The Camera Fiend, E. W. Hornung [important of reading books txt] 📗

It was a normal elderly gentleman, with certain simple habits, but no little distinction of address, who welcomed the schoolboy at his breakfast-table. The goblin inquisitor of Hyde Park had vanished with his hat and cloak. The excited empiric of the dark-room was a creature of that ruby light alone. Dr. Baumgartner was shaved and clad like other men, the iron-grey hair carefully brushed back from a lofty forehead, all traces of strong acids removed from his well-kept hands. There was a third person, and only a third, at table in the immature shape of a young lady whom the doctor introduced as his niece Miss Platts, and addressed as Phillida.

Pocket thought he had never heard of nobler atonement for unmitigable surname. He could not help thinking that this Phillida did not look the one [pg 68] to flout a fellow, after the fashion of the only other Phillida he had ever heard of, and then that it was beastly cheek to start thinking of her like that and by her Christian name. But he was of the age and temperament when thoughts will come of contact with young animals of the opposite sex. He looked at her sidelong from time to time, but all four eyes dropped directly they met; she seemed as shy and uninteresting as himself; her conversation was confined to table attentions to her uncle and his guest.

Pocket made more valiant attempts. A parlour billiard-table, standing against the wall, supplied an irresistible topic. “We have a full-size table at home,” he said, and could have mutilated his tongue that instant. “I like a small one best,” he assured the doctor, who shook his head and smiled.

“Honestly, sir, and snob-cricket better than the real thing! I'm no good at real games.”

The statement was too true, but not the preference.

“That must be awkward for you, at an English public school,” was the doctor's comment.

Pocket heaved an ingenuous sigh. It was hateful. He blamed the asthma as far as modesty would permit. He was modest enough in his breakfast-table talk, yet nervously egotistical, and apt to involve himself in lengthy explanations. He had [pg 69] two types of listener—the dry and the demure—to all he said.

“And they let you come up to London alone!” remarked Dr. Baumgartner when he got a chance.

“But it wasn't their fault that I——”

Pocket stopped at a glance from his host, and plunged into profuse particulars exonerating his house-master, but was cut short again. Evidently the niece was not to know where he had spent the night.

“I suppose there are a number of young men at your—establishment?” said the doctor, exchanging a glance with Miss Platts.

“There are over four hundred boys,” replied Pocket, a little puzzled.

“And how many keepers do they require?”

A grin apologised for the word.

“There must be over thirty masters,” returned Pocket more pointedly than before. He was not going to stand chaff about his public school from a mad German doctor.

“And they arm you for the battle of life with Latin and Greek, eh?”

“Not necessarily; there's a Modern Side. You can learn German if you like!” said Pocket, not without contempt.

“Do you?”

“I don't like,” said the boy gratuitously.

“Then we must stick to your excellent King's English.”

Pocket turned a trifle sulky. He felt he had not scored in this little passage. Then he reflected upon the essential and extraordinary kindness which had brought him to a decent breakfast-table that morning. That made him ashamed; nor could he have afforded to be too independent just yet, even had he been so disposed in his heart. His asthma was a beast that always growled in the background; he never knew when it would spring upon him with a roar. Breakfast pacified the brute; hot coffee always did; but the effects soon wore off, and the boy was oppressed again, yet deadly weary, long before it was time for him to go to Welbeck Street.

“Is there really nothing you can take?” asked Dr. Baumgartner, standing over him in the drawing-room, where Pocket sat hunched up in the big easy-chair.

“Nothing now, I'm afraid, unless I could get some of those cigarettes. And Dr. Bompas would kick up an awful row!”

“But it's inhuman. I'll go and get them myself. He should prescribe for such an emergency.”

“He has,” said Pocket. “I've got some stuff in my bag; but it's no use taking it now. It's [pg 71] meant to take in bed when you can have your sleep out.”

And he was going into more elaborate details than Dr. Bompas had done, when the other doctor cut him short once more.

“But why not now? You can sleep to your heart's content in that chair; nobody will come in.”

Pocket shook his head.

“I'm due in Welbeck Street at twelve.”

“Well, I'll wake you at quarter to, and have a taxi ready at the door. That will give you a good two hours.”

Pocket hesitated, remembering the blessed instantaneous effect of the first bottle under the bush.

“Would you promise to wake me, sir? You're not going out?”

“I shall be in again.”

“Then it is a promise?”

Pocket would have liked it in black and white.

“Certainly, my young fellow! Is the stuff in your bag?”

It was, and the boy took it with much the same results as overnight. It tasted sweeter and acted quicker; that was the only difference. The skin seemed to tighten on his face. His fingers tingled at the ends It was not at all an unpleasant sensation, especially as the labour in his breast came to an end as if by magic. The faintly foreign [pg 72] accents of Dr. Baumgartner sounded unduly distant in his last words from the open door. It was scarcely shut before the morning's troubles ceased deliciously in the cosy chair.

Yet they seemed to begin again directly, and this was a horrid crop! Of course he was back in Hyde Park; but the sky must have rained red paint in his absence, or else the earth was red-hot and the sky reflected it. No! the grass was too wet for that. It might have been wet with blood. Everything was as red as beet-root, as wet and red and one's body weltering in it like the slain! Reddest of all was the old photographer, who turned into Mr. Spearman in cap and gown, who turned into various members of the Upton family, one making more inconsequent remarks than the other, touching wildly on photography and the flitting soul, and between them working the mad race up to such a pace and pitch that Pocket woke with a dreadful start to find Dr. Baumgartner standing over him once more in the perfectly pallid flesh.

“I've had a beast of a dream!” said Pocket, waking thoroughly. “I'm in a cold perspiration, and I thought it was cold blood! What time is it?”

“A quarter to six,” said the doctor, who had invited the question by taking out his watch.

“A quarter to twelve, you mean!”

“No—six.”

And the boy was shown the dial, but would not believe it until he had gaped at his own watch, which had stopped at half-past three. Then he bounded to his feet in a puerile passion, and there lay the little garden, a lake of sunlight as he remembered it, swallowed up entirely in the shadow of the house.

“You promised to wake me!” gasped Pocket, almost speechless. “You've broken your word, sir!”

“Only in your own interest,” replied the other calmly.

“I believe you were waiting for me to wake—to catch my soul, or some rot!” cried the boy, with bitter rudeness; but he looked in vain for the stereoscopic or any other sort of camera, and Dr. Baumgartner only shrugged his shoulders as he opened an evening paper.

“I apologise for saying that,” the boy resumed, with a dignity that sounded near to tears. “I know you meant it for the best—to make up for my bad night—you've been very kind to me, I know! But I was due in Welbeck Street at twelve o'clock, and now I shall have to bolt to catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras.”

“You won't catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras,” replied Baumgartner, scarcely looking up from his paper.

“I will unless I'm in some outlandish part of London!” cried Pocket, reflecting for the first time that he had no idea in what part of London he was. “I must catch it. It's the last train back to school. I'll get into an awful row if I don't!”

“You'll get into a worse one if you do,” rejoined the doctor, looking over his paper, and not unfeelingly, at the boy.

“What about?”

Pocket held his breath instinctively as their eyes met. Baumgartner answered with increased compassion and restraint, a grey look on his grey face:

“Something that happened this morning. I fear you will be wanted here in town about it.”

“Do tell me what, sir!”

“Can you face things, my young fellow?”