CHAPTER II

SHADOWS ON THE BLIND

The landlady of Denzil was a rather uncommon specimen of the class. She

inclined to plumpness, was lively in the extreme, wore very fashionable

garments of the brightest colours, and--although somewhat elderly--still

cherished a hope that some young man would elevate her to the rank of a

matron.

At present, Miss Julia Greeb was an unwedded damsel of forty summers,

who, with the aid of art, was making desperate but ineffectual efforts

to detain the youth which was slipping from her. She pinched her waist,

dyed her hair, powdered her face, and affected juvenile dress of the

white frock and blue sash kind. In the distance she looked a girlish

twenty; close at hand various artifices aided her to pass for thirty;

and it was only in the solitude of her own room that her real age was

apparent. Never did woman wage a more resolute fight with Time than did

Miss Greeb.

But this was the worst and most frivolous side of her character, for she

was really a good-hearted, cheery little woman, with a brisk manner, and

a flow of talk unequalled in Geneva Square. She had been born in the

house she occupied, after the death of her father, and had grown up to

assist her mother in ministering to the exactions of a continuous

procession of lodgers. These came and went, married and died; but not

one of the desirable young men had borne Miss Greeb to the altar, so

that when her mother died the fair Julia almost despaired of attaining

to the dignity of wifehood. Nevertheless, she continued to keep

boarders, and to make attempts to captivate the hearts of such bachelors

as she judged weak in character.

Hitherto all her efforts had been more or less of a mercantile

character, with an eye to money; but when Lucian Denzil appeared on the

scene, the poor little woman really fell in love with his handsome face.

But, in strange contrast to her other efforts, Miss Greeb never for a

moment deemed that Lucian would marry her. He was her god, her ideal of

manhood, and to him she offered worship, and burnt incense after the

manner of her kind.

Denzil occupied a bedroom and sitting-room, both pleasant, airy

apartments, looking out on to the square. Miss Greeb attended to his

needs herself, and brought up his breakfast with her own fair hands,

happy for the day if her admired lodger conversed with her for a few

moments before reading the morning paper. Then Miss Greeb would retire

to her own sitting-room and indulge in day dreams which she well knew

would never be realised. The romances she wove herself were even more

marvellous than those she read in her favourite penny novelettes; but,

unlike the printed tales, her romance never culminated in marriage. Poor

brainless, silly, pitiful Miss Greeb; she would have made a good wife

and a fond mother, but by some irony of fate she was destined to be

neither; and the comedy of her husband-hunting youth was now changing

into the lonely tragedy of disappointed spinsterhood. She was one of the

world's unknown martyrs, and her fate merits tears rather than laughter.

On the morning after his meeting with Berwin, the young barrister sat at

breakfast, with Miss Greeb in anxious attendance. Having poured out his

tea, and handed him his paper, and ascertained that his breakfast was to

his liking, Miss Greeb lingered about the room, putting this straight

and that crooked, in the hope that Lucian would converse with her. In

this she was gratified, as Denzil wished to learn details about the

strange man he had assisted on the previous night, and he knew that no

one could afford him more precise information than his brisk landlady,

to whom was known all the gossip of the neighbourhood. His first word

made Miss Greeb flutter back to the table like a dove to its nest.

"Do you know anything about No. 13?" asked Lucian, stirring his tea.

"Do I know anything about No. 13?" repeated Miss Greeb in shrill

amazement. "Of course I do, Mr. Denzil. There ain't a thing I don't

know about that house. Ghosts and vampires and crawling spectres live in

it--that they do."

"Do you call Mr. Berwin a ghost?"

"No; nor nothing half so respectable. He is a mystery, sir, that's what

Mr. Berwin is, and I don't care if he hears me commit myself so far."

"In what way is he a mystery?" demanded Denzil, approaching the matter

with more particularity.

"Why," said Miss Greeb, evidently puzzled how to answer this leading

question, "no one can find out anything about him. He's full of secrets

and underhand goings on. It ain't respectable not to be fair and above

board--that it ain't."

"I see no reason why a quiet-living old gentleman should tell his

private affairs to the whole square," remarked Lucian drily.

"Those who have nothing bad to conceal needn't be afraid of speaking

out," retorted Miss Greeb tartly. "And the way in which Mr. Berwin lives

is enough to make one think him a coiner, or a thief, or even a

murderer--that it is!"

"But what grounds have you to believe him any one of the three?"

This question also puzzled the landlady, as she had no reasonable

grounds for her wild statements. Nevertheless, she made a determined

attempt to substantiate them by hearsay evidence. "Mr. Berwin," said she

in significant tones, "lives all alone in that haunted house."

"Why not? Every man has the right to be a misanthrope if he chooses."

"He has no right to behave so, in a respectable square," replied Miss

Greeb, shaking her head. "There's only two rooms of that large house

furnished, and all the rest is given up to dust and ghosts. Mr. Berwin

won't have a servant to live under his roof, and Mrs. Kebby, who does

his charing, says he drinks awful. Then he has his meals sent in from

the Nelson Hotel round the corner, and eats them all alone. He don't

receive no letters, he don't read no newspapers, and stays in all day,

only coming out at night, like an owl. If he ain't a criminal, Mr.

Denzil, why does he carry on so?"

"He may dislike his fellow-men, and desire to live a secluded life."

Miss Greeb still shook her head. "He may dislike his fellow-men," she

said with emphasis, "but that don't keep him from seeing them--ah! that

it don't."

"Is there anything wrong in that?" said Lucian, contemptuous of these

cobweb objections.

"Perhaps not, Mr. Denzil; but where do those he sees come from?"

"How do you mean, Miss Greeb?"

"They don't go in by the front door, that's certain," continued the

little woman darkly. "There's only one entrance to this square, sir,

and Blinders, the policeman, is frequently on duty there. Two or three

nights he's met Mr. Berwin coming in after dark and exchanged friendly

greetings with him, and each time Mr. Berwin has been alone!"

"Well! well! What of that?" said Denzil impatiently.

"This much, Mr. Denzil, that Blinders has gone round the square, after

seeing Mr. Berwin, and has seen shadows--two or three of them--on the

sitting-room blind. Now, sir," cried Miss Greeb, clinching her argument,

"if Mr. Berwin came into the square alone, how did his visitors get in?"

"Perhaps by the back," conjectured Lucian.

Again Miss Greeb shook her head. "I know the back of No. 13 as well as I

know my own face," she declared. "There's a yard and a fence, but no

entrance. To get in there you have to go in by the front door or down

the aiery steps; and you can't do neither without coming past Blinders

at the square's entrance, and that," finished Miss Greeb triumphantly,

"these visitors don't do."

"They may have come into the square during the day, when Blinders was

not on duty."

"No, sir," said Miss Greeb, ready for this objection. "I thought of that

myself, and as my duty to the square I have inquired--that I have. On

two occasions I've asked the day policeman, and he says no one passed."

"Then," said Lucian, rather puzzled, "Mr. Berwin cannot live alone in

the house."

"Begging your pardon, I'm sure," cried the pertinacious woman, "but he

does. Mrs. Kebby has been all over the house, and there isn't another

soul in it. No, Mr. Denzil, take it what way you will, there's

something that ain't right about Mr. Berwin--if that's his real name,

which I don't believe it is."

"Why, Miss Greeb?"

"Just because I don't," replied the landlady, with feminine logic. "And

if you think of having anything to do with this mystery, Mr. Denzil, I

beg of you not to, else you may come to something as is too terrible to

consider--that you may."

"Such as--"

"Oh, I don't know," cried Miss Greeb, tossing her head and gliding

towards the door. "It ain't for me to say what I think. I am the last

person in the world to meddle with what don't concern me--that I am."

And thus ending the conversation, Miss Greeb vanished, with significant

look and pursed-up lips.

The reason of this last speech and rapid retreat lay in the fact that

Miss Greeb could bring no tangible charge against her opposite

neighbour; and therefore hinted at his complicity in all kinds of

horrors, which she was quite unable to define save in terms more or less

vague.

Lucian dismissed such hints of criminality from his mind as the outcome

of Miss Greeb's very lively imagination; yet, even though he reduced her

communications to bare facts, he could not but acknowledge that there

was something queer about Mr. Berwin and his mode of life. The man's

self-pity and self-condemnation; his hints that certain people wished

to do him harm; the curious episode of the shadows on the blind--these

things engaged the curiosity of Denzil in no ordinary degree; and he

could not but admit to himself that it would greatly ease his mind to

arrive at some reasonable explanation of Berwin's eccentricities.

Nevertheless, he held that he had no right to pry into the secrets of

the stranger, and honourably strove to dismiss the tenant of No. 13 and

his tantalising environments from his mind. But such dismissal of

unworthy curiosity was more difficult to effect than he expected.

For the next week Lucian resolutely banished the subject from his

thoughts, and declined to discuss the matter further with Miss Greeb.

That little woman, all on fire with curiosity, made various inquiries of

her gossips regarding the doings of Mr. Berwin, and in default of

reporting the same to her lodger, occupied herself in discussing them

with her neighbours. The consequence of this incessant gossip was that

the eyes of the whole square fixed themselves on No. 13 in expectation

of some catastrophe, although no one knew exactly what was going to

happen.

This undefinable feeling of impending disaster communicating itself to

Lucian, stimulated his curiosity to such a pitch that, with some feeling

of shame for his weakness, he walked round the square on two several

evenings in the hope of meeting Berwin. But on both occasions he was

unsuccessful.

On the third evening he was more fortunate, for having worked at his

law books until late at night, he went out for a brisk walk before

retiring to rest. The night was cold, and there had been a slight fall

of snow, so Lucian wrapped himself up well, lighted his pipe, and

proceeded to take the air by tramping twice or thrice round the square.

Overhead the sky was clear and frosty, with chill glittering stars and a

wintry moon. A thin covering of snow lay on the pavement, and there was

a white rime on the bare branches of the central trees.

On coming to the house of Berwin, the barrister saw that the

sitting-room was lighted up and the curtains undrawn, so that the window

presented a square of illuminated blind. Even as he looked, two shadows

darkened the white surface--the shadows of a man and a woman. Evidently

they had come between the lamp and the window, and so, quite

unknowingly, revealed their actions to the watcher. Curious to see the

end of this shadow pantomime, Lucian stood still and looked intently at

the window.

The two figures seemed to be arguing, for their heads nodded violently

and their arms waved constantly. They retreated out of the sphere of

light, and again came into it, still continuing their furious gestures.

Unexpectedly the male shadow seized the female by the throat and swung

her like a feather to and fro. The struggling figures reeled out of the

radiance and Lucian heard a faint cry.

Thinking that something was wrong, he rushed up the steps and rang the

bell violently. Almost before the sound died away the light in the room

was extinguished, and he could see nothing more. Again and again he

rang, but without attracting attention; so Lucian finally left the house

and went in search of Blinders, the policeman, to narrate his

experience. At the entrance of Geneva Square he ran against a man whom

he recognised in the clear moonlight.

To his surprise he beheld Mark Berwin.