No sooner had the clock struck ten, however, than he took his hat and left the house. He found a cab, and had himself driven from one office to another all through the heat of the day, seeing confidential detectives and stating his business with a strange lucidity, never telling any single agent that he was employing another, but giving to each one a sum of money to begin his search and to each the same precise statement of all that he knew. The consequence was that before the sun was low he had dispatched half a dozen of the best men that could be found, and had got rid of about fifty thousand francs. Each one separately might have to go to the end of the world—to America perhaps, but most probably to England—before he could give the required information. It was necessary that his men should be perfectly free to move in any direction. He himself would go to Turin, and there receive their telegrams, himself watching that box of Batiscombe's, which he was sure must some day be claimed by its owner.
He was perfectly calm and self-possessed throughout all these arrangements. Only the strange ghastly colour that had overspread his face seemed to settle and become permanent, and his eyes were bloodshot and yellow, while his hand trembled violently when he held a pen or lit a match for his cigarette. But he felt no bodily ill, nor any capacity for fatigue. He had not closed his eyes for thirty-six hours, and had eaten little enough, but there was not an ache nor a sensation of pain in him, and he dreaded to pause or sit down, hating the idea of rest.
When he had done all that he could think of as being at all useful in his plan, he went home and told his servant to prepare for the journey to Turin that night. The train left at half past ten—there were some hours yet to wait. He moved restlessly about the house, and ordered all the windows to be opened.
The great rooms were in their summer dress. The furniture, the huge pier glasses and the chandeliers were all clothed in brown linen. The carpets had all been taken up, and the floors—some of marble, some of red brick, and some of tiles—were bare and smooth. There was the coolness and absence of all colour that seems to belong to great palaces when the owners are out of town, and the cold monotony of everything soothed him a little. After wandering aimlessly for half an hour, he settled into a regular walk, up and down the great ball-room, with its clere-story windows and vaulted ceiling. Up and down, up and down, with an even, untiring tread he paced, his eyes bent always on the floor and his hands behind him. His walk was like clockwork, absolutely even and unchanging, with its rhythmic echo and unvarying accuracy.
The broad daylight softened into shadow, and the shadow deepened into gloom, but still he kept on his beat as though counting his steps and measuring the time. There was a certain relief in it, though not from his mastering thought, which held him in a vise and never relaxed for a second, but from his terrible restlessness. It was an outlet to his overwrought activity, and he did it monotonously, without any consideration, because there was nothing else to do, and it would have driven him mad to sit still for five minutes.
As the night came on, strange faces seemed to look upon him from the gathering darkness. The thick, warm air took shape and substance, and he could distinguish forms moving quickly before him that he could not overtake. But there was no sensation of horror or fear with the sight—he gazed curiously at the fleeting shadows and looked into their faces as they came close to him and retreated, but he could not recognise them, and did not ask himself whence they came nor whither they were going, nor why he saw them. It seemed very natural somehow.
But at last, as he turned, there was one coming toward him that had more substance than the rest, so that they all vanished but that one. It was a woman, and she seemed moving towards him; but it was almost quite dark. He came nearer; his waking senses caught the sound of her footstep; she was no shadow—it was his wife coming back to him—it had all been a fearful dream, and she was there again. He sprang forward with a quick cry.
"Leonora! Oh, thank God!" and he fell forward into her arms.
"No, dearest brother—it is not Leonora—would God it were!"
Diana had come already—he could not tell how—and they stood together in the dark, empty ball-room, clasped in each other's arms.