Part 65

"This way, sir," he heard Tommy's voice say outside. "Plenty of room higher up."

"I don't want to go higher up. I'll go here. Just open it at once, I tell you."

The door was opened reluctantly, and two middle-aged men came in. "Always take the middle carriage of a train," said the first. "Safest in any accident, y'know. Never heard of a middle carriage of a train getting smashed up, to speak of."

The other sat heavily down just over Paul, with a comfortable grunt, and the train started, Paul feeling naturally annoyed by this intrusion, as it compelled him to remain in seclusion for the whole of the journey. "Still," he thought, "it is lucky that I had time to get under here before they came in; it would have seemed odd if I had done it afterwards." And he resigned himself to listen to the conversation which followed.

"What was it we were talking about just now?" began the first. "Let me see. Ah! I remember. Yes; it was a very painful thing--very, indeed, I assure you."

There is a certain peculiar and uncomfortable suspicion that attacks most of us at times, which cannot fairly be set down wholly to self-consciousness or an exaggerated idea of our own importance. I mean the suspicion that a partly-heard conversation must have ourselves for its subject. More often than not, of course, it proves utterly unfounded, but once in a way, like most presentiments, it finds itself unpleasantly fulfilled.

Mr. Bultitude, though he failed to recognise either of the voices, was somehow persuaded that the conversation had something to do with himself, and listened with eager attention.

"Yes," the speaker continued; "he was never, according to what I hear, a man of any extraordinary capacity, but he was always spoken of as a man of standing in the City, doing a safe business, not a risky one, and so on, you know. So, of course, his manner, when I called, shocked me all the more."

"Ah!" said the other. "Was he violent or insulting, then?"

"No, no! I can only describe his conduct as eccentric--what one might call reprehensibly eccentric and extravagant. I didn't call exactly in the way of business, but about a poor young fellow in my house, who is, I fear, rather far gone in consumption, and, knowing he was a Life Governor, y'know, I thought he might give me a letter for the hospital. Well, when I got up to Mincing Lane----"

Paul started. It was as he had feared, then; they were speaking of him!

"When I got there, I sent in my card with a message that, if he was engaged or anything, I would take the liberty of calling at his private house, and so on. But they said he would see me. The clerk who showed me in said: 'You'll find him a good deal changed, if you knew him, sir. We're very uneasy about him here,' which prepared me for something out of the common. Well, I went into a sort of inner room, and there he was, in his shirt-sleeves, busy over some abomination he was cooking at the stove, with the office-boy helping him! I never was so taken aback in my life. I said something about calling another time, but Bultitude----"

Paul groaned. The blow had fallen. Well, it was better to be prepared and know the worst.

"Bultitude says, just like a great awkward schoolboy, y'know, 'What's your name? How d'ye do? Have some hardbake, it's just done?' Fancy finding a man in his position cooking toffee in the middle of the day, and offering it to a perfect stranger!"

"Softening of the brain--must be," said the other.

"I fear so. Well, he asked what I wanted, and I told him, and he actually said he never did any business now, except sign his name where his clerks told him. He'd worked hard all his life, he said, and he was tired of it. Business was, I understood him to say, 'all rot!'"

"Then he wouldn't promise me votes or give me a letter or anything, without consulting his head clerk; he seemed to know nothing whatever about it himself, and when that was over, he asked me a quantity of frivolous questions which appeared to have a sort of catch in them, as far as I could gather, and he was exceedingly angry when I wouldn't humour him."

"What kind of questions?"

"Well, really I hardly know. I believe he wanted to know whether I would rather be a bigger fool than I looked or look a bigger fool than I was, and he pressed me quite earnestly to repeat some foolishness after him, about 'being a gold key,' when he said 'he was a gold lock,' I was very glad to get away from him, it was so distressing."

"They tell me he has begun to speculate, too, lately," said the other. "You see his name about in some very queer things. It's a pitiful affair altogether."

Paul writhed under his seat with shame. How could he, even if he succeeded in ousting Dick and getting back his old self, how could he ever hold up his head again after this?

Why, Dick must be mad. Even a schoolboy would have had more caution when so much depended on it. But none would suspect the real cause of the change. These horrible tales were no doubt being circulated everywhere!

The conversation fell back into a less personal channel again after this; they talked of "risks," of some one who had only been "writing" a year and was doing seven thousand a week, of losses they had been "on," and of the uselessness of "writing five hundred on everything," and while at this point the train slackened and stopped--they had reached Dufferton.

There was an opening of doors all along the train, and sounds of some inquiry and answer at each. The voices became audible at length, and, as he had expected, Paul found that the Doctor, not having discovered him on the platform, was making a systematic search of the train, evidently believing that he had managed to slip in somewhere unobserved.

It was a horrible moment when the door of his compartment was flung open and a stream of ice-cold air rushed under the blue cloth which, fortunately for Paul, hung down almost to the floor.

Some one held a lantern up outside, and by its rays Paul saw from behind the hanging the upper half of Dr. Grimstone appear, very pale and polite, at the doorway. He remained there for some moments without speaking, carefully examining every corner of the compartment.

The two men on the seats drew their wraps about them and shivered, until at length one said rather testily--"Get in, sir; kindly get in if you're coming on, please. This draught is most unpleasant!"

"I do not propose to travel by this train, sir," said the Doctor; "but, as a person entrusted with the care of youth, permit me to inquire whether you have seen (or, it may be assisted to conceal) a small boy of intelligent appearance----"