Section 26

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with a sudden rush the storm tore down upon the street that he began to consider the expediency of finding some shelter. The rain, driven by the wind, pelted down with the violence of a thunderstorm, dashing up from the stones and hissing through the air, and soon a perfect torrent of water coursed along the kennels and accumulated in pools over the choked-up drains. The few stray passengers who had been loafing rather than walking about the street had scuttered away, like frightened rabbits, to some invisible places of refuge, and though Salisbury whistled loud and long for a hansom, no hansom appeared. He looked about him, as if to discover how far he might be from the haven of Oxford Street, but strolling carelessly along, he had turned out of his way, and found himself in an un- known region, and one to all appearance devoid even of a public-house where shelter could be bought for the modest sum of twopence. ‘The street lamps were few and at long intervals, and burned behind grimy glasses with the sickly light of oil, and by this wavering glimmer Salisbury could make out the shadowy and vast old houses of which the street was composed. As he passed along, hurrying, and shrinking from the full sweep of the rain, he noticed the innumerable bell- handles, with names that seemed about to vanish of old age graven on brass plates beneath them, and here and there a richly carved penthouse overhung the door, blackening with the grime of fifty years. The storm seemed to grow more and more furious; he was wet through, and a new hat had become a ruin, and still Oxford Street seemed as far off as ever; it was with deep relief that the dripping man caught sight of a dark archway which seemed to promise shelter from
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the rain if not from the wind. Salisbury took up his position in the driest corner and looked about him; he was standing in a kind of passage contrived under part of a house, and behind him stretched a narrow footway leading between blank walls to regions un- known. He had stood there for some time, vainly endeavouring to rid himself of some of his superfluous moisture, and listening for the passing wheel of a han- som, when his attention was aroused by a loud noise coming from the direction of the passage behind, and growing louder as it drew nearer. In a couple of minutes he could make out the shrill, raucous voice of a woman, threatening and renouncing, and making the very stones echo with her accents, while now and then a man grumbled and expostulated. Though to all appearance devoid of romance, Salisbury had some relish for street rows, and was, indeed, somewhat of - an amateur in the more amusing phases of drunken- ness; he therefore composed himself to listen and ob- serve with something of the air of a subscriber to grand opera. To his annoyance, however, the tem- pest seemed suddenly to be composed, and he could hear nothing but the impatient steps of the woman and the slow lurch of the man as they came towards him. Keeping back in the shadow of the wall, he could see the two drawing nearer; the man was evidently drunk, and had much ado to avoid frequent collision with the wall as he tacked across from one side to the other, like some bark beating up against a wind. The woman was looking straight in front of her, with tears streaming from her eyes, but suddenly as they went by 260
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the flame blazed up again, and she burst forth into a torrent of abuse, facing round upon her companion.
‘You low rascal, you mean, contemptible cur,’ she went on, after an incoherent storm of curses, ‘you think I’m to work and slave for you always, I suppose, while you’re after that Green Street girl and drinking every penny you've got? But you’re mistaken, Sam— indeed, [ll bear it no longer. Damn you, you dirty thief, I’ve done with you and your master too, so you can go your own errands, and I only hope they’ll get you into trouble.’
The woman tore at the bosom of her dress, and taking something out that looked like paper, crumpled it up and flung it away. It fell at Salisbury’s feet. She ran out and disappeared in the darkness, while the man lurched slowly into the street, grumbling indis- tinctly to himself in a perplexed tone of voice. Salis- bury looked out after him and saw him maundering along the pavement, halting now and then and swaying indecisively, and then starting off at some fresh tan- gent. The sky had cleared, and white fleecy clouds were fleeting across the moon, high in the heaven. The light came and went by turns, as the clouds passed by, and, turning round as the clear, white rays shone into the passage, Salisbury saw the little ball of crum- pled paper which the woman had cast down. Oddly curious to know what it might contain, he picked it up and put it in his pocket, and set out afresh on his journey.
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Ill
Salisbury was a man of habit. When he got home, drenched to the skin, his clothes hanging lank about him, and a ghastly dew besmearing his hat, his only thought was of his health, of which he took studious care. So, after changing his clothes and encasing himself in a warm dressing-gown, he proceeded to pre- pare a sudorific in the shape of a hot gin and water, warming the latter over one of those spirit-lamps which mitigate the austerities of the modern hermit’s life. By the time this preparation had been exhibited, and Salisbury’s disturbed feelings had been soothed by a pipe of tobacco, he was able to get into bed in a happy state of vacancy, without a thought of his adventure in the dark archway, or of the weird fancies with which Dyson had seasoned his dinner. It was the same at breakfast the next morning, for Salis- bury made a point of not thinking of any thing until that meal was over; but when the cup and saucer were cleared away, and the morning pipe was lit, he remem- bered the little ball of paper, and began fumbling in the pockets of his wet coat. He did not remember in- to which pocket he had put it, and as he dived now in- to one and now into another, he experienced a strange feeling of apprehension lest it should not be there at ,all, though he could not for the life of him have ex- plained the importance he attached to what was in all probability mere rubbish. But he sighed with relief
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when his fingers touched the crumpled surface in an inside pocket, and he drew it out gently and laid it on the little desk by his easy-chair with as much care as if it had been some rare jewel. Salisbury sat smoking and staring at his find for a few minutes, an odd temp- tation to throw the thing in the fire and have done with it struggling with as odd a speculation as to its pos- sible contents, and as to the reason why the infuri- ated woman should have flung a bit of paper from her with such vehemence. As might be expected, it was the latter feeling that conquered in the end, and yet it was with something like repugnance that he at last took the paper and unrolled it, and laid it out before him. It was a piece of common dirty paper, to all appearance torn out of a cheap exercise-book, and in the middle were a few lines written in a queer cramped hand. Salisbury bent his head and stared eagerly at it for a moment, drawing a long breath, and then fell back in his chair gazing blankly before him, till at last with a sudden revulsion he burst into a peal of laugh- ter, so long and loud and uproarious that the landlady’s baby on the floor below awoke from sleep and echoed his mirth with hideous yells. But he laughed again and again, and took the paper up to read a second time what seemed such meaningless nonsense.
‘Q. has had to go and see his friends in Paris,’ it began. ‘Traverse Handle S. “Once around the grass, and twice around the lass, and thrice around the maple tree.”’’
Salisbury took up the paper and crumpled it as the angry woman had done, and aimed it at the fire. He
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did not throw it there, however, but tossed it carelessly into the well of the desk, and laughed again. The sheer folly of the thing offended him, and he was ashamed of his own eager speculation, as one who pores over the high-sounding announcements in the agony column of the daily paper, and finds nothing but advertisement and triviality. He walked to the window, and stared out at the languid morning life of his quarter; the maids in slatternly print dresses wash- ing door-steps, the fish-monger and the butcher on their rounds, and the tradesmen standing at the doors of their small shops, drooping for lack of trade and ex- citement. In the distance a blue haze gave some gran- deur to the prospect, but the view as a whole was de- pressing, and would only have interested a student of the life of London, who finds something rare and choice in its very aspect. Salisbury turned away in disgust, and settled himself in, the easy-chair, up- holstered in a bright shade of green, and decked with yellow gimp, which was the pride and attraction of the apartments. Here he composed himself to his morn- ing’s occupation—the perusal of a novel that dealt with sport and love in a manner that suggested the col- laboration of a stud-groom and a ladies’ college. In an ordinary way, however, Salisbury would have been carried on by the interest of the story up to lunch-time, but this morning he fidgeted in and out of his chair, took the book up and laid it down again, and swore at last to himself and at himself in mere irritation. In point of fact the jingle of the paper found in the arch- way had ‘got into his head,’ and do what he would he could not help muttering over and over, ‘Once around the grass, and twice around the lass, and thrice around
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the maple tree.’ It became a positive pain, like the foolish burden of a music-hall song, everlastingly quoted, and sung at all hours of the day and night, and treasured by the street-boys as an unfailing resource for six months together. He went out into the streets, and tried to forget his enemy in the jostling of the crowds and the roar and clatter of the traffic, but pres- ently he would find himself stealing quietly aside, and pacing some deserted byway, vainly puzzling his brains, and trying to fix some meaning to phrases that were meaningless. It was a positive relief when Thursday came, and he remembered that he had made an ap- pointment to go and see Dyson; the flimsy reveries of the self-styled man of letters appeared entertaining when compared with this ceaseless iteration, this maze of thought from which there seemed no possibility of escape. Dyson’s abode was in one of the quietest of the quiet streets that led down from the Strand to the river, and when Salisbury passed from the narrow stairway into his friend’s room, he saw that the uncle had been beneficent indeed. The floor glowed and - flamed with all the colours of the East; it was, as Dyson pompously remarked, ‘a sunset in a dream,’ and the lamplight, the twilight of London streets, was shut out with strangely worked curtains, glittering here and there with threads of gold. In the shelves of an oak armoire stood jars and plates of old French china, and the black and white of etchings not to be found in the Haymarket or in Bond Street, stood out against the splendour of a Japanese paper. Salisbury sat down on the settle by the hearth, and sniffed the mingled fumes of incense and tobacco, wondering and dumb be- fore all this splendour after the green rep and the oleo-
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graphs, the gilt-framed mirror, and the lustres of his _ own apartment.
‘I am glad you have come,’ said Dyson. ‘Comfort- able little room, isn’t it? But you don’t look very well, Salisbury. Nothing disagreed with you, has it?”
‘No; but I have been a good deal bothered for the last few days. The fact is I had an odd kind of —of— adventure, I suppose I may call it, that night I saw you, and it has worried me a good deal. And the provoking part of it is that it’s the merest nonsense— but, however, I will tell you all about it, by and by. You were going to let me have the rest of that odd story you began at the restaurant.’
‘Yes. But I am afraid, Salisbury, you are incor- | rigible. You-are a slave to what you call matter of fact. You know perfectly well that in your heart you think the oddness in that case is of my making, and that it is all really as plain as the police reports. However, as I have begun, I will go on. But first we will have something to drink, and you may as well light your pipe.’
Dyson went up to the oak cupboard, and drew from its depths a rotund bottle and two little glasses, quaintly gilded.
‘It’s Benedictine,’ he said. ‘You'll have some, won’t you?”
Salisbury assented, and the two men sat sipping and smoking reflectively for some minutes before Dyson began. ,
‘Let me see,’ he said at last, ‘we were at the inquest, weren't we? No, we had done with that. Ah, I remember. I was telling you that on the whole I had been successful in my inquiries, investigation, or what-
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ever you like to call it, into the matter. Wasn’t that where I left off?”
‘Yes, that was it. To be precise, I think ‘“‘though” was the last word you said on the matter.’
‘Exactly. I have been thinking it all over since the other night, and I have come to the conclusion that that “though” is a very big “though” indeed. Not to put too fine a point on it, I have had to confess that what I found out, or thought I found out, amounts in reality to nothing. I am as far away from the heart of the case as ever. However, I may as well tell you what Ido know. You may remember my saying that I was impressed a good deal by some remarks of one of the doctors who gave evidence at the inquest. Well, I determined that my first step must be to try if I could get something more definite and intelligible out of that doctor. Somehow or other I managed to get an intro- duction to the man, and he gave me an appointment to come and see him. He turned out to be a pleasant, genial fellow; rather young and not in the least like the typical medical man, and he began the conference by offering me whisky and cigars. I didn’t think it worth while to beat about the bush, so I began by say- ing that part of his evidence at the Harlesden Inquest struck me as very peculiar, and I gave him the printed report, with the sentences in question underlined. He just glanced at the slip, and gave me a queer look. “It struck you as peculiar, did it?” said he. ‘‘Well, you must remember that the Harlesden case was very peculiar. In fact, I think I may safely say that in some features it was unique—dquite unique.” ‘Quite so,” I replied, ‘‘and that’s exactly why it interests me, and why I want to know more about it. And I thought
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that if anybody could give me any information it would be you. What is your opinion of the matter?”
‘It was a pretty downright sort of question, and my doctor looked rather taken aback.
‘“Well,”’ he said, “as I fancy your motive in in- quiring into the question must be mere curiosity, I think I may tell you my opinion with tolerable free- dom. So, Mr., Mr. Dyson? if you want to know my theory, it is this: I believe that Dr. Black killed his wife.”
‘“But the verdict,” I answered, ‘‘the verdict was given from your own evidence.”
* “Quite so; the verdict was given in accordance with the evidence of my colleague and myself, and, under the circumstances, I think the jury acted very sensibly. In fact, I don’t see what else they could have done. But I stick to my opinion, mind you, and I say this also. I don’t wonder at Black’s doing what I firmly believe he did. I think he was justified.”
* “Justified! How could that be?” I asked. I was astonished, as you may imagine, at the answer I had got. The doctor wheeled round his chair and looked steadily at me for a moment before he answered.
‘“T suppose you are not a man of science yourself? No; then it would be of no use my going into detail. I have always been firmly opposed myself to any partner- ship between physiology and psychology. I believe that both are bound to suffer. No one recognizes more decidedly than I do the impassable gulf, the fathomless abyss that separates the world of conscious- ness from the sphere of matter. We know that every change of consciousness is accompanied by a rearrange- ment of the molecules in the grey matter; and that is