CHAPTER IX.
MR. MARX.
At first I had eyes only for the dark figure seated a few yards away from me at a small writing-table drawn into the centre of the room. He was bending low over his desk and never even raised his eyes or ceased writing at my entrance. Before him on the table, and scattered around his chair on the floor, were many sheets of white foolscap covered with his broad, firm handwriting, some with the ink scarcely dry upon them; and while I stood before him he impatiently swept another one from his desk and, without waiting to see it flutter to the ground, began a fresh sheet.
A glass of water, a few dry biscuits, and a little pile of books—some turned face-downwards—were by his side. Nothing else was on the table, save a great pile of unused paper, a watch detached from its chain, and a heavily-shaded lamp, which threw a ghastly light upon his white, worn face, and his dry, brilliant eyes, under which were faintly engraven the dark rims of the student.
I watched him for a while, fascinated. Then, as he took not the slightest notice of me, my eyes began to wander round the room. It was hexagonal and, on every side save one, lined from the floor to the high ceiling with books. The furniture was all of black oak, as also were the bookshelves, and the carpet and hangings were of a deep olive-green. The mantelpiece and inlaid grate were of black marble, faintly relieved with gold, and within the polished bars of the grate a small fire was burning.
There was nothing cheerful about the apartment; on the contrary, it struck me as being, though magnificent, sombre and heavy, wrapped as it was in the gloom of a dismal twilight, which the flickering fire and the shaded lamp failed to pierce. From the high French windows, I could catch a glimpse of a long stretch of soddened lawn, beyond which everything was shrouded in the semi-obscurity of the fast-falling dusk, deepened by the grey, cloudy sky. But I chose, after my first glance around the room, to keep my eyes fixed upon the man who sat writing before me, the man in whom already I felt an interest so strong as to deaden all the curiosity which I might otherwise have felt as to my surroundings.
At last he seemed conscious of my presence. Lifting his eyes, to give them a momentary rest, he encountered my fixed gaze. For a moment he looked at me in a puzzled manner, as though wondering how I came there. Then his expression changed and, putting down his pen, he pushed his papers away from him.
“So you have come, Philip Morton,” he said.
To so self-evident a statement I could return no answer, save a brief affirmative. He seemed to expect nothing more, however.
“How old did you say you were?” he asked abruptly.
“Seventeen, sir.”