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"What are thy names, and what calling dost thou follow?"
"I ought to have introduced myself before – let me give you my card;" and Ventimore gave him one, which the other took and placed in his girdle. "That's my business address. I'm an architect, if you know what that is – a man who builds houses and churches – mosques, you know – in fact, anything, when he can get it to build."
"A useful calling indeed – and one to be rewarded with fine gold."
"In my case," Horace confessed, "the reward has been too fine to be perceived. In other words, I've never been rewarded, because I've never yet had the luck to get a client."
"And what is this client of whom thou speakest?"
"Oh, well, some well-to-do merchant who wants a house built for him and doesn't care how much he spends on it. There must be lots of them about – but they never seem to come in my direction."
"Grant me a period of delay, and, if it be possible, I will procure thee such a client."
Horace could not help thinking that any recommendation from such a quarter would hardly carry much weight; but, as the poor old man evidently imagined himself under an obligation, which he was anxious to discharge, it would have been unkind to throw cold water on his good intentions.
"My dear sir," he said lightly, "if you should come across that particular type of client, and can contrive to impress him with the belief that I'm just the architect he's looking out for – which, between ourselves, I am, though nobody's discovered it yet – if you can get him to come to me, you will do me the very greatest service I could ever hope for. But don't give yourself any trouble over it."
"It will be one of the easiest things that can be," said his visitor, "that is" (and here a shade of rather pathetic doubt crossed his face) "provided that anything of my former power yet remains unto me."
"Well, never mind, sir," said Horace; "if you can't, I shall take the will for the deed."
"First of all, it will be prudent to learn where Suleyman is, that I may humble myself before him and make my peace."
"Yes," said Horace, gently, "I would. I should make a point of that, sir. Not now, you know. He might be in bed. To-morrow morning."
"This is a strange place that I am in, and I know not yet in what direction I should seek him. But till I have found him, and justified myself in his sight, and had my revenge upon Jarjarees, mine enemy, I shall know no rest."
"Well, but go to bed now, like a sensible old chap," said Horace, soothingly, anxious to prevent this poor demented Asiatic from falling into the hands of the police. "Plenty of time to go and call on Suleyman to-morrow."
"I will search for him, even unto the uttermost ends of the earth!"
"That's right – you're sure to find him in one of them. Only, don't you see, it's no use starting to-night – the last trains have gone long ago." As he spoke, the night wind bore across the square the sound of Big Ben striking the quarters in Westminster Clock Tower, and then, after a pause, the solemn boom that announced the first of the small hours. "To-morrow," thought Ventimore, "I'll speak to Mrs. Rapkin, and get her to send for a doctor and have him put under proper care – the poor old boy really isn't fit to go about alone!"
"I will start now – at once," insisted the stranger "for there is no time to be lost."
"Oh, come!" said Horace, "after so many thousand years, a few hours more or less won't make any serious difference. And you can't go out now – they've shut up the house. Do let me take you upstairs to your room, sir."
"Not so, for I must leave thee for a season, O young man of kind conduct. But may thy days be fortunate, and the gate never cease to be repaired, and the nose of him that envieth thee be rubbed in the dust, for love for thee hath entered into my heart, and if it be permitted unto me, I will cover thee with the veils of my protection!"
As he finished this harangue the speaker seemed, to Ventimore's speechless amazement, to slip through the wall behind him. At all events, he had left the room somehow – and Horace found himself alone.
He rubbed the back of his head, which began to be painful. "He can't really have vanished through the wall," he said to himself. "That's too absurd. The fact is, I'm over-excited this evening – and no wonder, after all that's happened. The best thing I can do is to go to bed at once."
Which he accordingly proceeded to do.
CHAPTER V
When Ventimore woke next morning his headache had gone, and with it the recollection of everything but the wondrous and delightful fact that Sylvia loved him and had promised to be his some day. Her mother, too, was on his side; why should he despair of anything after that? There was the Professor, to be sure – but even he might be brought to consent to an engagement, especially if it turned out that the brass bottle … and here Horace began to recall an extraordinary dream in connection with that extremely speculative purchase of his. He had dreamed that he had forced the bottle open, and that it proved to contain, not manuscripts, but an elderly Jinnee who alleged that he had been imprisoned there by the order of King Solomon!
What, he wondered, could have put so grotesque a fancy into his head? and then he smiled as he traced it to Sylvia's playful suggestion that the bottle might contain a "genie," as did the famous jar in the "Arabian Nights," and to her father's pedantic correction of the word to "Jinnee." Upon that slight foundation his sleeping brain had built up all that elaborate fabric – a scene so vivid and a story so circumstantial and plausible that, in spite of its extravagance, he could hardly even now persuade himself that it was entirely imaginary. The psychology of dreams is a subject which has a fascinating mystery, even for the least serious student.
As he entered the sitting-room, where his breakfast awaited him, he looked round, half expecting to find the bottle lying with its lid off in the corner, as he had last seen it in his dream.
Of course, it was not there, and he felt an odd relief. The auction-room people had not delivered it yet, and so much the better, for he had still to ascertain if it had anything inside it; and who knew that it might not contain something more to his advantage than a maundering old Jinnee with a grievance several thousands of years old?
Breakfast over, he rang for his landlady, who presently appeared. Mrs. Rapkin was a superior type of her much-abused class. She was scrupulously clean and neat in her person; her sandy hair was so smooth and tightly knotted that it gave her head the colour and shape of a Barcelona nut; she had sharp, beady eyes, nostrils that seemed to smell battle afar off, a wide, thin mouth that apparently closed with a snap, and a dry, whity-brown complexion suggestive of bran.
But if somewhat grim of aspect, she was a good soul and devoted to Horace, in whom she took almost a maternal interest, while regretting that he was not what she called "serious-minded enough" to get on in the world. Rapkin had wooed and married her when they were both in service, and he still took occasional jobs as an outdoor butler, though Horace suspected that his more staple form of industry was the consumption of gin-and-water and remarkably full-flavoured cigars in the basement parlour.
"Shall you be dining in this evening, sir?" inquired Mrs. Rapkin.
"I don't know. Don't get anything in for me; I shall most probably dine at the club," said Horace; and Mrs. Rapkin, who had a confirmed belief that all clubs were hotbeds of vice and extravagance, sniffed disapproval. "By the way," he added, "if СКАЧАТЬ