At last he gave the key the right pressure, and the latch yielded. He passed within and closed the door noiselessly. The electric switch governing the hall-lamp was on the wall beyond the short entrance-passage. He removed his overcoat and hat in the semi-darkness; the sheen coming through the corrugated-glass panels of the outer door did not so much as cast a shadow.
All at once he detected a fragrance of violets, faintly, but distinctly. This was puzzling! He knew that it was almost impossible for that scent to have been there earlier in the evening when he was at home, without being marked by him. Even now not one man in a thousand in London that night would have caught the subtle perfume; but David retained the hunter’s senses. As he stood in suspense, a feeling peeped and grew up within him that the odor carried with it a suggestion of death; his muscles grew taut, ready to fight, to defend himself against this world or the next.
The next instant he smiled, thinking: “Nonsense! It must have been here before. Each time I came in I was smoking; the air is frosty, too.”
He groped inward for the switch, turned on the light, and, without deigning to give another thought to the smell of violets, turned to the left along the main corridor, which was rectangular to the entrance-hall. Passing the drawing-room door, he entered the dining-room. Opposite the latter was the kitchen and servants’ apartments. Around the other end of the main corridor were disposed three bed-rooms and a bath-room. The light he had turned on illuminated entrance and corridor alike.
In the dining-room he found the fire still burning. That was good. The coal-scuttle was not by the fireplace, but in a corner. He went to get a shovelful of coal; and as he stooped, again came to him the fragrance, thrilling, bringing with it a picture of a girl whom he had once seen lying in funereal state, surrounded by flowers, and clothed in the last white robes of earth.
David stabbed the coals with the shovel. “What’s wrong with me?” he half laughed. Yet his eyes sought the crayon drawing of Gwendoline Barnes.
Presently he lit a cigar, unfolded an evening paper which he had bought in the streets, and tried to take an interest in the news of this new-old world into which he was new-born.
But his mind wandered. Without he heard the distant rumble of traffic; hansoms were beginning to arrive in the street beneath; he heard doors slam; the jingling of bells on head-stalls; feet pattering across the pavement; a driver’s tongue-click, and away would jog a horse, to be stirred, perhaps, into sudden frenzy by two shrills of a far-off whistle.
A contrast, these sounds, to the twig-snapping and grass-rustling of a night on the plains! There, lying by the camp-fire embers, he had heard the coyote slinking past in the dark, while the tethered horses suspended their cropping to hearken. Here men and streets made a yet stranger wilderness. He sat over the hearth absorbed by it, already yielding his tribute to the greatness of the outer ocean of life.
But prairie or city, man must sleep. David rose and went to the sideboard for a decanter. A certain graceful slowness characterized his movements. Town-bred men might have been deceived thereby, might reason that he was lethargic, of strapping physique, certainly, yet a man who could be hit three times before he countered once. It is this error of judgment which leads to accidents when town-dwellers encounter the denizens of the jungle. Harcourt’s hand was outstretched for the decanter when he became aware that he was not alone in the flat. The knowledge was derived from neither sight nor sound. It was intuitive, a species of feeling through space, an imperative consciousness that he shared his suite of apartments with another distinct, if intangible, being. Many men might not have had it, but Harcourt had it clearly.