The Moonlit Way: A Novel by Robert W. Chambers

Author:Robert W. Chambers [Chambers, Robert W. (Robert William)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

216

XVII

A CONFERENCE

The elegantly modulated accents of Aristocrates, announcing the imminence of luncheon, aroused Barres from disconcerted but wrathful reflections.

As he sat up and tenderly caressed his battered head, Thessalie and Dulcie came slowly into the studio together, their arms interlaced.

Both exclaimed at the sight of the young man’s swollen face, but he checked their sympathetic enquiries drily:

“Bumped into something. It’s nothing. How are you, Dulcie? All right again?”

She nodded, evidently much concerned about his disfigured forehead; so to terminate sympathetic advice he went away to bathe his bruises in witch hazel, and presently returned smelling strongly of that time-honoured panacea, and with a saturated handkerchief adorning his brow.

At the same time, there came a considerable thumping and bumping from the corridor; the bell rang, and Westmore appeared with the trunks—five of them. These a pair of brawny expressmen rolled into the studio and carried thence to the storeroom which separated the bedroom and bath from the kitchen.

“Any trouble?” enquired Barres of Westmore, when the expressmen had gone.

“None at all. Nobody looked at me twice. What’s happened to your noddle?”

217

“Bumped it. Lunch is ready.”

Thessalie came over to him:

“I have included Dulcie among my confidants,” she said in a low voice.

“You mean you’ve told her——”

“Everything. And I am glad I did.”

Barres was silent; Thessalie passed her arm around Dulcie’s waist; the two men walked behind together.

The table was a mass of flowers, over which netted sunlight played. Three cats assisted—the Prophet, always dignified, blinked pleasantly from a window ledge; the blond Houri, beside him, purred loudly. Only Strindberg was impossible, chasing her own tail under the patient feet of Aristocrates, or rolling over and over beneath the table in a mindless assault upon her own hind toes.

Seated there in the quiet peace and security of the pleasant room, amid familiar things, with Aristocrates moving noiselessly about, sunlight lacing wall and ceiling, and the air aromatic with the scent of brilliant flowers, Barres tried in vain to realise that murder could throw its shadow over such a place—that its terrible menace could have touched his threshold, even for an instant.

No, it was impossible. The fellow could not have intended murder. He was merely a blackmailer, suddenly detected and instantly frightened, pulling a gun in a panic, and even then failing in the courage to shoot.

It enraged Barres to even think about it, but he could not bring himself to attach any darker significance to the incident than just that—a blackmailer, ready to display a gun, but not to use it, had come to bully a woman; had found himself unexpectedly trapped, and had behaved according to his kind.

218

Barres had meant to catch him. But he admitted to himself that he had gone about it very unskilfully. This added disgust to his smouldering wrath, but he realised that he ought to tell the story.

And after the rather subdued luncheon was ended, and everybody had gone out to the studio, he did tell it, deliberately including Dulcie in his audience, because he felt that she also ought to know.

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