“I will come—yes, I will come,” Jethro answered, the lids drooping over his eyes in which were the shadows of the first murder of the created world.
“Here is my address, then.” Ingolby wrote something on his visiting-card. “My man’ll let you in, if you show that. Well, good-bye.”
The Romany took the card, and turned to leave. He had been dismissed by the swaggering Gorgio, as though he was a servant, and he had not even been asked his name, of so little account was he! He could come and play on the Sarasate to the masterful Gorgio at the hour which the masterful Gorgio fixed—think of that! He could be—a servant to the pleasure of the man who was stealing from him the wife sealed to him in the Roumelian country. But perhaps it was all for the best—yes, he would make it all for the best! As he left the shop, however, and passed down the street his mind remained in the barber-shop. He saw in imagination the masterful Gorgio in the red-plush chair, and the negro barber bending over him, with black fingers holding the Gorgio’s chin, and an open razor in the right hand lightly grasped. A flash of malicious desire came into his eyes as the vision shaped itself in his imagination, and he saw himself, instead of the negro barber, holding the Gorgio chin and looking down at the Gorgio throat with the razor, not lightly, but firmly grasped in his right hand. How was it that more throats were not cut in that way? How was it that while the scissors passed through the beard of a man’s face the points did not suddenly slip up and stab the light from helpless eyes? How was it that men did not use their chances? He went lightly down the street, absorbed in a vision which was not like the reality; but it was evidence that his visit to Max Ingolby’s house was not the visit of a virtuoso alone, but of an evil spirit.
As the Romany disappeared, Max Ingolby had his hand on the old barber’s shoulder. “I want one of the wigs you made for that theatrical performance of the Mounted Police, Berry,” he said. “Never mind what it’s for. I want it at once—one with the long hair of a French-Canadian coureur-de-bois. Have you got one?”
“Suh, I’ll send it round-no, I’ll bring it round as I come from dinner. Want the clothes, too?”
“No. I’m arranging for them with Osterhaut. I’ve sent word by Jowett.”
“You want me to know what it’s for?”
“You can know anything I know—almost, Berry. You’re a friend of the right sort, and I can trust you.”
“Yeth-’ir, I bin some use to you, onct or twict, I guess.”
“You’ll have a chance to be of use more than ever presently.”