And he felt a twinge of panic – the remark about editorial facelessness seemed too pat to be coincidental.
‘And now that you’ve finally come to see me,’ Madison was saying, ‘I fear it may be in regard to an item in the morning papers.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ Harrington said smoothly, ‘that is why I’m here.’
‘I hope you’re not too angry.’
Harrington shook his head. ‘Not at all. In fact, I came to thank you for your help in making up my mind. I had considered it, you see. It was something I told myself I should do, but…’
‘But you were worried about an implied responsibility. To your public, perhaps; perhaps even to yourself.’
‘Writers seldom quit,’ said Harrington, ‘At least not voluntarily. It didn’t seem quite cricket.’
‘But it was obvious,’ protested Madison. ‘It seemed so appropriate a thing for you to do, so proper and so called-for, that I could not resist. I confess I may have wished somewhat to influence you. You’ve tied up so beautifully what you set out to say so many years ago in this last book of yours that it would be a shame to spoil it by attempting to say more. It would be different, of course, if you had need of money from continued writing, but your royalties-‘
‘Mr. Madison, what would you have done if I had protested?’
‘Why, then,’ said Madison, ‘I would have made the most abject apology in the public prints. I would have set it all aright in the best manner possible.’
He got up from the desk and scrabbled at a pile of books stacked atop a chair.
‘I have a review copy of your latest book right here,’ he said. ‘There are a few things in it I’d like to chat about with you…’
He’s a clue, thought Harrington, watching him scrabble through the books – but that was all he was. There was more, Harrington was sure, to this business, whatever it might be, than Cedric Madison.
He must get out of here, he knew, as quickly as he could, and yet it must be done in such a manner as not to arouse suspicion. And while he remained, he sternly warned himself, he must play his part as the accomplished man of letters, the final gentleman.
‘Ah, here it is!’ cried Madison in triumph.
He scurried to the desk, with the book clutched in his hand.
He leafed through it rapidly.
Now, here, in chapter six, you said…’
The moon was setting when Harrington drove through the massive gates and up the curving driveway to the white and stately house perched upon its hill.
He got out of the car and mounted the broad stone steps that ran up to the house. When he reached the top, he halted to gaze down the moon-shadowed slope of grass and tulips, whitened birch and darkened evergreen, and he thought it was the sort of thing a man should see more often – a breathless moment of haunting beauty snatched from the cycle that curved from birth to death.
He stood there, proudly, gazing down the slope, letting the moonlit beauty, the etching of the night soak into his soul.
This, he told himself, was one of those incalculable moments of experience which one could not anticipate, or afterwards be able to evaluate or analyze.
He heard the front door open and slowly turned around.
Old Adams stood in the doorway, his figure outlined by the night lamp on the table in the hall. His snow-white hair was ruffled, standing like a halo round his head, and one frail hand was clutched against his chest, holding together the ragged dressing gown he wore.
‘You are late, sir,’ said Adams. ‘We were growing a bit disturbed.’
‘I am sorry,’ said Harrington. ‘I was considerably delayed.’
He mounted the stoop and Adams stood aside as he went through the door.
‘You’re sure that everything’s all right, sir?’
‘Oh, quite all right,’ said Harrington. ‘I called on Cedric Madison down at _Situation_. He proved a charming chap.’
‘If it’s all right with you, sir. I’ll go back to bed. Knowing you are safely in, I can get some sleep.’
‘It’s quite all right,’ said Harrington. ‘Thanks for waiting up.’
He stood at the study door and watched Adams trudge slowly up the stairs, then went into the study, turning on the lights.
The place closed in around him with the old familiarity, with the smell of comfort and the sense of being home, and he stood gazing at the rows of calf-bound books, and the ordered desk, the old and home-like chairs, the worn, mellow carpet.
He shrugged out of his topcoat and tossed it on a chair and became aware of the folded paper bulging in his jacket pocket.
Puzzled, he pulled it out and held it in front of him and the headline hit him in the face:
The room changed, a swift and subtle changing. No longer the ordered sanctuary, but a simple workroom for a writing man. No longer the calf-bound volumes in all their elegance upon the shelves, but untidy rows of tattered, dog-eared books. And the carpet was neither worn nor mellow; it was utilitarian and almost brand new.
‘My God!’ gasped Harrington, almost prayerfully.
He could feel the perspiration breaking out along his forehead and his hands suddenly were shaking and his knees like water.
For he had changed as well as the room had changed; the room had changed because of the change in him.
He was no longer the final gentleman, but that other, more real person he had been this evening. He was himself again; had been jerked back to himself again, he knew, by the headlines in the paper.
He glanced around the room and knew that it finally was right, that all its starkness was real, that this had been the way the room had always been, even when he had made it into something more romantic.
He had found himself this very evening after thirty years and then – he sweat as he thought about it – and then he had lost himself again, easily and without knowing it, without a twitch of strangeness.
He had gone to see Cedric Madison, with this very paper clutched within his hands, had gone without a clear purpose – almost, he told himself, as if he were being harried there. And he had been harried for too long. He had been harried into seeing a room different than it was; he had been made to read a myth-haunted name upon a strange gravestone; he had been deluded into thinking that he had supper often with his mother who had long been dead; he had been forced to imagine that a common quick-and-greasy was a famous eatery – and, of course, much more than that.
It was humiliating to think upon, but there was more than mere humiliation – there was a method and a purpose and now it was important, most immediately important, to learn that method and that purpose.
He dropped the paper on the floor and went to the liquor cabinet and got a bottle and a glass. He sloshed liquor in the glass and gulped it.
You had to find a place to start, he told himself, and you worked along from there – and Cedric Madison was a starting point, although he was not the whole of it. No more, perhaps, than a single clue, but at least a starting point.
He had gone to see Cedric Madison and the two of them had sat and talked much longer than he planned, and somewhere in that talk he’d slid smoothly back into the final gentleman.
He tried to drive his mind and memory along the pathway of those hours, seeking for some break, hunting for the moment he had changed, but there was nothing. It ironed out flat and smooth.
But somewhere he had changed, or more likely had been changed, back into the masquerade that had been forced upon him long years in the past.
And what would be the motive of that masquerade? What would be the reason in changing a man’s life, or, more probably, the lives of many men?
A sort of welfare endeavor, perhaps. A matter of rampant do-goodism, an expression of the itch to interfere in other people’s lives.
Or was there here a conscious, well-planned effort to change the course of world events, so to alter the destiny of mankind as to bring about some specific end-result? That would mean that whoever, or whatever, was responsible possessed a sure method of predicting the future, and the ability to pick out the key factors in the present which must be changed in order effectively to change that future m the desired direction.
From where it stood upon the desk the phone snarled viciously.
He swung around in terror, frightened at the sound. The phone snarled a second time.