Part 3. The Tomb - Chapter 20. 'Are You There?'

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_ PART III. THE TOMB
CHAPTER XX. 'ARE YOU THERE?'

The next morning Hugo's dreams seemed to be concerned chiefly with a telephone, and the telephone-bell of his dreams made the dreams so noisy that even while asleep he knew that his rest was being outrageously disturbed. He tried to change the subject of his fantastic visions, but he could not, and the telephone-bell rang nearly all the time. This was the more annoying in that he had taken elaborate precautions to secure perfect repose. Perfect repose was what he needed after quitting Tudor's flat. He felt that he had stood as much as a man can expect himself to stand. In the vault, and again in the flat, his life had been in danger; he had suffered the ignominy of the ruined sale; he had come to grips with Ravengar, and let Ravengar go free; he had listened to the amazing recital of the phonograph. Moreover, between the interview with Ravengar and the burglary of the flat he had summoned his Council of Ten, or, rather, his Council of Nine (Bentley being absent, dead), had addressed all his employes, had separated three traitorous shopwalkers, ten traitorous cashiers, and forty-two traitorous servers from the main body, and sent them packing, had arranged for the rehabilitation of Lady Brice (_nee_ Kentucky-Webster), had appointed a new guardian to the Safe Deposit, had got on the track of the stolen stoles, and had approved special advertisements for every daily paper in London.

And, finally and supremely, he had experienced the greatest stroke of joy, ecstatic and bewildering joy, of his whole existence--the news that Camilla lived. It was this tremendous feeling of joy, and not by any means his complex and variegated worries, that might have prevented him from obtaining the sleep which Nature demanded.

On reaching the dome at 2 a.m., he had taken four tabloids, each containing 0.324 gramme of trional, and had drunk the glass of hot milk which Simon always left him in case he should want it. And he had written on a sheet of paper the words: 'I am not to be disturbed before 10 a.m., no matter what happens; but call me at ten.--H.'; and had put the sheet of paper on Simon's door-mat. And then he had stumbled into bed, and abandoned himself to sleep--not without reluctance, for he did not care to lose, even for a few hours, the fine consciousness of that sheer joy. He desired to rush off instantly into the universe at large and discover Camilla, wherever she might be.

Of course, he had dreamed of Camilla, but the telephone-bell had drowned the remembered accents of her voice. The telephone-bell had silenced everything. The telephone-bell had grown from a dream into a nightmare; and at last he had said to himself in the nightmare: 'I might just as well be up and working as lying throttled here by this confounded nightmare.' And by an effort of will he had wakened. And even after he was roused, and had switched on the light, which showed the hands of the clock at a quarter to ten, he could still hear the telephone-bell of his nightmare. And then the truth occurred to him, as the truth does occur surprisingly to people whose sleep has been disturbed, that the telephone-bell was a real telephone-bell, and not in the least the telephone-bell of a dream, and it was ringing, ringing, ringing in the dome. There were fifteen lines of telephone in the Hugo building, and one of them ran to the dome. Few persons called him up on it, because few persons knew its precise number, but he used it considerably himself.

'Anyhow,' he murmured, 'I've had over seven and a half hours' sleep, and that's something.'

And as he got out of bed to go across to the telephone, his great joy resumed possession of him, and he was rather glad than otherwise that the telephone had forced him to wake.

'Well, well, well?' he cried comically, lifting the ear-piece off the hook and stopping the bell.

'Are you there?' the still small voice of the telephone whispered in his ear.

'I should think I was here!' he cried. 'Who are you?'

'Are you Mr. Hugo?' asked the voice.

'I'm what's left of Mr. Hugo,' he answered in a sort of drunken tone. The power of the sedative was still upon him. 'Who are you? You've pretty nearly rung my head off.'

'I just want to say good-bye to you,' said the voice.

'What!'

Hugo started, glancing round the vast room, which was in shadow except where a solitary light threw its yellow glare on the dial of the clock.

'Are you there?' asked the voice patiently once again.

'It isn't'--something prompted him to use a Christian name--'it isn't Louis?'

'Yes.'

'Where are you, then?' Hugo demanded.

'Not far off,' replied the mysterious voice in the telephone.

It was unmistakably the voice of Louis Ravengar, but apparently touched with some new quality, some quality of resigned and dignified despair. Hugo wondered where the man could be. And the sinister magic of the telephone, which brought this sad, quiet voice to him from somewhere out of the immensity of England, but which would not yield up the secret of its hiding, struck him strangely.

'Are you there?' said the voice yet again.

'Yes.'

Hugo shivered, but whether it was from cold--he wore nothing but his pyjamas--or from apprehension he could not decide.

'I'm saying good-bye,' said the voice once more. 'I suppose you mean to have the police after me, and so I mean to get out of their way. See? But first I wished to tell you--_crrrck cluck_--Eh? What?'

'I didn't speak.'

'It's these Exchange hussies, then. I wanted to tell you I've thought a lot about our interview last night. What you said was true enough, Owen. I admit that, and so I am going to end it. Eh? Are you there? That girl keeps putting me off.'

'End what?'

'End _it_--_it_--_it_! I'm not making anybody happy, not even myself, and so I'm going to end it. But I'll tell you her address first. I know it.'

'Whose address?'

'Hers--Camilla's. If I tell you, will you promise not to say a word about me speaking to you on the telephone this morning?'

'Yes.'

'Not a word under any circumstances?'

'Certainly.'

'Well, it's 17, Place Saint-Etienne, Bruges, Belgium.'

'17, Place Saint-Etienne, Bruges. That's all right. I shan't forget. Look here, Louis, you'd better clear out of England. Go to America. Do you hear? I don't understand this about "ending it." You surely aren't thinking of--'

He felt quite magnanimous towards Ravengar. And he was aware that he could get to Bruges in six hours or so.

'That idea of yours about chloroform,' said the voice, 'and going into the vault, and being shut up there, is a very good one. Nobody would know, except the person whom one paid to shut the door after one.'

'I say, where are you?' Hugo asked curtly. He was at a loss how to treat these singular confidences.

'And so is that idea good about merely ending one incarnation and beginning another. That's much better than calling it death.'

'I shall ring you off,' said Hugo.

'Wait a moment,' said the voice, still patiently. 'If you should hear the name Callear--'

There was a pause.

'Well?' Hugo inquired, 'what name?'

'Callear--C-a-l-l-e-a-r. If you should hear that name soon--'

'What then?'

'Remember your promise of secrecy--that's all. Good-bye.'

'I wish you'd tell me where you are.'

'Not far off,' said the voice. 'I shall never be far off, I think. When you've found Camilla and brought her here'--the tone of the voice changed and grew almost malignant despite its reticence--'you'd like to know that I was always near to, somewhere underneath, mouldering, wouldn't you?'

'What did you say?'

'I said mouldering. Good-bye.'

'But look here--'

The bell rang off. Louis Ravengar had finished his good-bye. Hugo tried in vain to resume communication with him. He could not even get any sort of reply from the Exchange.

'It's a queer world,' he soliloquized, as he returned to bed. 'What does the man mean?'

He was still happy in the prospect of finding Camilla, but it was as though his happiness were a pool in a private ground, and some trespasser had troubled it with a stone.

The clock struck ten, and Simon entered with tea and the paper. _

Read next: Part 3. The Tomb: Chapter 21. Suicide

Read previous: Part 2. The Phonograph: Chapter 19. What The Phonograph Said

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