Silly was not the word. “But why, why?”
“That’s what I want to find out,” said Tarlyon. “Antony is playing some sort of a game with himself, and he’s frightening himself to death in doing it. He always was a superstitious ass. Giants usually are, somehow—perhaps because, having nothing physical to fear, they fear the psychic. I’ll bet he goes into that library every night at the same time—Roger shot himself at about twenty-five past eleven, by the way. Poor old Antony!”
“But what was all that nonsense about the smell?” I asked.
Tarlyon did not answer. At last he said:
“Did you ever hear, Ralph, the theory that if Judas Iscariot had not come after Jesus he might have done all that Jesus did? But as he found he could not because he was too late, he was doomed to crime. In a sort of far-fetched way it was the same way with Roger and Antony. The tragedy of those two brothers has something absurdly, fantastically reasonable about it. You see, Roger was a year older and did all that Antony wanted to do, the fine and brilliant things, while poor Antony could do nothing but make a fool of himself, which he did only too well. Antony would have been a man of many accomplishments, for he’s no fool, but for the fact that Roger was before him—so Antony thought. And Roger loved Antony, while Antony hated and admired and feared Roger. And at last, somehow or another, he managed to betray Roger. No one knows what that last moment held for those two—no one knows what lay behind the insults that Roger heaped on Antony at that final moment. For they were overheard, you know, by Roger’s wife and the man who was dining there. But something seems to have stuck in Antony’s mind and grown very big with years. I’m rather concerned for the poor devil, Ralph. He’s still afraid of his elder brother. Or perhaps he feels that Roger left something unsaid which he must hear, and so he wants to re-create him.”
It was as the taxi stopped at my door that Tarlyon cried out as though he had made a discovery: “Good God, of course!”
“Of course what?”
“Smoke, you fool! It was smoke!”
V
What was our surprise, on entering the dining-room some minutes after nine o’clock the next evening—for Antony dined late—to see the table laid for four! And then a lady came in—a tall, dark young lady, a strange and unusual lady with a flash of very white teeth for a smile and a gardenia alight on the wing of her sleek black hair! I am afraid Tarlyon and I must have seemed very rude, for we were so surprised that we stared. The white teeth flashed at us. We bowed.