The House by the Lock/Chapter 22

was very nearly dinner time, two days later, when I drove up to the Santa Anna Hotel in San Francisco. Far away the bay could be seen and the Seal Rock, with the light of a great yellow moon touching its dark outlines and mingling with the blue, wintry twilight.

The neighbourhood was greatly changed since my last visit, but the hotel remained much the same. My first thought, after greeting the bluff old compatriot who kept the house, was to look at the visitors' book.

My heart gave a quick thump as I came on the name of Harvey Farnham. It was not in his handwriting, which, though I had not seen it for some time, I remembered quite distinctly.

"Ah, gentleman's ill," said the proprietor, when I cautiously questioned him. "Had his arm in a sling–got my clerk to put his name down for him, I recollect, as I was standing by. Mr. Farnham has been out a good deal, however, since he arrived, and, indeed, is out at present. He usually comes in about dinner time though."

This was an incentive to me not to miss that meal. I got into my evening togs in a hurry and was in the dining-room before anyone else, save a hungry-looking old man.

It was not a good season for the "Santa Anna," so the proprietor had confidentially informed me, but two or three dozen people strolled into the room before I had been there for half an hour. Still, I saw no familiar face, and was beginning to think in angry desperation that I had been eluded again, when the door opened to admit a tall and slender figure.

I looked up, my pulses quickening, my breath coming fast.

The man had a green shade over his eyes, was limping slightly, had his right arm in a sling, and altogether presented a somewhat battered appearance. But, I said to myself, if it was not Harvey Farnham it was his twin brother.

With all my eyes I stared at him. Almost as though there had been some magnetic influence in them to draw him he came towards me, and finally approaching my table, motioned to the attentive waiter to draw out a certain chair.

He sat down, leaned back with an audible sigh, shook out his serviette with his left hand, slightly pushed up the green shade that shadowed his eyes, and began looking carelessly about the room.

As he did so his glance passed over my face. There was not the slightest hint of recognition in it. "Hullo, Farnham!" I said, carefully controlling the agitation in my voice.

He started violently and nearly dropped the soup spoon, which he had picked up with his left hand. Then, pulling himself together by a violent effort, he smiled, without any of the old cordiality. Almost mechanically he had reached up for the green shade, and given it a hasty pull downward.

"Hullo!" he responded in a hoarse voice, following the word with a cough. "This is a surprise, eh?"

"Yes," I replied slowly. "People do run against each other in unexpected places, don't they? Now I will wager something that you've forgotten my name?"

He smiled again, with a relieved expression. "Well"–still hoarsely–"I'm afraid I have, for a moment. It'll come back, no doubt, but would you mind enlightening me, meanwhile?"

"My name is Noel Stanton," I very quietly said. But I could have shouted aloud. Notwithstanding the extraordinary resemblance, this man was no more Harvey Farnham than I was!