The simile of the hammer was peculiarly consonant with his present view of the new Valentine, for, despite the latter's gaiety, ease, and self-possession, his smiling sociability and expansiveness, the doctor was perpetually conscious of a lurking violence, an incessant and forcible exigence in him. It might be a fancy, but the doctor was not, as a rule, the prey of fancies. Yet Valentine gave no outward hint of inward turmoil. Rather did the doctor divine it as by a curious intuition that guided him to that which lay in hiding. And it was this apprehension of a deep violence and peculiar, excessive animation in Valentine that woke the doctor's deepest wonder, and set the gulf between them so widely. For all violence had once been so specially abhorred by Valentine. He had so loved and sought all calm. The calm, he had often said, were the true aristocrats of life. Fury and any wild movements of the passions were of the gutter.
That dinner was returned. The doctor dined with Valentine and Julian more than once, and accompanied them to the theatre. But he was unable to make certain of Valentine's precise attitude towards Julian, although he saw easily that the influence of the one over the other had rather waxed than waned. This being so, it followed that Julian, having completely changed, the influence that guided him must have completely changed also. The pendulum had swung back. That often happened in the record of men's lives. But not in such a way as this. The doctor, like Cuckoo, recognized the existence of a mystery. But he was by no means prepared to accept her fantastic and ignorantly vague explanation of it. That was a wild fable, a fairy tale for a child, not a reasonable elucidation for a man and a doctor. The most curious thing of all was that she declared that Valentine had actually told her the truth about the matter, knowing that she could not understand it. The doctor resolved to see her later, and to question her more minutely on this point. Meanwhile he began to watch Valentine carefully, and with the most sedulous attention to every detail and nuance of manner, look, and word. He understood Julian. His sad case was to an extent due to his long happiness and freedom from the bondage in which so many men move wearily. It was as if his passions had been dammed up by the original influence of Valentine. Through the years, behind the height of the dam, the waters had been rising, accumulating, pressing. Suddenly the dam was removed, and a devastating flood swept forth, uncontrollable, headlong, and furious. Julian needed rescue, but the only way to rescue seemed to lie through Valentine, within whose circle of influence he was so closely bound. The mystery of Valentine must be laid bare.
And so the doctor watched and wondered, bringing all his knowledge of the world and of the minds and bodies of men to help him.
And meanwhile the lady of the feathers was seen nightly in Piccadilly.
And Julian went his way steadily downwards.
* * * * *
One night there was a flicker of snow over London, and the air was chill with the breath of coming winter. The dreary light of snow illumined the faces of all who walked in the streets, painting the brightest cheeks with a murky grey pigment, and making the sweetest eyes hollow and expressive of depression. Heavily the afternoon went by and the evening came sharply, like a blow.
Dr. Levillier was engaged to dine with Julian and Valentine at the former's rooms in Mayfair. Of late Valentine had seemed to seek him out, and especially to enjoy seeing him in the company of Julian. And the doctor fancied he detected something of a triumph that was almost blatant in Valentine's manner when they three were together, and when the doctor's eyes rested sorrowfully upon that crumbling wall, which had once been so fair and strong. Of late, too, the doctor, ever watching for the signs of change in Valentine, had grown more and more aware that he was an utterly, through and through, different man from the youth men had called the Saint of Victoria Street. He felt the transformation to be inhuman, and, by slow and reluctant degrees, he was beginning to form an opinion. It was only in embryo as yet, a shadow hesitating in the background of his mind. He shrank from holding it. He shuddered at its coming. Yet, if it were right, it might explain everything, might make what was otherwise incredible clear and comprehensible.
Was this vile change in his friend caused by a radical distortion of mind? Was Valentine a madman?
Lunacy turns temperaments upside down, transforms the lamb into the tiger, the saint into the murderer.