At the prospect of solitude, his fears seemed to crowd back upon him, and he stretched out a hand to detain him.
‘Yes, I must go. I have my work to do. You are all right now. I think that with your nervous system you should take up some less morbid study.’
‘Oh, I am not nervous as a rule; and I have unwrapped mummies before.’
‘You fainted the last time,’ observed Monkhouse Lee.
‘Ah, yes, so I did. Well, I must have a nerve tonic or a course of electricity. You are not going, Lee?’
‘I’ll do whatever you wish, Ned.’
‘Then I’ll come down with you and have a shake-down on your sofa. Good-night, Smith. I am so sorry to have disturbed you with my foolishness.’
They shook hands, and as the medical student stumbled up the spiral and irregular stair he heard a key turn in a door, and the steps of his two new acquaintances as they descended to the lower floor.
One habit Bellingham had developed of late which Smith knew to be a frequent herald of a weakening mind. He appeared to be forever talking to himself. At late hours of the night, when there could be no visitor with him, Smith could still hear his voice beneath him in a low, muffled monologue, sunk almost to a whisper, and yet very audible in the silence. This solitary babbling annoyed and distracted the student, so that he spoke more than once to his neighbour about it. Bellingham, however, flushed up at the charge, and denied curtly that he had uttered a sound; indeed, he showed more annoyance over the matter than the occasion seemed to demand.
Had Abercrombie Smith had any doubt as to his own ears he had not to go far to find corroboration. Tom Styles, the little wrinkled man-servant who had attended to the wants of the lodgers in the turret for a longer time than any man’s memory could carry him, was sorely put to it over the same matter.
‘If you please, sir,’ said he, as he tidied down the top chamber one morning, ‘do you think Mr. Bellingham is all right, sir?’
‘All right, Styles?’
‘Yes sir. Right in his head, sir.’
‘Why should he not be, then?’
He’s took to talkin’ to himself something awful. I wonder it don’t disturb you. I don’t know what to make of him, sir.’
‘I don’t know what business it is of yours, Styles.’
‘Well, I takes an interest, Mr. Smith. It may be forward of me, but I can’t help it. I feel sometimes as if I was mother and father to my young gentlemen. It all falls on me when things go wrong and the relations come. But Mr. Bellingham, sir. I want to know what it is that walks about his room sometimes when he’s out and when the door’s locked on the outside.’
‘Eh! you’re talking nonsense, Styles.’
‘Maybe so, sir; but I heard it more’n[8] once with my own ears.’
‘Rubbish, Styles.’
‘Very good, sir. You’ll ring the bell if you want me.’
Abercrombie Smith gave little heed to the gossip of the old man-servant, but a small incident occurred a few days later which left an unpleasant effect upon his mind, and brought the words of Styles forcibly to his memory.
Bellingham had come up to see him late one night, and was entertaining him with an interesting account of the rock tombs of Beni Hassan in Upper Egypt, when Smith, whose hearing was remarkably acute, distinctly heard the sound of a door opening on the landing below.
‘There’s some fellow gone in or out of your room,’ he remarked.
Bellingham sprang up and stood helpless for a moment, with the expression of a man who is half incredulous and half afraid.
‘I surely locked it. I am almost positive that I locked it,’ he stammered. ‘No one could have opened it.’
‘Why, I hear someone coming up the steps now,’ said Smith.
Bellingham rushed out through the door, slammed it loudly behind him, and hurried down the stairs. About half-way down Smith heard him stop, and thought he caught the sound of whispering. A moment later the door beneath him shut, a key creaked in a lock, and Bellingham, with beads of moisture upon his pale face, ascended the stairs once more, and re-entered the room.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, throwing himself down in a chair. ‘It was that fool of a dog. He had pushed the door open. I don’t know how I came to forget to lock it.’
