All manner of diabolical artifices presented themselves to his brain, barren of true intellect, yet fertile in fraud; in that, and all low cunning and subtlety, far more than a match for Solomon or Bacon.
His sinister studies were pursued far into the night. Then he went to bed, and his unbounded egotism gave him the sleep a grander criminal would have courted in vain on the verge of a monstrous and deliberate crime.
Next day he went to a fashionable tailor, and ordered a complete suit of black. This was made in forty-eight hours; the interval was spent mainly in concocting lies to be incorporated with the number of minute facts he had gained from Staines's letter, and in making close imitations of his handwriting.
Thus armed, and crammed with more lies than the “Menteur” of Corneille, but not such innocent ones, he went down to Gravesend, all in deep mourning, with crape round his hat.
He presented himself at the villa.
The servant was all obsequiousness. Yes, Mrs. Staines received few visitors; but she was at home to HIM. He even began to falter excuses. “Nonsense,” said Falcon, and slipped a sovereign into his hand; “you are a good servant, and obey orders.”
The servant's respect doubled, and he ushered the visitor into the drawing-room, as one whose name was a passport. “Mr. Reginald Falcon, madam.”
Mrs. Staines was alone. She rose to meet him. Her color came and went, her full eye fell on him, and took in all at a glance—that he was all in black, and that he had a beard, and looked pale, and ill at ease.
Little dreaming that this was the anxiety of a felon about to take the actual plunge into a novel crime, she was rather prepossessed by it. The beard gave him dignity, and hid his mean, cruel mouth. His black suit seemed to say he, too, had lost some one dear to him; and that was a ground of sympathy.
She received him kindly, and thanked him for taking the trouble to come again. She begged him to be seated; and then, womanlike, she waited for him to explain.