“Lighten?” whispered Davies; “oh, I hope I shan’t bosh it.”
“I hope I shan’t get cramp,” I muttered between my teeth.
It will be remembered that Davies had never been to the villa before.
The door of a room on the ground floor was opened to us by a man-servant. As we entered the rattle of a piano stopped, and a hot wave of mingled scent and cigar-smoke struck my nostrils. The first thing I noticed over Davies’s shoulder, as he preceded me into the room, was a woman—the source of the perfume I decided—turning round from the piano as he passed it and staring him up and down with a disdainful familiarity that I at once hotly resented. She was in evening dress, pronounced in cut and colour; had a certain exuberant beauty, not wholly ascribable to nature, and a notable lack of breeding. Another glance showed me Dollmann putting down a liqueur glass of brandy, and rising from a low chair with something of a start; and another, von Brüning, lying back in a corner of a sofa, smoking; on the same sofa, _vis-à-vis_ to him, was—yes, of course it was—Clara Dollmann; but how their surroundings alter people, I caught myself thinking. For the rest, I was aware that the room was furnished with ostentation, and was stuffy with stove-engendered warmth. Davies steered a straight course for Dollmann, and shook his hand with businesslike resolution. Then he tacked across to the sofa, abandoning me in the face of the enemy.
“Carruthers,” I answered, distinctly. “I was with Davies in the boat just now, but I don’t think he introduced me. And now he has forgotten again,” I added, dryly, turning towards Davies, who, having presented himself to Fräulein Dollmann, was looking feebly from her to von Brüning, the picture of tongue-tied awkwardness. (The Commander nodded to me and stretched himself with a yawn.)
“Von Brüning told me about you,” said Dollmann, ignoring my allusion, “but I was not quite sure of the name. No; it was not an occasion for formalities, was it?” He gave a sudden, mirthless laugh. I thought him flushed and excitable; yet, seen in a normal light, he was in some respects a pleasant surprise, the remarkable conformation of the head giving an impression of intellectual power and restless, almost insanely restless, energy.