



Produced by Al Haines









[Illustration: Cover art]





[Frontispiece:  He could picture in the next box Cydonia's golden head
at just the same angle and in between the narrow velvet curtains barely
separating the pair.  _See page 93_.]






THE MAN WITH

THE DOUBLE HEART



BY

MURIEL HINE

(MRS. SIDNEY COXON)




LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD

NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY

TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN : : MCMXIV




COPYRIGHT, 1914

BY JOHN LANE COMPANY



J. J. Little & Ives Company

New York, U. S. A.




TO

MY MOTHER




  Some starlit garden grey with dew
  Some chamber flushed with wine and fire
  What matters where, so I and you
        Are worthy our desire?
                          --_W. L. Henley_.




THE MAN WITH

THE DOUBLE HEART




PART I

  "Flower o' the broom
  Take away love and our earth is a tomb!"
        --_R. Browning_.




CHAPTER I

The hour was close on midday, but the lamps in Cavendish Square shone
with a blurred light through the unnatural gloom.

The fog, pouring down from Regent's Park above, was wedged tight in
Harley Street like a wad of dirty wool, but in the open space fronting
Harcourt House it found room to expand and took on spectral shape; dim
forms with floating locks that clung to the stunted trees and,
shuddering, pressed against the high London buildings which faded away
indistinctly into the blackened sky.

From thence ragged pennons went busily fluttering South to be caught in
the draught of the traffic in noisy Oxford Street, where hoarse and
confusing cries were blent with the rumble of wheels in all the
pandemonium of man at war with the elements.

The air was raw and sooty, difficult to breathe, and McTaggart, already
irritable with the nervous tension due to his approaching interview,
his throat dry, his eyes smarting as he peered at the wide crossing,
started violently as the horn of an unseen motor sounded unpleasantly
near at hand.

"Confound the man!" he said, in apology to himself and stepped back
quickly onto the narrow path as a shapeless monster with eyes of flame
swung past, foiled of its prey.

"A nice pace to go on a day like this!"  And here something struck him
sharply in the rear, knocking his hat forward onto the bridge of his
nose.

"What the...!" he checked his wrath with a sudden shamefaced laugh as
he found his unseen adversary to consist of the square railings.

Somewhere down Wigmore Street a clock boomed forth the hour.  A quarter
to twelve.  McTaggart counted the strokes and gave a sigh of relief not
unmixed with amusement: the secret congratulation of an unpunctual man
redeemed by an accident from the error of his ways.

Wedging his hat more firmly down on his head, he dared again the black
space before him, struck the curb on the opposite side and, one hand
against the wall, steered round the corner and up into Harley Street.

Under the first lamp he paused and hunted for the number over the
nearest door where four brass plates menaced the passer-by with that
modern form of torture that few live to escape--the inquisitorial
process known as dentistry.

Making a rapid calculation, he came to the conclusion that the house he
sought must lie at the further end of the street--London's "Bridge of
Sighs"--where breathless hope and despair elbow each other ceaselessly
in the wake of suffering humanity.

The fog was changing colour from a dirty yellow to opal, and the damp
pavement was becoming visible as McTaggart moved forward with a quick
stride that held an elasticity which it did not owe to elation.

He walked with an ease and lightness peculiar in an Englishman who,
athletic as he may be, yet treads the earth with a certain conscious
air of possessing it: a tall, well-built man, slender and very erect,
but without that balanced stiffness, the hall-mark of "drill."

A keen observer would guess at once an admixture of blood that betrayed
its foreign strain in that supple grace of his; in the olive skin, the
light feet, and the glossy black hair that was brushed close and thick
to his shapely head.

Not French.  For the Frenchman moves on a framework of wire, fretting
toward action, deadly in attack.  But the race that bred Napoleon,
subtle and resistant, built upon tempered steel that bends but rarely
breaks.

Now, as he reached the last block and the house he sought, McTaggart
paused for a second, irresolute, on the step.

He seemed to gather courage with a quick indrawn breath, and his mouth
was set in a hard line as his hand pressed the bell.

Then he raised his eyes to the knocker above, and with the slight
action his whole face changed.

For, instead of being black beneath their dark brows, the man's eyes
were blue, an intense, fiery blue; with the clear depths and the temper
touch that one sees nowhere else save in the strong type of the hardy
mountain race.  They were not the blue of Ireland, with her
half-veiled, sorrowful mirth; nor the placid blue of England, that mild
forget-me-not.  They were utterly unmistakable; they brought with them
a breath of heather-gloried solitude and the deep and silent lochs.

Here was a Scot--a hillsman from the North; no need of his name to cry
aloud the fact.

And yet...

The door was opened, and at once the imprisoned fog finding a new
outlet drove into the narrow hall.

A tall, bony parlour maid was staring back at him as, mechanically,
McTaggart repeated the great man's name.

"You have an appointment, sir?"  Her manner seemed to imply that her
dignity would suffer if this were not the case.

Satisfied by his answer, she ushered him into a room where a gas fire
burned feebly with an apologetic air, as though painfully conscious of
its meretricious logs.  Half a dozen people, muffled in coats and furs,
were scattered about a long dining table, occupied in reading
listlessly the papers, to avoid the temptation of staring at each
other.  The place smelt of biscuits, of fog and of gas, like an unaired
buffet in a railway station.

McTaggart, weighed down by a sense of impending doom, picked up a
"Punch" and retired to the window, ostensibly to amuse himself, in
reality to rehearse for the hundredth time his slender stock of
"symptoms." The clock ticked on, and a bleak silence reigned, broken at
intervals by the sniff of a small boy, who, accompanied by a parent and
a heavy cold in the head, was feasting his soul on a volume of the
"Graphic."

Something familiar in the cartoon under his eyes drew McTaggart away
from his own dreary thoughts.

"I mustn't forget to tell him..." he was saying to himself, when he
realized that the paper he held was dated five months back!  He felt
immediately quite unreasonably annoyed.  A sudden desire to rise up and
go invaded his mind.  In his nervous state the excuse seemed amply
sufficient.  A "Punch" five months old!... it was a covert insult.

A doctor who could trade on his patient's credulity--pocketing his
three guineas, don't forget that!--and offer them literature but fit to
light the fire...

A "Punch" Five Months Old!... he gathered up his gloves.

But a noiseless step crossed the room, a voice whispered his name.

"Mr. McTaggart?  This way, please."

He found himself following the bony parlour maid, past the aggressive
eyes of the still-waiting crowd, out into the hall and down a
glass-roofed passage.

"Now I'm in for it..." he said silently...  "Oh!... _damn_!"  He put
on his most truculent air.

The maid tapped at a door.

"Come in," said a sharp voice.

McTaggart entered and stood still for a moment, blinking on the
threshold, irresolute.

For the scene was unexpected.  Despite the heavy fog that filtered
through the windows with its insidious breath, a hint of Spring was
there in the fresh white walls, the rose-covered chintzes and the
presence of flowers.

The place seemed filled with them.  An early bough of blossom, the
exquisite tender pink of the almond in bloom, stood against a mirror
that screened a recess; and the air was alive with the scent of
daffodils, with subtle yellow faces, like curious Chinamen, peering
over the edge of a blue Nankin bowl.

In the centre of the room a man in a velvet coat was bending over a
mass of fresh violets, adding water carefully to the surrounding moss
out of a copper jug that he held in his hands.

McTaggart stared at him; at the lean, colourless face under its untidy
thatch of coarse, gray hair; at the spare figure, the long, steady
hands and the loose, unconventional clothes that he wore.  He might
have been an artist of Rossetti's day in that shabby brown coat and
soft faded shirt.  But the great specialist--whose name carried weight
wherever science and medicine were wont to foregather.  Had he made a
mistake?  It seemed incredible.

The doctor gave a parting touch to an overhanging leaf and wheeled
round to greet his patient with a smile.

"I can't bear to see flowers die from lack of care, and this foggy
weather tries them very hard.  Excuse me a moment."  He passed into the
recess, and washed his hands vigorously, talking all the while.

"Some years ago," he switched off the tap, "I went to a public dinner
of agriculturists.  Found to my surprise I was sitting next Oscar
Wilde--one doesn't somehow associate him with such a function!  On my
left was a farmer of the good old-fashioned type, silent, aggressive,
absorbed in his food.  I happened to remark that the flowers were all
withered; the heat of the room had been too much for them.

"'Not withered'--Wilde corrected me--'but merely _weary_...'

"The farmer turned his head, and gave him one glance.

"'Silly Ass!' he said explosively and returned to his dinner.  It was
his single contribution to the evening's conversation.  I've never
forgotten it, nor the look on Wilde's face."

McTaggart laughed.  He felt oddly at ease.

The doctor glanced at his nails and came back into the room.

He pushed an easy-chair toward his patient and leaning against the
mantelpiece with his hands in his pocket:

"Now, tell me all the trouble," he suggested quietly.

A slight flush crept up under the olive skin.  McTaggart was suddenly
immensely ashamed.

"I don't believe really... there's anything... wrong..."  He gave an
apologetic, husky little laugh... "but the fact is, a friend of
mine--he's a medical student--ran over me the other day, and, well--he
said--there was something odd--that he couldn't understand--something
about the beat of my heart.  I'd fainted, you know--awfully
inconvenient--at a supper party, too...  I'd been feeling pretty
cheap..."  He broke off, confused, as for the first time the older man
deliberately fixed his eyes upon him.  Hazel eyes they were with
curious flecks of yellow, bright and hard beneath his pince-nez.

"You fainted?  For how long were you unconscious?"  He added a few more
questions, nodded his shaggy head, and crossing the room sat down at
his desk.  He opened a book, massively bound, where on each page was
printed, hideous and suggestive, an anatomical sketch of the human form
divine.

"I'd like your name in full."  He picked up the card which McTaggart
had sent in by the parlour maid.

"P. M. McTaggart--what does that stand for?"

"It's rather a mouthful."  The owner smiled.  "Peter Maramonte."

The specialist glanced up shrewdly.

"Italian?--I thought so."

"On my mother's side.  My father was Scotch, an Aberdonian."

"Your parents are living?"

"No, both dead."  He stood there, tall and sombre, watching the other
write in a thin, crabbed hand the unusual name.

"Any hereditary tendency to heart trouble?"

"Not that I know of.  My father was drowned--out fishing, one day.  The
boat overturned, caught by a squall.  He was, I believe, a strong
healthy man."

"And your mother?"

"She never seemed the same after his death.  And then the climate tried
her.  She'd been brought up in the South.  The end was pneumonia.  I
was only twelve at the time, but I don't think that either of them
suffered from the heart."

"I see.  And now if you'll take off your things--strip to the waist,
please--and lie on that sofa."

It seemed to McTaggart that at this juncture the devil himself entered
into his clothes.  Buttons multiplied and waxed evasive, his collar
stud stuck, his vest clove to his head.

He dragged it off at last, breathless and ruffled.

"That's capital."  The great man adjusted his stethoscope and leaned
over the white young body outstretched.  McTaggart felt dexterous hands
passing swiftly, surely; tapping here, pressing there, over his bare
flesh.

"A deep breath--so.  Thank you, that will do.  Now gently in and out
... quite naturally.  Ah...!"  He paused, listened a second and gave a
grunt.  "I wonder?"

A wave of anger swept over the prostrate man.

"He's found something, damn him!" he said to himself, resenting the
eager light on that lean, absorbed face.

"Curious!" The specialist drew himself upright, and reached round for a
shorter, wooden instrument.

Another silence followed, pregnant of disaster.  The pressure of the
wooden disk upon McTaggart's chest seemed to become insupportable--a
thing of infinite weight.

The doctor's coarse gray hair exhaled a faint scent where brilliantine,
ineffectually, had played a minor part, and in some mysterious way it
added to the other's annoyance.  The suspense was unbearable.

"Found anything wrong?"  His voice, unnaturally cheerful, brought a
frown to the doctor's face.

"Don't move, please.  Keep silent, now."  The disk slid across his
chest and settled above his ribs, on the right side this time, with its
load of discomfort.

"Marvellous... extraordinary!  One's read of it, of course, but never
come across it... my first experience."  The great man stood erect,
perplexity at end, a vast enthusiasm glowing in his eyes.

Suddenly he divined the patient's anxiety.  "Nothing to worry about,"
he added soothingly.  "You can dress now.  Your heart's perfectly
sound."  He walked away to his writing table, still engrossed in
thought.

McTaggart felt an immense relief that swamped curiosity.  The ordeal
was over, and life still smiled at him.  He tumbled into his clothes
and groped for his collar stud, which, with the guile of these wayward
things, had crept away to hide.

Suddenly in a glass he caught his own reflection--his hair dishevelled,
his collar bent, and felt an insane desire, despite these minor flaws,
to shake himself by the hand, as though, by personal effort, he had
prolonged his days!

The doctor still stood motionless, gazing into space.  In the silence
of the room a faint pattering told of the almond blossom falling on the
polished floor.

McTaggart straightened his tie, and with his back turned,
surreptitiously began to dive in his pocket for the fee.

He found it at last, and took a step forward toward the absorbed figure
at the desk.

"I'd like to know," he suggested, "what you really think is the
cause...."

"Of course!"  The lean face lifted with a start.  "You must forgive me.
The fact is"--he smiled--"I'm too interested in your case to remember
your natural anxiety.  I think your present trouble is caused by an
error in digestion.  The palpitation comes from that and the other
symptoms too.  A little care with your diet--I'll write you a
prescription--a bismuth mixture to be taken after meals.  But if you've
further worry, come to me again.  As