Part 3 (1/2)
I sat upright in my chair. The excitement died out of me and left me chilly. I looked about me; I was in my own lodging at the corner of St James's Street, outside in the streets the world was beginning to wake, and the voice which had spoken to me and the hand which was now laid upon my shoulder were the voice and the hand of Lieutenant Clutterbuck.
”What's this?” said he, leaning over my shoulder. ”It is a map.”
”Yes,” I answered, ”it is a mere map, the map of the Great West Road;”
and in my eyes it was no longer any more than a map.
Clutterbuck, who was holding it in his hand, dropped it with a movement and an exclamation of anger. Then he looked curiously at me, stepped over to the sideboard and took up a gla.s.s or two which stood there. The gla.s.ses were clean and dry. He looked at me again, his curiosity had grown into uneasiness; he walked to the opposite side of the table, and drawing up a chair seated himself face to face with me.
”I hoped you were drunk,” said he. ”But it seems you are as sober as a bishop. Are you daft, then? Has it come to a strait-waistcoat? I come back late from Twickenham. I stopped at the 'Hercules Pillars.' There I heard that you had rushed in two hours before in a great flurry and disorder, crying out that you must speak to me on the instant. The same story was told to me at the 'Cocoa Trees.' My landlady repeated it. I conjectured that it must needs be some little affair to be settled with sharps at six in the morning; and so that you might not say your friends neglect you, I turn from my bed, and hurry to you at three o'clock of the morning. I find that you have left your front-door unlatched for any thief that wills to make his profit of the house. I come into your room and find you bending over a map in a great excitement and crying out aloud that d.a.m.ned boy's name. Is he to trouble my peace until the Judgment Day? Are you daft, eh, Steve?” and he reached his hand across the table not unkindly, and laid it on my sleeve. ”Are you daft?”
I was staring again at the map, and did not answer him. He s.h.i.+fted his hand from my sleeve and took it up and away from my eyes. He looked at it himself, and then spoke slowly, and in quite a different voice:
”It is a curious, suggestive thing, the map of a road, when all's said,” he observed slowly. ”I'll not deny but what it seizes one's fancies. Its simple lines and curves call up I know not what pictures of flowering hedgerows; a little black blot means a village of stone cottages, very likely overhung with ivy and climbed upon with roses.”
He suddenly thrust the map again under my nose, ”What do you see upon the road?” said he.
”Parmiter,” I answered.
”Of course,” he interrupted sharply. ”Well, where is Parmiter?” and I laid a finger on the map.
”Between Fenny Bridges and Exeter,” said he, leaning forward. ”He has made great haste.”
He spoke quite seriously, not questioning my conjecture, but accepting it as a mere statement of fact.
”That is a heath?” he asked, pointing to an inch or so where the map was shaded on each side of the high-road. ”Yes, a heath t'other side of Hartley Row; I know it. There should be a mail-coach there, and the horses out of the shafts, and one or two men in c.r.a.pe masks and a lady in a swoon, and the driver stretched in the middle of the road with a bullet through his crop.”
”I do not see that,” I returned. ”But here, beyond Axminster----”
”Well?”
He leaned yet further forward.
”There is a forest here.”
”Yes.”
”I saw a man on horseback ride into it between the trees. He has not as yet emerged from it.”
”Who was he? Did you know him?”
”I thought I did. But I could not see his face.”
Clutterbuck watched that forest eagerly, and with a queer suspense in his att.i.tude and even in his breathing. Every now and then he raised his eyes to mine with a question in them. Each time I shook my head, and answered:
”Not yet,” and we both again stared at the map.
Then Clutterbuck whispered quickly: