The Art of Disappearing

by John Talbot Smith

"Was your husband a speaker?" he asked.

"Horace would not demean himself to talk in public, and he couldn't make a speech to save his life. But to talk on the sorrows of Ireland ... oh, it's too absurd."

"And why not Ireland's sorrows as well as those of America, or any other country?" he replied savagely.

"Oh, I quite forgot that you were Irish ... a thousand pardons," she said with sneering civility. "Of course, I shall be glad to hear his description of the sorrows. An orator! It's very interesting."

The occasion for the display of Arthur's powers was one of the numerous meetings for which the talking Irish are famous all over the world, and in which their clever speakers have received fine training. Even Sonia, impressed by the enthusiasm of the gathering, and its esteem for Dillon, could not withhold her admiration. Alas, it was not her Horace who poured out a volume of musical tone, vigorous English, elegant rhetoric, with the expression, the abandonment, the picturesqueness of a great actor. She shuddered at his descriptions, her heart melted and her eyes moistened at his pathos, she became filled with wonder. It was not Horace! Her husband might have developed powers of eloquence, but would have to be remade to talk in that fashion of any land. This Dillon had terrible passion, and her Horace was only a a handsome fool. She could have loved Dillon.

"So you will have to arrange the little scene where I shall stand before him without warning, and murmur tenderly, 'at last, Horace!' And it must be done without delay," was her command to Edith.

"It can be done perhaps to-morrow night," Edith said in a secret rage, wondering what Arthur Dillon could have seen in Sonia. "But bear in mind why I am doing this scene, with the prospects of a furious time afterwards with Dillon. I want you to see him asleep, just for ten minutes, in the light of a strong lamp. In sleep there is no disguise. When he is dressed for a part and playing it, the sharpest eyes, even the eyes of hate, may not be able to escape the glamour of the disguise. The actor asleep is more like himself. You shall look into his face, and turn it from side to side with your own hands. If you do not catch some feeling from that, strike a resemblance, I shall feel like giving up."

"La, but you are an audacious creature," said Sonia, and the triviality of the remark sent Edith into wild laughter. She would like to have bitten the beauty.

The detective consented to Edith's plans, in his anxiety to bring the farce to an end before the element of danger grew. Up to this point they might appeal to Arthur for mercy. Later the dogs would be upon them. As yet no sign of irritation on Arthur's part had appeared. The day after the oration on the sorrows of Erin he sent a note to Curran announcing his intention to call the same evening. Edith, amazed at her own courage in playing with the fire which in an instant could destroy her, against the warning of her husband, was bent on carrying out the scene.

Dearly she loved the dramatic off the stage, spending thought and time in its arrangement. How delicious the thought of this man and his wife meeting under circumstances so wondrous after five years of separation. Though death reached her the next moment she would see it. The weakness of the plot lay in Sonia's skepticism and Arthur's knowledge that a trap was preparing. He would brush her machinery aside like a cobweb, but that did not affect the chance of his recognition by Sonia.