"Is this the beginning of the surprises, dad?" said Vane, as the two cabs drove away. "This is certainly one of the last places in London that I should have expected to meet Ernshaw in, after seeing him up to his neck in work at Bethnal Green yesterday. It must have been a pretty strong attraction, Ernshaw, that got you as far west as this."
"My dear Maxwell," said Ernshaw, "surely the worst of us are entitled to a holiday now and then. Why, even Father Philip goes to Norway for a fortnight every year, to say nothing of an occasional run up to Town now and then, and he confessed to me not very long ago that he enjoys no earthly pleasure better than a good 'Varsity match at Lord's."
"There is nothing better," said Sir Arthur, "except a good Indian polo match. Well, come in. I have just got time for a wash and a change before our other guests arrive. You clerics don't want a change, so you can have a wash and a cigarette if you want one in the Den."
As the door opened Koda Bux came along the hall and made his salaam; his grave, deep eyes made no sign as he recognised Vane in his clerical garb; he only salaamed again and welcomed Vane back to the house of his father and his mother. That was Koda Bux's way of putting it in his Indian fashion. He would have put it otherwise if he had known what such a welcome meant to him.
"This is the place of the debacle," said Vane to Ernshaw when they met in the Den after they had had their wash; "there's the hearthrug—yes, and there's the same spirit-case. It is a curious thing, Ernshaw, but since then, or rather, since that other ghastly collapse at Oxford, I've lectured in club rooms reeking with alcohol; I've gone with you as you know where everyone was sodden with the gin and stank of it, and even into bars where you could smell nothing but liquor and unwashed humanity, and yet that intoxication has never come back to me."
"Of course not," said Ernshaw; "you have prayed and fought since then, and as you have won your battles your prayers have been answered."
"Yes," said Vane, "I hope you are right; in fact, I am sure you are. I don't suppose a sniff at that whiskey decanter would affect me any more than a few drops of eau de cologne on my handkerchief."
As he said this he went towards the spirit-case on the little old oak sideboard and took out the whiskey decanter.
"Take care, Vane!" said Ernshaw. "I hope you are not forgetting the old doctrine of association. Remember what you were saying just now about this room. There is a sense, you know, in which places are really haunted."
"My dear Ernshaw, I believe you are even more ideal than I am," laughed Vane, as he took the stopper out and raised the decanter to his nostrils. As he did so the front door bell tinkled, and the hand of a practised footman played a brief fantasia on the knocker. In the middle of an inhalation Vane stopped and put the bottle down; but even as he did so the mysterious force of association against which Ernshaw had warned him had begun to work upon his imagination. The familiar room, with its pictures and furniture and simple ornaments, the feel of the cut-glass decanter, which was the same one that he had held in his hand that fatal night, the smell of the whiskey—all these elements were rapidly combining in those few moments to produce an effect partly mental and partly physical which might have more than justified Ernshaw's sudden fear.