XII
THE LAST MAIL
The last mail had not yet arrived at Dragon Court.
Five people awaited it—Dulcie Soane, behind the desk in the entrance hall, already wandering drowsily with Barres along the fairy borderland of sleep; Thessalie Dunois in Barres’ studio, her rose-coloured evening cloak over her shoulders, her slippered foot tapping the dance-scarred parquet; Barres opposite, deep in his favourite armchair, chatting with her; Soane on the roof, half stupid with drink, watching them through the ventilator; and, lurking in the moonlit court, outside the office window, the dimly sinister figure of the one-eyed man. He wore a white handkerchief over his face, with a single hole cut in it. Through this hole his solitary optic was now fixed upon the back of Dulcie’s drowsy head.
As for the Prophet, perched on the desk top, he continued to gaze upon shapes invisible to all things mortal save only such as he.
The postman’s lively whistle aroused Dulcie. The Prophet, knowing him, observed his advent with indifference.
“Hello, girlie,” he said;—he was a fresh-faced and flippant young man. “Where’s Pop?” he added, depositing a loose sheaf of letters on the desk before her and sketching in a few jig steps with his feet.
“I don’t know,” she murmured, patting with one slim hand her pink and yawning lips, and watching him unlock the post-box and collect the outgoing mail. He lingered a moment to caress the Prophet, who endured it without gratitude.
“You better go to bed if you want to grow up to be a big, sassy girl some day,” he advised Dulcie. “And hurry up about it, too, because I’m going to marry you if you behave.” And, with a last affable caress for the Prophet, the young man went his way, singing to himself, and slamming the iron grille smartly behind him.