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Page 56
"Yes," he replied. "Anything with a Cleopatra to it interests me.
I'll go now and see about the tickets," and he left me.
I have related Maitland's aesthetic views as expressed to me upon
this occasion, not because they have any particular bearing upon the
mystery I am narrating, but because they cast a strong side-light
upon the young man's character, and also for the reason that I
believe his personality to be sufficiently strong and unique to be
of general interest.
We went that same night to see Sardou's "Cleopatra." I asked Maitland
how he liked the piece, and the only reply he vouchsafed was: "I have
recently read Shakespeare's treatment of the same theme."
CHAPTER II
If events spread themselves out fanwise from the past into the
future, then must the occurrences of the present exhibit
convergence toward some historical burning-point,--some focal
centre whereat the potential was warmed into the kinetic.
It was nearly a week after the events last narrated before I saw
Maitland again, and then only by chance. We happened to meet in the
Parker House, and, as he had some business pertaining to a case he
was on, to transact at the Court House, I walked up Beacon Street
with him. There is a book or stationery store, on Somerset Street,
just before you turn down toward Pemberton Square. As we were
passing this store, Maitland espied a large photographic reproduction
of some picture.
"Let us cross over and see what it is," he said. We did so. It was
a photograph of L. Alma-Tadema's painting of Antony and Cleopatra.
Maitland started a little as he read the title, and then said
lightly: "Do you suppose, Doc, that woman's mummy is in existence?
I should like to find it. I've an idea she left some hieroglyphic
message for me on her mummy-case, and doesn't propose to let me
rest easy until I find and translate it. Now, if I believed in
transmigration of souls--do you see any mark of Antony about me?
Say, though, just imagine the spirit of Marcus Antonius in a rubber
apron, making an analysis of oleomargarine! But here we are;
good-bye," and he left me without awaiting any reply. He seemed to
me to be in decidedly better spirits than formerly, and I was at
the time at a loss to account for it. The cause of his levity,
however, was soon explained, for that night, as Gwen, my sister, and
I were sitting cosily in the study according to our usual custom,
Maitland walked in, unannounced. He had come now to be a regular
visitor, and I invented not a few subterfuges to get him to call
even oftener than he otherwise would, for I perceived that his
coming gave pleasure to Gwen. She exhibited less depression when
in his presence than at any other time. I had learned that hers
was one of those deep natures in which grief crystallises slowly,
but with an unconquerable persistence. Instead of her forgetting
her bereavement, or the sense thereof waxing weaker by time, she
seemed to be drifting toward that ever-present consciousness of
loss in which the soul feels itself gradually, but surely, sinking
under an insupportable burden--a burden so long borne, so well
known, that the mind no longer thinks of it. The heart beats
stolidly under its load, and seems to forget the time when it was
not so oppressed. No one knows better than we physicians the danger
of this autocracy of grief, and I watched Gwen with a solicitude at
times almost bordering on despair. But, as I said before, she always
seemed to show more interest in affairs when Maitland was present,
and, on the night in question, his abrupt and unexpected entrance
surprised her into the betrayal of more pleasure than she would have
wished us to note, and, indeed, so quickly did she conceal her
confusion that I was the only one who noticed it. Maitland was too
busy with the news he brought.
"Well, Miss Darrow," he began at once, "at last your detective has
got a clue--not much of a one--but still a clue. I can pick the
man for whom we are looking from among a million of his fellows--if
I am ever fortunate enough to get the chance."
Somebody has already called attention to the fact that women are
more or less curious, and there are well-authenticated cases on
record where this inquisitiveness has even extended to things which
did not immediately concern themselves; so I have little doubt I
shall be believed when I say the women folk were in a fever of
expectancy, and besought Maitland with an earnestness quite
unnecessary--(it would have required a great deal to have prevented
his telling it)--to begin at the beginning, and relate the whole
thing. He readily acceded to this request, and began by telling
them the experiences which I have just narrated. It was, he said,
during the last act of Sardou's "Cleopatra" that the idea had
suddenly come to him to change the plan of search from the analytical
to the synthetical.
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