The Evil Shepherd | Page 8

pleasant
appointments, upon the tankard of beer by his side, upon the plate of
roast beef to which he was already doing ample justice. He laughed
with the easy confidence of a man awakened from some haunting
nightmare, relieved to find his feet once more firm upon the ground.
"I have been a fool to take the whole matter so seriously, Andrew," he
declared. "I expect to walk back to Clarges Street to-night, disillusioned.
The man will probably present me with a gold pencil-case, and the
woman--"
"Well, what about the woman?" Wilmore asked, after a brief pause.
"Oh, I don't know!" Francis declared, a little impatiently. "The woman
is the mystery, of course. Probably my brain was a little over-excited
when I came out of Court, and what I imagined to be an epic was
nothing more than a tissue of exaggerations from a disappointed wife.
I'm sure I'm doing the right thing to go there .... What about a four-ball
this afternoon, Andrew?"
The four-ball match was played and won in normal fashion. The two
men returned to town together afterwards, Wilmore to the club and
Francis to his rooms in Clarges Street to prepare for dinner. At a few
minutes to eight he rang the bell of number 10 b, Hill Street, and found
his host and hostess awaiting him in the small drawing-room into
which he was ushered. It seemed to him that the woman, still colourless,
again marvellously gowned, greeted him coldly. His host, however,
was almost too effusive. There was no other guest, but the prompt
announcement of dinner dispelled what might have been a few
moments of embarrassment after Oliver Hilditch's almost too cordial
greeting. The woman laid her fingers upon her guest's coat-sleeve. The
trio crossed the little hall almost in silence.
Dinner was served in a small white Georgian dining-room, with every
appurtenance of almost Sybaritic luxury. The only light in the room
was thrown upon the table by two purple-shaded electric lamps, and the
servants who waited seemed to pass backwards and forwards like
shadows in some mysterious twilight--even the faces of the three diners

themselves were out of the little pool of light until they leaned forward.
The dinner was chosen with taste and restraint, the wines were not only
costly but rare. A watchful butler, attended now and then by a trim
parlour-maid, superintended the service. Only once, when she ordered a
bowl of flowers removed from the table, did their mistress address
either of them. Conversation after the first few amenities speedily
became almost a monologue. One man talked whilst the others listened,
and the man who talked was Oliver Hilditch. He possessed the rare gift
of imparting colour and actuality in a few phrases to the strange places
of which he spoke, of bringing the very thrill of strange happenings
into the shadowy room. It seemed that there was scarcely a country of
the world which he had not visited, a country, that is to say, where men
congregate, for he admitted from the first that he was a city worshipper,
that the empty places possessed no charm for him.
"I am not even a sportsman," he confessed once, half apologetically, in
reply to a question from his guest. "I have passed down the great rivers
of the world without a thought of salmon, and I have driven through the
forest lands and across the mountains behind a giant locomotive,
without a thought of the beasts which might be lurking there, waiting to
be killed. My only desire has been to reach the next place where men
and women were."
"Irrespective of nationality?" Francis queried.
"Absolutely. I have never minded much of what race--I have. the trick
of tongues rather strangely developed--but I like the feeling of human
beings around me. I like the smell and sound and atmosphere of a great
city. Then all my senses are awake, but life becomes almost turgid in
my veins during the dreary hours of passing from one place to another."
"Do you rule out scenery as well as sport from amongst the joys of
travel?" Francis enquired.
"I am ashamed to make such a confession," his host answered, "but I
have never lingered for a single unnecessary moment to look at the
most wonderful landscape in the world. On the other hand, I have
lounged for hours in the narrowest streets of Pekin, in the markets of

Shanghai, along Broadway in New York, on the boulevards in Paris,
outside the Auditorium in Chicago. These are the obvious places where
humanity presses the thickest, but I know of others. Some day we will
talk of them."
Francis, too, although that evening, through sheer lack of sympathy, he
refused to admit it, shared to some extent Hilditch's passionate interest
in his fellow-creatures,