He was still standing, looking at his shoes, but after a long silence he added:
“I’ve seen you before, but didn’t know who you were.”
After another silence, he asked:
“Is it true that you’re doing camouflage work?”
“Perfectly true.”
“I bet you’re damned good at it. Are you still on the job?”
“No. I’ve been ill. I’m on three months’ sick leave. I don’t suppose I’ll go back. The war will be over.”
“Over! It will start when it stops.”
With an immense effort, I managed to say:
“Why don’t you sit down?”
“That’s an idea. Give me a cigarette.”
“There’s a box on the table.”
He lit a cigarette. Again there was silence. For some reason I felt that he kept forgetting his surroundings—then rediscovered them with a start. He seemed completely unaware of the fact that I was studying him intently—studying the small feet, the tiny hands with their disproportionate large knuckles, the worn-out figure, the quick, audible breathing.
“All that’s as may be,” he said at last. “Good enough for a text-book psychologist, I’ve no doubt.”
These remarks, presumably, had relevance to his thoughts. They certainly had none to anything else.
About two minutes passed before he said:
“I want to talk about that murder. The night of the murder. You were in London, of course, because you had that letter from her. Pity you did not go round to see her.”
“Were you in town that night?
“Oh, yes! I was out that night. Not far from Mitre Street. Quite near, in fact.”
“Didn’t you get lost in the fog?”
For the first time, he looked at me full-face. There was a vacant fixity in the pale eyes—not unlike that sometimes seen in the eyes of drug addicts—then he said in a tone that was almost a purr:
“I love fogs. I’ve always loved them. You’re immersed in a shapeless soundless sea. Memories are obliterated. You feel like God, confronting chaos. You keep still—terribly still—still as a standing stone on a midnight moor. Silence annihilates you. Only you are alive. And you listen—listen—for the footfall of a ghost.”
“Did you hear any one—that night?”
“I’ll ask you a question. Suppose, when you got her letter, you had gone to her flat. Just suppose that. D’you think I’d have heard you? I was near Mitre Street. Very near. D’you think I’d have heard you—in that alley? You’d have come by the alley, wouldn’t you?”
“Probably.”
“I might even have seen you. I see much better in fogs than most people.”
“How long did you stay out that night?”
“How long? Oh, quite a time.”
“And saw no one.”
“I never said I saw no one.”
“You’d have told the police, if you had.”
“I never said I hadn’t told the police.”
After a long silence, he went on:
“Pretty level pegging up till then, wasn’t it? Still, you’re a psychologist—and not a text-book one. Why didn’t you go round, when you got her letter?”
“I was ill. I didn’t get in till eleven. It was the first night I had been out for weeks.”
He rose suddenly—went into the hall—returning almost immediately with his mackintosh. He looked at it minutely—put it on—then took a notebook out of the right-hand pocket. I was wondering whether he intended to go, when he lit another cigarette and sat down at the table. For some moments, he stared at the fire, still holding the note-book in his hand. He seemed so grotesque that I had an insane desire to pull his sandy hair, just to make certain that it wasn’t a wig.
He opened the notebook, flicked over several pages, covered with tiny script, produced a fountain pen, then began to write rapidly.
Several minutes passed, but he remained so absorbed that I felt almost sure he had forgotten my presence. Then, as I continued to watch him, his attitude suddenly seemed so familiar that I exclaimed:
“I rememberer!”
He started violently, then thrust the notebook into his pocket.
“What do you remember?”
“You said you had seen me before. It was at the Mirage Club, when I was there with Maitland and a woman.”
“When you were there with the Polish woman—trying to find out what she knew.”
“Really? I didn’t know she’d be there—and she asked me to go to her table.”
“You worry too much. That’s your trouble. They won’t find the murderer. You know that. I know that. He’s too clever for ’em.”
“Do you think it was that Chelsea student?”
He crossed his arms, then rocked to and fro, shaking with silent laughter.
“Wasn’t that marvellous luck? Unbelievable! He knew her—he killed himself—and didn’t leave a letter saying why. That’s the kind of luck a genius gets.”
Then, with an abrupt change of manner, he turned and asked:
“Know what my trouble is?”
“Haven’t a guess.”
“I can only talk to a genius. That’s why I’m always alone.”
Then he added:
“You’ve a touch of genius.”
There was nothing to say to that, so I said nothing.
He held his head with his hands for some moments, then went on:
“You’re different from the mass-produced mob. Your face is branded with suffering. Not worry. Suffering! It’s branded with thoughts and emotions unknown to the average man. What’s the average man know about anything? All he wants is the possible: a villa, an uncritical wife, a dud little car, and brats as boring as himself.”
Pause.
“They say this will be the century of the average man. Christ! Every morning, all humanity will leave the same villa, at the same time, go to the same job, by the same train. Every evening, all humanity will catch the same train, back to the same villa, be greeted by the same uncritical wife and the same dense-faced brats. This comatose condition will be called—happiness.”
Another pause.
“You know nothing about that. You’ve never known anything about morons. You never will. You’re either in heaven or hell.”
I said nothing. My silence evidently amused him, because he laughed.
“It’s all in your face. You know—no one better—that everything is in the face. Luckily for us, most people can’t decipher faces. Of course, you have very elevated moments. Your work shows that. You gate-crash heaven and see visions. You were immensely elevated when you painted Enigma. You popped into the Garden of Eden by the back door—but the angel with the flaming sword soon had you out of it.”
“Does that sort of thing happen to you?”
“I have my visions, Mr. Arnold. I have my visions—and they are ideals, in their way. Satan, too, is an idealist, in his way. He doesn’t catch the same train to town every day. He’s more interested in quality than quantity. He’s a cosmic exponent of Private Enterprise—and provides the Almighty with formidable competition. Some people think he’s put him out of business. But we’ll stick to you. I’ve come here to-night with a very definite object.”
He rose, wandered about the room, looking at the furniture and the major’s military text-books.
“Not your set-up! It must preen your perversity to be marooned in this museum.”
He pulled open various drawers, eventually trying the bottom drawer of the bureau—containing the Fredrika drawings and the Carol photographs.
“A locked drawer! Well, well! People like us always have a locked drawer in their rooms—or in their minds.”
He went back to his chair, patted the pocket of his mackintosh to assure himself that the notebook was in it, then said: