Part 17 (1/2)

Gaining no reply to his call, Julian grew alarmed. He sprang up from the table and turned on the electric light. Valentine was leaning back nervelessly in his chair. His face was quite pale and cold. His lips were slightly parted. His eyes were wide open and stared before him without expression. His head hung far back over the edge of his chair. He looked exactly like a man who had just died, and died in a convulsion. For though the lips were parted, the teeth set tightly together grinned through them, and the hands were intensely contracted into fists. Julian seized Valentine in his arms, lifted the drooping body from the chair and laid it out at length on the divan. He put a pillow under the head, which fell on it grotesquely and lay sideways, still smiling horribly at nothing. Then he poured out a gla.s.s of brandy and strove to force some of it between Valentine's teeth, dashed water in the glaring eyes, beat the air with a fan which he tore from the mantelpiece. All was in vain.

There came no sign of returning life. Then Julian caught Valentine's hands in his and sought to unclench the rigid, cold fingers. He laid his hand on the heart of his friend. No pulsation beat beneath his anxious touch. Then a great horror overtook him. Suddenly he felt a conviction that Valentine had died beside him in the dark, had died sitting up in his chair by the table. The cry he had heard, so thin, so strange and piercing, the attenuated flame that he had seen, were the voice and the vision of the flying soul which he had loved, seeking its final freedom, _en route_ to the distant spheres believers dream of and sceptics deny.

”Valentine! Valentine!” he cried again, with the desperate insistence of the hopeless. But the cold, staring creature upon the green divan did not reply. With a brusque and fearful movement Julian shut the eyelids. Would they ever open again? He knelt upon the floor, leaning pa.s.sionately over his friend, or that which had been his friend. He bent his head down on the silent breast, listening. Surely if Valentine were alive he would show it by some sign, the least stir, breath, s.h.i.+ver, pulse. There was none. Julian might have been clasping stone or iron. If he could only know for certain whether Valentine were really dead. Yet he dared not leave him alone and go to seek aid. Suddenly a thought struck him. In the hall of the flat was a handle which, when turned in a certain direction, communicated with one of those wooden and gla.s.s hutches in which sleepy boy-messengers harbour at night. Julian sprang to this handle, set the communicator in motion, then ran back into the tentroom. His intention was to write a note to Dr. Levillier. The writing-table was so placed that, sitting at it, his back would be turned to that silent figure on the divan. A s.h.i.+ver ran over him at the bare thought of such a blind posture. No, he must face that terror, once so dear. He caught up a pen and a sheet of note paper, and, swerving round, was about to write, holding the paper on his knee, when the electric bell rang. The boy had been very quick in his run from the hutch. Julian laid down the paper and went to let the boy in. His knees shook as he descended the dark, echoing stairs and opened the door. There stood the messenger, a rosy-faced urchin of about twelve, with rather sleepy brown eyes.

”Come up,” Julian said, and he hurried back to the flat, the little boy violently emulating his giant stride up the stairs and arriving flushed and panting at the door. Julian, who was entirely abstracted in his agitation, made for the tentroom without another word to the boy, seized pen and paper and began to write, urgently requesting Dr. Levillier to come at once to see Valentine. Abruptly a childish voice intruded itself upon him.

”Lor', sir,” it said. ”Is the gentleman ill?”

Julian glanced up and found that the little boy had innocently followed him into the tentroom, and was now standing near him, gazing with a round-eyed concern upon the stretched figure on the divan.

”Yes,” Julian replied; ”ill, very ill. I want you to go for a doctor.”

The boy approached the divan, moved apparently by the impelling curiosity of tender years. Julian stopped writing and watched him. He leaned down and looked at the face, at the inertia of hands and limbs. As he raised himself up from a calm and close inspection he saw Julian staring at him.

He shook his round bullet head, on which the thick hair grew in an unparted stubble.

”No, I don't think he's ill, sir,” he remarked, with treble conviction.

”Then why does he lie like that?”

”I expect it's because he's dead, sir,” the child replied, with grave serenity.

This unbiased testimony in favour of his fears came to Julian's mind like a storm.

”How do you know?” he exclaimed, with a harsh voice.

”Lor', sir,” the boy said, not without a certain pride, ”I knows a corpse when I sees it. My father died come a fortnight ago. See that?”

And he indicated, with stumpy finger, the black band upon his left arm.

”Well, father looked just like the gentleman.”

Julian was petrified by this urchin's intimacy with death. It struck him as utterly vicious and terrible. A horror of the rosy-faced little creature, with good-conduct medals gleaming on its breast, came over him.

”Hus.h.!.+” he said.

”All right, sir; but you take my word for it, the gentleman's dead.”

Julian finished the note, thrust it into an envelope, and addressed it to the doctor.

”Run and get a cab and take that at once to Harley Street,” he said.

The boy smiled.

”I like cab-riding,” he said.

”And,” Julian caught his arm, ”that gentleman is not dead. He's alive, I tell you; only in a faint, and alive.”

The boy looked into Julian's face with the pitying grin of superior knowledge of the world.

”Ah, sir, you didn't see father,” he said.

Then he turned and bounded eagerly down the stairs, in a hurry for the cab-ride.