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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hugo, by Arnold Bennett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Hugo
+       A Fantasia on Modern Themes
+
+Author: Arnold Bennett
+
+Release Date: April 26, 2005 [EBook #15712]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUGO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+HUGO
+
+A FANTASIA ON MODERN THEMES
+
+BY
+ARNOLD BENNETT
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+Mismatched quotes have been normalized.
+"L'eat, c'est moi." corrected to "L'etat, c'est moi."
+Recalicitant corrected to recalcitrant.
+Other oddities in spelling and punctuation have been
+left as in the original.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+NOVELS.
+
+A MAN FROM THE NORTH.
+ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS.
+LEONORA.
+A GREAT MAN.
+SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE.
+
+
+FANTASIAS.
+
+THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEL.
+THE GATES OF WRATH.
+TERESA OF WATLING STREET.
+THE LOOT OF CITIES
+
+
+SHORT STORIES.
+
+TALES OF THE FIVE TOWNS.
+
+
+BELLES LETTRES.
+
+JOURNALISM FOR WOMEN.
+FAME AND FICTION.
+HOW TO BECOME AN AUTHOR.
+THE TRUTH ABOUT AN AUTHOR.
+
+
+DRAMA.
+
+POLITE FARCES.
+
+
+
+
+HUGO
+
+A FANTASIA ON MODERN THEMES
+
+BY
+ARNOLD BENNETT
+
+AUTHOR OF
+'THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEL,' 'ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS,' 'A GREAT MAN,'
+ETC.
+
+[ILLUSTRATION]
+
+LONDON
+CHATTO & WINDUS
+1906
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+PART I
+THE SEALED ROOMS
+
+CHAPTER
+     I.  THE DOME
+    II.  THE ESTABLISHMENT
+   III.  HUGO EXPLAINS HIMSELF
+    IV.  CAMILLA
+     V.  A STORY AND A DISAPPEARANCE
+    VI.  A LAPSE FROM AN IDEAL
+   VII.  POSSIBLE ESCAPE OF SECRETS
+  VIII.  ORANGE-BLOSSOM
+    IX.  'WHICH?'
+     X.  THE COFFIN
+
+
+PART II
+THE PHONOGRAPH
+
+    XI.  SALE
+   XII.  SAFE DEPOSIT
+  XIII.  MR. GALPIN
+   XIV.  TEA
+    XV.  RAVENGAR IN CAPTIVITY
+   XVI.  BURGLARS
+  XVII.  POLYCARP AND HAWKE'S MAN
+ XVIII.  HUSBAND AND WIFE
+   XIX.  WHAT THE PHONOGRAPH SAID
+
+
+PART III
+THE TOMB
+
+    XX.  'ARE YOU THERE?'
+   XXI.  SUICIDE
+  XXII.  DARCY
+ XXIII.  FIRST TRIUMPH OF SIMON
+  XXIV.  THE LODGING-HOUSE
+   XXV.  CHLOROFORM
+  XXVI.  SECOND TRIUMPH OF SIMON
+ XXVII.  THE CEMETERY
+XXVIII.  BEAUTY
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+THE SEALED ROOMS
+
+
+
+
+HUGO
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE DOME
+
+
+He wakened from a charming dream, in which the hat had played a
+conspicuous part.
+
+'I shouldn't mind having that hat,' he murmured.
+
+A darkness which no eye could penetrate surrounded him as he lay in bed.
+Absolute obscurity was essential to the repose of that singular brain,
+and he had perfected arrangements for supplying the deficiencies of
+Nature's night.
+
+He touched a switch, and in front of him at a distance of thirty feet
+the ivory dial of a clock became momentarily visible under the soft
+yellow of a shaded electric globe. It was fifteen minutes past six. At
+the same moment a bell sounded the quarter in delicate tones, which fell
+on the ear as lightly as dew. In the upper gloom could be discerned the
+contours of a vast dome, decorated in turquoise-blue and gold.
+
+He pressed a button near the switch. A portiere rustled, and a young man
+approached his bed--a short, thin, pale, fair young man, active and
+deferential.
+
+'My tea, Shawn. Draw the curtains and open the windows.'
+
+'Yes, sir,' said Simon Shawn.
+
+In an instant the room was brilliantly revealed as a great circular
+apartment, magnificently furnished, with twelve windows running round
+the circumference beneath the dome. The virginal zephyrs of a July
+morning wandered in. The sun, although fierce, slanted his rays through
+the six eastern windows, printing a new pattern on the Tripoli carpets.
+Between the windows were bookcases, full of precious and extraordinary
+volumes, and over the bookcases hung pictures of the Barbizon school.
+These books and these pictures were the elegant monument of hobbies
+which their owner had outlived. His present hobby happened to be music.
+A Steinway grand-piano was prominent in the chamber, and before the
+ebony instrument stood a mechanical pianoforte-player.
+
+'I must have that hat.'
+
+He paused reflectively, leaning on one elbow, as he made the tea which
+Simon Shawn had brought and left on the night-table. And again, at the
+third cup, he repeated to himself that he must possess the hat.
+
+He had a passion for tea. His servants had received the strictest orders
+to supply him at early morn with materials sufficient only for two cups.
+Nevertheless, they were always a little generous, and, by cheating
+himself slightly in the first and the second cup, the votary could
+often, to his intense joy, conjure a third out of the pot.
+
+After glancing through the newspaper which accompanied the tea, he
+jumped vivaciously out of bed, veiled the splendour of his pyjamas
+beneath a quilted toga, and disappeared into a dressing-room, whistling.
+
+'Shawn!' he cried out from his bath, when he heard the rattle of the
+tea-tray.
+
+'Yes, sir?'
+
+'Play me the Chopin Fantasie, will you. I feel like it.'
+
+'Certainly, sir,' said Simon, and paused. 'Which particular one do you
+desire me to render, sir?'
+
+'There is only one, Shawn, for piano solo.'
+
+'I beg pardon, sir.'
+
+The gentle plashing of water mingled with the strains of one of the
+greatest of all musical compositions, as interpreted by Simon Shawn with
+the aid of an ingenious contrivance the patentees of which had spent
+twenty thousand pounds in advertising it.
+
+'Very good, Shawn,' said Shawn's master, coming forward in his
+shirt-sleeves as the last echoes of a mighty chord expired under the
+dome. He meditatively stroked his graying beard while the pianist
+returned to the tea-tray.
+
+'And, Shawn--'
+
+'Yes, sir?'
+
+'I want a hat.'
+
+'A hat, sir?'
+
+'A lady's hat.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Run down into Department 42, there's a good fellow, and see if you can
+find me a lady's hat of dark-blue straw, wide brim, trimmed chiefly with
+a garland of pinkish rosebuds.'
+
+'A lady's hat of dark-blue straw, wide brim, trimmed chiefly with
+pinkish rosebuds, sir?'
+
+'Precisely. Here, you're forgetting the token.'
+
+He detached a gold medallion from his watch-chain, and handed it to
+Shawn, who departed with it and with the tea-tray.
+
+Two minutes later, having climbed the staircase between the inner and
+outer domes, he stood, fully clad in a light-gray suit, on the highest
+platform of the immense building, whose occidental facade is the glory
+of Sloane Street and one of the marvels of the metropolis. Far above him
+a gigantic flag spread its dazzling folds to the sun and the breeze. On
+the white ground of the flag, in purple letters seven feet high, was
+traced the single word, 'HUGO.'
+
+From his eyrie he could see half the West End of London. Sloane Street
+stretched north and south like a ruled line, and along that line two
+hurrying processions of black dots approached each other, and met and
+vanished below him; they constituted the first division of his army of
+three thousand five hundred employes.
+
+He leaned over the balustrade, and sniffed the pure air with exultant,
+eager nostrils. He was forty-six. He did not feel forty-six, however. In
+common with every man of forty-six, and especially every bachelor of
+forty-six, he regarded forty-six as a mere meaningless number, as a
+futile and even misleading symbol of chronology. He felt that Time had
+made a mistake--that he was not really in the fifth decade, and that his
+true, practical working age was about thirty.
+
+Moreover, he was in love, for the first time in his life. Like all men
+and all women, he had throughout the whole of his adult existence been
+ever secretly preoccupied with thoughts, hopes, aspirations, desires,
+concerning the other sex, but the fundamental inexperience of his heart
+was such that he imagined he was going to be happy because he had fallen
+in love.
+
+'I'm glad I sent for that hat,' he said, smiling absently at the Great
+Wheel over a mile and a half of roofs.
+
+The key to his character and his career lay in the fact that he
+invariably found sufficient courage to respond to his instincts, and
+that his instincts were romantic. They had led him in various ways,
+sometimes to grandiose and legitimate triumphs, sometimes to hidden
+shames which it is merciful to ignore. In the main, they had served him
+well. It was in obedience to an instinct that he had capped the nine
+stories of the Hugo building with a dome and had made his bed under the
+dome. It was in obedience to another instinct that he had sent for the
+hat.
+
+'Very pretty, isn't it?' he observed to Shawn, when Simon handed him the
+insubstantial and gay object and restored the gold token. They were at a
+window in the circular room; the couch had magically melted away.
+
+'I admire it, sir,' said Shawn, and withdrew.
+
+'Dolt!' he cried out upon Shawn in his heart. '_You_ didn't see her at
+work on it. As if _you_ could appreciate her exquisite taste and the
+amazing skill of her blanched fingers! I alone can appreciate these
+things!'
+
+He hung the hat on a Louis Quatorze screen, and blissfully gazed at it,
+her creation.
+
+'But I must be careful,' he muttered--'I must be careful.'
+
+A clerk entered with his personal letters. It was scarcely seven
+o'clock, but these fifteen or twenty envelopes had already been sorted
+from the three thousand missives that constituted his first post; he had
+his own arrangement with the Post-Office.
+
+'So it's coming at last,' he said to himself, as he opened an envelope
+marked 'Private and Confidential' in red ink. The autograph note within
+was from Senior Polycarp, principal partner in Polycarps, the famous
+firm of company-promoting solicitors, and it heralded a personal visit
+from the august lawyer at 11.30 that day.
+
+In the midst of dictating instructions to the clerk, Mr. Hugo stopped
+and rang for Shawn.
+
+'Take that back,' he commanded, indicating the hat. 'I've done with it.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+The hat went.
+
+'I may just as well be discreet,' his thought ran.
+
+But her image, the image of the artist in hats, illumined more brightly
+than ever his soul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE ESTABLISHMENT
+
+
+Seven years before, when, having unostentatiously acquired the necessary
+land, and an acre or two over, Hugo determined to rebuild his premises
+and to burst into full blossom, he visited America and Paris, and
+amongst other establishments inspected Wanamaker's, the Bon Marche, and
+the Magasins du Louvre. The result disappointed him. He had expected to
+pick up ideas, but he picked up nothing save the Bon Marche system of
+vouchers, by which a customer buying in several departments is spared
+the trouble of paying separately in each department. He came to the
+conclusion that the art of flinging money away in order that it may
+return tenfold was yet quite in its infancy. He said to himself, 'I will
+build a _shop_.'
+
+Travelling home by an indirect route, he stopped at a busy English
+seaport, and saw a great town-hall majestically rising in the midst of
+a park. The beautiful building did not appeal to him in vain. At the
+gates of the park he encountered a youth, who was staring at the
+town-hall with a fixed and fascinated stare.
+
+'A fine structure,' Hugo commented to the youth.
+
+'_I_ think so,' was the reply.
+
+'Can you tell me who is the architect?' asked Hugo.
+
+'I am,' said the youth. 'And let me beg of you not to make any remark on
+my juvenile appearance. I am sick of that.'
+
+They lunched together, and Hugo learnt that the genius, after several
+years spent in designing the varnished interiors of public-houses, had
+suddenly come out first in an open competition for the town-hall;
+thenceforward he had thought in town-halls.
+
+'I want a shop putting up,' said Hugo.
+
+The youth showed no interest.
+
+'And when I say a shop,' Hugo pursued, 'I mean a _shop_.'
+
+'Oh, a _shop_ you mean!' ejaculated the youth, faintly stirred. They
+both spoke in italics.
+
+'A _real_ shop. Sloane Street. A hundred and eighty thousand
+superficial feet. Cost a quarter of a million. The finest shop in the
+world!'
+
+The youth started to his feet.
+
+'I've never had any luck,' said he, gazing at Hugo. 'But I believe you
+really do understand what a shop ought to be.'
+
+'I believe I do,' Hugo concurred. 'And I want one.'
+
+'You shall have it!' said the youth.
+
+And Hugo had it, though not for anything like the sum he had named.
+
+The four frontages of his land exceeded in all a quarter of a mile. The
+frontage to Sloane Street alone was five hundred feet. It was this
+glorious stretch of expensive earth which inflamed the architect's
+imagination.
+
+'But we must set back the facade twenty feet at least,' he said; and
+added, 'That will give you a good pavement.'
+
+'Young man,' cried Hugo, 'do you know how much this land has stood me in
+a foot?'
+
+'I neither know nor care,' answered the youth. 'All I say is, what's the
+use of putting up a decent building unless people can see it?'
+
+Hugo yielded. He felt as though, having given the genius something to
+play with, he must not spoil the game. The game included twelve
+thousand pounds paid to budding sculptors for monumental groups of a
+symbolic tendency; it included forests of onyx pillars and pillars of
+Carrara marble; it included ceilings painted by artists who ought to
+have been R.A.'s, but were not; and it included a central court of vast
+dimensions and many fountains, whose sole purpose was to charm the eye
+and lure the feet of customers who wanted a rest from spending money.
+Whenever Hugo found the game over-exciting, he soothed himself by
+dwelling upon the wonderful plan which the artist had produced, of his
+extraordinary grasp of practical needs, and his masterly solution of the
+various complicated problems which continually presented themselves.
+
+After the last bit of scaffolding was removed and the machine in full
+working order, Hugo beheld it, and said emphatically, 'This will do.'
+
+All London stood amazed, but not at the austere beauty of the whole, for
+only a few connoisseurs could appreciate that. What amazed London was
+the fabulous richness, the absurd spaciousness, the extravagant
+perfection of every part of the immense organism.
+
+You could stroll across twenty feet of private tessellated pavement,
+enter jewelled portals with the assistance of jewelled commissionaires,
+traverse furlong after furlong of vistas where nought but man was vile,
+sojourn by the way in the concert-hall, the reading-room, or the
+picture-gallery, smoke a cigarette in the court of fountains, write a
+letter in the lounge, and finally ask to be directed to the stationery
+department, where seated on a specially designed chair and surrounded by
+the most precious manifestations of applied art, you could select a
+threepenny box of J pens, and have it sent home in a pair-horse van.
+
+The unobservant visitor wondered how Hugo made it pay. The observant
+visitor did not fail to note that there were more than a hundred
+cash-desks in the place, and that all the cashiers had the air of being
+overworked. Once the entire army of cashiers, driven to defensive
+action, had combined in order to demand from Hugo, not only higher pay,
+but an increase in their numbers. Hugo had immediately consented,
+expressing regret that their desperate plight had escaped his attention.
+
+The registered telegraphic address of the establishment was 'Complete,
+London.'
+
+This address indicated the ideal which Hugo had turned into a reality.
+His imperial palace was far more than a universal bazaar. He boasted
+that you could do everything there, except get into debt. (His
+dictionary was an expurgated edition, and did not contain the word
+'credit.') Throughout life's fitful fever Hugo undertook to meet all
+your demands. Your mother could buy your layette from him, and your
+cradle, soothing-syrup, perambulator, and toys; she could hire your
+nurse at Hugo's. Your school-master could purchase canes there. Hugo
+sold the material for every known game; also sweets, cigarettes,
+penknives, walking-sticks, moustache-forcers, neckties, and
+trouser-stretchers. He shaved you, and kept the latest in scents and
+kit-bags. He was unsurpassed for fishing-rods, motor-cars, Swinburne's
+poems, button-holes, elaborate bouquets, fans, and photographs. His
+restaurant was full of discreet corners with tables for two under
+rose-shaded lights. He booked seats for theatres, trains, steamers,
+grand-stands, and the Empire. He dealt in all stocks and shares. He was
+a banker. He acted as agent for all insurance companies. He would insert
+advertisements in the agony column, or any other column, of any
+newspaper. If you wanted a flat, a house, a shooting-box, a castle, a
+yacht, or a salmon river, Hugo could sell, or Hugo could let, the very
+thing. He provided strong-rooms for your savings, and summer quarters
+for your wife's furs; conjurers to amuse your guests after dinner, and
+all the requisites for your daughter's wedding, from the cake and the
+silk petticoats to the Viennese band. His wine-cellars and his specific
+for the gout were alike famous; so also was his hair-dye.... And,
+lastly, when the riddle of existence had become too much for your
+curiosity, Hugo would sell you a pistol by means of which you could
+solve it. And he would bury you in a manner first-class, second-class,
+or third-class, according to your deserts.
+
+And all these feats Hugo managed to organize within the compass of four
+floors, a basement, and a sub-basement. Above, were five floors of
+furnished and unfurnished flats. 'Will people of wealth consent to live
+over a shop?' he had asked himself in considering the possibilities of
+his palace, and he had replied, 'Yes, if the shop is large enough and
+the rents are high enough.' He was right. His flats were the most
+sumptuous and the most preposterously expensive in London; and they
+were never tenantless. One man paid two thousand a year for a furnished
+suite. But what a furnished suite! The flats had a separate and
+spectacular entrance on the eastern facade of the building, with a foyer
+that was always brilliantly lighted, and elevators that rose and sank
+without intermission day or night. And on the ninth floor was a special
+restaurant, with prices to match the rents, and a roof garden, where one
+of Hugo's orchestras played every fine summer evening, except Sundays.
+(The County Council, mistrusting this aerial combination of music and
+moonbeams, had granted its license only on the condition that customers
+should have one night in which to recover from the doubtful influences
+of the other six.) The restaurant and the roof-garden were a resort
+excessively fashionable during the season. The garden gave an excellent
+view of the dome, where Hugo lived. But few persons knew that he lived
+there; in some matters he was very secretive.
+
+That very sultry morning Hugo brooded over the face of his establishment
+like a spirit doomed to perpetual motion. For more than two hours he
+threaded ceaselessly the long galleries where the usual daily crowds of
+customers, sales-people, shopwalkers, inspectors, sub-managers,
+managers, and private detectives of both sexes, moved with a strange and
+unaccustomed languor in a drowsy atmosphere which no system of
+ventilation could keep below 75 deg. Fahrenheit. None but the chiefs of
+departments had the right to address him as he passed; such was the
+rule. He deviated into the counting-house, where two hundred typewriters
+made their music, and into the annexe containing the stables and
+coach-houses, where scores of vans and automobiles, and those elegant
+coupes gratuitously provided by Hugo for the use of important clients,
+were continually arriving and leaving. Then he returned to the
+purchasing multitudes, and plunged therein as into a sea. At intervals a
+customer, recognising him, would nudge a friend, and point eagerly.
+
+'That's Hugo. See him, in the gray suit?'
+
+'What? That chap?'
+
+And they would both probably remark at lunch: 'I saw Hugo himself to-day
+at Hugo's.'
+
+He took an oath in his secret heart that he would not go near Department
+42, the only department which had the slightest interest for him. He
+knew that he could not be too discreet. And yet eventually, without
+knowing how or why, he perceived of a sudden that his legs carried him
+thither. He stopped, at a loss what to do, and then, by the direct
+interposition of kindly Fate, a manager spoke to him.... He gazed out of
+the corner of his eye. Yes, she was there. He could see her through a
+half-drawn portiere in one of the trying-on rooms. She was sitting limp
+on a chair, overcome by the tropic warmth of Sloane Street, with her
+noble head thrown back, her fine eyes half shut, and her beautiful hands
+lying slackly on her black apron.
+
+What an impeachment of civilization that a creature so fair and so
+divine should be forced to such a martyrdom! He desired ardently to run
+to her and to set her free for the day, for the whole summer, and on
+full wages. He wondered if he could trust the manager with instructions
+to alleviate her lot.... The next instant she sprang up, giving the
+indispensable smile of welcome to some customer who had evidently
+entered the trying-on room from the other side. The phenomenon
+distressed him. She disappeared from view behind the portiere, and
+reappeared, but only for a moment, talking to a foppish old man with a
+white moustache. It was Senior Polycarp, the lawyer.
+
+Hugo flushed, and, abandoning the manager in the middle of a sentence,
+fled to his central office. He had no confidence in his self-command....
+Could this be jealousy? Was it possible that he, Hugo, should be so far
+gone? Nay!
+
+But what was Polycarp, that old and desiccated widower, doing in the
+millinery department?
+
+He said he must form some definite plan, and begin by giving her a
+private room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+HUGO EXPLAINS HIMSELF
+
+
+'And what,' asked Hugo, smiling faintly at Mr. Senior Polycarp--'what is
+your client's idea of price?'
+
+For half an hour they had been talking in the luxurious calm of Hugo's
+central office, which was like an island refuge in the middle of that
+tossing ocean of business. It overlooked the court of fountains from the
+second story, and the highest jet of water threw a few jewelled drops to
+the level of its windows.
+
+Mr. Polycarp stroked his beautiful white moustache.
+
+'We would give,' he said in his mincing, passionless voice, 'the cost
+price of premises, stock, and fixtures, and for goodwill seven times
+your net annual profits. In addition, we should be anxious to secure
+your services as managing director for ten years at five thousand a
+year, plus a percentage of profits.'
+
+'Hum!'
+
+'And, of course, if you wished part of the purchase-money in shares--'
+
+'Have you formed any sort of estimate of my annual profits?' Hugo
+demanded.
+
+'Yes--a sort of estimate.'
+
+'You have looked carefully round, eh?'
+
+'My clients have. I myself, too, a little. This morning, for example.
+Very healthy, Mr. Hugo.'
+
+'What departments did you visit this morning? Each has its busy days.'
+
+'Grocery, electrical, and--let me see--yes, furniture.'
+
+'Not a good day for that--too hot! Anything else?'
+
+'No,' said Mr. Polycarp.
+
+'Ah!... Well, and what is your clients' estimate?'
+
+'Naturally, I cannot pretend--'
+
+'Listen, Mr. Polycarp,' said Hugo, interrupting: 'I will be open with
+you.'
+
+The lawyer nodded, appreciatively benign. As usual, he kept his thoughts
+to himself, but he had the air of adding Hugo to the vast collection of
+human curiosities which he had made during a prolonged professional
+career.
+
+'My net trading profits last year were L106,000. You are surprised?'
+
+'Somewhat.'
+
+'You expected a higher figure?'
+
+'We did.'
+
+'I knew it. And the figure might be higher if I chose. Only I do things
+in rather a royal way, you see. I pay my staff five hundred a week more
+than I need. And I allow myself to be cheated.' He laughed suddenly.
+'Costume department, for instance. I send charming costumes out on
+approval, and fetch them back in two days. And the pretty girls who have
+taken off the tickets, and worn the garments, and carefully restored the
+tickets, and lied to my carmen--the pretty girls imagine they have
+deceived me. They have merely amused me. My detective reports are
+excellent reading. And, moreover, I like to think that I have helped a
+pretty girl to make the best of herself.'
+
+'Immoral and unbusinesslike, Mr. Hugo.'
+
+'Admitted. I have no doubt that if I put the screw on all round I could
+quite justifiably increase my profits by fifty per cent.'
+
+'That shows what a splendid prospect a limited company would have.'
+
+'Yes, doesn't it?' said Hugo joyously.
+
+'But why are your clients so anxious to turn me into a limited
+company?'
+
+'They see in your undertaking,' replied Polycarp, folding his thin
+hands, 'a legitimate opening for that joint-stock enterprise which has
+had such a beneficial effect on England's prosperity.'
+
+'They would make a profit?'
+
+'A reasonable profit. A small syndicate would be formed to buy from you,
+and that syndicate would sell to a public company. The usual thing.'
+
+'And where do I come in?'
+
+'Where do you come in, my dear Mr. Hugo? Everywhere! You would receive
+over a million in cash. You would have your salary and your percentage,
+and you would be relieved of all your present risks.'
+
+'All my present risks?'
+
+'You have risks, Mr. Hugo, because your business has increased so
+rapidly that your income is out of all proportion to your capital, which
+consists almost solely of buildings which you could not sell at anything
+like their cost price in open market, and of goodwill. Now, I ask you,
+what is goodwill? What _is_ it? Under our scheme you would at once
+become a millionaire in actual fact.'
+
+'Decidedly an inviting prospect,' said Hugo.
+
+He walked about the room.
+
+'Then I may take it that you are at any rate prepared to negotiate?' the
+lawyer ventured, staring at the fountain.
+
+'Mr. Polycarp,' answered Hugo, 'I must first give you a little
+information and ask you a few questions.'
+
+'Certainly.'
+
+Hugo halted in front of Polycarp, close to him, and, lighting a cigar,
+gazed down at the frigid lawyer.
+
+'Till the age of twenty-eight,' he began, 'I had no object in life. I
+was educated at Oxford. I narrowly escaped the legal profession. I had a
+near shave of the Church. I wasted years in aimless travel, waiting for
+destiny to turn up. I was conscious of no gift except a power for
+organizing. That gift I felt I had, and gradually I perceived that I
+would like to be the head of some large and complicated undertaking. I
+examined the latest developments of modern existence, and came to the
+conclusion that the direction of a thoroughly up-to-date stores would
+amuse me as well as anything. So I bought this concern--a flourishing
+little drapery and furnishing business it was then. I had exactly fifty
+thousand pounds--not a cent more. I paid twenty-five thousand for the
+business. It was too much, but when an idea takes me it takes me. I
+required a fine-sounding name, and I chose Hugo. It was an inspiration.'
+
+'Then Hugo is not your--'
+
+'It is not. My real name is Owen. But think of "Owen" on a flag, and
+then think of "Hugo" on a flag.'
+
+'Exactly.'
+
+'I began. And because I had everything to learn I lost money at first. I
+took lessons in my own shop, and the course cost me a hundred a week for
+some months. But in two years I had proved that my theory of myself was
+correct. In ten I had made nearly a quarter of a million. Everyone knows
+the history of my growth.'
+
+Polycarp nodded.
+
+'In the eleventh year I determined to emerge from the chrysalis. I
+dreamed a dream of my second incarnation as universal tradesman. And the
+fabric of my dream, Mr. Polycarp, you behold around you.' He waved the
+cigar. 'It is the most colossal thing of its kind ever known.'
+
+Polycarp nodded again.
+
+'Some people regard it as extravagant. It is. It is meant to be. Hugo's
+store is only my fun, my device for amusing myself. We have glorious
+times here, I and my ten managers--my Council of Ten. They know me; I
+know them. They are well paid; they are artists. A trade spirit must, of
+course, actuate a trade concern; but above that, controlling that, is
+another spirit--the spirit which has made this undoubtedly the greatest
+shop in the world. I cannot describe it, but it exists. All my managers,
+and even many of the rank and file, feel it.'
+
+'Very interesting,' said the lawyer.
+
+'Mr. Polycarp,' Hugo announced solemnly, 'the direction of this
+establishment is my life. In the midst of this lovely and interesting
+organism I enjoy every hour of the day. What else can I want?'
+
+Polycarp raised his eyebrows.
+
+'Do you suppose it would add to my fun to have a million in the bank--I,
+with an income of two thousand a week? Do you suppose I should find it
+diverting to be at the beck and call of a board of directors--I, the
+supreme fount of authority? Do you suppose it would be my delight to
+consider eternally the interests of a pack of shareholders--I, who
+consider nothing but my fancy? And, finally, do you suppose it would
+amuse me, Hugo, to have "limited" put after my name? Me, limited!'
+
+'Then,' said the lawyer slowly, 'I am to understand you are not
+willing--'
+
+'My friend,' Hugo replied, dropping into his chair, 'I would sooner see
+the whole blessed place fall like the Bastille than see it "limited."'
+
+Polycarp rose in his turn.
+
+'My clients,' he remarked in a peculiar tone, 'had set their minds on
+this affair.'
+
+'For once in a way your clients will be disappointed,' said Hugo.
+
+'What do you mean--"for once in a way"?'
+
+'Who are your clients, Mr. Polycarp?'
+
+'Since the offer is rejected, it would be useless to divulge their
+names.'
+
+'I will tell you, then,' said Hugo. 'Your client--for there is only
+one--is Louis Ravengar. I saw it stated in a paper the other day that
+Louis Ravengar had successfully floated thirty-nine companies with a
+total capitalization of thirty millions. But my scalp will not be added
+to his collection.'
+
+'I shall not disclose the identity of my clients,' Mr. Polycarp minced.
+'But, speaking of Mr. Ravengar, I have noticed that what he wants he
+gets. The manner in which the United Coal Company, Limited, was brought
+to flotation by him in the teeth of the opposition of the proprietors
+was really most interesting.'
+
+'You mean to warn me that there are ways of compelling a private concern
+to become public and joint-stock?'
+
+'Not at all, Mr. Hugo. I am incapable of such a hint. I am sure that
+nothing and nobody could force you against your will. I was only
+mentioning the case of the Coal Company. I could mention others.'
+
+'Don't trouble, my dear sir. Convey my decision to Louis Ravengar, and
+give him my compliments. We are old acquaintances.'
+
+'You are?' The solicitor seemed astonished in his imperturbable way.
+
+'We are.'
+
+'I will convey your decision to my clients.'
+
+Accepting a cigar, Mr. Polycarp departed.
+
+Without giving himself time to think, Hugo went straight to Department
+42, and direct to the artist in hats. She stood pale and deferential to
+receive him. The heat was worse than ever.
+
+'Your name is Payne, I think?' he began. (He well knew her name was
+Payne.)
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+Other employes in the trying-on room looked furtively round.
+
+'About half-past eleven an old gentleman, with white moustache, came
+into this room, Miss Payne. You remember?'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'What did he want?'
+
+'He was inquiring about a hat, sir,' she hurriedly answered.
+
+'For a lady?'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Thank you.'
+
+And he hastened back to his central office, and breathed a sigh. 'I have
+actually spoken to her,' he murmured. 'How charming her voice is!'
+
+But Miss Payne's physical condition desolated him. If she was so
+obviously exhausted at 12.30, what would she be like at the day's end?'
+
+'I've got it!' he cried.
+
+He seized a pen and wrote: 'Notice.--The public are respectfully
+informed that this establishment will close to-day at two o'clock.'
+
+He rang a bell, and a messenger appeared.
+
+'Take this to the printing-office instantly, and tell Mr. Waugh it must
+be posted throughout the place in half an hour.'
+
+Shortly after two o'clock Sloane Street was amazed to witness the exodus
+of the three thousand odd. The closure was attributed to a whim of
+Hugo's for celebrating some obscure anniversary in his life. Many
+hundreds of persons were inconvenienced, and the internal economy of
+scores of polite homes seriously deranged. The evening papers found a
+paragraph. And Hugo lost perhaps a hundred and fifty pounds net. But
+Hugo was happy, and he was expectant.
+
+At ten o'clock that night a youngish man, extremely like Simon Shawn,
+was brought by Simon into Hugo's presence under the dome. This was
+Simon's brother, Albert Shawn, a member of Hugo's private detective
+force.
+
+'Sit down,' said Hugo. 'Well?'
+
+'I reckon you've heard, sir,' Albert Shawn began impassively, 'the yarn
+that's going all round the stores.'
+
+'I have not.'
+
+'Everyone's whispering,' said Albert Shawn, gazing carefully at his
+boots, 'that Mr. Hugo has taken a kind of a fancy to Miss Payne.'
+
+Hugo restrained himself.
+
+'Heavens!' he exclaimed, with a clever affectation of lightness, 'what
+next? I've only spoken to the chit once.'
+
+'Don't I know it, sir!'
+
+'Enough of that! What have you to report?'
+
+'Miss Payne left at 2.15, whipped round to the flats entrance, took the
+lift to the top-floor, went into Mr. Francis Tudor's flat.'
+
+'What's that you say? Whose flat?' cried Hugo.
+
+'Mr. Francis Tudor's, sir.'
+
+Mr. Tudor was famous as the tenant of the suite rented at two thousand a
+year; he had a reputation for being artistic, sybaritic, and something
+in the inner ring of the City.
+
+'Ah!' said Hugo. 'Perhaps she is a friend of one of Mr. Tudor's--'
+
+'Servants,' he was about to say, but the idea of Miss Payne being on
+terms of equality with a menial was not pleasant to him, and he stopped.
+
+'No, sir,' said Albert Shawn, unmoved. 'She is not, because Mr. Tudor
+shunted out all his servants soon afterwards. Miss Payne was shown into
+his study. She had her tea there, and her dinner. The Hugo half-guinea
+dinner was ordered late by telephone for two persons, and rushed up at
+eight o'clock.'
+
+'I wonder Mr. Tudor didn't order an orchestra with the dinner,' said
+Hugo grimly. It was a sublime effort on his part to be his natural self.
+
+'I waited for Miss Payne to leave,' continued Albert Shawn. 'That's why
+I'm so late.'
+
+'And what time did she leave?'
+
+'She hasn't left,' said Albert Shawn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+CAMILLA
+
+
+Hugo dismissed Albert, with orders to continue his vigil, and then he
+rang for Simon.
+
+'Do you think I might have some tea?' he asked.
+
+'I am disposed to think you might, sir,' said Simon the cellarer. 'It is
+eight days since you indulged after dinner.'
+
+'Bring me one cup, then, poured out.'
+
+He was profoundly disturbed by Albert's news. He was, in fact,
+miserable. He had a physical pain in the region of the heart. He wished
+he could step off Love as one steps off an omnibus, but he found that
+Love resembled an express train more than an omnibus.
+
+'Can she be secretly married to him?' he demanded half aloud, sipping at
+the tea.
+
+The idea soothed him exactly as much as it alarmed him.
+
+'The question is,' he murmured angrily, 'am I or am I not an ass?... At
+my age!'
+
+He felt vaguely that he was not, that he was rather a splendid and
+Byronic figure in the grip of tremendous emotions.
+
+Having regretfully finished the tea, he unlocked a bookcase, and picked
+out at random a volume of Boswell's 'Johnson.' It was the modern Oxford
+edition--the only edition worthy of a true amateur--bound by Riviere.
+Like all wise and lettered men, Hugo consulted Boswell in the grave
+crises of life, and to-night he happened upon the venerable Johnson's
+remark: _'Sir, I would be content to spend the remainder of my existence
+driving about in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.'_
+
+He leaned back in his chair and laughed. 'In the whole history of
+mankind,' he asserted to the dome, 'there have only been two really
+sensible men. Solomon was one, and Johnson the other.'
+
+He restored the book to its place, and sat down to the piano-player, and
+in a moment the overture to 'Tannhaeuser,' that sublime failure to prove
+that passion is folly, filled the vast apartment. The rushing violin
+passages, and every call of Aphrodite, intoxicated his soul and raised
+his spirits till he knew with the certainty of a fully-aroused instinct
+that Camilla Payne must be his. He became optimistic on all points.
+
+'A lady insists on seeing you, sir,' said Simon Shawn, intruding upon
+the Pilgrims' Chant.
+
+'She may insist,' Hugo answered lightly. 'But it all depends who she is.
+I'm--'
+
+He stopped, for the insisting lady had entered.
+
+It was Camilla.
+
+He jumped up. Never before in his career had he been so astounded,
+staggered, charmed, enchanted, dazzled, and completely silenced.
+
+'Miss Payne?' he gasped after a prolonged pause.
+
+Simon Shawn effaced himself.
+
+'Yes, Mr. Hugo.'
+
+'Won't you sit down?'
+
+The singular prevalence of beautiful women in England is only
+appreciated properly by Englishmen who have lived abroad, and these
+alone know also that in no other country is beauty wasted by women as it
+is wasted in England. Camilla was beautiful, and supremely beautiful;
+she was tall, well and generously formed, graceful, fair, with fine
+eyes and fine dark chestnut hair; her absolutely regular features had
+the proud Tennysonian cast. But the coldness of Tennysonian damsels was
+not hers. Whether she had Latin blood in her veins, or whether Nature
+had peculiarly gifted her out of sheer caprice, she possessed in a high
+degree that indescribable demeanour, at once a defiance and a surrender,
+a question and an answer, a confession and a denial, which is the
+universal weapon of women of Latin race in the battle of the sexes, but
+of which Englishwomen seem to be almost deprived. 'I am Eve!' say the
+mocking, melting eyes of the Southern woman, and so said Camilla's eyes.
+No man could rest calm under that glance; no man could forbear the
+attempt to decipher the hidden secrecies of its message, and no man
+could succeed in the task.
+
+Hugo felt that he had never seen this woman before.
+
+And he might have been excused for feeling so; for instead of the black
+alpaca, Camilla now wore a simple but effectively charming toilette such
+as 'Hugo's' created and sold to women for the rapture of men in summer
+twilights, and over the white dress was thrown a very rich pearl-tinted
+opera-cloak, which only partly concealed the curves of the shoulders,
+and poised aslant on the glistening coiffure was the identical blue hat
+with its wide brims that had visited the dome seventeen hours before.
+The total effect was calculated, perfect, overwhelming.
+
+'I'm sorry to disturb you, Mr. Hugo,' said Camilla, throwing back her
+cloak on the left side with a fine gesture, 'but I am in need of your
+assistance.'
+
+'Yes?' Hugo whispered, seating himself.
+
+She had a low voice, rare in a blonde, and it thrilled him. And she was
+so near him in the great chamber!
+
+'I want you to tell me what plot I am in the midst of. What is the web
+that has begun to surround me?'
+
+'Plot?' stammered Hugo. 'Web?'
+
+Her eyes flashed scrutinizingly on his face.
+
+'You have a kind heart,' she said; 'everybody can see that. Be frank. Do
+you know,' she asked in a different tone, 'or don't you, that you spoke
+very gruffly to me this morning?'
+
+'Miss Payne,' he began, 'I assure you--'
+
+'I thought perhaps you didn't know,' she smiled calmly. 'But you did
+speak very gruffly. Now, I have taken my courage in both hands in order
+to come to you to-night. I may have lost my situation through it--I
+can't tell. Whether I have lost my situation or not, I appeal to you for
+candour.'
+
+'Miss Payne,' said Hugo, 'it distresses me to hear you speak of a
+"situation."'
+
+'And why?'
+
+'You know why,' he answered. 'A woman as distinguished as you are must
+be perfectly well aware how distinguished she is, and perfectly capable,
+let me add, of hiding her distinction from the common crowd. For what
+purpose of your own you came into my shop, I can't guess. But necessity
+never forced you there. No doubt you meant to avoid getting yourself
+talked about; nevertheless, you have got yourself talked about.'
+
+'Indeed!' She looked at him sideways.
+
+'Yes,' Hugo went on; 'several thousands of commonplace persons are
+saying that I have fallen in love with you. Do you think it's true, this
+rumour?'
+
+'How can I tell you?' said she.
+
+'Well, it is true!' he cried. 'It's doubly and trebly true! It's the
+greatest truth in the world at the present moment. It is one of those
+truths that a believer can't keep to himself.' He paused, expectant. 'A
+woman less fine than you would have protested against this sudden
+avowal, which is only too like me--too like Hugo. You don't protest. I
+knew you wouldn't. I knew you knew. You asked for candour. You have it.
+I love you.'
+
+'Then, why,' she demanded firmly, with a desolating smile--'why do you
+have me followed by your private detective?'
+
+Hugo was caught in a trap. He had hesitated long before instructing
+Albert Shawn to shadow Camilla, but in the end his desire for exact
+knowledge concerning her, and his possession of a corps of detectives
+ready to hand, had proved too much for his scruples. He had, however,
+till that day discovered little of importance for his pains--merely that
+her parents, who were dead, had kept a small milliner's shop in Edgware
+Road, that her age was twenty-five, that she had come to his millinery
+department with a good testimonial from an establishment in Walham
+Green, that she lived in lodgings at Fulham and saw scarcely anyone, and
+that she had once been a typewriter.
+
+'The fact is--'
+
+He stopped, perceiving that the 'fact' would not do at all, and that to
+explain to the woman you love why you have spied on her is a somewhat
+nice operation.
+
+'Is that the way you usually serve us?' pursued Camilla, with a strange
+emphasis on the word 'us' which maddened him.
+
+'The fact is, Miss Payne,' he said boldly, sitting down as soon as he
+had invented the solution of the difficulty, 'you will not deny that
+this afternoon and this evening you have been in a position of some
+slight delicacy. What your relations are with Mr. Francis Tudor I have
+never sought to inquire, but I have always doubted the bona fides of Mr.
+Francis Tudor. And to-day I have simply--if I may say so--watched over
+you. If my man has been clumsy, I beg your forgiveness. I beg you to
+believe in my deep respect for you.'
+
+The plain sincerity of his accent and of his gaze touched and convinced
+her. She looked at her feet, white-shod on the crimson carpet.
+
+'Ah!' she murmured, as if to herself, mournfully, 'why don't you ask me
+how it is that I, to whom you pay thirty-six shillings a week, am
+wearing these clothes? Surely you must think that an employe who--'
+
+'At this hour you are not an employe,' he interrupted here. 'You visit
+me of your own free will to demand an explanation of matters which are
+quite foreign to our business relations. I give it you. Beyond that I
+permit myself no thoughts except such as any man is entitled to
+concerning any woman. You used the word "plot" when you came in. What
+did you refer to? If Mr. Tudor has--' He could not proceed.
+
+'As I left Mr. Tudor's flat a few minutes since,' said Camilla quietly,
+producing a revolver from the folds of her cloak, 'I picked up this. It
+may or may not be loaded. Perhaps you can tell me.'
+
+He seized the weapon, and impetuously aimed at a heavy Chinese gong
+across the room, and pulled the trigger several times. The revolver
+spoke noisily, and the gong sounded and swung.
+
+'You see!' he exclaimed. 'Pardon the din. I did it without thinking.'
+
+'Did you call, sir?' asked Simon Shawn, appearing in the doorway.
+
+Hugo extirpated him with a look.
+
+'How cool you are!' he resumed to Camilla, and laid down the revolver.
+'No, you aren't! By Jove, you aren't! What is it? What have you been
+through? What is this plot? A plot--in my building--and against you!
+Tell me everything--everything! I insist.'
+
+'Shall you believe all that I say?' she ventured.
+
+'Yes,' he said, 'all.'
+
+He saw with intense joy that he was going to be friendly with her. It
+seemed too good to be true.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A STORY AND A DISAPPEARANCE
+
+
+'Perhaps I ought to begin by informing you,' said Camilla Payne, 'that I
+have known Mr. Francis Tudor for about two years. Always he has been
+very nice to me. Once he asked me to marry him--quite suddenly--it was a
+year ago. I refused because I didn't care for him. I then saw nothing of
+him for some time. But after I entered your service here, he came across
+me again by accident. I did not know until lately that he had one of
+your flats. He was very careful, very polite, timid, cautious--but very
+obstinate, too. He invited me to call on him at his rooms, and to bring
+any friends I liked. Of course, it was a stupidity on his part, but,
+then, what else could he do? A man who wants to cultivate relations with
+a homeless shopgirl is rather awkwardly fixed.'
+
+'I wish to Heaven you would not talk like that, Miss Payne!' said Hugo,
+interrupting her impatiently.
+
+'I am merely telling you these things so that you may understand my
+position,' Camilla coldly replied. 'Do you imagine that I am amusing
+myself?'
+
+'Go on, go on, I beg,' he urged, with a gesture of apology.
+
+'Naturally, I declined the invitation. Then next I received a letter
+from him, in which he said that unless I called on him, or agreed to
+meet him in some place where we could talk privately and at length, he
+should kill himself within a week. And he added that death was perhaps
+less to him than I imagined. I believed that letter. There was something
+about it that touched me.'
+
+'And so you decided to yield?'
+
+'I did yield. I felt that if I was to trust him at all, I might as well
+trust him fully, and I called at his flat this afternoon alone. He was
+evidently astonished to see me at that hour, so I explained to him that
+you had closed early for some reason or other.'
+
+'Exactly,' said Hugo.
+
+He insisted on giving me tea. I was treated, in fact, like a princess;
+but during tea he said nothing to me that might not have been said
+before a roomful of people. After tea he left me for a few moments, in
+order, as he said, to give some orders to his servants. Up till then he
+had been extremely agitated, and when he returned he was even more
+agitated. He walked to and fro in that lovely drawing-room of his--just
+as you were doing here not long since. I was a little afraid.'
+
+'Afraid of what?' demanded Hugo.
+
+'I don't know--of him, lest he might do something fatal, irretrievable;
+something--I don't know. And then, being alone with him in that palace
+of a place! Well, he burst out suddenly into a series of statements
+about himself, and about his future, and his intentions, and his
+feelings towards me. And these statements were so extraordinary and so
+startling that I could not think he had invented them. I believed them,
+as I had believed in the sincerity of his threat to kill himself if I
+would not listen to him.'
+
+'And what were they--these statements?' Hugo inquired.
+
+Camilla waved aside the interruptions, and continued: '"Now," he said,
+"will you marry me? Will you marry me now?"'
+
+She paused and glanced at Hugo, who observed that her eyes were filling
+with tears.
+
+'And then?' murmured Hugo soothingly.
+
+'Then I agreed to marry him.'
+
+And with these words she cried openly.
+
+'If anyone had told me beforehand,' she resumed, 'that I should be so
+influenced by a man's--a man's acting, I would have laughed. But I
+was--I was. He succeeded completely.'
+
+'You have not said what these extraordinary statements were,' Hugo
+insisted.
+
+'Don't ask me,' she entreated, drying her eyes. 'It is enough that I was
+hoodwinked. If you have had no hand in this plot, don't ask me. I am too
+ashamed, too scornful of my credulity, to repeat them. You would laugh.'
+
+'Should I?' said Hugo, smiling gravely. 'What occurred next?'
+
+'The next step was that Mr. Tudor asked me to accompany his housekeeper
+to the housekeeper's room, and on the other side of the passage from the
+drawing-room I was to dine with him. The housekeeper is a Mrs. Dant, a
+kind, fat, lame old woman, and she produced this cloak and this hat, and
+so on, and said that they were for me! I was surprised, but I praised
+them and tried them on for a moment. You must remember that I was his
+affianced wife. I talked with Mrs. Dant, and prepared myself for
+dinner, and then I went back to the drawing-room, and found Mr. Tudor
+ready for dinner. I asked him why he had got the clothes, and he said he
+had got them this very morning merely on the chance of my accepting his
+proposal out of pity for him. And I believed that, too.'
+
+There was a silence.
+
+'But that is not the end?' Hugo encouraged her.
+
+'Oh,' she exclaimed, 'it is useless, all this story! And the episode is
+finished! When I came in here I was angry; I suspect you of some
+complicity. But I suspect you no longer, and I see now that the wisest
+course for a woman such as I after such an adventure is to be mute about
+it, and to forget it.'
+
+'No,' he said; 'you are wrong. Trust me. I entreat.'
+
+Camilla bit her lip.
+
+'We went into the dining-room, and dinner was served,' she recommenced,
+'and there I had my first shock, my first doubt, for one of the two
+waiters was your spy.'
+
+'Shawn! My detective!'
+
+Hugo was surprised to find that Albert, almost a novice in his
+vocation, had contrived to be so insinuating.
+
+'And he made a very bad waiter indeed,' Camilla added.
+
+'I regret it,' said Hugo. 'He meant well.' 'When the waiters had gone I
+asked Mr. Tudor if they were his own servants. He hesitated, and then
+admitted frankly that they were not. He told me that his servants were
+out on leave for the evening. "You don't mean to say that I am now alone
+with you in the flat!" I protested. "No," he said quickly. "Mrs. Dant is
+always in her room across the passage. Don't be alarmed, dearest." His
+tone reassured me. After coffee, he took my photograph by flashlight. He
+printed one copy at once, and then, after we had both been in the
+dark-room together, he returned there to get some more printing-paper.
+While he was absent I went into the housekeeper's room for a
+handkerchief which I had left there. Mrs. Dant was not in the room. But
+in a mirror I saw the reflection of a man hiding behind the door. I was
+awfully frightened. However, I pretended to see nothing, and tried to
+hum a song. I same into the passage. The passage window was open, and I
+looked out. Another man was watching on the balcony. Of course, I saw
+instantly it was a plot. I--I--'
+
+'Did you recognise the men, then?' Hugo asked.
+
+'The one in the room I was not quite sure of. The other, on the balcony,
+was your detective, I think. I saw him disappear in this direction.'
+
+'But whatever the plot was, Shawn had no hand in it.'
+
+'No, no, of course not! I see now. But the other, in the room! Ah, if
+you knew all my history, you would understand better! I felt that some
+vengeance was out against me. I saw everything clearly. I tried to keep
+my head, and to decide calmly what I ought to do. It was from a little
+table in the passage that I picked up the revolver. Then I heard hurried
+footsteps coming through the drawing-room towards the passage. It was
+Mr. Tudor. He seemed very startled. I tried to appear unconcerned. "What
+is the matter?" he asked; he had gone quite pale. "Nothing," I said. "I
+only went to fetch a handkerchief." He laughed uneasily. "I was afraid
+you had thought better of it and run away from me," he said. And he
+kissed me; I was obliged to submit. All this time I was thinking hard
+what to do. I suggested we should go on to the roof garden for awhile.
+He objected, but finally he gave way, and he brought me the cloak and
+hat, and we went to the garden and sat down. I felt safer there. At last
+I ventured to tell him that I must go home. Of course, he objected to
+that too, but he gave way a second time. "I will just speak to Mrs.
+Dant," I said. "You stay here for three minutes. By that time I shall be
+ready." And I went off towards the flat, but as soon as I was out of his
+sight I turned and ran here. And that's all.'
+
+'You are a wonderful creature,' Hugo murmured, looking at her
+meditatively.
+
+'Why?' The question was put with a sort of artless and melancholy
+surprise.
+
+'How can I tell?' said Hugo. 'How can I tell why Heaven made you so?'
+
+She laughed, and the laugh enchanted him. He had studied her during her
+recital; he had observed her continual effort to use ordinary words and
+ordinary tones like a garment to hide vivid sensations and emotions
+which, however, shone through the garment as her face might have shone
+through a veil.
+
+He recalled her little gestures, inflections, glances--the thousand
+avenues by which her rich and overflowing individuality escaped from
+the prison of her will, and impressed itself on the rest of the created
+universe. Her story was decidedly singular, and as mysterious as it was
+singular; that something sinister would be brought to light, he felt
+sure. But what occupied and charmed his mind was the exquisite fact that
+between him and her relations were now established. The story, her past
+danger, even her possible future danger--these things only interested
+him in so far as they formed the basis of an intimacy. He exulted in
+being near her, in the savour of her commanding presence. When he
+thought of her in his monstrous shop, wilting in the heat, bowing
+deferentially to fools, martyrizing her soul for less than two pounds a
+week, he thought of kings' daughters sold into slavery. But she was a
+princess now, and for evermore, and she had come to him of her own free
+will; she had trusted him; she had invited his help! It was glorious
+beyond the dreams of his passion.
+
+'Come,' he said feverishly, 'show me how you managed to get to my dome.'
+
+And he threw open the easternmost window, and she stepped with him out
+on to the balcony.
+
+They looked down across Hugo's little private garden, into the
+blackness of the court of fountains, whose balconies were vaguely
+disclosed here and there by the reflection from lit interiors. On the
+other side of the deep pit of the court was the vast expanse of flat
+roof containing the famous roof garden. Amid dwarf trees and festoons of
+coloured lights, the figures of men and women who counted themselves the
+cream of London could dimly be seen walking about or sitting at tables;
+and the wild strain of the Tsigane musicians, as they swayed to and fro
+in their red coats on the bandstand, floated towards the dome through
+the heavy summer air. In the near distance the fantastic shapes of
+chimney-cowls raised themselves against the starry but moonless sky, and
+miles away the grandiose contours of a dome far greater than Hugo's--the
+dome of St. Paul's--finished the prospect in solemn majesty. It was a
+scene well calculated to intensify a man's emotions, especially when a
+man stands to view it, as Hugo stood, on a lofty balcony, with a
+beautiful and loved woman by his side.
+
+She was indicating pathways, as well as she could, when they both saw a
+man hurrying in the direction of the dome along by the roof-balustrade
+of the court of fountains--the route by which Camilla herself had come.
+He arrived under the dome, and would have disappeared into a doorway had
+not Hugo called:
+
+'Shawn, I'm here!'
+
+'I was just coming to see you, sir,' replied Albert Shawn in a loud
+whisper, as he climbed breathless up to the little raised garden beneath
+the dome.
+
+Camilla withdrew behind a curtain of the window.
+
+'Well?' Hugo queried.
+
+'She's gone, sir. But dashed if I know where, unless she's got herself
+lost somewhere on the roof.'
+
+'She is here,' said Hugo, lowering his voice. 'And it appears that you
+waited very clumsily at that dinner, my boy. A bad disguise is worse
+than none. I must lend you Gaboriau's "Crime of Orcival" to read; that
+will teach you. Anything else to tell me?'
+
+'I went back to the balcony entrance of the flat,' the youthful
+detective replied humbly, looking up to Hugo in the window of the dome.
+'I could see through the lacework of the blind; the drawing-room was
+empty. The French window was open an inch or so, and I could hear a
+clock ticking as clear as a bell. Then Mr. Tudor toddled up, and I hid
+in the servants' doorway. Mr. Tudor went in by the other door, and out I
+popped again to my post. I see my gentleman stamping about and calling
+"Camilla! Camilla!" fit to burst. No answer. Then he picks up a
+photograph off a table and kisses it smack--twice.'
+
+Camilla stirred behind the curtain.
+
+'Then he goes into another room,' proceeded Albert Shawn, 'and lo and
+behold! another man comes from round the corner of a screen--a man much
+older than Mr. Tudor! And Mr. Tudor runs in again, and these two
+meet--these two do. And they stare at each other, and Mr. Tudor says,
+"Hullo, Louis--"'
+
+'I knew it!' The cry came from Camilla within the dome.
+
+'What?' demanded Hugo, turning to her and ignoring Shawn.
+
+'It was Louis Ravengar whom I saw hiding behind the door. I felt all the
+time that it was he!'
+
+And she put her hands to her face.
+
+'Ravengar!' He was astounded to hear that name. What had she, what had
+Tudor, to do with Ravengar?
+
+'That was why I thought _you_ were in the plot, Mr. Hugo,' she added.
+
+'Me? Why?'
+
+'Can you ask?'
+
+Her eyes met his, and it was his that fell.
+
+'I have no relations whatever with Ravengar, I assure you,' he said
+gravely. 'But, by the dagger! I'll see this affair to the end.' 'By the
+dagger' was a form of oath, meaningless yet terrible in sound, which
+Hugo employed only on the greatest occasions. He turned sharply to the
+window. 'Anything else, Shawn?'
+
+'There was a gust of wind that shut the blessed window, sir. I couldn't
+hear any more, so I came to report.'
+
+'Go to the front entrance of the flat instantly,' Hugo ordered him. 'I
+will watch the balcony.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+Camilla was crouching in the embrasure of the window. Her body seemed to
+shake.
+
+'There is nothing to fear,' Hugo soothed her. 'Stay here till I return.'
+And he snatched up the revolver.
+
+'No,' she said, straightening herself; 'I must go with you.'
+
+'Better not.'
+
+'I must go with you,' she repeated.
+
+They passed together along the railed edge of the court of fountains
+under the stars, skirted the gay and melodious garden behind the trees
+in their huge wooden boxes, and so came to a second quadrangle, upon
+whose highest story the windows of Tudor's flat gave. Descending a
+stairway of forged iron to the balcony, they crept forward in silence to
+the window of Tudor's drawing-room, and, still side by side, gazed, as
+Shawn had done, through the fine lacework of the blind into the splendid
+apartment.
+
+The window was almost at a corner of the room, near a door; but Hugo had
+a perfect view of the two men within, and one was as certainly Louis
+Ravengar as the other was Francis Tudor. They were gesticulating
+violently and angrily, and a heavy, ornate Empire chair had already been
+overturned. The dispute seemed to be interminable; each moment heralded
+a fight, but it is the watched pot that never boils. Suddenly Hugo
+became aware that Camilla was no longer at his elbow, and the next
+instant, to his extreme amazement, he saw her glide into the room. She
+had removed her hat and cloak, and stood revealed in all her beauty.
+The two men did not perceive her. She softly opened the window, and the
+confused murmur of voices reached Hugo's ear.
+
+'Give me the revolver,' Camilla whispered.
+
+And her whisper was such that he passed the weapon, as it were
+hypnotically, to her under the blind. And then the blind slipped down,
+and he could see no more. He heard a shot, and the next thing was that
+the revolver was pushed back to him, nearly at the level of the floor.
+
+'Wait there!' The sound of her voice, tense and authoritative, came
+through the slit of the window and thrilled him. 'All is well now, but I
+will send you a message.'
+
+And the window was swiftly closed and a curtain drawn behind the blind.
+He could hear nothing.
+
+He had small intention of obeying her. 'She must have gone in by the
+servants' entrance,' he argued. 'I should have seen her if she had tried
+the other.' And he ran to the small door, but it was shut fast. In vain
+he knocked and shook the handle for several minutes. Then he hastened to
+the main door on the broad balcony, but that also was impregnable.
+
+Should he break a pane?
+
+A noise far along the balcony attracted him. He flew towards it, found
+nothing but a cat purring, and returned. The luscious music of the
+Tsigane band, one of the nine orchestras which he owned, reached him
+faintly over the edge of the quadrangle.
+
+Then he decidedly did hear human footsteps on the balcony. They were the
+footsteps of Shawn.
+
+'She's gone, sir. Took the lift, and whizzed off in Mr. Tudor's electric
+brougham that was waiting.'
+
+'And the men?' he gasped.
+
+'Seen neither of them, sir. She put this note in my hand as she passed
+me, sir.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A LAPSE FROM AN IDEAL
+
+
+'If you please, sir,' said Simon Shawn, when he brought Hugo's tea the
+next morning, 'I am informed that a man has secreted himself on the
+summit of the dome.'
+
+Hugo, lying moveless on his back, and ignoring even the tea, made no
+reply to this speech. He was still repeating to himself the following
+words, which, by constant iteration, had assumed in his mind the force
+and emphasis of italics: _'So grateful for your sympathetic help. When
+next I see you, if there is opportunity, I will try to thank you.
+Meantime, all is well with me. Please trouble no more. And forget.'_
+Such were the exact terms of the note from Camilla Payne delivered to
+him by Albert Shawn. Of course, he knew it by heart. It was scribbled
+very hastily in pencil on half a sheet of paper, and it bore no
+signature, not even a solitary initial. If it had not been handed to
+Albert by Camilla in person, Hugo might have doubted its genuineness,
+and might have spent the night in transgressing the law of trespass and
+other laws, in order to be assured of a woman's safety. But under the
+circumstances he could not doubt its genuineness. What he doubted was
+its exact import. And what he objected to in it was its lack of
+information. He wished ardently to know whether Ravengar and Tudor, or
+either of them, had been wounded, and if so, by whose revolver; for he
+could not be certain that it was Camilla who had fired. An examination
+of the revolver which he and she had passed from hand to hand had shown
+two chambers undischarged. He wished ardently to know how she had
+contrived to settle her account with Tudor, and yet get away in Tudor's
+brougham, unless it was by a wile worthy of the diplomacy of a Queen
+Elizabeth. And he wished ardently to understand a hundred and one other
+things concerning Camilla, Tudor, and Ravengar, and the permutations and
+combinations of these three, which offered apparently insoluble problems
+to his brain. Nevertheless, there was one assurance which seemed to him
+to emerge clearly from the note, and to atone for its vagueness--a
+vagueness, however, perfectly excusable, he reflected, having regard to
+the conditions in which it was written--namely, that Camilla intended to
+arrive, as usual, in Department 42 that morning. What significance could
+be attached to the phrase, 'When next I see you, _if there is
+opportunity_,' unless it signified that she anticipated seeing him next
+in the shop and in the course of business? Moreover, he felt that it
+would be just like Camilla to start by behaving to him as though nothing
+had occurred. (But he would soon alter that, he said masterfully.) He
+was, on the whole, happy as he lay in bed. She knew that he loved her.
+They had been intimate. In three hours at most he would see her again.
+And his expectations ran high. Indeed, she had already begun to exist in
+his mind as his life's companion.
+
+Simon coughed politely but firmly.
+
+'What's that you say?' Hugo demanded; and Simon repeated his item of
+news.
+
+'Ha!' said Hugo; 'doubtless some enthusiast for sunrises.'
+
+'He has been twice perceived in the little gallery by the men cleaning
+the roof garden,' Simon added.
+
+'And who is it?'
+
+'His identity has not been established,' said Simon.
+
+'Can't you moderate your language a little, Shawn?' Hugo asked, staring
+always absently up into the dome.
+
+'I beg pardon, sir. I have spent part of the night with Albert, and his
+loose speech always drives me to the other extreme,' Simon observed,
+repentant.
+
+'Has Albert seen the burglar?'
+
+'No, sir, if it _is_ a burglar.'
+
+'Well,' said Hugo, 'he's quite safe where he is. He can't get down
+except by that door, can he?' pointing to a masked door, which was
+painted to represent a complete set in sixty volumes of the 'Acts of the
+Saints.'
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+'And he could only have got up by that door?' Hugo pursued.
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Which means that you were away from your post last night, my son.'
+
+'I was, sir,' Shawn admitted frankly. 'When you and Albert and the lady
+ran off so quickly, I followed, as far as I judged expedient--beg
+pardon, sir. The man must have slipped in during my absence. I remember
+I noticed the masked door was ajar on my return. I shut and locked it.'
+
+'That explains everything,' said Hugo. 'You see how your sins find you
+out.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'I say, Shawn,' Hugo cried, as he went to his bath, 'talking of that
+chap up above, play me the Captives' chorus from "Fidelio."'
+
+'It is not in the repertoire, sir,' said Simon, after searching.
+
+'Not in the repertoire! Impossible!'
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+'Ah well, then, let us have the Wedding March from "Lohengrin."'
+
+'With pleasure, sir.'
+
+But Simon was unfortunate that morning. The toilet completed, Hugo came
+towards him swinging the gold token, the bearer of which had the right
+to take whatever he chose from all the hundred and thirty-one
+departments of the stores in exchange for a simple receipt.
+
+'I will interview the burglar,' said Hugo. 'But just run down first and
+get me a pair of handcuffs.'
+
+In ten minutes Simon returned crestfallen.
+
+'We do not keep handcuffs, sir,' he stammered.
+
+'Not--keep--! What nonsense! First you tell me that "Fidelio" is not in
+the repertoire, and then you have the effrontery to add that we do not
+keep handcuffs. Shawn, are you not aware that the fundamental principle
+of this establishment is that we keep everything? If we received an
+order for a herd of white elephants--'
+
+'No doubt our arrangement with Jamrach's would enable us to supply them,
+sir,' Simon put in rapidly. 'But handcuffs seem to be a monopoly of the
+State.'
+
+'Evidently, Shawn, you are not familiar with the famous remark of Louis
+the Fourteenth.'
+
+'I am not, sir.'
+
+'He said, "_L'etat, c'est moi_." Show me the catalogue.'
+
+Simon, bearing on his shoulders at that moment the sins of ten managers,
+scurried to bring an immense tome, bound in crimson leather, and
+inscribed in gold, 'Hugo, General Catalogue.' It contained nearly two
+thousand large quarto pages, and above six thousand illustrations. Hugo
+turned solemnly to the exhaustive index, which alone occupied seventy
+pages of small type, and, running his finger down a column, he read
+out, Handbells, handbell-ringers, handbills, hand-embroidered sheets,
+handkerchiefs, handles, handsaws, hansoms, Hardemann's beetle powder,
+hares, haricot beans....'
+
+'Lamentable!' he ejaculated--'lamentable! You will tell Mr.--Mr. Banbury
+this morning to procure some handcuffs, assorted sizes, at once, and to
+add them to the--the--Explorers' Outfit Department.'
+
+'Precisely, sir.'
+
+'In the meantime I shall have to ascend the dome, and face the burglar
+without this necessary of life. Give me the revolver instead.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+POSSIBLE ESCAPE OF SECRETS
+
+
+The top of the dome was fashioned into a kind of belvedere, with a small
+circular gallery. Hugo emerged at the head of the stairs, and saw no
+living thing; but at the sound of his footstep a man sprang nervously
+into view round the curve of the gallery, and fronted him.
+
+Hugo, with his hands still on either rail of the staircase, took the top
+step, gazing the while at his burglar, first in wonder, and then with a
+capricious abandonment to what he considered the humour of the
+situation. He thought of Albert Shawn's account of the meeting between
+Francis Tudor and his visitor in Tudor's flat on the previous night, and
+some fantastic impulse, due to the strain of Welsh blood in him, caused
+him to address the man as Tudor had addressed him:
+
+'Hullo, Louis!'
+
+There was a pause, and then came the reply in a tone which might have
+been ferocious or facetious:
+
+'Well, my young friend?'
+
+It was indeed Louis Ravengar. Dishevelled, fatigued, and unstrung, he
+formed a sinister contrast to Hugo, fresh from repose, cold water and
+music, and also to the spirit of the beautiful summer morning itself,
+which at that unspoilt hour seemed always to sojourn for a space in the
+belvedere. The sun glinted joyously on the golden ornament of the dome,
+and on Hugo's smooth hair, but it revealed without pity the stains on
+Ravengar's flaccid collar and the disorder of his evening clothes and
+opera-hat.
+
+He was a fairly tall man, with thin gray hair round the sides of his
+head, but none on the crown nor on his face, the chief characteristics
+of which were the square jaw, the extremely long upper lip, the flat
+nose, and the very small blue-gray eyes. He looked sixty, and was
+scarcely fifty. He looked one moment like a Nonconformist local preacher
+who had mistaken his vocation; but he was nothing of the kind. He looked
+the next moment like a good hater and a great scorner of scruples; and
+he was.
+
+These two men had not exchanged a word, had not even seen each other,
+save at the rarest intervals, for nearly a quarter of a century. They
+were the principals in a quarrel of the most vivid, satanic, and
+incurable sort known to anthropological science--the family quarrel--and
+the existence of this feud was a proof of the indisputable truth that it
+sometimes takes less than two to make a quarrel. For, though Owen Hugo
+was not absolutely an angel, Ravengar had made it single-handed.
+
+The circumstances of its origin were quite simple. When Louis Ravengar
+was nine years old, his father, a widower, married a widow with one
+child, aged six. That child was Hugo. The two lads, violently different
+in temperament--the one gloomy and secretive, the other buoyant and
+frank--with no tie of blood or of affection, were forced by destiny to
+grow up together in the same house, and by their parents even to sleep
+in the same room. They were never apart, and they loathed each other.
+Louis regarded young Owen as an interloper, and acted towards him as
+boys and tigers will towards interlopers weaker than themselves. The
+mischief was that Owen, in course of years, became a great favourite
+with his step-father. This roused Louis to a fury which was the more
+dangerous in that Owen had begun to overtake him in strength, and the
+fury could, therefore, find no outlet. Then Owen's mother died, and
+Ravengar, senior, married again--a girl this time, who soon discovered
+that the household in which she had planted herself was far too
+bellicose to be comfortable. She abandoned her husband, and sought
+consolation and sympathy with another widower, who also was blessed with
+offspring. Such is the foolishness of women. You cannot cure a woman of
+being one. But it must be said in favour of the third Mrs. Ravengar and
+her consoler that they conducted their affair with praiseworthy
+attention to outward decency. She went to America by one steamer, and
+purchased a divorce in Iowa for two hundred dollars. He followed in the
+next steamer, and they were duly united in Minneapolis. Meanwhile, the
+Ravengar household, left to the ungoverned passions of three males,
+became more and more impossible, and at length old Ravengar expired. In
+his will he stated that it was only from a stern sense of justice that
+he divided his considerable fortune in equal shares between Louis and
+Owen. Had he consulted his inclination, he would have left one shilling
+to Louis, and the remainder to Owen, who alone had been a true son to
+him.
+
+It was a too talkative will. Testators, like politicians, should never
+explain.
+
+Louis, who got as a favour half the fortune of which the whole was, in
+his opinion, his by right, was naturally exasperated in the highest
+degree by the terms of the indiscreet testament, and on the day of the
+funeral he parted from the son of his step-mother, swearing, in a
+somewhat melodramatic manner, that he would be revenged. Hugo was then
+twenty-one, and for twenty-five years he had waited in vain for symptoms
+of the revenge.
+
+And now they met again, in the truest sense strangers. And each had a
+reason for humouring the other, for each wanted to know what the other
+had to do with Camilla Payne.
+
+'So you're determined, Louis,' said Hugo lightly, 'to bring me to my
+knees about the transfer of my business to a limited company, eh?'
+
+'What on earth do you mean, man?' asked Ravengar, whose voice was always
+gruff.
+
+'I refer to Polycarp's visit yesterday.'
+
+'I know nothing of it,' said Ravengar slowly, looking across the
+wilderness of roofs.
+
+'Then why are you here, Louis? Is your revenge at last matured?'
+
+Ravengar controlled himself, and glanced round as if for unseen aid in a
+forlorn enterprise.
+
+'Owen,' he said, moved, 'I'm here because I need your help. I won't say
+anything about the past. I know you were always good-natured. And you've
+worn better than I have. I need your help in a matter of supreme
+importance to me. I became aware last night that you and your men were
+interested in the proceedings at Tudor's flat. I ran here, meaning to
+see you. There was no one in the big circular room downstairs, and no
+one at the entrance. Then I saw your servant coming, and I retreated
+through the door. I wished my presence to be known only to you. The door
+was locked on me. I knocked in vain. Then I stumbled up the stairs, and
+found myself out here. I wanted to calm myself, and here I remained. I
+knew your habit of coming up here at early morning. That is the whole
+explanation of my presence.'
+
+Hugo nodded.
+
+'I guessed as much,' he said. 'I will help you if I can. But first tell
+me what happened in the flat last night after Miss Payne entered while
+you and Tudor were quarrelling. She fired on you?'
+
+'No,' said Ravengar; 'I believe she would have done. It was Tudor who
+drew a revolver and fired. Had I had my own--But I had laid it on a
+table, like a fool, and it disappeared.'
+
+'Is not this it?' asked Hugo, producing Camilla's weapon.
+
+Ravengar nodded, amazed.
+
+'I thought so,' Hugo said, and returned it to his pocket. 'Were you
+wounded?'
+
+'It was nothing. A scratch on the wrist. See! But I left. She--she
+ordered me to. And I saw I had no chance. I came out by the principal
+door on the balcony while you were struggling with the servants' door.'
+
+'Wait a moment,' Hugo put in. 'Tudor knew you were hiding in the flat?'
+
+'Not much!' exclaimed Ravengar. 'I dropped on him like something out of
+the sky. It cost me some trouble to get in. I had a silly old
+housekeeper to dispose of.'
+
+Hugo's heart fell.
+
+'Great heavens!' he sighed.
+
+'Why? What's the matter?'
+
+'Nothing. But tell me what you wanted to get into the flat for at all.
+What is there between you and Tudor?'
+
+'Man! he's taken Camilla from me!' The accents of rage and despair were
+in Ravengar's voice as he uttered these words. 'He's taken her from me!
+She was my typewriter, you know. I fell in love with her. We were
+engaged!'
+
+Hugo was startled for a moment; then he smiled bitterly and
+incredulously. It seemed too monstrous and absurd that Camilla should
+have betrothed herself to this forbidding, ugly, ageing, and terrible
+man.
+
+'You were engaged? Never! Perhaps you aren't aware that she was engaged
+to Tudor?'
+
+'I tell you we were engaged.'
+
+'She accepted you?'
+
+'Why not? I meant well by the girl.'
+
+'And then she disappeared?'
+
+Hugo spoke with a certain cynicism.
+
+'How do you know?' Ravengar demanded angrily.
+
+'I only guess.'
+
+'Well, she did. I can't imagine why. I meant well by her. And the next
+thing is, I find her working in your shop, and in the arms of that
+scoundrel, Tudor.' He hesitated, and then, as he proceeded, his tones
+softened to an appeal. 'Owen, why were you watching last night? I must
+know. It's an affair of life or death to me.'
+
+Hugo did not believe most of Ravengar's story, and he perceived the
+difficulty of his own position and the necessity for caution.
+
+'I was watching because Miss Payne thought herself in some mysterious
+danger,' he said.
+
+'She came to me, as you have done, to ask my help. And I won't hide from
+you that it was she herself who informed me definitely that Tudor had
+invited her to marry him, and that she had consented.'
+
+'She shall not marry him!' cried Ravengar, exasperated.
+
+'You are right,' said Hugo. 'She shall not. I have yet to be convinced
+even that he meant to marry her.'
+
+'The rascal! He and I had business relations for several years before I
+discovered who he was. Of course, you know?'
+
+'Indeed I don't,' said Hugo, 'if he isn't Francis Tudor.'
+
+'He has as much right to the name of Tudor as you have to the name of
+Hugo,' Ravengar sneered. 'He is the son of the man who dishonoured my
+father's name by pretending to marry that woman in Minneapolis. Even if
+I hated my father, I've no cause to love _that_ branch of our
+complicated family connections.'
+
+Hugo whistled.
+
+'I did not think there was so much money there,' he said at length.
+
+'There wasn't. The fellow came into twenty thousand two years ago, and
+he has never earned a cent.'
+
+'Yet he's living at the rate of five thousand a year at least.'
+
+'It's like him!' Ravengar snorted. 'It's like him!'
+
+'Perhaps he can't help it,' Hugo said queerly. 'Everyone isn't like you
+and me.'
+
+'He can help robbing me of my future wife!'
+
+'But she left you of her own accord.'
+
+'Owen, she must marry me. It is essential. You must bring your influence
+to bear,' Ravengar burst out wildly. 'She must be my wife!'
+
+'My dear fellow,' Hugo protested calmly, 'what are you dreaming of? I
+have no influence. You talk like a man at his wits' end.'
+
+There was a silence.
+
+'I am a man at his wits' end,' Ravengar murmured, half sadly. 'I trusted
+that girl. She knows all my secrets.'
+
+'What secrets?' asked Hugo, struck by the phrase.
+
+'My business secrets, of course. What else do you fancy?'
+
+'My fancy is too active,' said Hugo, with careful casualness. 'It runs
+away with me. I was thinking of other sorts of secrets, and of that
+curious principle of English law that a wife can't give evidence against
+her husband.... You must pardon my fancy,' he added.
+
+'Do you mean to insinuate that my eagerness to marry Camilla Payne is in
+order to prevent her from being able to--'
+
+'No, Louis; I mean to insinuate nothing. Can't you see a joke?'
+
+'I cannot,' said Ravengar. 'Not that variety of joke.'
+
+'The appreciation of humour was never your strong point.'
+
+Something in Hugo's manner made Ravengar spring forward; then he checked
+himself.
+
+'Owen,' he entreated, 'don't let's quarrel again. I beg you to help me.
+Help me, and I'll promise never to interfere with you in your
+business--I'll swear it.'
+
+'Then it was you, after all, that instructed Polycarp?'
+
+Ravengar gave an affirmative sign.
+
+'I meant either to get hold of this place or to ruin you. Remember what
+I suffered--in the old days.... You see I'm frank with you. Help me.
+We're neither of us growing younger. I'm mad for that girl, and I must
+have her.'
+
+Hugo put his hands into his pockets, and consulted his toes. This
+semi-step-brother of his somehow aroused his compassion.
+
+'No, Louis,' he said; 'I can't.'
+
+'You hate me?'
+
+'Not a bit.'
+
+'Do you think I'm too old to marry, or what is it?'
+
+'It's just like this, Louis, my friend: I have every intention of
+marrying Miss Payne myself.'
+
+'You!... Ah!... Indeed!'
+
+'I have so decided. And when I decide, the thing is as good as done.'
+
+'And that's why you were watching last night! Good! Oh, good! Only I
+may as well inform you, Owen, that if Camilla Payne marries anyone but
+me, there will be murder. And no ordinary murder, either!'
+
+Hugo took a turn in the gallery. He felt genuinely sorry for the gray
+and desperate man, driven by the intensity of emotion to utterances
+which were merely absurd.
+
+'Louis,' he remarked, with a melancholy kindliness of tone, 'fate has a
+grudge against us two. It ruined our youth, and now it's embroiling us
+once more. Can't we both be philosophical? Can't we contrive to look at
+the thing in a--'
+
+'Enough!' Ravengar almost yelled. 'You always talked that kind of d----d
+nonsense, you did! Unless you can arrange to say you'll give her up, you
+may as well hold your tongue.'
+
+'Very well,' said Hugo, 'I'll hold my tongue.'
+
+'That's all, then?'
+
+'Quite all.'
+
+'I suppose I can go? You'll let me pass? You'll not exercise your right
+to treat me as a burglar?'
+
+'There are the stairs. Pass Shawn boldly. He is terrible, but he will
+not eat you.'
+
+'Thanks.'
+
+'And that is the unrivalled company promoter! And this is life!' Hugo
+meditated when he was alone on the dome.
+
+He leaned over the railing of the gallery, and watched his legions
+gathering for the day's battle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+ORANGE-BLOSSOM
+
+
+Some two hours later Hugo was in one of the common rooms devoted to the
+leisure and diversion of the legions in the upper basement: a large and
+bright apartment, ornamented with bookcases, wicker chairs, and
+reproductions of all that was most uplifting in graphic art. It was the
+domain of the ladies engaged in Departments 30 to 45, and was managed by
+an elected committee of their number. Affixed to the walls, in and out
+among the specimens of graphic art, were quite a lot of little red
+diamond squares, containing in white the words, 'Do it now,' in
+excessively readable letters. A staff notice about the early closing of
+the previous day had been pinned up near the door, and printed
+information relating to a trip to the Isle of Man, balloting for the use
+of motor-cars on Sundays, and a gratis book entitled 'Human Nature in
+Shoppers,' were also prominent. Above the fireplace was a fine mirror,
+and Hugo was personally engaged in pasting on the mirror a fine and
+effective poster, which ran as follows:
+
+'Interesting. Last year the sales of the Children's Boot and Shoe
+Department surpassed the sales of the Ladies' Ditto by L558. In the
+first half of this year, on the contrary, the sales of the Ladies' Boot
+and Shoe Department have surpassed the sales of the Children's Ditto by
+L25. Great credit is due to the staff of the L.B. and S.D. But will the
+staff of the C.B. and S.D. allow themselves to be thus wiped out? That
+is the question, and Mr. Hugo will watch for the answer. Managers'
+Council, July 10th.'
+
+Hugo, as the supreme head of Hugo's, had organized his establishment in
+such a manner as to leave no regular duties for himself, conformably to
+the maxim that a well-managed business is a business which runs smoothly
+and efficiently when the manager is not managing, and to that other
+maxim that the highest aim of the competent manager should be to make
+himself unnecessary. Hence he was perfectly at liberty to be wayward and
+freakish in his activities from time to time. And this happened to be
+one of his wayward and freakish mornings. There were, however, few
+young women in the common room to behold his aberration, for the hour
+was within two minutes of nine, and at nine o'clock the latest of the
+legionaries was supposed to be at her post. Three girls who were being
+hastily served with glasses of milk by a pink-aproned waitress politely
+feigned not to see him. Then another girl ran in, and she, too, had to
+pretend that the spectacle of Hugo pasting posters on mirrors was one of
+the most ordinary in life. Hugo glanced at this last comer in the
+mirror, and sighed a secret disappointment.
+
+The interview with Louis Ravengar had left him less perturbed than might
+be imagined--at any rate, as regards Ravengar's own share in what had
+occurred and what was to occur. He was inclined to leave Ravengar out of
+the account, and to put the greater part of his hysterical appeals and
+threats down to the effect of a sleepless and highly unusual night. That
+Ravengar was absolutely sincere in his desire to marry Camilla he did
+not doubt, and he fully shared the frenzied man's determination that
+Camilla should not marry Francis Tudor. But beyond this Hugo did not go.
+He certainly did not go so far as to believe that Camilla had ever
+formally engaged herself to Ravengar. He thought it just possible that
+Ravengar might have committed a crime, or several crimes, and that
+Camilla might have knowledge of them, but the question whether Ravengar
+was or was not a criminal appeared to him to be a little off the point.
+
+The unique point was his own prospects with Camilla. It may be said that
+he felt capable of shielding her from forty Ravengars.
+
+He had torn prudence to shreds, and stamped on it, that morning, and had
+gone down boldly and directly to Department 42 at a quarter to nine, in
+order to meet Camilla. And she had not then arrived. He had then
+conceived the idea of, and the excuse for, a visit to the common room,
+through which every assistant was obliged to pass on her way to the
+receipt of custom. In the whole history of Hugo's a poster had never
+before been known to be posted on a mirror, which is utterly the wrong
+place for a poster, but Hugo had chosen the mirror as the field of his
+labours solely that he might surreptitiously observe every soul that
+entered the room.
+
+The clock on the mantelpiece struck nine, and the last assistant had
+fled, and Hugo was left alone with the pink-aproned waitress, who was
+collecting glasses on a tray.
+
+'Has Miss Payne come this morning?' he asked casually of the girl,
+patting the poster like an artist absorbed in his work.
+
+It was a reckless question. He well knew that in half an hour the whole
+basement would be aware that Mr. Hugo had asked after Miss Payne, but he
+scorned the whole basement.
+
+'Miss who, sir?'
+
+'Miss Payne, of the millinery department.'
+
+'A tall young lady, sir?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'With chestnut hair?'
+
+'Now you have me,' he lied.
+
+'I fancy I know who you mean, sir; and now I come to think of it, I
+don't think she has.'
+
+The waitress spoke in an apologetic tone, and looked at the clock with
+an apologetic look. She was no fool, that waitress.
+
+'Thank you.'
+
+As he left the room Albert Shawn entered by the other door, and,
+perceiving nobody but the waitress, kissed the waitress, and was kissed
+by her heartily.
+
+Hugo's deportment was debonnair, but his heart had seriously sunk. Just
+as he had before been quite sure that Camilla would come as usual, now
+he was quite sure that she would not come as usual. Ever since he had
+learnt from Ravengar that Tudor had been ignorant of Ravengar's presence
+in the flat, and that Ravengar had had to 'dispose of' the housekeeper,
+a horrid suspicion had lurked at the back of his mind, and now this
+suspicion sprang out upon his hopes of Camilla's arrival, and fairly
+strangled them. And the suspicion was that Camilla had misjudged Francis
+Tudor, that his intentions had throughout been perfectly honourable, and
+that on her return to the flat he had quickly convinced Camilla of this.
+
+In which case, where did he, Hugo, come in?
+
+As for the terms of the note, he perceived that he had interpreted them
+in a particular way because he wished to interpret them in a particular
+way.
+
+He ascended in the direction of Department 42. Perhaps, after all, she
+had escaped his vigilance, and was at her duties.
+
+On the way thither he was accosted by a manager.
+
+'Mr. Hugo.'
+
+'Well, Banbury?'
+
+'I telephoned to New Scotland Yard, but they refused any information.
+However, I've got a pair from the nearest police-station. I shall order
+our blacksmiths to make a dozen pairs to pattern. They will be in next
+month's catalogue.'
+
+'I congratulate you, Banbury.'
+
+And he passed on. The early-rising customers were beginning to invade
+the galleries, the cashiers in their confessional-boxes were settling
+themselves in their seats, faultless shopwalkers were giving a final
+hitch to their lovely collars, and the rank-and-file were preparing to
+receive cavalry. The vast machine had started, slowly and deliberately,
+as an express engine starts. And already the heat, as yesterday, was
+formidable. But _she_ would not suffer to-day; she was not in Department
+42.
+
+He went further and further, aimlessly penetrating to the very heart of
+the jungle of departments. He had glimpses of departments that he had
+not seen for weeks. At length he came to the verdant and delicious
+Flower Department (hot-house branch), and by chance he caught a word
+which brought him to a standstill.
+
+'What's that?' he asked sharply, of a salesman in white.
+
+'Order for orange-blossom, sir. A single sprig only. Rather a curious
+order, sir.'
+
+'You can supply it?'
+
+'Without doubt, sir.'
+
+'Who is the customer?'
+
+'Mr. Francis Tudor,' replied the salesman, looking at a paper. 'No. 7,
+the Flats.'
+
+'Ah yes,' he said; and thought: 'My life is over.'
+
+He gazed with unseeing eyes into the green and shady recesses of the
+palmarium, where water trickled and tinkled.
+
+What was the power, the influence, the lever, which Francis Tudor was
+using to induce Camilla to marry him--him whom, on her own statement,
+she did not love? And could Louis Ravengar be in earnest, after all,
+with his savage threats?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+'WHICH?'
+
+
+'And when I decide, the thing is as good as done.' Those proud, vain
+words of his, spoken to Louis Ravengar with all the arrogance of a man
+who had never met Fate like a lion in the path, often recurred to Hugo's
+mind during the next few weeks. And their futility exasperated him. He
+had decided to win Camilla, and therefore Camilla was as good as won!
+Only, she had been married on the very morning of those boastful words
+by license at a registry-office to Francis Tudor. The strange admixture
+of orange-blossom and registry-office was not the only strange thing
+about the wedding. It was clear, for example, that Tudor must have
+arranged the preliminaries of the ceremony before the bride's consent
+had been obtained--unless, indeed, Camilla had garbled the truth to Hugo
+on the previous night; and Hugo did not believe this to be possible.
+
+Albert Shawn had brought the news hour by hour to Hugo.
+
+After the wedding, the pair drove to Mr. Tudor's flat, where Senior
+Polycarp paid them a brief visit.
+
+Then Hugo received by messenger a note from Tudor formally regretting
+that his wife had left her employment without due notice, and enclosing
+a cheque for the amount of a month's wages in lieu thereof.
+
+And then Mr. and Mrs. Tudor had departed for Paris by the two-twenty
+Folkstone-Boulogne service from Charing Cross. And the gorgeous flat was
+shut up.
+
+Albert Shawn had respectfully inquired whether there remained anything
+else to be done in the affair, far more mysterious to Albert than it was
+even to Hugo.
+
+'No,' Hugo had said shortly.
+
+He was Hugo, with extraordinary resources at hand, but a quite ordinary
+circumstance, such as ten minutes spent in a registry-office, will
+sometimes outweigh all the resources in the world when the success of a
+scheme hangs in the balance.
+
+What could he do, in London or in Paris, civilized and police-ridden
+cities?
+
+Civilization left him but one thing to do--to acknowledge his defeat,
+and to mourn the incomparable beauty and the distinguished spirit which
+had escaped his passionate grasp. And to this acknowledgment and this
+mourning he was reduced, feeling that he was no longer Hugo.
+
+It was perhaps natural, however, that his employes should have been made
+to feel that he was more Hugo than ever. For a month he worked as he had
+never worked before, and three thousand five hundred people, perspiring
+under his glance and under the sun of a London August, knew exactly the
+reason why. The intense dramatic and sentimental interest surrounding
+Camilla Payne's disappearance from Department 42 was the sole thing
+which atoned to the legionaries for the inconvenience of Hugo's mistimed
+activity.
+
+Then suddenly he fell limp; he perceived the uselessness of this attempt
+to forget in Sloane Street, and he decided to try the banks of a certain
+trout-stream on Dartmoor. He knew that with all the sun-glare of that
+season, and the water doubtless running a great deal too fine, he would
+be as likely to catch trout on Dartmoor as on the Thames Embankment; but
+he determined to go, and he announced his determination, and the entire
+personnel, from the managers to the sweepers, murmured privily, 'Thank
+Heaven!'
+
+The moment came for the illustrious departure. His electric coupe stood
+at his private door, and his own luggage and Simon Shawn's luggage--for
+Simon never entrusted his master to other hands--lay on the roof of the
+coupe. Simon, anxiously looking at his watch, chatted with the driver.
+Hugo had been stopped on emerging from the lift by the chief accountant
+concerning some technical question. At length he came out into the
+street.
+
+'Shaving it close, aren't we, Simon?' he remarked, and sprang into the
+vehicle, and Simon banged the door and sprang on to the box, and they
+seemed to be actually off, much to the relief of Simon, who wanted a
+holiday badly.
+
+But they were not actually off. At that very instant, as the driver
+pulled his lever, Albert Shawn came frantically into the scene from
+somewhere, and signalled the driver to wait. Simon cursed his brother.
+
+'Mr. Hugo,' Albert whispered, as he put his head into the coupe.
+
+'Well, my lad?'
+
+'I suppose you've heard? They've turned up again at the flat. Yes, this
+morning.'
+
+'Who have turned up again?'
+
+'That's the point, sir. Some of 'em. And there's been a funeral
+ordered.'
+
+'A funeral? Whose funeral? From _us_?
+
+'Yes, sir; but whose--that's another point. You see, I've just run along
+to let you know how far I've got. Not that you gave me any instructions.
+But when I heard of a funeral--'
+
+'Is it a man's or a woman's?' Hugo demanded, thinking to himself: 'I
+must keep calm. I must keep calm.'
+
+'Don't know, sir.'
+
+'But surely the order-book--'
+
+'No order for coffin, sir. Merely the cortege; day after to-morrow;
+parties making their own arrangements at cemetery. Brompton.'
+
+'And did none of the porters see who arrived at the flat this morning?'
+
+'None of 'em knows enough to be sure, sir.'
+
+'Well,' said Hugo, 'there isn't likely to be a funeral without a coffin,
+and no porter could be blind to a coffin going upstairs.'
+
+'I can't get wind of any coffin, sir.'
+
+'And that's all you've learnt?'
+
+'That's the hang of it, sir--up to now. But I can wire you to-night or
+to-morrow, with further particulars.'
+
+Hugo glanced at the carriage-clock in front of him, and thought of the
+famine of porters at Waterloo Station in August, and invented several
+other plausible excuses for a resolution which he foresaw that he was
+about to arrive at.
+
+'You've made me miss my train,' he said, pretending to be annoyed.
+
+'Sorry, sir. Simon, the governor isn't going.'
+
+Simon descended from the box for confirmation, a fratricide in all but
+deed.
+
+'Have the luggage taken upstairs,' Hugo commanded.
+
+He sat for seven hours in the dome, scarcely moving.
+
+At nine o'clock Albert was announced.
+
+'Coffin just come up, sir,' he said, 'from railway-station.'
+
+But that was the limit of his news.
+
+Within an hour Hugo went to bed. He could not sleep; he had known that
+he could not sleep. The wild and savage threat of Louis Ravengar, and
+the question, 'Which?' haunted his brain. At one o'clock in the morning
+he switched on all the lights, rose out of bed, and walked aimlessly
+about the chamber. Something, some morbid impulse, prompted him to take
+up the General Catalogue, which lay next to a priceless copy of the 1603
+edition of Florio's 'Montaigne.' There were pages and pages about
+funerals in the General Catalogue, and forty fine photographic specimens
+of tombstones and monuments.
+
+'Funerals conducted in town or country.... Cremations and embalmments
+undertaken.... Special stress is laid on the appearance and efficiency
+of the attendants, and on the reverent manner in which they perform all
+their duties.... A shell finished with satin, with robe, etc.... All
+necessary service.... A hearse (or open car, as preferred) and four
+horses, three mourning coaches, with two horses each. Coachmen and
+attendants in mourning, with gloves. Superintendent, L38.... Estimates
+for cremation on application.... Broken column, in marble, L70. The
+same, with less carving, L48.' And so on, and so on; and at the top of
+every page: 'Hugo, Sloane Street, London. Telegraphic address:
+"Complete, London." Hugo, Sloane Street, London. Telegraphic address:
+"Complete, London." Hugo--'
+
+Whom was he going to bury the day after to-morrow--he, Hugo,
+undertaker, with his reverent attendants of appearance guaranteed
+respectable?
+
+The great catalogue slipped to the floor with a terrible noise, and
+Simon Shawn sprang out from his lair, and stopped at the sight of his
+master in pyjamas under the full-blazing electric chandelier.
+
+'All serene,' said Hugo; 'I only dropped a book. Go to sleep. Perhaps we
+may reach Devonshire to-morrow,' he added kindly.
+
+He sympathized with Simon.
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+He thought he would take a stroll on the roof; it might calm his
+nerves.... Foolishness! How much wiser to take a sedative!
+
+Then he turned to the Montaigne, and after he had glanced at various
+pages, his eye encountered a sentence in italics: _'Wisdome hath hir
+excesses, and no lesse need of moderation, than follie.'_
+
+'True,' he murmured.
+
+He dressed, and went out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE COFFIN
+
+
+He was in that mental condition, familiar to every genuine man of
+action, in which, though the mind divides against itself, and there is
+an apparently even conflict between two impulses, the battle is lost and
+won before it is fought, and the fight is nothing but a sham fight. He
+wandered about the roofs; he went as far as the restaurant garden, and
+turned on all the electric festoons and standards by the secret switch,
+and sat down solitary at a table before an empty glass which a waiter
+had forgotten to remove. He extinguished the lights, wandered back to
+the dome, climbed to the topmost gallery, and saw the moon rising over
+St. Paul's Cathedral. He said he would go to bed again at once, well
+knowing that he would not go to bed again at once. He swore that he
+would conquer the overmastering impulse, well knowing that it would
+conquer him. He cursed, as men only curse themselves. And then,
+suddenly, he yielded, gladly, with relief.
+
+He hastened out, and did not pause till he reached the balcony of flat
+No. 7 in the further quadrangle. He admitted frankly now that the
+dominant impulse which controlled his mind would force him to enter the
+flat during that night, by means lawful or unlawful, and he perceived
+with satisfaction that the great French window of the drawing-room was
+not quite shut. The blinds, however, had been carefully lowered, and
+nothing of the interior was revealed save the fact that a light burned
+within. In the entire quadrangle, round which, tier above tier, hundreds
+of people were silent in sleep or in vigil, this was the sole
+illumination. Hugo leaned over the balcony, and tried to pierce the
+depths of the vast pit below, and those thoughts came to him which come
+to watchers by night in the presence of sleeping armies, or on the high
+sea. The eternal and insoluble question troubled and teased him, and
+would not be put aside. In imagination, he felt the very swish of the
+planet as it whirled through space with its cargo of pitiful humanity.
+What, after all, were life, love, ambition, grief, death? What, in the
+incessant march of suns, could be the value of a few restless specks of
+vitality clinging with desperation to a minor orb?
+
+And then he fancied he could hear a sound within the flat, and he forgot
+these transcendental speculations, and for him the secret of the
+universe lay behind the blinds of Francis Tudor's drawing-room. Yes, he
+could hear a sound. It was the distant sound of a man talking--loudly,
+slowly, and distinctly--but too far off for him to catch even one word.
+He guessed, as he pushed the window a little wider open, and bent his
+ear to the aperture, that the voice must be in a room beyond the
+drawing-room. It continued monotonously for a long time, with little
+breaks at rare intervals; it was rather like a parson reading a sermon
+in an empty church. Then it ceased. And there were footsteps, which
+approached the window, and retired. He noticed that the light within the
+room was being moved, but it cast no human shadow on the blind. The
+light came finally to a standstill, and then there followed sounds which
+Hugo could not diagnose--short, regular sounds, broken occasionally by a
+sharp clash, as of an instrument falling. And when these had come to an
+end, there were more footsteps--a precise, quick walking to and fro,
+which continued for ages of time. Lastly, the footsteps receded;
+something dropped, not heavily, but rather in a manner gently subsiding,
+and a groan (or was it a moan, a tired suspiration?) wakened in Hugo's
+spinal column a curious, strange thrill. Then silence, complete,
+definitive, terrifying.
+
+By merely pushing the window against the blind, he could enter and know
+the secret of the universe.
+
+'Why am I doing this?' he asked himself, while he pushed the window.
+'Why have I done this?' he asked himself, as he stood within the immense
+and luxurious room.
+
+He gazed round with a swift and timid glance, as a man would who expects
+to see that which ought not to be seen. To his left was the fireplace,
+with a magnificent mirror over it. On the mantelpiece burned a movable
+electric table--lamp, with twin branched lights. He observed the
+silk-covered cord lying across the mantelpiece and disappearing over the
+further edge; by the side of the lamp was a screwdriver. Exactly in
+front of the lamp, on a couple of trestles such as undertakers use, lay
+an elm coffin, its head towards the mantelpiece. At the opposite end of
+the room was another fireplace and another mirror, with the result that
+Hugo saw an endless succession of coffins and corpse-lights, repeated
+and repeated, till they were lost in a vague crystal blur, and by every
+pair of corpse-lights was a screwdriver.
+
+He stood moveless, and listened, and could detect no faintest sound.
+Across the room from the principal window there was a doorway with a
+heavy portiere; not a fold of the portiere stirred. To his right, near
+the other window, was a door--the door by which Camilla had entered that
+night a month ago; it was shut. His glance searched among the rich
+confusion of furniture--fauteuils, occasional tables, sofas, statuary,
+vases, cabinets. He peered into every corner of the silent chamber, and
+saw nothing that gave a sign of life. He even gazed up guiltily at the
+decorated ceiling, as though some Freemason's Eye might be scanning him
+from above.
+
+The coffin reigned in the room; all else was subservient to its massive
+and sinister presence, and the bright twin-lamps watched over its
+majesty with dazzling orbs.
+
+Hugo went near the coffin, stepping on tip-toe over the thick-piled
+rugs, and examined it. There was no name-plate. He looked at himself in
+the mirror, and again he murmured a question: 'Why am I here?' Then he
+listened attentively, fearfully. No sound. His hands travelled to the
+screwdriver on the mantelpiece, and then fifty of his hands picked up
+fifty screwdrivers. And he listened once more. No sound.
+
+'I must do it. I must,' he thought.
+
+The next moment he was unscrewing the screws in the lid of the coffin,
+and scarcely had he begun the task when he realized that what he had
+heard from the balcony was the screwing of these same screws. There were
+twelve, and some of them were difficult to start, but in due course he
+had removed them all, and they stood in a row on their heads on the
+mantelpiece. He listened yet again. No sound. He had only to push the
+lid of the coffin to the left or to the right, or to lift it up. He
+spent several seconds in deciding whether he should push or lift, and
+then at length fifty Hugos lifted bodily the lids of fifty coffins. And
+after a dreadful hesitation he lowered his gaze and looked.
+
+Yes, it was Camilla! He had known always that it would be Camilla.
+
+The pale repose of death only emphasized the proud and splendid beauty
+of that head, with its shut eyes, its mouth firmly closed in a faint
+smile, and its glorious hair surrounded by all the white frippery of the
+shroud. Here lay the mortal part of the incomparable creature who had
+been coveted by three men and won by one--for a few brief days'
+possession. Here lay the repository of Ravengar's secrets, the grave of
+Hugo's happiness, the dead mate of Tudor's desire. Here lay the eternal
+woman, symbol of all beauty and all charm, victimized by her own
+loveliness. For if she had not been lovely, thought Hugo, if the curves
+of her cheek and her nostrils and the colour of her skin had been ever
+so slightly different, the world might have contained one widower, one
+ruined heart, and one murderer the less that night.
+
+He did not doubt, he could not doubt, after Ravengar's threats, that she
+had been murdered. And yet he was not angry then. He did not feel a
+great grief. He was conscious of no sensation save a numbed and desolate
+awe. He had not begun to feel. Ledging the lid crossways on the coffin,
+he placed his hand gently upon Camilla's brow. It was colder than he had
+expected, and it had the peculiar hard, inelastic touch of incipient
+decay--that touch which communicates a shudder even to the most
+impassive.
+
+'I must go,' he whispered, staring spell-bound at her face.
+
+He was surprised to find drops of moisture falling on the shroud. They
+were his tears, and yet he had not known that he was crying.
+
+He hid her again beneath the elm plank, and, taking the screws one by
+one from the mantel-piece, shut her up for ever from any human gaze. And
+then, nearly collapsing under a nervous tension such as he had never
+before experienced, he turned to leave the apartment as he had entered
+it, like a thief. But the mystery of the heavy velvet portiere
+invincibly attracted him. His steps wavered towards it. He fancied he
+saw something dark protruding under the curtain, and he pulled the
+curtain aside with a movement almost hysteric. A man lay extended at
+full length on his chest in the passage beyond--what Hugo had noticed
+was his boot.
+
+'Tudor!' he exclaimed, kneeling to examine the half-concealed face.
+
+At the same moment a figure came quietly down the passage. Hugo looked
+up, and saw a sallow-featured man of about thirty-five in a tourist
+suit, with light beard and hair, and long thin hands.
+
+'What is this?' asked the stranger evenly. 'Who are you?'
+
+'My name is Hugo,' Hugo answered with assurance. 'I was walking along
+the balconies, as I do sometimes at night, and I heard strange sounds
+here, and as the window was open I stepped in and found this. Are you a
+friend of Mr. Tudor's?'
+
+The other bent in his turn, and after examining the prone body said:
+
+'I was. He has no friends now.'
+
+'You mean he is dead?'
+
+'He must have died within the last quarter of an hour or so.'
+
+'And nothing can be done?'
+
+'Nothing can be done with death!'
+
+'I take it you are a doctor?' said Hugo.
+
+'My name is Darcy,' the other replied. 'Besides being Tudor's friend, I
+was his physician.'
+
+'Yet even for a physician,' Hugo pursued, 'it seems to me that you have
+been able to decide very quickly that your friend and patient is dead. I
+have always understood that to say with assurance that death has taken
+place means a very careful and thorough examination.'
+
+'You are right,' Darcy agreed, stroking his short, bright, silky beard.
+'There is only one absolute proof of death.'
+
+'And that is?'
+
+'Putrefaction. Nevertheless, the inquest will show whether or not I have
+been in error.'
+
+'There will have to be an inquest?'
+
+'Certainly. In such a case as this no doctor in his senses would give
+his certificate without a post-mortem, and though I am an enthusiast, I
+am in my senses, Mr. Hugo.'
+
+'An enthusiast?'
+
+'Let me explain. My friend Tudor was suffering from one of the rarest of
+all maladies--malignant disease of the heart. The text-books will tell
+you that malignant disease of the heart has probably never been
+diagnosed. It is a disease of which there are no symptoms, in which the
+patient generally suffers no pain, and for which there is no treatment.
+Nevertheless, in my enthusiasm, I have diagnosed in this case that a
+very considerable extent of the cardiac wall was affected by
+epithelioma. We shall see. Not long since I condemned Tudor to an early
+and sudden death--a death which might be hastened by circumstances.'
+
+'Poor chap!' Hugo murmured.
+
+The dead man looked so young, artless, and content.
+
+'Why "poor"?' Darcy turned on him sharply but coldly. 'Is not a sudden
+death the best? Would you not wish it for yourself, for your friends?'
+
+'Yes,' said Hugo; 'but when one is dead one is dead. That's all I
+meant.'
+
+'I have heard much of you, Mr. Hugo,' said the other. 'And, if I may be
+excused a certain bluntness, it is very obvious that, though you say
+little, you are no ordinary man. Can it be possible that you have lived
+so long and so fully and are yet capable of pitying the dead? Have you
+not learnt that it is only _they_ who are happy?' He vaguely indicated
+the corpse. 'If you will be so good as to assist me--'
+
+'Willingly,' said Hugo, who could find nothing else to say. 'I suppose
+we must call the servants?'
+
+'Why call the servants? To begin with, there is only one here, a
+somewhat antique housekeeper. Let her sleep. She has been through
+sufficient to-day. Morning will be time enough for the futile
+formalities which civilization has invented to protect itself. Night,
+which is the season of death, should not be disturbed by them.'
+
+'As you think best,' Hugo concurred.
+
+'And now,' Darcy began, in a somewhat relieved tone, when he had
+finished his task, and the remains of Francis Tudor lay decently covered
+on a sofa in the drawing-room, that mortuary chamber, 'will you oblige
+me by coming into the study for a while? I am not in the mood for sleep,
+and perhaps you are not. And I will admit frankly that I should prefer
+not to be alone at present. Yes,' he added, with a faint deprecatory
+smile, 'my theories about death are thoroughly philosophical, but one
+cannot always act up to one's theories.'
+
+And in the study, at the other end of the flat, far from the relics of
+humanity, he began to roll cigarettes with marvellous swiftness in his
+long thin fingers.
+
+Hugo surmised that under his singular and almost glacial calm the man
+concealed a temperament highly nervous and sensitive.
+
+'You do not inquire about the--the coffin?' said Darcy at length, when
+they had smoked for a few moments in silence.
+
+As a fact, Hugo had determined that, at no matter what cost to his
+feelings, he would not be the first to mention the other fatality.
+
+The two men looked at each other, and each blew out a lance of smoke.
+
+'What did she die of?' Hugo demanded curtly.
+
+'You are aware, then, who it is?'
+
+'Naturally, I guessed.'
+
+'Ah! she died of typhoid fever. You knew her?'
+
+'I knew her.'
+
+'Of course; I remember. She was in your employ. Yes,' he sighed; 'she
+contracted typhoid fever in Paris. It's always more or less endemic
+there. And what with this hot summer and their water-supply and their
+drainage, it's been more rife than usual lately. Tudor called me in at
+once. I am qualified both in England and France, but I practise in
+Paris. It was a fairly ordinary case, except that she suffered from
+severe and persistent headaches at the beginning. But in typhoid the
+danger is seldom in the fever; it is in the complications. She had a
+haemorrhage. I--I failed. A haemorrhage in typhoid is not necessarily
+fatal, but it often proves so. She died from exhaustion.'
+
+'I thought,' said Hugo, in a low, unnatural voice, 'that typhoid marked
+the patient--spots on the face.'
+
+'Not invariably. Oh no; but why do you say that?'
+
+'I only meant that I hope her face was not marked.'
+
+'It was not. You mean that you hope her face was not marked because she
+was so beautiful?'
+
+'Exactly,' said Hugo. 'And so Tudor brought the body over to England for
+burial?'
+
+'Yes; he insisted on that. And he insisted on my coming with him. I
+could not refuse.'
+
+'And now he, too, is gone! Tell me, was he expecting it--his own death?'
+
+Darcy lighted another cigarette.
+
+'Who can say?' he observed to the ceiling. 'Who can say what
+premonitions such a man may not have had?'
+
+'I heard talking before I came into the flat from the balcony,' said
+Hugo abruptly. 'It went on for a long time. Was it you and he?'
+
+'No,' the doctor replied; 'I was in here, writing.' He pointed to some
+papers on a desk. 'I did not even hear him fall.'
+
+'Yet you heard me?'
+
+'No, I didn't. I was just coming to find out what Tudor was doing when I
+saw you.'
+
+'It is curious that I heard talking, and walking about, too.'
+
+'Possibly he was talking to himself. Did you hear two voices?'
+
+'Perhaps I heard only one.'
+
+'Then no doubt he was talking to himself. You won't be surprised to
+learn that he had been in an excessively emotional condition all day....
+It is all very sad. Only a month ago, and Tudor was--but what am I
+saying? Who knows what perils and misfortunes he--they--may not have
+escaped? For my part, I envy--yes, I envy Tudor.'
+
+'But not her? You do not envy her? In your quality of philosophy, you
+regret _her_ death?'
+
+'Do not ask me to be consistent,' said the philosopher, after a long
+pause.
+
+Hugo rose and approached Darcy.
+
+'Are you acquainted with a man named Louis Ravengar?' he demanded in a
+rather loud tone.
+
+The doctor scanned his face.
+
+'I have heard Tudor mention the name, but I do not know him.'
+
+'And upon my soul I believe you,' cried Hugo. 'Nevertheless--'
+
+'Nevertheless what?'
+
+Darcy seemed startled. Hugo's strange outburst was indeed startling.
+
+'Oh, nothing!' Hugo muttered. 'Nothing.' He walked to the window, which
+looked out on Blair Street. The first heralds of the dawn were in the
+eastern sky, and the moon overhead was paling. 'It will be daylight in a
+minute,' he said. 'I must go. Come with me first to the drawing-room,
+will you?'
+
+And they passed together along the passage to the drawing-room, where
+the electric lamp was still keeping watch. Hugo stood by the side of the
+coffin.
+
+'What is it?' Darcy quietly asked.
+
+'Have you ever been in love?' Hugo questioned him.
+
+'Yes,' said Darcy.
+
+'Then I will tell you. You will understand. I must tell someone. I loved
+her.'
+
+He touched the elm-wood gently, and hurried out of the room by the
+French window.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Four days later Mr. Senior Polycarp called on Hugo in his central
+office.
+
+In the meantime the inquest had proved the correctness of Mr. Darcy's
+diagnosis. Francis Tudor was buried, and Francis Tudor's wife was
+buried. Hugo, who had accompanied the funerals disguised as one of his
+own 'respectful attendants,' saw scarcely anyone. He had to recover the
+command of his own soul, and to adopt some definite attitude towards the
+army of suspicions which naturally had assailed him. Could he believe
+Darcy? He decided that he could, and that he must. Darcy had inspired
+him with confidence, and there was no doubt that the man had an
+extensive practice in Paris, and was well known at the British Embassy.
+Camilla, then, had really died of typhoid fever on her honeymoon, and
+hence Ravengar had not murderously compassed her death. And people did
+die of typhoid fever, and people did die on their honeymoons.
+
+Either Ravengar's threats had been idle, or Fate had mercifully robbed
+him of the opportunity to execute them. Hugo remembered that he had
+begun by regarding the threats as idle, and that it was only later, in
+presence of Camilla's corpse, that he had thought otherwise of them. So
+he drove back the army of suspicions, and settled down to accustom
+himself to the eternal companionship of a profound and irremediable
+grief.
+
+Then it was that Polycarp called.
+
+'I come to you,' said the white-moustached solicitor, 'on behalf of my
+late client, Mr. Tudor. He made his will after his marriage, and before
+starting for Paris, and it contains a peculiar clause. Mr. Tudor had the
+flat on a three years' agreement, renewable at his option for a further
+period of two years. Over two years of the three are expired.'
+
+'That is so,' said Hugo. 'You want to get rid of the tenancy at once?
+Well, I don't mind. I can easily--'
+
+'No,' Polycarp interrupted him, 'I wish to give notice of renewal. The
+will provides that if the testator should die within two months of the
+date of it the flat shall be sealed up exactly as it stands for twelve
+months after his death, and that the estate shall be held by me, as
+executor and trustee, for that period, and then dealt with according to
+instructions deposited in the testator's private safe in the vault which
+I rent from you in your Safe Deposit.'
+
+'But--'
+
+'I have just sealed up the flat--doors, windows, ventilators,
+everything.'
+
+'Mr. Polycarp, this is impossible.'
+
+'Not at all. It is done.'
+
+'But the reason?'
+
+'I know no more than yourself. As executor, I have carried out the
+terms of the will. I thought that you, as landlord, were entitled to the
+information which I have given you.'
+
+'As landlord,' said Hugo, 'I object. And I shall demand entrance.'
+
+'On what ground?'
+
+'Under the clause which in all tenancy agreements gives the landlord the
+right to enter at reasonable times in order to inspect the condition of
+the premises,' Hugo answered defiantly to the lawyer.
+
+'I had considered that. But I shall dispute the right. You may bring an
+action. What then? No court will give you leave to force an entrance. An
+Englishman's furnished flat, just as much as his house, is his castle. I
+could certainly keep you out for a year.'
+
+'And may I ask why you are so anxious to keep me out, Mr. Polycarp?'
+
+'I am anxious merely to fulfil my duties. May I ask why you are so
+anxious to get in? Why do you want to thwart the wishes of a dead man?'
+
+'I could not permit that mystery to remain for a whole year in the very
+middle of my block of flats.'
+
+_'What mystery?'_ Polycarp suavely inquired.
+
+During this brief conversation all Hugo's suspicions had hurriedly
+returned, and he had examined them anew and more favourably. Polycarp?
+Was it not curious that Polycarp should be acting for both Ravengar and
+Tudor?... Darcy? Were there not very strange features in the behaviour
+of this English doctor who preferred to practise in Paris?... And the
+haemorrhage? And, lastly, this monstrous, unaccountable, inexplicable
+shutting-up of the flat?
+
+He felt already that those empty rooms, dark, silent, sealed, guarding
+in some recess he knew not what dreadful secret, were getting on his
+nerves. And was he to suffer for a year?
+
+'Come, Mr. Hugo,' said Polycarp; 'I may count on your goodwill?'
+
+'I don't know,' Hugo replied--'I don't know.'
+
+
+
+
+PART II THE PHONOGRAPH
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+SALE
+
+
+Strange sights are to be seen in London.
+
+At five minutes to nine a.m. on the first day of the year seven vast
+crowds stood before the seven principal entrances to Hugo's; seven
+crowds of immortal souls enclosed in the bodies of women. They meant to
+begin the year well by an honest attempt to get something for nothing.
+It was a cold, dank, raw, and formidable morning; Hugo's tessellated
+pavements were covered with moisture, and, moreover, day had not yet
+conquered night. But the seven crowds, growing larger each moment,
+recked nothing of these inconveniences. They waited stolidly, silently,
+in a suppressed and dangerous fever, as besiegers await the signal for
+an attack. Between the various entrances, on the three facades of the
+establishment, ran the long lines of windows dressed with all the
+materials for happiness, and behind these ramparts of materials could
+be glimpsed Hugo's assistants moving about in anxious expectation under
+the electric lights, which burned red in the foggy gloom. Over every
+portal was a purple warning: 'Beware of pickpockets, male and female.'
+No possible male pickpockets, however, were visible to the eye; perhaps
+they were disguised as ladies. The seven crowds wedged themselves closer
+and closer, clutched tighter and tighter their purses, and stared at the
+golden commissionaires through the glass doors with a glance more and
+more ferocious. Then suddenly something went off with a boom; it was the
+first stroke of the great Hugo clock under the dome. Six pairs of double
+doors opened simultaneously, six pairs of golden commissionaires were
+overthrown like ninepins, and in a fraction of time six companies of
+determined and remorseless women had swept like Prussian cavalry into
+the interior of the doomed edifice.
+
+But the seventh crowd was left on the pavement, for the seventh pair of
+doors had not opened. And this was the more extraordinary in that the
+seventh crowd was the largest crowd, and stood before the entrance
+nearest to the principal scene of the day's operations. Instantly the
+world became aware that Hugo's management was less perfect than usual,
+and people recalled incidents in his business during the previous four
+months which had not been to his credit. The seventh crowd was
+staggered, furious, and homicidal. If glances could have killed the
+impassive pair of golden commissionaires behind the seventh portal, they
+would certainly have fallen down dead. If the glass of the seventh
+portal had not been set in small squares of immense thickness, it would
+have been shattered to bits, and the stronghold forced. Many women cried
+out that justice had come to an end in England, for was it not an
+elementary principle of justice that all doors should open together? A
+few women, more practical, and near the edge of the enraged horde,
+slipped away to other entrances. One woman fainted, but she was held
+upright by the press, and as no one paid the slightest attention to her
+she rapidly came to. Then at length a tall gentleman in a beautiful
+frock-coat was seen to be expostulating sternly with the seventh 
+pair of golden commissionaires; the recalcitant doors flew open,
+and the beautiful frock-coat was hurled violently against a marble
+pillar for its pains. Just as the seventh regiment was disappearing to
+join in the sack and loot, a young and pretty girl drove up in a hansom,
+threw the driver a shilling (which the driver contemplated with a scorn
+too deep for words), and joined the tail of the regiment.
+
+'I knew I should do it,' she said to herself, 'and Alb said I
+shouldn't.'
+
+In another moment Hugo's was a raging sea of petticoats. In half an hour
+the doors had to be shut and locked, and new crowds formed on the
+tessellated pavements; Hugo's was full.
+
+Hugo's was full!
+
+For three days past Hugo had bought whole pages of every daily paper in
+London, in order to break gently to the public the tremendous fact that
+his annual sale would commence on New Year's Day, and the still more
+tremendous fact that it would close on the third of January. There are
+only three genuine annual sales in the Metropolis. One is Hugo's,
+another happens in Tottenham Court Road, and the third--but why disclose
+the situation of the third, since all persons from Putney to Peckham
+Rise who are worthy to know it, know it? Hugo's was naturally the
+greatest, the largest, the most exciting, the most marvellous, the most
+powerful in its appeal to the most powerful of human instincts--the
+instinct to get half a crown's worth of value for two shillings. In
+earlier years Hugo had made his annual sale prodigious and incredible,
+with no thought of profit, merely for the pleasure of the affair. But he
+found that the more he offered to the public the more he received from
+them, and that it was practically impossible to lose money by giving
+things away. This is, of course, a fundamental axiom of commerce. And
+now Hugo's annual sale was to be more astonishing than ever; some said
+that he meant at any cost to efface the memory of those discreditable
+incidents before mentioned. Decidedly, many of the advertised bargains
+were remarkable in the highest degree. There was, for example, the 'fine
+silvered fox-stole, with real brush at each end,' at a guinea. Every
+woman who can tell a silvered fox-stole from a cock's-feather boa is
+aware that a silvered fox-stole simply cannot be sold for a guinea. Yet
+Hugo had announced that he would sell two thousand of them at that
+price, not to mention muffs to match at the same figure. And there was
+the famous 'Incroyable' corset, white coutille, with wide belted band
+round hips, double belt to buckle at sides, cut low--' Enough! Further
+indiscretions of description are not necessary to show that eighteen and
+nine is the lowest price at which a reasonable creature could hope to
+obtain the 'Incroyable' corset. But Hugo's price was twelve and eleven.
+And the whole-page advertisements were a solid blazing mass of such
+jewels.
+
+The young and pretty girl who had known that she would 'do it' hastened
+with assured steps, and as quickly as the jostling multitudes would
+allow, to the fur department. She was in pursuit of one of the silvered
+fox-stoles with real brush at each end. She had her husband's
+permission--nay, his command--to purchase a silvered fox-stole at a
+guinea--if she could. On the way to her goal she encountered by chance
+Simon Shawn, and it occurred that a temporary block compelled her to
+halt before him. The two gazed at each other, and Simon looked away,
+flushing. It was plain that, though acquainted, they were not on
+speaking terms. The fact was, that their silence covered a domestic
+drama--a drama which had arisen as the consequence of a great human
+truth--namely, that even detectives will marry.
+
+It will be remembered that on a certain morning in July, after Hugo had
+finished pasting a notice on a mirror in one of the common rooms, in the
+presence of a pink-aproned waitress, Albert Shawn entered, and kissed
+the pink-aproned waitress. So far as possible, whom Albert Shawn kissed
+he married, and he had married the waitress just the week before
+Christmas, and this was she. Simon had objected sternly to the
+_mesalliance_. It seemed shocking to Simon that a rising detective
+should marry a girl who waited on shop-girls. Hence the drama. Hugo had
+positively refused to allow an open quarrel between the brothers,
+because of its inconvenience to himself, but he could not prevent a
+quarrel between Simon and Lily--such was her name. They met now for the
+first time since the marriage, and Lily's demeanour may be imagined. She
+gazed through Simon as though he did not exist, and passed magnificently
+onwards as soon as the throng permitted. She was Mrs. Albert Shawn, as
+neat as ninepence, as smart and pert as a French maid out for the day.
+She drove in hansoms, and she had a five-pound note in her pocket.
+
+Albert had been granted two weeks' vacation for his honeymoon, and he
+ought to have resumed his duties of detection that morning. The
+honeymoon, however, had lasted only nine days, and the remaining five
+days of the period had been spent by him in some secret affair of his
+own, an affair which had ended in an accident to his left foot, so that
+he could not walk. The consequence was that, on this day of all days,
+Hugo's was deprived of his services. Lily was, perhaps, not altogether
+sorry for the catastrophe which kept him a prisoner in the nest-like
+home in Radipole Road, for it had resulted in this excursion of hers to
+the sale. Albert had bidden her to go to buy a stole and other things,
+to keep her eyes open, and to report to Hugo in person if she observed
+anything queer. He had even given her a pass which would ensure her
+immediate admittance to any of Hugo's private lairs. Therefore, Lily
+felt extremely important, extremely like a detective's wife. She knew
+that Albert trusted her, and she was very proud that she had not asked
+him any questions concerning a matter exasperatingly mysterious. Albert
+had taught her that a detective's wife should crucify curiosity.
+
+She fought her way to a counter in the fur department.
+
+'The guinea stoles?' she inquired from a shopwalker.
+
+'I--I beg pardon, miss,' said the shopwalker.
+
+'Madam,' Lily corrected him. 'I want one of those silvered fox-stoles
+advertised at a guinea.'
+
+'You'll probably find them over there, madam,' said the shopwalker,
+pointing.
+
+'Aren't you sure?' she asked tartly. 'I don't want to struggle across
+there and then find they're somewhere else.'
+
+The shopwalker turned his back on her.
+
+'Well, I never!' she exclaimed to herself, and decided that Albert
+should avenge her.
+
+Then, behind the counter, she saw a girl whom she used to serve with a
+glass of milk every morning.
+
+'Oh, Miss Lawton,' she cried, as an equal to an equal, 'can you tell me
+where the stoles are to be found?'
+
+'Probably over there, Mrs. Shawn,' said Miss Lawton kindly, nodding the
+greeting she had no time to utter.
+
+So Lily got away from the counter, plunged into a chartless sea of
+customers, and eventually emerged in the quarter which had been
+indicated.
+
+'All sold out, miss!'
+
+Such was the blunt answer to her demand for a silvered fox-stole.
+
+'Don't talk to me like that!' said Mrs. Albert Shawn. 'It isn't above
+half-past nine on the first morning of the sale, and you advertised two
+thousand of them.'
+
+'Sorry, miss. All sold out,' repeated the second shopwalker.
+
+'I shall report this to Mr. Hugo. Do you know who I am? I'm--'
+
+And the second shopwalker also turned his back.
+
+Could these things be happening at Hugo's, at Hugo's, so famous for the
+courtesy, the long patience, the indestructible politeness of its
+well-paid employes? And could Hugo have descended to the trickeries of
+the eleven-pence-halfpenny draper, who proclaimed non-existent bargains
+to lure the unwary into his shop? Lily might have wondered if she was
+not dreaming, but she was far too practical ever to be in the least
+doubt as to whether she was asleep or awake. And now she perceived that
+scores of angry women about her were equally disappointed by the
+disgraceful absence of those stoles. The department, misty, stuffy, and
+noisy, had the air of being the scene of an insurrection. One lady was
+informing the public generally that she had demanded a guinea stole at
+three minutes past nine, and had been put off with a monstrous excuse.
+And then a newspaper reporter appeared, and began to take notes. The din
+increased, though shopwalkers said less and less, and the chances seemed
+in favour of the insurrection becoming a riot. Other admirable bargains
+in furs were indubitably to be had--muffs, for example--and the cashiers
+were busy; but nothing could atone for the famine of stoles.
+
+Lily had a suspicion that Albert would have wished her to report these
+singular circumstances to Hugo at once. But she dismissed the suspicion,
+because she passionately desired an 'Incroyable' corset at twelve and
+eleven, and she feared lest the corsets might have vanished as strangely
+as the stoles. In ten minutes, breathless, she had reached the corset
+department, demanded an 'Incroyable' of the correct size, and bought it.
+There was no dissatisfaction in the corset department.
+
+'Shall we send it, miss?'
+
+'Madam,' said Lily proudly. 'No, I'll take it.'
+
+'Yes, madam.'
+
+At the cash desk (No. 56) she had to wait her turn in a disorderly
+queue before she could tender the bill and her five-pound note.
+Customers pressed round her on all sides as she put down the note and
+peered through the wire network into the interior of the desk.
+
+'Next, please,' said the cashier sharply, after a moment.
+
+'My change,' demanded Lily.
+
+'You have had it, madam.'
+
+'Oh,' said Lily, 'I have had it, have I? Now, none of your nonsense,
+young man! Do you know who I am? I'm Mrs. Albert Shawn.'
+
+'Mr. Randall,' the cashier called out coldly, and a grave and gigantic
+shopwalker appeared who knew not the name of Albert Shawn, and who
+firmly told Mrs. Shawn that if she wished to make a complaint she must
+make it at the Central Inquiry Office, ground-floor, Department 1A.
+
+Lily had been brazenly robbed at Hugo's by an employe of Hugo! She was
+elbowed away by other women apparently anxious to be robbed. She wanted
+to cry, but suddenly remembering her identity, and her pass to the
+presence of Hugo, she threw up her head and marched off through the
+crowds.
+
+She had not proceeded twenty yards before she was stopped by a group of
+persons round a policeman--a policeman obviously called in from Sloane
+Street. A stout woman of lady-like appearance had been arrested on a
+charge of attempted pocket-picking. An accusatory shopwalker charged
+her, and she replied warmly that she was Lady Brice (_nee_
+Kentucky-Webster), the American wife of the well-known philanthropist,
+and that her carriage was waiting outside. The policeman and the
+shopwalker smiled. It was so easy to be the wife of a well-known
+philanthropist, and in these days all the best pickpockets had their
+carriages waiting outside.
+
+'I know this lady by sight,' said Lily. 'She visited the common-rooms
+last year to see the arrangements, with Mr. Hugo, and he called her Lady
+Brice, and I can tell you he'll be very angry with you.'
+
+'And who are _you_, my young friend?' said the policeman sceptically,
+and threateningly.
+
+'I'm--'
+
+The formula proved useless. Lady Brice (_nee_ Kentucky-Webster) was led
+off in all her vast speechless, outraged impeccability, and poor little
+Lily was glad to escape with her freedom and the memory of Lady Brice's
+grateful bow.
+
+She ran, gliding in and out between the knots of visitors, until she was
+stopped by a pair of doors being suddenly shut and fastened in her face.
+The reason for the obstruction was plain. Those doors admitted to the
+blouse department, and the blouse department, as Lily could see through
+the diamond panes, was a surging sea of bargain-hunters, amid which
+shopwalkers stood up like light-houses, while the girls behind the
+counters trembled in fear of being washed away. Discipline, order,
+management, had ceased to exist at Hugo's.
+
+Mrs. Shawn turned to seek another route, but already dozens of women
+were upon her, and she could not retire. The crowd of candidates for
+admission to the blouse department swelled till it filled the gallery
+between that department and its neighbour. Then someone cried out for
+air, and someone else protested that the doors at the other end of the
+short gallery had also been shut. Lily, whose manifold misfortunes had
+not quenched her interest in the 'Incroyable' corset, opened her parcel,
+and found that the corset was not an 'Incroyable' at all, but an
+inferior substitute, with no proper belted band, and of a shape to
+startle even a Brighton bathing-woman! The change must have been
+effected by the assistant in making up the parcel.
+
+'Well!'
+
+She could say no more, and think no more, than this 'Well!'
+
+And, moreover, the condition of the packed gallery soon caused her to
+forget even the final swindle of the corset. The air had rapidly become
+exhausted. Women clutched at each other; women rapped frenziedly against
+the heavy, glazed doors; women screamed. It was the Black Hole of
+Calcutta over again, and yet no one in the blouse department seemed to
+notice the signals of distress. Lily felt the perspiration on her brow
+and chin, and then she knew that she, too, must scream and clutch; and
+she cried out, and the pressure which forced her against the door grew
+more and more terrible.... She had dropped the corset.... She murmured
+feebly 'Alb--'.... She began to dream queer dreams and to see strange
+lights.... And then something gave way with a crash, and she fell
+forward, and regiments of horses trampled over her, and at last all
+living things receded from her, and she was in the midst of a great
+silence. And then even the silence was gone, and there was nothing.
+
+So ended the first part of Lily's adventures at Hugo's infamous annual
+sale.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When she recovered perfect consciousness, she was in the dome. She knew
+it was the dome because Albert had once, at her urgent request, taken
+her surreptitiously to see it. Simon was standing over her, as
+sympathetic as the most exigent sister-in-law could wish, and the great
+Shawn family feud had expired.
+
+In two minutes she was her intensely practical self again. In five
+minutes she had acquainted Simon with all her experiences; they were but
+the complement of what he himself had witnessed.
+
+The sense of a mysterious calamity over-hanging Hugo's, and the sense of
+the shame which had already disgraced Hugo's, pressed heavily on both of
+them. They knew that only one man could retrieve what had been lost and
+avert irreparable disaster. Their faith in that man was undiminished,
+and Simon at least was sure that he had been victimized by some immense
+conspiracy.
+
+'Why don't you find Mr. Hugo?' Lily demanded.
+
+'I've looked everywhere. A letter was brought up to him about an hour
+ago, and he went off instantly.'
+
+'And where's the letter?'
+
+'I expect it's in that drawer, where he throws all his private letters,'
+said Simon, pointing to a drawer in the big writing-table on the
+opposite side of the room from the piano.
+
+'Is it locked--the drawer?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Then open it.'
+
+'It's the governor's private drawer,' said Simon. 'I've never--'
+
+'Stuff!' Lily exclaimed, and she opened the drawer and drew out the
+topmost letter.
+
+It was on blue paper.
+
+'Yes, that's it,' said Simon. 'The envelope was blue, I remember.'
+
+'He must be in the Safe Deposit,' said Lily, perusing the letter with
+flying glance.
+
+And Simon, at length sufficiently emboldened, seized the letter and
+read:
+
+    'SIR,
+
+    'Mr. Polycarp has just been here, and accidentally left behind him
+    keys of his vault, including safe of late Mr. Francis Tudor, etc.
+    In these peculiar circumstances I shall be glad to know what I am to
+    do.
+
+    'Yours respectfully,
+
+    'H. BROWN,
+
+    'Head Guardian,
+
+    'Hugo's Safe Deposit.'
+
+'What on earth can Brown be thinking about?' muttered Simon. 'Hadn't he
+got enough gumption to send a messenger after Mr. Polycarp, without
+troubling the governor? He'll catch it.'
+
+'Never mind that,' said Lily sharply. 'Run down to the Safe Deposit.
+Run, Simon.'
+
+It was as though a delay of minutes might mean ruin. Who could say what
+was even then happening in the disorganized and masterless departments?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+SAFE DEPOSIT
+
+
+The Safe Deposit at Hugo's was perhaps the most wonderful of all the
+departments. Until Hugo thought of it, and paid a trinity of European
+experts to design and devise it, there had existed no such thing as an
+absolutely impregnable asylum for valuables. In Dakota a strong-room
+alleged to be impregnable had been approached underground, tunnelled,
+mined, and emptied by thieves with imagination. In the North of England
+a safe, which its inventor had defied the whole universe of crime to
+open, had been rifled by the aid of so simple a dodge as duplicate keys.
+Even in Tottenham Court Road a couple of ingenious persons had burnt a
+hole in a guaranteed safe by means of common gas at three and threepence
+per thousand cubic feet. These surprises could not occur at Hugo's. His
+Safe Deposit really was what it pretended to be. All contingencies were
+provided for. It was the final retort of virtue to vice.
+
+You approached it by a door of quite ordinary appearance (no one cares
+to be seen leaving what is obviously a safe deposit), and you signed
+your name before entering a lift. You descended forty feet below the
+surface of the earth, gave a password on emerging from the lift,
+traversed a corridor, and at length stood in front of the sole entrance
+to the Safe Deposit. A guardian, when you had signed your name again,
+unlocked three unpickable, incombustible, and gunpowder-proof locks in a
+massive steel door, and you were admitted, assuming always that the hour
+was between nine and six. Out of hours and on Saturday after-noons and
+on Sundays a time-lock rendered it utterly impossible for any person
+whatever to turn any key in the Safe Deposit. Once the lock was set,
+Hugo himself could not have entered, not even to save the British Empire
+from instant destruction, until the time-lock had run its course.
+
+You found yourself in an electrically lighted world of passages built in
+flashing steel, with floors of steel and ceilings of steel--a world
+where the temperature was always 65 deg.. Every passage was separated from
+every other passage by steel grilles, and at intervals uniformed and
+gigantic officials wandered about with impassive, haughty faces--faces
+that indicated a sublime confidence in the safety of the multifarious
+riches committed to their care. You might have guessed yourself in the
+fell grip of the Inquisition. As a fact, you were in something far more
+fell. You were in a vast chamber of steel, and that chamber was itself
+enclosed on all sides by three feet of solid concrete. No thief could
+tunnel or mine you without first getting through the District Railway on
+the one hand, or the main drainage system of London on the other. No
+thief could rifle you by means of duplicate keys, for no vault and no
+safe could be opened except in the presence of the head guardian, who
+possessed a key without which the renter's key was useless. No tricks
+could be played with the gas, because there was no gas, and the electric
+light could only be turned off or on from the top of the lift-well.
+
+Now, it was a singular thing that when Simon Shawn, having proved his
+identity and his mission at the lift, arrived at the entrance to the
+Safe Deposit, he discovered the great steel door ajar, and no
+door-guardian in the leather chair where a door-guardian always sat.
+This condition of affairs did not affect the essential impregnability of
+any individual vault or safe, but, nevertheless, it was singular.
+
+Simon walked straight in.
+
+'There's no one at the door,' he said to the patrol, whom he met in the
+main passage. 'I want to see Mr. Hugo at once. He's down here somewhere,
+or he's been here.'
+
+'Yes, Mr. Shawn,' said the patrol politely; 'I did see Mr. Hugo here
+about an hour or so ago. I'll ask Mr. Brown. Will you step into the
+waiting-room?'
+
+Half-way along the main corridor was a large room, whose steel walls
+were masked by tapestries, where renters could examine their treasures
+on marble tables. It was empty when Simon went in. The patrol carefully
+closed the door on him, and then in a moment came back to say that Mr.
+Brown was not in his office, and had probably gone out to lunch, the
+hour being noon.
+
+'Where did you see Mr. Hugo?' Simon asked, hurrying out of the room in a
+state of considerable agitation.
+
+'I saw him just here, sir,' said the patrol, turning down a short side
+corridor--the grille was unfastened--and stopping before a door numbered
+thirty-nine. 'He was talking to Mr. Brown, and the door of the vault was
+open.'
+
+'That must be Mr. Polycarp's vault,' Simon observed; and then he
+started, and put his ear against the door. 'Listen!' he exclaimed to the
+patrol. 'Can't you hear anything inside?'
+
+And the patrol also put his ear to the steel face of the door.
+
+'I seem to hear a faint knocking, but it's that faint as you scarcely
+_can_ hear it. There! it's stopped.'
+
+'He is inside,' Shawn whispered.
+
+'Who's inside?'
+
+'Mr. Hugo.'
+
+'It's God help him, then,' said the patrol, 'if he's there long. There's
+no ventilation, Mr. Shawn. We'd better telephone for Mr. Polycarp. The
+other key will be in the key-safe. I can get it. But how do you make
+out, sir, that Mr. Hugo can be in there? The vault could only be locked
+by Mr. Polycarp and Mr. Brown together, and surely they couldn't both--'
+
+'Mr. Polycarp left his keys behind by accident. He had gone before Mr.
+Hugo came down.'
+
+'There's been no Mr. Polycarp here this morning,' said the patrol a
+minute later. 'I've looked at the signature-book. I thought it was queer
+I hadn't seen him. And, what's more, that isn't Mr. Polycarp's vault at
+all. Mr. Polycarp's vault is No. 37. This vault has been empty for
+several weeks.'
+
+'Then you have both the keys?' Simon demanded quickly.
+
+'No, sir. It's very strange. There's only one key of No. 39 in the
+key-safe, and it's the renter's key.'
+
+'Then Mr. Brown must have the other.'
+
+'I expect so. But he ought not to have. It's against rules,' said the
+patrol. 'I know where he takes his lunch. I'll send for him.'
+
+Simon put his ear again to the face of the door. The faint knocking had
+ceased, but after a few seconds it recommenced.
+
+'And suppose you don't find Mr. Brown?' he queried, still listening.
+
+'Then that vault can't be opened. But never you fear, Mr. Shawn. I'll
+have him here in three minutes. It's funny as he should have left
+anybody in there by accident--and Mr. Hugo of all people in this
+blessed world....'
+
+The patrol's accents died away as he passed down the main corridor.
+
+Within the next half-hour Simon, who had the rare virtue of being honest
+with himself, was freely admitting, in the privacy of his own mind, that
+the crisis had got beyond his power to grapple with it, and he had begun
+to fear complications more dreadful than he dared to put into words. For
+the patrol had failed to find Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown, head guardian of the
+Safe Deposit, had disappeared. Nor was this all. A renter had come to
+take his belongings from a safe in the third side-passage on the left,
+and the sub-guardian imprisoned in that passage could not open the
+grille between it and the main corridor. He had his key, but the key
+would not turn in the glittering lock. The renter, too impatient to
+wait, had departed very angrily at this excess of safety. Then it was
+gradually discovered that every sub-guardian in every side-passage was
+similarly imprisoned. Not a key in the entire place would turn. The
+patrol rushed to the main door. The three keys had clearly been turned
+while the door was opened, and the shot bolts prevented the door from
+closing. This explained why the door was ajar, but it did not explain
+the absence of the doorkeeper, who had apparently followed in the
+footsteps of his chief, Mr. Brown.
+
+'The time-lock! Someone must have set it!' cried the patrol to Shawn,
+and the two hastened to the other end of the main corridor, where the
+dial of the machine glistened under an electric lamp.
+
+And all the sub-guardians stirred and grumbled in their beautiful bright
+cages like wrathful lions. No such scene had ever been known in that
+Safe Deposit or any other safe deposit before.
+
+The patrol was right. The dial of the time-lock showed that it had been
+set against every lock, great and small, in the Safe Deposit, until nine
+a.m. the next day.
+
+'It's all up!' the patrol said solemnly.
+
+'Do you mean to say nothing can be done to open that vault till nine
+to-morrow?' Simon demanded in despair.
+
+'Nothing. The blooming Czar couldn't manage it with all his Cossacks!
+No, nor Bobs either! This is a Safe Deposit, this is, and if Mr. Hugo is
+in that vault, it's Mr. Hugo as knows it's a Safe Deposit by now.'
+
+A brief silence ensued, and then Simon said:
+
+'We must telephone to the police. There's a telephone in the
+waiting-room, isn't there?'
+
+The patrol admitted that there was, but his manner hinted a low opinion
+of the utility of the police. He stood mute while Simon Shawn told the
+telephone receiver what had occurred in the bowels of the earth beneath
+Hugo's.
+
+'Wait a minute,' said the telephone, and then, after a pause: 'Are you
+there? I'm Inspector Winter.'
+
+'That's him as has charge of all the strong-room cases,' the patrol
+interjected to Simon.
+
+'I've got Mr. Jack Galpin here, as it happens,' said the telephone.
+
+'Mr. Jack Galpin?' Simon questioned.
+
+'He's just done eighteen months for an attempt in Lombard Street,' the
+patrol explained. 'I've heard of him.'
+
+'I'll come down with him immediately in a cab,' said the telephone.
+
+When Simon returned to the impregnable door of Vault 39 he listened in
+vain for a sound. Then he knocked with his pen-knife on the polished
+steel, and presently there was an answering signal from within--a series
+of scarcely perceptible irregular taps. It struck him that the
+irregularity of the taps formed a rhythm, and after a few seconds he
+recognised the rhythm of the Intermezzo from 'Cavalleria Rusticana,'
+which he had played for Hugo that very morning.
+
+It was at this moment that the messenger-boy attached to the department
+came whistling into the steel corridors, and delivered to the patrol a
+small white packet, which, he said, Mr. Brown had handed to him with
+instructions to hand it to the patrol. He had seen Mr. Brown in a cab
+outside the building, and Mr. Brown had the appearance of being very
+ill.
+
+The packet contained the second key of Vault 39.
+
+'But this'll be no use till to-morrow,' was the patrol's comment, 'and
+by then--'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+MR. GALPIN
+
+
+When the patrol and Simon between them had explained the mysterious and
+fatal situation to Mr. Jack Galpin, Mr. Jack Galpin leaned against one
+of the marble tables in the waiting-room, and roared with laughter.
+
+'Well,' observed Mr. Galpin, 'he didn't have his Safe Deposit built for
+nothing, anyhow!'
+
+And he laughed again.
+
+'But he's slowly dying in there!' said Simon.
+
+'Yes, I know,' said Mr. Galpin. 'That's what makes it such a good joke.'
+
+'I don't see it, sir,' Simon remarked.
+
+'Simply because your sense of humour is a bit off. What are you?'
+
+'I am Mr. Hugo's man.'
+
+'My respects.'
+
+Mr. Galpin had arrived with Inspector Winter, and Inspector Winter had
+introduced him as knowing more about safes than any other man in
+England, or perhaps in Europe. After the introduction, Inspector Winter,
+being pressed for time, had departed. Mr. Galpin was aged about forty,
+and looked like an extremely successful commercial traveller. No one
+would have suspected that he had recently done eighteen months anywhere
+but in a first-class hotel; even his thin hands were white, and if his
+hair was a little short--well, the hair of very many respectable persons
+is often a little short. It appeared that he was under obligations to
+Inspector Winter, and anxious to oblige. The relations between
+distinguished law-breakers and distinguished detectives are frequently
+such as can only exist between artists who esteem each other. For the
+rest, Mr. Galpin had brought a brown bag.
+
+'You see, the time-lock is placed so that--' began the patrol.
+
+'Shut up!' said Mr. Galpin curtly. 'I know all that. I've got
+scale-plans of every Safe Deposit in London, and I decided long since
+that this one was too good to try. Of course, with the aid of the entire
+staff things might be a bit easier, but not much--not much!' he
+repeated scornfully. 'If I can manage a job at all, I can usually manage
+it alone, and in spite of the entire staff.'
+
+'I suppose you couldn't burn the door of the vault with oxy-hydrogen?'
+Simon suggested.
+
+'Yes, I could,' said Mr. Galpin; 'and with the brand of steel used here
+I should get through about this time to-morrow. I could blow the bally
+vault up with gun-cotton in something under two seconds, but no doubt
+your Mr. Hugo would go up with it, and then the Yard would be angry.
+No!'
+
+He hummed an air, and strolled out into the main corridor to stare at
+the curious dial of the time-lock.
+
+'Why not blow up the clock of the time-lock?' ventured the patrol.
+
+'Look here!' said Mr. Galpin, '_you_ ought to know better than that,
+even if this other gent doesn't. Any violence to the clock automatically
+jams all the connecting levers. Stop the clock, and it's all up. Nothing
+but unbuilding the whole place would free the locks after that. And it
+would be a mighty smart firm that could unbuild this place inside a
+fortnight. No!' he said again. 'No gammon with the clock--unless we
+could make it go quicker.'
+
+'Then there's nothing,' Simon stammered.
+
+Mr. Galpin gazed at the young man.
+
+'Assuming I do the job, what's the job worth?' he asked.
+
+'It's worth anything.'
+
+'Is it worth a hundred pounds?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Cash?'
+
+'Yes, I promise it. I will hand you my savings-bank book if you like.'
+
+'I only ask because I have a sort of a notion about that clock. It's a
+pendulum clock, and you know how fast a clock ticks when you take the
+pendulum away, and the escapement can run free. It does an hour in about
+three minutes. Now, if I could get the pendulum out without alarming the
+clock ... it would be nine to-morrow morning in no time. See?'
+
+'I see that,' said the patrol. 'I see that. But what I don't see--'
+
+'Never mind what you don't see,' Mr. Jack Galpin murmured. 'Bring me my
+bag out of there. I may tell you,' he went on to Simon, 'that I thought
+of this scheme months ago, just as a pleasant sort of a fancy, but quite
+practical. It's a queer world, isn't it?'
+
+'Here's your bag,' said the patrol.
+
+'Now you two can just go into the waiting-room, and wait till I call
+you. Understand? And tell all these wild beasts round here to hold their
+tongues and sit tight. I haven't got to be disturbed in a job like
+this.... And it's a hundred pounds if I do it, mister, no more and no
+less, eh?'
+
+Within exactly twenty-five minutes Mr. Galpin entered the waiting-room.
+
+'See that?' he said, holding up a pendulum. 'That's _it_. You can come
+and look now. But I don't invite the public to see my own private
+melting process. Not me!'
+
+He had burnt two holes through the half-inch plate of Bessemer steel in
+which the clock was enclosed, and by means of two pairs of tweezers
+(which must certainly have been imitated from the armoury of a dentist)
+he had detached the pendulum without stopping the clock. The hands of
+the clock could be plainly seen to move, and its ticking was furiously
+rapid.
+
+Mr. Galpin made a calculation on his dazzling cuff.
+
+'In three-quarters of an hour the clock will have run out,' he informed
+his audience, 'and you will be able to open any locks that you've got
+keys for. I shall call to-morrow morning, young man, for the swag. And
+don't you forget that there's only one Jack Galpin in the world. My
+address is 205, the Waterloo Road.'
+
+He left, with his bag.
+
+Simon rushed to Vault 39 to encourage the captive by continual knocking.
+
+Then the messenger-boy, who had been despatched to obtain food for the
+prisoners behind the various grilles, came back with the desired food,
+and with a copy of the _Evening Herald_. The back page of the _Herald_
+bore Hugo's immense advertisement. The front page was also chiefly
+devoted to Hugo. It displayed headings such as: 'Shocking Scenes at a
+Sloane Street Sale,' 'Women Injured,' 'Customers Complain of Wholesale
+Swindling,' 'Scandalous Mismanagement,' 'The Hugo Safe Deposit Suddenly
+Closed,' 'Reported Disappearance of Mr. Hugo,' 'Is He a Lunatic?'
+
+And when the three-quarters of an hour had expired Simon and the patrol
+unlocked the massive portal of Vault 39, and swung it open, fearful of
+what they might see within. And Hugo, pale and feeble, but alive,
+staggered heavily forward, and put a hand on Simon's shoulder.
+
+'Let us get away from this,' he whispered, as if in profound mental
+agony.
+
+Ignoring everything, he passed out of the impregnable Safe Deposit, with
+its flashing steel walls, on Simon's obedient arm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+TEA
+
+
+Arrived on the ground-floor, Simon managed to avoid the busy parts of
+the establishment, but he happened to choose a way to Hugo's private
+lift which led past the service-door of the Hugo Grand Central
+Restaurant. And Hugo, although apparently in a sort of torpor, noticed
+it.
+
+'Tea!' he ejaculated. 'If I could have some at once!'
+
+And he directed Simon into the restaurant, and so came plump upon one of
+the worst scenes in the entire place. The first day of the great annual
+sale was closing in almost a riot, and there in the restaurant the
+primeval and savage instincts of the vast, angry crowd were naturally to
+be seen in their crudest form. The famous walnut buffet, eighty feet in
+length, was besieged by an army of customers, chiefly women, who were
+competing for food in a manner which ignored even the rudiments of
+politeness. It would be difficult to deny that several scores of
+well-dressed ladies, robbed of their self-possession and their lunch by
+delays and vexations and impositions in the departments, were actually
+fighting for food. The girls behind the buffet remained nobly at their
+posts, but the situation had outgrown their experience. Every now and
+then a crash of crockery or crystal was heard over the din of shrill
+voices, and occasionally a loud protest. Away from the buffet, on the
+fine floor of the restaurant, a few waitresses hurried distracted and
+aimless between the tables at which sat irate and scandalized persons
+who firmly believed themselves to be dying of hunger. A number of people
+were most obviously stealing food, not merely from the sideboards, but
+from their fellows. At a table near to the corner in which Hugo, shocked
+by the spectacle, had fallen limp into a chair, was seated an old,
+fierce man, who looked like a retired Indian judge, and who had somehow
+secured a cup of tea all to himself. A pretty young woman approached
+him, and deliberately snatched the cup from under his very nose--and
+without spilling a drop. The Indian judge sprang up, roared 'Hussy!' and
+knocked the table over with a prodigious racket, then proceeded to pick
+the table up again.
+
+'Is it like this everywhere?' asked Hugo of Shawn.
+
+And Shawn nodded.
+
+'I might have foreseen,' Hugo murmured.
+
+'I'll try to get you some tea, sir,' Shawn said, with an attempt to be
+cheerful.
+
+'Don't leave me,' begged Hugo, like a sick child. 'Don't leave me.'
+
+'Only for a moment, sir,' said Shawn, departing.
+
+Hugo felt that he was about to swoon, that he had suffered just as much
+as a man could suffer, and that Fate was dropping the last straw on the
+camel's back. His head fell forward. He was beaten for that day by too
+many mysteries and too many tortures. And then he observed that the
+pretty young woman who had stolen the cup of tea from the Indian judge
+was hastening towards him with the cup of tea in one hand and several
+pieces of bread-and-butter in the other.
+
+'Drink this, Mr. Hugo,' she whispered, standing over him. He hesitated.
+_'Drink it, I say, or must I throw it over you?'_
+
+He sipped, and sipped again, obediently.
+
+'Good, isn't it?' she questioned.
+
+He looked up at her. He was stronger already.
+
+'It's very good,' he said, with conviction. 'Now a bit of
+bread-and-butter. Thanks.' Yes, the excellence and power of the Hugo tea
+was not to be denied, and he was deeply glad in that moment that he
+owned his private plantations in Ceylon. 'Who are you, may I ask?' he
+demanded of his rescuer.
+
+'If you please, sir, I'm Albert's wife.'
+
+'Albert?'
+
+'Albert Shawn, your detective, sir.'
+
+'Of course you are!'
+
+'You gave us a bedroom suite for a wedding present, sir.'
+
+'Of course I did! By the way, where's Albert?'
+
+'He's had an accident to his foot, and couldn't come to-day. You're less
+pale than you were, sir. Take this other piece.'
+
+Then Simon returned, empty-handed, and Lily's eye indicated to him her
+real opinion of the value of a male in a crisis. She asked no questions
+concerning the events which had ended in Hugo's collapse. She merely
+dealt with the collapse, and in the intervals of dealing with it she
+explained to Simon how she had waited and waited in the dome, and then
+descended and tried in vain to enter the Safe Deposit, and been insulted
+by the messenger-boy, and had finally drifted to the restaurant, where
+she had caught sight of Hugo and himself, and guessed immediately that
+something in the highest degree unusual had occurred.
+
+'Come,' said Hugo at last, in curt command, 'I am better.'
+
+He had recovered. He was Hugo again. And Simon was once more nothing but
+his body servant, and Lily nothing but an ex-waitress who had married
+rather well. He thanked Lily, and told her to go and look after her
+husband as well as she had looked after him.
+
+In the dome Simon ventured to show him the _Evening Herald_. And, having
+read it, Hugo nodded his head and pressed his lips together. He had
+ordered champagne and sandwiches, and was consuming them, at the same
+time opening a series of yellow envelopes which lay on a table. These
+latter were reports from his detective corps, which had accumulated
+during the day.
+
+'Get a sheet of plain paper,' he said to Simon, 'and write this letter.
+Are you ready? Yes, it will do in pencil; I even prefer it in pencil.
+
+    '"DEAR SIR,
+
+    '"I have reason to think that you may be interested in some
+    extraordinary information which I have in my possession concerning
+    Camilla Tudor, who is supposed to have been buried at Brompton
+    Cemetery in July last year. If I am right, perhaps you will
+    accompany the bearer to my rooms. At present I will not disclose my
+    name.
+
+    '"Yours, etc."
+
+
+'Put any initials you like. Address it to Louis Ravengar, Esquire. Now
+listen to me. Go down to the auto garage, and choose a good man to take
+the note instantly; a second man must go with him. If they bring back
+Ravengar, he is to be taken to No. 6, Blair Street, shown upstairs, and
+brought along the bridge-passage into the building. It will be quite
+dark, and he will never guess. If necessary, he must be brought to me by
+force, once he is inside. Have two or three porters in attendance to see
+to that. But if it's managed properly, he'll come without a suspicion,
+and he'll be finely surprised when he finds that the long passage ends
+in just this room. Come back to me as soon as you've attended to that.'
+
+'Yes, sir,' said Simon, quite mystified, but none the less enchanted to
+see Hugo so actively the old Hugo.
+
+In ten minutes he had returned, and was beginning to relate new facts
+which he had learnt while downstairs.
+
+'Stop!' said Hugo. 'Don't worry me with needless details. I know enough.
+And don't ask me any questions. We can't hope to remedy the state of
+affairs to-day. Nevertheless, we can do something for to-morrow. I must
+have Mr. Bentley, the drapery manager, brought here before six o'clock.
+He must be found.'
+
+'He is found, sir. He has shot himself in his house in Pimlico Road.'
+
+Hugo started.
+
+'Ah!' was all he said at first. He added dryly: 'Good! And Brown?'
+
+'I have no news of him, sir. He's vanished.'
+
+'Telephone down to the press department that Mr. Aked must come up to
+see me at seven o'clock precisely, and, in the meantime, he must secure
+an extra half-page in all to-morrow's papers.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'And after closing-time the entire staff must assemble, the men in the
+carpet-rooms, and the women in the central restaurant--or what's left
+of it. I shall speak to them. Have notices put in the common-rooms.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'And send me all the buyers from the drapery department. They must go
+round and buy every silvered fox-stole in London to-night, at no matter
+what price.'
+
+'Certainly, sir.'
+
+'And telephone to Y.Z. that I shall be down there as soon as I can about
+these things.'
+
+He touched the pile of yellow envelopes. Y.Z. was the name always given
+to the detectives' private room.
+
+'Precisely, sir.'
+
+'That's all.'
+
+Simon Shawn gathered that his master had a very definite clue to the
+origin of the unique and fatal events of that day, and that all dark
+places were about to be made light with a blinding light.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+RAVENGAR IN CAPTIVITY
+
+
+'Ravengar, what a fool you are!'
+
+The dome was in darkness. Hugo, who stood concealed near the switch,
+turned on all the lights as soon as he had uttered this singular
+greeting, and stepped forward. He had decided to kill Ravengar. The
+desire to murder was in his heart, and in order to give all his
+instincts full play he had chosen a theatrical method of welcoming his
+victim into the fastness from which he was never to escape.
+
+'D--n!' exclaimed Ravengar, evidently astounded to the uttermost to find
+himself in Hugo's dome, and in the presence of Hugo.
+
+He sprang back to the door of the dressing-room by which he had so
+unsuspectingly entered.
+
+'What a fool you are to fall into a trap so simple! No; don't try to get
+away. You can't. That door is locked now. And, moreover, I have a
+revolver here, and also a pair of handcuffs, which I shall use if I have
+any trouble with you.'
+
+Ravengar gazed at his captor, irresolute. His clean-shaven upper lip
+seemed longer than ever, and his short gray beard and gray locks gave
+him an appearance of sanctimony which not even his sinister eyes could
+destroy. Then he sat down on a chair.
+
+'I should like to know--' he began, trying to speak steadily.
+
+'You would like to know,' Hugo took him up, 'why I am here alive,
+instead of being in that vault, suffocated. It was a pretty dodge of
+yours to get me down there. You counted on my curiosity about the Tudor
+mystery. You felt sure I should yield to the temptation. And I did
+yield. You were right. I was prepared to commit a breach of faith in
+order to satisfy that curiosity. No sooner was the door closed on me by
+that scoundrel Brown, and I found the vault not Polycarp's vault at all,
+than I knew to a certainty that you were at the bottom of the affair. So
+easy to make out afterwards that it was an accident! So easy to spirit
+Brown away! So easy to explain everything! Why, Ravengar, you intended
+to murder me! I saw the whole scheme in a flash. You have corrupted many
+of my servants to-day. But you didn't corrupt all of them. And because
+you didn't, because you couldn't, I am alive. You would like to know how
+I got out. But you will never know, Ravengar. You will die without
+knowing.'
+
+Ravengar put his hands in his pockets.
+
+'I can only assume that you are going mad, Owen,' said he. 'I have long
+guessed that you were. Nothing else will explain this extraordinary
+action of yours towards me.'
+
+'You act well,' replied Hugo, sitting down and eyeing Ravengar
+critically. 'You act well. But you gave the whole show away by the tone
+in which you swore two minutes ago. If there is anyone mad in this room,
+it is yourself. Your schemes show that queer mixture of amazing
+ingenuity and amazing folly which is characteristic of madmen. Let us
+hope you are mad, at any rate.'
+
+'My schemes!' sneered Ravengar. 'You might at least tell the madman what
+his schemes are.'
+
+Hugo laughed.
+
+'You must have been maturing the day's business quite a long time, my
+boyhood's companion, my floater of public companies, my pearl of
+financiers. Yes, decidedly parts of it were wonderfully ingenious. To
+sow the place with pickpockets, to get at my cashiers, my
+commissionaires, and my servers. To substitute your own false
+shopwalkers for the genuine article. To arrange for the arrest of
+important customers on preposterous charges of theft. To lock up a
+hundred women in a gallery till they nearly died. To have my best and
+most advertised bargains removed in the night. To deprive the
+restaurants of food, and to employ women to turn them upside down. To
+produce, as you contrived to do, a general air of pandemonium, and to
+ruin the discipline of over three thousand of the best-trained employes
+in England. All this, and much else which I do not mention, was devilish
+clever in its conception, and the execution of it commands my
+unqualified admiration. Especially having regard to the fact that you
+contrived not to arouse my suspicions. I may tell you that certain
+strange incidents which occurred in my establishment during the autumn
+did indeed lead me vaguely to suspect that you were at work against me,
+but you were sufficiently smart to put me off the track again. Let me
+add that until this afternoon I did not perceive that your purchase of a
+controlling share in the _Evening Herald_ was only a portion of a
+mightier plan.'
+
+'Really, Owen--'
+
+'Don't waste your breath in denials. You will have none at all
+presently, like Bentley.'
+
+'Bentley?' repeated Ravengar, with a slight movement.
+
+'Yes; but we will come to Bentley in a few minutes. I have enlarged to
+you on your own cleverness. I must enlarge to you on your folly. What
+folly! What was the end of all this to be, Ravengar? I have tried to put
+myself in your place, and to follow your thoughts. You hate me. You
+think I robbed you of a fortune, and that I helped to rob you of a
+woman. You wished to buy my business, and add it to the roll of your
+companies. And I deprived you of that triumph. Your hatred of me grew
+and grew. Leading a solitary and narrow life, you allowed it to develop
+into a species of monomania. I had come out on top once too often for
+your peace of mind. In your opinion the world was too small to hold both
+of us. Accordingly, you evolved your terrific campaign. My business was
+to be seriously damaged. And I was to be murdered. And then you were to
+get the concern cheap from my executors, and to float me dead since you
+could not float me living. What folly, Ravengar! What stupendous folly!
+Even if the fanciful and grotesque scheme had succeeded as far as my
+death, it could not have succeeded beyond that point.'
+
+'I don't know what you are chattering about, Owen, but you look as if
+you expected me to ask, "Why?" Anything to oblige you. Why?'
+
+'You would have known the reason had you lived long enough to read the
+provisions of my will,' said Hugo.
+
+'I see,' said Ravengar.
+
+'You do,' said Hugo. 'You see, you hear, you breathe, but Bentley
+doesn't. Bentley has killed himself.' (Ravengar started.) 'So that if
+you have not my blood on your conscience, you have his. You tempted him;
+he fell ... and he has repented. Admit that you tempted him!'
+
+Ravengar smiled superiorly. And then Hugo sprang forward in a sudden
+overmastering passion.
+
+'Hate breeds hate,' he cried, 'and I have learnt from you how to hate.
+Admit that you have tried to ruin and to murder me, or, by G--! I will
+kill you sooner than I intended.'
+
+He had no weapon in his hands; the revolver was in a drawer; but
+nevertheless Ravengar shrank from those menacing hands.
+
+'Look here, Hugo--'
+
+'Will you admit it? Or shall I have to--'
+
+Their wills met in a supreme conflict.
+
+'Oh, very well, then,' muttered Ravengar.
+
+The conflict was over.
+
+Hugo returned to his chair.
+
+'Miserable cur!' he exclaimed. 'You were afraid of me. I knew I could
+frighten you. I would have liked to be able to admire something more
+than your ingenuity. Ravengar, I do believe I could have forgiven your
+attempt to murder me if it had not included an attempt to dishonour me
+at the same time. There is something simple and grand about a
+straightforward murder--I shall prove to you soon that I do not always
+regard murder as a crime--but to murder a man amid circumstances of
+shame, to finish him off while making him look a fool--that is the act
+of a--of a Ravengar.'
+
+Ravengar yawned and glanced at his watch.
+
+'It's nearly my dinner-time,' said he.
+
+Again Hugo sprang forward, and, snatching at the watch, tore it and the
+chain from Ravengar's waistcoat, dashed them to the floor, and stamped
+on them. He was amazed, and he was also delighted, at his own fury. The
+lust of destruction had got hold of him.
+
+'Ass!' he murmured, suddenly lowering his voice. 'Can't you guess what I
+mean to do?'
+
+'I cannot,' Ravengar stammered.
+
+'I mean to put you to the same test to which you put me. You arranged
+that I should spend twenty-two hours in a vault without ventilation. At
+the end of five hours I was by no means dead. I might have survived the
+twenty-two. But, frankly, I don't fancy I should. And I don't fancy you
+will. In fact, I'm convinced that you won't.'
+
+'Indeed!' said Ravengar uncertainly.
+
+'You think this scene is not real,' Hugo continued. 'You think it can't
+be real. You refuse to credit the fact that this time to-morrow you will
+be dead. You refuse to admit to yourself that I am in earnest--deadly,
+fatal earnest.'
+
+'Upon my soul!' Ravengar burst out, standing, 'I believe you are.'
+
+'Good,' said Hugo. 'You are waking up, positively. You are getting
+accustomed to the unpleasant prospect of not dying in your bed
+surrounded by inconsolable dependants.'
+
+'Hugo,' Ravengar began persuasively, 'you must be aware that all these
+suspicions of yours are a figment of your excited brain. You must be
+aware that I never meant to murder you.'
+
+'My dear fellow,' Hugo replied with calm bitterness, '_I_ don't intend
+to murder _you_. I intend merely to put you in that vault. Your death
+will be an accidental consequence, as mine would have been. And why
+should you not die? Can you give me a single good reason why you should
+continue to live? What good are you doing on the earth? Are you making
+anyone happy? Are you making yourself happy? That spark of vitality
+which constitutes your soul has chanced on an unfortunate incarnation.
+Suppose that I release it, and give it a fresh opportunity, shall I not
+be acting worthily? For you must agree that murder in the strict sense
+is an impossible thing. The immortal cannot die. Vital energy cannot be
+destroyed. All that the murderer does is to end one incarnation and
+begin another.'
+
+'So that is your theory!'
+
+'Was it not yours, when you got me deposited in the vault?' Hugo
+demanded with ferocious irony. 'I am bound to believe that it was. The
+common outcry against murder (as it is called) can have no weight with
+enlightened persons like you and me, Ravengar.'
+
+'Perhaps not,' said Ravengar, summoning his powers of self-control. 'But
+the common outcry against murder is apt to be very inconvenient for the
+person who chooses, as you put it, to end one incarnation and begin
+another. Has it not struck you, Owen, that inquiries would be made for
+me, that my death would be certain to be discovered, and that ultimately
+you would suffer the penalty?'
+
+'My arrangements for the future are far more complete than yours could
+have been in regard to me,' Hugo answered smoothly. 'You betrayed some
+clumsiness. I shall profit by your mistakes. No one will see you go into
+the Safe Deposit except myself and a man whom I can trust. No one at all
+except myself will see you go into the vault. I can manage the operation
+alone. A little chloroform will quieten you for a time. The vault once
+closed will not be opened during my lifetime, unless at four o'clock
+to-morrow night I hear you knocking on the door. Of course, inquiries
+will be made, but they will be futile. People often simply disappear.
+You will simply disappear.'
+
+The clock struck six.
+
+'And your conscience?' Ravengar muttered.
+
+'It's soon well under control. Besides, I shall be doing the human race,
+and especially the investing part of the human race, a very good turn.'
+
+Then Ravengar approached Hugo, and, Hugo rising to meet him, their faces
+almost touched in the middle of the great room.
+
+'You called me a cur,' he said. 'Yet perhaps I am not such a cur after
+all. You have beaten me. You mean to finish me; I can see it in your
+face. Well, you will regret it more than I shall. Do you know I have
+often wished to die? You are right in saying that there is no reason why
+I should live. I am only a curse to the world. But you are wrong to
+scorn me when you kill me. You ought to pity me. Did I choose my
+temperament, my individuality? As I am, so I was born, and from his
+character no man can escape.'
+
+And he sat down, and Hugo sat down.
+
+'When is it to be?' Ravengar questioned.
+
+'In a few minutes,' said Hugo impassively, feeding his mortal
+resentment on the memory of those hours when he himself had waited for
+death in the vault.
+
+'Then I shall have time to ask you how you came to know that Camilla
+Payne, or rather Camilla Tudor, is alive.'
+
+'She is not alive,' Hugo explained. 'The suggestion contained in my
+decoy letter was a pure invention in order to entice you. As you tempted
+me into the vault, so I tempted you here on your way to the vault.'
+
+'But she is alive all the same!' Ravengar persisted. 'It is the fact
+that she is not dead that makes me less unwilling to die, for a word
+from her might send me to a death more shameful than the one you have so
+kindly arranged for me.'
+
+Hugo in that instant admired Ravengar, and he replied quite gently:
+
+'You are mistaken. Where can you have got the idea that she is not dead?
+She is dead. I myself--I myself screwed her up in her coffin.'
+
+The words sounded horrible.
+
+'Then you were in the plot!' Ravengar cried.
+
+'What plot?'
+
+'The plot to persuade me falsely that she is dead. Bah! I know more
+than you think. I know, for example, that her body is not in the coffin
+in Brompton Cemetery. And I am almost sure that I know where she is
+hiding. I should have known beyond doubt before to-morrow morning.
+However, what does it matter now?'
+
+'Not in the coffin?' Hugo whispered, as if to himself. His whole frame
+trembled, shook, and his heart, leaping, defied his intellect.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+BURGLARS
+
+
+When at eleven o'clock that same winter night Hugo stood hesitating,
+with certain tools and a hooded electric lamp in his hand, on the
+balcony in front of the drawing-room window of Francis Tudor's sealed
+flat, he thought what a strange, illogical, and capricious thing is the
+human heart.
+
+He knew that Camilla was dead. He had had the very best and most
+convincing evidence of the fact. He knew that Ravengar's suspicions were
+without foundation, utterly wrong-headed; and yet those statements of
+his enemy had unsettled him. They had not unsettled the belief of his
+intelligence, but they had unsettled his soul's peace. And that
+curiosity to learn the whole truth about the history of the relations
+between Francis Tudor and Camilla, that curiosity which had slumbered
+for months, and which had been so suddenly awakened by Ravengar's lure
+of the morning, was now urged into a violent activity.
+
+Nor was this all. Camilla was surely dead. But supposing that by some
+incredible chance she was not dead (lo! the human heart), could he kill
+Ravengar? This question had presented itself to him as he sat in the
+dome listening to Ravengar's asseverations that Camilla lived. And the
+mere ridiculous, groundless suspicion that she lived, the mere fanciful
+dream that she lived, had quite changed and softened Hugo's mood. He had
+struggled hard to keep his resolution to kill Ravengar, but it had
+melted away; he had fanned the fire of his mortal hatred, but it had
+cooled, and at length he had admitted to himself, angrily, reluctantly,
+that Ravengar had escaped the ordeal of the vault. And this being
+decided, what could he do with Ravengar? Retain him under lock and key?
+Why? To what end? Such illegal captivities were not practicable for long
+in London. Besides, they were absurd, melodramatic, and futile. As the
+moments passed and the fumes of a murderous intoxication gradually
+cleared away, Hugo had regained his natural, sagacious perspective, and
+he had perceived that there was only one thing to do with Ravengar.
+
+He let Ravengar go. He showed him politely out.
+
+It was an anti-climax, but the incalculable and peremptory processes of
+the heart often result in an anti-climax.
+
+The night was cold and damp, as the morning had been, and Hugo shivered,
+but not with cold. He shivered in the mere exciting eagerness of
+anticipation. He had chosen the drawing-room window because the panes
+were very large. He found it perfectly simple, by means of the treacled
+cardboard which he carried, to force in the pane noiselessly. He pushed
+aside the blind, and crept within the room. So simple was it to violate
+the will of a dead man, and the solemnly affixed seals of his executor!
+He had arranged that the pane should be replaced before dawn, and the
+new putty darkened to match the rest. Thus, no trace would remain of the
+burglarious entry. No seal on door or window would have been broken.
+
+He stood upright in the drawing-room, restored the blind and the heavy
+curtains to their positions, and then ventured to press the button of
+his lamp. He saw once more the vast outlines of the room which he had
+last seen under such circumstances of woe. The great pieces of furniture
+were enveloped in holland covers, and resembled formless ghosts in the
+pale illumination of the lamp. He shivered again. He was afraid now,
+with the fear of the unknown, the forbidden, and the withheld. Why was
+he there? What could he hope to discover?
+
+In answer to these questions, he replied:
+
+'Why did Francis Tudor order that the flat should be closed? He must
+have had some reason. I will find it out. It is essential to my peace of
+mind to know. I meant to commit murder to-day; I have only committed
+burglary. I ought to congratulate myself and sing for joy, instead of
+feeling afraid.'
+
+So he reassured his spirit as he stepped carefully into the midst of the
+holland-covered and moveless ghosts. On the mantelpiece to the left
+there still stood the electric table-light, and by its side still lay
+the screwdriver.... He determined to pass straight through the
+drawing-room. At the further edge of the carpet, on the parquet flooring
+between the carpet and the portiere leading to the inner hall, he
+noticed under the ray of his lamp footprints in the dust--footprints of
+a man, and smaller footprints, either of a woman or a child. He remained
+motionless, staring at them. Then it occurred to him that during the
+days between the death of its tenant and the sealing-up the flat would
+probably not have been cleaned, and that these footprints must have been
+made months ago by the last persons to leave the flat. Little dust would
+fall after the closing of the flat. He was glad that he had thought of
+that explanation. It was a convincing explanation.
+
+Nevertheless he dared not proceed. For on the other mantelpiece to the
+right there was a clock, and while staring in the ghostly silence at the
+footprints, he had fancied that his ear caught the ticking of the clock.
+Imagination, doubtless! But he dared not proceed until he had satisfied
+himself that his ears had deluded him; and, equally, he dared not
+approach the clock to satisfy himself. He could only gaze at the
+reflection of the clock in the opposite mirror. In the opposite mirror
+the hands indicated half a minute past nine; hence the clock was really
+at half a minute to three, and if it was actually going, it might be
+expected to strike immediately. He waited. He heard a preliminary
+grinding noise familiar to students of symptoms in clocks, and in the
+fraction of a second he was bathed from head to foot in a cold
+perspiration.
+
+The clock struck three.
+
+The next instant he walked boldly up to the clock and bent his ear to
+it. No, he could hear nothing. It had stopped. He glared steadily at the
+hands for two minutes by his own watch; they did not move.
+
+In the back of his head, in the small of his back, in his legs, little
+tracts of his epidermis tickled momentarily. He wiped his face, and
+walked boldly away from the clock to the portiere, which he lifted with
+one arm. Then he threw the light of his lamp direct on the dial, and
+glared at it again, fearful lest it should have taken advantage of his
+departure to resume its measuring of eternity.
+
+Could a clock go for four months? A clock could be made that would go
+for four months. But this was not a freak-clock. It was a large Louis
+Seize pendule, and he knew it to be genuine of his own knowledge; he had
+bought it.
+
+He dropped the portiere between himself and the clock, and stood in the
+inner hall. He had had as much of the drawing-room as was good for his
+nerves.
+
+The inner hall was oblong in shape, and measured about twelve feet at
+its greatest width. In front of him, as he stood with his back to the
+drawing-room, was a closed door, which he knew led into the principal
+bedroom of the flat. To his right another heavy portiere divided the
+inner from the outer hall. This portiere hung in straight perpendicular
+folds. He wondered why the portieres had not been taken down and folded
+away.
+
+He decided to penetrate first into the bedroom, partly because he deemed
+the bedroom might contain the solution of the enigma, and partly because
+his eye had fancied it saw a slight tremor in the portiere leading to
+the outer hall. So he stepped stoutly across the space which separated
+him from the bedroom door. But he had not reached the door before there
+was a loud, sharp explosion, and a panel of the door splintered and
+showed a hole, and he thought he heard a faint cry.
+
+A revolver shot!
+
+He did not believe in anything so far-fetched as man-traps and
+spring-guns. Hence there must be some person or persons in the flat.
+Some unseen intelligence was following him. Some mysterious will had
+ordained that he should not enter that bedroom. The shot was a warning.
+He guessed from the flight of the splinters and the appearance of the
+hole that the mysterious will must be on the other side of the portiere,
+but the portiere gave no sign.
+
+What was he to do? He had brought with him no weapon. He had not
+anticipated that revolvers would be needed in the exploration of an
+empty and forbidden flat. The very definite terrors of the inner hall
+seemed to him to surpass the vaguer terrors of the drawing-room, and he
+decided to return thither in order to consider quietly what his tactics
+should be; if necessary, he could return to the dome for arms and
+assistance. But no sooner did he move a foot towards the drawing-room
+than another shot sounded. The drawing-room portiere trembled, and
+something crashed within the apartment. The mysterious will had ardently
+decided that he should go neither back nor forward.
+
+'Who's there? Who's that shooting?' he muttered thickly, and
+extinguished his lamp.
+
+He had meant to cry out loud, but, to his intense surprise, his throat
+was dried up.
+
+There was no answer, no stir, no noise. The silence that exists between
+the stars seemed to close in upon him. Then he really knew what fear
+was. He admitted to himself that he was unmistakably and horribly
+afraid. He admitted that life was inconceivably precious, and the
+instinct to preserve it the greatest of all instincts. And gradually he
+came to see that the safest course was the most desperate course, and
+gradually his courage triumphed over his fear.
+
+He dropped gently to his hands and knees, and began, with a thousand
+precautions, to crawl like a serpent towards the outer hall. The
+darkened lamp he held between his teeth. If the mysterious will fired
+again, the mysterious will would almost to a certainty fire harmlessly
+over his head. At last his hands touched the portiere. He hesitated,
+listened, and put one hand under the portiere. Then, relighting the
+lamp, he sprang up with a yell on the other side of the portiere, and
+clutched for the unseen intelligence.
+
+But there was nothing. He stood alone in the outer hall. To his right
+lay the side-passage between the drawing-room and the _cabinet de
+toilette_, which Camilla had used on the night of her engagement. In
+front of him was a door, slightly ajar, which led to the servants'
+quarters. He gazed around, breathing heavily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+POLYCARP AND HAWKE'S MAN
+
+
+Then it was that he heard a noise, something between scratching and
+fumbling, on the further side of the front-door, in the main corridor of
+the flats. He could see through the ground glass over the door that the
+corridor was lighted as usual.
+
+He thought: 'Someone is breaking the seal on that door!' And his next
+idea was: 'Since the seal is being broken in the full light of the
+public corridor, it is being broken by someone who has the right to
+break it. Only one man has the right, and that man is Francis Tudor's
+executor, Senior Polycarp.'
+
+The noise of scratching and fumbling ceased, and a key was placed in the
+lock.
+
+Hugo hastily extinguished his lamp, and hid behind the portiere.
+Immediately the lamp was extinguished he observed, what he had not
+observed before, that a faint light came through the aperture of the
+door leading to the servants' quarters.
+
+The front-door opened, and he heard footsteps in the hall. Then ensued a
+pause. Then the footsteps advanced, and the newcomer evidently went into
+the room where the faint light was.
+
+'Come out of that!'
+
+Yes; it was Polycarp's quiet, mincing, imperious voice.
+
+'Come out of it yourself!'
+
+The answering tones were gruff, heavy, full, the speech of a strong
+coarse-fibred man.
+
+Hugo peeped cautiously through the portiere. Polycarp was backing slowly
+out of the room into the hall, followed by a tall, dark, scowling man,
+who bore an ordinary kitchen candle. Polycarp halted in the middle of
+the floor. The man also halted; he seemed to be towering over Polycarp
+in an attitude of menace.
+
+'Let me pass,' said the man. 'I've had enough of this.'
+
+Polycarp smiled scornfully.
+
+'You're caught,' said he. 'You're one of Hawke's men, aren't you?'
+
+'Go to h---!' was the man's ferocious reply.
+
+'Answer my question, sir.'
+
+'What if I am?' the man grumbled.
+
+'In five minutes you'll be in the hands of the police. I got wind
+yesterday of what your rascally agency was up to. You needn't deny
+anything. You're working on behalf of Mr. Ravengar. You know me! Mr.
+Ravengar happens to be a client of mine, but after to-night he will be
+so no longer. What he wants done in this flat I cannot guess, but it's
+an absolute certainty that you're in for three years' penal, my friend.'
+
+'Let me pass,' the man repeated, lifting his jaw, 'or I'll blow your
+brains out!'
+
+He produced his revolver.
+
+'Oh no, you won't,' said Polycarp coldly. 'You daren't. You aren't on
+the stage, and you aren't in Texas. And you aren't a bold Bret Harte
+villain. You're simply the creature of a private inquiry agency, as it's
+called, the most miserable of trades! Usually you spend your time in
+manufacturing divorces, but just now you're doing something more
+dangerous even than that, something that needed more pluck than you've
+got. I should advise you to come with me quietly.'
+
+Polycarp was in evening dress, and carried a pair of white gloves. Hugo
+decidedly admired the old dandy as he stood there gazing up so
+condescendingly at the man with the candle.
+
+'Look here!' said the man with the candle. 'Let me pass. I don't want
+any fuss. I want to go. There's more in this flat than I bargained for.
+Let me pass.'
+
+'Give me that revolver,' Polycarp smoothly demanded.
+
+'Curse it!' cried the man. 'I'll give it you! Hands up, you old fool! Do
+you think I'm here for fun?'
+
+And he raised the revolver.
+
+'I shall not put my hands up.'
+
+'I'll count five,' said the man grimly, 'and if you don't--'
+
+'Count.'
+
+'One!... two!... three! Can't you see I mean it?'
+
+Hugo perceived plainly the murderous, wild look on the man's face. He
+knew what it was to feel murderous. He knew that in a fit of homicide
+all considerations of prudence, all care for the future, vanish away,
+that the mind is utterly monopolized by the obsession of the one single
+desire.
+
+Polycarp disdainfully sneered:
+
+'Four!'
+
+Hugo could withstand the strain no more. He bounded out from his
+concealment, and snatched the revolver from the man's hand.
+
+'I forgot you,' growled the man, glancing at him, disgusted.
+
+And so saying he dashed the candle in Polycarp's face and knocked him
+violently against Hugo. Both Hugo and Polycarp fell to the ground. The
+man made a leap for the door, and in a second had fled, banging it after
+him. Hugo and Polycarp rose with stiff movements. Hugo picked up his
+lamp, and the two confronted each other. It was a highly delicate
+situation.
+
+'Your life is, at any rate, saved,' said Hugo at length.
+
+'You think it was in danger?'
+
+Polycarp's lip curled.
+
+'I think so.'
+
+'Possibly you foresaw the danger I ran,' Polycarp remarked with frigid
+irony, 'and came into the flat with the intention of protecting me. May
+I ask _how_ you came in?'
+
+'I came in through the drawing-room window,' said Hugo. 'I did not
+interfere with your seals, however,' he added.
+
+'You know you are guilty of a criminal offence?'
+
+'I know it.'
+
+'And that I, as executor of the late Francis Tudor, have a duty which I
+must perform, no matter how unpleasant both for you and for me?'
+
+'Just so.'
+
+'What are you doing here? Do you think your conduct is worthy of a
+gentleman?'
+
+Hugo put the candle down on a table, and dug his hands into his pockets.
+
+'At this moment,' said he, 'I am not a gentleman. I am just a man.
+Nothing else. I will appeal to you as another man. I need hardly say
+that I have no connection with the opposition firm; I was entirely
+ignorant of the presence of Hawke's mission here when I broke into the
+flat. I had no notion that Ravengar was pursuing investigations similar
+to mine. Mr. Polycarp, Ravengar is, or was, a client of yours--'
+
+'Was.'
+
+'Yes, I heard what you said a few moments ago. Was a client of yours. I
+am sure, therefore, that no one knows better than you that Ravengar is
+not an honest man. On the other hand, I am equally sure that on the few
+occasions when you and I have met I must have impressed you as a
+comparatively honest man. Is it not so? I speak without false modesty.
+Is it not so?'
+
+Polycarp nodded.
+
+'Well, then,' proceeded Hugo, walking slowly about, 'you will probably
+need no convincing that in any difficulty between me and Ravengar I am
+in the right. Now, there have been, and are, matters between Ravengar
+and me in which others had best not interfere, even indirectly. I shall
+end those matters in my own way, because I am the strongest, and because
+my hands are clean. I can give you no details. But let me tell you that
+once the whole of my life's dream was in this flat, this flat which you
+have legally closed, and I have illegally opened. Let me tell you that
+my life, the only part of my life for which I cared, came to an end in
+this flat some months ago: and that a mystery hangs over that event
+which has lately made intolerable even the dead-alive existence which
+Fate had left to me. Let me tell you that circumstances have arisen this
+very day which rendered it impossible for me to keep myself out of this
+flat, be the penalty what it might. And, finally, let me make my appeal
+to you.'
+
+'What do you want?' asked Polycarp quietly. The sincerity of Hugo's
+emotion had touched him. 'Don't ask me to act contrary to my duty.'
+
+'But that is just what I shall ask!' Hugo exclaimed. 'Leave me. Leave me
+till to-morrow: that is my sole wish. What is your duty, after all?
+Tudor is dead. He is beyond the reach of harm. He requires the
+protection of no lawyer. Trust me, and leave me. I am an honest man.
+Forget your law, forget your parchments, forget the conventions of
+society, forget everything except that you are human, and can do a
+service to a fellow-creature. Exercise some imagination, and see how
+artificial and absurd is the world of ideas in which you live. Listen to
+your heart, and help me. I am worth it. Can't you see how I suffer?
+To-day I have been through as much as I can stand. I am at the end of my
+forces, and I must have sympathy. You will be guilty of deliberate
+neglect of duty in leaving me here, but I implore you to leave me. And I
+give no specific reason why you should. Will you?'
+
+There was a silence.
+
+'Yes,' said Polycarp.
+
+'I thank you.'
+
+'I don't know why I should consent,' Polycarp continued, 'but I do. I
+am quite in the dark. Legally, I am a disgrace to my profession. I
+forfeit my professional honour. But I will consent. Do what you like. Go
+out as you came in and leave no trace. If, however--'
+
+'Don't trouble to say that,' Hugo interrupted him. 'I shall take no
+unfair advantage of your generosity. The flat and all its contents are
+absolutely safe in my hands. And if you should decide, in the future,
+that I must accept the consequences of to-night's work, I shall not
+shuffle. All I want is to be left alone _now_.'
+
+Polycarp opened the door.
+
+'Good-night,' he said. 'Perhaps you did save my life. But if you had
+appealed on that account to my gratitude I should have been obliged to
+refuse your request.'
+
+'I know it,' said Hugo. 'I knew whom I was talking to. Good-night, and
+thanks.'
+
+'I shall lock this door,' Polycarp called out, departing.
+
+'Yes, do; and, I say, you'll lay hands on that man of Hawke's easily
+enough in a day or two.'
+
+'Oh, certainly,' said Polycarp. 'I have not forgotten him. But I was
+compelled to deal with you first.'
+
+Twisting his white moustache, and buttoning his overcoat across the vast
+acreage of his shirt-front, Polycarp disappeared from Hugo's view into
+the corridor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+HUSBAND AND WIFE
+
+
+Hugo bolted the front-door on the inside, relighted the candle which
+Hawke's man had used as a weapon, and placed it in the middle of the
+hall floor. He then penetrated into the servants' part of the flat, and
+emerged on to the balcony by the small side-door, which was open, and
+had evidently been forced by Hawke's man. And there, on the balcony, he
+leaned over the balustrade in the cold humid night, and tried to recover
+his calmness. He felt that any systematic, scientific search of the
+premises would be impossible to him until his mind resembled somewhat
+less a sea across which a hurricane has just passed.
+
+Many questions stood ready to puzzle his brain, but he ignored them all,
+and fell into a vague reverie, of which Camilla was the centre. And from
+this reverie he was suddenly startled by the clear, unmistakable sound
+of a door being shut within the flat. It was not the shutting of a door
+by the wind, but the careful, precise shutting of a door by some person
+who had a habit of shutting doors as doors ought to be shut.
+
+'Polycarp has returned!' was his first thought. But he remembered. 'No!
+I bolted the front-door on the inside.'
+
+The conundrum of the clock and of the two sizes of footprints in the
+drawing-room recurred to him. Without allowing himself to hesitate, he
+strode back again into the flat, with a sort of unbreathed sigh, an
+unuttered complaint against circumstances for not giving him an
+instant's peace.
+
+The candle was still placidly burning in the hall, but its position had
+certainly been shifted by at least three feet. It was much nearer the
+portiere leading to the inner hall. Hugo listened intently. Not a sound!
+And he stared interrogatively at the candle as though the candle were a
+guilty thing.
+
+However, he now possessed the revolver of Hawke's man, and this gave him
+confidence. He left the perambulating candle to itself, and proceeded to
+the inner hall by the light of his own electric lamp. The door of the
+principal bedroom, which he had originally meant to invade, lay to his
+right; the entrance to the drawing-room lay to his left. He thought he
+would take another look at the drawing-room, and then he thought:
+
+'No; I'll tackle the bedroom.'
+
+And he seized the handle of the bedroom door. At the first trial it
+would not turn, but in a moment it turned a little, and then turned back
+against his pressure.
+
+'Someone's got hold of it inside!' he said to himself.
+
+He put the lamp on a chair, and took the revolver from his pocket in
+readiness for any complications that might follow his forcing of the
+door.
+
+Then he heard a woman's voice within the bedroom.
+
+'I shall open it, Alb, if you kill me for it. I don't care who it is.
+You may be dying of loss of blood. In fact, I'm sure you are.'
+
+And the door was pulled wide open with a single sweeping movement, and
+Hugo beheld the figure, slightly dishevelled and more than slightly
+perturbed, of Mrs. Albert Shawn.
+
+'Oh, Alb!' cried Lily. 'It's Mr. Hugo! Oh, Mr. Hugo! whatever next will
+happen in this world?'
+
+The swift loosing of the tension of Hugo's nerves was too much for his
+self-possession. He burst into a peal of loud laughter. It was
+unnaturally loud, it was hysterical; but it was genuine laughter, and it
+did him good.
+
+Lily straightened herself. So far, she had not admitted Hugo into the
+chamber.
+
+'It's all very well for you to laugh like that, Mr. Hugo,' she protested
+sharply; 'but perhaps you don't know that you've nearly killed my
+husband with that there revolver. The shot came through the door, and
+took him in the arm just as he was emptying this safe.'
+
+Hugo saw Albert Shawn lying on the stripped bed, a handkerchief tied
+round his arm, and in the corner near the door a large safe opened, and
+its contents in a heap on the floor.
+
+'It's all right, sir,' said Albert; 'come in. I'm nowhere near croaking.
+I didn't know you were on this lay as well as me, sir. I thought I was
+going to come down on you to-morrow with a surprise like a thousand of
+bricks.'
+
+'What lay, Albert?' asked Hugo, advancing into the room.
+
+'The secret-finding lay, sir,' said Albert.
+
+'Your wife has the right to be anxious about you,' Hugo observed, after
+a pause. 'But you don't seem to be quite dying, Shawn; and I think it
+will be as well if you explain to me why you have adopted the profession
+of burglar. It is extremely singular that there should have been three
+burglars here to-night. You, and then me--'
+
+'What did I tell you, Alb?' Mrs. Albert Shawn exclaimed. 'Didn't I tell
+you I heard a scuffle?'
+
+'The scuffle was between me and No. 3. And be it known to you, Mrs.
+Shawn, that the revolver was not fired by me, but by No. 3. I took it
+off him, afterwards.'
+
+'Then No. 3 must have come on behalf of Mr. Ravengar, sir,' said Albert.
+
+'You are no doubt right,' Hugo agreed. 'But how did you know that?'
+
+'Hawke's Detective Agency, sir. I found out before my wedding that one
+of their men had been hanging about here, so I chummed up to him. I spun
+him a yarn how I'd been with Hawke's once, and they gave me the bag, and
+I wasn't satisfied, and he'd got a lot of grievances against Hawke's,
+too, he had. We got very friendly. Pity I had to leave the thing for my
+wedding. But I came back after a week.'
+
+'Yes, that he did, sir,' said Lily proudly, 'and insisted on it.'
+
+'I soon knew they were going to burglarize this flat to get some
+phonograph records.'
+
+'Phonograph records!' Hugo repeated, pondering.
+
+'Yes, sir; and so I thought I'd be beforehand with 'em.'
+
+'Why didn't you tell me directly you knew?'
+
+'You gave me that Gaboriau book to read, sir, and I learnt a lot from
+it. It's put me up to a power of things. And, amongst others, that two
+people can't manage one job. One job, one man.'
+
+'You'll excuse Albert, sir,' said Lily; 'that's only his way of
+talking.'
+
+'It was simply this, sir. I found out enough to make me as sure as eggs
+is eggs that you'd like to have those phonograph records yourself,
+without having to inquire too much where they came from or how they
+came.'
+
+'I see.'
+
+'Exactly, sir. Well, to cut a long story short, sir, I happened to come
+across something yesterday that made me think that the annual sale was
+going to be interfered with by parties unknown. But I'd got all I could
+manage, and I left that alone; I'd no time for it. And last night
+parties unknown tried to break my leg for me with an open cellar-flap. I
+knew it was a plant, and so I pretended it had succeeded.'
+
+'He made me think his ankle was that sprained he couldn't walk. He
+wouldn't trust even me, sir,' said Lily.
+
+'Gaboriau,' Albert explained briefly. 'I knew I was watched, and I told
+Lily to tell the milkman I couldn't walk. It was all over Radipole Road
+at eight o'clock this morning. And so, while parties unknown thought I
+was fast on a sofa, I slipped out by the back-door as soon as I'd sent
+Lily here to warn you about the annual sale, in case of necessity. I
+must say I thought I should be twenty-four hours in front of Hawke's
+men, but I expect they changed their plans. I brought Lily along with me
+at the last moment. She's read Gaboriau, too, sir, and she's mighty
+handy.'
+
+'I am aware of it,' said Hugo.
+
+'Anyhow, we got in here first, by the side-door on the balcony. Hawke's
+man must have come in about an hour after us, and you just after him.
+That's how I reckon it.'
+
+'You went into the drawing-room, didn't you?' Hugo asked.
+
+'Just looked in.'
+
+'And played with the clock?'
+
+Here he glanced sternly at Lily.
+
+'I shook it to start it, sir, to see if it would go,' Lily admitted.
+
+'I reckon you turned out Hawke's man, sir?' Albert queried.
+
+'It amounted to that,' said Hugo. 'But these phonograph records--what
+are they?'
+
+'I don't know what they are,' said Albert, descending from the bed, 'but
+I know that Mr. Ravengar wanted them very badly. It seems Mr. Tudor was
+a great hand at phonographs and gramophones. Like me, sir.'
+
+'Yes, sir; we've got a beauty. My uncle gave it us,' Lily put in. 'Oh,
+Alb! your arm's all burst out again.'
+
+The bandage was, in fact, slightly discoloured.
+
+'Oh, that's nothing, my dear,' said Albert.
+
+He pushed up a pile of discs from in front of the safe, and displayed
+them to Hugo.
+
+'Can we try them here?' Hugo demanded, in a voice suddenly and
+profoundly eager.
+
+'Certainly, sir. Here's the machine. You undo this catch, and then
+you--'
+
+Albert was mounted on his latest hobby, and in a few minutes, although
+he could only use one arm, the phonograph, which stood on the table near
+the safe, was ready for its work of reproduction. Albert started it.
+
+'Follow me, follow me!'
+
+It began to sing the famous ditty in the famous voice of Miss Edna May.
+
+'Stop that!' cried Hugo, and Albert stopped it.
+
+The next two discs proved to be respectively a series of stories of Mr.
+R.G. Knowles and 'The Lost Chord,' played on a cornet. And these also
+were cut short. Then came a bundle of discs tied together. Hugo himself
+fixed the top one, and the machine, after whirring inarticulately, said
+in slow, clear tones:
+
+'In case I should die before--'
+
+Hugo arrested the action.
+
+'Go,' he said, almost threateningly, to Albert and his wife. 'Mrs.
+Shawn, look after your husband's wound. It needs it. See the blood!'
+
+'But--'
+
+'Go,' said Hugo.
+
+And they went.
+
+And when they were gone he released the mechanism, and in the still
+solitude of the bedroom listened to the strange story of Francis Tudor,
+related in Francis Tudor's own voice. It occurred to him that the man
+must have been talking into a phonograph shortly before he died. He
+remembered the monotonous voice on that fatal night in August.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+WHAT THE PHONOGRAPH SAID
+
+
+In case I should die before I can complete my arrangements for the
+future (said the phonograph, reproducing the voice of Francis Tudor), I
+am making a brief statement of the whole case into this phonograph. I am
+exhausted with to-day's work, and I shall find it easier and much
+quicker to speak than to write; and I'm informed that I ought never to
+exert myself more than is necessary. Supposing I were to die within the
+next few days--and I have yet to go through the business of the funeral
+ceremonies!--circumstances might arise which might nullify part of my
+plan, unless a clear account of the affair should ultimately come into
+the hands of some person whom I could trust not to make a fool of
+himself--such as Polycarp, my solicitor, for instance.
+
+Hence I relate the facts for a private record.
+
+When I first met Camilla Payne she was shorthand clerk or private
+secretary, or whatever you call it, to Louis Ravengar. I saw her in his
+office. Curiously, she didn't make a tremendous impression on me at the
+moment. By the way, Polycarp, if it is indeed you who listen to this,
+you must excuse my way of relating the facts. I can only tell the tale
+in my own way. Besides meddling with finance, I've dabbled in pretty
+nearly all the arts, including the art of fiction, and I can't leave out
+the really interesting pieces of my narrative merely because you're a
+lawyer and hate needless details, sentimental or otherwise. But _do_ you
+hate sentimental details? I don't know. Anyhow, this isn't a counsel's
+brief. What was I saying? Oh! She didn't make a tremendous impression on
+me at the moment, but I thought of her afterwards. I thought of her a
+good deal in a quiet way after I had left her--so much so that I made a
+special journey to Ravengar's a few days afterwards, when there was no
+real need for me to go, in order to have a look at her face again. I
+should explain that I was dabbling in finance just then, fairly
+successfully, and had transactions with Ravengar. He didn't know that I
+was the son of the man who had taken his stepmother away from his
+father, and I never told him I had changed my name, because the scandals
+attached to it by Ravengar and his father had made things very
+unpleasant for any bearer of that name. Still, Ravengar happened to be
+the man I wanted to deal with, and so I didn't let any stupid resentment
+on my part stop me from dealing with him. He was a scoundrel, but he
+played the game, I may incidentally mention. I venture to give this
+frank opinion about one of your most important clients, because he'll be
+dead before you read this, Polycarp. At least, I expect so.
+
+Well, the day I called specially with a view to seeing her she was not
+there. She had left Ravengar's employment, and disappeared. Ravengar
+seemed to be rather perturbed about it. But perhaps he was perturbed
+about the suicide which had recently taken place in his office. I felt
+it--I mean I felt her disappearance. However, the memory of her face
+gave me something very charming to fall back on in moments of
+depression, and it was at this time something occurred sufficient to
+make me profoundly depressed for the remainder of my life. I was over in
+Paris, and seeing a good deal of Darcy, my friend the English doctor
+there. We were having a long yarn one night in his rooms over the Cafe
+Americain, and he said to me suddenly: 'Look here, old chap, I'm going
+to do something very unprofessional, because I fancy you'll thank me for
+it.' He said it just like that, bursting out all of a sudden. So I said,
+'Well?' He said: 'It's very serious, and in nine hundred and ninety-nine
+cases out of a thousand I should be a blundering idiot to tell you.' I
+said to him: 'You've begun. Finish. And let's see whether I'll thank
+you.' He then told me that I'd got malignant disease of the heart, might
+die at any moment, and in any case couldn't live more than a few years.
+He said: 'I thought you'd like to know, so that you could arrange your
+life accordingly.' I thanked him. I was really most awfully obliged to
+him. It wanted some pluck to tell me. He said: 'I wouldn't admit to
+anyone else that I'd told you.' I never admired Darcy more than I did
+that night. His tone was so finely casual.
+
+In something like a month I had got used to the idea of being condemned
+to death. At any rate, it ceased to interfere with my sleep. I purchased
+a vault for myself in Brompton Cemetery. Then I took this flat that I'm
+talking in now, and began deliberately to think over how I should
+finish my life. I'd got money--much more than old Ravengar imagined--and
+I'm a bit of a philosopher, you know; I have my theories as to what
+constitutes real living. However, I won't bother you with those. I
+expect they're pretty crude, after all. Besides, my preparations were
+all knocked on the head. I saw Camilla Payne again in Hugo's. She had
+stopped typewriting, and was a milliner there. I tried my level best to
+strike up an intimacy with her, but I failed. She wouldn't have it. The
+fact is, I was too rich and showy. And I had a reputation behind me
+which, possibly--well, you're aware of all that, Polycarp. In about a
+fortnight I worshipped her--yes, I did actually worship her. I would
+have done anything she ordered me, except leave her alone; and that I
+wouldn't do. I dare say I might have got into a sort of friendship with
+her if she'd had any home, any relatives, any place to receive me in.
+But what can a girl do with nothing but a bed-sitting-room? I asked her
+to go up the river; I asked her to dinner and to lunch, and to bring her
+friends with her; I even asked her to go with me to an A.B.C. shop, but
+she wouldn't. She was quite right, in a general way. How could she
+guess I wasn't like the rest, or like what I had been?
+
+Once, when she let me walk with her from Hugo's down to Walham Green, I
+nearly went mad with joy. I think I verily was mad for a time. I used to
+take out licenses for our marriage, and I used to buy clothes for
+her--heaps of clothes, in case. Yes, I was as good as mad then. And when
+she made it clear that this walking by my side was nothing at all, meant
+nothing, and must be construed as nothing, I grew still more mad.
+
+At last I wrote to her that if she didn't call and see me at my flat, I
+should blow my brains out. I didn't expect her to call, and I did expect
+that I should blow my brains out. I was ready to do so. A year more or a
+year less on this earth--what did it matter to me?
+
+Some people may think--_you_ may think, Polycarp--that a man like me,
+under sentence of death from a doctor, had no right to make love to a
+woman. That may be so. But in love there isn't often any question of
+right. Human instincts have no regard for human justice, and when the
+instinct is strong enough, the sense of justice simply ceases to exist
+for it. When you're in love--enough--you don't argue. You desire--that's
+all.
+
+To my amazement, she came to the flat. When she was announced, I could
+scarcely tell the servant to show her in, and when she entered, I
+couldn't speak at all for a moment. She was so--however, I won't
+describe her. I couldn't, for one thing. No one could describe that
+woman. She didn't make any fuss. She didn't cry out that she had ruined
+her reputation or anything like that. She simply said that she had
+received my letter, and that she had believed the sincerity of my
+threat, while regretting it, and what did I wish to say to her--she
+wouldn't be able to stay long. It goes without saying I couldn't begin.
+I couldn't frame a sentence. So I suggested we should have some tea.
+Accordingly, we had some tea. She poured it out, and we discussed the
+furniture of the drawing-room. I might have known she had fine taste in
+furniture. She had. When tea was over, she seemed to be getting a little
+impatient. Then I rang for the tray to be removed, and as soon as we
+were alone again, I started: 'Miss Payne--'
+
+Now, when I started like that, I hadn't the ghost of a notion what I was
+going to say. And then the idea stepped into my head all of a sudden:
+'Why not tell her exactly what your situation is? Why not be frank with
+her, and see how it works?' It was an inspiration. Though I didn't
+believe in it, and thought in a kind of despair that I was spoiling my
+chances, it was emphatically an inspiration, and I was obliged to obey
+it.
+
+So I told her what Darcy had told me. I explained how it was that I
+couldn't live long. I said I had nothing to hope for in this world, no
+joy, nothing but blackness and horror. I said how tremendously I was in
+love with her. I said I knew she wasn't in love with me, but at the same
+time I thought she ought to have sufficient insight to see that I was
+fundamentally a decent chap. I went so far as to say that I didn't see
+how she could dislike me. And I said: 'I ask you to marry me. It will
+only be for a year or two, but that year or two are all my life, while
+only a fraction of yours. I am rich, and after my death you will be
+rich, and free from the necessity of this daily drudgery of yours. But I
+don't ask you to marry me for money; I ask you to marry me out of pity.
+I ask you, out of kindness to the most unfortunate and hopeless man in
+the world, to give me a trifle out of your existence. Merely out of
+pity; merely because it is a woman's part in the world to render pity
+and balm. I won't hide anything from you. There will be the unpleasant
+business of my sudden death, which will be a shock to you, even if you
+learn to hate me. But you would get over that. And you would always
+afterwards have the consciousness of having changed the last months of a
+man's career from hell to heaven. There's no disguising the fact that
+it's a strange proposition I'm making to you, but the proposition is not
+more strange than the situation. Will you consent, or won't you?' She
+was going to say something, but I stopped her. I said: 'Wait a moment. I
+shan't try to terrorize you by threats of suicide. And now, before you
+say "Yes" or "No," I give you my solemn word not to commit suicide if
+you say "No."' Then I went on in the same strain appealing to her pity,
+and telling her how humble I should be as a husband.
+
+I could see I had moved her; and now I think over the scene I fancy that
+my appeal must have been a lot more touching than I imagined it was when
+I was making it.
+
+She said: 'I have always liked you a little. But I haven't loved you,
+and I don't love you.' And then, after a pause--I was determined to say
+nothing more--she said: 'Yes, I will marry you. I may be doing wrong--I
+am certainly doing something very unusual; but I have no one to advise
+me against it, and I will follow my impulse and marry you. I needn't say
+that I shall do all I can to be a good wife to you. Ours will be a
+curious marriage.... Perhaps, after all, I am very wicked!'
+
+I cried out: 'No, you aren't--no you aren't! The saints aren't in it
+with you!'
+
+She smiled at this speech. She's so sensible, Camilla is. She's like a
+man in some things; all really great women are.
+
+I could tell you a lot more that passed immediately afterwards, but I
+can feel already my voice is getting a bit tired. Besides, it's nothing
+to you, Polycarp.
+
+Then, afterwards, I said: 'You _will_ love me, you know.'
+
+And I meant it. Any man in similar circumstances would have said it and
+meant it. She smiled again. And then I wanted to be alone with her, to
+enjoy the intimacy of her presence, without a lot of servants all over
+the place; so I went out of the drawing-room and packed off the whole
+tribe for the evening, all except Mrs. Dant. I kept Mrs. Dant to attend
+on Camilla.
+
+We had dinner sent up; it was like a picnic, jolly and childish.
+Camilla was charming. And then I took photographs of her by flashlight,
+with immense success. We developed them together in the dark-room. That
+evening was the first time I had ever been really happy in all my life.
+And I was really happy, although every now and then the idea would shoot
+through my head: 'Only for a year or two at most; perhaps only for a day
+or two!'
+
+I returned to the dark-room alone for something or other, and when I
+came back into the drawing-room she was not there. By heaven! my heart
+went into my mouth. I feared she had run away, after all. However, I met
+her in the passage. She looked very frightened; her face was quite
+changed; but she said nothing had occurred. I kissed her; she let me.
+
+Soon afterwards she went on to the roof. She tried to be cheerful, but I
+saw she had something on her mind. She said she must go home, and begged
+my permission to precede me into the flat in order to prepare for her
+departure. I consented. When ten minutes had elapsed I followed, and in
+the drawing-room, instead of finding Camilla, I found Louis Ravengar.
+
+I needn't describe my surprise at all that.
+
+Ravengar was beside himself with rage. I gathered after a time that he
+claimed Camilla as his own. He said I had stolen her from him. I
+couldn't tell exactly what he was driving at, but I parleyed with him a
+little until I could get my revolver out of a drawer in my escritoire.
+He jumped at me. I thrust him back without firing, and we stood each of
+us ready for murder. I couldn't say how long that lasted. Suddenly he
+glanced across the room, and his eyes faltered, and I became aware that
+Camilla had entered silently. I was so startled at her appearance and by
+the transformation in Ravengar that I let off the revolver
+involuntarily. I heard Camilla order him, in a sharp, low voice, to
+leave instantly. He defied her for a second, and then went. Before
+leaving he stuttered, in a dreadful voice: 'I shall kill you'--meaning
+her. 'I may as well hang for one thing as for another.'
+
+I said to Camilla, gasping: 'What is it all? What does it mean?'
+
+She then told me, after confessing that she had caught Ravengar hiding
+in the dressing-room, and had actually suspected that I had been in
+league with him against her, that long ago she had by accident seen
+Ravengar commit a crime. She would not tell me what crime; she would
+give me no particulars. Still, I gathered that, if not actually murder,
+it was at least homicide. After that Ravengar had pestered her to marry
+him--had even said that he would be content with a purely formal
+marriage; had offered her enormous sums to agree to his proposal; and
+had been constantly repulsed by her. She admitted to me that he had
+appeared to be violently in love with her, but that his motive in
+wanting marriage was to prevent her from giving evidence against him. I
+asked her why she had not communicated with the police long since, and
+she replied that nothing would induce her to do that.
+
+'But,' I said, 'he will do his best to kill you.'
+
+She said: 'I know it.'
+
+And she said it so solemnly that I became extremely frightened. I knew
+Ravengar, and I had marked the tone of his final words; and the more I
+pondered the more profoundly I was imbued with this one idea: 'The life
+of my future wife is not safe. Nothing can make it safe.'
+
+I urged her to communicate with the police. She refused absolutely.
+
+'Then one day you will be killed,' I said.
+
+She gazed at me, and said: 'Can't you hit on some plan to keep me safe
+for a year?'
+
+I demanded: 'Why a year?'
+
+I thought she was thinking of my short shrift.
+
+She said: 'Because in a year Mr. Ravengar will probably have--passed
+away.'
+
+Not another word of explanation would she add.
+
+'Yes,' I said; 'I can hit on a plan.'
+
+And, as a matter of fact, a scheme had suddenly flashed into my head.
+
+She asked me what the scheme was. And I murmured that it began with our
+marriage on the following day. I had in my possession a license which
+would enable us to go through the ceremony at once.
+
+'Trust me,' I said. 'You have trusted me enough to agree to marry me.
+Trust me in everything.'
+
+I did not venture to tell her just then what my scheme was.
+
+She went to her lodging that night in my brougham. After she had gone I
+found poor old Mrs. Dant drugged in the kitchen. On the next morning
+Camilla and I were married at a registry office. She objected to the
+registry-office at first, but in the end she agreed, on the condition
+that I got her a spray of orange-blossom to wear at her breast. It's no
+business of yours, Polycarp, but I may tell you that this feminine
+trait, this almost childish weakness, in a woman of so superb and
+powerful a character, simply enchanted me. I obtained the
+orange-blossom.
+
+Then you will remember I sent for you, Polycarp, made my will, and
+accompanied you to my safe in your private vault, in order to deposit
+there some secret instructions. I shall not soon forget your
+mystification, and how you chafed under my imperative commands.
+
+Camilla and I departed to Paris, my brain full of my scheme, and full of
+happiness, too. We went to a private hotel to which Darcy had
+recommended us, suitable for honeymoons. The following morning I was,
+perhaps, inclined to smile a little at our terror of Ravengar; but,
+peeping out of the window early, I saw Ravengar himself standing on the
+pavement in the Rue St. Augustin.
+
+I told Camilla I was going out, and that she must not leave that room,
+nor admit anyone into it, until I returned. I felt that Ravengar, what
+with disappointed love, and jealousy, and fear of the consequences of a
+past crime, had developed into a sort of monomaniac in respect to
+Camilla. I felt he was capable of anything. I should not have been
+surprised if he had hired a room opposite to us on the other side of
+that narrow street, and directed a fusillade upon Camilla.
+
+When I reached the street he had disappeared--melted away.
+
+It was quite early. However, I walked up the Rue de Grammont, and so to
+Darcy's, and I routed him out of bed. I gave him the entire history of
+the case. I convinced him of its desperateness, and I unfolded to him my
+scheme. At first he fought shy of it. He said it might ruin him. He said
+such things could not be done in London. I had meant to carry out the
+scheme in this flat. Hence the reason, Polycarp, of the clause in my
+will which provides for the sealing up of the flat in case I die within
+two months of my wedding. You see, I feared that I might be cut off
+before the plan was carried out or before all traces of it were cleared
+away, and I wanted to keep the place safe from prying eyes. As it
+happened, there was no need for such a precaution, as you will see, and
+I shall make a new will to-morrow.
+
+Darcy said suddenly: 'Why not carry out your plan here in Paris; and
+now?'
+
+The superior advantages of this alternative were instantly plain. It
+would be safer for Camilla, since it would operate at once; and also
+Darcy said that the formal details could be arranged much better in
+Paris than in London, as doctors could be found there who would sign
+anything, and clever sculptors, who did not mind a peculiar commission,
+were more easily obtainable in the Quartier Montparnasse than in the
+neighbourhood of the Six Bells and the Arts Club, Chelsea.
+
+We found the doctor and the sculptor.
+
+The hotel was informed that Camilla was ill, and that the symptom
+pointed to typhoid fever. Naturally, she kept her room. That day the
+sculptor, a young American, who said that a thing was 'bully' when he
+meant it was good, arrived, and took a mask of Camilla's head. By the
+way, this was a most tedious and annoying process. The two straws
+through which the poor girl had to breathe while her face was covered
+with that white stuff--! Oh, well, I needn't go into that.
+
+The next day typhoid fever was definitely announced. Hotels generally
+prefer these things to be kept secret, but we published it
+everywhere--it was part of our plan. In a few hours the entire Rue St.
+Augustin was aware that the English bride recently arrived from London
+was down with typhoid fever.
+
+The disease ran its course. Sometimes Camilla was better, sometimes
+worse. Then all of a sudden a haemorrhage supervened, and the young wife
+died, and the young husband was stricken with trouble and grief. The
+whole street mourned. The death even got into the Paris dailies, and the
+correspondence column of the Paris edition of the _New York Herald_ was
+filled with outcries against the impurities of Parisian water.
+
+It was colossal. I laughed, Polycarp.
+
+My mind unhinged by sorrow, I insisted on taking the corpse to London
+for burial. I had a peculiar affection for the Brompton Cemetery, though
+neither her ancestors nor mine had been buried there. I insisted on
+Darcy accompanying me. The procession left the Rue St. Augustin, and the
+hotel was disinfected. This alone cost me a thousand francs. I gave the
+sculptor one thousand five hundred, and the doctor two thousand. Then
+there were the expenses of the journey with the coffin. I forget the
+figure, but I know it was prodigious.
+
+But I was content. For, of course, Camilla was not precisely in that
+coffin. Camilla had not been suffering from precisely typhoid fever. In
+strict fact, she had never been ill the least bit in the world. In
+strict fact, she had been spirited out of the hotel one night, and at
+the very moment when her remains were crossing the Channel in charge of
+an inconsolable widower, she was in the middle of the Mediterranean on a
+steamer. The coffin contained a really wonderful imitation of her
+outward form, modelled and coloured by the American sculptor in a
+composition consisting largely of wax. The widower's one grief was that
+he was forced to separate himself from his life's companion for a period
+of, at least, a week.
+
+A pretty enough scheme, wasn't it, Polycarp? We shall shortly bury the
+wax effigy in Brompton Cemetery, with the assistance of Hugo's
+undertakers, and a parson or so, and grave-diggers, and registrars of
+deaths, and so on and so on. Louis Ravengar will breathe again, thankful
+that typhoid fever has relieved him of an unpleasant incubus, and since
+Camilla is underground, he will speedily forget all about her. She will
+be absolutely safe from him. The inconsolable widower will
+ostentatiously seek distraction in foreign travel, and in a fortnight,
+at most, will, under another name, resume his connubial career in a
+certain villa unsurpassed, I am told, for its picturesque situation.
+
+To-morrow or the next day I must make that new will, dispensing with the
+shutting-up of the flat. The secret instructions, however, will stand.
+
+You may wonder why I confide all this to the phonograph, Polycarp. I
+will tell you. The record will be placed by me to-morrow in my safe in
+your vault. To-night I shall lock it up in the safe here. When I am
+dead, Polycarp, you will find that the secret instructions instruct you
+to realize all my estate, and to keep the proceeds in negotiable form
+until a lady named Mrs. Catherine Pounds, a widow, comes to you with an
+autograph letter from me. You will hand everything to that lady, or to
+her representative, without any further inquiry. But it has struck me
+this very day, Polycarp, that you, with your confounded suspicious and
+legal nature, when you see Mrs. Catherine Pounds, if she should come in
+person, may recognise in her a striking resemblance to Camilla. And you
+may put difficulties in the way, and rake up history which was not
+meant to be raked up. This phonographic record is to prevent you from
+doing so, if by chance you have an impulse to do so. Think it over
+carefully, Polycarp. Consider our situation, and obey my instructions
+without a murmur. The thought of the false death certificates and burial
+certificates, and of the unprofessionalism of Darcy, will abrade your
+legal susceptibilities; but submit to the torture for my sake, Polycarp.
+You are human. I shall add to the letter which Mrs. Catherine Pounds
+will bring you a note to say that if you have any scruples, you are to
+listen to the phonographic records in the safe; if not, you are to
+destroy the phonographic records.
+
+Do I seem gay, Polycarp?
+
+I ought to be. I have carried through my scheme. I have outwitted
+Ravengar. I have saved Camilla from death at his hands. I can look
+forward to an idyll--brief, perhaps, but ecstatic--in a villa with the
+loveliest view on all the Mediterranean. I ought to be gay. And yet I am
+not. And it is not the knowledge of my fatal disease that saddens me.
+No; I think I have been saddened by a day and a night spent with that
+coffin. It is a fraud of a coffin, but it exists. And when I saw it
+just now occupying the drawing-room, it gave me a sudden shock. It
+somehow took hold of my imagination. I was obliged to look within, and
+to touch the waxen image there. And that image seemed unholy. I did not
+care to dwell on the thought of it going into the ground, with all the
+solemnities of the real thing. What do you suppose will happen to that
+waxen image on the Judgment Day, Polycarp? Surely, someone in authority,
+possibly a steward, fussy and overworked, will exclaim: 'There is some
+mistake here!' I can hear you say that I am mad, Polycarp, that Francis
+Tudor was always a little 'wrong.' But I am not mad. It is only that my
+brain is too agile, too fanciful. I am a great deal more sane than you,
+Polycarp.
+
+And I am trying to put some heart into myself. I am trying to make ready
+to enjoy the brief ecstatic future where Camilla awaits me. But I am so
+tired, Polycarp. And there's no disguising the fact that it's an awful
+nuisance never to be quite sure whether you won't fall down dead the
+next minute or the next second. I must go in and have another glance at
+that singular swindle of a coffin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The phonograph went off into an inarticulate whirr of its own
+machinery. The recital was over. Tudor must have died immediately after
+securing the record in the safe in his bedroom, where Hugo had just
+listened to it.
+
+'She lives!' was Hugo's sole thought.
+
+The profound and pathetic tragedy of Tudor's career did not touch him
+until long afterwards.
+
+'She lives! Ravengar lives! Ravengar probably knows where she is, and I
+do not know! And Ravengar is at large! I have set him at large.'
+
+His mind a battlefield on which the most glorious hope struggled against
+a frenzied fear, Hugo rose from the chair in front of the
+phonograph-stand, and, after a slight hesitation, left the flat as he
+had entered it. Before dawn the pane had been replaced in the
+drawing-room window, and the side-door secured.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+THE TOMB
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+'ARE YOU THERE?'
+
+
+The next morning Hugo's dreams seemed to be concerned chiefly with a
+telephone, and the telephone-bell of his dreams made the dreams so noisy
+that even while asleep he knew that his rest was being outrageously
+disturbed. He tried to change the subject of his fantastic visions, but
+he could not, and the telephone-bell rang nearly all the time. This was
+the more annoying in that he had taken elaborate precautions to secure
+perfect repose. Perfect repose was what he needed after quitting Tudor's
+flat. He felt that he had stood as much as a man can expect himself to
+stand. In the vault, and again in the flat, his life had been in danger;
+he had suffered the ignominy of the ruined sale; he had come to grips
+with Ravengar, and let Ravengar go free; he had listened to the amazing
+recital of the phonograph. Moreover, between the interview with Ravengar
+and the burglary of the flat he had summoned his Council of Ten, or,
+rather, his Council of Nine (Bentley being absent, dead), had addressed
+all his employes, had separated three traitorous shopwalkers, ten
+traitorous cashiers, and forty-two traitorous servers from the main
+body, and sent them packing, had arranged for the rehabilitation of Lady
+Brice (_nee_ Kentucky-Webster), had appointed a new guardian to the Safe
+Deposit, had got on the track of the stolen stoles, and had approved
+special advertisements for every daily paper in London.
+
+And, finally and supremely, he had experienced the greatest stroke of
+joy, ecstatic and bewildering joy, of his whole existence--the news that
+Camilla lived. It was this tremendous feeling of joy, and not by any
+means his complex and variegated worries, that might have prevented him
+from obtaining the sleep which Nature demanded.
+
+On reaching the dome at 2 a.m., he had taken four tabloids, each
+containing 0.324 gramme of trional, and had drunk the glass of hot milk
+which Simon always left him in case he should want it. And he had
+written on a sheet of paper the words: 'I am not to be disturbed before
+10 a.m., no matter what happens; but call me at ten.--H.'; and had put
+the sheet of paper on Simon's door-mat. And then he had stumbled into
+bed, and abandoned himself to sleep--not without reluctance, for he did
+not care to lose, even for a few hours, the fine consciousness of that
+sheer joy. He desired to rush off instantly into the universe at large
+and discover Camilla, wherever she might be.
+
+Of course, he had dreamed of Camilla, but the telephone-bell had drowned
+the remembered accents of her voice. The telephone-bell had silenced
+everything. The telephone-bell had grown from a dream into a nightmare;
+and at last he had said to himself in the nightmare: 'I might just as
+well be up and working as lying throttled here by this confounded
+nightmare.' And by an effort of will he had wakened. And even after he
+was roused, and had switched on the light, which showed the hands of the
+clock at a quarter to ten, he could still hear the telephone-bell of his
+nightmare. And then the truth occurred to him, as the truth does occur
+surprisingly to people whose sleep has been disturbed, that the
+telephone-bell was a real telephone-bell, and not in the least the
+telephone-bell of a dream, and it was ringing, ringing, ringing in the
+dome. There were fifteen lines of telephone in the Hugo building, and
+one of them ran to the dome. Few persons called him up on it, because
+few persons knew its precise number, but he used it considerably
+himself.
+
+'Anyhow,' he murmured, 'I've had over seven and a half hours' sleep, and
+that's something.'
+
+And as he got out of bed to go across to the telephone, his great joy
+resumed possession of him, and he was rather glad than otherwise that
+the telephone had forced him to wake.
+
+'Well, well, well?' he cried comically, lifting the ear-piece off the
+hook and stopping the bell.
+
+'Are you there?' the still small voice of the telephone whispered in his
+ear.
+
+'I should think I was here!' he cried. 'Who are you?'
+
+'Are you Mr. Hugo?' asked the voice.
+
+'I'm what's left of Mr. Hugo,' he answered in a sort of drunken tone.
+The power of the sedative was still upon him. 'Who are you? You've
+pretty nearly rung my head off.'
+
+'I just want to say good-bye to you,' said the voice.
+
+'What!'
+
+Hugo started, glancing round the vast room, which was in shadow except
+where a solitary light threw its yellow glare on the dial of the clock.
+
+'Are you there?' asked the voice patiently once again.
+
+'It isn't'--something prompted him to use a Christian name--'it isn't
+Louis?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Where are you, then?' Hugo demanded.
+
+'Not far off,' replied the mysterious voice in the telephone.
+
+It was unmistakably the voice of Louis Ravengar, but apparently touched
+with some new quality, some quality of resigned and dignified despair.
+Hugo wondered where the man could be. And the sinister magic of the
+telephone, which brought this sad, quiet voice to him from somewhere out
+of the immensity of England, but which would not yield up the secret of
+its hiding, struck him strangely.
+
+'Are you there?' said the voice yet again.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+Hugo shivered, but whether it was from cold--he wore nothing but his
+pyjamas--or from apprehension he could not decide.
+
+'I'm saying good-bye,' said the voice once more. 'I suppose you mean to
+have the police after me, and so I mean to get out of their way. See?
+But first I wished to tell you--_crrrck cluck_--Eh? What?'
+
+'I didn't speak.'
+
+'It's these Exchange hussies, then. I wanted to tell you I've thought a
+lot about our interview last night. What you said was true enough, Owen.
+I admit that, and so I am going to end it. Eh? Are you there? That girl
+keeps putting me off.'
+
+'End what?'
+
+'End _it_--_it_--_it_! I'm not making anybody happy, not even myself,
+and so I'm going to end it. But I'll tell you her address first. I know
+it.'
+
+'Whose address?'
+
+'Hers--Camilla's. If I tell you, will you promise not to say a word
+about me speaking to you on the telephone this morning?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Not a word under any circumstances?'
+
+'Certainly.'
+
+'Well, it's 17, Place Saint-Etienne, Bruges, Belgium.'
+
+'17, Place Saint-Etienne, Bruges. That's all right. I shan't forget.
+Look here, Louis, you'd better clear out of England. Go to America. Do
+you hear? I don't understand this about "ending it." You surely aren't
+thinking of--'
+
+He felt quite magnanimous towards Ravengar. And he was aware that he
+could get to Bruges in six hours or so.
+
+'That idea of yours about chloroform,' said the voice, 'and going into
+the vault, and being shut up there, is a very good one. Nobody would
+know, except the person whom one paid to shut the door after one.'
+
+'I say, where are you?' Hugo asked curtly. He was at a loss how to treat
+these singular confidences.
+
+'And so is that idea good about merely ending one incarnation and
+beginning another. That's much better than calling it death.'
+
+'I shall ring you off,' said Hugo.
+
+'Wait a moment,' said the voice, still patiently. 'If you should hear
+the name Callear--'
+
+There was a pause.
+
+'Well?' Hugo inquired, 'what name?'
+
+'Callear--C-a-l-l-e-a-r. If you should hear that name soon--'
+
+'What then?'
+
+'Remember your promise of secrecy--that's all. Good-bye.'
+
+'I wish you'd tell me where you are.'
+
+'Not far off,' said the voice. 'I shall never be far off, I think. When
+you've found Camilla and brought her here'--the tone of the voice
+changed and grew almost malignant despite its reticence--'you'd like to
+know that I was always near to, somewhere underneath, mouldering,
+wouldn't you?'
+
+'What did you say?'
+
+'I said mouldering. Good-bye.'
+
+'But look here--'
+
+The bell rang off. Louis Ravengar had finished his good-bye. Hugo tried
+in vain to resume communication with him. He could not even get any sort
+of reply from the Exchange.
+
+'It's a queer world,' he soliloquized, as he returned to bed. 'What does
+the man mean?'
+
+He was still happy in the prospect of finding Camilla, but it was as
+though his happiness were a pool in a private ground, and some
+trespasser had troubled it with a stone.
+
+The clock struck ten, and Simon entered with tea and the paper.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+SUICIDE
+
+
+The paper contained a whole-page advertisement of Hugo's great annual
+sale, and also a special half-page advertisement headed 'Hugo's Apology
+and Promise'--a message to the public asking pardon of the public for
+the confusion, inconvenience, and disappointments of the previous day,
+hinting that the mystery of the affair would probably be elucidated in a
+criminal court, and stating that a prodigious number of silvered
+fox-stoles would positively be available from nine o'clock that morning
+at a price even lower than the figure named in the original
+announcement. The message further stated that a special Complaint Office
+had been opened as a branch of the Inquiry Bureau, and that all
+complaints by customers who had suffered on New Year's Day would there
+be promptly and handsomely dealt with.
+
+In addition to Hugo's advertisements, there were several columns of
+news describing the singular phenomena of the sale, concluding with what
+a facetious reporter had entitled 'Interviews with Survivors.'
+
+As he read the detailed accounts Hugo knew, perhaps for the first time
+in his life, what it was 'to go hot and cold all over.' However, he was
+decidedly inclined to be optimistic.
+
+'Anyhow,' he said, 'it's the best ad. I ever had. Still, it's a mercy
+there were no deaths.'
+
+He began to dress hurriedly, furiously. Already the second day of the
+sale had been in progress for more than an hour, and he had not even
+visited the scene of the campaign. Simon had said nothing; it was not
+Simon's habit to speak till he was spoken to. And Hugo did not feel
+inclined to ask questions; he preferred to reconnoitre in person. Yes,
+he would descend instantly, and afterwards, when he had satisfied
+himself that the evil had been repaired, he would consider about
+Camilla.... By neglecting all else, he could reach her in time for
+dinner.... Should he?... (At this point he plunged into his cold bath.)
+... No! He was Hugo before he was Camilla's lover. He would be a
+tradesman for yet another ten hours. He had a duty to London....
+
+Then Ravengar wandered into his thoughts and confused them.
+
+Just as he was assuming his waistcoat, Simon entered.
+
+'Mr. Galpin, sir.'
+
+'And who the d---l is Mr. Galpin?' asked Hugo.
+
+'Mr. Galpin is the gentleman who saved your life yesterday, sir,' said
+Simon with admirable sangfroid. 'He has called for a hundred pounds.'
+
+'Show him in here immediately,' said Hugo.
+
+Mr. Galpin appeared in the dressing-room, looking more than ever like an
+extremely successful commercial traveller. Hugo could not think of any
+introductory remark worthy of the occasion.
+
+'I needn't say how grateful I am,' Hugo began.
+
+'Certainly you needn't,' said Mr. Galpin. 'I understand. I've been under
+lock and key myself.'
+
+'I should offer you more than this paltry sum,' said Hugo, with a smile,
+'but I know, of course, that a man like you can always obtain all the
+money he really wants.'
+
+Mr. Galpin smiled, too.
+
+'However,' continued Hugo, detaching his watch from his waistcoat, 'I
+will ask you to take something that you can't get elsewhere. This is the
+thinnest watch in the world. Breguet, of the Rue de la Paix, Paris, made
+it specially for me. It is exactly the same size as a five-shilling
+piece. It repeats the quarters, shows the time in four cities, and does
+practically everything except tell the weather and the political party
+in power. It has one drawback. Only Breguet can clean it, and he will
+charge you five guineas for the job, besides probably having you
+arrested for unlawful possession. I must write to him. Such as it is,
+accept it.'
+
+The golden, jewelled toy was offered and received with a bow. The
+practised hands of Mr. Galpin had opened the case in two seconds.
+
+'How do you regulate it?' demanded Mr. Galpin, staring at the movement.
+
+'You don't,' said Hugo proudly; 'it never needs it.'
+
+Mr. Galpin stood corrected.
+
+'If there's anything in my line I can do for you at any time, sir,' said
+he.
+
+Hugo pondered.
+
+Mr. Galpin put the watch in his waistcoat-pocket, and, tearing the
+hundred-pound note in two halves, placed one half in the left breast
+pocket of his coat, and the other half in the right breast pocket of his
+coat.
+
+'Could you have opened that vault,' Hugo asked, 'if both keys had been
+lost?'
+
+'No, sir, I could not. It's such people as you who are ruining my
+profession, sir.'
+
+'You think the vault is impregnable?'
+
+'Yes, sir,' said Mr. Galpin. 'I should say its name was just about as
+near being Gibraltar as makes no matter.'
+
+'I was only wondering,' Hugo mused aloud, 'only wondering.... Ah, well,
+I won't trouble you with my fancies.'
+
+'As you wish, sir. Good-bye.'
+
+'Good-bye, Mr. Galpin. And thank you!'
+
+'Thank _you_, sir,' said Mr. Galpin, and disappeared.
+
+'Simon,' Hugo ordered immediately afterwards, handing Simon the token,
+'run down and get me the best gold watch in the place.'
+
+Throughout the morning Hugo's thoughts were far away. Most frequently
+they were in Belgium, but now and then they paid a strange
+incomprehensible visit with Ravengar to the vault.
+
+While he was lunching under the dome, Albert Shawn came in with the
+early edition of the _Evening Herald_, containing a prominent item
+headed, 'Feared Suicide of Mr. Louis Ravengar.' The paper stated that
+Mr. Ravengar had gone to Dover on the previous evening, had been seen to
+board the Calais steamer, and had been missed soon after the boat had
+left the harbour. His hat, umbrella, rug, and bag had been found on
+deck. As the night was quite calm, there could be no other explanation
+than that of suicide. The _Evening Herald_ gave a sympathetic biography
+of Mr. Ravengar ('one of our proprietors'), and attributed his suicide
+to a fit of depression caused by the entirely groundless rumours which
+had circulated during the late afternoon connecting him with the
+scandalous disturbances at Hugo's sale.
+
+Hugo dropped the organ of public opinion.
+
+'H'm!' he observed to Albert.
+
+'I'm not surprised, sir,' said Albert.
+
+'Aren't you?' said Hugo. 'Then, there's nothing more to be said.'
+
+Since Louis Ravengar had certainly been talking with Hugo that selfsame
+morning, it was obviously impossible that he should have committed
+suicide in the English Channel some twelve hours earlier. Why, then,
+had he arranged for this elaborate deception to be practised? What was
+his scheme? His voice through the telephone had been so quiet, so
+resigned, so pathetic; only towards the end had it become malevolent.
+
+Hugo perceived that he must go down to the vault. No! He dared not go
+himself. The sight of that vault, after yesterday's emotions, would
+surely be beyond his power to bear!
+
+'Albert,' he said, 'go to the Safe Deposit.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'And inquire if anyone named--'
+
+Hugo stopped.
+
+'Named what, sir?'
+
+'Never mind. I'll go myself. By the way,' he said, 'I must run over to
+Belgium to-night. Perhaps I may take you with me.'
+
+'Don't forget the inquest on Bentley to-morrow, sir. You'll have to
+attend that.'
+
+Hugo made a gesture of excessive annoyance. He had forgotten the
+inquest.
+
+'Take this telegram,' he said, suddenly inspired; and he scribbled out
+the following words: 'Darcy, 16, Boulevard des Italiens, Paris. Please
+come instantly; urgent case.--HUGO, London.'
+
+'At any rate, I've made a beginning,' he murmured when Albert had gone.
+'I can find out all that is to be known about Camilla from Darcy--if he
+comes. I wonder if he'll come. He'd better.'
+
+And then, collecting his powers of self-control, he went slowly down to
+the Safe Deposit, and entered those steely and dreadful portals.
+
+'Getting on all right?' he said to the newly-installed manager, a young
+man with light hair from the counting-house.
+
+'Oh yes, Mr. Hugo.'
+
+'Any new customers?'
+
+He trembled for the reply.
+
+'Yes, sir. Two gentlemen came as soon as we opened this morning, and
+took Vault 39. They paid a year's rent in advance. Two hundred pounds.'
+
+'What did they want a whole vault for?'
+
+'I can't say, sir. There was a lot of going to and fro with parcels and
+things, sir, and a lot of telephoning in the waiting-room. And one of
+them asked for a glass and some water. They were here a long time, sir.'
+
+'When did they go?'
+
+'It was about ten-thirty, sir, when one of the two gentlemen called me
+to bring my key and lock up the vault. The vault was properly locked,
+first with his key, and then with mine, and then he left. Perhaps it
+might be a quarter to eleven, sir.'
+
+'But the other gentleman?'
+
+'Oh, he must have slipped off earlier, sir. I didn't see him go.'
+
+'What did he look like?'
+
+'Oldish man, Mr. Hugo. Gray.'
+
+The manager was somewhat mystified by this cross-examination.
+
+'And the name?'
+
+'The name? Let me see. Callear. Yes, Callear, sir.'
+
+'What?'
+
+'C-a-l-l-e-a-r.'
+
+'What was the address?'
+
+'Hotel Cecil. He said he would send a permanent address in a day or
+two.'
+
+In half an hour Hugo had ascertained that no person named Callear was
+staying at the Hotel Cecil.
+
+He understood now, understood too clearly, the meanings of Ravengar's
+strange utterances on the telephone. The man had determined to commit
+suicide, and he had chosen a way which was calculated with the most
+appalling ingenuity to ruin, if anything would ruin, Hugo's peace of
+mind for years to come--perhaps for ever. For the world, Ravengar was
+drowned. But Hugo knew that his body was lying in that vault.
+
+'Louis had an accomplice,' Hugo reflected. 'Who can that have been? Who
+could have been willing to play so terrible a role?'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+DARCY
+
+
+That night, when he was just writing out some cheques in aid of
+charities conducted by Lady Brice (_nee_ Kentucky-Webster), Simon
+entered with a card. The hour was past eleven.
+
+Hugo read on the card, 'Docteur Darcy.'
+
+He had nearly forgotten that he had sent for Darcy; in fact, he was no
+longer quite sure why he had sent for him, since he meant, in any case,
+to hasten to Belgium at the earliest moment.
+
+'You are exceedingly prompt, doctor,' he said, when Darcy came into the
+dome. 'I thank you.'
+
+The cosmopolitan physician appeared to be wearing the same tourist suit
+that he had worn on the night of Tudor's death. The sallowness of his
+impassive face had increased somewhat, and his long thin hands had their
+old lackadaisical air. 'You don't look at all the man for such a part,'
+said Hugo in the privacy of his brain, 'but you played your part
+devilish well that night, my pale friend. You deceived me perfectly.'
+
+'Prompt?' smiled the doctor, shaking hands, and removing his overcoat
+with fatigued gestures.
+
+'Yes; you must have caught the 4 p.m. express, and come via Folkstone
+and Boulogne.'
+
+'I did,' said Darcy.
+
+'And yet I expect you didn't get my telegram till after two o'clock.'
+
+'I have received no telegram from you, my dear Mr. Hugo. It had not
+arrived when I left.'
+
+'Then your presence here to-night is due to a coincidence merely?'
+
+'Not at all,' said Darcy; 'it is due to an extreme desire on my part to
+talk to you.'
+
+'The desire is mutual,' Hugo answered, gently insisting that Darcy
+should put away his cigarettes and take a Muria. 'Dare I ask--'
+
+Darcy had become suddenly nervous, and he burst out, interrupting Hugo:
+
+'The suicide of Mr. Ravengar was in this morning's Paris papers. And I
+may tell you at once that it's in connection with that affair that I'm
+here.'
+
+'I also--' Hugo began.
+
+'I may tell you at once,' Darcy proceeded with increasing
+self-consciousness, 'that when I had the pleasure of meeting you before,
+Mr. Hugo, I was forced by circumstances, and by my promise to a dead
+friend, to behave in a manner which was very distasteful to me. I was
+obliged to lie to you, to play a trick on you--in short--well, I can
+only ask you for your sympathy. I have a kind of a forlorn notion that
+you'll understand--after I've explained, as I mean to do--'
+
+'If you refer to the pretended death of Tudor's wife--' said Hugo.
+
+'Then you know?' Darcy cried, astounded.
+
+'I know. I know everything, or nearly everything.'
+
+'How?' Darcy retreated towards the piano.
+
+'I will explain how some other time,' Hugo replied, going also to the
+piano and facing his guest. 'You did magnificently that night, doctor.
+Don't imagine for a moment that my feelings towards you in regard to
+that disastrous evening are anything but those of admiration. And now
+tell me about her--about _her_. She is well?'
+
+Hugo put a hand on the man's shoulder, and persuaded him back to his
+chair.
+
+'She is well--I hope and believe,' answered Darcy.
+
+'You don't see her often?'
+
+'On the contrary, I see her every day, nearly.'
+
+'But if she lives at Bruges and you are in Paris--'
+
+'Bruges?'
+
+'Yes; Place Saint-Etienne.'
+
+Darcy thought for a second.
+
+'So it's _you_ who have been on the track,' he murmured.
+
+Hugo, too, became meditative in his turn.
+
+'I wish you would tell me all that happened since--since that night,' he
+said at length.
+
+'I ask nothing better,' said Darcy. 'Since Ravengar is dead and all
+danger passed, there is no reason why you should not know everything
+that is to be known. Well, Mr. Hugo, I have had an infinity of trouble
+with that girl.'
+
+Hugo's expression gave pause to the doctor.
+
+'I mean with Mrs. Tudor,' he added correctively. 'I'll begin at the
+beginning. After the disappearance--the typhoid disappearance, you
+know--she went to Algiers. Tudor had taken a villa at Mustapha
+Superieure, the healthiest suburb of the town. After Tudor's sudden
+death I telegraphed to her to come back to me in Paris. I couldn't bring
+myself to wire that Tudor was dead. I only said he was ill. And at first
+she wouldn't come. She thought it was a ruse of Ravengar's. She thought
+Ravengar had discovered her hiding-place, and all sorts of things.
+However, in the end she came. I met her at Marseilles. You wouldn't
+believe, Mr. Hugo, how shocked she was by the news of her husband's
+death. Possibly I didn't break it to her too neatly. She didn't pretend
+to love him--never had done--but she was shocked all the same. I had a
+terrible scene with her at the Hotel Terminus at Marseilles. Her whole
+attitude towards the marriage changed completely. She insisted that it
+was plain to her then that she had simply sold herself for money. She
+said she hated herself. And she swore she would never touch a cent of
+Tudor's fortune--not even if the fortune went to the Crown in default of
+legal representatives.'
+
+'Poor creature!' Hugo breathed.
+
+'However,' Darcy proceeded, 'something had to be done. She was supposed
+to be dead, and if her life was to be saved from Ravengar's vengeance,
+she just had to continue to be dead--at any rate, as regards England. So
+she couldn't go back to England. Now I must explain that my friend Tudor
+hadn't left her with much money.'
+
+'That was careless.'
+
+'It was,' Darcy admitted. 'Still, he naturally relied on me in case of
+necessity. And quite rightly. I was prepared to let Mrs. Tudor have all
+the money she wanted, she repaying me as soon as events allowed her to
+handle Tudor's estate. But as she had decided never to handle Tudor's
+estate, she had no prospect of being able to repay me. Hence she would
+accept nothing. Hence she began to starve. Awkward, wasn't it?'
+
+'I see clearly that she could not come to England to earn her living,'
+said Hugo, 'but could she not have earned it in Paris?'
+
+'No,' Darcy replied; 'she couldn't earn it regularly. And the reason was
+that she was too beautiful. Situation after situation was made
+impossible for her. She might easily have married in Paris, but earn her
+living there--no! In the end she was obliged to accept money from me,
+but only in very small sums, such as she could repay without much
+difficulty when Ravengar's death should permit her to return to England.
+She was always sure of Ravengar's death, but she would never tell me
+why. And now he's dead.'
+
+'And there is no further obstacle to her coming to England?'
+
+'None whatever. That is to say--except one.'
+
+'What do you mean?' Hugo demanded.
+
+Darcy had flushed.
+
+'I'm in a very delicate position,' said Darcy. 'I've got to explain to
+you something that a man can't explain without looking an ass. The fact
+is--of course, you see, Mr. Hugo, I did all I could for her all the
+time. Not out of any special regard for her, but for Tudor's sake, you
+understand. She's awfully beautiful, and all that. I've nothing against
+her. But I believe I told you last year that I had been in love once.
+That "once" was enough. I've done with women, Mr. Hugo.'
+
+'But how does this affect--' Hugo began to inquire, rather inimically.
+
+'Can't you see? She doesn't _want_ to leave Paris. I did all I could for
+her all the time. I've been her friend in adversity, and so on, and so
+on, and she's--she's--'
+
+'What on earth are you driving at, man?'
+
+'She's fallen in love with me. That's what I'm driving at. And now you
+know.'
+
+'My dear sir,' said Hugo earnestly, 'if she is in love with you, you
+must marry her and make her happy.'
+
+He did not desire to say this, but some instinct within him compelled
+him to utter the words.
+
+'You told me that you loved her,' Darcy retorted.
+
+'I told you the truth. I do.'
+
+A silence ensued. All Hugo's previous discouragements, sadnesses,
+preoccupations, despairs, were as nothing in comparison with the black
+mood which came upon him when he learnt this simple fact--that Camilla
+had fallen in love with Darcy.
+
+'She is still in Paris?' he asked, to end the silence.
+
+'I--I don't know. I called at her lodgings at noon, and she had gone and
+left no address.'
+
+Hugo jumped up.
+
+'She can't have disappeared again?'
+
+'Oh no; rest assured. Doubtless a mere change of rooms. When I return I
+shall certainly find a letter awaiting me.'
+
+'Why did you come to me?'
+
+'Well,' Darcy said, 'you told me you loved her, and I thought--I
+thought perhaps you'd come over to Paris, and see--see what could be
+done. That's why I came. The thing's on my mind, you know.'
+
+'Just so,' Hugo answered, 'and I will come.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+FIRST TRIUMPH OF SIMON
+
+
+A week later, Simon and Albert stood talking together in Simon's room
+adjoining the dome. Simon had that air of absolute spruceness and
+freshness which in persons who have stayed at home is so extremely
+offensive to persons who have just arrived exhausted and unclean from a
+tiresome journey. It was Albert who, with Hugo, had arrived from the
+journey.
+
+'Had a good time, Alb?' Simon asked.
+
+'So-so,' said Albert cautiously.
+
+'By the way, what did you go to Paris _for_?'
+
+'Didn't you know?'
+
+'How should I know, my son?'
+
+'The governor wanted to find that girl of his.'
+
+'What girl?' Simon asked innocently.
+
+'Oh, chuck it, Si!' Albert remonstrated against these affectations of
+ignorance in a relative from whom he had no secrets.
+
+'You mean Mrs. Tudor?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'She's disappeared again, has she? And you couldn't find her?'
+
+Albert concurred.
+
+'It seems to me, Alb,' said Simon, 'that you aren't shining very
+brilliantly just now as a detective. And I'm rather surprised, because
+I've been doing a bit of detective work myself, and it's nothing but
+just using your eyes.'
+
+'What have you been up to?' Albert inquired.
+
+'Oh, nothing. Never you mind. It's purely unofficial. You see, I'm not a
+detective. I'm only a servant that gets left at home. I've only been
+amusing myself. Still, I've found out a thing or two that you'd give
+your eyes to know, my son.'
+
+'What?'
+
+Albert pursued his quest of knowledge.
+
+'You get along home to your little wife,' Simon enjoined him. 'You're a
+professional detective, you are. No doubt when you've recovered from
+Paris, and got into your stride, you'll find out all that I know and a
+bit over in about two seconds. Off you go!'
+
+Simon's eyes glinted.
+
+And later, when he was giving Hugo the last ministrations for the
+night, Simon looked at his lord as a cat looks at the mouse it is
+playing with--humorously, viciously, sarcastically.
+
+'I'll give him a night to lie awake in,' said Simon's eyes.
+
+But he only allowed his eyes to make this speech while Hugo's back was
+turned.
+
+The next morning Hugo's mood was desolating. To speak to him was to play
+with fire. Obviously, Hugo had heard the clock strike all the hours.
+Nevertheless, Simon permitted himself to be blithe, even offensively
+blithe. And when Hugo had finished with him he ventured to linger.
+
+'You needn't wait,' said Hugo, in a voice of sulphuric acid.
+
+'So you didn't find Mrs. Francis Tudor, sir?' responded Simon, with calm
+and beautiful insolence.
+
+It was insolence because, though few of Hugo's secrets were hid from
+Simon, the intercourse between master and servant was conducted on the
+basis of a convention that Simon's ignorance of Hugo's affairs was
+complete. And if the convention was ignored, as it sometimes was, Hugo
+alone had the right to begin the ignoring of it.
+
+'What's that you said?' Hugo demanded.
+
+'You didn't find Mrs. Francis Tudor, sir?' Simon blandly repeated.
+
+'Mind your own business, my friend,' he said.
+
+'Certainly, sir,' said Simon. 'But I had intended to add that possibly
+you had not been searching for Mrs. Tudor in the right city.'
+
+Hugo stared at Simon, who retreated to the door.
+
+'What in thunder do you mean?' Hugo asked coldly and deliberately.
+
+At last Simon felt a tremor.
+
+'I mean, sir, that I think I know where she is. At least, I know where
+she will be in a couple of hours' time.'
+
+'Where?'
+
+'In Department 42--her old department, sir.'
+
+By a terrific effort Hugo kept calm.
+
+'Simon,' he said, 'don't play any tricks on me. If you do, I'll thrash
+you first, and then dismiss you on the spot.'
+
+'It's through the new manager of the drapery, sir, in place of Mr.
+Bentley--I forget his name. Mr. Bentley's room being all upset with
+police and accountants and things, the new manager has been using your
+office. And I was in there to-day, and he was engaging a young lady for
+the millinery, sir. He didn't recognise her, not having been here long
+enough, but I did. It was Miss Payne.'
+
+'Impossible!'
+
+'Yes, sir; Miss Payne--that is to say, Mrs. Tudor. I heard him say,
+"Very well, you can start to-morrow morning."'
+
+'That's _this_ morning?'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Why didn't you tell me this last night?' Hugo roared.
+
+'It slipped my memory, sir,' said Simon, surpassing all previous feats
+of insolence.
+
+Hugo, speechless, waved him out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE LODGING-HOUSE
+
+
+The thought of soon seeing her intoxicated him. His head swam, his heart
+leapt, his limbs did what they liked, being forgotten. And then, as he
+sobered himself, he tried seriously to find an answer to this question:
+Why had she returned, as it were surreptitiously, to the very building
+from which her funeral was supposed to have taken place? Could she
+imagine that oblivion had covered her adventure, and that the three
+thousand five hundred would ignore the fact that she was understood to
+be dead? He found no answer--at least, no satisfactory answer--except
+that women are women, and therefore incalculable.
+
+'Go and see if she is there,' he said to Simon at five minutes to nine.
+
+'She is there,' said Simon at five minutes past nine; 'in one of the
+work-rooms alone.'
+
+Then Hugo put a heavy curb on his instincts, and came to a sudden
+resolve.
+
+'Tell the new drapery manager,' he instructed Simon, 'to give
+instructions to Mrs. Tudor, or Miss Payne, whichever she calls herself,
+that she is to meet him in my central office at six o'clock this
+evening. He, however, is not to be there. She is to wait in the room
+alone, if I have not arrived. Inform no one that I have returned from
+Paris. I am now going out for the day.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+Hugo thereupon took train to Ealing. He walked circuitously through the
+middle of the day from Ealing to Harrow, alone with his thoughts in the
+frosty landscape. From Harrow he travelled by express to Euston,
+reaching town at five-thirty. Somehow or other the day had passed. He
+got to Sloane Street at six, and ascended direct to his central office.
+
+Had his orders been executed? Would she be waiting? As he hesitated
+outside the door he was conscious that his whole frame shook. He entered
+silently.
+
+Yes, she was there. She sat on the edge of a chair near the fire,
+staring at the fire. She was dressed in the customary black. Ah! it was
+the very face he had seen in the coffin, the same marvellous and
+incomparable features; not even sadder, not aged by a day; the same!
+
+She turned at the sound of the closing of the door, and, upon seeing
+him, started slightly. Then she rose, and delicately blushed.
+
+'Good-evening, Mr. Hugo,' she said, in a low, calm voice. 'I did not
+expect to see you.'
+
+Great poetical phrases should have rushed to his lips--phrases meet for
+a tremendous occasion. But they did not. He sighed. 'I can only say what
+comes into my head,' he thought ruefully. And he said:
+
+'Did I startle you?'
+
+'Not much,' she replied. 'I knew I must meet you one day or another
+soon. And it is better at once.'
+
+'Just so,' he said. 'It _is_ better at once. Sit down, please. I've been
+walking all day, and I can scarcely stand.' And he dropped into a chair.
+'Do you know, dear lady,' he proceeded, 'that Doctor Darcy and I have
+been hunting for you all over Paris?'
+
+He managed to get a little jocularity into his tone, and this
+achievement eased his attitude.
+
+'No,' she said, 'I didn't know. I'm very sorry.'
+
+'But why didn't you let Darcy know that you were coming to London?'
+
+'Mr. Hugo,' she answered, with a charming gesture, 'I will tell you.'
+And she got up from her chair and came to another one nearer his own.
+This delicious action filled him with profound bliss. 'When I read in
+the paper that Mr. Ravengar had committed suicide, I had just enough
+money in my pocket to pay my expenses to London, and to keep me a few
+days here. And I did so want to come! I did so want to come! I came by
+the morning train. It was an inspiration. I waited for nothing. I meant
+to write to Mr. Darcy that same night, but that same night I caught
+sight of him here in Sloane Street, so I knew it was no use writing just
+then. And I didn't care for him to see me. I thought I would give him
+time to return. As a matter of fact, I wrote yesterday evening. He would
+get the letter to-night. I hope my disappearance didn't cause you any
+anxiety?'
+
+'Anxiety!' He repeated the word. 'You don't know what I've been through.
+I feared that Ravengar, before killing himself, had arranged to--to--I
+don't know what I feared. Horrible, unmentionable things! You can't
+guess what I've been through.'
+
+'I, too, have suffered since we met last,' said Camilla softly.
+
+'Don't talk of it--don't talk of it!' he entreated her. 'I know all. I
+saw your image in a coffin. I have heard your late husband's statement.
+And Darcy has told me much. Let us forget all that, and let us forget it
+for evermore. But you have to remember, nevertheless, that in London you
+have the reputation of being dead.'
+
+'I have not forgotten,' she said, with a beautiful inflection and a
+bending of the head, 'that I promised to thank you the next time we met
+for what you did for me. Let me thank you now. Tell me how I can thank
+you!'
+
+He wanted to cry out that she was divine, and that she must do exactly
+what she liked with him. And then he wanted to take her and clasp her
+till she begged for her breath. And he was tempted to inform her that
+though she loved Darcy as man was never loved before, still she should
+marry him, Hugo, or Darcy should die.
+
+'Sit down,' he said in a quiet, familiar voice. 'Don't bother about
+thanking me. Just tell me all about the history of your relations with
+Ravengar.' And to himself he said: 'She shall talk to me, and I will
+listen, and we shall begin to be intimate. This is the greatest
+happiness I can have. Hang the future! I will give way to my mood. Darcy
+said she didn't want to leave Paris, but she has left it. That's
+something.'
+
+'I will do anything you want,' she answered almost gaily; and she sat
+down again.
+
+'I doubt it,' he smiled. 'However--'
+
+The sense of intimacy, of nearness, gave him acute pleasure, as at their
+first interview months ago.
+
+'I would _like_ to tell you,' she began; 'and there is no harm now.
+Where shall I start? Well'--she became suddenly grave--'Mr. Ravengar
+used to pass my father's shop in the Edgware Road. He came in to buy
+things. It was a milliner's shop, and so he could buy nothing but
+bonnets and hats. He bought bonnets and hats. I often served him. He
+gave my father some very good hints about shares, but my father never
+took them. When my parents both died, Mr. Ravengar was extremely
+sympathetic, and offered me a situation in his office. I took it. I
+became his secretary. He was always very polite and considerate to me,
+except sometimes when he got angry with everybody, including me. He
+couldn't help being rude then. He had an old clerk named Powitt, who sat
+in the outer office, and seemed to do nothing. Powitt had just brains
+enough to gamble, and he gambled in the shares of Mr. Ravengar's
+companies. I know he lost money, because he used to confide in me and
+grumble at Mr. Ravengar for not giving him proper tips. Mr. Ravengar
+simply sneered at him--he was very hard. Powitt had a younger brother,
+who was engaged in another City office, and this younger brother also
+gambled in Ravengar shares, and also lost. The two brothers gambled more
+and more, and old Powitt once told me that Mr. Ravengar misled them
+sometimes from sheer--what shall I call it?'
+
+'Devilry,' Hugo suggested. 'I can believe it. That would be his idea of
+a good joke.'
+
+'By-and-by I learnt that they were in serious difficulties. Young Powitt
+was married, but his wife left him--I believe he had taken to drink.
+There was a glass partition between my room and Mr. Ravengar's--ground
+glass at the bottom, clear glass at the top. One night, after hours, I
+went back to the office for an umbrella which I had forgotten, and I
+found young Powitt trying to open the petty-cash-box in my room. He had
+not succeeded, and I just told him to go, and that I should forget I had
+seen him there. He kissed my hand. And just then the outer door of the
+office opened, and someone entered. I turned off the light in my room.
+Young Powitt crouched down. It was Mr. Ravengar. He went to his own
+room. I jumped on a chair, and looked through the glass screen. Old
+Powitt was hanging by the neck from the brass curtain-rod in Mr.
+Ravengar's room. While young Powitt was trying to get out of their
+difficulties by thieving, old Powitt had taken a shorter way. Mr.
+Ravengar looked at the body swinging there, and I heard him say, "Ah!"
+Like that!'
+
+'Great heaven!' cried Hugo, 'you've been through sufficient in your
+time!'
+
+'Yes.' Camilla paused. 'Mr. Ravengar cut down the body, searched the
+pockets, took out a paper, read it, and put it in his own pocket. Then
+the old man's lips twitched. He was not quite dead, after all. Mr.
+Ravengar stared at the face; and then, by means of putting a chair on a
+table and lifting Powitt on to the chair, he tied up the cord which he
+had cut, and left the poor old man to swing again. It was an--an
+interrupted suicide.'
+
+She stopped once more, and Hugo fervently wished he had never asked her
+to begin. He gazed at her set face with a fascinated glance.
+
+'All this time,' she resumed, 'young Powitt had been crouching on the
+floor, and had seen nothing.'
+
+'And what did you do?'
+
+'I fainted, and fell off my chair. The noise startled Mr. Ravengar, and
+he came round into my room. Young Powitt met him at the door, and, to
+explain his presence there, he said that he had come to see his brother.
+Mr. Ravengar said: "Your brother is in the next room." But instead of
+going into the next room, young Powitt ran off. Then Mr. Ravengar
+perceived me on the floor. My first words to him when I recovered
+consciousness were: "Why did you hang him up again, Mr. Ravengar?" He
+was staggered. He actually tried to justify himself, and said it was
+best for the old man--the old man had wanted to die, and so on. Mr.
+Ravengar certainly thought that young Powitt had seen what I had seen.
+That very night young Powitt was arrested for another theft, from his
+own employers, and it was not till after his arrest that he learnt that
+his brother had committed suicide. He got four years. When he received
+sentence, he swore that he would kill Mr. Ravengar immediately he came
+out of prison. I heard his threat. I knew him, and I knew that he meant
+it. He argued that Mr. Ravengar's financial operations had ruined
+thousands of people, including his brother and himself.
+
+'But the inquest on old Powitt--I seem to remember about it. Why didn't
+you give evidence?'
+
+'Because I was ill with brain-fever. When I recovered, all was finished.
+What was I to do? I warned Mr. Ravengar that young Powitt meant to kill
+him. He laughed. Of course, I left him. It is my belief that Mr.
+Ravengar was always a little mad. If he was not so before, this affair
+had strained his intelligence too much.'
+
+'You did a very wrong thing,' said Hugo, 'in keeping silence.'
+
+'Put yourself in my place,' Camilla answered. 'Think of all the facts.
+It was all so queer, And--and--Mr. Ravengar had found me in the room
+with young Powitt. Suppose he had--'
+
+'Say no more,' Hugo besought her. 'How long is this ago?'
+
+'Three years last June. In six months young Powitt's sentence will be
+up.'
+
+Hugo nearly leapt from his chair.
+
+'Is it possible, Mrs. Tudor,' he asked her eagerly, 'that you are not
+aware that in actual practice a reasonably well-behaved prisoner never
+serves the full period of his sentence? Marks for good conduct are
+allowed, and each mark means so many days deducted from the term.'
+
+'I didn't know,' said Camilla simply. 'How should I know a thing like
+that?'
+
+'I have no doubt that young Powitt is already free. And if he is--'
+
+'You think that Mr. Ravengar's suicide may not have been a suicide?'
+
+Hugo hesitated.
+
+'Yes,' he said, and lapsed into reflection.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'I shall see you home,' he said.
+
+'I am going to walk,' she replied. 'And I have to get my things from the
+cloak-room.'
+
+'I will walk with you,' he said.
+
+'What style the woman has!' he thought, enraptured.
+
+They proceeded southwards in silence. Then suddenly she asked how he had
+left Mr. Darcy, and they began to talk about Darcy and Paris. Hugo
+encouraged her. He wished to know the worst.
+
+'Except my father,' she said, 'I have never met anyone with more sense
+than Mr. Darcy, or anyone more kind. I might have been dead now if it
+hadn't been for Mr. Darcy.'
+
+'Mr. Darcy is a very decent fellow,' Hugo remarked experimentally.
+
+She turned and gave him a look. No, it was not a look; it was the merest
+fraction of a look, but it withered him up.
+
+'She loves him!' he thought. 'And what's more, if she hadn't made up her
+mind to marry him, she wouldn't be so precious easy and facile and
+friendly with me. I might have guessed that.'
+
+They passed Victoria Station, and came into Horseferry Road. She had
+informed him that she had taken a furnished room in Horseferry Road. The
+high and sinister houses appeared unspeakably and disgracefully mean to
+him in the wintry gloom of the gaslights. She halted before a tenement
+that seemed even more odious than its neighbours. Was it possible that
+she should exist in such a quarter? The idea sickened him.
+
+'Which floor?' he questioned.
+
+'Oh,' she laughed, 'the top, the fifth. Good-night, Mr. Hugo.'
+
+He pictured the mean and frowsy room, and shuddered. Yet what could he
+do? What right had he to interfere, to criticise, to ameliorate?
+
+'Good-night,' she repeated, and in a moment she had opened the door with
+a latchkey and disappeared. He stood staring at the door. He had by no
+means finished saying all that he meant to say to her. He must talk to
+her further. He must show her that he could not be dismissed in that
+summary fashion. He mounted the two dirty steps, and rang the bell in a
+determined manner. He heard it tinkle distantly.
+
+She was divine, adorable, marvellous, and far beyond the deserts of any
+man; but she had not shaken hands with him, and she had treated him as
+she might have treated one of the shopwalkers. Moreover, the question of
+to-morrow had to be decided.
+
+There was no answer to the bell, and he rang again, with an increase of
+energy.
+
+Then he perceived through the fanlight an illumination in the hall. The
+door opened cautiously, as such doors always do open, and a middle-aged
+man in a dressing-gown stood before him. In the background he descried a
+small table with a candle on it, and the foul, polished walls of the
+narrow lobby--a representative London lodging-house.
+
+'I want to see Mrs. Tudor,' said Hugo.
+
+'Well, she ain't in at the moment,' replied the man.
+
+'Excuse me,' Hugo corrected him, 'I saw her enter a minute ago with her
+latchkey.'
+
+'No, you didn't,' the man persisted. 'I'm the landlord of this house,
+and I've been in my room at the back, and nobody's come in this last
+half-hour, for I can see the 'all and the stairs as I sits in my chair.'
+
+'Wait a moment,' said Hugo; and he retreated to the kerb, in the
+expectation of being able to descry Camilla's light in the fifth story.
+
+'Oh, you can look,' the landlord observed loftily, divining his
+intention; 'I warrant there's no light there.'
+
+And there was not.
+
+'Perhaps you'll call again,' said the landlord suavely.
+
+'I suppose you haven't got a room to let?' Hugo demanded, fumbling
+about in his brain for a plan to meet this swift crisis.
+
+'I can't tell you till my wife comes home.'
+
+'And when will that be?'
+
+'That'll be to-morrow.'
+
+The door was banged to. Hugo rang again, wrathfully, but the door
+remained obstinate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+CHLOROFORM
+
+'Come in,' said Simon grandly, in response to a knock.
+
+He was seated in his master's chair in the dome, which was lit as though
+for a fete. The clock showed the hour of nine.
+
+Albert entered.
+
+'Oh, it's you, is it?' exclaimed Albert. 'Where's the governor?'
+
+'I don't know where he is. He was in his office at something to seven,
+having an interview with Mrs. Tudor. Since then--'
+
+Simon raised his eyebrows, and Albert expressed a similar sentiment by
+means of a whistle.
+
+'Then, you've been telephoning on your own for me to come up?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'It's like your cheek!' Albert complained, calmly perching himself on
+the top of the grand piano.
+
+'Perhaps it will be. I regret to tear you from your fireside, Alb, but
+I wish to consult you on a matter affecting the governor.'
+
+'Go ahead, then,' said Albert. 'There's been enough talk about the
+governor to-day downstairs, I should hope.'
+
+'You mean in reference to Mrs. Tudor's reappearance?'
+
+'Yes.' Albert imitated Simon's carefully enunciated periods. 'I do mean
+in reference to Mrs. Tudor's reappearance. By the way, what the deuce
+are you burning all these lights for?'
+
+'I was examining this photograph,' said Simon, handing to his brother a
+rather large unmounted silver-print photograph which had lain on his
+knees.
+
+'What of it?' Albert asked, glancing at it. 'Medical and Pharmaceutical
+Department, isn't it? Not bad.'
+
+'We're having a new series of full-plate photographs done for the next
+edition of the General Catalogue,' said Simon, 'and this is one of them.
+It contains forty-five figures. It was taken yesterday morning by that
+Curgenven flashlight process that we're running. Look at it. Don't you
+see anything?'
+
+'Nothing special,' Albert admitted.
+
+Simon rose and came towards the piano.
+
+'Let me show you,' he said superiorly. 'You see the cash-desk to the
+left. There's a lady just leaving the cash-desk. And just behind her
+there's an oldish man. You can't see all of his face because of her hat.
+He's holding his bill in his hand--you can see the corner of it--and
+he's got some sort of a parcel under his arm. See?'
+
+'Yes, Mr. Lecoq.'
+
+'Well, doesn't he remind you of somebody?'
+
+'He's rather like old Ravengar, perhaps,' said Albert dubiously.
+
+'You've hit it!' Simon almost shouted. 'It is Ravengar.'
+
+'This man's got no beard.'
+
+'That comes well from a detective, that does!' said Simon scornfully.
+'It needn't have cost him more than threepence to have his beard shaved
+off, need it?'
+
+'And seeing that this photograph was taken yesterday morning, and
+Ravengar fell off a steamer into the Channel more than a week ago!'
+
+'But did he fall off a steamer more than a week ago?'
+
+'He was noticed on board the steamer before she started, and he wasn't
+on board when she arrived.'
+
+'Couldn't he have walked on to the steamer with his luggage, and then
+walked off again and let her start without him?'
+
+'But why?'
+
+'Suppose he wanted to pretend to be dead?'
+
+'Why should he want to pretend to be dead?' Albert defended his
+position.
+
+Simon, entirely forgetful of that dignity which usually he was at such
+pains to preserve, sprang on to the piano alongside Albert.
+
+'I'll tell you another thing,' said he. 'When I came in with the
+governor's tea this morning he was just dozing and half-dreaming
+like--he'd had a very bad night--and I heard him say, "So they think you
+are at the bottom of the Channel, Louis? I wish you were!" What do you
+think of that, my son?'
+
+'Then the governor must know Ravengar didn't commit suicide in the
+Channel? The governor never said a word to me!'
+
+'You don't imagine the governor tells you everything, do you?' said
+Simon cruelly.
+
+'Have you shown him the photo?' Albert asked.
+
+'No,' said Simon, with a certain bluntness.
+
+'Why not?'
+
+'Well, for one thing, I've had no chance, and for another I wanted to
+find out something more first. I'd just like the governor to see that
+I'm not an absolute idiot.... Though I should have thought he might have
+found that out before now.'
+
+'He doesn't think you're an absolute idiot,' said Albert.
+
+'He acts as if he did,' said Simon. The Paris trip still rankled.
+
+A pause followed.
+
+'Another thing,' Albert recommenced. 'Even supposing Ravengar's alive,
+it's not very likely he'd venture here, of all places.'
+
+'Why not?' Simon argued. 'Scarcely anybody knows Ravengar by sight. He's
+famous for keeping himself to himself. He's one of the least known
+celebrities in London. He'd be safe from recognition almost anywhere.
+Moreover, supposing he wanted to buy something peculiar?'
+
+'He might,' Albert admitted. 'But don't forget this is all theory. I
+suppose you've been making your own inquiries in the Medical
+Department?'
+
+'Yes,' said Simon rather apologetically. 'But I couldn't find anyone
+among the staff who remembers serving such a man, or even seeing him.
+He may have had an accomplice, you know, on the staff. What makes it
+more awkward is that there were two photographs taken, one about eleven,
+and another about half-past, and the photographer got the plates mixed
+up, and doesn't know whether this one is the first or the second. You
+see, the clock doesn't show in the picture; otherwise, we might have
+pieced things together.'
+
+'Pity!' Albert murmured.
+
+'However,' said Simon, with an obvious intention to be dramatic, 'I
+thought of Lecoq, and I hit on something. You see the lady just leaving
+the cash-desk with her receipt? Can you read the number of her receipt?'
+
+Albert peered.
+
+'No, I can't,' he said.
+
+'Neither could I,' Simon agreed. 'But I've had that part of the
+photograph enlarged to-night.'
+
+'The deuce you have!' Albert opened his eyes.
+
+'Yes, the deuce I have! And here it is.'
+
+Simon took a photographic print from his pocket, showing the lady's hand
+and part of the receipt, very blurred and faint, with some hieroglyphic
+figures mistily appearing.
+
+'Looks like 6,706,' said Albert.
+
+'It's either 6,706 or 6,766,' Simon concurred. 'Now, Ravengar's receipt
+must be numbered next to hers. Consequently, if we go and look at the
+counterfoils and duplicates--'
+
+'Yes,' said Albert, thoughtfully sliding down from the piano.
+
+'We may be able to find out something very interesting,' Simon finished,
+descending also.
+
+'Now?'
+
+'Now. That's what I wanted you for. You've got your pass-keys and
+everything, haven't you?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Then run down and search.'
+
+'Aren't you coming too?'
+
+'I was only thinking, suppose the governor came back and wanted me?'
+
+Albert gazed contemptuously at this exhibition of timidity--the
+cowardice of a born valet, he deemed it.
+
+'Oh, of course,' he exclaimed, 'if you--'
+
+'I'll come,' said Simon boldly. 'If he wants me he must wait, that's
+all.'
+
+They descended together in Hugo's private lift, direct from the dome;
+the Medical and Pharmaceutical Department was on the ground-floor.
+Simon acted as lift-man, and slammed the grill when they emerged.
+
+'Just open that again, Si,' Albert requested him.
+
+'Why? What's up?'
+
+'Just open it.'
+
+Albert was sniffing about like a dog that is trying to decide whether
+there is not something extremely attractive in the immediate
+neighbourhood. He re-entered the lift, and nosed it curiously.
+
+Suddenly he bent down and peered under the cushioned seat of the lift,
+and drew forth an object that resembled in shape a canister of
+disinfectant powder.
+
+'Conf--!' he exclaimed, dropping it sharply. 'It's hot. What in the name
+of--'
+
+He kicked the object out of the lift on to the tessellated floor of a
+passage which led to the Fish and Game Department.
+
+'I bet you I can hold it,' said Simon boastfully.
+
+And, at the expense of his fingers, he picked it up, and successfully
+carried it into the Fish and Game Department, where a solitary light
+(which burnt night and day) threw a dim radiance over vast surfaces of
+white marble dominated by silver taps. The fish and game were below in
+the refrigerators. Simon let the cylinder fall on to a slab; Albert
+turned a tap, and immediately the cylinder was surrounded by clouds of
+steam. The phenomenon was like some alchemical and mysterious operation.
+And the steam, as it rose and spread abroad in the immense, pale
+interior, might have been the fumes of a fatal philtre distilled by a
+mediaeval sorcerer.
+
+'I hope it won't blow up!' Simon ejaculated.
+
+'Not it!' said Albert. 'Let's have a look at it now.'
+
+Albert had a mechanical bent, and, with the aid of a tool, he soon
+discovered that the cylinder was divided into two parts. In the lower
+part was burning charcoal. In the upper, carefully closed, was paraffin.
+The division between the two compartments consisted of some sort of
+soldering lead, which the heat of the charcoal had gradually been
+melting.
+
+'So when this stuff had melted,' he explained to Simon, 'the paraffin
+would run into the charcoal, and there would be a magnificent flare-up.'
+
+They looked at one another, amazed, astounded, speechless.
+
+And each knew that on the tip of the other's tongue, unuttered, was the
+word 'Ravengar.'
+
+'But why was it put in the lift?' asked Simon.
+
+'Because,' said Albert promptly, 'a lift-well is the finest possible
+place for a fire. There's a natural draught, and a free chance for every
+floor. Poof! And a flame's up nine stories in no time. And a really good
+mahogany lift would burn gorgeously, and give everything a good start.'
+
+'There are fifteen lifts in this place,' Simon muttered.
+
+'I know,' said Albert.
+
+He approached a little glass square in the wall, broke it, pulled a
+knob, and looked at his watch.
+
+'We'll test the Fire Brigade Department,' he remarked; and then, as he
+heard a man running down the adjacent corridor, 'Seven seconds. Not
+bad.'
+
+In another seven minutes nine cylinders, which had been found in nine
+different lifts, were sizzling beside Albert's original discovery. The
+other five lifts appeared to have been omitted from this colossal scheme
+for providing London with a pyrotechnic display such as London had
+probably never had since the year 1666. The night fire staff, which
+consisted of some fifty men, had laid hose on to every hydrant, and were
+taking instructions from their chief for the incessant patrol of the
+galleries.
+
+'See here,' said Albert, 'we'd better go on with what we started of
+now.'
+
+'Had we?' Simon questioned somewhat dubiously.
+
+'Of course,' said Albert. 'If that is Ravengar in the photo, and if we
+can find out anything to-night, and if Ravengar's in this business'--he
+jerked his elbow towards the cylinders--'we shall be so much to the
+good. Besides, it won't take us a minute.'
+
+So they went forward, through twilit chambers and passages filled with
+sheeted objects, past miles of counters inhabited by thousands of
+chairs, through doors whose openings resounded strangely in the vast
+nocturnal silence of Hugo's, till they came to the Medical and
+Pharmaceutical Department. And the Medical and Pharmaceutical
+Department, in its night-garb, and illuminated by a single jet at either
+end of it, seemed to take on a kind of ghostly and scented elegance; it
+seemed to be a lunar palace of bizarre perfumes and crystal magics.
+
+The two young men halted, and listened, and they could catch the
+distant footfall of the patrols echoing in some far-off corridor. That
+reassured them. They ceased to fancy the smell of burning and to be
+victimized by the illusion that a little tongue of flame darted out
+behind them.
+
+Albert gained access to the accountant's cupboard, and pulled out a
+number of books, over which they pored side by side.
+
+'Here you are!' exclaimed Simon presently. 'Receipts. January 9.'
+
+And Albert read: 'No. 6,766, Mrs. Poidevin, 37, Prince's Gate; vinolia.
+No. 6,767, Dr. Woolrich, 23, Horseferry Road; chloroform! Can't make out
+the quantity, but it must be a lot, I should think; the price is
+eighteen and ninepence.'
+
+'Dr. Woolrich, 23, Horseferry Road?' Simon repeated mechanically.
+'Chloroform?'
+
+'That's it,' said Albert. 'You may bet your boots. Let's look him up in
+the Medical Directory, if they've got one here. Yes, they're sure to
+have one.'
+
+But there was no Dr. Woolrich in the Medical Directory.
+
+Once more the brothers stared at each other. Was or was not Ravengar
+alive? Were they or were they not on his track?
+
+'Listen, Si,' said Albert. 'I'll drive right down to 23, Horseferry
+Road, and have a look round. Eh? What do you say?'
+
+'I think I'll come, too,' Simon replied.
+
+In six minutes Albert pulled up the hansom at the end of the street, and
+they walked slowly towards No. 23, but on the opposite side of the road.
+
+'That's it,' said Simon, pointing. 'What are you going to do now?
+Inquire there?'
+
+At the same moment a window opened behind them, in the house immediately
+facing No. 23; they both heard a hissing sound, evidently designed to
+attract their attention, and they both turned their heads.
+
+From a first-story window Hugo was gesticulating at them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+SECOND TRIUMPH OF SIMON
+
+
+'Come up at once,' Hugo whispered. 'Door opposite top of stairs.'
+
+And he threw down on to the pavement a latchkey.
+
+'What do you think of yourself now, Si?' Albert asked his brother, as
+they entered the house. 'You've let yourself in for something at last.'
+
+They found Hugo in an ordinary bedsitting-room. He was wearing his hat
+and his overcoat, and staring out of the open window. It was a cold
+night, but he did not seem to feel the icy draught which blew into the
+apartment. The whole of his attention appeared to be concentrated on No.
+23. He did not at first even turn to look at the brothers when they came
+in. They explained themselves.
+
+'I will tell you why I am here, and what has occurred to me,' said
+Hugo, playing, perhaps rather nervously, with the knife and cheese-plate
+which still lay on the small table by the window. 'Then we can decide
+what to do. I've hired this room.'
+
+No doubt existed in his mind that Simon had happened upon the track of
+the veritable living Ravengar. It could not be a coincidence that a man
+so strongly resembling Ravengar, a man posing as a doctor, and buying
+nearly a sovereign's worth of chloroform, should be occupying rooms in
+the same house as Camilla. The tremendous revelation of Ravengar's
+genius for stratagem and intrigue afforded by the recital of the two
+brothers came upon Hugo with a dazing shock. This man, whom he knew from
+Camilla's own story to be curiously deficient in ordinary human
+sentiments, had arranged a sham suicide for the benefit of the general
+public. He had let Hugo into the secret of that deception, but only to
+cheat him with another deception, and a more monstrous one. The brain
+that could conceive the fiction of suicide in the vault--a fiction
+which, while lulling Hugo into a false security as regards Camilla's
+safety, at the same time poisoned his happiness--such a brain might be
+capable of unimagined horrors. Sane or mad, the mere existence of that
+brain was a menace before which Hugo trembled. He realized that Ravengar
+had been consummately acting during the latter part of their interview
+on the first day of the sale, and again consummately acting when he
+spoke to Hugo on the telephone. Ravengar had, beyond doubt, deliberately
+set himself to lure Camilla back to England, and he had succeeded.
+Beyond doubt, all her movements had been spied and marked, and Ravengar
+had been in a position to complete his arrangements--whatever his
+arrangements were--at leisure and with absolute freedom. She had taken a
+room in Horseferry Road, and he had followed.... What was the sequel to
+be?
+
+That she was in his power at that moment Hugo could not question.
+
+And the chloroform?
+
+At that moment Ravengar had meant that the Hugo building should have
+been a funeral pyre--a spectacle to petrify the Metropolis. And it
+seemed to Hugo that if Ravengar was mad, as he must be, he could only
+have designed the spectacle as something final, as at once a last
+revenge and an accompaniment to the supreme sacrifice of Camilla.
+
+'We must get into that house immediately,' said Hugo, when he had
+finished his own narrative. 'The question is how?'
+
+'I've got a card of Inspector Wilbraham's, of the Yard, in my pocket,'
+Albert suggested. 'We might use that, and make out that this purchase of
+chloroform under a false name had got to be explained to the Yard
+instantly.'
+
+Albert had recently become rather intimate with Scotland Yard. Inspector
+Wilbraham had even called on him in reference to Bentley's death and the
+disappearance of Brown; and Albert was duly proud.
+
+'We will try that,' said Hugo. 'Have you any handcuffs?'
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+'Go and obtain a couple of pairs. You can be back in twenty minutes.
+Bring also my revolver.'
+
+Hugo and Simon were left alone. Hugo spoke no word.
+
+'I'll put the room to rights, sir,' said Simon, after a pause. He could
+bear the inaction no longer.
+
+Hugo nodded absently, and Simon collected the ruins of the vile repast
+which his master had consumed, and put them outside on a tray on the
+landing.
+
+'There's a light now in the first story!' exclaimed Hugo. 'I hope that
+boy won't be long.'
+
+And then Albert arrived with the revolver and the handcuffs. He had been
+supernaturally quick.
+
+They descended and crossed the road.
+
+'You understand,' Hugo instructed them. 'Let us have no mistake about
+getting in. Immediately the door is opened, in we all go. We can talk
+inside.'
+
+'Supposing Albert and me went down to the area-door,' Simon ventured,
+'instead of the front-door. We might get in easier that way. It's always
+easier to deal with servant-girls and persons of that sort in kitchens.
+Then we could come upstairs and let you in at the front-door. Three
+detectives seem rather a lot to be entering all at once. And, besides,
+you don't look like a detective, sir.'
+
+'What do I look like?' Hugo asked coldly.
+
+'You look too much like a gentleman, sir. It's the hat, sir,' he added.
+
+Simon had certainly surpassed himself that day. He had begun by
+surpassing himself at early morning, and he had kept it up. Probably
+never before in his life had he been so loquacious and so happy in his
+loquacity.
+
+'That's not a bad scheme, Simon,' said Hugo. 'Try it.'
+
+The brothers went down the area-steps while Hugo remained at the gate. A
+light burned steadily in the first-floor window. And then another and a
+fainter light flickered in the hall, and after a few seconds the
+front-door opened. Hugo literally jumped into the house, and, safely
+within, he banged the door.
+
+'Now,' he said.
+
+A middle-aged woman, holding a candle, stood by Simon and Albert in the
+hall.
+
+'Are you the servant?' Hugo demanded.
+
+'No, sir; I'm the landlady. And I'd like to know--'
+
+'Your husband told me you were away and wouldn't return till to-morrow.'
+
+'Seeing as how my husband's been dead these thirteen years--'
+
+'We're in, sir. We'd better search the house to start with,' said
+Albert. 'There's three of us. The man that opened the door to you must
+have been a wrong un, one of _his_.'
+
+'Never have I had the police in my house before,' wailed the landlady of
+No. 23, Horseferry Road, while the candle dropped tallow tears on the
+oilcloth. 'And all I can say is I thank the blessed Lord it's dark, and
+you aren't in uniform. Doctor Woolrich's rooms are on the first floor,
+and you can go up and see for yourself, if you like. And how should I
+know he wasn't a real doctor?'
+
+As the landlady spoke, sounds of footsteps made themselves heard
+overhead, and a door closed.
+
+'Give me that candle, my good woman,' said Hugo, hastily snatching it
+from her.
+
+The three men ran upstairs, leaving the hall to darkness and the
+landlady.
+
+Whether Hugo dropped the candle in his excitement, or whether it was
+knocked out of his hand by means of a stick through the rails of the
+landing-banister as he ascended, will never be accurately known. He
+himself is not sure. The important fact is that the candle fell, and the
+trio stumbled up the last few stairs with nothing to guide them but a
+chink of light through a half-closed door. This door led to the rooms of
+Dr. Woolrich, and the rooms of Dr. Woolrich were well lighted with gas.
+But they were empty. There was a sitting-room and a bedroom, and on the
+round table in the centre of the sitting-room was a copy of the most
+modern edition of Quain's 'Dictionary of Medicine,' edited by Murray,
+Harold, and Bosanquet, bound in half-morocco; the volume was open at the
+article 'Anaesthetics,' and Hugo will always remember that the page was
+sixty-two. No sooner were the rooms found to be empty than Hugo rushed
+back to the landing, followed by Simon. The landing, however, even with
+the sitting-room door thrown wide and the light streaming across the
+landing and down the stairs, showed no sign of life.
+
+Then Albert, who had remained within the suite, called out:
+
+'There must be a dressing-room off this bedroom, and it's locked.'
+
+'Simon,' said Hugo, 'go to the front window and keep watch.'
+
+And Hugo ran into the bedroom to Albert.
+
+Decidedly there was a door in the bedroom which had the appearance of
+leading into a further room, but the door would not budge. The pair
+glanced about. No evidence of recent human habitation was visible either
+in the sitting-room or in the bedroom, save only the dictionary, and
+Albert commented on this.
+
+'We must force that door,' Hugo decided, 'and be ready to look after
+yourself when it gives way.'
+
+As he spoke he could see, in the tail of his eye, Simon opening the
+front window and then looking out into the street.
+
+'One--two--charge!' cried Hugo; and he and Albert flung themselves
+valiantly against the door.
+
+They made no impression upon it at all.
+
+Breathless and shaken, they looked at each other.
+
+'Suppose I fire into the lock?' said Hugo.
+
+'We might try a key first,' Albert answered.
+
+He took the key from the door between the bedroom and the sitting-room,
+and applied it to the lock of the obstinate portal. The obstinate portal
+opened at once.
+
+'Empty!' ejaculated Albert, putting his nose into a small dressing-room.
+
+With a gesture of disgust Hugo turned away. In the same instant Simon
+withdrew his head into the sitting-room.
+
+'I've seen him,' Simon whispered in hoarse excitement. 'He just popped
+out of the kitchen and came half-way up the area steps. Then he ran
+back. He saw me looking at him.'
+
+'Ravengar?'
+
+Simon nodded. This was the hour of Simon's triumph, the proof that he
+had not been mistaken in the theory which he had raised on the
+foundation of the photograph.
+
+'Come along,' said Hugo grimly, preparing to rush downstairs.
+
+But a singular thing had occurred. While Simon had been staring out of
+the front window, and Hugo and Albert engaged in forcing a door which
+led to emptiness, the door of the sitting-room, the sole means of egress
+from the first-floor suite, had been shut and locked on the outside.
+
+In vain Hugo assailed it with boot and shoulder; in vain Albert assisted
+him.
+
+'Keep your eye on the street, you fool!' said Albert to Simon, when the
+latter offered to join the siege of the door.
+
+Hugo and Albert multiplied their efforts.
+
+'There's a cab driven up,' Simon informed them from the window. 'A man's
+got out. Now he's gone down the area steps. They're carrying something
+up, something big. Oh! look here, I must help you.'
+
+And Simon ran to the door. Before the triple assault it fell at last,
+and the three tumbled pell-mell downstairs into the hall. The front-door
+was open.
+
+A cab was just driving away. It drove rapidly, very rapidly.
+
+'After it!' Hugo commanded.
+
+The hunt was up.
+
+Two minutes afterwards another cab drove up to the door.
+
+Ravengar and another man emerged from the area holding between them the
+form of a woman. They got leisurely into the cab with the woman and
+departed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE CEMETERY
+
+
+Both Simon and Albert easily outran Hugo, and, fast as the first cab was
+travelling, they had gained on it by the time it turned into Victoria
+Street. And at the turning an incident happened. The driver, though
+hurried, was apparently to a certain extent careful and cautious, but he
+did not altogether avoid contact with a policeman at the corner. The
+policeman was obliged to step sharply out of the way of the cab, and
+even then the sleeve of his immaculate tunic was soiled by contact with
+the hind-wheel of the vehicle. Now, the driver might have scraped an
+ordinary person with impunity, and passed on unchallenged; he might even
+have soiled the sleeve of a veteran policeman and got nothing worse than
+a sharp word of censure and a fragment of good advice. But this
+particular policeman was quite a new policeman, whose dignity was as
+delicate and easily smirched as his beautiful shining tunic. And the
+result was that the cabby had to stop, give his number, and listen to a
+lecture.
+
+Simon and Albert formed part of the audience for the lecture. It did
+not, however, interest them, for they had instantly perceived that the
+cab was empty.
+
+Then, as the lecturer was growing eloquent, Hugo arrived, and was
+informed of the emptiness of the vehicle.
+
+'It was just a trick,' Simon exclaimed; 'a trick to get us out of the
+house.'
+
+'We must go back,' said Hugo, breathless.
+
+At this moment the second cab appeared, was delayed a moment by the
+multitude listening to the lecture, and passed westwards into Victoria
+Street.
+
+'They're in that!' cried Simon.
+
+'Are you sure?' Hugo questioned.
+
+'Of course I'm sure,' said Simon, who in the excitement of the trail had
+ceased to be a valet.
+
+To jump into a hansom and order the driver to keep the four-wheeler in
+sight ought to have been the work of a few seconds, but it occurred, as
+invariably occurs when a hansom is urgently needed, that no hansom was
+available. The four-wheeler was receding at a moderate rate in the
+direction of the Grosvenor Hotel.
+
+'Run after it!' said Hugo. 'I'll get a cab in the station-yard and
+follow.'
+
+The quarry vanished round a corner just as they tumbled into the hansom
+on the top of Hugo, but it was never out of observation for more than a
+quarter of a minute. Through divers strange streets it came at length
+into Fulham Road at Elm Place, and thenceforward, at a higher rate of
+speed, it kept to the main thoroughfare. The procession passed the
+workhouse and the Redcliffe Arms. Between Edith Grove and Stamford
+Bridge the roadway was up for fundamental repairs, and omnibuses were
+being diverted down Edith Grove to King's Road. A policeman at the
+corner spoke to the driver of the four-wheeler, gave a sign of assent,
+and the four-wheeler went straight onwards into a medley of wood-blocks,
+which was all that was left of Fulham Road. The hansom followed
+intrepidly, and then its three occupants were conscious of a sudden
+halt.
+
+'Bobby wants to know where you're going to,' said the driver, opening
+the trap.
+
+There was a slight hesitation, and the policeman's voice could be
+heard:
+
+'Come out of it!'
+
+'We're following that four-wheeler,' Hugo was about to say, but he
+perceived the absurdity of saying such a thing in cold blood to a
+policeman.
+
+All three descended. The cabman had to be paid. There was a difficulty
+about finding change--one of those silly and ridiculous difficulties
+that so frequently supervene in crises otherwise grave; in short, a
+succession of trifling delays, each of which might easily have been
+obviated by perfect forethought, or by perfect accord between the three
+men.
+
+When next they came to close quarters with the four-wheeler it was
+leisurely driving away empty from a small semi-detached house which was
+separated from the road by a tiny garden. They ran into the garden. The
+one thing that flourished in it was a 'To Let' notice. The front-door,
+shaded by unpruned trees, was shut, and there were cobwebs on the
+handle, as Hugo plainly saw when he struck a match. They hastened round
+to the back of the house, where was a larger garden. A French window
+gave access to the house. This French window yielded at once to a firm
+push. The three men searched the ground-floor and found nothing. They
+then ascended the stairs and equally found nothing. The house must have
+been empty for many months. From the first-floor window at the back Hugo
+gazed out, baffled. Far off he could see lights of houses, but the
+foreground was all darkness and mystery.
+
+'What lies between us and those lights?' he asked.
+
+'It must be Brompton Cemetery, sir,' said Albert. 'The garden gives on
+the cemetery, I expect.'
+
+As if suddenly possessed by a demon, Hugo flew out of the room, down the
+stairs, into the garden. At the extremity of the garden was a brick
+wall, and against the wall were two extremely convenient barrels; they
+might have been placed there specially for the occasion. In an instant
+he was in the cemetery.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The remainder of the adventure survives in Hugo's memory like a sort of
+night-picture in which all the minor details of life are lost in large,
+vague glooms, and only the central figures of the composition emerge
+clearly, in a sharp and striking brilliance, against the mysterious
+background.
+
+He knew himself in the cemetery, and immediately, by a tremendous effort
+of the brain, he had arranged his knowledge of the place and decided
+exactly where he was. Instinctively he ran by side-alleys till he came
+to the broad central way which cuts this vast field of the dead north
+and south. He hurried northwards, and when he had gone about a hundred
+and fifty yards he turned to the left, and then went north again.
+
+'It's here,' he muttered.
+
+He was in the middle of that strange and sinister city within a city,
+that flat expanse of silence, decay, and putrefaction which is
+surrounded on every side by the pulsating arteries of London. The living
+visit the dead during the day, but at night the dead are left to
+themselves, and the very flowers which embroider their dissolution close
+up and forget them. Round about him everywhere trees and shrubs moved
+restlessly and plaintively in the night breeze; the angular grave-stones
+raised their kindly lies in the darkness. A few stars flickered in the
+sky; no moon. And miles off, so it seemed, north, south, east, and west,
+the yellow lights of human habitations, the lights of warm rooms where
+living people were so engaged in the business of being alive that they
+actually forgot death--these lights winked to each other across the
+waste and desolation of a hundred thousand tombs.
+
+With the certainty of a blind man, the assurance of a seer who has
+divined what the future holds, he approached the vault. He was aware
+that the little gate in the railing would be open. It was. He was aware
+that the iron door in the side of the vault would be unlocked. It was.
+He pushed it and entered. All difficulties and hindrances had been
+removed. No odour of death greeted his nostrils, unless the strong smell
+of chloroform can be called the odour of death. He struck a match. The
+first thing he saw was a candle and a screwdriver, and then the match
+blew out. The door of the vault was ajar, and he would not close it. He
+dared not. He struck another match and put it to the candle, and the
+vault was full of jumping shadows. And he looked and looked again. Yes,
+down in that corner she lay, motionless, lifeless, done with for ever
+and ever. Only her face was visible. The rest of her seemed to be
+covered with a man's overcoat, flung hastily down. He stared, enchanted
+by the horror. What was that white stuff round her head? Part of it
+seemed to be torn, and a strip fluttered across her closed eyelids. He
+went nearer. He touched--cold! Could she be so soon cold? And then the
+truth swept over him, and almost swept his senses away, that this image
+in the corner was not she, but merely that waxen thing made by the
+sculptor in Paris, that counterfeit which had deceived him in the
+drawing-room of the flat.
+
+Then where was she? And why was not this counterfeit in its coffin, in
+which it had been buried with all the rites of the Church? The coffin?
+Yes, the coffin was there at his feet, with its brass plate, which had
+rusted at the corners; and below it, in some undefined depth, was
+another coffin, the sarcophagus of Tudor himself. He stooped and shifted
+the candle. On Camilla's coffin were a number of screws, rolled about in
+various directions; only one screw was in its place. He seized the
+screwdriver--and in that moment a tiny part of his intelligence found
+leisure to decide that this screwdriver was slightly longer than the one
+he had used aforetime for a similar purpose--and he unscrewed the
+solitary screw and raised the lid of the coffin, letting all the screws
+roll off it with a great rattle.... An overwhelming rush of chloroform
+vapour escaped.... She lay within, dressed in her black dress, and her
+dress had been crammed into the coffin hastily, madly, and was thrust
+down in thick, disorderly folds about her feet, and her hair half
+covered her face. And her face was slightly flushed, and her eyelids
+quivered, and the cheeks were warm. He put his hands under her armpits
+and wrenched her out and carried her from the vault. And then he sank to
+the ground sobbing.
+
+What caused him to sob? If any man dared now to ask him, and if he dared
+to answer, he might reply that it was not grief nor joy, nor the
+reaction from an intolerable strain, but simply the idea of the terrific
+and heart-breaking cruelty of Ravengar which had dragged from him a sob.
+
+The path followed by the madman's brain was easy to pursue once the clue
+found. He had been cheated into the belief that Camilla's body rested in
+that coffin, and when he had discovered that it did not rest there he
+had determined that the mistake should be rectified, the false made
+true. That had seemed to him logical and just. She was supposed to be
+in the coffin; she should really be in the coffin; she should be forced
+and jammed into it. And his lunatic and inhuman fancy had added even to
+that conception. She should be drugged and carried to the vault, and
+drugged again, and then immured, unconscious, but alive; and if by
+chance she awoke from the chloroform sleep after he had finished
+screwing in the screws, so much the better! So it was that his mind had
+worked. And the scheme had been executed with that courage, that
+calmness, that audacity, that minute attention to detail, of which only
+madmen at their maddest appear to be capable. Beyond any question the
+scheme would have succeeded had not Hugo, the moment Albert Shawn
+uttered the word 'cemetery,' perceived the general trend of it in a
+single wondrous flash of intuition. He had guessed it, and even while
+afraid to believe that he was right, had known absolutely and
+convincingly that he was right.
+
+Camilla murmured some phrase, and gave a sigh as she lay on the
+gravelled path.
+
+She had recovered from the fatal torpor in the cool night air. He said
+nothing, because he felt that he could do nothing else. Albert and Simon
+were certainly looking for him in the maze of the cemetery; they would
+find him soon. It did not seem to him extraordinary that he had left
+them in that sudden, swift fashion without a word.
+
+Then he heard, or thought he heard, a noise in the vault, and, summoning
+all his strength of will, he descended the steps again and glanced
+within. Ravengar was there. Had he been there all the time, hidden
+behind the door? Or had he fled and stealthily returned? Only Ravengar
+could say. He had taken up the image from the corner and was replacing
+it in the coffin. It was as if he had bowed his obstinate purpose to
+some higher power which was inscrutable to him. Children and madmen can
+practise this singular and surprising fatalism. Disturbed, he raised his
+head and caught sight of Hugo. They gazed at one another by the
+flickering candle.
+
+'Where's the man who helped you?' Hugo demanded faintly.
+
+He had not much heart, much force, much firmness left. Ravengar's eyes,
+at once empty and significant, blank and yet formidable, startled him.
+He had the revolver and the handcuffs in his pocket, but he could not
+have used them. Ravengar's eyes, so fiendish and so ineffably sad,
+melted his spine. Ravengar stepped forward and Hugo stepped back.
+
+'Let me pass,' said Ravengar, in the tone of one who has suffered much
+and does not mean to suffer much more.
+
+And Hugo let him pass, inexplicably, weakly; and at the end of a narrow
+path he merged into the vague, general darkness. And then Hugo heard the
+sound of a struggle, and the voices of Simon and Albert--young and
+boisterous and earthly and sane. And then scampering footfalls which
+died away in the uttermost parts of the cemetery.
+
+And Camilla sat up, rubbing her eyes.
+
+'It's all right,' he soothed her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+BEAUTY
+
+
+'Hum! he's going to marry her,' Simon had said, and Albert had said, and
+Lily had said. 'I knew it all along.' When, at the end of six months,
+Hugo went away, much furnishing of rooms near the Dome took place by his
+orders during his absence.
+
+Yet here was Hugo back at the end of the fortnight, radiant certainly,
+but alone.
+
+'There was one little matter I forgot,' Hugo began, rather timidly, as
+Simon thought, when assured that everything was in order.
+
+'Yes, sir?' said Simon.
+
+'I want you to be good enough to give up your room.'
+
+'My room, sir?'
+
+'To oblige a lady.'
+
+'A lady, sir?'
+
+'I should say a lady's lady.'
+
+Simon paused. He was wounded, but he would not show it.
+
+'With pleasure, sir.'
+
+'To-night,' Hugo proceeded, 'you can occupy my bed in the dome;' and he
+pointed to the spot where, during the day, the bed lay ingeniously
+hidden in a recess of the wall. 'I shall no longer need it. To-morrow we
+can make some more permanent arrangement for you.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Also,' Hugo continued, 'I would like you to go along to the offices of
+the _Morning Post_ for me some time to-night before ten o'clock and take
+this. There will be a guinea to pay.' Hugo handed him a slip of paper.
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Read it,' said Hugo.
+
+And Simon read: '"A marriage has been arranged, and"--and--has taken
+place, sir?'
+
+'Precisely.'
+
+'Precisely, sir. "Has taken place at Hythe between Mr. Owen Hugo, of
+Sloane Street, London, and Mrs. Camilla Tudor, widow of the late Mr.
+Francis Tudor."'
+
+'You are the first to know, Simon.'
+
+Simon bowed.
+
+'May I respectfully venture to wish you every happiness, sir?' Simon
+pronounced at his most formal.
+
+'No, you may not,' said Hugo. 'But you may shake hands with me.'
+
+And he respectfully ventured to explain to Simon how, in the case of a
+man like himself, with three thousand five hundred tongues ever ready to
+wag about him, absolute secrecy had been the only policy.
+
+'Telephone down to the refreshment department for Tortoni to come up to
+me instantly. I must order a dinner for two. My wife and her maid will
+be here in half an hour. I shall not want you--at any rate, before
+ten-thirty or so.'
+
+'Yes, sir. And the maid?'
+
+'What about the maid?'
+
+'You said you would order dinner for two, sir.'
+
+'Look here, Simon,' said Hugo. 'If you will take the maid down to dine
+in the Central Restaurant and keep her there--take her with you for a
+drive to the _Morning Post_--I shall regard it as a favour. Catch!' And
+he threw to Simon the gold token, which made Simon master of all the
+good things in the entire building. 'Make use of that.'
+
+Simon felt a little nervous at the prospect. He had not seen the maid.
+However, he hoped for the best, and assured Hugo of his delight.
+
+'I forgot to inform you, sir,' he turned back to tell Hugo as he was
+leaving the room, 'Doctor Darcy called again to-day. He has called
+several times the last few days. He said he might look in again
+to-night.'
+
+The bridegroom started.
+
+'If he should,' Hugo ordered, 'don't say I'm in till you've warned me.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+Three hours later the bride and bridegroom were finishing one of the
+distinguished Tortoni's most elaborate dinners. Tortoni had protested
+that it was destructive of the elementary principles of art to order a
+dinner for eight-thirty at seven o'clock. However, he had not completely
+failed. The waiters had departed, and Camilla, in dazzling ivory-white,
+was pouring out coffee. Hugo was cutting a cigar. They did not speak;
+they felt. They were at the end of the brief honeymoon, and the day was
+at an end. The last remnants of twilight had vanished, and through the
+eastern windows of the dome the moon was rising. Neither the hour nor
+the occasion made for talkativeness. Life lay before Hugo and Camilla.
+Both were honestly convinced that they had not lived till that
+hour--that hour whence dated the commencement of their regular united
+existence. They looked at each other, satisfied, admiring, happy,
+expecting glorious things from Fate.
+
+There was a discreet alarm at the door. Simon came in. It would have
+been a gross solecism to knock, but Simon performed the equivalent. He
+paused, struck when he beheld Camilla, as well he might; for Camilla was
+such a vision as is not often vouchsafed to the Simons of this world.
+She was peerless that evening. And she smiled charmingly on him, and
+asked after his health.
+
+'Your coffee, dearest,' she murmured to Hugo.
+
+It occurred to Simon that the dome would never be the same again. This
+miraculous and amazing creature was going to be always there, to form
+part of his daily life, to swish her wonderful skirts in and out of the
+rooms, to--to--He did not know whether to be glad or sorry. He knew only
+that he was perturbed, thrown off his balance, so much so that he forgot
+to explain his invasion.
+
+'Well, Simon,' said Hugo, 'had your dinner and been to the _Morning
+Post_ office?'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Alone?'
+
+Simon blushed.
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+'Good.'
+
+'Doctor Darcy is here, sir. Are you at home?'
+
+Hugo had utterly forgotten about Doctor Darcy. He glanced at his wife
+interrogatively, but Camilla looked at the moon through the window.
+
+'Show Doctor Darcy in in five minutes,' said Hugo.
+
+'Poor old Darcy!' exclaimed Camilla when they were alone. 'Does he
+know?'
+
+'Know what? That we are married? No. I wrote to him nearly six months
+ago to tell him that you were safe and all that, and he acknowledged the
+letter on a postcard. Afterwards I sent him that trifle of money that
+you owed him, and he sent a stamped receipt.'
+
+'He always hides his feelings,' said Camilla. 'This will be a blow for
+him!'
+
+'How?'
+
+'Didn't he tell you he was most violently in love with me in Paris?'
+
+'He did not,' said Hugo. 'Did he tell _you_?'
+
+'No, of course not. He was far too chivalrous for that. It would have
+seemed like taking advantage of my situation to force me into a
+marriage.'
+
+'How do you know he was violently in love with you, bright star?' Hugo
+demanded in that amiably malicious tone which he could never withstand
+the temptation to employ.
+
+'My precious boy,' replied Camilla, 'how _does_ a woman know these
+things?'
+
+And she came over and kissed Hugo.
+
+'You shall talk to him first,' she said. 'I'll join you later.'
+
+'Did he ever commit sublime follies for you,' Hugo asked, detaining her
+hand, 'as I did when I shut up the entire place because I thought you
+looked exhausted one hot morning?'
+
+She bent over him.
+
+'Darcy is incapable of any folly in regard to women,' she said. 'That is
+one reason why we should never have suited each other, he and I. A fool
+should always marry a fool. Consider _my_ folly when I came back to work
+in your Department 42 simply because I could not forget your masterful
+face. Wasn't that also sublime?'
+
+'You never told me--'
+
+'But you guessed.'
+
+'Perhaps.'
+
+She withdrew her hand, and then that delicious swish of skirts which
+Simon's imagination had foretold thrilled Hugo with delight. He launched
+a kiss towards her as she vanished.
+
+'We are all to be heartily congratulated,' said Darcy, somewhat
+astonished when Hugo had put him abreast of the times. 'At one period I
+suspected that you were going to make a match of it, and then, as I
+heard nothing, I began to be afraid that she had been unable to banish
+my humble self from her mind. And, to tell you the truth, the object of
+this present visit to London was to inform myself, and, if necessary,
+to--offer her--See?'
+
+Hugo was bound to admit that he saw. Inwardly he laughed to think that
+he had been seriously disturbed by Darcy's statement in regard to the
+condition of Camilla's heart.
+
+'Shall we go out to the top of the dome?' he suggested.
+
+They rose.
+
+And at that juncture Camilla reappeared.
+
+The greeting between the Paris friends was commendably calm, but neither
+seemed to be able to speak freely. And at length Camilla said she would
+get a cloak and follow them to the belvidere.
+
+The two men climbed to the summit which dominated the City of Pleasure.
+To the east the famous roof restaurant glittered and jingled under the
+moon. To the west the Great Wheel was outlined in flame--a symbol of the
+era. Hugo told Darcy the history of the night in the cemetery, and what
+preceded, and what came after it, including the strange death of
+Ravengar in a lunatic asylum, and how everything was explained or
+explicable--even Mr. Brown, the manager of the Safe Deposit, had run up
+against justice in Caracas--save and except the identity of Ravengar's
+accomplice during the last days. He was enlarging upon the
+inscrutability of that part of the affair, and upon the interest which
+it lent to the whole episode, when Darcy, who had not been listening,
+broke in upon his observation with an inapposite remark which obviously
+sprang from deep feeling.
+
+'She's simply marvellous!' cried Darcy.
+
+'Who?'
+
+'Your wife. Simply marvellous! I had no idea--in Paris--'
+
+'Recollect, you are not in love with her, my friend,' Hugo laughed.
+
+'She must have the best blood in her veins. With that style, that
+carriage, she surely must be--'
+
+'My dear fellow,' said Hugo, 'beauty has no rank. It bloweth where it
+listeth. It is the one thing in the world that you can't account for.
+You've only got to be thankful for it when it blows your way, that's
+all.'
+
+A white figure appeared in the cavity of the steps leading to the
+circular gallery.
+
+'What are you talking about?' Camilla inquired.
+
+'Women,' said Hugo.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.
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