‘The smell! What smell?’ asked his host, amused by this odd notion of his visitor’s, and sniffing about for the aroma of dead rats.
‘The smell of fire,’ said Ivor Restormel, speaking in a low voice, as of a thing too dreadful to be talked of in normal tones. ‘The whole place is full of the smell of fire. Don’t you notice it, Mr. Darnley? I suppose nothing can be on fire now? No; it is the stale old smell of a fire that has been out for a long time—the sharp, beastly smell of charred wood and burnt stone. I know it so well.’ He shivered against his will.
Kingston was startled at this strange new development. He had heard nothing of Ivor Restormel’s hidden horror. Gundred had disliked the whole subject too much to tattle about it. Kingston was astounded at the sudden fantastic anxiety of his guest, the perturbation of his manners, his evident discomposure. So vivid was Ivor Restormel’s apprehension that it even impressed itself on Kingston. The host inhaled the air sharply. There was not the faintest suggestion of fire or smoke. The room was sleepily fragrant with potpourri from the old perforated jade censer on the corner table. Otherwise there was nothing in the air. And yet it was evident that Ivor Restormel was dodging some secret terror that was almost on the point of breaking covert and declaring itself.
‘You have got a most wonderful imagination,’ said Kingston at last. ‘There is no smell of fire here. On my word, there isn’t. There couldn’t be. The fire was put out twenty years ago, hang it all! The smell of it could not very well be hanging about here still.’
‘No; I suppose not,’ answered the other, obviously quite unconvinced.
Then, lamely, hesitatingly, he explained the reasons why the memories of the catastrophe at Brakelond had become so closely involved with his own life, and what a troublesome legacy it had left him through the shock that his mother had suffered. Kingston was more and more stirred.
‘I never heard anything more extraordinary,’ he replied. ‘Suggestion, I suppose it must be. And this room makes you feel uncomfortable even now, I can see, and you manage to smell fire where there has been no fire for twenty years. And yet you have no more recollections?’
‘Recollections? I don’t quite know what there could be for me to recollect.’
‘Well, to tell you the truth, when I first saw you on the road, I had a vague and yet a very strong feeling that you and I have met before, and known each other quite well. I imagine that was all a mistake? See if you can’t remember any previous meeting between us, though. It would be interesting if you could, for my instinct was quite extraordinarily clear on the point, though my memory seems to say accurately and definitely that I had never seen your face till I passed you in the car yesterday afternoon.’
Ivor Restormel shook his head positively, and made haste to answer in the negative. The question did not interest him in the least. The one feeling of which he was conscious was his tyrannous need of getting away from those serene and pleasant modern rooms, which, to his excited fancy, seemed full of horrid ghosts.