He pushed his hair away from his face with both hands, and looked rather nervously around the snug little apartment. There were lurking shadows in the corners of the room that he scarcely liked. The door opening into his little dressing-room was ajar; he got up to shut it, and turned the key in the lock with a sharp click.
"I haven't read Alexander Dumas and Wilkie Collins for nothing," he muttered. "I'm up to their tricks, sneaking in at doors behind a fellow's back, and flattening their white faces against window panes, and making themselves all eyes in the twilight. It's a strange thing that your generous hearted fellow, who never did a shabby thing in his life, is capable of any meanness the moment he becomes a ghost. I'll have the gas laid on to-morrow and I'll engage Mrs. Maloney's eldest son to sleep under the letter-box in the lobby. The youth plays popular melodies upon a piece of tissue paper and a small-tooth comb, and it will be quite pleasant company."
Mr. Audley walked wearily up and down the room, trying to get rid of the time. It was no use leaving the Temple until ten o'clock, and even then he would be sure to reach the station half an hour too early. He was tired of smoking. The soothing narcotic influence might be pleasant enough in itself, but the man must be of a singularly unsocial disposition who does not, after a half dozen lonely pipes, feel the need of some friendly companion, at whom he can stare dreamily athwart the pale gray mists, and who will stare kindly back at him in return. Do not think that Robert Audley was without friends, because he so often found himself alone in his chambers. The solemn purpose which had taken so powerful a hold upon his careless life had separated him from old associations, and it was for this reason that he was alone.
He had dropped away from his old friends. How could he sit among them, at social wine parties, perhaps, or at social little dinners, that were washed down with nonpareil and chambertin, pomard and champagne? How could he sit among them, listening to their careless talk of politics and opera, literature and racing, theaters and science, scandal and theology, and yet carry in his mind the horrible burden of those dark terrors and suspicions that were with him by day and by night? He could not do it! He had shrunk from those men as if he had, indeed, been a detective police officer, stained with vile associations and unfit company for honest gentlemen. He had drawn himself away from all familiar haunts, and shut himself in his lonely rooms with the perpetual trouble of his mind for his sole companion, until he had grown as nervous as habitual solitude will eventually make the strongest and the wisest man, however he may vaunt himself of his strength and wisdom.