Feathers would not have knocked down the sturdy Lexy, however. On the contrary, she was pleased and interested by this utterly unexpected visit. The sinister doctor here, in this house, and asking for her! She started promptly toward the stairs.
“Miss Moran!” cautioned the landlady, in a whisper. “Don’t tell him nothing!”
“Tell him!” said Lexy. “But I haven’t anything to tell!”
“Well, you’d best be very careful!” said Mrs. Royce.
With this solemn warning in her ears, Lexy descended the stairs. She saw Dr. Quelton standing in the hall, hat in hand, waiting for her. The doctor was rather a disappointment. He was not the dark, sinister figure he should have been. He was a big man, powerfully built, with a clumsy stoop to his tremendous shoulders. His heavy, clean-shaven face would have been an agreeable one if it had not been for its expression, but that expression was not at all an alarming or dangerous one. It was an expression of the most utter and hopeless boredom.
He came toward her.
“Miss Moran?” he asked.
Even his voice was listless, and his glance was without a spark of interest.
“Yes,” said she.
“My brother-in-law, Captain Grey, told us you were here, and I did myself the honor of calling,” he went on.
“You certainly were quick about it!” thought Lexy. “Captain Grey couldn’t have reached his sister’s house an hour ago, and it’s three miles from here. Won’t you come into the sitting room?” she asked aloud.
“Thank you,” he replied, and followed Lexy into the decorous and dismal room.
He sat down opposite her in a small chair that cracked under his weight, and he smiled a bored and extinguished smile.
“A writer, I believe?” he said.
“Well, yes, in a way,” answered Lexy, growing a little red.
“My wife and I were very much interested,” he went on, with as little interest as a human being may well display. “We don’t have many newcomers here. It’s a very quiet place.”
His apathetic manner exasperated Lexy.
“But I don’t care how quiet it is,” she observed.
“My wife and I like a quiet life,” he said. “My wife asked me to explain, Miss Moran, that she is something of a recluse. Her health prevents her from calling upon you; but she wished me to say that she would be very happy to see you at the Tower, whenever it may be convenient for you to call, any afternoon after four o’clock.”
“Thank you,” replied Lexy. “Please thank Mrs. Quelton. I shall be very pleased to come.”
And now why didn’t he go away? This visit was apparently a painful duty for him. He had delivered his message, and yet he lingered.
“A very quiet place,” he repeated; “but perhaps you are not sociably inclined?”
“Oh, I’m sociable enough—at times,” said Lexy.
“But at the present time you prefer solitude? For the purposes of your work? As a change from the stimulating atmosphere of the city?”
Any mention of her work made Lexy uncomfortable.
“Well, yes,” she answered in a dubious tone.
“I lived in New York myself for a number of years,” he went on. “I wonder if you—may I ask what part of the city you lived in, Miss Moran?”
Lexy hesitated, and she meant him to see that she hesitated. After all, however, it was not an unnatural or impertinent question, and she couldn’t very well refuse to answer it.
“In the East Sixties, near the park,” she said. “It wasn’t my own home, though—I was a companion,” she added.
She always liked people to know that. She was far from being cynical, but she was aware that this information made a difference—to some people.
She was astonished to see the difference it made in Dr. Quelton. He raised his black, weary eyes to her face and stared at her with unmistakable insolence.
“Ah!” he said. “I see! I thought so!”
There was a moment’s silence.
“And you’ve come to Wyngate to—er—to write?” he went on. “Very interesting—very!”
Lexy felt her cheeks grow hot. She wished with all her heart that she had not involved herself in that stupid falsehood. It humiliated her so much that she couldn’t answer Dr. Quelton with her usual spirit. He noticed her confusion—no doubt about that.
“Poetry, perhaps?” he suggested.
“No!” said Lexy vehemently. “Not poetry!”
He leaned forward a little, looking directly into her face.
“Perhaps,” he said, “you write detective stories?”
“Yes!” said Lexy.
The doctor rose.
“The solving of mysteries!” he said, with his unpleasant smile. “That makes very interesting fiction!”
Lexy rose, too. His tone, his manner, exasperated her almost beyond endurance. She felt an ardent desire to contradict everything he said. What is more, she was in no humor to hear mystery stories made light of. She had had enough of that—first Mrs. Enderby pretending there was no mystery, and then Mr. Houseman going off and pretending it was solved, so that she was left alone to do the best she could. Wasn’t she in a mystery story at this very minute, and without a single promising clew to guide her?
“There are plenty of mysteries that aren’t fiction,” she observed curtly.
“But they are never solved,” said Dr. Quelton.
“Never solved?” said Lexy. “But lots of them are! You can read in the newspapers all the time about crimes that—”
“The mystery of a crime is never solved,” the doctor blandly proceeded. “Never! Let us say, for example, that a murder is committed. The police investigate, they arrest some one. There is a trial, the jury finds that the suspect is guilty, the judge sentences him, and he is executed. Public opinion is satisfied; but as a matter of fact, nothing whatever has been solved. It is all guesswork. Not one living soul, not one member of the jury, not the judge, not the executioner, really knows that the accused man was guilty. They think so—that is all. What you call a ‘solution’ is merely a guess, based upon probabilities.”
Lexy considered this with an earnest frown.
“Well,” she said at last, “quite often criminals confess.”
“In the days of witchcraft trials,” said he, “it was not uncommon for women to come forward voluntarily and confess to being witches. In the course of my own practice I have known people to confess things they could not possibly have done. No!” He shook his head and smiled faintly. “An acquaintance with the psychology of the diseased mind makes one very skeptical about confessions, Miss Moran.”
This idea, too, Lexy took into her mind and considered for a few minutes.
“Even an eyewitness,” Dr. Quelton went on, “is entirely unreliable. Any lawyer can tell you how completely the senses deceive one. Three persons can see the same occurrence, and each one of the three will swear to a quite different impression. Each one may be entirely honest, entirely convinced that he saw or heard what never took place.”
“Do you mean that you think it’s never possible to find out who’s guilty?”
“Never,” he replied agreeably. “It can never be anything but a guess, as I said, based upon probabilities. Human senses, human judgment, human reason, are all pitifully liable to error.”
Lexy was silent for a time, thinking over this.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said slowly, “about the senses, and judgment, and reason. Perhaps their evidence isn’t always to be trusted; but there’s something else.”
“Something else?” he repeated. “Something else? And what may that be?”
Lexy looked up at him. There was a smile on his heavy, pallid face, aloof and contemptuous; but she was chiefly concerned just then in trying to put into words her own firm conviction, more for her own benefit than for his. It was not reason that had brought her here to look for Caroline, it was not reason that sustained her.
“There’s something else,” she said again, with a frown. “There’s a way of knowing things without reason. It’s—I don’t know just how to put it, but it’s a thing beyond reason.”
He laughed, and she thought she had never heard a more unpleasant laugh.
“Certainly!” he said. “Beyond reason lies—unreason.”
“I don’t mean that,” said Lexy. “I mean—”
She stopped, because he had abruptly turned away and was walking toward the door. She stood where she was, amazed by this unique rudeness; but in the doorway he turned.
“The thing beyond reason!” he said, almost in a whisper. Then, with a sudden and complete change of manner, he went on: “It has been very interesting to meet you, Miss Moran. My wife will enjoy a visit from you. Any afternoon, after four o’clock!” He bowed politely. “After four o’clock,” he repeated, and off he went.
Lexy stood looking at the closed door.
“Crazy?” she said to herself. “No—that’s not the word for him at all. He’s—he’s just horrible!”