All sorts of grotesque ideas darted into my mind . . . I was still dreaming . . . I was ill, delirious. . . .
Then I remembered the letter I had had from Carol last night.
I fumbled in my overcoat pocket. But I wasn’t wearing this coat! Perhaps I’d put it in my wallet. Yes, of course!
I stared at the handwriting—the fine sensitive hand-writing—at the square envelope. Last night, she had written, asking me to go to her flat. Last night, she had been murdered. Last night, I dreamed——
She was dead!
Carol—dead.
Someone ran into me and began to apologise. When he had gone, I looked round. I was outside the Café Royal. I did not remember taking a step since I had stopped outside the London Pavilion to glance at the paper. I must have crossed Shaftesbury Avenue as involuntarily as a sleep-walker.
Sleep-walker.
I dropped the paper and was about to pick it up, when someone took my arm and a familiar voice exclaimed:
“Max!”
I managed to recognised Mervyn Maitland, whom I had not seen since the war.
“Max, my dear fellow! You look absolutely ghastly. You do, really. Even by modern standards.”
I told him I had had influenza and had been stupid enough to stay out late last night.
He took my arm and began to pilot me towards the club.
Although everything about Mervyn Maitland was on a big scale, he did not create an impression of solidity. He was six feet, very broad, with a big head, a resounding voice—and yet seemed to have no more substance than a shadow. He was forty-five and belonged to an old family, each generation of which produced men of considerable distinction, women of remarkable beauty—and one notable misfit. Mervyn was the misfit of his generation and sustained the rôle with verve and versatility.
He knew everyone and had drifted from one occupation to another with mercurial alacrity. He had been a half-commission man on the Stock Exchange; had launched various business enterprises, every one of which had failed; he had made a brief appearance on the stage; had been a journalist; had stood for Parliament as an independent and lost his deposit—but although his friends found him expensive he remained popular, probably because he had an immense zest for life and described his adventures as if they had happened to someone else.
Fortunately he gave me an opportunity to recover some control, as he chattered all the way to St. James’s Street, but at last he interrupted himself in order to ask:
“What have you been doing since the lid blew off?”
I told him that, some months before the war, I had dined with a naval officer who had bought some of my pictures. We had discussed camouflage and when the war came, he asked if I’d join a camouflage research unit.
“And did you?”
“Yes. And have scarcely been out of London since.”
“Change for you—after living abroad and only coming to England for flying visits twice a year. What about your own work?”
“I haven’t done any for about three years.”
“Well, look here, Max, you’d better knock off something, because your pictures are fetching devilish good prices nowadays—in Ireland of all places. So they’re letting you waste your time on camouflage! Just what I’d expect.”
As we turned out of St. James’s Street, I started to tell him that I could eat nothing, but he interrupted:
“Brandy, sandwich, black coffee. In the library. I’ve a hell of a lot to tell you, Max. A hell of a lot!”
The library was deserted, two of the windows were blocked out as the result of a bomb, a wooden support disfigured one of the walls, but Mervyn altered the whole atmosphere of the room by behaving as if it were his private apartment. He summoned an ancient waiter, told him what we wanted, then sank into a huge arm-chair by the window.
As ever, his clothes were excellent and his general appearance unaltered, but I noticed that the features had a fixity, which was new, and that the expression of the eyes lacked concentration. The very pale blue eyes, under remarkable bushy brows, regarded nothing in particular but everything in general.
When the waiter returned, Mervyn said:
“Drink the brandy. All of it. You really do look simply frightful.”
Directly we were alone, he lit a cigarette, blew out a cloud of smoke which he watched with a mildly surprised air before he said:
“My dear fellow, I’ve had a time since I saw you last. Must be six years ago. Yes, no end of a time. Absolute Odyssey! Simply grotesque! Must tell you about it. I was forty when the Fight for Freedom started. Directly war was declared, wires poured in from my mother saying that now, at last—and thank God for it—I simply must do something. So she got me a commission. Ludicrous! Luckily the colonel was a very decent fellow. He felt my position keenly. Anyway, in due course, off we rattled to France with a couple of guns and a few rifles. Finally, we arrived at Dunkirk, very much the worse for wear.”
Pause.
“I don’t know if it’s generally recognised, but Dunkirk was extremely unpleasant. Unless you happen to like soldiering. I don’t personally. It’s too noisy. However, owing entirely to a sergeant—a most practical fellow—I returned to the Island Home.”
He stared at the ceiling for some moments with wide-eyed vacuity, then went on:
“I had to go before a board. They said I was in bad shape. That was the phrase—in bad shape. They thought a trip would do me good. At least old Huggins did. You remember him—did awfully well in the Crimea. Anyway, the board decided that I must have a trip, and told me to take charge of some German prisoners who were being sent to Canada. So I found myself in a ship with hundreds of the Herrenvolk.”
Pause.
“Extraordinary people! I speak German, as my mother brought me up with a succession of foreign governesses—with the result that I started to learn English at the age of sixteen. Yes, I chatted to the Master Race. Absurd people, really. Still, excellent relations between officers and men, perfect discipline and, much more important, remarkably clean. I discussed tactics with one German officer who seemed dumbfounded by my ideas. God knows why! They were all Hitler-hypnotised, of course, and I found that rather tiresome.”
Another pause.
“Well, I had a look at Canada, then embarked for the return journey—and was promptly torpedoed. I spent an indefinite period bouncing about on a raft, clad in a shirt—and was duly rescued by a British destroyer. Young Harry Boulter was in command. He was in absolute fits when he saw me being hauled off the raft by an intricate contrivance and in a somewhat indecent attitude. You know Harry Boulter. I was up at Oxford with his brother. He married the Garnsey girl—the one with the warts. Anyhow, they looked after me very well in the destroyer. I drank buckets of rum and pails of cocoa. Harry insisted on hearing my military adventures, so I related a few of them while he rolled about with laughter. God knows why! Eventually, looking like the end of the war, I reached the Island Fortress.”
He took a sip of brandy, then went on:
“Well, I had to go before another board. Old Huggins wasn’t on it and they decided that I was fighting fit. They evidently liked the phrase, because they said it three times. So I went back to the army—and found the most extraordinary state of affairs. The captain in my show was an ex-policeman, I didn’t mind, personally, because I like the lower classes, but it did seem rather odd, don’t you know? The colonel was a pawnbroker, when he was in ‘Civvy Street,’ as he expressed it, and the major was a potato merchant. All frightfully efficient. I tell you, I found it rather strenuous. Then some general came to review something or other—I could never quite make out what—and I ought to have done something and didn’t do it. There was a most complicated inquiry, which they made me attend for some obscure reason—and the upshot of the whole thing was that they invalided me out of the army.”