§ 8
Man is the most restless of animals. There is an incessant urgency in his nature. He never knows when he is well off. And so it was that Bealby’s comparative security under the sofa became presently too irksome to be endured. He seemed to himself to stay there for ages, but as a matter of fact, he stayed there only twenty minutes. Then with eyes tempered to the darkness he first struck out an alert attentive head, then crept out and remained for the space of half a minute on all fours surveying the indistinct blacknesses about him.
Then he knelt up. Then he stood up. Then with arms extended and cautious steps he began an exploration of the apartment.
The passion for exploration grows with what it feeds upon. Presently Bealby was feeling his way into the blue parlour and then round by its shuttered and curtained windows to the dining-room. His head was now full of the idea of some shelter, more permanent, less pervious to housemaids, than that sofa. He knew enough now of domestic routines to know that upstairs in the early morning was much routed by housemaids. He found many perplexing turns and corners, and finally got into the dining-room fireplace where it was very dark and kicked against some fire-irons. That made his heart beat fast for a time. Then groping on past it, he found in the darkness what few people could have found in the day, the stud that released the panel that hid the opening of the way that led to the priest hole. He felt the thing open, and halted perplexed. In that corner there wasn’t a ray of light. For a long time he was trying to think what this opening could be, and then he concluded it was some sort of back way from downstairs.... Well, anyhow it was all exploring. With an extreme gingerliness he got himself through the panel. He closed it almost completely behind him.
Careful investigation brought him to the view that he was in a narrow passage of brick or stone that came in a score of paces to a spiral staircase going both up and down. Up this he went, and presently breathed cool night air and had a glimpse of stars through a narrow slit-like window almost blocked by ivy. Then—what was very disagreeable—something scampered.
When Bealby’s heart recovered he went on up again.
He came to the priest hole, a capacious cell six feet square with a bench bed and a little table and chair. It had a small door upon the stairs that was open and a niche cupboard. Here he remained for a time. Then restlessness made him explore a cramped passage, he had to crawl along it for some yards, that came presently into a curious space with wood on one side and stone on the other. Then ahead, most blessed thing! he saw light.
He went blundering toward it and then stopped appalled. From the other side of this wooden wall to the right of him had come a voice.
“Come in!” said the voice. A rich masculine voice that seemed scarcely two yards away.
Bealby became rigid. Then after a long interval he moved—as softly as he could.
The voice soliloquized.
Bealby listened intently, and then when all was still again crept forward two paces more towards the gleam. It was a peephole.
The unseen speaker was walking about. Bealby listened, and the sound of his beating heart mingled with the pad, pad, of slippered footsteps. Then with a brilliant effort his eye was at the chink. All was still again. For a time he was perplexed by what he saw, a large pink shining dome, against a deep greenish grey background. At the base of the dome was a kind of interrupted hedge, brown and leafless....
Then he realized that he was looking at the top of a head and two enormous eyebrows. The rest was hidden....
Nature surprised Bealby into a penetrating sniff.
“Now,” said the occupant of the room, and suddenly he was standing up—Bealby saw a long hairy neck sticking out of a dressing-gown—and walking to the side of the room. “I won’t stand it,” said the great voice, “I won’t stand it. Ape’s foolery!”
Then the Lord Chancellor began rapping at the panelling about his apartment.
“Hollow! It all sounds hollow.”
Only after a long interval did he resume his writing....
All night long that rat behind the wainscot troubled the Lord Chancellor. Whenever he spoke, whenever he moved about, it was still; whenever he composed himself to write it began to rustle and blunder. Again and again it sniffed,—an annoying kind of sniff. At last the Lord Chancellor gave up his philosophical relaxation and went to bed, turned out the lights and attempted sleep, but this only intensified his sense of an uneasy, sniffing presence close to him. When the light was out it seemed to him that this Thing, whatever it was, instantly came into the room and set the floor creaking and snapping. A Thing perpetually attempting something and perpetually thwarted....
The Lord Chancellor did not sleep a wink. The first feeble infiltration of day found him sitting up in bed, wearily wrathful.... And now surely someone was going along the passage outside!
A great desire to hurt somebody very much seized upon the Lord Chancellor. Perhaps he might hurt that dismal farceur upon the landing! No doubt it was Douglas sneaking back to his own room after the night’s efforts.
The Lord Chancellor slipped on his dressing-gown of purple silk. Very softly indeed did he open his bedroom door and very warily peep out. He heard the soft pad of feet upon the staircase.
He crept across the broad passage to the beautiful old balustrading. Down below he saw Mergleson—Mergleson again!—in a shameful deshabille—going like a snake, like a slinking cat, like an assassin, into the door of the study. Rage filled the great man’s soul. Gathering up the skirts of his dressing-gown he started in a swift yet noiseless pursuit.
He followed Mergleson through the little parlour and into the dining-room, and then he saw it all! There was a panel open, and Mergleson very cautiously going in. Of course! They had got at him through the priest hole. They had been playing on his nerves. All night they had been doing it—no doubt in relays. The whole house was in this conspiracy.
With his eyebrows spread like the wings of a fighting cock the Lord Chancellor in five vast noiseless strides had crossed the intervening space and gripped the butler by his collarless shirt as he was disappearing. It was like a hawk striking a sparrow. Mergleson felt himself clutched, glanced over his shoulder and, seeing that fierce familiar face again close to his own, pitiless, vindictive, lost all sense of human dignity and yelled like a lost soul....