THE MAN WHO LOST HIMSELF (4)
By:
February 26, 2018
This year marks the 100th anniversary of a forgotten Avenger/Artful Dodger-type adventure novel, The Man Who Lost Himself. A man down on his luck wakes up after a drunken night in London only to discover… that he has somehow slipped into the identity of a wealthy aristocrat! HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize this funny, thrilling yarn by H. De Vere Stacpoole — best known as author of The Blue Lagoon — here at HILOBROW.
He awoke from sleep in bed in the dark, with his mind clear as crystal and hot shame clutching at his throat. Rochester was the first recollection that came to him, and it was a recollection tinged with evil. He felt like a man who had supped with the devil. Led by Rochester he had made a fool of himself, he had made a brute of himself, how would he face the hotel people? And what had he done with the last of his money?
These thoughts held him motionless for a few terrific moments. Then he clapped his hand to his unfortunate head, turned on his side, and lay gazing into the darkness. It had all come back to him clearly. Rochester’s wild conduct, the dinner, the smashed plates, the quarrel. He was afraid to get up and search in his pockets, he guessed their condition. He occupied himself instead, trying to imagine what would become of him without money and without friends in this wilderness of London. With ten pounds he might have done something; without, what could he do? Nothing, unless it were manual labour, and he did not know where to look for that.
Then Rochester, never from his mind, came more fully before him — that likeness, was it real, or only a delusion of alcohol? And what else had Rochester done? He seemed mad enough to have done anything, plum crazy — would he, Jones, be held accountable for Rochester’s deeds? He was fighting with this question when a clock began to strike in the darkness and close to the bed, nine delicate and silvery strokes, that brought a sudden sweat upon the forehead of Jones.
He was not in his room at the Savoy. There was no clock in the Savoy bed room, and no clock in any hotel ever spoke in tones like these. On the sound, as if from a passage outside, he heard a voice:
“Took all his money, and sent him home in another chap’s clothes.”
Then came the sound of a soft step crossing the carpet, the sound of curtain rings moving — then a blind upshrivelled letting the light of day upon a room never before seen by Jones, a Jacobean bed room, severe, but exquisite in every detail.
The man who had pulled the blind string, and whose powerful profile was silhouetted against the light, showed to the sun a face highly but evenly coloured, as though by the gentle painting of old port wine, through a long series of years and ancestors. The typical colour of the old fashioned English Judge, Bishop, and Butler.
He was attired in a black morning coat, and his whole countenance, make, build and appearance had something grave and archiepiscopal most holding to the eye and imagination.
It terrified Jones, who, breathing now as though asleep, watched through closed eyelids whilst the apparition, with pursed lips, dealt with the blind of the other window.
This done, it passed to the door, conferred in muted tones with some unseen person, and returned bearing in its hands a porcelain early morning tea service.
Having placed this on the table by the bed, the apparition vanished, closing the door.
Jones sat up and looked around him.
His clothes had disappeared. He always hung his trousers on the bed post at the end of his bed and placed his other things on a chair, but trousers or other things were nowhere visible, they had been spirited away. It was at this moment that he noticed the gorgeous silk pyjamas he had got on. He held out his arm and looked at the texture and pattern.
Then, in a flash came comfort and understanding. He was in Rochester’s house. Rochester must have sent him here last night. That apparition was Rochester’s man servant. The vision of Rochester turned from an evil spirit to an angel, and filled with a warm sensation of friendliness towards the said Rochester he was in the act of pouring out a cup of tea, when the words he had heard spoken in the passage outside came back to him.
“Took all his money, and sent him home in another chap’s clothes.”
What did that mean?
He finished pouring out the tea and drank it; there was thin bread and butter on a plate but he disregarded it. Whose money had been taken, and who had been sent home in another chap’s clothes?
Did those words apply to him or to Rochester? Had Rochester been robbed? Might he, Jones, be held accountable?
A deep uneasiness and a passionate desire for his garments begotten of these queries, brought him out of bed and on to the floor. He came to the nearer window and looked out. The window gave upon the Green Park, a cheerful view beneath the sky of a perfect summer’s morning. He turned from the window, and crossing the room opened the door through which the apparition had vanished. A thickly carpeted corridor lay outside, a corridor silent as the hypogeum of the Apis, secretive, gorgeous, with tasseled silk curtains and hanging lamps. Jones judged these lamps to be of silver and worth a thousand dollars apiece. He had read the Arabian Nights when a boy, and like a waft now from the garden of Aladdin came a vague something stirring his senses and disturbing his practical nature. He wanted his clothes. This silent gorgeousness had raised the desire for his garments to a passion. He wanted to get into his boots and face the world and face the worst. Swinging lamps of silver, soft carpets, silken curtains, only served to heighten his sensitiveness as to his apparel and whole position.
He came back into the room. His anger was beginning to rise, the nervous anger of a man who has made a fool of himself, upon whom a jest is being played, and who finds himself in a false position.
Seeing an electric button by the fire place he went to it and pressed it twice, hard, then he opened the second door of the room and found a bath room.
A Pompeian bath room with tassellated floor, marble walls and marble ceiling. The bath was sunk in the floor. Across hot water pipes, plated with silver, hung towels of huck-a-back, white towels with cardinal red fringes. Here too, most un-Pompeian stood a wonderful dressing table, one solid slab of glass, with razors set out, manicure instruments, brushes, powder pots, scent bottles.
Jones came into this place, walked round it like a cat in a strange larder, gauged the depth of the bath, glanced at the things on the table, and was in the act of picking up one of the manicure implements, when a sound from the bed room drew his attention.
Someone was moving about there.
Someone who seemed altering the position of chairs and arranging things.
He judged it to be the servant who had answered the bell; he considered that it was better to have the thing out now, and have done with it. He wanted a full explanation, and bravely, but with the feelings of a man who is entering a dental parlour, he came to the bath room door.
A pale faced, agile-looking young man with glossy black hair, a young man in a sleeved waistcoat, a young man carrying a shirt and set of pink silk undergarments over his left arm, was in the act of placing a pair of patent leather boots with kid tops upon the floor. A gorgeous dressing gown lay upon the bed. It had evidently been placed there by the agile one.
Jones had intended to ask explanations. That intention shrivelled, somehow, in the act of speech. What he uttered was a very mildly framed request.
“Er — can I have my clothes, please?” said Jones.
“Yes, my Lord,” replied the other. “I am placing them out.”
The instantaneous anger raised by the patent fact that he was being guyed by the second apparition was as instantly checked by the recollection of Rochester. Here was another practical joke. This house was evidently Rochester’s — the whole thing was plain. Well, he would show that tricky spirit how he could take a joke and turn it on the maker. Like Br’er Rabbit he determined to lie low.
He withdrew into the bath room and sat down on the rush bottomed chair by the table, his temper coiled, and ready to fly out like a spring. He was seated like this, curling his toes and nursing his resolve, when the Agile One, with an absolute gravity that disarmed all anger, entered with the dressing gown. He stood holding it up, and Jones, rising, put it on. Then the A.O. filled the bath, trying the temperature with a thermometer, and so absorbed in his business that he might have been alone.
The bath filled, he left the room, closing the door.
He had thrown some crystals into the water, scenting it with a perfume fragrant and refreshing, the temperature was just right, and as Jones plunged and wallowed and lay half floating, supporting himself by the silver plated rails arranged for that purpose, the idea came to him that if the practical joke were to continue as pleasantly as it had begun, he, for one, would not grumble.
Soothed by the warmth his mind took a clearer view of things.
If this were a jest of Rochester’s, as most certainly it was, where lay the heart of it? Every joke has its core, and the core of this one was most evidently the likeness between himself and Rochester.
If Rochester were a Lord and if this were his house, and if Rochester had sent him — Jones — home like a bundle of goods, then the extraordinary likeness would perhaps deceive the servants and maybe other people as well. That would be a good joke, promising all sorts of funny developments. Only it was not a joke that any man of self respect would play. But Rochester, from those vague recollections of his antics, did not seem burdened with self respect. He seemed in his latter developments crazy enough for anything.
If he had done this, then the servants were not in the business; they would be under the delusion that he, Jones, was Rochester, doped and robbed and dressed in another man’s clothes and sent home.
Rochester, turning up later in the morning, would have a fine feast of humour to sit down to.
This seemed plain. The born practical joker coming on his own twin image could not resist making use of it. This explanation cleared the situation, but it did not make it a comfortable one. If the servants discovered the imposition before the arrival of Rochester things would be unpleasant. He must act warily, get downstairs and escape from the place as soon as possible. Later on he would settle with Rochester. The servants, if they were not partners in the joke, had taken him on his face value, his voice had evidently not betrayed him. He felt sure on this point. He left the bath and, drying himself, donned the dressing gown. Tooth paste and a tooth brush stood on a glass tray by a little basin furnished with hot and cold water taps, and now, so strangely are men constituted, the main facts of his position were dwarfed for a second by the consideration that he had no tooth brush of his own.
Just that little thing brought his energies to a focus and his growing irritation.
He, opened the bed-room door. The glossy haired one was putting links in the sleeves of a shirt.
“Get me a tooth brush — a new one,” said Jones, brusquely, almost brutally. “Get it quick.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
He dropped the shirt and left the room swiftly, but not hurriedly, taking care to close the door softly behind him.
It was the first indication to Jones of a method so complete and a mechanism so perfectly constituted, that jolts were all but eliminated.
“I believe if I’d asked that guy for an elephant,” he said to himself, “he’d have acted just the same — do they keep a drug store on the premises?”
They evidently kept a store of tooth brushes, for in less than a minute and a half Expedition had returned with the tooth brush on a little lacquered tray.
Now, to a man accustomed to dress himself it comes as a shock to have his underpants held out for him to get into as though he were a little boy.
This happened to Jones — and they were pink silk.
A pair of subfusc coloured trousers creased and looking absolutely new were presented to him in the same manner. He was allowed to put on his own socks, silk and never worn before, but he was not allowed to put on his own boots. The perfect valet did that kneeling before him, shoe horn and button hook in hand.
Having inducted him into a pink silk under vest and a soft pleated shirt, with plain gold links in the sleeves, each button of the said links having in its centre a small black pearl, a collar and a subfusc coloured silk tie were added to him, also a black morning vest and a black morning coat, with rather broad braid at the edges.
A handkerchief of pure white cambric with a tiny monogram also in white was then shaken out and presented.
Then his valet, intent, silent, and seeming to move by clockwork, passed to a table on which stood a small oak cabinet. Opening the cabinet he took from it and placed on the table a watch and chain.
His duties were now finished, and, according to some prescribed rule, he left the room carefully and softly, closing the door behind him.
Jones took up the watch and chain.
The watch was as thin as a five shilling piece, the chain was a mere thread of gold. It was an evening affair, to be worn with dress clothes, and this fact presented to the mind of Jones a confirmation of the idea that, not only was he literally in Rochester’s shoes, but that Rochester’s ordinary watch and chain had not returned.
He sat down for a moment to consider another point. His own old Waterbury and rolled gold chain, and the few unimportant letters in his pockets — where were they?
He determined to clear this matter at once, and boldly rang the bell.
The valet answered it.
“When I came back last night — er — was there anything in my pockets?” asked he.
“No, my Lord. They had taken everything from the pockets.”
“No watch and chain?”
“No, my Lord.”
“Have you the clothes I came back in?”
“Yes, my Lord.”
“Go and fetch them.”
The man disappeared and returned in a minute with a bundle of clothes neatly folded on his arm.
“Mr. Church told me to keep them careful, lest you’d want to put the matter in the hands of the police, my Lord, shockin’ old things they are.”
Jones examined the clothes. They were his own. Everything he had worn yesterday lay there, and the sight of them filled his mind with a nostalgia and a desire for them — a home sickness and a clothes sickness — beyond expression.
He was absolutely sure from the valet’s manner that the servants were not “in the know.” A wild impulse came on him to take the exhibitor of these remnants of his past into his confidence. To say right out: “I’m Jones. Victor Jones of Philadelphia. I’m no Lord. Here, gimme those clothes and let me out of this — let’s call it quits.”
The word “police” already dropped held him back. He was an impostor. If he were to declare the facts before Rochester returned, what might be the result? Whatever the result might be one thing was certain, it would be unpleasant. Besides, he was no prisoner, once downstairs he could leave the house.
So instead of saying: “I’m Victor Jones of Philadelphia,” he said: “Take them away,” and finding himself alone once more he sat down to consider.
Rochester must have gone through his pockets, not for loot, but for the purpose of removing any article that might cast suspicion, or raise the suspicion that he, Jones, was not Rochester. That seemed plain enough, and there was an earnestness of purpose in the fact that was disturbing.
There was no use in thinking, however. He would go downstairs and make his escape. He was savagely hungry, but he reckoned the Savoy was good enough for one more meal — if he could get there.
Leaving the watch and chain — unambitious to add a charge of larceny to his other troubles, should Fate arrest him before the return of Rochester, he came down the corridor to a landing giving upon a flight of stairs, up which, save for the gradient, a coach and horses might have been driven.
The place was a palace. Vast pictures by gloomy old artists, pictures of men in armour, men in ruffs, women without armour or ruffs, or even a rag of chiffon, pictures worth millions of dollars no doubt, hung from the walls of the landing, and the wall flanking that triumphant staircase.
Jones looked over into the well of the hall, then he began to descend the stairs.
He had intended, on finding a hat in the hall, to clap it on and make a clean bolt for freedom and the light of heaven, get back to the Savoy, dress himself in another suit, and once more himself, go for Rochester, but this was no hall with a hat-rack and umbrella-stand. Knights in armour were guarding it, and a flunkey, six feet high, in red plush breeches, and with calves that would have made Victor Jones scream with laughter under normal conditions.
The flunkey, seeing our friend, stepped to a door, opened it, and held it open for him. Not to enter the room thus indicated would have been possible enough, but the compelling influence of that vast flunkey made it impossible to Jones.
His volition had fled, he was subdued to his surroundings, for the moment conquered.
He entered a breakfast room, light and pleasantly furnished, where at a breakfast table and before a silver tea urn sat a lady of forty or so, thin faced, high nosed, aristocratic and rather faded.
She was reading a letter, and when she saw the incomer she rose from the table and gathered some other letters up. Then she, literally, swept from the room. She looked at him as she passed, and it seemed to Jones that he had never known before the full meaning of the word “scorn.”
For a wild second he thought that all had been discovered, that the police were now sure to arrive. Then he knew at once. Nothing had been discovered, the delusion held even for this woman, that glance was meant for Rochester, not for him, and was caused by the affair of last night, by other things, too, maybe, but that surely.
Uncomfortable, angry, nervous, wild to escape, and then yielding to caution, he took his seat at the table where a place was laid — evidently for him.
The woman had left an envelope on the table, he glanced at it.
THE HONBLE: VENETIA BIRDBROOK,
10A Carlton House Terrace,
London, S.W.
Victor read the inscription written in a bold female hand.
It told him where he was, he was in the breakfast-room of 10A Carlton House Terrace, but it told him nothing more.
Was the Honble: Venetia Birdbrook his wife, or at least the wife of his twin image? This thought blinded him for a moment to the fact that a flunkey — they seemed as numerous as flies in May — was at his elbow with a menu, whilst another flunkey, who seemed to have sprung from the floor, was fiddling at the sideboard which contained cold edibles, tongue, ham, chicken and so forth.
“Scrambled eggs,” said he, looking at the card.
“Tea or coffee, my Lord?”
“Coffee.”
He broke a breakfast roll and helped himself mechanically to some butter, which was instantly presented to him by the sideboard fiddler, and he had just taken a mechanical bite of buttered roll, when the door opened and the Archiepiscopal gentleman who had pulled up his window blind that morning entered. Mr. Church, for Jones had already gathered that to be his name, carried a little yellow basket filled with letters in his right hand, and in his left a great sheaf, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Morning Post, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Chronicle, and Daily News. These papers he placed on a side table evidently intended for that purpose. The little letter basket he placed on the table at Jones’ left elbow.
Then he withdrew, but not without having spoken a couple of murmured words of correction to the flunkey near the sideboard, who had omitted, no doubt, some point in the mysterious ritual of which he was an acolyte.
Jones glanced at the topmost letter.
THE EARL OF ROCHESTER,
10A, Carlton House Terrace,
London, S.W.
Ah! now he knew it. The true name of the juggler who had played him this trick. It was plain, too, now, that Rochester had sent him here as a substitute.
But the confirmation of his idea did not ease his mind. On the contrary it filled him with a vague alarm. The feeling of being in a trap came upon him now for the first time. The joke had lost any semblance of colour, the thing was serious. Rochester ought to have been back to put an end to the business before this. Had anything happened to him? Had he got jailed?
He did not touch the letters. Without raising suspicion, acting as naturally as possible the part of a peer of the realm, he must escape as swiftly as possible from this nest of flunkeys, and with that object in view he accepted the scrambled eggs now presented to him, and the coffee.
When they were finished, he rose from the table. Then he remembered the letters. Here was another tiny tie. He could not leave them unopened and untouched on the table without raising suspicion. He took them from the basket, and with them in his hand left the room, the fellow in waiting slipping before to open the door.
The hall was deserted for a wonder, deserted by all but the men in armour. A room where he might leave the infernal letters, and find a bell to fetch a servant to get him a hat was the prime necessity of the moment.
He crossed to a door directly opposite, opened it, and found a room half library, half study, a pleasant room used to tobacco, with a rather well worn Turkey carpet on the floor, saddle bag easy chairs, and a great escritoire in the window, open and showing pigeon holes containing note paper, envelopes, telegraph forms, and a rack containing the A.B.C. Railway Guide, Whitakers Almanac, Ruffs’ Guide to the Turf, Who’s Who, and Kelly.
Pipes were on the mantel piece, a silver cigar box and cigarette box on a little table by one of the easy chairs, matches — nothing was here wanting, and everything was of the best.
He placed the letters on the table, opened the cigar box and took from it a Ramón Alones. A blunt ended weapon for the destruction of melancholy and unrest, six and a half inches long, and costing perhaps half-a-crown. A real Havana cigar. Now in London there are only four places where you can obtain a real and perfect Havana cigar. That is to say four shops. And at those four shops — or shall we call them emporiums — only known and trusted customers can find the sun that shone on the Vuelta Abajos in such and such a perfect year.
The Earl of Rochester’s present representative was finding it now, with little enough pleasure, however, as he paced the room preparatory to ringing the bell. He was approaching the electric button for this purpose, when the faint and far away murmuring of an automobile, as if admitted by a suddenly opened hall door, checked his hand. Here was Rochester at last. He waited listening.
He had not long to wait.
The door of the room suddenly opened, and the woman of the breakfast table disclosed herself. She was dressed for going out, wearing a hat that seemed a yard in diameter, and a feather boa, from which her hen-like face and neck rose to the crowning triumph of the hat.
“I am going to Mother,” said she. “I am not coming back.”
“Um-um,” said Jones.
She paused. Then she came right in and closed the door behind her.
Standing with her back close to the door she spoke to Jones.
“If you cannot see your own conduct as others see it, who can make you? I am not referring to the disgrace of last night, though heaven knows that was bad enough, I am talking of everything, of your poor wife who loves you still, of the estate you have ruined by your lunatic conduct, of the company you keep, of the insults you have heaped on people — and now you add drink to the rest. That’s new.” She paused.
“That’s new. But I warn you, your brain won’t stand that. You know the taint in the family as well as I do, it has shewn itself in your actions. Well, go on drinking and you will end in Bedlam instead of the workhouse. They call you ‘Mad Rochester’; you know that.” She choked. “I have blushed to be known as your sister — I have tried to keep my place here and save you. It’s ended.” She turned to the door.
Jones had been making up his mind. He would tell the whole affair. This Rochester was a thoroughly bad lot evidently; well, he would turn the tables on him now.
“Look here,” said he. “I am not the man you think I am.”
“Tosh!” cried the woman.
She opened the door, passed out, and shut it with a snap.
“Well, I’m d —— d,” said Jones, for the second time in connection with Rochester.
The clock on the mantelpiece pointed to a quarter to eleven; the faint sound of the car had ceased. The lady of the feather boa had evidently taken her departure, and the house had resumed its cloistral silence.
He waited a moment to make sure, then he went into the hall where a huge flunkey — a new one, more curious than the others, was lounging near the door.
“My hat,” said Jones.
The thing flew, and returned with a glossy silk hat, a tortoiseshell handled cane, and a pair of new suede gloves of a delicate dove colour. Then it opened the door, and Jones, clapping the hat on his head, walked out.
The hat fitted, by a mercy.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague | Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail (and “As Easy as A.B.C.”) | Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt | H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook | Edward Shanks’ The People of the Ruins | William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land | J.D. Beresford’s Goslings | E.V. Odle’s The Clockwork Man | Cicely Hamilton’s Theodore Savage | Muriel Jaeger’s The Man With Six Senses | Jack London’s “The Red One” | Philip Francis Nowlan’s Armageddon 2419 A.D. | Homer Eon Flint’s The Devolutionist | W.E.B. DuBois’s “The Comet” | Edgar Rice Burroughs’s The Moon Men | Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland | Sax Rohmer’s “The Zayat Kiss” | Eimar O’Duffy’s King Goshawk and the Birds | Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Lost Prince | Morley Roberts’s The Fugitives | Helen MacInnes’s The Unconquerable | Geoffrey Household’s Watcher in the Shadows | William Haggard’s The High Wire | Hammond Innes’s Air Bridge | James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen | John Buchan’s “No Man’s Land” | John Russell’s “The Fourth Man” | E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” | John Buchan’s Huntingtower | Arthur Conan Doyle’s When the World Screamed | Victor Bridges’ A Rogue By Compulsion | Jack London’s The Iron Heel | H. De Vere Stacpoole’s The Man Who Lost Himself | P.G. Wodehouse’s Leave It to Psmith | Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” | Houdini and Lovecraft’s “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs” | Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Sussex Vampire.”
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