December Love Part 118

"Very fine! Wonderful!"

Garstin's usually hard face softened in an extraordinary way.

"Your opinion goes down in my memory in red letters."

Sir Seymour turned to go. As he did so he cast a look round the studio, which suggested to Garstin that he would perhaps like to examine the other portraits dotted about on easels and hanging on the walls. A faint reddish line appeared in the painter's shaven blue cheeks.

"Not worth your while!" he almost muttered.

"Eh?" said Sir Seymour.

"A lot of decadent stuff. I've been choosing my models badly. But--" he paused, looking almost diffident for a moment.

"Yes?" said Sir Seymour.

"Perhaps, if we ever get to know each other a bit better, you'd let me have a shy at you for a change?"

"That would be an honour," said Sir Seymour with a touch of his very simple, courtly manner.

"In return you know for my letting in the detectives!" said Garstin, with a laugh. "Hulloh!"

He had heard the bell ring downstairs.

"If it's our man!" he said, instinctively lowering his voice.

"Arabian! Are you expecting him?"

"No. But it's just as likely as not. Want to meet him?"

"I can hardly say that!" said Sir Seymour, looking suddenly, Garstin thought, remarkably like a very well-bred ramrod.

"Well, then--"

"But it may be necessary." He hesitated obviously, then added: "If it should be Arabian by chance, perhaps it would be as well if I did see him."

"Just as you like."

"I'll stay if you will allow me," said Sir Seymour, with sudden decision, like a man who had just overcome something.

The bell rang again.

"Can you act?" said Garstin, quickly.

"Sufficiently, I dare say," said Sir Seymour, with a very faint and grim smile.

"Then you'd better! He can!"

And Garstin sprang down the stairs. Two or three minutes later Arabian walked into the studio with Garstin just behind him. When he saw Sir Seymour a slight look of surprise came into his face, and he half turned towards Garstin as if in inquiry. Sir Seymour realized that Garstin had not mentioned that there was a visitor in the studio.

"A friend of mine, Sir Seymour Portman," said Garstin. "Mr. Nicolas Arabian!"

Arabian bowed and said formally:

"Very glad to meet you."

Sir Seymour bowed, and said:

"Thanks."

"Sit down, my boy!" said Garstin, with sudden heartiness, laying a hand on Arabian's shoulder. "And I know you'll put your lips to a whisky."

"Thank you," said Arabian.

And he sat down in a deep arm-chair. Sir Seymour saw his brown eyes, for a moment hard and inquiring, rest upon the visitor he had not expected to find, and wondered whether Arabian remembered having seen him before.

If so Arabian would also remember that he, Seymour, was a friend of Adela Sellingworth, who had been with him at the Ritz on that day ten years ago.

"Say how much," said Garstin, coming up with the whisky.

Sir Seymour noticed that Arabian took a great deal of the spirit and very little soda-water with it. Directly his gla.s.s was filled--it was a long gla.s.s--he drank almost greedily.

"A cigar?" said Garstin. "But I know without asking."

"I do not refuse," said Arabian.

And Sir Seymour hated his voice, while realizing that it was agreeable, perhaps even seductive.

"There! Now we're cozy!" said Garstin. "But I wish Sir Seymour you'd join us!"

"If you will allow me I will smoke a light cigar I have here."

And Sir Seymour drew out a cigar-case and lit up a pale and long Havannah.

"That's better!" said Garstin, drinking. "How's Beryl, my boy?"

"I have not seen Miss Van Tuyn to-day," said Arabian. "But I hope to see her to-morrow."

He looked at Sir Seymour, and there seemed to be a flicker of suspicion in his eyes.

"DO you know Miss Van Tuyn?" he asked.

"Very slightly," said Sir Seymour. "I have met her once or twice in London. She is a very beautiful creature."

There was constraint in the room. Sir Seymour felt it strongly and feared that it came from something in him. Evidently he was not a very good actor. He found it difficult to be easy and agreeable with a man whom he longed to get hold of by the collar and thrash till it was time to hand him over to the police. But he resolved to make a strong effort to conceal what he could not conquer. And he began to talk to Arabian.

Afterwards he could not remember what they had talked about just then.

He could only remember the strangeness which he had realized as he sat there smoking his Havannah, the strangeness of life. That he should be smoking and chatting with the scoundrel who had changed Adela's existence, who had tricked her, robbed her, driven her into the solitude which had lasted ten years! And why was he doing it? He did not absolutely know. But his instinct had told him to stay on in Garstin's studio when everything else in him, revolting, had shrunk from meeting this beast, unless and until he could deal with him properly.

He had smoked about half his cigar, and the constraint in the room seemed to him to be lessened, though not abolished, when the conversation took a turn quite unexpected by him. And all that was said in the studio from that moment remained firmly fixed in his memory.

Garstin got up to fetch some more whisky for Arabian, whose gla.s.s was now empty, and as he came back with the decanter he said to Arabian: