The House of Souls/The Three Impostors
THE THREE IMPOSTORS
Prologue
'And Mr. Joseph Walters is going to stay the night?' said the smooth, clean-shaven man to his companion, an individual not of the most charming appearance, who had chosen to make his ginger-coloured moustache merge into a pair of short chin-whiskers.
The two stood at the hall door, grinning evilly at each other; and presently a girl ran quickly down the stairs and joined them. She was quite young, with a quaint and piquant rather than a beautiful face, and her eyes were of a shining hazel. She held a neat paper parcel in one hand, and laughed with her friends.
'Leave the door open,' said the smooth man to the other, as they were going out. 'Yes, by ,' he went on with an ugly oath, 'we'll leave the front door on the jar. He may like to see company, you know.'
The other man looked doubtfully about him.
'Is it quite prudent, do you think, Davies?' he said, pausing with his hand on the mouldering knocker. 'I don't think Lipsius would like it. What do you say, Helen?'
'I agree with Davies. Davies is an artist, and you are commonplace, Richmond, and a bit of a coward. Let the door stand open, of course. But what a pity Lipsius had to go away! He would have enjoyed himself.'
'Yes,' replied the smooth Mr. Davies, 'that summons to the west was very hard on the doctor.'
The three passed out, leaving the hall door, cracked and riven with frost and wet, half open, and they stood silent for a moment under the ruinous shelter of the porch.
'Well,' said the girl, 'it is done at last. We shall hurry no more on the track of the young man with spectacles.'
'We owe a great deal to you,' said Mr. Davies politely; 'the doctor said so before he left. But have we not all three some farewells to make? I, for my part, propose to say good-bye here, before this picturesque but mouldy residence, to my friend, Mr. Burton, dealer in the antique and curious,' and the man lifted his hat with an exaggerated bow.
'And I,' said Richmond, 'bid adieu to Mr. Wilkins, the private secretary, whose company has, I confess, become a little tedious.'
'Farewell to Miss Lally, and to Miss Leicester also,' said the girl, making as she spoke a delicious curtsy. 'Farewell to all occult adventure; the farce is played.'
Mr. Davies and the lady seemed full of grim enjoyment, but Richmond tugged at his whiskers nervously.
'I feel a bit shaken up,' he said. 'I've seen rougher things in the States, but that crying noise he made gave me a sickish feeling.'
The three friends moved away from the door, and began to walk slowly up and down what had been a gravel path, but now lay green and pulpy with damp mosses. It was a fine autumn evening, and a faint sunlight shone on the yellow walls of the old deserted house, and showed the patches of gangrenous decay, the black drift of rain from the broken pipes, the scabrous blots where the bare bricks were exposed, the green weeping of a gaunt laburnum that stood beside the porch, and ragged marks near the ground where the reeking clay was gaining on the worn foundations. It was a queer, rambling old place, the centre perhaps two hundred years old, with dormer windows sloping from the tiled roof, and on each side there were Georgian wings; bow windows had been carried up to the first floor, and two dome-like cupolas that had once been painted a bright green were now grey and neutral. Broken urns lay upon the path, and a heavy mist seemed to rise from the unctuous clay; the neglected shrubberies, grown all tangled and unshapen, smelt dank and evil, and there was an atmosphere all about the deserted mansion that proposed thoughts of an opened grave. The three friends looked dismally at the rough grasses and the nettles that grew thick over lawn and flowerbeds; and at the sad water-pool in the midst of the weeds. There, above green and oily scum instead of lilies, stood a rusting Triton on the rocks, sounding a dirge through a shattered horn; and beyond, beyond the sunk fence and the far meadows, the sun slid down and shone red through the bars of the elm trees.
Richmond shivered and stamped his foot.
'We had better be going soon,' he said; 'there is nothing else to be done here.'
'No,' said Davies; 'it is finished at last. I thought for some time we should never get hold of the gentleman with the spectacles. He was a clever fellow, but, Lord! he broke up badly at last. I can tell you, he looked white at me when I touched him on the arm in the bar. But where could he have hidden the thing? We can all swear it was not on him.'
The girl laughed, and they turned away, when Richmond gave a violent start.
'Ah!' he cried, turning to the girl, 'what have you got there? Look, Davies, look; it's all oozing and dripping.'
The young woman glanced down at the little parcel she was carrying, and partially unfolded the paper.
'Yes, look, both of you,' she said; 'it's my own idea. Don't you think it will do nicely for the doctor's museum? It comes from the right hand, the hand that took the Gold Tiberius.'
Mr. Davies nodded with a good deal of approbation, and Richmond lifted his ugly high-crowned bowler, and wiped his forehead with a dingy handkerchief.
'I'm going,' he said; 'you two can stay if you like.'
The three went round by the stable-path, past the withered wilderness of the old kitchen-garden, and struck off by a hedge at the back, making for a particular point in the road. About five minutes later two gentlemen, whom idleness had led to explore these forgotten outskirts of London, came sauntering up the shadowy carriage-drive. They had spied the deserted house from the road, and as they observed all the heavy desolation of the place, they began to moralize in the great style, with considerable debts to Jeremy Taylor.
'Look, Dyson,' said the one, as they drew nearer; 'look at those upper windows; the sun is setting, and, though the panes are dusty, yet—
"The grimy sash an oriel burns."'