The Mysterious Mr. Quin

Anthony Cosden, that was the stranger's name, and his life had been much as Mr. Satterthwaite had imagined it. He was a bad hand at telling a story but his listener supplied the gaps easily enough. A very ordinary life--an average income, a little soldiering, a good deal of sport whenever sport offered, plenty of friends, plenty of pleasant things to do, a sufficiency of women. The kind of life that practically inhabits thought of any description and substitutes sensation. To speak frankly, an animal's life. "But there are worse things than that," thought Mr. Satterthwaite from the depths of his experience. "Oh! many worse things than that..."This world had seemed a very good place to Anthony Cosden. He had grumbled because everyone always grumbled but it had never been a serious grumble. And then--this.

He came to it at last--rather vaguely and incoherently. Hadn't felt quite the thing--nothing much. Saw his doctor, and the doctor had persuaded him to go to a Harley Street man. And then--the incredible truth. They'd tried to hedge about it--spoke of great care--a quiet life, but they hadn't been able to disguise that that was all eyewash--letting him down lightly. It boiled down to this--six months. That's what they gave him. Six months.

He turned those bewildered brown eyes on Mr. Satterthwaite. It was, of course, rather a shock to a fellow. One didn't--one didn't somehow, know what to do.

Mr. Satterthwaite nodded gravely and understandingly.

It was a bit difficult to take in all at once, Anthony Cosden went on. How to put in the time. Rather a rotten business waiting about to get pipped He didn't feel really ill--not yet. Though that might come later, so the specialist had said--in fact, it was bound to. It seemed such nonsense to be going to die when one didn't in the least want to. The best thing, he had thought, would be to carry on as usual. But somehow that hadn't worked.

Here Mr. Satterthwaite interrupted him. Wasn't there, he hinted delicately, any woman?

But apparently there wasn't. There were women, of course, but not that kind. His crowd was a very cheery crowd. They didn't, so he implied, like corpses. He didn't wish to make a kind of walking funeral of himself. It would have been embarrassing for everybody. So he had come abroad.

"You came to see these islands? But why?" Mr. Satterthwaite was hunting for something, something intangible but delicate that eluded him and yet which he was sure was there. "You've been here before, perhaps?"

"Yes." he admitted it almost unwillingly. "Years ago when I was a youngster."

And suddenly, almost unconsciously so it seemed, he shot a quick glance backward over his shoulder in the direction of the villa.

"I remembered this place," he said, nodding at the sea.

"One step to eternity!"

"And that is why you came up here last night," finished Mr. Satterthwaite calmly.

Anthony Cosden shot him a dismayed glance.

"Oh! I say--really------" he protested.

"Last night you found someone here. This afternoon you have found me. Your life has been saved--twice."

"You may put it that way if you like--but damn it all, it's my life. I've a right to do what I like with it."

"That is a cliche" said Mr. Satterthwaite wearily.

"Of course I see your point," said Anthony Cosden generously. "Naturally you've got to say what you can. I'd try to dissuade a fellow myself, even though I knew deep down that he was right. And you know that I'm right. A clean quick end is better than a lingering one--causing trouble and expense and bother to all. In any case it's not as though I had anyone in the world belonging to me..."

"If you had------?" said Mr. Satterthwaite sharply.

Cosden drew a deep breath.

"I don't know. Even then, I think, this way would be best But anyway--I haven't..."

He stopped abruptly. Mr. Satterthwaite eyed him curiously. Incurably romantic, he suggested again that there was, somewhere, some woman. But Cosden negatived it. He oughtn't, he said, to complain. He had had, on the whole, a very good life. It was a pity it was going to be over so soon, that was all. But at any rate he had had, he supposed, everything worth having. Except a son. He would have liked a son. He would like to know now that he had a son living after him. Still, he reiterated the fact, he had had a very good life-----

It was at this point that Mr. Satterthwaite lost patience. Nobody, he pointed out, who was still in the larval stage, could claim to know anything of life at all. Since the words larval stage clearly meant nothing at all to Cosden, he proceeded to make his meaning clearer.

"You have not begun to live yet. You are still at the beginning of life."

Cosden laughed.

"Why, my hair's grey. I'm forty------"

Mr. Satterthwaite interrupted him.