Part 25 (1/2)

Then he telephoned to her sister, enquiring in a voice of studied casualness. Eve was not at her sister's. He had known all the while that she would not be at her sister's. Being unable to recall the number, he had had to consult the telephone book. His instinct now was to fetch Sissie, whose commonsense had of late impressed him more and more; but he repressed the instinct, holding that he ought to be able to manage the affair alone. He could scarcely say to his daughter: ”Your mother has vanished. What am I to do?” Moreover, feeling himself to be the guardian of Marian's reputation for perfect sanity, he desired not to divulge her disappearance, unless obliged to do so. She might return at any moment. She must return very soon. It was inconceivable that anything should have ”happened” in the Prohack family....

Almost against his will he looked up ”Police Stations” in the telephone-book. There were scores of police stations. The nearest seemed to be that of Mayfair. He demanded the number. To demand the number of the police station was like jumping into bottomless cold water. In a detestable dream he gave his name and address and asked if the police had any news of a street accident. Yes, several. He described his wife.

He said, reflecting wildly, that she was not very tall and rather plump; dark hair. Dress? Dark blue. Hat and mantle? He could not say. Age? A queer impulse here. He knew that she hated the mention of her real age, and so he said thirty-nine. No! The police had no news of such a person.

But the polite firm voice on the wire said that it would telephone to other stations and would let Mr. Prohack hear immediately if there was anything to communicate. Wonderful organisation, the London police force!

As he hung up the receiver he realised what had occurred and what he had done. Marian had mysteriously disappeared and he had informed the police,--he, Arthur Prohack, C.B. What an awful event!

His mind ran on the consequences of traumatic neurasthenia. He put on his hat and overcoat and unbolted the front-door as silently as he could--for he still did not want anybody in the house to know the secret--and went out into the street. What to do? A ridiculous move! Did he expect to find her lying in the gutter? He walked to the end of the dark street and peered into the cross-street, and returned. He had left the front-door open. As he re-entered the house he descried in a corner of the hall, a screwed-up telegraph-envelope. Why had he not noticed it before? He s.n.a.t.c.hed at it. It was addressed to ”Mrs. Prohack.”

Mr. Prohack's soul was instantaneously bathed in heavenly solace.

Traumatic neurasthenia had nothing to do with Eve's disappearance! His bliss was intensified by the fact that he had said not a word to the servants and had not called Sissie. And it was somewhat impaired by the other fact that he had been a.s.s enough to tell the police. He was just puzzling his head to think what misfortune could have called his wife away--not that the prospect of any misfortune much troubled him now that Eve's vanis.h.i.+ng was explained--when through the doorway he saw a taxi drive up. Eve emerged from the taxi.

II

He might have gone out and paid the fare for her, but he stayed where he was, in the doorway, thinking with beatific relief that after all nothing had ”happened” in the family.

”Ah!” he said, in the most ordinary, complacent, quite undisturbed tone, ”I was just beginning to wonder where you'd got to. We've been back about five minutes, Sissie and I, and Sissie's gone to bed. I really don't believe she knows you were out.”

Mrs. Prohack came urgently towards him, pus.h.i.+ng the door to behind her with a careless loud bang. The bang might waken the entire household, but Mrs. Prohack did not care. Mrs. Prohack kissed him without a word.

He possessed in his heart a barometric scale of her kisses, and this was a set-fair kiss, a kiss with a somewhat violent beginning and a reluctant close. Then she held her cheek for him to kiss. Both cheek and lips were freshly cold from the night air. Mr. Prohack was aware of an immense, romantic felicity. And he immediately became flippant, not aloud, but secretly, to hide himself from himself.

He thought:

”It's a positive fact that I've been kissing this girl of a woman for a quarter of a century, and she's fat.”

But beneath his flippancy and beneath his felicity there was a lancinating qualm, which, if he had expressed it he would have expressed thus:

”If anything _did_ happen to her, it would be the absolute ruin of me.”

The truth was that his felicity frightened him. Never before had he been seriously concerned for her well-being. The reaction from grave alarm lighted up the interior of his mysterious soul with a revealing flash of unique intensity.

”What are all these lights burning for?” she murmured. Lights were indeed burning everywhere. He had been in a mood to turn on but not to turn off.

”Oh!” he said, ”I was just wandering about.”

”I'll go straight upstairs,” she said, trying to be as matter-of-fact as her Arthur appeared to be.

When he had leisurely set the whole of the ground-floor to rights, he followed her. She was waiting for him in the boudoir. She had removed her hat and mantle, and lighted one of the new radiators, and was sitting on the sofa.

”There came a telegram from Charlie,” she began. ”I was crossing the hall just as the boy reached the door. So I opened the door myself. It was from Charlie to say that he would be at the Grand Babylon Hotel to-night.”

”Charlie! The Grand Babylon!... Not Buckingham Palace.” Eve ignored his crude jocularity.

”It seems I ought to have received it early in the afternoon. I was so puzzled I didn't know what to do--I just put my things on and went off to the hotel at once. It wasn't till after I was in the taxi that I remembered I ought to have told the servants where I was going. That's why I hurried back. I wanted to get back before you did. Charlie suggested telephoning from the hotel, but I wouldn't let him on any account.”

”Why not?”