“You agree with me, I hope? You feel that anything more than Mme. de Dolmetsch’s beautiful voice—anything in the way of a choral accompaniment—would only weaken my effect? Where the facts are so overwhelming it is enough to state them; that is,” Mr. Mayhew added modestly, “if they are stated vigorously and tersely—as I hope they are.”
Mme. de Dolmetsch, with the gesture of a marble mourner torn from her cenotaph, glided up behind him and laid her hand in Campton’s.
“Dear friend, you’ve heard?... You remember our talk? I am Cassandra, cursed with the hideous gift of divination.” Tears rained down her cheeks, washing off the paint like mud swept by a shower. “My only comfort,” she added, fixing her perfect eyes on Mr. Mayhew, “is to help our great good friend in this crusade against the assassins of my Ladislas.”
Mrs. Talkett had said a word to Mr. Mayhew. Campton saw his complacent face go to pieces as if it had been vitrioled.
“Benny—Benny——” he screamed, “Benny hurt? My Benny? It’s some mistake! What makes you think——?” His eyes met Campton’s. “Oh, my God! Why, he’s my sister’s child!” he cried, plunging his face into his soft manicured hands.
In the cab to which Campton led him, he continued to sob with the full-throated sobs of a large invertebrate distress, beating his breast for an unfindable handkerchief, and, when he found it, immediately weeping it into pulp.
Campton had meant to leave him at the bank; but when the taxi stopped Mr. Mayhew was in too pitiful a plight for the painter to resist his entreaty.
“It was you who saw Benny last—you can’t leave me!” the poor man implored; and Campton followed him up the majestic stairway.
Their names were taken in to Mr. Brant, and with a motion of wonder at the unaccountable humours of fate, Campton found himself for the first time entering the banker’s private office.
Mr. Brant was elsewhere in the great glazed labyrinth, and while the visitors waited, the painter’s registering eye took in the details of the room, from the Barye cire-perdue on a peach-coloured marble mantel to the blue morocco armchairs about a giant writing-table. On the table was an electric lamp in a celadon vase, and just the right number of neatly folded papers lay under a paper-weight of Chinese crystal. The room was as tidy as an expensive stage-setting or the cage of a well-kept canary: the only object marring its order was a telegram lying open on the desk.