The Collaborators | Page 9

theatre, Henley encountered some ladies
who carried him home to tea after the performance. They lived in
Chelsea, and in returning to Smith's Square afterwards Henley took his
way along the Chelsea Embankment. He always walked near to the
dingy river when he could. The contrast of its life to the town's life
through which it flowed had a perpetual fascination for him. In the
early evening, too, the river presents many Doré effects. It is dim,
mysterious, sometimes meretricious, with its streaks of light close to
the dense shadows that lie under the bridges, its wailful, small waves
licking the wharves, and bearing up the inky barges that look like the
ferry-boat of the Styx. Henley loved to feel vivaciously despairing, and
he hugged himself in the belief that the Thames at nightfall tinged his
soul with a luxurious melancholy, the capacity for which was not far
from rendering him a poet. So he took his way by the river. As he
neared Cheyne Row, he saw in front of him the figure of a man leaning
over the low stone wall, with his face buried in his hands. On hearing
his approaching footsteps the man lifted himself up, turned round, and
preceded him along the pavement with a sort of listless stride which
seemed to Henley strangely familiar. He hastened his steps, and on
coming closer recognised that the man was Trenchard; but, just as he
was about to hail him, Trenchard crossed the road to one of the houses
opposite, inserted a key in the door, and disappeared within, shutting
the door behind him.
Henley paused a moment opposite to the house. It was of a dull red
colour, and had a few creepers straggling helplessly about it, looking
like a torn veil that can only partially conceal a dull, heavy face.
"Andrew seems at home here," he thought, gazing up at the blind, tall
windows, which showed no ray of light. "I wonder----"
And then, still gazing at the windows, he recalled the description of the
house where Olive Beauchamp lived in their book.
"He took it from this," Henley said to himself. Yes, that was obvious.
Trenchard had described the prison-house of despair, where the two
victims of a strange, desolating habit shut themselves up to sink, with a
curious minuteness. He had even devoted a paragraph to the tall iron

gate, whose round handle he had written of as "bald, and exposed to the
wind from the river, the paint having long since been worn off it." In
the twilight Henley bent down and examined the handle of the gate.
The paint seemed to have been scraped from it.
"How curiously real that book has become to me!" he muttered. "I
could almost believe that if I knocked upon that door, and was let in, I
should find Olive Beauchamp stretched on a couch in the room that lies
beyond those gaunt, shuttered windows."
He gave a last glance at the house, and as he did so he fancied that he
heard a slight cry come from it to him. He listened attentively and
heard nothing more. Then he walked away toward home.
When he reached his room, he found upon his table the envelope which
Trenchard had directed to him. He opened it, and unwrapped the key
from the inclosed sheet of note-paper, on which were written these
words:
"Dear Jack,
"I am off again. And this time I can't say when I shall be back. In any
case, I have completed my part of the book, and leave the finishing of it
in your hands. This is the key of the drawer in which I have locked the
manuscript. You have not seen most of the last volume. Read it, and
judge for yourself whether the dénouement can be anything but utterly
tragic. I will not outline to you what I have thought of for it. If you
have any difficulty about the finale, I shall be able to help you with it
even if you do not see me again for some time. By the way, what
nonsense that saying is, 'Dead men tell no tales!' Half the best tales in
the world are told, or at least completed, by dead men.
"Yours ever,
"A. T."
Henley laid this note down and turned cold all over. It was the
concluding sentence which had struck a chill through his heart. He took

the key in his hand, went down to Trenchard's room, unlocked the
drawer in his writing-table, and took out the manuscript. What did
Andrew mean by that sinister sentence? A tale completed by a dead
man! Henley sat down by the fire with the manuscript in his hands and
began to read. He was called away to dinner; but immediately
afterward he