J. Storer Clouston

“ Colonel Barlow closed the door, and both men went to the fire and then turned and stood side by side with their backs to it, gazing at the vase.
"Well, Barlow, frankly I don't call it pretty," said the doctor at last, and as he spoke, he had an odd feeling that his criticism was overheard; as if he were half-aware of some one behind the curtains or under the table.
"It's the most hideous thing I ever bought."
"Too outré, as Mr. Waldron calls it, even for you?" ”

“ Frowning formidably, he looked the figure hard in the eye before he turned away, as if defying it to intimidate a veteran who had looked heathen idols and sudden death in the face for thirty years, and then the two passed into another show-room.
"It doesn't appeal to you then, sir?" inquired Mr. Waldron.
"It does not," said Dr. Anstruther emphatically. "Does it appeal to anybody?"
"It isn't my own taste certainly. In fact, speaking unprofessionally, it hardly seems to me what you'd call a healthy taste. ”

“ Vincent was sitting at the side of the oblong table and the stranger at the end. Between them, under Vincent's elbow, was the chair on which the box was resting. Both glanced at it, the stranger eagerly and yet with a little shudder, Vincent quickly and only for an instant. The next, his eyes were on the stranger's.
"You seem to know my name," he observed dryly.
"Yes," said the other, talking quietly now and with his restraint ebbing away as he spoke, "I know all about you, Mr. Barlow. It is the vase which you are taking to your uncle. ”

“ Colonel Barlow would most probably have shown him out before extinguishing the library lights, and so he set off again.
"I must never let Barlow know I've been spying on him," he said to himself, for he knew that one of the few things his old friend would find it hard to forgive was anything like an attempt to surprize a confidence he had not given spontaneously himself. And, indeed, no man could feel a stronger sympathy for this sensitive reticence than Dr. Anstruther, for his own sentiments were precisely the same. ”

“ Anstruther's excuse for walking up to the hall next morning after breakfast. Even from himself he tried to conceal the truth that he was devoured with something between apprehension and curiosity to learn what had happened last night, for in his estimation curiosity was a vulgar vice and apprehension a foolish weakness.
But even if he did not see through himself as he hastened to Urby Hall at twice his usual pace, he realized it quickly enough when he found his old friend smoking a pipe in his library, apparently as imperturbable as ever. The intense relief came almost as a shock. ”

“ Colonel Barlow was a man of ample means and a passionate collector, especially of rare china, but with a strong distaste for London and indeed for towns and town-life of any kind. Dr. Anstruther, on the other hand, liked to run up to town occasionally, and on these occasions used to look round the show-rooms and curiosity-shops on his friend's behalf. He himself was a collector in a modest way and an excellent and sagacious judge. ”

“ Waldron himself came forward and greeted him affably, the Mr. Waldron of those days being a square-shouldered gentleman with a waxed red mustache and a pale, business-like eye.
"We happen," said he, "to have an article of vertu at present that the colonel might quite fancy. I have noticed his taste is generally for the odd and unusual; in fact, sir, one might almost say for the outré. I think that is so, doctor?"
Dr. Anstruther was a man of few words. He merely nodded and agreed that Colonel Barlow's taste did run that way. ”

“ The colonel turned to his friend.
"Will you excuse me for a few minutes, Anstruther?"
"Beg pardon, sir," put in the butler, "but I think Mrs. Summerton would like to see Dr. Anstruther too, he being a magistrate likewise."
"Oh," said the colonel, "she wants to see us as magistrates, does she? Well, show her in."
The woman who entered was elderly, pale, and very respectably dressed; a woman of a naturally quiet and superior type, one would judge at once, and yet, as evidently, a woman who had come through some very disturbing and very recent experience. ”

“ And yet even that seemed scarcely ugly enough to give him the very odd sensation that kept running down his spine all the time he stood there and increased disagreeably every time he looked the creature straight in the eye.
"It is an evil thing," murmured Dr. Anstruther, more to himself apparently than aloud.
"Kind of odd feeling he gives one," agreed Mr. Waldron, who looked if possible even less likely to be subject to odd sensations than the doctor, being in fact the very incarnation of commercial shrewdness and assurance. ”

“ The doctor stared at his host.
"What's the matter with them?"
"He has been spending too much money," said the colonel shortly. "And when I told him what I thought of his extravagance, he was rude to me. I can't stand rudeness, Anstruther, even from Vincent."
Dr. Anstruther got a very sharp and a very unpleasant shock of surprize this time. The mere fact of a quarrel between this uncle and nephew, usually the best of friends and mutually attached, was astonishing. His host's petulant irritation was, knowing the man so well, perhaps even more unexpected. ”

“ I says to Lizzie, 'Never did I see a young man with more peaceable tastes!'"
"Did he wear a black felt hat and tight trousers and shoes that looked as if they were made of brown paper?" asked the doctor.
"He did indeed, sir! That's the very things he did wear. Oh, I quite took pity on him when I saw how foreign he was. He asked such funny questions too; one would have called him inquisitive if he'd been English. A lot about you, sir, he asked—" she was turning now to Colonel Barlow—"and whether you was very rich, and about your curiosities. ”

“ To give chase was so obviously futile that after peering into the shadows for a minute or two he resumed his walk down the avenue. More and more slowly he paced, till, when he reached the lodge-gates, he stopped short for the space of several minutes. The stranger had apparently been coming in the opposite direction and had certainly gone on toward the hall, and the more he reflected on this, the stronger grew the doctor's reluctance to leave his friend's house unwatched and unwarned.
To stand by the avenue and expose himself seemed unlike the conduct of a thief ”

“ He was gone then, but he'd done what was almost the worst thing of all. He had heated the poker and burned some writing on my nice mahogany table. It's the one thing in my house I'm proud of, sir. And I'd told him it was, too. And on the table was a bucket of water and Lizzie's kitten—the one he'd been playing with—was tying drowned at the bottom of it."
"Do you know where he's got to?" the colonel rapped out like a rifle-shot.
"He had slipped out of the house without our hearing him and caught the early train to London."
"Damn!" murmured the colonel with the profoundest disappointment. ”

“ A dark figure was actually standing within five paces of him, a figure that first seemed to loom up to a gigantic height, and then, as he kept his eyes hard and frowning upon it, appeared to shrink to a lesser stature than his own. ”

“ They stopped at a station, and with a vast sense of relief he let down the window and leaned out. The clean night air seemed to blow the disturbing fancy out of his head, and when they started, he left the window down and let the wind whistle into the carriage all the way to Gilswood Junction. Uncomfortable he still remained, yet the fresh drafts of air seemed to have a tonic effect, as if the fancy were morbid and its cause unclean and the pure wind from the sea disinfected the carriage. ”

“ It was that quality, in fact, of friendship which had first Jed him into Marshley & Waldron's. A retired Anglo-Indian and a confirmed bachelor, he had settled in the east coast hamlet of Chipping-Urby a few months after his old friend Colonel Barlow retired from the army and came to live at Urby Hall.
The pair had always been intimate cronies and by this time had grown to be inseparable; the more readily as, the doctor had no near relatives and the colonel only one, his nephew and reputed heir, Vincent Barlow, a young barrister living in London ”

“ There's a foreign chap in particular——"
Mr. Waldron broke off suddenly, and then, touching the doctor's arm, said in a lowered voice:
"There he comes now! The thing seems to be a regular magnet for the fellow—just look at him, sir."
From where they stood they could see into the other show-room, and there, slowly approaching the vase with his back half-turned toward them appeared a well-dressed young man in a black felt hat. Dr. Anstruther studied him with pursed lips and an intent professional look in his eye. ”

“ Barlow, I offer you three hundred pounds for that vase."
"Unfortunately it isn't mine to sell."
"Four hundred pounds!"
"I tell you, Mr. von Helmolt, it isn't mine to sell."
"Five hundred pounds! Come now, Mr. Barlow, I know all about you. You have debts; you need money. You can give your uncle whatever share of that five hundred pounds you choose. It covers nearly ten times what he paid, so there will be plenty for you both. Or, if you like, the box might simply get stolen——"
"I think I hear my train," said Vincent. ”

“ What happened then?"
"Well, sir, he just went in to the little parlor up-stairs. I'd given him the little parlor to himself, for there was no one else staying in the house and I thought he'd like to be private and comfortable-like, and there he was for the rest of the evening—up till the time he came out."
Mrs. Summerton's tone fell and she shivered a little.
"You are sure he was in the parlor all the time?" asked the doctor.
"Oh, quite sure, sir. Lizzie was in and out once or twice, bringing him his supper and seeing to the fire. Besides, we'd have heard him if he'd gone out. ”

“ His voice must have reached the young man, for he turned with a violent start and for a moment showed a pale face with wide-open blue eyes staring in their direction. It was an open, pleasant and simple face, the doctor thought in the few seconds it was turned toward them, and then the young man hastily put on his hat and hurried out of their sight.
"What a rum go!" commented Mr. Waldron.
"Very," murmured Dr. Anstruther.
ABOUT the middle of the day, a week later, Vincent Barlow rang the bell of his sitting-room in Ebury Street and asked to see his landlady. ”

“ Temptation takes damned queer forms. Hullo——"
He broke off and his eyes opened wide. The young man had come right in front of the vase by this time, and now, with a jerky impulsive movement, as if forced despite his judgment, he raised his hand and deferentially bared his head. It was a curiously square head, Dr. Anstruther noticed, with very close-cropped fair hair, and it bent a little forward involuntarily toward the vase.
"Great Scott!" exclaimed Mr. Waldron. "The chap is taking off his hat to it!" ”

“ But I just answered so he was none the wiser by the end.
"And then in the afternoon off he goes for a walk and was away that long I'd have thought he'd have walked miles, but George tells me that old Thomas Walker tells him that all the distance he went was up to the hall here and rambled round the park and stood for nigh an hour on end behind the big yew hedge, staring at the house, like as if he'd fallen into a trance."
"By gad!" exclaimed the colonel. "I saw the fellow myself from this very window. I spotted him as he was walking away. ”