“He is clever, I grant you, but the worst of it is he knows it.”
“He is arrogant with power, Witty, which is somewhat different, although it sounds the same. I think he is a perfectly terrible man, and he looks so big and great and deadly. Did you notice his enormous hands? Did you observe his chest? And that voice as soft as a flute yet as deep as an organ?”
“You are completely conquered, Featherhead. Yet you would not call this phenomenon precisely beautiful?”
“Strength is more beautiful than symmetry, I think; although I grant you that huge square jowl verges upon the horrible. It is far worse than yours, my dear, although the poor hansom cabmen are constantly mistaking it for that of an eminent pugilist.”
“Well, little gal,” said the solicitor, “I shall heed you once more, since your luck is proverbial. I am prepared to back our latest discovery pretty heavily, although I must confess that when in cold blood I catch myself thinking of his infernal genie he frightens me to death.”
XIV
A JURY OF TWO
In the meantime the subject of these speculations had entered the night. Food and wine in unaccustomed quantities, the romance of events, the spells cast by music and by a woman of signal beauty and accomplishment, had provoked his energies to an insurgency that had rendered them overbearing. He walked like a whirlwind, up one street and down another, in the chill wet darkness, not knowing whither he was bound. Soft yet wild strains of melody which still floated through his brain mingled with a swarm of ideas which were whirling about in it like so many atoms in a protoplasm. He moved so fast in the endeavor to keep abreast of his thoughts that at times he broke into a run.
The seductive, amiable, and brilliant woman, who had so nearly succeeded in casting over him a delicious spell, began to fade from his consciousness like the intangible occupant of a dream. She had no appeal for him now. The feast at the restaurant, that phase of color, warmth, and splendor in which for an hour the squalor of his existence had been dispelled; the struggle to retain the treasure which had been entrusted to his keeping by a supernatural agent; the bizarre incident of the hansom cabman; and the personality of the genial god out of the machine had now ceased to have significance.
Indeed one thing alone merged his faculties in his overstimulated thoughts. It was the packet which he could feel in the breast-pocket of his coat, towards which his hands were straying constantly. These pages of foolscap bound with red tape, were they not his magic talisman? By that occult presence had not his thwarted bleak and empty life been changed into an electrical existence crowded with glory?
His brain bursting with ideas, he began to run faster and faster through the maze of endless streets, lined with high garden walls, portentously respectable dwelling-houses, lamps, shops, and secretive silent-footed policemen. These frequently flashed their lanterns upon him, for the manner of his progress had an illegal air. Even at the height of this orgy of freedom, the question shaped itself with the oddest definiteness as to whether it would not be expedient to curb his paces, since if he were stopped, he feared lest he should be able to render an account of himself that would be sufficiently lucid to commend itself to the myrmidons of the law.