He could not determine how to act in the circumstances; he could not think; his mind was blank with despair. And then jealousy awoke; his thoughts gained stimulus, and worked in a new direction along fines that were fiercely personal and possessive in outlook. After all, she was his wife. This man had no claim on her; she belonged to him. He was not going to allow any one to hold what was lawfully his.
This sense of urgency to resume possession spurred him to a fever of aggressive activity, in which mood, and with the settled purpose of interviewing his brother-in-law, he went round to Port Elizabeth, and called on Jim Bainbridge at the latter’s place of business as soon as he arrived.
To say that Jim Bainbridge was amazed at the sight of him, were to express his emotions as inadequately as it would be to describe a violent explosion as disquieting to the unfortunate persons within the affected area: the effect on him was rather similar to the effects of an explosion; he was literally bowled over on beholding a dead man returned to the world of the living. Had he been given to the cult of the supernatural he would have imagined that he saw Paul Hallam’s ghost, when Hallam walked into his office. But he did not believe in ghosts; and there was something uncomfortably lifelike in the hostile gleam of Hallam’s eyes, as he turned from shutting the door and regarded the man seated in his swivel-chair, with jaw dropped, and with protruding eyes which stared back at him stupidly.
“Oh hell!” muttered Jim Bainbridge, and collapsed in his seat in a crumpled heap.
Hallam advanced deliberately, and seated himself opposite his dumbfounded brother-in-law.
“I knew I was bound to give you an unpleasant surprise,” he said, “so I didn’t make an appointment. I’ve come for news of my wife.”
Bainbridge’s jaw dropped lower in his increasing consternation. The man’s florid countenance had turned the colour of putty.
“Your—Oh lord!”
The words gurgled in his throat. He gripped the arms of his chair and attempted to sit up straighter and to get control of himself. Compared with his nervous collapse the calm of Hallam’s demeanour was remarkable.
“Look here,” he muttered, fumbling for words, his bewildered gaze fixed upon the other’s face. “Don’t you try to rush things. I’ve got to get used to this idea. I’m all abroad. When a man has been missing for years one doesn’t expect to see him walk in as if he had been away on a holiday. What in hell do you mean by turning up here after all this time? Where’ve you been? Man, you were found—dead—and buried. There’s a stone erected to your memory out on the veld beyond Bulawayo. You’ve no right to disappear and turn up again after six years. It’s indecent.”