The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, October, 1913: Vol. LXXXVI. New Series: Vol. LXIV. May to October, 1913Various
General
The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, October, 1913: Vol. LXXXVI. New Series: Vol. LXIV. May to October, 1913
Various
Periodicals
They went without further ceremony. As they walked through the hall and
down the corridors side by side, an imaginative person might have felt
that perhaps the eyes of an ancient, darkling portrait or so looked
down at the pair curiously: the long, loosely built New Yorker rather
slouching along by the soldierly almost romantic figure which in a
measure suggested that others not unlike it might have trod the same
oaken floor, wearing ruff and doublet, or lace jabot and sword. There
was a far cry between the two, but they walked closely in friendly
union. When they entered the picture-gallery, Strangeways paused a
moment again, and stood peering down its length.
“It is very dimly lighted. How can we see?” he said.
“I told Pearson to leave it dim,” Tembarom answered.
He tried, and succeeded tolerably well, to say it casually as he led
the way ahead of them. He and the duke had not talked the scheme over
for nothing. As his grace had said, they had “worked the thing up.” As
they moved down the gallery, the men and women in their frames looked
like ghosts staring out to see what was about to happen.
“We’ll turn up the lights after a while,” T. Tembarom explained still
casually. “There’s a picture here I think a good deal of. I’ve stood
and looked at it pretty often. It reminded me of someone the first day
I set eyes on it; but it was quite a time before I made up my mind who
it was. It used to drive me half dotty trying to think it out.”
“Which one?” asked Strangeways.
“We’re coming to it. I want to see if it reminds you of any one. And I
want you to see it sudden.” “It’s got to be sudden,” he had said to the
duke. “If it’s going to pan out, I believe it’s got to be sudden. When
he first sees that picture he’s _got_ to get a jolt--he’s got to.”
That was why Tembarom had the lights left dim. He had told Pearson to
leave a lamp that he could turn up quickly.
The lamp was on a table near by and was shaded by a screen. He took
it from the shadow and lifted it suddenly, so that its full gleam
fell upon the portrait of the handsome youth with the lace collar and
the dark, drooping eyes. It was done in a second, with a dramatically
unexpected swiftness. His heart fairly thumped.
“Who’s that?” he demanded, with abruptness so sharp-pitched that the
gallery echoed with the sound. “Who’s that?”
He heard a hard, quick gasp, a sound which was momentarily a little
horrible, as if the man’s soul was being jerked out of his body’s
depths.
“Who is he?” Tembarom cried again. “Tell me!”
After the gasp, Strangeways stood still and stared. His eyes were glued
to the canvas, drops of sweat came out on his forehead, and he was
shuddering. He began to back away with a look of gruesome struggle. He
backed and backed, and stared and stared. The gasp came twice again,
and then his voice seemed to tear itself loose from some power that was
holding it back.
“Th--at!” he cried. “It is--it--is Miles Hugo!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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