“My poor dear,” she smiled, approaching him. “I haven’t said good-night to you.”
She put her long and elegant hands on his shoulders, as was her wont each evening, and kissed him on both cheeks in her French fashion. The affection between Carlos and his half-French half-sister was real and profound. He liked her for her Parisian daintiness, and for the eminently practical qualities which she possessed in common with most Frenchwomen, and also because she regarded him as a genius. To-night he thought she was sweeter and more sisterly than ever.
“Good-night,” she said, and her voice trembled, and a slight humidity glistened in her eyes.
“Good-night,” he responded.
And she tripped off, swinging the perfect skirt of her black mousseline dress round the edge of the door.
“She’s mightily excited to-night,” he murmured to himself; and he reflected, as all men reflect from time to time, that women are strange and incomprehensible, a device invented by Providence to keep the wit of man well sharpened by constant employment.
He passed into his bedroom, and went out on to the wooden balcony of the bedroom, which commanded a view of Ilam’s side-door. A light showed through the glass above the door, and Carpentaria noticed at length that the door was slightly ajar. He stepped back into the bedroom, extinguished all his own lights, and returned to the balcony to watch. He determined to watch as long as Ilam’s door remained ajar. He sat down in a cane chair provided for repose on the balcony, and his one regret was that the glow of a cigarette or a cigar would betray him.
He grew calmer. The frenzy into which music always threw him had quite worn itself away. He was able to think clearly. He did not, however, think so much upon the incident of the drunken man as upon the incident of the bullet; and this was perhaps natural. He was astounded now that he could have remained in the bandstand, so utterly careless of danger, after the arrival of the bullet. He was astounded, too, at the sang-froid of his musicians. But, then, their ears had not been grazed, and his had. He saw that he was at the mercy of any homicidal maniac who, on a dark night, with a good rifle and a sure aim, chose to secrete himself in some deserted alley of the vast Oriental Gardens, and shoot at him during a loud burst of music. And he said: “Well, if I am to die, I am to die, and there’s an end of it. Assuming that a given man A has really determined to kill another given man B, and A is obstinate, nothing will ultimately save B. I am B. Hence I must be philosophical.”
But who was A?
He thought of all the enemies he had made, all the rivals he had defeated, but the process of their enumeration was perfunctory. For out of the depths of his mind rose persistently one name, again, and again, and again, and yet again, like a succession of bubbles, all alike, rising to the surface of a pond and breaking there. And that name was the name of Ilam. He forbade the name to rise, but it rose. With the simplicity which marked some of his mental processes, he could not understand why Ilam should hate him murderously. But the episode of the balloon had magically and terribly cast a new and searching light on the recesses of Ham’s character. He felt that hitherto he had been mistaken in Ilam, and that Ilam was not a person with whom it was wise to have interests in common. And the unknown designs of Ilam seemed to surround him in the night like the web of a gigantic spider, and to bind him tighter and tighter.