"I am sure," he said, "that everyone gives you your own way as often as they can and is only too delighted to do so."
"Then you are really going to let me have the picture?"
Mr. Satterthwaite shook his head slowly and regretfully. "I am afraid that is impossible. You see--" He paused. "I bought that picture for a lady. It is a present."
"Oh! but surely--"
The telephone on the table rang sharply. With a murmured word of excuse, Mr. Satterthwaite took up the receiver. A voice spoke to him, a small, cold voice that sounded very far away.
"Can I speak to Mr. Satterthwaite, please?"
"It is Mr. Satterthwaite speaking."
"I am Lady Charnley, Alix Charnley. I daresay you don't remember me, Mr. Satterthwaite; it is a great many years since we met."
"My dear Alix. Of course I remember you."
"There is something I wanted to ask you. I was at the Harchester Galleries at an exhibition of pictures today. There was one called 'The Dead Harlequin'--perhaps you recognized it--it was the Terrace Room at Charnley. I--I want to have that picture. It was sold to you." She paused. "Mr. Satterthwaite, for reasons of my own I want that picture. Will you resell it to me?"
Mr. Satterthwaite thought, _Why, this is a miracle_. As he spoke into the receiver he was thankful that Aspasia Glen could only hear one side of the conversation. "If you will accept my gift, dear lady, it will make me very happy." He heard a sharp exclamation behind him and hurried on. "I bought it for you. I did indeed. But listen, my dear Alix, I want to ask you to do me a great favor if you will."
"Of course. Mr. Satterthwaite, I am so _very_ grateful."
He went on: "I want you to come round now to my house, at once."
There was a slight pause and then she answered quietly, "I will come at once."
Mr. Satterthwaite put down the receiver and turned to Miss Glen. She said quickly and angrily, "That was the picture you were talking about?"
"Yes," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "the lady to whom I am presenting it is coming round to this house in a few minutes."
Suddenly Aspasia Glen's face broke once more into smiles. "You will give me a chance of persuading her to turn the picture over to me?"
"I will give you a chance of persuading her."
Inwardly he was strangely excited. He was in the midst of a drama that was shaping itself to some foredoomed end. He, the looker-on, was playing a star part. He turned to Miss Glen.
"Will you come into the other room with me? I should like you to meet some friends of mine."
He held the door open for her and, crossing the hall, opened the door of the smoking room.
"Miss Glen," he said, "let me introduce to you an old friend of mine, Colonel Monckton. Mr. Bristow, the painter of the picture you admire so much." Then he started as a third figure rose from the chair which he had left empty beside his own.
"I think you expected me this evening," said Mr. Quin. "During your absence I introduced myself to your friends. I am so glad I was able to drop in."
"My dear friend," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "I--I have been carrying on as well as I am able but--" He stopped before the slight sardonic glance of Mr. Quin's dark eyes. "Let me introduce you. Mr. Harley Quin, Miss Aspasia Glen."
Was it his fancy--or did she shrink back slightly. A curious expression flitted over her face. Suddenly Bristow broke in boisterously: "I have got it."
"Got what?"
"Got hold of what was puzzling me. There is a likeness, there is a distinct likeness." He was staring curiously at Mr. Quin. "You see it?" He turned to Mr. Satterthwaite. "Don't you see a distinct likeness to the Harlequin of my picture--the man looking in through the window?"
It was no fancy this time. He distinctly heard Miss Glen draw in her breath sharply and even saw that she stepped back one pace.
"I told you that I was expecting someone," said Mr. Satterthwaite. He spoke with an air of triumph. "I must tell you that my friend Mr. Quin is a most extraordinary person. He can unravel mysteries. He can make you see things."
"Are you a medium, sir?" demanded Colonel Monckton, eyeing Mr. Quin doubtfully.
The latter smiled and slowly shook his head. "Mr. Satterthwaite exaggerates," he said quietly. "Once or twice when I have been with him he has done some extraordinarily good deductive work. Why he puts the credit down to me I can't say. His modesty, I suppose."
"No, no," said Mr. Satterthwaite excitedly. "It isn't. You make me see things--things that I ought to have seen all along--that I actually have seen--but without knowing that I saw them."
"It sounds to me deuced complicated," said Colonel Monckton.
"Not really," said Mr. Quin. "The trouble is that we are not content just to see things--we will tack the wrong interpretation onto the things we see."
Aspasia Glen turned to Frank Bristow. "I want to know," she said nervously, "what put the idea of painting that picture into your head?"
Bristow shrugged his shoulders. "I don't quite know," he confessed. "Something about the place--about Charnley, I mean--took hold of my imagination. The big empty room, the terrace outside, the idea of ghosts and things, I suppose. I have just been hearing the tale of the last Lord Charnley who shot himself. Supposing you are dead, and your spirit lives on? It must be odd, you know. You might stand outside on the terrace looking in at the window at your own dead body and you would see everything."
"What do you mean?" said Aspasia Glen. "_See_ everything?"
"Well, you would see what happened. You would see--"
The door opened and the butler announced Lady Charnley.
Mr. Satterthwaite went to meet her. He had not seen her for nearly thirteen years. He remembered her as she once was, an eager, glowing girl. And now he saw--a Frozen Lady. Very fair, very pale, with an air of drifting rather than walking, a snowflake driven at random by an icy breeze. Something unreal about her. So cold, so far away.
"It was very good of you to come," said Mr. Satterthwaite.
He led her forward. She made a half gesture of recognition toward Miss Glen and then paused as the other made no response.
"I am so sorry," she murmured, "but surely I have met you somewhere, haven't I?"
"Over the footlights perhaps," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "This is Miss Aspasia Glen, Lady Charnley."
"I am very pleased to meet you, Lady Charnley," said Aspasia Glen.
Her voice had suddenly a slight transatlantic tinge to it. Mr. Satterthwaite was reminded of one of her various stage impersonations.
"Colonel Monckton you know," continued Mr. Satterthwaite, "and this is Mr. Bristow."
He saw a sudden faint tinge of color in her cheeks.
"Mr. Bristow and I have met too," she said and smiled a little. "In a train."
"And Mr. Harley Quin."
He watched her closely, but this time there was no flicker of recognition. He set a chair for her and then seating himself he cleared his throat and spoke a little nervously: "I--this is rather an unusual little gathering. It centers round this picture. I--I think that if we liked we could--clear things up."
"You are not going to hold a séance, Satterthwaite?" asked Colonel Monckton. "You are very odd this evening."
"No," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "not exactly a séance. But my friend, Mr. Quin, believes, and I agree, that one can by looking back over the past see things as they were and not as they appeared to be."
"The past?" said Lady Charnley.
"I am speaking of your husband's suicide, Alix. I know it hurts you--"
"No," said Alix Charnley, "it doesn't hurt me. Nothing hurts me now."
Mr. Satterthwaite thought of Frank Bristow's words: "_She was not quite real, you know. Shadowy. Like one of the people who come out of the hills in Gaelic fairy tales._"
"Shadowy," he had called her. That described her exactly. A shadow, a reflection of something else. Where then was the real Alix? And his mind answered quickly, "_In the past. Divided from us by fourteen years of time._"
"My dear," he said, "you frighten me. You are like the Weeping Lady with the Silver Ewer."
Crash! The coffee cup on the table by Aspasia Glen's elbow fell shattered to the floor. Mr. Satterthwaite waved aside her apologies. He thought, _We are getting nearer, we are getting nearer every minute--but nearer to what?_
"Let us take our minds back to that night fourteen years ago," he said. "Lord Charnley killed himself. For what reason? No one knows."
Lady Charnley stirred slightly in her chair.
"Lady Charnley knows," said Frank Bristow abruptly.
"Nonsense," said Colonel Monckton, then stopped, frowning at her curiously.
She was looking across at the artist. It was as though he drew the words out of her. She spoke, nodding her head slowly, and her voice was like a snowflake, cold and soft.
"Yes, you are quite right. _I know._ That is why as long as I live I can never go back to Charnley. That is why when my boy Dick wants me to open the place up and live there again I tell him it can't be done."
"Will you tell us the reason, Lady Charnley?" asked Mr. Quin.
She looked at him. Then, as though hypnotized, she spoke as quietly and naturally as a child. "I will tell you if you like. Nothing seems to matter very much now. I found a letter among his papers and I destroyed it."