telling you this: Dick’s like all collectors. He prefers rarities, odd shapes, dwarfs, and that sort of thing. Of course any anatomical peculiarity has to have allowance made for it in the coffin. On the whole his specimens tend to be smaller than the general run—shorter, anyhow. Is that what you wanted to know?’
‘You’ve told me a lot,’ said Valentine. ‘But there was another thing.’
‘Out with it.’
‘When I imagined we were talking about perambulators—’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘I said something about their being empty. Do you remember?’
‘I think so.’
‘Then I said something about them having mannequins inside, and he seemed to agree.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Well, he couldn’t have meant that. It would be too—too realistic’
‘Well, then, any sort of dummy.’
‘There are dummies and dummies. A skeleton isn’t very talkative.’
Valentine stared.
‘He’s been away,’ Bettisher said hastily. ‘I don’t know what his latest idea is. But here’s the man himself.’
Munt came into the room.
‘Children,’ he called out, ‘have you observed the time? It’s nearly seven o’clock. And do you remember that we have another guest coming? He must be almost due.’
‘Who is he?’ asked Bettisher.
‘A friend of Valentine’s. Valentine, you must be responsible for him. I asked him partly to please you. I scarcely know him. What shall we do to entertain him?’
‘What sort of man is he?’ Bettisher inquired.
‘Describe him, Valentine. Is he tall or short? I don’t remember.’
‘Medium.’
‘Dark or fair?’
‘Mouse-coloured.’
‘Old or young?’
‘About thirty-five.’
‘Married or single?’
‘Single.’
‘What, has he no ties? No one to take an interest in him or bother what becomes of him?’
‘He has no near relations.’
‘Do you mean to say that very likely nobody knows he is coming to spend Sunday here?’
‘Probably not. He has rooms in London, and he wouldn’t trouble to leave his address.’
‘Extraordinary the casual way some people live. Is he brave or timid?’
‘Oh, come, what a question! About as brave as I am.’
‘Is he clever or stupid?’
‘All my friends are clever,’ said Valentine, with a flicker of his old spirit. ‘He’s not intellectuaclass="underline" he’d be afraid of difficult parlour games or brilliant conversation.’
‘He ought not to have come here. Does he play bridge?’
‘I don’t think he has much head for cards.’
‘Could Tony induce him to play chess?’
‘Oh, no, chess needs too much concentration.’
‘Is he given to wool-gathering, then?’ Munt asked. ‘Does he forget to look where he’s going?’
‘He’s the sort of man,’ said Valentine, ‘who expects to find everything just so. He likes to be led by the hand. He is perfectly tame and confiding, like a nicely brought up child.’
‘In that case,’ said Munt, ‘we must find some childish pastime that won’t tax him too much. Would he like Musical Chairs?’
‘I think that would embarrass him,’ said Valentine. He began to feel a tenderness for his absent friend, and a wish to stick up for him. ‘I should leave him to look after himself. He’s rather shy. If you try to make him come out of his shell, you’ll scare him. He’d rather take the initiative himself. He doesn’t like being pursued, but in a mild way he likes to pursue.’
‘A child with hunting instincts,’ said Munt pensively. ‘How can we accommodate him? I have it! Let’s play “Hide-and-Seek.” We shall hide and he shall seek. Then he can’t feel that we are forcing ourselves upon him. It will be the height of tact. He will be here in a few minutes. Let’s go and hide now.’
‘But he doesn’t know his way about the house.’
‘That will be all the more fun for him, since he likes to make discoveries on his own account.’
‘He might fall and hurt himself.’
‘Children never do. Now you run away and hide while I talk to Franklin,’ Munt continued quietly, ‘and mind you play fair, Valentine—don’t let your natural affections lead you astray. Don’t give yourself up because you’re hungry for your dinner.’
The motor that met Hugh Curtis was shiny and smart and glittered in the rays of the setting sun. The chauffeur was like an extension of it, and so quick in his movements that in the matter of stowing Hugh’s luggage, putting him in and tucking the rug round him, he seemed to steal a march on time. Hugh regretted this precipitancy, this interference with the rhythm of his thoughts. It was a foretaste of the effort of adaptability he would soon have to make; the violent mental readjustment that every visit, and specially every visit among strangers, entails: a surrender of the personality, the fanciful might call it a little death.
The car slowed down, left the main road, passed through white gateposts and followed for two or three minutes a gravel drive shadowed by trees. In the dusk Hugh could not see how far to right and left these extended. But the house, when it appeared, was plain enough: a large, regular, early nineteenth-century building, encased in cream-coloured stucco and pierced at generous intervals by large windows, some round-headed, some rectangular. It looked dignified and quiet, and in the twilight seemed to shine with a soft radiance of its own. Hugh’s spirits began to rise. In his mind’s ear he already heard the welcoming buzz of voices from a distant part of the house. He smiled at the man who opened the door. But the man didn’t return his smile, and no sound came through the gloom that spread out behind him.
‘Mr. Munt and his friends are playing “Hide-and-Seek” in the house, sir,’ the man said, with a gravity that checked Hugh’s impulse to laugh. ‘I was to tell you that the library is home, and you were to be “He”, or I think he said, “It”, sir. Mr. Munt did not want the lights turned on till the game was over.’
‘Am I to start now?’ asked Hugh, stumbling a little as he followed his guide,—‘or can I go to my room first?’
The butler stopped and opened a door. ‘This is the library,’ he said. ‘I think it was Mr. Munt’s wish that the game should begin immediately upon your arrival, sir.’
A faint coo-ee sounded through the house.
‘Mr. Munt said you could go anywhere you liked,’ the man added as he went away.
Valentine’s emotions were complex. The harmless frivolity of his mind had been thrown out of gear by its encounter with the harsher frivolity of his friend. Munt, he felt sure, had a heart of gold which he chose to hide beneath a slightly sinister exterior. With his travelling graves and charnel-talk he had hoped to get a rise out of his guest, and he had succeeded. Valentine still felt slightly unwell. But his nature was remarkably resilient, and the charming innocence of the pastime on which they were now engaged soothed and restored his spirits, gradually reaffirming his first impression of Munt as a man of fine mind and keen perceptions, a dilettante with the personal force of a man of action, a character with a vein of implacability, to be respected but not to be feared. He was conscious also of a growing desire to see Curtis; he wanted to see Curtis and Munt together, confident that two people he liked could not fail to like each other. He pictured the pleasant encounter after the mimic warfare of Hide-and-Seek—the captor and the caught laughing a little breathlessly over the diverting circumstances of their reintroduction. With every passing moment his mood grew more sanguine.