The Camera Fiend by E. W. Hornung (sites to read books for free TXT) 📖

id="page171">[pg 171]

And Phillida rose submissively, with unreal thanks which could not conceal her recognition of the impromptu pretext for getting rid of her; her uncle called a taxicab, and with harsh hilarity turned her off the premises in the frock she had been wearing all day.

“And now,” said he, returning with a scowl, “what the devil were you two talking about while my back was turned?”

“Yesterday,” replied Pocket, more than ready for him, though his heart beat fast.

“What about yesterday?”

“Our scuffle in the other room.”

“Is that all?”

“No—I found out something; she didn't tell me.”

“What did you find out?”

“That you let her think me mad!” cried Pocket, in monstrous earnest. He might have laughed at himself, could he have seen his own reproachful face. But he could have killed Baumgartner for laughing at him; it did not occur to him that the laugh was partly one of pure relief.

“Why, my young fellow, how else can I account for you?”

“You said she would think I was a patient.”

“Exactly! A mental case.”

“You had no business to make me out mad,” persisted Pocket, with dogged valour.

[pg 172]

“Pardon me! I had all the business in the world; and I beg that you'll continue to foster the illusion as thoroughly as you did yesterday when I was out. It's no good shaking your head at me; listen to reason,” continued Baumgartner, with an adroit change of tone. “And try, my good young fellow, do try to think of somebody besides yourself; have some consideration for my niece, if you have none for me.”

Pocket was mystified, but still more incensed; for he felt himself being again put gently but clearly in the wrong.

“And I should like to know,” he cried, “what good it does her to think she's associating with a lunatic?”

“She would probably prefer the idea to that of a murderer,” was the suave reply. “I speak only of ideas; otherwise I should not make use of such an expression, even in jest. It's as ugly as it's ridiculous in your case. Yet you heard for yourself that others are applying the horrid term in all sobriety.”

“I heard more than that,” returned Pocket. “They've arrested somebody!”

“I thought I told you there was no truth in that?”

But Baumgartner had winced for once, and the boy had seen it, and his retort was a precocious inspiration.

[pg 173]

“That was only to avoid a scene at table, Dr. Baumgartner!”

“Well, my young fellow,” said the doctor, after one of his wise pauses, “and what if it was?”

“I can't sit here and let an innocent man lie in prison.”

“He won't lie long.”

“It's absolutely wicked to let them keep him at all.”

“Nor will they, longer than another hour or two.”

“Well, if they do, you know what I shall do!”

Pocket had never displayed such determination, nor incurred quite the same measure or quality of wrath that Baumgartner poured upon him without a word for the next few moments. It was a devouring gaze of sudden and implacable animosity. The ruthless lips were shut out of sight, yet working as though the teeth were being ground behind them; the crow's footed face flushed up, and the crow's feet were no more; it was as though age was swallowed in that flood of speechless passion till the whole man was no older than the fiery eyes that blazed upon the boy. And yet the most menacing thing of all was the complete control with which the doctor broke this pregnant silence.

“You say that. I say otherwise. You had better find a book in the other room till you know your own mind again.”

[pg 174]

“I know it now, unless they release that man,” said Pocket, through his teeth, although they chattered.

“Give them a chance, and give yourself one! It will be time to think of clearing other people when they fail to clear themselves. Have more patience! Think of your own friends, and give them time too.”

If the last allusion was to the lad's letter, due in Leicestershire that morning, it was as happy as all Baumgartner's last words. If he meant himself to be included among Pocket's friends, there was food for thought in the suggestion that a man of the doctor's obvious capacity was not idle in the boy's best interests. Pocket was made to feel rather ashamed of himself, as usual; but he could not forget the concentrated fury of the look which had not been weakened by infuriate words; and the recollection remained as an excuse, as well as a menace, in his mind. He had time enough to think it over. Dr. Baumgartner smoked his meerschaum in the gathering shade at the back of the house. The schoolboy sulked for some time in the big chair, but eventually took the doctor at his word about a book.

If it be ever true that a man may be known by his books, it was certainly so to some extent in the case of Dr. Otto Baumgartner. His library [pg 175] was singularly small for an intellectual man who wrote himself, and a majority of the volumes were in languages which no public schoolboy could be expected to read; but of the English books many were on military subjects, some few anthropological; there were photographic year-books and Psychical Research Reports by the foot or yard, and there was an odd assortment of second-hand books which had probably been labelled “occult” in their last bookseller's list. Boismont on “Hallucinations” was one of these; it was the book for Pocket. He took the little red volume down, and read a long chapter on somnambulism in the big chair. In a way it comforted him. It was something to find that he was far from being the only harmless creature who had committed a diabolical deed in his sleep; here among several cases was one of another boy who had made an equally innocent and yet determined attempt on his own father. But there was something peculiar in poor Pocket's case, something that distinguished it from any of those cited in the book, and he was still ferreting for its absolute fellow when Phillida came in long before he expected her. Boismont had made the time fly wonderfully, in spite of everything; the girl, too, appeared to have been taken out of herself, and talked about her concert as any other young girl might have done, both to Pocket and her [pg 176] uncle, who glided in at once from the garden. The doctor, however, was himself in mellower mood; and they were having tea, for all the world like any ordinary trio, the girl still making talk about sundry songs, the man quizzing them and her, and the boy standing up for one that his sister sang at home, when a metallic tattoo put a dramatic stop to the conversation.

The two young people, but not their elder, were startled quite out of their almost inadvertent tranquillity; and the knocker was not still before Pocket realised that it was the first time he had heard it. No letters were delivered at that house; not a soul had he seen or heard at the door before. Even in his excitement, however, with its stunning recrudescence of every reality, its instantaneous visions of his people or the police, there was room for a measure of disgust when the girl got up, at an ungallant nod from the German, to go to the door.

“It's a huge fat man,” whispered Phillida, on her return to the big room at the back of the house. “Here's his card.”

“Thrush!” muttered Baumgartner as though he knew the name, and he glowered at the two young faces on which it made no impression whatever. It was plain how he hated leaving them together; but for once it must be done, and done [pg 177] quickly—with both doors open and the visitor's very movements audible on the steps. To the door the doctor must go, and went, shutting that one pointedly behind him.

The young creatures, looking in each other's eyes, listened for raised voices and the slam of prompt expulsion; but the voices were pitched too low to reach their ears in words, and were only interrupted by the sound of footsteps in the hall, and the perfectly passive closing of an outer and an inner door in quick succession.

“He's taken him into the dining-room,” murmured Phillida. “Who can it be?”

“Hasn't he any friends?”

“None who ever come here; none of that name anywhere, I feel sure.” Her great eyes, without leaving his for an instant, filled with thought as a blank screen takes a shadow. “I wonder if it's about that!” she whispered.

“What?”

“What they were calling out with the newspapers while we were at table.”

There was a pause. The look in her eyes had changed. It was purely penetrating now.

“Why should it be?” asked Pocket, his own eyes falling.

“It's no use asking me, Mr. Upton.”

“But I don't understand the question.”

[pg 178]

“Is that true?”

“No,” he muttered; “it isn't.”

She was leaning over to him; he felt it, without looking up.

“Mr. Upton,” she said, speaking quickly in the undertone they were both instinctively adopting, “you know now what I thought about you at first. I won't say what made me; but that was what I thought, but could hardly believe, and never will again. It makes it all the more a mystery, your being here. I can't ask my uncle—he tells me nothing—but there's something I can and must ask you.”

Pocket hung his head. He knew what was coming. It came.

“My uncle brought you here, Mr. Upton, on the very morning that thing happened they were calling out about to-day. In the Park. It is to the Park he goes so often in the early morning with his camera! How can I say what I want to say? But, if you think, you will see that everything points to it; especially the way he ran out for that paper—and hid the truth when he came in!”

Pocket looked up at last.

“I know the truth.”

“About the arrest?”

“Yes; it was quite obvious, and he admitted it when you'd gone.”

[pg 179]

“Why not before?”

“I couldn't tax him