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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Summons, by A.E.W. Mason
+
+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: The Summons
+
+Author: A.E.W. Mason
+
+Release Date: July 28, 2005 [EBook #16381]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SUMMONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+SUMMONS
+
+BY
+A.E.W. MASON
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE FOUR FEATHERS," "THE TURNSTILE," ETC.
+
+
+NEW YORK
+
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1920.
+BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+            TO THOSE
+     WHO SERVED WITH ME ABROAD
+      THROUGH THE FOUR YEARS
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+
+     I THE OLYMPIC GAMES                                  11
+
+    II AN ANTHEM INTERVENES                               18
+
+   III MARIO ESCOBAR                                      28
+
+    IV THE SECRET OF HARRY LUTTRELL                       35
+
+     V HILLYARD'S MESSENGER                               47
+
+    VI THE HONORARY MEMBER                                55
+
+   VII IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN                              65
+
+  VIII HILLYARD HEARS NEWS OF AN OLD FRIEND               70
+
+    IX ENTER THE HEROINE IN ANYTHING BUT WHITE SATIN      80
+
+     X THE SUMMONS                                        91
+
+    XI STELLA RUNS TO EARTH                              100
+
+   XII IN BARCELONA                                      111
+
+  XIII OLD ACQUAINTANCE                                  121
+
+   XIV "TOUCHING THE MATTER OF THOSE SHIPS"              135
+
+    XV IN A SLEEPING-CAR                                 144
+
+   XVI TRICKS OF THE TRADE                               155
+
+  XVII ON A CAPE OF SPAIN                                163
+
+ XVIII THE USES OF SCIENCE                               173
+
+   XIX UNDER GREY SKIES AGAIN                            183
+
+    XX LADY SPLAY'S PREOCCUPATIONS                       193
+
+   XXI THE MAGNOLIA FLOWERS                              208
+
+  XXII JENNY PRASK                                       219
+
+ XXIII PLANS FOR THE EVENING                             227
+
+  XXIV JENNY PRASK IS INTERESTED                         235
+
+   XXV IN A LIBRARY                                      238
+
+  XXVI A FATAL KINDNESS                                  248
+
+ XXVII THE RANK AND FILE                                 257
+
+XXVIII THE LONG SLEEP                                    263
+
+  XXIX JENNY PUTS UP HER FIGHT                           273
+
+   XXX A REVOLUTION IN SIR CHICHESTER                    287
+
+  XXXI JENNY AND MILLIE SPLAY                            298
+
+ XXXII "BUT STILL A RUBY KINDLES IN THE VINE"            306
+
+
+
+
+THE SUMMONS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE OLYMPIC GAMES
+
+
+"Luttrell! Luttrell!"
+
+Sir Charles Hardiman stood in the corridor of his steam yacht and bawled
+the name through a closed door. But no answer was returned from the
+other side of the door. He turned the handle and went in. The night was
+falling, but the cabin windows looked towards the north and the room was
+full of light and of a low and pleasant music. For the tide tinkled and
+chattered against the ship's planks and, in the gardens of the town
+across the harbour, bands were playing. The town was Stockholm in the
+year nineteen hundred and twelve, and on this afternoon, the Olympic
+games, that unfortunate effort to promote goodwill amongst the nations,
+which did little but increase rancours and disclose hatreds, had ended,
+never, it is to be hoped, to be resumed.
+
+"Luttrell," cried Hardiman again, but this time with perplexity in his
+voice. For Luttrell was there in the cabin in front of him, but sunk in
+so deep a contemplation of memories and prospects that the cabin might
+just as well have been empty. Sir Charles Hardiman touched him on the
+shoulder.
+
+"Wake up, old man!"
+
+"That's what I am doing--waking up," said Luttrell, turning without any
+start. He was seated in front of the writing-desk, a young man, as the
+world went before the war, a few months short of twenty-eight.
+
+"The launch is waiting and everybody's on deck," continued Hardiman.
+"We shall lose our table at Hasselbacken if we don't get off."
+
+Then he caught sight of a telegram lying upon the writing-table.
+
+"Oh!" and the impatience died out of his voice. "Is anything the
+matter?"
+
+Luttrell pushed the telegram towards his host.
+
+"Read it! I have got to make up my mind--and now--before we start."
+
+Hardiman read the telegram. It was addressed to Captain Harry Luttrell,
+Yacht _The Dragonfly_, Stockholm, and it was sent from Cairo by the
+Adjutant-General of the Egyptian Army.
+
+     "_I can make room for you, but you must apply immediately to
+     be transferred._"
+
+Hardiman sat down in a chair by the side of the table against the wall,
+with his eyes on Luttrell's face. He was a big, softish, overfed man of
+forty-five, and the moment he began to relax from the upright position,
+his body went with a run; he collapsed rather than sat. The little veins
+were beginning to show like tiny scarlet threads across his nose and on
+the fullness of his cheeks; his face was the colour of wine; and the
+pupils of his pale eyes were ringed with so pronounced an _arcus
+senilis_ that they commanded the attention like a disfigurement. But the
+eyes were shrewd and kindly enough as they dwelt upon the troubled face
+of his guest.
+
+"You have not answered this?" he asked.
+
+"No. But I must send an answer to-night."
+
+"You are in doubt?"
+
+"Yes. I was quite sure when I cabled to Cairo on the second day of the
+games. I was quite sure, whilst I waited for the reply. Now that the
+reply has come--I don't know."
+
+"Let me hear," said the older man. "The launch must wait, the table at
+the Hasselbacken restaurant must be assigned, if need be, to other
+customers." Hardiman had not swamped all his kindliness in good living.
+Luttrell was face to face with one of the few grave decisions which
+each man has in the course of his life to make; and Hardiman understood
+his need better than he understood it himself. His need was to formulate
+aloud the case for and against, to another person, not so much that he
+might receive advice as, that he might see for himself with truer eyes.
+
+"The one side is clear enough," said Luttrell with a trace of
+bitterness. "There was a Major I once heard of at Dover. He trained his
+company in night-marches by daylight. The men held a rope to guide them
+and were ordered to shut their eyes. The Major, you see, hated stirring
+out at night. He liked his bridge and his bottle of port. Well, give me
+another year and that's the kind of soldier I shall become--the worst
+kind--the slovenly soldier. I mean slovenly in mind, in intention. Even
+now I come, already bored, to the barrack square and watch the time to
+see if I can't catch an earlier train from Gravesend to London."
+
+"And when you do?" asked Hardiman.
+
+Luttrell nodded.
+
+"When I do," he agreed, "I get no thrill out of my escape, I assure you.
+I hate myself a little more--that's all."
+
+"Yes," said Hardiman. He was too wise a man to ask questions. He just
+sat and waited, inviting Luttrell to spread out his troubles by his very
+quietude.
+
+"Then there are these games," Luttrell cried in a swift exasperation,
+"--these damned games! From the first day when the Finns marched out
+with their national flag and the Russians threatened to withdraw if they
+did it again----" he broke off suddenly. "Of course you know soldiers
+have believed that trouble's coming. I used to doubt, but by God I am
+sure of it now. Just a froth of fine words at the opening and
+afterwards--honest rivalry and let the best man win? Not a bit of it!
+Team-running--a vile business--the nations parked together in different
+sections of the Stadium like enemies--and ill-will running here and
+there like an infection! Oh, there's trouble coming, and if I don't go I
+shan't be fit for it. There, that's the truth."
+
+"The whole truth and nothing but the truth?" Hardiman asked with a
+smile. He leaned across the table and drew towards him a case of
+telegraph forms. But whilst he was drawing them towards him, Luttrell
+spoke again.
+
+"Nothing but the truth--_yes_," he said. He was speaking shyly,
+uncomfortably, and he stopped abruptly.
+
+"The whole truth--no." Hardiman added slowly, and gently. He wanted the
+complete story from preface to conclusion, but he was not to get it. He
+received no answer of any kind for a considerable number of moments and
+Luttrell only broke the silence in the end, to declare definitely,
+
+"That, at all events, is all I have to say."
+
+Sir Charles nodded and drew the case of forms close to him. There was
+something more then. There always is something more, which isn't told,
+he reflected, and the worst of it is, the something more which isn't
+told is always the real reason. Men go to the confessional with a
+reservation; the secret chamber where they keep their sacred vessels,
+their real truths and inspirations, as also their most scarlet
+sins--that shall be opened to no one after early youth is past unless it
+be--rarely--to one woman. There was another reason at work in Harry
+Luttrell, but Sir Charles Hardiman was never to know it. With a shrug of
+his shoulders he took a pencil from his pocket, filled up one of the
+forms and handed it to Luttrell.
+
+"That's what I should reply."
+
+He had written:
+
+     "_I am travelling to London to-morrow to apply for
+     transfer._--LUTTRELL."
+
+Luttrell read the telegram with surprise. It was not the answer which he
+had expected from the victim of the flesh-pots in front of him.
+
+"You advise that?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Yes. My dear Luttrell, as you know, you are a guest very welcome to me.
+But you don't belong. We--Maud Carstairs, Tony Marsh and the rest of
+us--even Mario Escobar--we are the Come-to-nothings. We are the people
+of the stage door, we grow fat in restaurants. From three to seven, you
+may find us in the card-rooms of our clubs--we are jolly fine
+fellows--and no good. You don't belong, and should get out while you
+can."
+
+Luttrell moved uncomfortably in his chair.
+
+"That's all very well. But there's another side to the question," he
+said, and from the deck above a woman's voice called clearly down the
+stairway.
+
+"Aren't you two coming?"
+
+Both men looked towards the door.
+
+"That side," said Hardiman.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Hardiman nodded his head.
+
+"Stella Croyle doesn't belong either," he said. "But she kicked over the
+traces. She flung out of the rank and file. Oh, I know Croyle was a
+selfish, dull beast and her footprints in her flight from him were
+littered with excuses. I am not considering the injustice of the world.
+I am looking at the cruel facts, right in the face of them, as you have
+got to do, my young friend. Here Stella Croyle is--with us--and she
+can't get away. You can."
+
+Luttrell was not satisfied. His grey eyes and thin, clean features were
+troubled like those of a man in physical pain.
+
+"You don't know the strange, queer tie between Stella Croyle and me," he
+said. "And I can't tell you it."
+
+Hardiman grew anxious. Luttrell had the look of a man overtrained, and
+it was worry which had overtrained him. His face was a trifle too
+delicate, perhaps, to go with those remorseless sharp decisions which
+must be made by the men who win careers.
+
+"I know that you can't go through the world without hurting people,"
+cried Hardiman. "Neither you nor any one else, except the limpets. And
+you won't escape hurting Stella Croyle, by abandoning your chances. Your
+love-affair will end--all of that kind do. And yours will end in a
+bitter, irretrievable quarrel after you have ruined yourself, and
+because you have ruined yourself. You are already on the rack--make no
+doubt about it. Oh, I have seen you twitch and jump with irritation--how
+many times on this yacht!--for trumpery, little, unimportant things she
+has said and done, which you would never have noticed six months ago;
+or only noticed to smile at with a pleased indulgence."
+
+Luttrell's face coloured. "Why, that's true enough," he said. He was
+remembering the afternoon a week ago, when the yacht steamed between the
+green islands with their bathing stations and ch�lets, over a tranquil,
+sunlit sea of the deepest blue. Rounding a wooded corner towards sunset
+she came suddenly upon the bridges and the palace and the gardens of
+Stockholm. The women of the party were in the saloon. A rush was made
+towards it. They were summoned to this first wonderful view of the city
+of beauty. Would they come? No! Stella Croyle was in the middle of a
+game of Russian patience. She could play that game any day, every day,
+all day. This exquisite vision was vouchsafed to her but the once, and
+she had neglected it with the others. She had not troubled, even to move
+so far as the saloon door. For she had not finished her game.
+
+Luttrell recalled his feeling of scorn; the scorn had grown into
+indignation; in the end he had made a grievance of her indifference to
+this first view of the city of Stockholm; a foolish, exasperating
+grievance, which would rankle, which would not be buried, which sprang
+to fresh life at each fresh sight of her. Yes, of a certainty, sooner or
+later Stella Croyle and he would quarrel, so bitterly that all the
+king's horses and all the king's men could never bring them again
+together; and over some utterly unimportant matter like the first view
+of Stockholm.
+
+"Youth has many privileges over age," continued Hardiman, "but none
+greater than the vision, the half-interpreted recurring vision of wider
+spaces and greater things, towards which you sail on the wind of a great
+emotion. Sooner or later, a man loses that vision and then only knows
+his loss. Stay here, and you'll lose it before your time."
+
+Luttrell looked curiously at his companion, wondering what manner of man
+he had been in his twenties. Hardiman answered the look with a laugh.
+"Oh, I, too, had my ambitions once."
+
+Luttrell folded the cablegram which Hardiman had written out and placed
+it in the breast pocket of his dinner-jacket.
+
+"I will talk to Stella to-night at dinner. Then, if I decide to send it,
+I can send it from the hotel over there at the landing-steps before we
+return to the yacht."
+
+Sir Charles Hardiman rose cumbrously with a shrug of his shoulders. He
+had done his best, but since Luttrell would talk the question over with
+Stella Croyle, shoulder to shoulder with her amongst the lights and
+music, the perfume of her hair in his nostrils and the pleading of her
+eyes within his sight--he, Charles Hardiman, might as well have held his
+tongue.
+
+So very likely it would have been. But when great matters are ripe for
+decisions one way or the other, the little accident as often as not
+decides. There was a hurrying of light feet in the corridor outside, a
+swift, peremptory knocking upon the door. The same woman's voice called
+in rather a shrill note through the panels! "Harry! Why don't you come?
+We are waiting for you."
+
+And in the sound of the voice there was not merely impatience, but a
+note of ownership--very clear and definite; and hearing it Luttrell
+hardened. He stood up straight. He had the aspect of a man in revolt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+AN ANTHEM INTERVENES
+
+
+Upon the entrance of Hardiman's party a wrinkle was smoothed away from
+the forehead of a _ma�tre d'h�tel_.
+
+"So! You have come!" he cried. "I began to despair."
+
+"You have kept my table?" Sir Charles insisted.
+
+"Yes, but with what an effort of diplomacy!"; and the _ma�tre d'h�tel_
+led his guests to the very edge of the great balcony. Here the table was
+set endwise to the balustrade, commanding the crowded visitors, yet
+taking the coolness of the night. Hardiman was contented with his choice
+of its position. But when he saw his guests reading the cards which
+assigned them their places, he was not so contented with the order of
+their seating.
+
+"If I had known an hour before!" he said to himself, and the astounding
+idea crept into his mind that perhaps it was, after all, a waste to
+spend so much time on the disposition of a dinner-table and the ordering
+of food.
+
+However, the harm was done now. There was Luttrell already seated at the
+end against the balustrade. He had the noise of a Babel of tongues and
+the glitter of a thousand lights upon his left hand; upon his right, the
+stars burning bright in a cool gloom of deepest purple, and far below
+the riding-lamps of the yachts tossing on the water like yellow flowers
+in a garden; whilst next to him, midway between the fragrant darkness
+and the hard glitter, revealing, as she always did, a kinship with each
+of them, sat Stella Croyle.
+
+"I should have separated them," Hardiman reflected uneasily as he raised
+and drank his cocktail. "But how the deuce could I without making
+everybody stare? This party wasn't got up to separate people. All the
+same----"
+
+The hushed wonder of a summer night. The gaiety of a bright thronged
+restaurant! In either setting Stella Croyle was a formidable
+antagonist. But combine the settings and she took to herself, at once by
+nature, the seduction of both!
+
+"Poor devil, he won't have a dog's chance!" the baronet concluded; and
+he watched approvingly what appeared to him to be Luttrell's endeavour
+to avoid joining battle on this unfavourable field. He could only trust
+feebly in that and in the strength of the "something else," the secret
+reason he was never to know.
+
+It was about half-way through dinner when Stella Croyle, who had
+directed many a furtive, anxious glance to the averted face of her
+companion, attacked directly.
+
+"What is the matter with you to-night?" she asked, interrupting him in
+the midst of a rattle of futilities. "Why should you recite to me from
+the guide-book about the University of Upsala?"
+
+"It appears to be most interesting, and quaint," replied Luttrell
+hastily.
+
+"Then we might hire a motor-car and run out there to luncheon.
+To-morrow! Just you and I."
+
+"No." Harry Luttrell exclaimed suddenly and Stella Croyle drew back. Her
+face clouded. She had won the first round, but victory brought her no
+ease. She knew now from the explosion of his "No" and the swift alarm
+upon his face that something threatened her.
+
+"You must tell me what has happened," she cried. "You must! Oh, you turn
+away from me!"
+
+From the dark steep garden at their feet rose a clamour of cheers--to
+Luttrell an intervention of Providence.
+
+"Listen," he said.
+
+Here and there a man or a woman rose at the dinner tables and looked
+down. Upwards along a glimmering riband of path, a group of students
+bore one of their number shoulder-high. Luttrell leaned over the
+balustrade. The group below halted; speeches were made; cheers broke out
+anew.
+
+"It is the Swedish javelin-thrower. He won the championship of the world
+this afternoon."
+
+"Did he?" asked Stella Croyle in a soft voice at his side. "Does he
+throw javelins as well as you? You wound me every time."
+
+Luttrell raised his head. It was not fear of defeat which had kept his
+looks averted from Stella's dark and starry eyes. No thought of lists
+set and a contest to be fought out had even entered his head. But he did
+fear to see those eyes glisten with tears--for she so seldom shed them!
+And even more than the evidence of her pain he feared the dreadful
+submission with which women in the end receive the stroke of fortune. He
+had to meet her gaze now, however.
+
+"I put off telling you," he began lamely.
+
+"So that this evening of mine with you might not be spoilt," she
+returned. "But, my dear, my evening was already spoilt before the launch
+left the yacht gangway. I am not so blind."
+
+Stella Croyle was at this date twenty-six years old; and it was
+difficult to picture her any older. Partly because of her vivid
+colouring and because she was abrim with life; partly because in her
+straightness of limb and the clear treble of her voice, she was boyish.
+"What a pretty boy she would make!" was the first thought until you
+noticed the slim delicacy of her hands and feet, the burnish of gold on
+the dark wealth of her hair, the fine chiselling of brow and nose and
+chin. Then it was seen that she was all woman. She was tall and yet
+never looked tall. It seemed that you could pick her up with a finger,
+but try and she warned you of the weakness of your arm. She was a
+baffling person. She ran and walked with the joyous insolence of
+eighteen, yet at any moment some veil might be rolled up in her eyes and
+face to show you for one tragic instant a Lady of Sorrows.
+
+She leaned towards Luttrell, and as Hardiman had foreseen the perfume of
+her hair stormed his senses.
+
+"Tell me!" she breathed, and Luttrell, with his arguments and reasons
+cut and dried and conned over pat for delivery, began nevertheless to
+babble. There were the Olympic Games. She herself must have seen how
+they were fatal to their own purpose. Troubles were coming--battles
+behind the troubles. All soldiers knew! They knew this too--the phrase
+of a young Lieutenant-Colonel lecturing at the Staff College.
+
+"Battles are not won either by sheer force or pure right, but by the one
+or the other of those two Powers which has Discipline as its Chief of
+Staff."
+
+He was implying neither very tactfully nor clearly that he was on the
+way to dwindling into an undisciplined soldier. But it did not matter in
+the least. For Stella Croyle was not listening. All this was totally
+unimportant. Men always went about and about when they had difficult
+things to say to women. Her eyes never left his face and she would know
+surely enough when those words were rising to his lips which it was
+necessary that she should mark and understand. Meanwhile her
+perplexities and fears grew.
+
+"Of course it can't be _that_," she assured herself again and again, but
+with a dreadful catch at her heart. "Oh no, it can't be _that_."
+
+"That," was the separation which some day or another--after a long and
+wondrous period--both were agreed, must come. But, consoling herself
+with the thought that she would be prepared, she had always set the day
+on so distant an horizon that it had no terrors for her. Now it suddenly
+dismayed her, a terror close at hand. Here on this crowded balcony
+joyous with lights and gay voices and invaded by all the subtle
+invitations of a summer night above the water! Oh no, it was not
+possible!
+
+Luttrell put his hand to his breast pocket and Stella watched and
+listened now with all her soul. More than once during dinner she had
+seen him touch that pocket in an abstraction. He drew from it two
+papers, one the cablegram which he had received from Cairo, the other
+Hardiman's reply. He handed her the first of the two.
+
+"This reached me this morning."
+
+Stella Croyle studied the paper with her heart in her mouth. But the
+letters would not be still.
+
+"Oh, what does it mean?" she cried.
+
+"It offers me service abroad."
+
+Stella's face flushed and turned white. She bent her head over the
+cablegram.
+
+"At Cairo," she said, with a little gasp of relief. After all Cairo was
+not so far. A week, and one was at Cairo.
+
+"Further south, in the Sudan--Heaven knows where!"
+
+"Too far then?" she suggested. "Too far."
+
+"For you? Yes! Too far," Luttrell replied.
+
+Stella lifted a tragic face towards him; and though he winced he met her
+eyes.
+
+"But you are not going! You can't go!"
+
+Luttrell handed to her the second paper.
+
+"You never wrote this," she said very quickly.
+
+"Yet it is what I would have written."
+
+Stella Croyle shot one swift glance at Sir Charles Hardiman. She had
+recognised his handwriting. Hardiman was in Luttrell's cabin while the
+rest of the party waited on the deck and the launch throbbed at the
+gangway. If a woman's glance had power, he would have been stricken that
+instant. But she wasted no more than a glance upon the worldly-wiseman
+at the head of their table. She turned again to the first telegram.
+
+"This is an answer, this cablegram from Cairo?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"To a cable of yours?"
+
+"Sent three days ago."
+
+The answers she received were clear, unhesitating. It was a voice from a
+rock speaking! So utterly mistaken was she; and so completely Luttrell
+bent every nerve to the service of shortening the hour of misery. The
+appalling moment was then actually upon her. She had foreseen it--so she
+thought. But it caught her nevertheless unprepared as death catches a
+sinner on his bed.
+
+She stared at the telegrams--not reading them. His arguments and
+prefaces--the Olympic Games, Discipline and the rest of it--what she had
+caught of them, she blew away as so much froth. She dived to the
+personal reason.
+
+"You are tired of me."
+
+"No," Luttrell answered hotly. "That's not true--not even a half-truth.
+If I were tired of you, it would all be so easy, so brutally easy."
+
+"But you are!" Her voice rose shrill in its violence. "You know you are
+but you are too much of a coward to say so--oh, like all men!" and as
+Luttrell turned to her a face startled by her outcry and uttered a
+remonstrant "Hush!", she continued bitterly, "What do I care if they all
+hear? I am impossible! You know that, don't you? I am quite impossible!
+I have gone my own way. I am one of the people you hate--one of the
+Undisciplined."
+
+Stella Croyle hardly knew in her passion what she was saying, and
+Luttrell could only wait in silence for the storm to pass. It passed
+with a quickness which caught him at loss; so quickly she swept from
+mood to mood.
+
+He heard her voice at his ear, remorseful and most appealing. "Oh, Wub,
+what have I done that you should treat me so?"
+
+Sir Charles Hardiman, watchful of the duel, guessed from the movement of
+her lips what she was saying.
+
+"These nicknames are the very devil," he exclaimed, apparently about
+nothing, to his startled neighbour. "The first thing a woman does when
+she's fond of a man is to give him some ridiculous name, which doesn't
+belong to him. She worries her wits trying this one and that one, as a
+tailor tries on you a suit of clothes, and when she has got your fit,
+she uses it--publicly. So others use it too and so it no longer contents
+her. Then she invents a variation, a nickname within a nickname, and
+that she keeps to herself, for her own private use. That's the nickname
+I am referring to, my dear, when I say it's the very devil."
+
+The lady to whom he spoke smiled vaguely and surmised that he might be
+very right. For herself, she said, she had invented no nicknames; which
+was to assert that she had never been in love. For the practice seems
+invariable, and probably Dido in times long since gone by had one for
+�neas, and Virgil knew all about it. But since she was a woman, it would
+be a name at once so absurd and so intimate that it would never have
+gone with the dignified rhythm of the hexameter. "Wobbles" had been the
+first name which Stella Croyle had invented for Harry Luttrell, though
+by what devious process she had lighted upon it, psychology could not
+have discovered. "Wub" was the nickname within the nickname, the
+cherished sign that the two of them lived apart in a little close-hedged
+garden of their own. Luttrell's eyes were upon her as she spoke it. And
+she spoke it with a curious little wistful pursing of soft lips so that
+it came to him winged with the memory of all her kisses.
+
+"Oh, Wub, must you leave me?" she pleaded in a breaking whisper. "What
+will be left to me if you do?"
+
+Luttrell dropped his forehead in his hands. All the character which he
+had in those untried days bade him harden himself against the appeal.
+But his resolution was melting like metal in a furnace. He tried to
+realise the truth which Hardiman had uttered three or four hours before.
+There would be sooner or later a quarrel, a humiliating, hateful quarrel
+over some miserable trifle which neither Stella nor he would ever
+afterwards forgive. But her voice was breaking with a sob in a whisper
+at his ear and how could he look forward so far?
+
+"Stella!"
+
+He turned impulsively towards her.
+
+"The game's up," reflected Sir Charles Hardiman at the end of the table.
+"Calypso wins--no, by God!"
+
+For before Luttrell could speak another word, the music crashed and all
+that assemblage was on its feet. The orchestra was playing the Swedish
+National Anthem; and upon that, one after the other, followed the hymns
+of the peoples who had taken part in the Games. In turn the
+representatives of each people stood and resumed their seat, the music
+underlining their individuality and parking them in sections, even as
+rivalry had parked them in the Stadium. The majestic anthem of Russia,
+the p�an of the Marseillaise, the livelier march of Italy, the song of
+Germany, the Star-Spangled Banner; and long before the band struck into
+the solemn rhythm of "God save the King," Stella Croyle at all events
+knew that Calypso had lost. For she saw a flame illumine Luttrell's face
+and transfigure him. He had slipped out of her reach. The doubts and
+perplexities which had so troubled him during the last months were now
+resolved. As he listened to the Hymns, he saw as in a vision the nations
+advancing abreast over a vast plain like battalions in line with their
+intervals for manoeuvring spaced out between them. In front of each
+nation rolled a grey vapour, which gradually took shape before
+Luttrell's eyes; and there was made visible to him a shadowy legion of
+men marching in the van, the men who had left ease and women and all the
+grace of life behind them and had gone out to die in the harness of
+service--one in this, one in that corner of the untravelled world, and
+now all reunited in a strong fellowship. The vision remained with him
+after the last strains of music had died away, and faded slowly. He
+waked to the lights and clamour of the restaurant and turned to Stella
+Croyle.
+
+"Stella," he began, and----
+
+"I know," she interrupted in a small voice. She was sitting with her
+head downcast and her hands clenched upon her lap so tightly that the
+skin was white about the points where the tips of her fingers pressed.
+"Perhaps I shan't suffer so very much."
+
+She was careful not to lift her head, and when a few moments later their
+host gave the signal to move, she rose quickly and turned her back on
+Luttrell.
+
+The party motored back through the Dyurgarden, past the glimmering tents
+where the Boy-Scouts were encamped to the great hotel by the
+landing-stage. There a wait of a few minutes took place whilst Hardiman
+settled for the cars, and during that wait Luttrell disappeared. He
+rejoined his friends at the harbour steps and when the launch put off
+towards the _Dragonfly_, he found himself side by side with Stella
+Croyle. In the darkness she relaxed her guard. Luttrell saw the great
+tears glisten on her dark eyelashes and fall down her cheeks.
+
+"I am sorry, Stella," he whispered, dropping his hand on hers, and she
+clutched it and let it go.
+
+"Perhaps I shan't suffer so very much," she repeated and the next moment
+the gangway light shone down upon their faces. Stella dropped her head
+and furtively dried her cheeks.
+
+"I want to go up last," she said, "and just behind you, so that no one
+shall see what a little fool I am making of myself."
+
+But by some subtle understanding already it was felt amongst that group
+of people, quick to perceive troubles of the emotions, that something
+was amiss between the pair. They were left alone upon the deck. Stella
+by chance looking southwards to the starlit gloom, Luttrell to the
+north, where still the daylight played in blue and palest green and the
+delicate changing fires of the opal.
+
+"What will you do, Stella?" Luttrell asked gently.
+
+"I think I will go and live in the country," she replied.
+
+"It will be lonely, child."
+
+"There will be ghosts, my dear, to keep me company," she answered with a
+wan smile. "People like me always have to be a good deal alone, anyway.
+I shall be, of course, lonelier, now that I have no one to play with,"
+and the smile vanished from her lips. She flung up her face towards the
+skies, letting her grief have its way upon that empty deck.
+
+"So we shall never be together--just you and I--alone again," she said,
+forcing herself to realise that unintelligible thing. Her thoughts ran
+back over the year--the year of their alliance--and she saw all of its
+events flickering vividly before her, as they say drowning people do.
+"Oh, Wub, what a cruel mistake you made when you went out of your way to
+be kind," she cried, with the tears streaming down her face; and
+Luttrell winced.
+
+"Yes, that's true," he admitted remorsefully. "I never dreamed what
+would come of it."
+
+"You should have left me alone."
+
+Amongst the flickering pictures of the year the first was the clearest.
+A great railway station in the West of England, a train drawn up at the
+departure platform, herself with a veil drawn close over her face, half
+running, half walking in a pitiful anguish towards the train; and then a
+man at her elbow. Harry Luttrell.
+
+"I have reserved a compartment. I suspected that things were not going
+to turn out well. I thought the long journey to London alone would be
+terrible. If things had turned out right, you would not have seen me."
+
+She had let him place her in a carriage, look after her wants as if she
+had been a child, hold her in his arms, tend her with the magnificent
+sympathy of his silence. That had been the real beginning. Stella had
+known him as the merest of friends before. She had met him here and
+there at a supper party, at a dancing club, at some Bohemian country
+house; and then suddenly he had guessed what others had not, and
+foolishly had gone out of his way to be kind.
+
+"She would have died if I hadn't travelled with her," Luttrell argued
+silently. "She would have thrown herself out of the carriage, or when
+she reached home she would have----" and his argument stopped, and he
+glanced at her uneasily.
+
+Undisciplined, was the epithet she had used of herself. You never knew
+what crazy thing she might do. There was daintiness but no order in her
+life; the only law she knew was given to her by a fastidious taste.
+
+"Of course, Wub, I have always known that you never cared for me as I do
+for you. So it was bound to end some time." She caught his hand to her
+heart for a second, and then, dropping it, ran from his side.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+MARIO ESCOBAR
+
+
+Late in the autumn of the following year a new play, written by Martin
+Hillyard and named "The Dark Tower," was produced at the Rubicon Theatre
+in Panton Street, London. It was Hillyard's second play. His first,
+produced in April of the same year, had just managed to limp into July;
+and that small world which concerns itself with the individualities of
+playwrights was speculating with its usual divergencies upon Hillyard's
+future development.
+
+"The Dark Tower" was a play of modern days, built upon the ancient
+passions. The first act was played to a hushed house, and while the
+applause which greeted the fall of the curtain was still rattling about
+the walls of the theatre, Sir Charles Hardiman hoisted himself heavily
+out of his stall and made his way to a box on the first tier, which he
+entered without knocking.
+
+There was but one person in the box, a young man hidden behind a side
+curtain. Hardiman let himself collapse into a chair by the side of the
+young man.
+
+"Seems all right," he said. "You have a story to tell. It's clear in
+every word, too, that you know where you are going. That makes people
+comfortable and inclined to go along with you."
+
+Hillyard turned with a smile.
+
+"We haven't come to the water jump yet," he said.
+
+Hardiman remained in the box during the second act. He watched the stage
+for a while, took note of the laughter which welcomed this or that line,
+and of the silence which suddenly enclosed this or that scene from the
+rest of the play; and finally, with a certain surprise, and a certain
+amusement he fixed his attention upon the play's author. The act ended
+in laughter and Hillyard leaned back, and himself laughed, without pose
+or affectation, as heartily as any one in the theatre.
+
+"You beat me altogether, my young friend," said Hardiman. "You ought to
+be walking up and down the pavement outside in the classical state of
+agitation. But you appear to be enjoying the play, as if you never had
+seen it before."
+
+"And I haven't," Hillyard returned. "This isn't quite the play which
+we have been learning and rehearsing during the last month. Here's
+the audience at work, adding a point there, discovering an
+interpretation--yes, actually an interpretation--there, bringing into
+importance one scene, slipping over the next which we thought more
+important--altering it, in fact. Of course," and he returned to his
+earlier metaphor, "I know the big fences over which we may come a
+cropper. I can see them ahead before we come up to them and know the
+danger. We are over two of them, by the way. But on the whole I am more
+interested than nervous. It's the first time I have ever been to a first
+night, you see."
+
+"Well, upon my word," cried Hardiman, "you are the coolest hand at it I
+ever saw." But he could have taken back his words the next moment.
+
+In spite of Hillyard's aloof and disinterested air, the night had
+brought its excitement and in a strength of which he himself was
+unaware. It lifted now the veils behind which a man will hide his secret
+thoughts! He turned swiftly to Hardiman with a boyish light upon his
+face.
+
+"Oh, I am not in doubt of what to-night means to me! Not for a moment.
+If it's failure, it means that I begin again to-morrow on something
+else; and again after that, and again after that, until success does
+come. Playwriting is my profession, and failures are a necessary part of
+it--just as much a part as the successes. But even if the great success
+were to come now, it wouldn't mean quite so much to me perhaps as it
+might to other people." He paused, and a smile broke upon his face. "I
+live expecting a messenger. There! That's my secret delivered over to
+you under the excitement of a first night."
+
+And as he spoke the colour mounted into his face. He turned away in
+confusion. His play was nearer at his heart than he had thought; the
+enthusiasm which seemed to be greeting it had stirred him unwisely.
+
+"Tell me," he said hurriedly, "who all these people in the stalls are."
+
+He peeped down between the edge of the curtain and the side wall of the
+box whilst Hardiman stood up behind him.
+
+"Yes, I will be your man from Cook's," said Hardiman genially.
+
+His heart warmed to the young man both on account of his outburst and of
+the shame which had followed upon the heels of it. Few beliefs had
+survived in Hardiman after forty years of wandering up and down the
+flowery places of the earth; but one--he had lectured Harry Luttrell
+upon it on a night at Stockholm--continually gained strength in him.
+Youth must beget visions and man must preserve them if great work were
+to be done; and so easily the visions lost their splendour and their
+inspiration. Of all the ways of tarnishing the vision, perhaps talk was
+the most murderous. Hillyard possessed them. Hillyard was ashamed that
+he had spoken of them. Therefore he had some chance of retaining them.
+
+"Yes, I will show you the celebrities." He pointed out the leading
+critics and the blue stockings of the day. His eyes roamed over the
+stalls. "Do you see the man with the broad face and the short whiskers
+in the fourth row? The man who looks just a little too like a country
+gentleman to be one? That is Sir Chichester Splay. He made a fortune in
+a murky town of Lancashire, and, thirsting for colour, came up to London
+determined to back a musical comedy. That is the way the craving for
+colour takes them in the North. His wish was gratified. He backed 'The
+Patchouli Girl,' and in that shining garden he got stung. He is now what
+they call an amateur. No first night is complete without him. He is the
+half-guinea Mec�nas of our days."
+
+Hillyard looked down at Sir Chichester Splay and smiled at his
+companion's description.
+
+"You will meet him to-night at supper, and if your play is a
+success--not otherwise--you will stay with him in Sussex."
+
+"No!" cried Hillyard; but Sir Charles was relentless in his insistence.
+
+"You will. His wife will see to that. Who the pretty girl beside him is
+I do not know. But the more or less young man on the other side of her,
+talking to her with an air of intimacy a little excessive in a public
+place, is Mario Escobar. He is a Spaniard, and has the skin-deep
+politeness of his race. He is engaged in some sort of business,
+frequents some sort of society into which he is invited by the women,
+and he is not very popular amongst men. He belongs, however, to some
+sort of club. That is all I know about him. One would think he had
+guessed we were speaking of him," Hardiman added.
+
+For at that moment Mario Escobar raised his dark, sleek head, and his
+big, soft eyes--the eyes of a beautiful woman--looked upwards to the
+box. It seemed to Hillyard for a moment that they actually exchanged a
+glance, though he himself was out of sight behind the curtain, so direct
+was Escobar's gaze. It was, however, merely the emptiness of the box
+which had drawn the Spaniard's attention. He was neatly groomed, of a
+slight figure, tall, and with his eyes, his thin olive face, his small
+black moustache and clean-cut jaw he made without doubt an effective and
+arresting figure.
+
+"Now turn your head," said Hardiman, "the other way, and notice the big,
+fair man in the back row of the stalls. He is a rival manager, and he is
+explaining in a voice loud enough to be heard by the first rows of the
+pit, the precise age of your leading lady. Now look down! There is a
+young girl flitting about the stalls. She is an actress, not very
+successful. But to-night she is as busy as a bee. She is crabbing your
+play. Yesterday her opinion on the subject was of no value, and it will
+be again of no value to-morrow. But as one of the limited audience on a
+first night, she can do just a tiny bit of harm. But don't hold it
+against her, Hillyard! She has no feeling against you. This is her
+little moment of importance."
+
+Sir Charles rattled on through the interval--all good nature with just a
+slice of lemon--and it had happened that he had pointed out one who was
+to be the instrument of great trouble for Hillyard and a few others,
+with whom this story is concerned.
+
+Hillyard interrupted Hardiman.
+
+"Who is the girl at the end of the sixth row, who seems to have stepped
+down from a china group on a mantelpiece?"
+
+"That one?" said Hardiman, and all the raillery faded from his face.
+"That is Mrs. Croyle. You will meet her to-night at my supper party." He
+hesitated as to what further he should say. "You might do worse than be
+a friend to her. She is not, I am afraid, very happy."
+
+Hillyard was surprised at the sudden gentleness of his companion's
+voice, and looked quickly towards him. Hardiman answered the look as he
+got heavily up from his chair.
+
+"I sometimes fear that I have some responsibility for her unhappiness.
+But there are things one cannot help."
+
+The light in the auditorium went down while Hardiman was leaving the
+box, and the curtain rose on the third act of "The Dark Tower." Of that
+play, however, you may read in the files of the various newspapers, if
+you will. This story is concerned with Martin Hillyard, not his work. It
+is sufficient to echo the words of Sir Chichester Splay when Hillyard
+was introduced to him an hour and a half later in the private
+supper-room at the Semiramis Hotel.
+
+"A good play, Mr. Hillyard. Not a great play, of course, but quite a
+good play," said Sir Chichester with just the necessary patronage to
+tickle Hillyard to an appreciation of Hardiman's phrases--a ten and
+six-penny Mec�nas.
+
+"I am grateful that it has earned your good opinion," he replied.
+
+"Oh, not at all!" cried Sir Chichester, and catching a lady who passed
+by the arm. "Stella, Mr. Hillyard should know you. This is Mrs. Croyle.
+I hope you will meet him some day at Rackham Park."
+
+Sir Chichester trotted away to greet the manager of the _Daily Harpoon_,
+who was at that moment shaking hands with Hardiman.
+
+"I congratulate you," said Stella Croyle, as she gave him her hand.
+
+"Thank you. So you know Sir Chichester well?"
+
+"His wife has been a friend of mine for a long time." Her eyes twinkled.
+"I wonder you have not been seen at his house."
+
+"Oh, I am only just hatched out," said Hillyard. They both laughed. "I
+hardly know a soul here except my leading lady and our host."
+
+They were summoned to the supper table. Hillyard found himself with the
+leading lady on one side of him and Stella Croyle opposite, and Mario
+Escobar a couple of seats away. Supper was half through when Escobar
+leaned suddenly forward.
+
+"Mr. Hillyard, I have seen you before, somewhere and not in England."
+
+"That is possible."
+
+"In Spain?"
+
+"Yes," answered Hillyard.
+
+A certain curiosity in Escobar's voice, a certain reticence in
+Hillyard's, arrested the attention of those about.
+
+"Let me see!" continued Escobar. "It was in the Opera House at Barcelona
+on the first performance of Manon Lescaut."
+
+"No," replied Hillyard.
+
+"Then--I know--it was under the palm-trees in front of the sea at
+Alicante one night."
+
+Hillyard nodded.
+
+"That may well have been. I was up and down the south coast of Spain for
+three years. Eighteen months of it were spent at Alicante."
+
+He turned to his neighbour, but Escobar persisted.
+
+"It was for your health?"
+
+Hillyard did not answer directly.
+
+"My lungs have always been my trouble," he said.
+
+Hardiman bent towards Stella Croyle.
+
+"I think our new friend has had a curious life, Stella. He should
+interest you."
+
+Stella Croyle replied with a shrewd look towards the Spaniard.
+
+"At present he is interesting Escobar. One would say Escobar was
+suspicious lest Mr. Hillyard should know too much of him."
+
+Sir Charles laughed.
+
+"The Mario Escobars are always suspicious. Let us see!" he said in a low
+voice, and leaning across the table, he shot a question sharply at the
+Spaniard.
+
+"And what were you doing under the palm trees, in front of the sea at
+Alicante, Se�or Escobar?"
+
+Mario Escobar sat back. The challenge had startled him. He reflected,
+and as the recollection came he turned slowly very white.
+
+"I?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," said Hardiman, leaning forward. But it was not at Hardiman that
+Escobar was looking. His eyes were fixed warily on Hillyard. He answered
+the question warily too, fragment by fragment, ready to stop, ready to
+take the words back, if a sign of recollection kindled in Hillyard's
+face.
+
+"It is what we should call here the esplanade--the sea and harbour on
+one side, the houses on the other. The band plays under the palms in
+front of the Casino on summer nights. I----" and he took the last words
+at a rush--"I was sitting in a lounge chair in front of the club, when I
+saw Mr. Hillyard pass. An Englishman is noticeable in Alicante. There
+are so few of them."
+
+"Yes," Hillyard agreed. No recollection was stirred in him by Escobar's
+description. Escobar turned away, but he could not quite conceal the
+relief he felt.
+
+"Yes, my friend," said Hardiman to himself, "you have taken your
+water-jump too. And you're uncommonly glad that you haven't come a
+cropper."
+
+After that noticeable moment of tension, the talk swept on into
+sprightlier channels.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE SECRET OF HARRY LUTTRELL
+
+
+"Shall I take you home?"
+
+"Oh, will you?" cried Stella Croyle, with a little burst of pleasure.
+After all, Hillyard was the great man of the evening, and that he should
+consider her out of all that company was pleasant. "I will get my
+cloak."
+
+Throughout the supper-party Hillyard had been at a loss to discover in
+Stella Croyle the woman whom Hardiman had led him to expect. Her spirits
+were high, but unforced. She chattered away with more gaiety than wit,
+like the rest of Hardiman's guests, but the gaiety was apt to the
+occasion. She had the gift of a clear and musical laugh, and her small
+delicate face would wrinkle and pout into grimaces which gave to her a
+rather attractive air of _gaminerie_--Hillyard could find no word but
+the French one to express her on that evening. He drove her to a small
+house in the Bayswater Road, overlooking Kensington Gardens.
+
+"Will you come in for a moment?" she asked.
+
+Hillyard followed her up a paved pathway, through a tiny garden enclosed
+in a high wall, to her door. She led him into a room bright with flowers
+and pictures. Curtains of purple brocade were drawn across the window, a
+fire burned on the hearth, and thick soft cushions on broad couches gave
+the room a look of comfort.
+
+"You live here alone?" Hillyard asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+She turned suddenly towards him as he gazed about the room.
+
+"I married a long while ago." She stood in front of him like a slim
+child. It seemed impossible. "Yes, before I knew anything--to get away
+from home. Our marriage did not go smoothly. After three years I ran
+away--oh, not with any one I cared for; he happened to be there, that
+was all. After a month he deserted me in Italy. I have fortunately some
+money of my own and a few friends who did not turn me down--Lady Splay,
+for instance. There!"
+
+She moved to a table and poured out for Hillyard a whisky-and-soda.
+
+"My question was thoughtless," he said. "I did not mean that you should
+answer it as you did."
+
+"I preferred you to know."
+
+"I am honoured," Hillyard replied.
+
+Stella Croyle sat down upon a low stool in front of the fire. Hillyard
+sank into one of the deep-cushioned chairs. The day of tension was over,
+and there was no doubt about the success of "The Dark Tower." Stella
+Croyle sat very quietly, with the firelight playing upon her face and
+her delicate dress. Her vivacity had dropped from her like the pretty
+cloak she had thrown aside. Both became her well, but they were for use
+out-of-doors, and Hillyard was grateful that she had discarded them.
+
+"You are tired, no doubt," he said, reluctantly. "I ought to go."
+
+"No," she answered. "It is pleasant before the fire here."
+
+"Thank you. I should like to stay for a little while. I did not know
+until I came into this room with how much anxiety I had been looking
+forward to this night."
+
+He leaned forward with his hands clenched, and saw pass in the bright
+coals glimpses of the long tale of days when endeavour was fruitless and
+hopes were disappointed. "Success! Lord, how I wanted it!" he whispered.
+
+Stella Croyle looked at him with a smile.
+
+"It was sure to come to you, since you wanted it enough," she said.
+
+"Yes, but in time?" exclaimed Hillyard.
+
+"In time for what?"
+
+Hillyard broke into a laugh.
+
+"I don't know," he answered. He was silent for a little while, and the
+comfort of the room, the quiet of the night, the pleasant sympathy of
+Stella Croyle, all wrought upon him. "I don't know," he repeated slowly.
+"I am waiting. But out of my queer life something more has got to
+come--something more and something different. I have always been sure of
+it, but I used to be afraid that the opportunity would come while I was
+still chained to the handles of the barrow."
+
+Hillyard's life, though within a short time its vicissitudes had been
+many and most divergent, had probably not been as strange as he imagined
+it to be. He looked back upon it with too intense an interest to be its
+impartial judge. Certainly its distinctive feature had escaped him
+altogether. At the age of twenty-nine he was a man absolutely without
+tradition.
+
+His father, a partner in a small firm of shipping agents which had not
+the tradition of a solid, old-fashioned business, had moved in Martin's
+boyhood from a little semi-detached villa with its flight of front steps
+in one suburb, to a house in a garden of trees in another. The boy had
+been sent to a brand new day-school of excessive size, which gathered
+its pupils into its class-rooms at nine o'clock in the morning and
+dispersed them to their homes at four. No boy was proud that he went to
+school at St. Eldred's, or was deterred from any meanness by the thought
+that it was a breach of the school's traditions. The school meant so
+many lessons in so many class-rooms, and no more.
+
+Hillyard was the only child. Between himself and his parents there was
+little sympathy and understanding. He saw them at meals, and fled from
+the table to his own room, where he read voraciously.
+
+"You never heard of such a jumble of books," he said to Stella Croyle.
+"Matthew Arnold, Helps, Paradise Lost, Ten Thousand a Year, The Revolt
+of Islam, Tennyson. I knew the whole of In Memoriam by heart--absolutely
+every line of it, and pages of Browning. The little brown books! I would
+walk miles to pick one of them up. My people would find the books lying
+about the house, and couldn't make head or tail of why I wanted to read
+them. There were two red-letter days: one when I first bought the two
+volumes of Herrick, the second when I tumbled upon De Quincey. That's
+the author to bowl a boy over. The Stage-Coach, the Autobiography, the
+Confessions--I could never get tired of them. I remember buying an ounce
+of laudanum at a chemist's on London Bridge and taking it home, with
+the intention of following in the steps of my hero and qualifying to
+drink it out of a decanter."
+
+Stella Croyle had swung round from the fireplace, and was listening now
+with parted lips.
+
+"And did you?" she exclaimed, in a kind of eager suspense.
+
+Hillyard shook his head.
+
+"The taste was too unpleasant. I drank about half an ounce and threw the
+rest away. I was saved from that folly."
+
+Stella Croyle turned again to the fire.
+
+"Yes," she said rather listlessly.
+
+Yet Hillyard might almost have become a consumer of drugs, such queer
+and wayward fancies took him in charge. It became a fine thing to him to
+stay up all night just for the sake of staying up, and many a night he
+passed at his open window, even in winter time, doing nothing, not even
+dreaming, simply waiting for the day to break. It seemed to him soft and
+wrong that a man should take his clothes off and lie comfortably between
+sheets. And then came another twist. When all the house was quiet, he
+would slip out of a ground-floor window and roam for hours about the
+lonely roads, a solitary boy revelling even then in the extraordinary
+conduct of his life. There was in the neighbourhood a footpath through a
+thick grove of trees which ran up a long, high hill, and, midway in the
+ascent, crossed a railway cutting by a rustic bridge.
+
+"That was my favourite walk, though I always entered by the swing-gate
+in fear, and trembled at every movement of the branches, and continually
+expected an attack. I would hang over that railway bridge, especially on
+moonlit nights, and compose poems and thoughts--you know--great, short
+thoughts." Hillyard laughed. "I was going to be a poet, you
+understand--a clear, full voice such as had seldom been heard; my poems
+were all about the moon sailing in the Empyrean and Death. Death was my
+strong suit. I sent some of my poems to the local Press, signed 'Lethe,'
+but I could never hear that they were published."
+
+Stella Croyle laughed, and Hillyard went on. "From the top of the hill I
+would strike off to the west, and see the morning break over London. In
+summer that was wonderful! The Houses of Parliament. St Paul's like a
+silver bubble rising out of the mist, then, as the mist cleared over the
+river, a London clean and all silver in the morning light! I was going
+to conquer all that, you know--I--
+
+     "'Silent upon a peak of Peckham Rye.'"
+
+"I wonder you didn't kill yourself," cried Stella.
+
+"I very nearly did," answered Hillyard.
+
+"Didn't your parents interfere?"
+
+"No. They never knew of my wanderings. They did know, of course, that I
+used not to go to bed. But they left me alone. I was a bitter
+disappointment in every way. They wanted a reasonable son, who would go
+into the agency business, and they had instead--me. I should think that
+I was pretty odious, too, and we were all of passionate tempers.
+Besides, with all this reading, I didn't do particularly well at school.
+How could I when day after day I would march off from the house, leaving
+a smooth bed behind me in my room? We were thorny people. Quarrels were
+frequent. My mother had a phrase which set my teeth on edge--'Don't you
+talk, Martin, until you are earning your living'--the sort of remark
+that stings and stays in a boy's memory as something unfair. There was a
+great row in the end, one night at ten o'clock, when I was sixteen, and
+I left the house and tramped into London."
+
+"What in the world did you do?" cried Stella.
+
+"I shipped as a boy on a fruit-tramp for Valencia in Spain. And I
+believe that saved my life. For my lungs were beginning to be
+troublesome."
+
+The fruit-tramp had not been out more than two days when the fo'c'sle
+hands selected the lad, since he had some education, to be their
+spokesman on a deputation to the captain. Martin Hillyard went aft with
+the men and put their case for better food and less violence. He was not
+therefore popular with the old man, and at Valencia he thought it
+prudent to desert.
+
+Stella Croyle had turned towards him again. There was a vividness in his
+manner, an enjoyment, too, which laid hold upon her. It was curious to
+her to realise that this man talking to her here in the Bayswater Road,
+had been so lately a ragged youth scouting for his living on the quays
+of Southern Spain.
+
+"You were at that place--Alicante!" she cried.
+
+"Part of the time."
+
+"And there Mario Escobar saw you. I wonder why he was frightened lest
+you too should have seen him," she added slowly.
+
+"Was he?"
+
+"Yes. He was sitting on the same side of the table as you, so you
+wouldn't have noticed. But he was opposite to me; and he was afraid."
+
+Hillyard was puzzled.
+
+"I can't think of a reason. I was a shipping clerk of no importance. I
+can't remember that I ever came across his name in all the eighteen
+months I spent in Alicante."
+
+When Martin Hillyard was nineteen, Death intervened in the family feud.
+His parents died within a few weeks of each other.
+
+"I was left with a thousand pounds."
+
+"What did you do with them?"
+
+"I went to Oxford."
+
+"You? After those years of independence?"
+
+"It had been my one passionate dream for years."
+
+"The Scholar Gipsy," "Thyrsis," the Preface to the "Essays in
+Criticism," one or two glimpses of the actual city, its grey spires and
+towers, caught from the windows of a train, had long ago set the craving
+in his heart. Oxford had grown dim in unattainable mists, no longer a
+desire so much as a poignant regret, yet now he actually walked its
+sacred streets.
+
+"And you enjoyed it?" asked Stella.
+
+"I had the most wondrous time," Hillyard replied fervently. "There was
+one bad evening, when I realised that I couldn't write poetry. After
+that I cut my hair and joined the Wine Club. I stroked the Torpid and
+rowed three in my College Eight. I had friends for the first time. One
+above all"
+
+He stopped over-abruptly. Stella Croyle had the impression of a careless
+sentinel suddenly waked, suddenly standing to attention at the door of a
+treasure-house of memories. She was challenged. Very well. It was her
+humour to take the challenge up just to prove to herself that she could
+slip past a man's guard if the spirit moved her. She turned on Hillyard
+a pair of most friendly sympathetic eyes.
+
+"Tell me of your friend."
+
+"Oh, there's not much to tell. He rowed in the same boat with me. He had
+just what I had not--traditions. From his small old brown manor-house in
+a western county to his very choice of a career, he was wrapped about in
+tradition. He went into the army. He had to go."
+
+"What is his name?"
+
+Stella Croyle interrupted him. She was not looking at him any more. She
+was staring into the fire, and her body was very still. But there was
+excitement in her voice.
+
+"Harry Luttrell," replied Hillyard, and Stella Croyle did not move. "I
+don't know what has become of him. You see, I had ninety pounds left out
+of the thousand when I left Oxford. So I just dived."
+
+"But you have come up again now. You will resume your friends at the
+point where you dived."
+
+"Not yet. I am going away in a week's time."
+
+"For long?"
+
+"Eight months."
+
+"And far?"
+
+"Very."
+
+"I am sorry," said Stella.
+
+It had been the intention of Hillyard to use his first months of real
+freedom in a great wandering amongst wide spaces. The journey had been
+long since planned, even details of camp outfit and equipment and the
+calibre of rifles considered.
+
+"I have been at my preparations for years," he said. "I lived in a
+cubbyhole in Westminster, writing and writing and writing, but when I
+thought of this journey to be, certain to be, the walls would dissolve,
+and I would walk in magical places under the sun."
+
+     "Now the New Year reviving old desires,
+      The thoughtful soul to solitude retires"
+
+Stella Croyle quoted the verses gaily, and Hillyard, lost in the
+anticipation of his journey, never noticed that the gaiety rang false.
+
+"And where are you going?" she asked.
+
+"To the Sudan."
+
+It seemed that Stella expected just that answer and no other. She gazed
+into the fire without moving, seeking to piece together a picture in the
+coals of that unknown country which held all for which she yearned.
+
+"I shall travel slowly up the White Nile to Renk," Hillyard continued,
+blissfully. He was delighted at the interest which Mrs. Croyle was
+taking in his itinerary. She was clearly a superior person. "From Renk,
+I shall cross to the Blue Nile at Rosaires, and travel eastward again to
+the River Dinder----"
+
+"You are most fortunate," Stella interrupted wistfully.
+
+"Yes, am I not?" cried Hillyard. It looked as if nothing would break
+through his obtuseness.
+
+"I should love to be going in your place."
+
+"You?"
+
+Hillyard smiled. She was for a mantelshelf in a boudoir, not for a camp.
+
+"Yes--I," and her voice suddenly broke.
+
+Hillyard sprang up from his chair, but Stella held up her hand to check
+him, and turned her face still further away. Hillyard resumed his seat
+uncomfortably.
+
+"You may meet your friend Harry Luttrell in the Sudan," she explained.
+"He is stationed somewhere in that country--where exactly I would give a
+great deal to know."
+
+They sat without speaking for a little while, Stella once more turning
+to the fire. Hillyard watching her wistful face and the droop of her
+shoulders understood at last the truth of Hardiman's description. The
+mask was lain aside. Here indeed was a Lady of Sorrows.
+
+Stella Croyle was silent until she was quite sure that she had once more
+the mastery of her voice. It was important to her that her next words
+should not be forgotten. But even so she did not dare to speak above a
+whisper.
+
+"I want you to do me a favour. If you should meet Harry, I should like
+him to have news of me. I should like him also--oh, not so often--but
+just every now and then to write me a little line."
+
+There were tears glistening on her dark eyelashes. Hillyard fell into a
+sort of panic as he reflected upon his own vaunting talk. Compared with
+this woman's poignant distress, all the vicissitudes of his life seemed
+now quite trivial and small. Here were tears falling and Hillyard was
+unused to tears. Nor had he ever heard so poignant a longing in any
+human voice as that on which Stella's prayer to him was breathed. He was
+ashamed. He was also a little envious of Harry Luttrell. He was also a
+little angry with Harry Luttrell.
+
+"You won't forget?"
+
+Stella clasped her hands together imploringly.
+
+"No," Hillyard replied. "Be very sure of that, Mrs. Croyle! If I meet
+Luttrell he shall have your message."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+Stella Croyle dried the tears from her cheeks and stood up.
+
+"I have been foolish. You won't find me like that again," she cried, and
+she helped Hillyard on with his coat. She went to the door to see him
+out, but stopped as she grasped the handle.
+
+All Hillyard's talk about himself had passed in at one ear and out at
+the other. But every word which he had spoken about Harry Luttrell was
+written on her heart. And one phrase had kindled a tiny spark of hope.
+She had put it aside by itself, wanting more knowledge about it, and
+meaning to have that knowledge before Hillyard departed. She put her
+question now, with the door still closed and her back to it.
+
+"You said that Harry _had_ to join the army. What did you mean by that?"
+
+Hillyard hesitated.
+
+"Did he not tell you himself?"
+
+"No."
+
+Hillyard stood between loyalty to his friend and the recollection of
+Stella Croyle's tears. If Luttrell had not told her--why then----
+
+"Then I don't well see how I can," he said uncomfortably.
+
+"But I want to know," said Stella, bending her brows at him in
+astonishment that he should refuse her so small a thing. Then her manner
+changed. "Oh, I do want to know," she cried, and Hillyard's obstinacy
+broke down.
+
+Men have the strangest fancies which compel them to do out of all
+reason, even the things which they hate to do, and to put aside what
+they hold most dear. Fancies unintelligible to practical people like
+women--thus Stella Croyle's thoughts ran--but to be taken note of very
+carefully. High-flown motives from a world of white angels, where no
+doubt they are very suitable. But men will use them as working motives
+here below, with the result that they wreck women's hearts and cause
+themselves a great deal of useless misery.
+
+Stella's hopes and her self-esteem had for long played with the thought
+that it might possibly be one of those impracticable notions which had
+whipped Harry Luttrell up to the rupture of their alliance; that after
+all, it was not that he was tired of a chain. Yes, she wanted to know.
+
+"Luttrell only told me once, only spoke about it once," said Hillyard
+shifting from one foot to the other. "The week after the eights. We
+rowed down to Kennington Island in a racing pair, had supper there----"
+
+"Yes, yes," Stella Croyle interrupted. Oh, how dense men could be to be
+sure! What in the world did it matter, how or when the secret was told?
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Hillyard. "But really it does matter a little.
+You see, it was on our way back, when it was quite dark, so dark that
+really you could see little but the line of sky above the trees, and the
+flash of the water at the end of the stroke. I doubt if Luttrell would
+have ever told me at all, if it hadn't been for just that one fact, that
+we were alone together in the darkness and out on the river."
+
+"Yes, I was wrong," said Stella penitently. "I was impatient. I am
+sorry."
+
+More and more, just because of this detail, she was ready to believe
+that Harry Luttrell had left her for some reason quite outside
+themselves, for some other reason than weariness and the swift end of
+passion.
+
+"Luttrell's father, his grandfather and many others of his name had
+served in the Clayford Regiment. It was his home regiment and the
+tradition of the family binding from father to son, was that there
+should always be Luttrells amongst its officers."
+
+"And for that reason Harry----" Stella interrupted impetuously.
+
+"No, there is more compulsion than that in Harry's case," Hillyard took
+her up. "Much more! The Clayfords _ran_ in the South African War, and
+ran badly. They returned to England a disgraced regiment. Now do you see
+the compulsion?"
+
+Stella Croyle turned the problem over in her mind.
+
+"Yes, I think I do," she said, but still was rather doubtful. Then she
+looked at the problem through Harry Luttrell's eyes.
+
+"Yes, I understand. The regiment must recover its good name in the next
+war. It was an obligation of honour on Harry to take his commission in
+it, to bear his part in the recovery."
+
+"Yes. I told you, didn't I? Harry Luttrell was cradled in tradition."
+
+Hillyard saw Mrs. Croyle's face brighten. Now she had the key to Harry
+Luttrell. He had joined the Clayfords. And what was his fear at
+Stockholm? The slovenly soldier! Yes, he had given her the real reason
+after all during that dinner on the balcony at Hasselbacken. He feared
+to become the slovenly soldier if he idled longer in England. It was not
+because he was tired of her, that the separation had come. Thus she
+reasoned, and she reasoned just in one little respect wrong. She had the
+real secret without a doubt, that "something else," which Sir Charles
+Hardiman divined but could not interpret. But she did not understand
+that Harry Luttrell saw in her, one of the factors, nay the chief of the
+factors which were converting him into that thing of contempt, the
+slovenly soldier.
+
+"Thank you," she said to Hillyard with a smile. She stood aside now from
+the door. "It was kind of you to bring me home and talk with me for a
+little while."
+
+But it seems that her recovery of spirits did not last out the night.
+Doubts assailed her--Harry Luttrell was beneath other skies with other
+preoccupations and no message from him had ever come to her. Even if
+his love was unchanged at Stockholm, it might not be so now. Hillyard
+rang her up on the telephone the next morning and warm in his sympathy
+asked her to lunch with him. But it was a pitiful little voice which
+replied to him. Stella Croyle answered from her bed. She was not well.
+She would stay in bed for a day and then go to a little cottage which
+she owned in the country. She would see Hillyard again next year when he
+returned from the East.
+
+"Yes, that's her way," said Sir Charles Hardiman. He met Hillyard the
+day before he sailed for Port Said and questioned him about Stella
+Croyle discreetly. "She runs to earth when she's unhappy. We shall not
+see her for a couple of months. No one will."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HILLYARD'S MESSENGER
+
+
+Hillyard turned his back upon the pools of the Khor Galagu at the end of
+April and wandered slowly down the River Dinder. From time to time his
+shikari would lead his camels and camp-servants out on to an open
+clearing on the high river bank and announce a name still marked upon
+the maps. Once there had been a village here, before the Kalifa sent his
+soldiers and herded the tribes into the towns for his better security.
+Now there was no sign anywhere of habitation. The red boles of the
+mimosa trees, purple-brown cracked earth, yellow stubble of burnt grass,
+the skimming of myriads of birds above the tree-tops and shy wild
+animals gliding noiselessly in the dark of the forest--there was nothing
+more now. It seemed that no human foot had ever trodden that region.
+
+Hillyard's holiday was coming to an end, for in a month the rainy season
+would begin and this great park become a marsh. He went fluctuating
+between an excited eagerness for a renewal of rivalry and the
+interchange of ideas and the companionship of women; and a reluctance to
+leave a country which had so restored him to physical well-being. Never
+had he been so strong. He had recaptured, after his five years of London
+confinement, the swift spring of the muscles, the immediate response of
+the body to the demand made upon it, and the glorious cessation of
+fatigue when after arduous hours of heat and exertion he stretched
+himself upon his camp-chair in the shadow of his tent. On the whole he
+travelled northwards reluctantly; until he came to a little open space
+ten days away from the first village he would touch.
+
+He camped there just before noon, and at three o'clock on the following
+morning, in the company of his shikari, his skinner and his donkey-boy
+he was riding along a narrow path high above the river. It was very
+dark, so that even with the vast blaze of stars overhead, Hillyard could
+hardly see the flutter of his shikari's white robe a few paces ahead of
+him. They passed a clump of bushes and immediately afterwards heard a
+great shuffling and lapping of water below them. The shikari stopped
+abruptly and seized the bridle of Hillyard's donkey. The night was so
+still that the noise at the water's edge below seemed to fill the world.
+Hillyard slipped off the back of his donkey and took his rifle from his
+boy.
+
+"_Gamus!_" whispered the shikari.
+
+Hillyard almost swore aloud. There was a creek, three hours' march away,
+where the reed buck came down to drink in the morning. For that creek
+Hillyard was now making with a little Mannlicher sporting rifle--and he
+had tumbled suddenly upon buffalo! He was on the very edge of the
+buffalo country, he would see no more between here and the houses of
+Senga.
+
+It was his last chance and he had nothing but a popgun! He was still
+reproaching himself when a small but startling change took place. The
+snuffling and lapping suddenly ceased; and with the cessation of all
+sound, the night became sinister.
+
+The shikari whispered again.
+
+"Now they in their turn know that we are here." He enveloped the
+donkey's head in a shawl that he was carrying. "Do not move," he
+continued. "They are listening."
+
+Shikari, skinner, donkey-boy, donkey and Hillyard stood together,
+motionless, silent. Hillyard had come out to hunt. Down below the herd
+in its dumb parliament was debating whether he should be the hunted.
+There was little chance for any one of them if the debate went against
+them. Hillyard might bring down one--perhaps two, if by some miraculous
+chance he shot a bullet through both forelegs. But it would make no
+difference to the herd. Hillyard pictured them below by the water's
+edge, their heads lifted, their tails stiffened, waiting in the
+darkness. Once the lone, earth-shaking roar of a lion spread from far
+away, booming over the dark country. But the herd below never stirred.
+It no more feared the lion than it feared the four men on the river bank
+above. An hour passed before at last the river water plashed under the
+trampling hoofs.
+
+Hillyard threw his rifle forward, but the shikari touched him on the
+arm.
+
+"They are going," he whispered, and again the four men waited, until the
+shikari raised his hand.
+
+"It will be good for us to move! They are very near." He looked towards
+the east, but there was no sign yet of the dawn.
+
+"We will go very cautiously into the forest. We shall not know where
+they are, but they will know everything we are doing."
+
+In single file they moved from the bank amongst the mimosas, the donkey
+with his head covered, still led by the boy. Under the cavern of the
+branches it was black as pitch--so black that Hillyard did not see the
+hand which the shikari quietly laid upon his shoulder.
+
+"Listen."
+
+On his left a branch snapped, ahead of them a bush that had been bent
+aside swished back on its release.
+
+"They are moving with us. They are all round us," the shikari whispered.
+"They know everything we do. Let us wait here. When the morning breaks
+they will charge or they will go."
+
+So once again the little party came to a halt. Hillyard stood listening
+and wondering if the morning would ever come; and even in that time of
+tension the habit of his mind reasserted its sway. This long, silent
+waiting for the dawn in the depths of an African forest with death at
+his very elbow--here was another sharp event of life in vivid contrast
+with all the others which had gone before. The years in London, the
+letter-box opposite the Abbey where he had posted his manuscripts at
+three in the morning and bought a cup of coffee at the stall by the
+kerb--times so very close to him--the terms at Oxford, the strange
+hungry days on the quays of Spain, the moonlit wanderings on the
+footpath over the rustic ridge and up the hill, when he composed poems
+to the moon and pithy short, great thoughts--here was something fresh to
+add to them if he didn't go down at daybreak under the hoofs of the
+herd! Here was yet a further token, that out of the vicissitudes of his
+life something more, something new, something altogether different and
+unimagined was to come, as the crown and ultimate reason of all that had
+gone before. Once more the shikari's hand touched him and pointed
+eastwards. The tree-trunks were emerging from the darkness. Beyond them
+the black cup of the sky was thinning to translucency. Very quickly the
+grey light widened beyond this vast palisade of trees. Even in here
+below the high branches, it began to steal vaporous and dim. About them
+on every side now the buffalo were moving. The shikari's grip tightened
+on Hillyard's arm. The moment of danger had come. It would be the smash
+of his breast-bone against the forehead of the beast, hoofs and knees
+kneading his broken body and the thrust and lunge of the short curled
+horns until long after he was dead, or--the new test and preparation to
+add to those which had gone before!
+
+Suddenly the shikari cried aloud.
+
+"They are off"; and while he spoke came a loud snapping of boughs, the
+sound of heavy bodies crashing against trees and for a moment against
+the grey light in that cathedral of a forest the huge carcases of the
+buffalo in mad flight were dimly visible. Then silence came again for a
+few moments, till the boughs above them shrilled with birds and the
+morning in a splendour of gold and scarlet, like a roar of trumpets
+stormed the stars.
+
+Hillyard drew a breath.
+
+"Let us go on," he said.
+
+They advanced perhaps fifty yards before the second miracle of that
+morning smote upon his eyes. A solitary Arab, driving a tiny, overladen
+donkey, was advancing towards him, his white robes flickering in and out
+among the tree-boles.
+
+Hillyard looked at his shikari. But the shikari neither spoke nor
+altered the regularity of his face. Hillyard put no question in
+consequence. The Arab was ten days' journey from the nearest village
+and, even so, his back was turned towards it. He was moving from
+solitude into solitude still more silent and remote. It was impossible.
+Hillyard's eyes were playing him false.
+
+He shut them for an instant and opened them again, thinking that the
+vision would have gone. But there was the Arab still nearer to them and
+moving with a swift agility. A ray of sunlight struck through the
+branches of a tree and burned suddenly like a dancing flame on something
+the man carried--a carbine with a brass hammer. And the next moment a
+sound proved beyond all doubt to Hillyard that his eyes did not deceive
+him. For he heard the slapping of the Arab's loose slippers upon the
+hard-caked earth.
+
+Oh yes, the man was real enough. For the shikari suddenly swerved from
+the head of the file towards the stranger and stopped. The two men
+talked together and meanwhile Hillyard and the rest of his party halted.
+Hillyard lit his pipe.
+
+"Who is it, Hamet?" he cried, and the shikari turned with his companion
+and came back.
+
+"It is the postman," he said as though the delivery of letters along the
+Dinder River were the most commonplace of events.
+
+"The postman!" cried Hillyard. "What in the world do you mean?"
+
+"Yes," Hamet explained. "He carries letters between Abyssinia and Senga
+on the Blue Nile. He is now on his way back to Abyssinia."
+
+"But how long does it take him?" Hillyard asked in amazement.
+
+"He goes and returns once a year. The journey takes him four months each
+way unless he meets with a party shooting. Then it takes longer for he
+goes with the party to get meat."
+
+Hillyard stared at the Arab in amazement. He was a lean slip of a man,
+almost as black as a negro, with his hair running back above the
+temples, and legs like walking-sticks. He stood wreathed in smiles and
+nodding confirmation of Hamet's words. But to Hillyard, with the
+emotions of the dark hour just past still shivering about him, he seemed
+something out of nature. Hillyard leaned from his donkey and took the
+carbine from the postman's hand. It was an ancient thing of Spanish
+manufacture, heavy as a pig of lead.
+
+"But this can't be of any use," he cried. "Is the man never attacked?"
+
+Hamet talked with the Arab in a dialect Hillyard did not understand at
+all; and interpreted the conversation.
+
+"No. He has only once fired his rifle. One night--oh, a long way farther
+to the south--he waked up to see an elephant fighting his little donkey
+in the moonlight and he fired his rifle and the elephant ran away. You
+must know that all these little Korans he carries on his arms and round
+his neck have been specially blessed by a most holy man."
+
+The postman's shoulders, elbows, wrists and neck were circled about by
+chaplets on which little wooden Korans were strung. He fingered them and
+counted them, smiling like a woman displaying her jewels to her less
+fortunate friends.
+
+"So he is safe," continued Hamet. "Yes, he will even have his picture
+taken. Yes, he can afford to suffer that. He will stand in front of the
+great eye and the machine shall go click, and it will not do him any
+harm at all. He has a letter for you." Hamet dropped from his enthusiasm
+over the wonderful immunity of the postman from the dangers of
+photography into a most matter-of-fact voice.
+
+"A letter for me? That's impossible," cried Hillyard.
+
+But the Arab was thrusting his hand here and there in the load on the
+donkey's back and finally drew out a goatskin bag. Hillyard, like other
+Englishmen, had been brought up in a creed which included the
+inefficiency of all Postmasters-general. A blight fell upon such
+persons, withering their qualities and shrivelling them into the meanest
+caricatures of bureaucrats. It could not be that the postal service was
+now to reveal resource and become the servant of romance. Yet the Arab
+drew forth a sealed envelope and handed it to Hillyard. And it bore the
+inscription of his name.
+
+Oh, but it bore much more than that! It was written in a hand which
+Hillyard had not seen for seven years, and the mere sight of it swept
+him back in a glory of recollections to Oxford, its towers and tall
+roofs, which mean so much more to the man who has gone down than to the
+youth who is up. The forest, with its patterns of golden sunlight and
+its colonnades of trees crowding away into darkness, was less visible
+than those towers to Hillyard, as he stood with the envelope in his
+hand. Once more he swung down the High and across the Broad from a
+lecture with a ragged gown across his arm. Merton and the House, New
+College and Magdalen Tower--he saw the enchanted city across Christ
+Church meadows from the river, he looked down upon it from Headington,
+and again from those high fields where, at twilight, the scholar-gipsy
+used to roam. For the letter was in the hand of Harry Luttrell.
+
+He tore it open and read:
+
+     "_Some one in London is asking for you. Who it is I don't
+     know. But the message came through in a secret cipher and it
+     might be important. I think you should pack your affs. and
+     hurry along to Senga, where I shall expect you._"
+
+Martin Hillyard folded the letter and put it away in his pocket.
+
+"He will find food in our camp," he said to Hamet, with a nod towards
+the postman. "We may as well go on."
+
+Even if he returned to camp at once, it would be too late to start that
+day. The sun would be high long before the baggage could be packed upon
+the camels. The little party went on to the creek and built a tiny house
+of reeds and boughs, in which Hillyard sat down to wait for the deer to
+gather. He had one of the green volumes of "The Vicomte de Bragelonne"
+in his pocket, but this morning the splendid Four for once did not
+enchain him. Who was it in London who wanted him--wanted him so much
+that cipher telegrams must find him out on the banks of the Dinder
+River? Was this letter the summons to the something more and something
+different? Was the postman to Abyssinia the expected messenger? The
+miracle of that morning predisposed him to think so.
+
+He sat thus for an hour, and then stepping daintily, with timid eyes
+alert, a tall reed-buck and his doe came through the glade towards the
+water. But they did not drink; they waited, cropping the grass.
+Gradually, through a long hour, others gathered, tawny and yellow, and
+dappled-brown, and stood and fed until--perhaps a signal was given,
+perhaps a known moment had come--all like soldiers at a command, moved
+down to the water's edge.
+
+Six nights later Hillyard camped at Lueisa, near to that big tree under
+which it is not wise to spread your bed. He took his bath at ten o'clock
+at night under the moon, and the water from the river was hot. He
+stretched himself out in his bed and waked again that night after the
+moon had set, to fix indelibly in his memory the blazing dome of stars
+above his head, and the Southern Cross burning in a corner of the sky.
+The long, wonderful holiday was ended. To-morrow night he would sleep in
+a house. Would he ever come this way again?
+
+In the dark of the morning he struck westwards from the Dinder, across a
+most tedious neck of land, for Senga and the Blue Nile.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE HONORARY MEMBER
+
+
+At six o'clock in the evening Colin Rayne, a young civilian in the Sudan
+Service, heard, as he sat on the balcony of the mess at Senga, the
+rhythmical thud of camels swinging in to their rest in the freshness of
+the night air.
+
+"There's our man," he exclaimed, and running downstairs, he reached the
+door just as Hillyard's twelve camels and his donkeys trooped into the
+light. Hillyard was riding bareheaded, with his helmet looped to his
+saddle, a young man, worn thin by sun and exercise, with fair burnt
+hair, and a brown clean shaven face. Colin Rayne went up to him as he
+dismounted.
+
+"Captain Luttrell asked me to look after you. He has got some work on
+hand for the moment. We'll see after your affs."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"You might show me, by the way, where your cartridges are."
+
+Hillyard selected the camel on which they were packed and Rayne called a
+Sudanese sergeant to take them into the mess.
+
+"Now we will go upstairs. I expect that you can do with a
+whisky-and-soda," he said.
+
+Hillyard was presented to a Doctor Mayle, who was conducting a special
+research into the cause of an obscure fever; and to the other officers
+of this headquarters of a Province. They were all young, Hillyard
+himself was older than any of them.
+
+"Oh, we have got some married ones, too," said Rayne, "but they live in
+houses of their own like gentlefolk."
+
+"There are some Englishwomen here then?" said Hillyard, and for an
+appreciable moment there was silence. Then a shortish, square man, with
+a heavy moustache explained, if explanation it could be called.
+
+"No. They were sent off to Senaar this morning--to be out of the way.
+Wiser."
+
+Hillyard asked no questions but drank his whisky-and-soda.
+
+"I haven't seen Luttrell since we were at Oxford together," he said.
+
+"And it's by an accident that you see him now," said Rayne. "The
+Governor of Senga was thrown from his horse and killed on the spot down
+by the bridge there six weeks ago. The road gave way suddenly under his
+horse's hoofs. Some one was wanted here immediately."
+
+"Yes, there's no doubt of that," said Mr. Blacker, the short square man,
+with emphasis.
+
+"Captain Luttrell had done very well in Kordofan," Rayne resumed. "He
+was fetched up here in a hurry as Acting-Governor. But no doubt the
+appointment will be confirmed."
+
+Mr. Blacker added another croak.
+
+"Oh, it'll be confirmed all right, if----" and he left his sentence in
+the air; but his gesture finished it.
+
+"If there is any Luttrell left to confirm," Martin Hillyard interpreted,
+though he kept his interpretation to himself.
+
+There certainly was in that room with the big balcony a grim expectation
+of trouble. It was apparent, not so much in words as in an attention to
+distant noises, and a kind of strained silence. The sound of a second
+caravan was heard. It was coming from the north. Rayne ran to the rail
+of the balcony and looked anxiously out. The street here was very broad
+and the huts upon the opposite side already dark except at one point,
+where an unshaded kerosene lamp cast through on open door a panel of
+glaring light upon the darkness. Rayne saw the caravan emerge spectrally
+into the light and disappear again.
+
+"They are our beasts," he said in a voice of relief, and a minute later
+he called down to the soldier in charge. He spoke in the Dinka language
+and the soldier replied in the same tongue. Hillyard understood enough
+of it now to learn that the women had arrived safely at Senaar without
+any incident or annoyance.
+
+"That's good," said Colin Rayne. He turned to Hillyard. "Luttrell's a
+long time. Shall we go and find him?"
+
+Both Blacker and Dr. Mayle looked up with surprise, but Hillyard had
+risen quickly, and they raised no objection. Rayne walked down the
+stairs first and led the way towards the rear of the building across an
+open stretch of ground. The moon had not yet risen, and it was pitch
+dark so that Hillyard had not an idea whither he was being led. Colin
+Rayne stopped at a small, low door in a high big wall and knocked. A
+heavy key grated in a lock and the door was opened by a soldier.
+Hillyard found himself standing inside a big compound, in the midst of
+which stood some bulky, whitish erection, from which a light gleamed.
+
+Colin Rayne led the way towards the light. It was shining through the
+doorway of a chamber of new wood planks with a flat roof and some
+strange, dimly-seen superstructure. Hillyard looked through the doorway
+and saw a curious scene. Two Sudanese soldiers were present, one of whom
+carried the lantern. The other, a gigantic creature with a skin like
+polished mahogany, was stripped to the waist and held poised in his
+hands a huge wooden mallet with a long handle. He stood measuring his
+distance from the stem of a young tree which was wedged tightly between
+a small square of stone on the ground and the flat roof above. Standing
+apart, and watching everything with quiet eyes was Harry Luttrell.
+
+Even at this first glance in the wavering light of the lantern Hillyard
+realised that a change had come in the aspect of his friend. It was not
+a look of age, but authority clothed him as with a garment. Rayne and
+Hillyard passed into the chamber. Luttrell turned his head and welcomed
+Hillyard with a smile. But he did not move and immediately afterwards he
+raised his face to the roof.
+
+"Are you ready up there?"
+
+An English voice replied through the planks.
+
+"Yes, sir," and immediately afterwards a dull and heavy weight like a
+full sack was dumped upon the platform above their heads.
+
+"Good!"
+
+Luttrell turned towards the giant.
+
+"Are you ready? And you know the signal?"
+
+The Sudanese soldier grinned in delighted anticipation, with a flash of
+big white teeth, and took a firmer grip of his mallet and swung it over
+his shoulder.
+
+"Good. Now pay attention," said Luttrell, "so that all may be well and
+seemly done."
+
+The Sudanese fixed his eyes upon Luttrell's foot and Luttrell began to
+talk, rapidly and rather to himself than to his audience. Hillyard could
+make neither head nor tail of the strange scene. It was evident that
+Luttrell was rehearsing a speech, but why? And what had the Sudanese
+with the mallet to do with it?
+
+A sudden and rapid sequence of events brought the truth home to him with
+a shock. At a point of his speech Luttrell stamped twice, and the
+Sudanese soldier swung his mallet with all his force. The head of it
+struck the great support full and square. The beam jumped from its
+position, hopped once on its end, and fell with a crash. And from above
+there mingled with the crash a most horrid clang, for, with the removal
+of the beam, two trap-doors swung downwards. Hillyard looked up; he saw
+the stars, and something falling. Instinctively he stepped back and shut
+his eyes. When he looked again, within the chamber, midway between the
+floor and roof, two sacks dangling at the end of two ropes spun and
+jerked--as though they lived.
+
+Rayne had stepped back and stood quivering from head to foot by
+Hillyard's side; Hillyard himself felt sick. He knew very well now what
+he was witnessing--the rehearsal of an execution. The Sudanese soldiers
+were grinning from ear to ear with delight and pride. The one person
+quite unmoved was Harry Luttrell, whose ingenuity had invented the
+device.
+
+"Let it be done just so," he said to the soldiers. "I shall not forgive
+a mistake."
+
+They saluted, and he dismissed them and turned at last to Martin
+Hillyard.
+
+"It's good to see you again," he said, as he shook hands; and then he
+looked sharply into Hillyard's face and laughed. "Shook you up a bit,
+that performance, eh? Well, they bungled things in Khartum a little
+while ago. I can't afford awkwardness here."
+
+Senga was in the centre of that old Khalifa's tribe which not so many
+years ago ruled in Omdurman. It was always restless, always on the
+look-out for a Messiah.
+
+"Messiahs are most unsettling," said Luttrell, "especially when they
+don't come. The tribe began sharpening its spear-heads a few weeks ago.
+Then two of them got excited and killed. That's the consequence," and he
+jerked his head towards the compound, from which the two friends were
+walking away.
+
+Hillyard was to hear more of the matter an hour later, as they all sat
+at dinner in the mess-room. There were thousands of the tribe, all in a
+ferment, and just half a battalion of Sudanese soldiers under Luttrell's
+command to keep them in order.
+
+"Blacker thinks we ought to have temporised, and that we shall get
+scuppered," said Luttrell. He was the one light-hearted man at that
+table, though he was staking his career, his life, and the life of the
+colony on the correctness of his judgment. Sir Charles Hardiman would
+never have recognised in the man who now sat at the head of the mess
+table the young man who had been so torn by this and that discrimination
+in the cabin of his yacht at Stockholm. There was something of the
+joyous savage about him now--a type which England was to discover
+shortly in some strength amongst the young men who were to officer its
+armies.
+
+"I don't agree. I have invited the chiefs to see justice done. I am
+going to pitch them a speech myself from the scaffold--cautionary tales
+for children, don't you know--and then, if old Fee-Fo-Fum with the
+mallet don't get too excited and miss his stroke, everything will go
+like clockwork."
+
+Hillyard wondered how in the world he was going to deliver Stella
+Croyle's message--a flimsy thing of delicate sentimentality--to this man
+concerned with life and death, and discharging his responsibilities
+according to the just rules of his race, without fear and without too
+much self-questioning. Indeed, the Luttrell, Acting-Governor of Senga,
+was a more familiar figure to Hillyard than he would have been to
+Stella Croyle. For he had shaken off, under the pressure of immediate
+work and immediate decisions, the thin and subtle emotions which were
+having their way with him two years before. He had recaptured the high
+spirit of Oxford days, and was lit along his path by that clear flame.
+
+But there were tact and discretion too, as Hillyard was to learn. For
+Mr. Blacker still croaked at the other end of the table.
+
+"It's right and just and all that of course. But you are taking too high
+a risk, Luttrell."
+
+The very silence at the table made it clear to Hillyard that Luttrell
+stood alone in his judgment. But Luttrell only smiled and said:
+
+"Well, old man, since I disagree, the only course is to refer the whole
+problem to our honorary member."
+
+And at once every countenance lightened, and merriment began to flick
+and dance from one to other of that company like the beads on the
+surface of champagne. Only Hillyard was mystified.
+
+"Your honorary member!" he inquired.
+
+Luttrell nodded solemnly, and raised his glass.
+
+"Gentlemen, the Honorary Member of the Senga Mess--Sir Chichester
+Splay."
+
+The toast was drunk with enthusiasm by all but Hillyard, who sat staring
+about him and wondering what in the world the Mec�nas of the First
+Nights had in common with these youthful administrators far-flung to the
+Equator.
+
+"You don't drink, Martin," cried Luttrell. A Socialist at a Public
+Dinner who refused to honour the Royal Toast could only have scandalised
+the chairman by a few degrees more than Hillyard's indifference did now.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Hillyard with humility. "I repair my error
+now. It was due to amazement."
+
+"Amazement!" Colin Rayne repeated, as Hillyard drained his glass.
+
+"Yes. For I know the man."
+
+There was the silence that follows some stupendous happening; eyes were
+riveted upon Hillyard in admiration; and then the silence burst.
+
+"He knows him!"
+
+"It's incredible!"
+
+"Actually knows him!"
+
+And suddenly above the din Blacker's voice rose warningly.
+
+"Don't let's lose our heads! That's the great thing! Let us keep as calm
+as we can and think out our questions very carefully lest the
+Heaven-sent Bearer of Great Tidings should depart without revealing all
+he knows."
+
+Chairs were hitched a little closer about Hillyard. The care which had
+brooded in that room was quite dispelled.
+
+"Have some more port, sir," said the youngest of that gathering, eagerly
+pushing across the bottle. Hillyard filled his glass. Port was his, and
+prestige too. He might write a successful play. That was all very well.
+He might go shooting for eight months along by the two Niles and the
+Dinder. That was all very well too. He was welcome at the Senga Mess.
+But he knew Sir Chichester Splay! He acquired in an instant the
+importance of a prodigy.
+
+"But, since he is an honorary member of your mess, you must know him
+too," cried Hillyard. "He must have come this way."
+
+"My dear Martin!" Luttrell expostulated, as one upbraiding a child. "Sir
+Chichester Splay out of London! The thing's inconceivable!"
+
+"Inconceivable! Why, he lives in the country."
+
+A moment of consternation stilled all voices. Then the Doctor spoke in a
+whisper.
+
+"Is it possible that we are all wrong?"
+
+"He lives at Rackham Park, in Sussex."
+
+Mr. Blacker fell back in relief.
+
+"I know the house. He is a new resident. It is near to Chichester. He
+went there on the Homoeopathic principle."
+
+The conjecture was actually true. Sir Chichester Splay, spurred by his
+ambition to be a country gentleman with a foot in town, had chosen the
+neighbourhood on account of his name, so that it might come to be
+believed that he had a territorial connection.
+
+"Describe him to us," they all cried, and, when Hillyard had finished:
+
+"Well, he might be like that," Luttrell conceded. "It was not our idea."
+
+"No," said Colin Rayne. "You will remember I always differed from all of
+you, but it seems that I am wrong too. I pictured him as a tall,
+melancholy man, with a conical bald head and with a habit of plucking at
+a black straggling beard--something like the portraits of Tennyson."
+
+"To me," said Luttrell, "he was always fat and fussy, with white spats."
+
+"But why are you interested in him at all?" cried Hillyard.
+
+"We will explain the affair to you on the balcony," answered Luttrell,
+as he rose.
+
+They moved into the dark and coolness of this spacious place, and,
+stretching themselves in comfort on the long cane chairs, they explained
+to Hillyard this great mystery. Rayne began the tale.
+
+"You see, we don't get a mail here so very often. Consequently we pay
+attention when it comes. We read the _Searchlight_, for instance, with
+care."
+
+Mr. Blacker snatched the narrative away at this point.
+
+"And Sir Chichester Splay occurs in most issues and in many columns. At
+first we merely noticed him. Some one would say, 'Oh, here's old Splay
+again,' as if--it seems incredible now--the matter was of no importance.
+It needed Luttrell to discover the real significance of Sir Chichester,
+the man's unique and astounding quality."
+
+Harry Luttrell interrupted now.
+
+"Yes, it was I," he said with pride. "Sir Chichester one day was seen at
+a Flower Show in Chelsea. On another he attended the first performance
+of a play. On a third day he honoured the Private View of an Exhibition
+of Pictures. On a fourth he sat amongst the Distinguished Strangers in
+the Gallery of the House of Commons. But that was all! This is what I
+alone perceived. Always that was all!"
+
+Luttrell leaned back and relit his cigar.
+
+"When other people come to be mentioned in the newspapers day after day,
+sooner or later some information about them slips out, some
+characteristic thing. If you don't get to know their appearance, you
+learn at all events their professions, their opinions. But of Sir
+Chichester Splay--never anything at all. Yet he is there always, nothing
+can happen without his presence, a man without a shadow, a being without
+a history. To me, a simple soldier, he is admirable beyond words. For he
+has achieved the inconceivable. He combines absolute privacy of life
+with a world-wide notoriety. He may be a stamp-collector. Do I know
+that? No. All I know is that if there were an Exhibition of Stamp
+Collections, he would be the first to pass the door." Luttrell rose from
+his chair.
+
+"Therefore," he added in conclusion, "Sir Chichester is of great value
+to us at Senga. We elected him to the mess with every formality, and
+some day, when we have leisure, we shall send a deputation up the Nile
+to shoot a Mrs. Grey's Antelope to decorate Rackham Park." He turned to
+Hillyard. "We have a few yards to walk, and it is time."
+
+The two friends walked down the stairs and turned along the road,
+Hillyard still debating what was, after all, the value of Sir Chichester
+Splay to the Senga mess. It had seemed to him that Luttrell had not
+wished for further questions on the balcony, but, now that the two were
+alone, he asked:
+
+"I don't see it," he said; and Luttrell stopped abruptly and turned to
+him.
+
+"Don't you, Martin?" he asked gently. All the merriment had gone from
+his face and voice. "If you were with us for a week you would. It's just
+the value of a little familiar joke always on tap. Here are a handful of
+us. We eat together, morning, noon, and night; we work together; we play
+polo together--we can never get away from each other. And in consequence
+we get on each other's nerves, especially in the months of hot weather.
+Ill-temper comes to the top. We quarrel. Irreparable things might be
+said. That's where Sir Chichester Splay comes in. When the quarrel's
+getting bitter, we refer it to his arbitration. And, since he has no
+opinions, we laugh and are saved." Luttrell resumed his walk to the
+Governor's house.
+
+"Yes, I see now," said Hillyard.
+
+"You had an instance to-night," Luttrell added, as they went in at the
+door. "It's a serious matter--the order of a Province and a great many
+lives, and the cost of troops from Khartum, and the careers of all of us
+are at stake. I think that I am right, and it is for me to say. They
+disagree. Yes, Sir Chichester Splay saved us to-night, and"--a smile
+suddenly broke upon his serious face--"I really should like to meet
+him."
+
+"I will arrange it when we are both in London," Hillyard returned.
+
+He did not forget that promise. But he was often afterwards to recall
+this moment when he made it--the silent hall, the door open upon the
+hot, still night, the moon just beginning to gild the dark sky, and the
+two men standing together, neither with a suspicion of the life-long
+consequences which were to spring from the casual suggestion and the
+careless assent.
+
+"You are over there," said Luttrell, pointing to the other side of the
+hall. He turned towards his own quarters, but a question from Hillyard
+arrested him.
+
+"What about that message for me?"
+
+"I know nothing about it," Luttrell answered, "beyond what I wrote. The
+telegram came from Khartum. No doubt they can tell you more at
+Government House. Good night!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN
+
+
+Just outside Senga to the north, in open country, stands a great walled
+zareba, and the space enclosed is the nearest approach to the Garden of
+Eden which this wicked world can produce. The Zoological Gardens of
+Cairo and Khartum replenish their cages from Senga. But there are no
+cages at Senga, and only the honey-badger lives in a tub with a chain
+round his neck, like a bull-dog. The buffalo and the elephant, the
+wart-hog and the reed-buck, roam and feed and sleep together. Nor do
+they trouble, after three days' residence in that pleasant sanctuary,
+about man--except that specimen of man who brings them food.
+
+All day long you may see, towering above the wall close to the little
+wooden door, the long necks and slim heads of giraffes looking towards
+the city and wondering what in the world is the matter with the men
+to-day, and why they don't come along with the buns and sugar. Once
+within the zareba, once you have pushed your way between the giraffes
+and got their noses out of your jacket-pockets, you have really only to
+be wary of the ostrich. He, mincing delicately around you with his
+little wicked red eye blinking like a camera shutter, may try with an
+ill-assumed air of indifference to slip up unnoticed close behind you.
+If he succeeds he will land you one. And one is enough.
+
+Into this zareba Harry Luttrell led Martin Hillyard on the next morning.
+Luttrell had an hour free, and the zareba was the one spectacle in
+Senga. He kicked the honey-badger's tub in his little reed-house and
+brought out that angry animal to the length of his strong chain and to
+within an inch of his own calves.
+
+"Charming little beast, isn't he? See the buffalo in the middle? The
+little elephant came in a week ago from just south of the Khor Galagu.
+You had something private to say to me? Now's your time. Mind the
+ostrich, that's all. He looks a little ruffled."
+
+They were quite alone in the zareba. The giraffes had fallen in behind
+and were following them, and level with them, on Hillyard's side, the
+ostrich stepped like a delicate lady in a muddy street. Hillyard found
+it a little difficult to concentrate his thoughts on Stella Croyle's
+message. But he would have delivered it awkwardly in any case. He had
+seen enough of Harry Luttrell last night to understand that an ocean now
+rolled between those two.
+
+"On the first night of my play, 'The Dark Tower,'" he began, and
+suddenly faced around as the ostrich fell back.
+
+"Yes!" said Luttrell, and he eyed the ostrich indifferently. "That
+animal's a brute, isn't he?"
+
+He took a threatening step towards it, and the ostrich sidled away as if
+it really didn't matter to him where he took his morning walk.
+
+"Yes?" Luttrell repeated.
+
+"I went to a supper-party given by Sir Charles Hardiman."
+
+"Oh?"
+
+Luttrell's voice was careless enough. But his eyes went watchfully to
+Hillyard's face, and he seemed to shut suddenly all expression out of
+his own.
+
+"Hardiman introduced me to a friend of yours."
+
+Luttrell nodded.
+
+"Mrs. Croyle?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She was well?"
+
+"In health, yes!"
+
+"I am very glad." Unexpectedly some feeling of relief had made itself
+audible in Luttrell's voice. "It would have troubled me if you had
+brought me any other news of her. Yes, that would have troubled me very
+much. I should not have been able to forget it," he said slowly.
+
+"But she is unhappy."
+
+Luttrell walked on in silence. His forehead contracted, a look of
+trouble came into his face. Yet he had an eye all the while for the
+movements of the animals in the zareba. At last he halted, struck out
+at the ostrich with his stick, and turned to Hillyard with a gesture of
+helplessness.
+
+"But what can one do--except the single thing one can't do?"
+
+"She gave me a message, if I should chance to meet you," answered
+Hillyard.
+
+Luttrell's face hardened perceptibly.
+
+"Let me hear it, Martin."
+
+"She said that she would like you to have news of her, and that from
+time to time she would like to have a little line from you."
+
+"That was all?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Harry Luttrell nodded, but he made no reply. He walked back with
+Hillyard to the door of the zareba, and the ostrich bore them company,
+now on this side, now on that. The elephant was rolling in the grass
+like a dog, the giraffes crowded about the little door like beggars
+outside a restaurant. The two friends walked back towards the town in an
+air shimmering with heat. The Blue Nile glittered amongst its sand-banks
+like so many ribands of molten steel. They were close upon the house
+before Luttrell answered Stella Croyle's message.
+
+"All _that_," he cried, with a sharp gesture as of a man sweeping
+something behind him, "all that happened in another age when I was
+another man."
+
+The gesture was violent, but the words were pitiful. He was not a man
+exasperated by a woman's unseasonable importunity, but angry with the
+grim, hard, cruel facts of life.
+
+"It's no good, Martin," he added, with a smile. "Not all the king's
+horses nor all the king's men----"
+
+Hillyard was sure now that no little line would ever go from Senga to
+the house in the Bayswater Road. The traditions of his house and of his
+regiment had Harry Luttrell in their keeping. Messages? Martin Hillyard
+might expect them, might indeed respond to and obey them, and with
+advantage, just because they came out of the blue. But the men of
+tradition, no! The messenger had knocked upon the doors of their
+fathers' houses before ever they were born.
+
+At the door of the Governor's house Harry Luttrell stopped.
+
+"I expect you'll want to do some marketing, and I shall be busy, and
+to-night we shall have the others with us. So I'll say now," and his
+face brightened with a smile, as though here at all events were a matter
+where the bitter laws of change could work no cruelties, "it has been
+really good to see you again."
+
+Certain excellent memories were busy with them both--Nuneham and Sanford
+Lasher and the Cherwell under its overhanging branches. Then Luttrell
+looked out across to the Blue Nile and those old wondrous days faded
+from his vision.
+
+"I should like you to get away bukra, bukra, Martin," he said.
+"Half-past one at the latest, to-morrow morning. Can you manage it?"
+
+"Why, of course," answered Hillyard in surprise.
+
+"You see, I postponed that execution, whilst you were here. I think
+it'll go off all right, but since it's no concern of yours, I would just
+as soon you were out of the way. I have fixed it for eight. If you start
+at half-past one you will be a good many miles away by then."
+
+He turned and went into the house and to his own work. Martin Hillyard
+walked down the road along the river bank to the town. Harry Luttrell
+had said his last word concerning Stella Croyle. Of that he was sure and
+was glad, though Stella's tear-stained face would rise up between his
+eyes and the water of the Nile. Sooner or later Harry Luttrell would
+come home, bearing his sheaves, and then he would marry amongst his own
+people; and a new generation of Luttrells would hold their commissions
+in the Clayfords. He had said his last word concerning Stella Croyle.
+
+But Hillyard was wrong. For in the dark of the morning, when he had
+bestridden his donkey and given the order for his caravan to march, he
+was hailed by Luttrell's voice. He stopped, and Luttrell came down in
+his pyjamas from the door of the house to him.
+
+"Good luck," he said, and he patted the donkey's neck. "Good luck, old
+man. We'll meet in England some time."
+
+"Yes," said Hillyard.
+
+It was not to speak these words that Harry Luttrell had risen, after
+wishing him good-bye the night before. So he waited.
+
+Luttrell was still, his hand on the little donkey's neck.
+
+"You'll remember me to our honorary member, won't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Don't forget."
+
+"I won't."
+
+Nor was it for this reminder, either. So Hillyard still waited, and at
+last the words came, jerkily.
+
+"One thing you said yesterday.... I was very glad to hear it. That
+Stella was well--quite well. You meant that, didn't you? It's the
+truth?"
+
+"Yes, it's the truth."
+
+"Thank you ... I was a little afraid ... thank you!"
+
+He took his hand from the donkey's neck, and Hillyard rode forward on
+the long and dreary stage to the one camping ground between Senga and
+Senaar.
+
+For a little while he wondered at this insistence of Harry Luttrell upon
+the physical health of Stella Croyle, and why he had been afraid. But
+when the dawn came his thoughts reverted to his own affairs. The message
+delivered to him in the forest of the River Dinder! It might mean
+nothing. It was the part of prudence to make light of his hopes and
+conjectures. But the hopes would not be stilled, now that he was alone.
+This was the Summons, the great Summons for which, without his
+knowledge, the experiences of his life, detail by detail, had builded
+him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+HILLYARD HEARS NEWS OF AN OLD FRIEND
+
+
+At Khartum, however, disappointment awaited him. He was received without
+excitement by a young aide-de-camp at the Palace.
+
+"I heard that you had come in last night. A good trip? Dine with me
+to-night and you shall show me your heads. The Governor-General's in
+England."
+
+"There's a telegram."
+
+"Oh yes. It came up to us from Cairo. Some one wanted to know where you
+were. They'll know about it at Cairo. We just pushed it along, you
+know," said the aide-de-camp. He dined with Hillyard, admired his heads,
+arranged for his sleeping compartment, and assured him that the
+execution had gone off "very nicely" at Senga.
+
+"Luttrell made a palaver, and his patent drop worked as well as anything
+in Pentonville, and every one went home cheered up and comfortable.
+Luttrell's a good man."
+
+Thus Hillyard took the train to Wadi Haifa in a chastened mood.
+Obviously the message was of very little, if indeed of any, importance.
+A man can hardly swing up to extravagant hopes without dropping to
+sarcastic self-reproaches on his flightiness and vanity. He was not
+aware that the young aide-de-camp pushed aside some pressing work to
+make sure that he did go on the train; or that when the last carriage
+disappeared towards the great bridge, the aide-de-camp cried, "Well,
+that's that," like a man who has discharged one task at all events of
+the many left to his supervision.
+
+One consequence of Hillyard's new humility was that he now loitered on
+his journey. He stayed a few days at Assouan and yet another few in
+Luxor, in spite of the heat, and reached Cairo in the beginning of June
+when the streets were thick with dust-storms and the Government had
+moved to Alexandria. Hillyard was in two minds whether to go straight
+home, but in the end he wandered down to the summer seat of government.
+
+If Khartum had been chilly to the enthusiast, Alexandria was chillier.
+It was civil and polite to Hillyard and made him a member of the Club.
+But it was concerned with the government of Egypt, and gently allowed
+Hillyard to perceive it. Khartum had at all events stated "There is a
+cablegram." At Alexandria the statement became a question: "Is there a
+cablegram?" In the end a weary and indifferent gentleman unearthed it.
+He did not show it to Hillyard, but held it in his hand and looked over
+the top of it and across a roll-top desk at the inquirer.
+
+"Yes, yes. This seems to be what you are asking about. It is for us, you
+know"--this with a patient smile as Hillyard's impatient hand reached
+out for it. "Do you know a man called Bendish--Paul Bendish?"
+
+"Bendish?" cried Hillyard. "He was my tutor at Oxford."
+
+"Ah! Then it does clearly refer to you. Bendish has a friend who needs
+your help in London."
+
+Hillyard stared.
+
+"Do you mean to say that I was sent for from the borders of Abyssinia
+because Bendish has a friend in London who wants my help?"
+
+The indifferent gentleman stroked his chin.
+
+"It certainly looks like it, doesn't it? But I do hope that you didn't
+cut your expedition short on that account." He looked remorsefully into
+Hillyard's face. "In any case, the rainy season was coming on, wasn't
+it?"
+
+"Yes, my expedition was really ended when the message reached me,"
+Hillyard was forced to admit.
+
+"That's good," said the indifferent gentleman, brightening. "You will
+see Bendish, of course, in England. By what ship do you sail? It's not
+very pleasant here, is it?"
+
+"I shall sail on the _Himalaya_ in a week's time."
+
+"Right!" said the official, and he nodded farewell and dipped his nose
+once more into his papers.
+
+Hillyard walked to the door, conscious that he looked the fool he felt
+himself to be. But at the door he turned in a sort of exasperation.
+
+"Can't you tell me at all why Bendish's friend wants my help?" he asked.
+
+It was at this moment that the indifferent gentleman had the inspiration
+of his life.
+
+"I haven't an idea, Mr. Hillyard," he replied. "Perhaps he has got into
+difficulties in the writing of a revue."
+
+The answer certainly drove Hillyard from the room without another word.
+He stood outside the door purple with heat and indignation. Hillyard
+neither overrated nor decried his work. But to be dragged away from the
+buffalo and the reed-buck of the Dinder River in order to be told that
+he was a writer of revues. No! That was carrying a bad joke too far.
+
+Hillyard stalked haughtily along the corridor towards the outer door,
+but not so fast but that a youth passed him with a sheet of paper in his
+hand. The youth went into the room where Government cablegrams were
+coded. The sheet of paper which he held in his hand was inscribed with a
+message that Martin Hillyard would leave Alexandria in a week's time on
+the s.s. _Himalaya_. And the message strangely enough was not addressed
+to Paul Bendish at all. It was headed, "For Commodore Graham.
+Admiralty." The great Summons had in fact come, although Hillyard knew
+it not.
+
+He travelled in consequence leisurely by sea. He started from Alexandria
+after half the month of June had gone, and he was thus in the Bay of
+Biscay on that historic morning of June the twenty-eighth, when the
+Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia Duchess of Hohenberg, were
+murdered in the streets of Saravejo. London, when he reached it, was a
+choir of a million voices not yet tuned to the ringing note of one. It
+was incredible that the storm, foreseen so often over the port wine,
+should really be bursting at last. Mediation will find a way. Not this
+time; the moment has been chosen. And what will England do? Ride safe in
+the calm centre of the hurricane? No ship ever did, and England won't.
+
+A few degenerate ones threw up their hands and cried that all was
+over--_they knew_.
+
+Of these a gaunt-visaged man, stubborn and stupid and two generations
+back a German, held forth in the hall of Hillyard's club.
+
+"German organisation, German thoroughness and German brains--we are no
+match for them. The country's thick with spies--wonderful men. Where
+shall _we_ find their equals?"
+
+A sailor slipped across the hall and dropped into a chair by Hillyard's
+side.
+
+"You take no part in these discussions? The crackling of thorns--what?"
+
+"I have been a long time away."
+
+"Thought so," continued the sailor. "A man was inquiring for you
+yesterday--a man of the name of Graham."
+
+Hillyard shook his head.
+
+"I don't know him."
+
+"No, but he is a friend of a friend of yours."
+
+Hillyard sat up in his chair. He had been four days in London, and the
+engrossing menace of those days had quite thrust from his recollections
+the telegram which had, as he thought, befooled him.
+
+"The friend of mine is possibly Paul Bendish," he said stiffly.
+
+"Think that was the name. Graham's the man I am speaking of," and the
+sailor paused. "Commodore Graham," he added.
+
+Hillyard's indignation ebbed away. What if he had not been fooled? The
+quenched hopes kindled again in him. There was all this talk of
+war--alarums and excursions as the stage-directions had it. Service!
+Suddenly he realised that ever since he had left Senga, a vague envy of
+Harry Luttrell had been springing up in his heart. The ordered life of
+service--authority on the one hand, the due execution of details on the
+other! Was it to that glorious end in this crisis that all his life's
+experience had slowly been gathering? He looked keenly at his companion.
+Was it just by chance that he had crossed the hall in the midst of all
+this thistle-down discussion and dropped in the chair by his side?
+
+"But what could I do?"
+
+He spoke aloud, but he was putting the question to himself. The sailor,
+however, answered it.
+
+"Ask Graham."
+
+He wrote an address upon a sheet of notepaper and handed it to Hillyard.
+Then he looked at the clock which marked ten minutes past three.
+
+"You will find him there now."
+
+The sailor went after his cap and left the club. Hillyard read the
+address. It was a number in a little street of the Adelphi, and as he
+read it, suspicion again seized upon Hillyard. After all, why should a
+Commodore want to see him in a little street of the Adelphi. Perhaps,
+after all, the indifferent official of Alexandria was right and the
+Commodore had ambitions in the line of revues!
+
+"I had better go and have it out with him," he decided, and, taking his
+hat and stick, he walked eastwards to Charing Cross. He turned into a
+short street. At the bottom a stone arch showed where once the Thames
+had lapped. Now, beyond its grey-white curve, were glimpses of green
+lawns and the cries of children at their play. Hillyard stopped at a
+house by the side of the arch. A row of brass plates confronted him, but
+the name of Commodore Graham was engraved on none of them. Hillyard rang
+the housekeeper's bell and inquired.
+
+"On the top floor on the left," he was told.
+
+He climbed many little flights of stairs, and at the top of each his
+heart sank a little lower. When the stairs ended he confronted a mean,
+brown-varnished door; and he almost turned and fled. After all, the
+monstrous thing looked possible. He stood upon the threshold of a set of
+chambers. Was he really to be asked to collaborate in a revue? He rang
+the bell, and a young woman opened the door and barred the way.
+
+"Whom do you wish to see?" she asked.
+
+"Commodore Graham."
+
+"Commodore Graham?" she repeated with an air of perplexity, as though
+this was the first time she had ever heard the name.
+
+Across her shoulder Hillyard looked into a broad room, where three other
+girls sat at desks, and against one wall stood a great bureau with many
+tiny drawers like pigeon-holes. Several of these drawers stood open and
+disclosed cards standing on their edges and packed against each other.
+Hillyard's hopes revived. Not for nothing had he sat from seven to ten
+in the office of a shipping agent at Alicante. Here was a card-index,
+and of an amazing volume. But his interlocutor still barred the way.
+
+"Have you an appointment with Commodore Graham?" she asked, still with
+that suggestion that he had lunched too well and had lost his way.
+
+"No. But he sent for me across half the world."
+
+The girl raised a pair of steady grey eyes to his.
+
+"Will you write your name here?"
+
+She allowed him to pass and showed him some slips of paper on a table in
+the middle of the room. Hillyard obeyed, and waited, and in a few
+moments she returned, and opened a door, crossed a tiny ante-room and
+knocked again. Hillyard entered a room which surprised him, so greatly
+did its size and the wide outlook from its windows contrast with the
+dinginess of its approach. A thin man with the face of a French abb� sat
+indolently twiddling his thumbs by the side of a big bureau.
+
+"You wanted to see me?"
+
+"Mr. Hillyard?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Commodore Graham nodded to the girl, and Hillyard heard the door close
+behind him.
+
+"Won't you sit down? There are cigarettes beside you. A match? Here is
+one. I hope that I didn't bring you home before your time."
+
+"The season had ended," replied Hillyard, who was in no mood to commit
+himself. "In what way can I help you?"
+
+"Bendish tells me that you know something of Spain."
+
+"Spain?" cried Hillyard in surprise. "Spain means Madrid, Bilbao, and a
+host of places, and a host of people, politicians, merchants, farmers.
+What should I know of them?"
+
+"You were in Spain for some years."
+
+"Three," replied Hillyard, "and for most of the three years picking up a
+living along the quays. Oh, it's not so difficult in Spain, especially
+in summer time. Looking after a felucca while the crew drank in a caf�,
+holding on to a dinghy from a yacht and helping the ladies to step out,
+a little fishing here, smuggling a box of cigars past the customs
+officer there--oh, it wasn't so difficult. You can sleep out in comfort.
+I used to enjoy it. There was a coil of rope on the quay at Tarragona;
+it made a fine bed. Lord, I can feel it now, all round me as I curled up
+in it, and the stars overhead, seen out of a barrel, so to speak!"
+
+Hillyard's face changed. He had the spark of the true wanderer within
+him. Even recollections of days long gone could blow it into clear, red
+flame. All the long glowing days on the hot stones of the water-side,
+the glitter of the Mediterranean purple-blue under the sun, the coming
+of night and the sudden twinkling of lights in the cave-dwellings above
+Almeria and across the bay from Aguilas, the plunge into the warm sea at
+midnight, the glorious evenings at water-side caf�s when he had half a
+dozen coppers in his pocket; the good nature of the people! All these
+recollections swept back on him in a rush. The actual hardships, the
+hunger, the biting winds of January under a steel-cold sky, these things
+were all forgotten. He remembered the freedom.
+
+"There weren't any hours to the day," he cried, and spoke the creed of
+all the wanderers in the world. "I saw the finest bull-fights in the
+world, and made money out of them by selling dulces and membrilla and
+almond rock from Alicante. Oh, the life wasn't so bad. But it came to an
+end. A shipping agent at Alicante used me as a messenger, and finally,
+since I knew English and no one else in his office did, turned me into a
+shipping clerk."
+
+Hillyard had quite forgotten Commodore Graham, who sat patiently
+twiddling his thumbs throughout the autobiography, and now came with
+something of a start to a recognition of where he sat. He sprang up and
+reached for his hat.
+
+"So, you see, you might as well ask a Chinaman at Stepney what he knows
+of England as ask me what I know of Spain. I am just wasting your time.
+But I have to thank you," and he bowed with a winning pleasantness, "for
+reviving in me some very happy recollections which were growing dim."
+
+The Commodore, however, did not stir.
+
+"But it is possible," he said quietly, "that you do know the very places
+which interest me--the people too."
+
+Hillyard looked at the Commodore. He put down his hat and resumed his
+seat.
+
+"For instance?"
+
+"The Columbretes."
+
+Hillyard laughed.
+
+"Islands sixty miles from Valencia."
+
+"With a lighthouse," interrupted Graham.
+
+"And a little tumble-down inn with a vine for an awning."
+
+"Oh! I didn't know there was an inn," said Graham. "Already you have
+told me something."
+
+"I fished round the Columbretes all one summer," said Hillyard, with a
+laugh.
+
+Graham nodded two or three times quickly.
+
+"And the Balearics?"
+
+"I worked on one of Island Line ships between Barcelona and Palma
+through a winter."
+
+"There's a big wireless," said Commodore Graham.
+
+"At Soller. On the other side of Mallorca from Palma. You cross a
+wonderful pass by the old monastery where Georges Sand and Chopin stayed
+and quarrelled."
+
+The literary reminiscence left Commodore Graham unmoved.
+
+"Did you ever go to Iviza?"
+
+"For a month with a tourist who dug for ancient pottery."
+
+Graham swung round to his bureau and drummed with the tips of his
+fingers upon the leather pad. He made no sign which could indicate
+whether he was satisfied or no. He lit a cigarette and handed the box to
+Hillyard.
+
+"Did you ever come across a man called Jos� Medina?"
+
+Eleven years had passed since the strange days in Spain, and those
+eleven years not without their sharp contrasts and full hours.
+Hillyard's act of memory was the making of a picture. One by one he
+called up the chain of coast cities wherein he had wandered. Malaga,
+with its brown cathedral; Almeria and its ancient castle and bright
+blue-painted houses glowing against the brown and barren hills; Aguilas,
+with its islets; Cartagena, Gandia, Alicante of the palms; Valencia--and
+under the trees and on the quays, the boatmen and the captains and the
+resplendent officials whom he had known! They took shape before him and
+assumed their names. He dived amongst them for one Jos� Medina.
+
+"Yes," he replied at last, "there was a Jos� Medina. He was a young
+peasant of Mallorca. He always said jo for yo."
+
+Graham's eyes brightened and his lips twitched to a smile. He glanced
+aside to his bureau, whereon lay a letter written by Paul Bendish at
+Oxford.
+
+"He probably has a larger acquaintance with the queer birds of the
+Mediterranean ports than any one else in England. But he does not seem
+to be aware of it. But if you persist in sitting quiet his knowledge
+will trickle out."
+
+Commodore Graham persisted, and facts concerning Jos� Medina began to
+trickle out. Jos�'s father had left him, the result of a Spanish
+peasant's thrift, a couple of thousand pesetas. With this Jos� Medina
+had gone to Gibraltar, where he bought a felucca, with a native of
+Gibraltar as its nominal owner; so that Jos� Medina might fly the flag
+of Britain and sleep more surely for its protection. At Gibraltar, with
+what was left of his two thousand pesetas and the credit which his
+manner gained him, he secured a cargo of tobacco.
+
+"Gibraltar's a free port, you see," said Hillyard. "Jos� ran the cargo
+along the coast to Benicassim, a little watering-place with a good beach
+about thirty kilometres east of Valencia. He ran the felucca ashore one
+dark night." Suddenly he stopped and smiled to himself. "I expect Jos�
+Medina's in prison now."
+
+"On the contrary," said Graham, "he's a millionaire."
+
+Hillyard stared. Then he laughed.
+
+"Well, those were the two alternatives for Jos� Medina. But I am judging
+by one night's experience. I never saw him again."
+
+Commodore Graham touched with his heel a bell by the leg of his bureau.
+The bell did not ring, but displaced a tiny shutter in front of the desk
+of his secretary in the ante-room; and Hillyard had hardly ended when
+the girl was in the room and announced:
+
+"Admiral Carstairs."
+
+Commodore Graham looked annoyed.
+
+"What a nuisance! I am afraid that I must see him, Mr. Hillyard."
+
+"Of course," said Hillyard. "Admirals are admirals."
+
+"And they know it!" said Commodore Graham with a sigh.
+
+Hillyard rose and took his hat.
+
+"Well, I am very grateful to you, Mr. Hillyard," said Graham. "I can't
+say anything more to you now. Things, as you know, are altogether very
+doubtful. We may slip over into smooth water. On the other hand," and he
+twiddled his thumbs serenely, "we may be at war in a month. If that were
+to be the case, I might want to talk with you again. Will you leave your
+address with Miss Chayne?"
+
+Hillyard was led out by another door, no doubt so that he might not meet
+the impatient admiral. He might have gone away disheartened from that
+interview with its vague promises. But there are other and often surer
+indications than words. When Miss Chayne took down his address, her
+manner had quite changed towards him. She had now a frank and pleasant
+comradeship. The official had gone. Her smile said as plainly as print
+could do: "You are with us now."
+
+Meanwhile Commodore Graham read through once more the letter of Paul
+Bendish. He turned from that to a cabled report from Khartum of the
+opinion which various governors of districts had formed concerning the
+ways and the discretion of Martin Hillyard. Then once more he rang his
+bell.
+
+"There was a list of suitable private yachts to be made out," he said.
+
+"It is ready," replied Miss Chayne, and she brought it to him.
+
+Over that list Commodore Graham spent a great deal of time. In the end
+his finger rested on the name of the steam-yacht _Dragonfly_, owned by
+Sir Charles Hardiman, Baronet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ENTER THE HEROINE IN ANYTHING BUT WHITE SATIN
+
+
+Goodwood in the year nineteen hundred and fourteen! There were some,
+throwers of stones, searchers after a new thing on which to build a
+reputation, who have been preaching these many years past that the
+temper of England had changed, its solidity all dissolved into froth,
+and that a new race of neurotics was born on Mafeking night. Just
+ninety-nine years before this Goodwood meeting, when Napoleon and the
+veterans of the Imperial Guard were knocking at the gates of Brussels, a
+famous ball was given. Goodwood of the year nineteen-fourteen, _mutatis
+mutandis_, did but repeat that scene, the same phlegmatic enjoyment of
+the festival, the same light-heartedness and sure confidence under the
+great shadow, and the same ending.
+
+The whispered word went round so that there should be no panic or alarm,
+and of a sudden every officer was gone. Goodwood of nineteen fourteen
+and a July so perfect with sunlight and summer that it seemed some bird
+at last must break the silence of the famed beech-grove! All the world
+went to it. The motor-cars and the coaches streamed up over Duncton Hill
+and wound down the Midhurst Road to pleasant Charlton, with its cottages
+and gardens of flowers. Martin Hillyard went too.
+
+As he walked away from Captain Graham's eyrie he met Sir Chichester
+Splay in Pall Mall.
+
+"Where have you been these eight months?" inquired Sir Chichester. "'The
+Dark Tower' is still running, I see. A good play, Mr. Hillyard."
+
+"But not a great play, of course," said Martin, his lips twitching to a
+smile.
+
+"I have been looking for you everywhere," remarked Sir Chichester. "You
+must stay with us for Goodwood. My wife will never forgive me if I don't
+secure you."
+
+Hillyard gladly consented. It would be his first visit to the high
+racecourse on the downs--and--and he might find Stella Croyle among the
+company. It would be a little easier for him and for her too, if they
+met this second time in a house of many visitors. He had no comfortable
+news to give to her, and he had shrunk from seeking her out in the
+Bayswater Road. Wrap the truth in words however careful, he could not
+but wound her. Yet sooner or later she must hear of his return, and
+avoidance of her would but tell the story more cruelly than his lips.
+
+"Yes, I will gladly come," he said, "if I may come down on the first
+day."
+
+He was delayed in London until midday, and so motored after luncheon
+through Guildford and Chiddingfold and Petworth to Rackham Park. The
+park ran down to the Midhurst Road, and when Hillyard was shown into the
+drawing-room he walked across to the window and looked out over a valley
+of fields and hedges and low, dark ridges to the downs lying blue in the
+sunlight and the black forests on their slopes.
+
+From an embrasure a girl rose with a book in her hand.
+
+"Let me introduce myself, Mr. Hillyard. I am Joan Whitworth, and make my
+home here with my aunt. They are all at Goodwood, of course, but they
+should be back at any moment."
+
+She rang the bell and ordered tea. Somewhere Hillyard realised he had
+seen the girl before. She was about eighteen years old, he guessed, very
+pretty, with a wealth of fair hair deepening into brown, dark blue eyes
+shaded with long dark lashes and a colour of health abloom in her
+cheeks.
+
+"You have been in Egypt, uncle tells me."
+
+"In the Sudan," Hillyard corrected. "I have been shooting for eight
+months."
+
+"Shooting!"
+
+Joan Whitworth's eyes were turned on him in frank disappointment. "The
+author of 'The Dark Tower'--shooting!"
+
+There was more than disappointment in her voice. There was a hint of
+disdain.
+
+Hillyard did not pursue the argument.
+
+"I knew that I had seen you before. I remember where now. You were with
+Sir Chichester at the first performance of 'The Dark Tower.' I peeped
+out behind the curtain of my box and saw you."
+
+Joan's face relaxed.
+
+"Oh, yes, I was there."
+
+"But----" Hillyard began, and caught himself up. He had been on the
+point of saying that she had a very different aspect in the stalls of
+the Rubicon Theatre. But he looked her up and down and held his peace.
+Yet what he did substitute left him in no better case.
+
+"So you have not gone to the races," he said, and once more her lip
+curled in disdain. She drew herself up to her full height--she was not
+naturally small, but a good honest piece of English maidenhood.
+
+"Do I look as if I were likely to go to the races?" she asked superbly.
+
+She was dressed in a sort of shapeless flowing gown, saffron in colour,
+and of a material which, to Hillyard's inexperienced eye, seemed canvas.
+It spread about her on the ground, and it was high at the throat. A
+broad starched white collar, like an Eton boy's, surmounted it, and a
+little black tie was fastened in a bow, and scarves floated untidily
+around her.
+
+"No, upon my word you do not," cried Hillyard, nettled at last by her
+haughtiness, and with such a fervour of agreement, that suddenly all her
+youth rose into Joan Whitworth's face and got the better of her pose.
+She laughed aloud, frankly, deliciously. And her laugh was still
+rippling about the room when motor-horns hooted upon the drive.
+
+At once the laughter vanished.
+
+"We shall be amongst horses in a minute," she observed with a sigh. "I
+can smell the stables already," and she retired to her book in the
+embrasure of the window.
+
+A joyous and noisy company burst into the room. Sir Chichester, with
+larger mother-of-pearl buttons on his fawn-coloured overcoat than ever
+decorated even a welshing bookmaker on Brighton Downs, led Hillyard up
+to Lady Splay.
+
+"My wife. Millie, Mr. Hillyard."
+
+Hints of Lady Splay's passion for the last new person had prepared
+Hillyard for a lady at once gushing and talkative. He was surprised to
+find himself shaking hands with a pleasant, unassuming woman of distinct
+good looks. Hillyard was presented to Dennis and Miranda Brown, a young
+couple two years married, and to Mr. Harold Jupp, a man of Hillyard's
+age. Harold Jupp was a queer-looking person with a long, thin, brown
+face, and a straight, wide mouth too close to a small pointed chin.
+Harold Jupp carried about with him a very aura of horses. Horses were
+his only analogy; he thought in terms of horses; and perhaps, as a
+consequence, although he could give no reasons for his judgments upon
+people, those judgments as a rule were conspicuously sound. Jupp shook
+hands with Hillyard, and turned to the student at the window.
+
+"Well, Joan, how have you lived without us? Aren't you bored with your
+large, beautiful self?"
+
+Joan looked at him with an annihilating glance, and crossed the room to
+Millie Splay.
+
+"Bored! How could I be? When I have so many priceless wasted hours to
+make up for!"
+
+"Yes, yes, my dear," said Millie Splay soothingly. "Come and have some
+tea."
+
+"That's it, Joan," cried Jupp, unrepressed by the girl's contempt. "Come
+and have tea with the barbarians."
+
+Joan addressed herself to Dennis Brown, as one condescending from
+Olympus.
+
+"I hope you had a good day."
+
+"Awful," Dennis Brown admitted. "We ought to have had five nice wins on
+form. But they weren't trying, Joan. The way Camomile was pulled. I
+expected to see his neck shut up like a concertina."
+
+"Never mind, boys," said Sir Chichester. "You'll get it back before
+Friday."
+
+Harold Jupp shook his head doubtfully.
+
+"Never sure about flat-racing. Jumping's the only thing for the poor and
+honest backer."
+
+Joan Wentworth looked about her regretfully.
+
+"I understand now why you have all come back so early."
+
+Miranda Brown ran impulsively to her. She was as pretty as a picture,
+and spoke as a rule in a series of charming explosions. At this moment
+she was deeply wronged.
+
+"Yes, Joan," she cried. "They would go! And I know that I have backed
+the winner for the last race."
+
+Dennis Brown contemplated his wife with amazement.
+
+"Miranda, you are crazy," he cried. "He can't win."
+
+Harold Jupp agreed regretfully.
+
+"He's a Plater. That's the truth. A harmless, unnecessary Plater. I sit
+at the feet of Miranda Brown, Joan, but as regards horses, she doesn't
+know salt from sugar."
+
+Miranda looked calmly at her watch.
+
+"He has already won."
+
+Tea was brought in and consumed. At the end of it Dennis Brown observed
+to Harold Jupp:
+
+"We ought to arrange what we are going to do to-morrow."
+
+Both men rose, and each drew from one pocket a programme of the next
+day's events, and from the other a little paper-covered volume called
+"Form at a Glance." Armed with their paraphernalia, they retired to a
+table in a window.
+
+"Come and live the higher life with us, Joan," cried Harold Jupp. "What
+are you reading?"
+
+"Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society," Joan returned icily.
+But pride burned through the ice, and was audible.
+
+"He sounds just like a Plater," replied Harold Jupp.
+
+Meanwhile Dennis Brown was immersed in his programme.
+
+"The first race is too easy," he announced.
+
+"Yes," said Jupp. "It's sticking out a foot. Peppercorn."
+
+Dennis Brown stared at his friend.
+
+"Don't be silly! Simon Jackson will romp home."
+
+Harold Jupp consulted his little brown book.
+
+"Peppercorn ran second to Petronella at Newbury, giving her nine pounds.
+Petronella met Simon Jackson at even weights at Newcastle, and Simon
+Jackson was left in the country. Peppercorn must win."
+
+"Let us hear the names of the others," interrupted Miranda, running up
+to the table.
+
+Harold Jupp read out the names.
+
+"Smoky Boy, Paper Crown, House on Fire, Jemima Puddleduck----" and
+Miranda clapped her hands.
+
+"Jemima Puddleduck's going to win."
+
+Both the young men stared at her, then both plunged their noses into
+their books.
+
+"Jemima Puddleduck," Dennis Brown read, "out of Side Springs, by the
+Quack."
+
+"Oh, what a pedigree!" cried Miranda. "She must win."
+
+Jupp wrinkled his forehead.
+
+"But she's done nothing. Why must she win?" asked Dennis.
+
+Miranda shrugged her shoulders at the ineffable stupidity of the young
+man with whom she was linked.
+
+"Listen to her name! Jemima Puddleduck! She can't lose!"
+
+Both the young men dropped their books and gazed at one another
+hopelessly. Here was the whole scientific business of spotting winners,
+through research into pedigrees, weights, records, the favourite
+distances and race courses of this or that runner, so completely
+disregarded that racing might really be a matter of chance.
+
+"I'll tell you, Miranda," said Harold Jupp. "Jemima Puddleduck's a
+Plater."
+
+The awful condemnation had no sooner been pronounced than the butler,
+with his attendant footman, appeared to remove the tea.
+
+"We have just heard over the telephone, sir," he said to Sir Chichester,
+"the winner of the last race."
+
+"Oh!" cried Miranda breathlessly. "Which was it?"
+
+"Chewing Gum."
+
+Miranda swept round to her husband, radiant. "There, what did I tell
+you? Chewing Gum. What were the odds, Harper?" She turned again to the
+butler. "Oh, you do know, don't you?"
+
+"Yes, madam, twelve to one. They say he rolled home."
+
+Miranda Brown jumped in the air.
+
+"Oh, I have won a hundred and twenty pounds."
+
+Harold Jupp was sympathetic and consolatory.
+
+"Of course it's a mistake, Miranda. I am awfully sorry! Chewing Gum ran
+nowhere to Earthly Paradise in the Newberry Stakes this year, and
+Earthly Paradise, all out to win, was beaten a month ago by seven
+lengths at Warwick, by Rollicking Lady. And Rollicking Lady was in this
+race too. So you see it's impossible. Chewing Gum's a Plater."
+
+Miranda wrung her hands.
+
+"But, Harold, he _did_ win; didn't he, Harper?"
+
+"There's no doubt about it, madam," replied the butler with dignity. "I
+'av verified the hinformation from other sources."
+
+He left the two experts blinking. Dennis was the first to recover from
+the blow.
+
+"What on earth made you back him, Miranda?"
+
+Miranda sailed to the side of Joan Whitworth.
+
+"You are both of you so very unpleasant that I am seriously inclined not
+to tell you. But I always back horses with the names of things to eat."
+
+The two scientists were dumb. They stared open-mouthed. Somewhere, it
+seemed, a religion tottered upon its foundations. Sacrilege itself could
+hardly have gone further than Miranda Brown had gone.
+
+"But--but," Harold Jupp stammered feebly, "you don't _eat_ chewing gum."
+
+Miranda flattened him out with a question.
+
+"What becomes of it, then?" and there was no answer. But Miranda was not
+content with her triumph. She must needs carry the war unwisely into the
+enemy's camp.
+
+"After all, what in the world can have possessed you, Dennis, to back a
+silly old mare like Barmaid?"
+
+Dennis Brown saw his opportunity.
+
+"I always back horses with the names of things to kiss," he declared.
+
+Jupp laughed aloud; Sir Chichester chuckled; Miranda looked as haughty
+as good-humour and a dainty personality enabled her to do.
+
+"Vulgar, don't you think?" she asked of Joan. "But racing men _are_
+vulgar. Oh, Joan! have you thought out your book to-day? Can you now
+begin to write it? Will you write it in the window, with the South Downs
+in front of your eyes? Oh, it'll be wonderful!"
+
+"What ho!" cried Mr. Jupp. "Miranda has joined the highbrows."
+
+Dennis Brown was too seriously occupied to waste his time upon Miranda's
+enthusiasms.
+
+"It's a pity we can't get the evening papers," he said gloomily. "I
+should dearly like to see the London forecasts for to-morrow."
+
+"I brought some evening papers down with me," said Hillyard, and "Did
+you?" cried Sir Chichester, and his eyes flashed with interest. But
+Harold Jupp was already out of the room. He came back from the hall with
+a bundle of newspapers in his hands, pink and white and yellow and
+green. He carried them all relentlessly past Sir Chichester to the table
+in the window. Sir Chichester to a newspaper, was a needle to a magnet;
+and while Dennis Brown read out the selections for the morrow's races of
+"The Man of Iron" in the _Evening Patriot_, and "Hitchy Koo" in _The
+Lamppost_, Sir Chichester edged nearer and nearer.
+
+Lady Splay invited Hillyard to play croquet with her in the garden; and
+half-way through the game Hillyard approached the question which
+troubled him.
+
+"I was wondering whether I should meet Mrs. Croyle here."
+
+Millicent Splay drove her ball before she answered, and missed her hoop.
+
+"What a bore!" she cried. "Now I shall have to come back again. I didn't
+know that you had met Stella."
+
+"I met her only once. I liked her."
+
+Millie Splay nodded.
+
+"I am glad. There's always a room here for Stella. I told her so
+immediately after I met her, and she took me at my word, as I meant her
+to do. But she avoids Goodwood week and festivals generally, and she is
+wise. For though I would take her anywhere myself, you know what long
+memories people have for other people's sins. There might be
+humiliations."
+
+"I understand that," said Hillyard, and he added, "I gathered from Mrs.
+Croyle that you had remained a very staunch friend."
+
+Millie Splay shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"I am a middle-aged woman with a middle-aged woman's comprehension.
+There are heaps of things I loathe more and more each day, meanness, for
+instance, and an evil tongue. But, for the other sins, more and more I
+see the case for compassion. Stella was hungry of heart, and she let the
+hunger take her. She had her blind, wild hour or two; she was a fool;
+she was--well, everything the moralists choose to call her. But she has
+been paying for her hour ever since, and will go on paying. Now, if I
+can only hit your yellow ball from here, I shall have rather a good game
+on."
+
+Lady Splay succeeded and, carrying the four croquet balls with her, went
+round the rest of the hoops and pegged out.
+
+"I must go in and change," she said, and suddenly, in a voice of
+melancholy, she cried, "Oh, I do wish----" and stopped.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Oh, it doesn't matter," she answered. But her eyes were upon the
+window, where Joan Whitworth stood in full view in all her disfiguring
+panoply. Lady Splay wrung her hands helplessly. "Oh, dear, dear, if she
+weren't so thorough!" she moaned.
+
+When they returned into the drawing-room, Sir Chichester was still
+standing near to Harold Jupp and Dennis Brown, shifting from one foot to
+another, and making little inarticulate sounds in his throat.
+
+"Haven't you two finished yet?" asked Millicent Splay.
+
+"Just," said Dennis Brown, rubbing his hands together with a laugh, "and
+we ought to have four nice wins to-morrow."
+
+"Good!" said Sir Chichester. "Then might I have a newspaper?"
+
+"But of course," said Dennis Brown, and he handed one over the table to
+him. "You haven't been waiting for it all this time, Sir Chichester?"
+
+"Oh no, no, no," exclaimed Sir Chichester, quickly. He glanced with a
+swift and experienced eye down the columns, and tossed the paper aside.
+
+"Might I have another?"
+
+"But of course, sir."
+
+The second paper was disposed of as rapidly as the first, and the others
+followed in their turn.
+
+"Nothing in them," said Sir Chichester with a resigned air. "Nothing in
+them at all."
+
+Millie Splay laughed.
+
+"All that my husband means is that his name is not to be found in any
+one of them."
+
+"The occurrence seems so rare that he has no great reason to complain,"
+said Hillyard; and, in order to assuage any disappointment which might
+still be rankling in the baronet's bosom, Hillyard related at the
+dinner-table, with the necessary discretions, his election to the mess
+at Senga.
+
+Sir Chichester was elated. "So far away my name is known! Really, that
+is very pleasant hearing!"
+
+There was no offence to him in the reason of his honorary membership of
+the Senga mess, which, however carefully Hillyard sought to hide it,
+could not but peep out. Sir Chichester neither harboured illusions
+himself as to his importance nor sought to foster them in others. There
+was none of the "How do these things get into the papers?" about _him_.
+
+"I am not a public character. So I have to take trouble to keep myself
+in print. And I do--a deuce of a lot of trouble."
+
+"Now, why?" asked Harold Jupp, who possessed an inquiring mind and was
+never satisfied by anything but the most definite statements.
+
+"Because I like it," replied Sir Chichester. "I am used to it, and I
+like it. Unless I see my name in real print every morning, I have all
+day the uncomfortable sensation that I am not properly dressed."
+
+Millie Splay and the others round the table, with the exception of one
+person, laughed. To that one person, Sir Chichester here turned
+good-humouredly:
+
+"All right, you can turn your nose up, Joan. It seems extraordinary to
+you that I should like to see my name in print. I can tell you something
+more extraordinary than that. The public likes it too. Just because I am
+not a public character, every reference to me must be of an exclusively
+personal kind. And that's just the sort of reference which the public
+eats. It is much more thrilled by the simple announcement that a Sir
+Chichester Splay, of whom it has never heard, has bought a new pair of
+purple socks with white stripes than it would be by a full account of a
+Cabinet crisis."
+
+Once more the company laughed at Sir Chichester's apology for his
+foible.
+
+Lady Splay turned to Hillyard.
+
+"And who is the ingenious man who discovered this way of keeping the
+peace at Senga?"
+
+Hillyard suddenly hesitated.
+
+"A great friend of mine," he answered with his eyes on Millie Splay's
+face. "He was with me at Oxford. A Captain Luttrell."
+
+But it was clear almost at once that the name had no associations in
+Lady Splay's mind. She preferred to entertain her friends in the country
+than to live in town. She knew little of what gossip might run the
+streets of London; and since Luttrell was, as yet, like Sir Chichester,
+in that he was not a public character, there had been no wide-run gossip
+about Stella Croyle or himself which Millicent Splay was likely to meet.
+
+Hillyard thought at first, that with a woman's self-control she turned a
+blank face to him of a set purpose. But one little movement of hers
+reassured him. Her eyes turned towards Joan Whitworth, as though asking
+whether this Harry Luttrell was a match for her, and she said:
+
+"You must bring your friend down to see us, when he comes back to
+England. We are almost acquainted as it is."
+
+No! Millicent Splay did not connect Harry Luttrell with Stella Croyle.
+It would have been better if Hillyard, that very night, had enlightened
+her. But he was neither a gossip nor a meddler. It was not possible that
+he should.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE SUMMONS
+
+
+It is curious to recollect how smoothly the surface water ran during
+that last week of peace. Debates there were, of course, and much
+argument across the table. It was recognised that great changes, social,
+economic, military, would come and great adaptations have to be made.
+But, meanwhile, to use the phrase which was soon to be familiar in half
+a million mouths, people carried on. The Brown couple, for instance.
+Each morning they set out gaily, certain of three or four nice wins;
+each evening they returned after a day which was "simply awful." Harold
+Jupp was at hand with his unfailing remedy.
+
+"We'll go jumping in the winter and get it all back easily. Flat
+racing's no good for the poor. The Lords don't come jumping."
+
+Joan Whitworth carried on too, in her sackcloth and sashes. She was
+moved by the enthusiastic explosions of Miranda Brown to reveal some
+details of the great novel which was then in the process of incubation.
+
+"_She_ insists on being married in a violet dress," said Joan, "with the
+organ playing the 'Funeral March of a Marionette.'"
+
+"Oh, isn't that thrilling!" cried Miranda.
+
+"But why does she insist upon these unusual arrangements?" asked Harold
+Jupp.
+
+Joan brushed his question aside.
+
+"It was symbolical of her."
+
+"Yes. Linda would have done that," said Miranda. "I suppose her marriage
+turns out very unhappily?"
+
+"It had to," said Joan, quite despondent over this unalterable
+necessity.
+
+"Now, why?" asked Jupp in a perplexity.
+
+"Her husband never understood her."
+
+"What ho!" cried Dennis Brown, looking up from his scientific researches
+into "Form at a Glance."
+
+"I expect that he talked racing all day," said Miranda.
+
+Dennis Brown treated the rejoinder with contempt. His eyes were fixed
+sympathetically on the young writer-to-be.
+
+"I hate crabbing any serious effort to elevate us, Joan, but, honestly,
+doesn't it all sound a little conventional?"
+
+He could have used no epithet more deplorable. Joan shot at him one
+annihilating glance. Miranda bubbled with indignation.
+
+"Don't notice them, Joan dear! They don't know the meaning of words.
+They are ribald, uneducated people. You call your heroine Linda?
+Linda--what?"
+
+Mr. Jupp supplied a name.
+
+"Linda Spavinsky," said he. "She comes of the ancient Scottish family of
+that name."
+
+"Pig! O pig!" cried Joan, routed at last from her superior serenity; and
+a second afterwards her eyes danced and with a flash of sound white
+teeth she broke into honest laughter. She did her best to suppress her
+sense of fun, but it would get the better of her from time to time.
+
+This onslaught upon Joan Whitworth took place on the Wednesday evening.
+Sir Chichester came into the room as it ended, with a telegram in his
+hand.
+
+"Mario Escobar wires, Millie, that he is held up in London by press of
+work and will only be able to run down here on Friday for the night."
+
+Hillyard looked up.
+
+"Mario Escobar?"
+
+"Do you know him?" asked Millie Splay.
+
+"Slightly," answered Hillyard. "Press of work! What does he do?"
+
+"Runs about with the girls," said Dennis Brown.
+
+Sir Chichester Splay would not have the explanation.
+
+"Nonsense, my dear Dennis, nonsense, nonsense! He has a great many
+social engagements of the most desirable kind. He is, I believe,
+interested in some shipping firms."
+
+"I like him," said Millie Splay.
+
+"And so do I," added Joan, "very much indeed." The statement was
+defiantly thrown at Harold Jupp.
+
+"I think he is charming," said Miranda.
+
+Harold Jupp looked from one to the other.
+
+"That seems to settle it, doesn't it? But----"
+
+"But what?" asked Sir Chichester.
+
+"Need we listen to the ridiculous exhibitions of male jealousy?" Miranda
+asked plaintively.
+
+"But," Harold Jupp repeated firmly, "I do like a man to have another
+address besides his club. Now, I will lay a nice five to one that no one
+in this room knows where Mario Escobar goes when he goes home."
+
+A moment's silence followed upon Harold Jupp's challenge. To the men,
+the point had its importance. The women did not appreciate the
+importance, but they recognised that their own menfolk did, and they did
+not interrupt.
+
+"It's true," said Sir Chichester, "I always hear from him with his club
+as his address. But it simply means that he lives at an hotel and is not
+sure that he will remain on."
+
+Thus the little things of every day occupied the foreground of Rackham
+Park. Millicent Splay had her worries of which Joan Whitworth was the
+cause. She loved Joan; she was annoyed with Joan; she admired Joan; she
+was amused at Joan; and she herself could never have told you which of
+these four emotions had the upper hand. So inextricably were they
+intermingled.
+
+She poured them out to Martin Hillyard, as they drove through the Park
+at Midhurst on the Thursday morning.
+
+"What do you think of Joan?" she asked. "She is beautiful, isn't she,
+with that mass of golden hair and her eyes?"
+
+"Yes, she is," answered Hillyard.
+
+"And what a fright she is making of herself! She isn't _dressed_ at all,
+is she? She is just--protected by her clothes."
+
+Hillyard laughed and Millicent Splay sighed. "And I did hope she would
+have got over it all by Goodwood. But no! Really I could slap her. But I
+might have known! Joan never does things by halves."
+
+"She seems thorough," said Hillyard, although he remembered, with some
+doubts as to the truth of his comment, moments now and again when more
+primitive impulses had bubbled up in Joan Whitworth.
+
+"Thorough! Yes, that's the word. Oh, Mr. Hillyard, there was a time when
+she really dressed--_dressed_, you understand. My word, she was thorough
+then, too. I remember coming out of the Albert Hall on a Melba
+afternoon, when we could get nothing but a hansom cab, and a policeman
+actually had to lift her up into it like a big baby because her skirt
+was so tight. And look at her now!"
+
+Millicent Splay thumped the side of the car in her vexation.
+
+"But you mustn't think she's a fool." Lady Splay turned menacingly on
+the silent Hillyard.
+
+"But I don't," he protested.
+
+"That's the last thing to say about her."
+
+"I never said it," declared Martin Hillyard.
+
+"I should have lost my faith in you, if you had," rejoined Millicent
+Splay, even now hardly mollified.
+
+But she could not avoid the subject. Here was a new-comer to Rackham
+Park. She could not bear that he should carry away a wrong impression of
+her darling.
+
+"I'll tell you the truth about Joan. She has lived her sheltered life
+with us, and no real things have yet come near her. No real troubles, no
+deep joys. Her parents even died when she was too young to know them.
+But she is eighteen and alive to her finger-tips. Therefore
+she's--expectant."
+
+"Yes," Hillyard agreed.
+
+"She is searching for the meaning, for the secrets of life, sure that
+there is a meaning, sure that there are secrets, if only she could get
+hold of them. But she hasn't got hold of them. She runs here. She runs
+there. She explores, she experiments. That's why she's dressed like a
+tramp and thinking out a book where the heroine gets married to the
+Funeral March of a Marionette. Oh, my dear person, it just means, as it
+always means with us poor creatures, that the right man hasn't come
+along."
+
+Millie Splay leaned back in her seat.
+
+"When he does!" she cried. "When he does! Did you see the magnolia this
+morning? It burst into flower during the night. Joan! I thought once
+that it might be Harold Jupp. But it isn't."
+
+Lady Splay spoke with discouragement. She had the matchmaking fever in
+her blood. Martin Hillyard remembered her glance when he had casually
+spoken of Harry Luttrell. Then she startled him with words which he was
+never to forget, and in which he chose to find a real profundity.
+
+"The right man has not come along. So Joan mistakes anything odd for
+something great, and thinks that to be unusual is to be strong. It's a
+mood of young people who have not yet waked up."
+
+They drove to the private stand and walked through into the paddock.
+Millie Splay looked round at the gay and brilliant throng. She sighed.
+
+"There she is, moping in the drawing-room over Prince
+Hohenstiel--whatever his name is. She _won't_ come to Goodwood. No, she
+just won't."
+
+Yet Joan Whitworth did come to Goodwood that year, though not upon this
+day.
+
+No one in that household had read the newspapers so carefully each day
+as Martin Hillyard. As the prospect darkened each morning, he was in a
+distress lest a letter should not have been forwarded from his flat in
+London, or should have been lost in the post. Each evening when the
+party returned from the races his first question asked whether there was
+no telegram awaiting him. So regular and urgent were his inquiries that
+the house-party could not be ignorant of his preoccupation. And on the
+afternoon of the Thursday a telegram in its orange envelope was lying
+upon the hall-table.
+
+"It's for you, Mr. Hillyard," said Lady Splay.
+
+Hillyard held it in his hands. So the summons had come, the summons
+hoped for, despaired of, made so often into a whip wherewith he lashed
+his arrogance, the summons to serve.
+
+"I shall have to go up to town this evening," he said.
+
+Anxious faces gathered about him.
+
+"Oh, don't do that!" said Harold Jupp. "We have just got to like you."
+
+"Yes, wait until to-morrow, my dear boy," Sir Chichester suggested.
+Even Joan Whitworth descended to earth and requested that he should
+stay.
+
+"It's awfully kind of you," stammered Martin. "But I am afraid that this
+is very important."
+
+Lady Splay was practical.
+
+"Hadn't you better see first?" she asked.
+
+Hillyard, with his thoughts playing swiftly in the future like a rapier,
+was still standing stock-still with the unopened telegram in his hand.
+
+"Of course," he said. "But I know already what it is."
+
+The anxious little circle closed nearer as he tore open the envelope. He
+read:
+
+     "_I have refused the Duke. Money is cash--I mean trash.
+     Little one I am yours._--LINDA SPAVINSKY."
+
+The telegram had been sent that afternoon from Chichester.
+
+Hillyard gazed around at the serious faces which hemmed him in. It
+became a contest as to whose face should hold firm longest. Joan herself
+was the first to flee, and she was found rocking to and fro in silent
+laughter in a corner of the library. Then Hillyard himself burst into a
+roar.
+
+"I bought that fairly," he admitted, and he went up several points in
+the estimation of them all.
+
+The last day of the races came--all sunshine and hot summer; lights and
+shadows chasing across the downs, the black slopes of Charlton forest on
+the one side, parks and green fields and old brown houses, sloping to
+the silver Solent, upon the other; and in the centre of the plain, by
+Bosham water, the spire of Chichester Cathedral piercing the golden air.
+Paddock and lawn and the stands were filled until about two in the
+afternoon. Then the gaps began to show to those who were concerned to
+watch. Especially about the oval railings in the paddock, within which,
+dainty as cats and with sleek shining skins, the racehorses stepped, the
+crowd grew thin. And in a few moments, the word had run round like fire,
+"The officers had gone."
+
+Hillyard stood reflecting upon the stupendous fact. Never had he so
+bitterly regretted that physical disqualification which banned him from
+their company. Never had he so envied Luttrell. He was in the uttermost
+depression when a small, brown-gloved hand touched his arm. He turned
+and saw Joan Whitworth at his side, her lovely face alive with
+excitement, her eyes most friendly. It was hardly at all the Joan he
+knew. Joan had courage, but to face Goodwood in the clothes she affected
+at Rackham Park was beyond it. From her grey silk stockings and su�de
+shoes to the little smart blue hat which sat so prettily on her hair,
+she was, as Millicent Splay would have admitted, really dressed.
+
+"There is a real telegram for you," she said. She held it out to him
+enclosed in an envelope which had been already opened.
+
+"_Please come to see me--Graham_," he read, and the actual receipt of
+the message stirred within him such a whirl of emotion that, for a
+moment or two, Joan Whitworth spoke and he was not aware of it.
+Suddenly, however, he understood that she was speaking words of
+importance.
+
+"I hope I did right to open it," she said. "Colonel Brockley rode over
+this morning to tell us that his son had been recalled to his battalion
+by a telegram. I knew you were expecting one. When this one came, I
+thought that it might be important and that you ought to have it at
+once. On the other hand it might be another telegram," and her face
+dimpled into smiles, "from Linda Spavinsky. I didn't know what to do
+about it. But Mario Escobar was quite certain that I ought to open it."
+
+"Mario Escobar?" cried Hillyard.
+
+"Yes. He had just arrived. He was quite certain that we ought to open
+it, so we did."
+
+"We?" A note of regret in his voice made her ask anxiously:
+
+"Was I wrong?"
+
+Hillyard hastened to reassure her.
+
+"Not a bit. Of course you were quite right, and I am very grateful."
+
+Joan's face cleared again.
+
+"You see, I thought that if it was important I could bring it over and
+drive you back again."
+
+"Will you?" Hillyard asked eagerly. "But now you are here you ought to
+stay."
+
+Joan would not hear of the proposal, and Hillyard himself was in a fever
+to be off. They found Sir Chichester and his wife in the paddock, and
+Hillyard wished his hosts good-bye. Mario Escobar, who had driven over
+with Joan Whitworth, was talking to them. Escobar turned to Martin
+Hillyard.
+
+"We met at Sir Charles Hardiman's supper party. You have not forgotten?
+You are off? A new play, I hope, to go into rehearsal."
+
+He smiled and bowed, and waved his hands. Hillyard went away with Joan
+Whitworth and mounted beside her into a little two-seated car which she
+had been accustomed to drive in her unregenerate days. She had not
+forgotten her skill, and she sent the little car spinning up and down
+the road into the hills. It was an afternoon of blue and gold, with the
+larks singing out of sight in the sky. The road wound up and down, dark
+hedges on one side, fields yellow with young wheat upon the other, and
+the scent of the briar-rose in the air. Joan said very little, and
+Hillyard was content to watch her as she drove, the curls blowing about
+her ears and her hands steady and sure upon the wheel as she swung the
+car round the corners and folds of the hills. Once she asked of him:
+
+"Are you glad to go?"
+
+He made no pretence of misunderstanding her.
+
+"Very," he answered. "If the great trial is coming, I want to fall back
+into the rank and file. Pushing and splashing is for peace times."
+
+"Oh, I understand that!" she cried.
+
+These were the young days. The jealousies of Departments, the intrigues
+to pull this man down and put that man up, not because of his capacity
+or failure, but because he fitted or did not fit the inner politics of
+the Office, the capture of honours by the stay-at-homes--all the little
+miseries and horrors that from time immemorial have disfigured the
+management of wars--they lay in the future. With millions of people, as
+with this couple speeding among the uplands, the one thought was--the
+great test is at hand.
+
+"You go up to London to-night, and it may be a long while before we see
+you," said Joan. She brought the car to a halt on the edge of Duncton
+Hill. "Look for luck and for memory at the Weald of Sussex," she cried
+with a little catch in her throat.
+
+Fields and great trees, and here and there the white smoke of a passing
+train and beyond the Blackdown and the misty slopes of Leith
+Hill--Hillyard was never to forget it, neither that scene nor the eager
+face and shining eyes of Joan Whitworth against the blue and gold of the
+summer afternoon.
+
+"You will remember that you have friends here, who will be glad to hear
+news of you," she said, and she threw in the clutch and started the car
+down the hill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+STELLA RUNS TO EARTH
+
+
+"You have been back in England long?" asked Stella Croyle.
+
+"A little while," said Hillyard evasively.
+
+It was the first week of September. But since his return from Rackham
+Park to London his days had been passed in the examination of files of
+documents; and what little time he had enjoyed free from that labour had
+been given to quiet preparations for his departure.
+
+"You might have come to see me," Stella Croyle suggested. "You knew that
+I wished to see you."
+
+"Yes, but I have been very busy," he answered. "I am going away."
+
+Stella Croyle looked at him curiously.
+
+"You too! You have joined up?"
+
+Hillyard shook his head.
+
+"No good," he answered. "I told you my lungs were my weak point. I am
+turned down--and I am going abroad. It's not very pleasant to find
+oneself staying on in London, going to a little dinner party here and
+there where all the men are oldish, when all of one's friends have
+gone."
+
+Stella Croyle's face and voice softened.
+
+"Yes. I can understand that," she said.
+
+Hillyard watched her narrowly, but there was no doubt that she was
+sincere. She had received him with an air of grievance, and a hard
+accent in her voice. But she was entering now into a comprehension of
+the regrets which must be troubling him.
+
+"I am sorry," she continued. "I never cared very much for women. I have
+very few friends amongst them. And so I am losing--every one." She held
+out her hand to him in sympathy. "But if I were a man and had been
+turned down by the doctors, I don't think that I could stay. I should
+go like you and hide."
+
+She smiled and poured out two cups of tea.
+
+"That is a habit of yours, even though you are not a man," Hillyard
+replied.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"You run away and hide."
+
+Stella looked at her visitor in surprise.
+
+"Who told you that?"
+
+"Sir Charles Hardiman."
+
+Stella Croyle was silent for a few moments.
+
+"Yes, that's true," and she laughed suddenly. "When things go wrong, I
+become rather impossible. I have often made up my mind to live entirely
+in the country, but I never carry the plan out."
+
+She let Hillyard drink his tea and light a cigarette before she
+approached the question which was torturing her.
+
+"You had a good time in the Sudan!" she began. "Lots of heads?"
+
+"Yes. I had a perfect time."
+
+"And your friend? Captain Luttrell. Did you meet him?"
+
+Hillyard had pondered on the answer which he would give to her when she
+asked that question. If he answered, "Yes,"--why, then he must go on, he
+must tell her something of what passed between Luttrell and himself, how
+he delivered his message and what answer he received. Let him wrap that
+answer up in words, however delicate and vague, she would see straight
+to the answer. Her heart would lead her there. To plead forgetfulness
+would be merely to acknowledge that he slighted her; and she would not
+believe him. So he lied.
+
+"No. I never met Luttrell. He was away down in Khordofan when I was on
+the White Nile."
+
+Stella Croyle had turned a little away from Hillyard when she put the
+question; and she sat now with her face averted for a long while.
+Nothing broke the silence but the ticking of the clock.
+
+"I am sorry," said Hillyard.
+
+No doubt her disappointment was bitter. She had counted very much, no
+doubt, on this chance of the two men meeting; on her message reaching
+her lover, and a "little word" now and again from him coming to her
+hands. Some morning she would wake up and find an envelope in the
+familiar writing waiting upon the tray beside her tea--that, no doubt,
+had been the hope which she had lived on this many a day. Hillyard was
+not fool enough to hold that he understood either the conclusions at
+which women arrived, or the emotions by which they jumped to them. But
+he attributed these hopes and thoughts with some confidence to Stella
+Croyle--until she turned and showed him her face. The sympathy and
+gentleness had gone from it. She was white with passion and her eyes
+blazed.
+
+"Why do you lie to me?" she cried. "I met Harry this morning."
+
+Hillyard was more startled by the news of Luttrell's presence in London
+than confused by the detection of his lie.
+
+"Harry Luttrell!" he exclaimed. "You are sure? He is in England?"
+
+"Yes. I met him in Piccadilly outside Jerningham's"--she mentioned the
+great outfitters and provision merchants--"he told me that he had run
+across you in the Sudan. What made you say that you hadn't?"
+
+Hillyard was taken at a loss.
+
+"Well?" she insisted.
+
+Hillyard could see no escape except by the way of absolute frankness.
+
+"Because I gave him your message, Mrs. Croyle," he replied slowly, "and
+I judged that he was not going to answer it."
+
+Stella Croyle was inclined to think that the world was banded against
+her, to deceive her and to do her harm. They had all been engaged,
+Hardiman and the rest of them, in keeping Harry Luttrell away from her:
+in defending him, whether he wished it or not, from the wiles of the
+enchantress. Stella Croyle was quick enough in the up-take where her
+wounded heart was not concerned, but she was never very clear in any
+judgment which affected Harry Luttrell. Passion and disappointment and
+hope drew veils between the truth and her, and she dived below the plain
+reason to this or that far-fetched notion for the springs of his
+conduct. Almost she had persuaded herself that Harry Luttrell, by the
+powerful influence of friends, was being kept against his will from her
+side. Her anger against Hillyard had sprung, not from the mere fact that
+he had lied to her, but from her fancy that he had joined the imaginary
+band of her enemies. She understood now that in this she had been wrong.
+
+"I see," she said gently. "It was to spare me pain?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Suddenly Stella Croyle laughed--and with triumph. She showed to Hillyard
+a face from which all the anger had gone.
+
+"You need not have been so anxious to spare me. Harry is coming here
+this afternoon."
+
+She saw the incredulity flicker in Hillyard's eyes, but she did not
+mind.
+
+"Yes," she asserted. "He goes down this evening to a camp in the New
+Forest where his battalion is waiting to go to France. He starts at six
+from Waterloo. He promised to run in here first."
+
+Hillyard looked at the clock. It was already half-past four. He had not
+the faintest hope that Luttrell would come. Stella had no doubt pressed
+him to come. She had probably been a little importunate. Luttrell's
+promise was an excuse, just an excuse to be rid of her--nothing more.
+
+"Luttrell has probably a great deal to do on this last afternoon," he
+suggested.
+
+"Of course, he won't be able to stay long," Stella Croyle agreed.
+"Still, five minutes are worth a good deal, aren't they, if you have
+waited for them two years?"
+
+She was impenetrable in her confidence. It clothed her about like
+armour. Not for a moment would she doubt--she dared not! Harry was
+coming back to the house that afternoon. Would he break something--some
+little china ornament upon the mantel-shelf? He generally knocked over
+something. What would it be to-day, the mandarin with the nodding head,
+or the funny little pot-bellied dwarf which she had picked up at
+Christie's the day before? Stella smiled delightedly as she selected
+this and that of her little treasures for destruction. Oh, to-day Harry
+Luttrell could sweep every glass or porcelain trinket she possessed
+into the grate--when once he had passed through the doorway--when once
+again he stood within her room. She sat with folded hands, hope like a
+rose in her heart, sure of him, so sure of him that she did not even
+watch the hands of her clock.
+
+But the hands moved on.
+
+"I will stay, if I may," said Hillyard uncomfortably. "I will go, of
+course, when----" and he could not bring himself to complete the
+sentence.
+
+Stella, however, added the words, though in a quieter voice and with
+less triumph than she had used before.
+
+"When he comes. Yes, do stay. I shall be glad."
+
+Slowly the day drew in. The sunlight died away from the trees in the
+park. In the tiny garden great shadows fell. The dusk gathered and
+Hillyard and Stella Croyle sat without a word in the darkening room. But
+Stella had lost her pride of carriage. On the mantelpiece the clock
+struck the hour--six little tinkling silvery strokes. At that moment a
+guard was blowing his whistle on a platform of Waterloo and a train
+beginning slowly to move.
+
+"He will have missed his train," said Stella in an unhappy whisper. "He
+will be here later."
+
+"My dear," replied Hillyard, and leaning forward he took and gently
+shook her hand. "Soldiers don't miss their trains."
+
+Stella did not answer. She sat on until the lamps were lit in the
+streets outside and in this room the dusk had changed to black night.
+
+"No, he will not come," she said at last, in a low wail of anguish. She
+rose and turned to Hillyard. Her face glimmered against the darkness
+deathly white and her eyes shone with sorrow.
+
+"It was kind and wise of you to wish to spare me," she said. "Oh, I can
+picture to myself how coldly he heard you. He never meant to come here
+this afternoon."
+
+Stella Croyle was wrong, just as Hillyard had been. Harry Luttrell had
+meant to pay his farewell visit to Stella Croyle, knowing well that he
+was unlikely ever to come back, and understanding that he owed her it.
+But an incident drove the whole matter from his thoughts, and the
+incident was just one instance to show how wide a gulf now separated
+these two.
+
+He had called at a nursing home close to Portland Place where a Colonel
+Oakley lay dying of a malignant disease. Oakley had been the chief
+spirit of reviving the moral and the confidence of the disgraced
+Clayfords. He had laboured unflinchingly to restore its discipline, to
+weld it into one mind, with dishonour to redeem, and a single arm to
+redeem it. He had lived for nothing else--until the internal trouble
+laid him aside. Luttrell called at half-past three to tell him that all
+was well with his old battalion, and was met by a nurse who shook her
+head.
+
+"The last two days he has been lying, except for a minute here and
+there, in a coma. You may see him if you like, but it is a question of
+hours."
+
+Luttrell went into the bedroom where the sick man lay, so thin of face
+and hand, so bloodless. But it seemed that the Fates wished to deal the
+Colonel one last ironic stroke, before they let him die. For, while
+Luttrell yet stood in the room, Colonel Oakley's eyes opened. This last
+moment of consciousness was his, the very last; and while it still
+endured, suddenly, down Portland Place, with its drums beating, its
+soldiers singing, marched a battalion. The song and the music swelled,
+the tramp of young, active, vigorous soldiers echoed and reached down
+the quiet street. Colonel Oakley turned his face to his pillow and burst
+into tears; the bitterness of death was given him to drink in
+overflowing measure. It seemed as though a jibe was flung at him.
+
+The tramp of the battalion had not yet died away when Oakley sank again
+into unconsciousness.
+
+"It was pretty rough that he should just wake up to hear that and to
+know that he would never have part in it, eh?" said Luttrell, speaking
+in a low voice more to himself than to the nurse. "What he did for us!
+Pretty hard treatment, eh?"
+
+Luttrell left the home with one thought filling his mind--the regiment.
+It had got to justify all Oakley's devotion; it had got somehow to make
+amends to him, even if he never was to know of it, for this last unfair
+stroke of destiny. Luttrell walked across London, dwelling upon the
+qualities of individual men in the company which was his command--how
+this man was quick, and that man stupid, and that other inclined to
+swank, and a fourth had a gift for reading maps, and a fifth would make
+a real marksman; and so he woke up to find himself before the bookstall
+in the station at Waterloo. Then he remembered the visit he had
+promised, but there was no longer any time. He took the train to the New
+Forest, and three days later went to France.
+
+But of Luttrell's visit to Colonel Oakley, Stella Croyle never knew.
+And, again, very likely it would not have mattered if she had. They were
+parted too widely for insight and clear vision.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hillyard carried away with him a picture of Stella's haunted and
+despairing face. It was over against him as he dined at his club,
+gleaming palely from out of darkness, the lips quivering, the eyes sad
+with all the sorrows of women. He could blame neither the one nor the
+other--neither Stella Croyle nor Harry Luttrell. One heart called to the
+other across too wide a gulf, and this heart on the hither side was
+listening to quite other voices and was deaf to her cry for help. But
+Hillyard was on the road along which Millicent Splay had already
+travelled. More and more he felt the case for compassion. He carried the
+picture of Stella's face home with him. It troubled his sleep; by
+constant gazing upon it he became afraid....
+
+He waked with a start to hear a question whispered at his ear. "Where is
+she? How has she passed this night?" The morning light was glimmering
+between the curtains. The room was empty. Yet surely those words had
+been spoken, actually spoken by a human voice.... He took his telephone
+instrument in his hand and lifted the receiver. In a little while--but a
+while too long for his impatience--his call was acknowledged at the
+exchange. He gave Stella Croyle's number and waited. Whilst he waited he
+looked at his watch. The time was a quarter past seven.
+
+An unfamiliar and sleepy voice answered him from her house.
+
+"Will you put me on to Mrs. Croyle?" he requested, and the reply came
+back:
+
+"Mrs. Croyle went away with her maid last night."
+
+"Last night?" cried Hillyard incredulously. "But I did not leave the
+house myself until well after six, and she had then no plans for
+leaving."
+
+Further details, however, were given to him. Mrs. Croyle had called up a
+garage whence cars can be hired. She had packed hurriedly. She had left
+at nine by motor.
+
+"Where for?" asked Hillyard.
+
+The name of an hotel in the pine country of Surrey was given.
+
+"Thank you," said Hillyard, and he rang off.
+
+She had run to earth in her usual way, when trouble and grief broke
+through her woman's armour and struck her down--that was all! Hillyard
+lighted a cigarette and rang for his tea. Yes, that was all! She was
+acting true to her type, as the jargon has it. But against his will, her
+face took shape before him, as he had seen it in the darkness of her
+room and ever since--ever since!
+
+He rang again, and more insistently. He possessed a small, swift
+motor-car. Before the clocks of London had struck eight he was
+travelling westwards along the King's Road. Hillyard was afraid. He did
+not formulate his fears. He was not sure of what he feared. But he was
+afraid--terribly afraid; and for the first time anger rose up in his
+heart against his friend. Luttrell! Harry Luttrell! At this very moment
+he was changing direction in columns of fours upon the drill ground,
+happy in the smooth execution of the manoeuvre by his men and
+untroubled by any thought of the distress of Stella Croyle. Well, little
+things must give way to great--women to the exigencies of drill!
+
+Meanwhile, Hillyard grew more afraid, and yet more afraid. He swept down
+the hill to Cobham, passed between the Hut and the lake, and was through
+Ripley before the shutters in the shops were down. The dew was heavy in
+the air; all the fresh, clean smell of the earth was in that September
+morning. And as yet the morning itself was only half awake. At last the
+Hog's Back rose, and at a little inn, known for its comfort--and its
+_chef_--Hillyard's car was stopped.
+
+"Mrs. Croyle?" Hillyard asked at the office.
+
+"Her maid is here," said the girl clerk, and pointed.
+
+Hillyard turned to a girl, pretty and, by a few years, younger than
+Stella Croyle.
+
+"I have orders not to wake Mrs. Croyle until she rings," said the maid.
+Jenny Prask, she was called, and she spoke with just a touch of pleasant
+Sussex drawl. "Mrs. Croyle has not been sleeping well, and she looked
+for a good night's rest in country air."
+
+The maid was so healthful in her appearance, so reasonable in her
+argument, that Hillyard's terrors, fostered by solitude, began to lose
+their vivid colours.
+
+"I understand that," he stammered. "Yet, Jenny----"
+
+Jenny Prask smiled.
+
+"You are Mr. Hillyard, I think?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I have heard my mistress speak of you." Hillyard knew enough of maids
+to understand that "mistress" was an unusual word with them. Here, it
+seemed, was a paragon of maids, who was quite content to be publicly
+Stella Croyle's maid, whose gentility suffered no offence by the
+recognition of a mistress.
+
+"If you wish, I will wake her."
+
+Jenny Prask went up the stairs, Hillyard at her heels. She knocked upon
+the door. No answer was returned. She opened it and entered.
+
+Stella Croyle was up and dressed. She was sitting at a table by the
+window with some sheets of notepaper and some envelopes in front of her,
+and her back was towards Hillyard and the open door. But she was dressed
+as she had been dressed the evening before when he had left her; the
+curtains in the room were drawn, and the electric lights on the
+writing-table and the walls were still burning. The bed had not been
+slept in.
+
+Stella Croyle rose and turned towards her visitors. She tottered a
+little as she stood up, and her eyes were dazed.
+
+"Why have you come here?" she asked faintly, and she fell rather than
+sat again in her chair.
+
+Hillyard sprang forward and tore the curtains aside so that the
+sunlight poured into the room, and Stella opened and shut her eyes with
+a contraction of pain.
+
+"I had so many letters to write," she explained, "I thought that I would
+sit up and get through with them."
+
+Hillyard looked at the table. There were great black dashes on the
+notepaper and lines, and here and there a scribbled picture of a face,
+and perhaps now and again half a word. She had sat at that table all
+night and had not even begun a letter. Hillyard's heart was torn with
+pity as he looked from her white, tired face to the sheets of notepaper.
+What misery and unhappiness did those broad, black dashes and idle lines
+express?
+
+"You must have some breakfast," he said. "I'll order it and have it
+ready for you downstairs by the time you are ready. Then I'll take you
+back to London."
+
+The blood suddenly mounted into her face.
+
+"You will?" she cried wildly. "In a reserved compartment, so that I may
+do nothing rash and foolish? Are you going to be kind too?"
+
+She broke into a peal of shrill and bitter laughter. Then her head went
+down upon her hands, and she gave herself up to such a passion of
+sobbing and tears as was quite beyond all Hillyard's experience. Yet he
+would rather hear those sobs and see her bowed shoulders shaking under
+the violence of them than listen again to the dreadful laughter which
+had gone before. He had not the knowledge which could enable him to
+understand her sudden outburst, nor did he acquire that knowledge until
+long afterwards. But he understood that quite unwittingly he had touched
+some painful chord in that wayward nature.
+
+"I am going to take you back in my motor-car," he said. "I'll be
+downstairs with the breakfast ready."
+
+She had probably eaten nothing, he reckoned, since teatime the day
+before. Food was the steadying thing she needed now. He went to the door
+which Jenny Prask held open for him.
+
+"Don't leave her!" he breathed in a whisper.
+
+Jenny Prask smiled.
+
+"Not me, sir," she said fervently.
+
+Hillyard remembered with comfort some words which she had spoken in
+appreciation of the loving devotion of her maid.
+
+"In three-quarters of an hour," said Jenny; and later on that morning,
+with a great fear removed from his heart, Hillyard drove Stella Croyle
+back to London.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+IN BARCELONA
+
+
+It was nine o'clock on a night of late August.
+
+The restaurant of the Maison Dor�e in the Plaza Catalu�a at Barcelona
+looks across the brilliantly-lighted square from the south side. On the
+pavement in front of it and of its neighbour, the Caf� Continental, the
+vendors of lottery tickets were bawling the lucky numbers they had for
+sale. Even in this wide space the air was close and stale. Within, a few
+people left over in the town had strayed in to dine at tables placed
+against the walls under flamboyant decorations in the style of
+Fragonard. At a table Hillyard was sitting alone over his coffee. Across
+the room one of the panels represented a gleaming marble terrace
+overlooking a country-side bathed in orange light; and on the terrace
+stood a sedan chair with drawn curtains, and behind the chair stood a
+saddled white horse. Hillyard had dined more than once during the last
+few months at the Maison Dor�e; and the problem of that picture had
+always baffled him. A lovers' tryst! But where were the lovers? In some
+inner room shaded from the outrage of that orange light which never was
+on sea or land? Or in the sedan chair? Or were their faces to be
+discovered, as in the puzzle pictures, in the dappling of the horse's
+flanks, or the convolutions of the pillars which supported the terrace
+roof, or the gilded ornamentations of the chair itself? Hillyard was
+speculating for the twentieth time on these important matters with a
+vague hope that one day the door of the sedan chair would open, when
+another door opened--the door of the restaurant. A sharp-visaged man
+with a bald forehead, a clerk, one would say, or a commercial traveller,
+looked round the room and went forward to Hillyard's table. He went
+quite openly.
+
+The two men shook hands, and the new-comer seated himself in front of
+Hillyard.
+
+"You will take coffee and a cigar?" Hillyard asked in Spanish, and gave
+the order to the waiter.
+
+The two men talked of the heat, the cinematograph theatres at the side
+of the Plaza, the sea-bathing at Caldetas, and then the sharp-faced man
+leaned forward.
+
+"Ramon says there is no truth in the story, se�or."
+
+Hillyard struck a match and held it to his companion's cigar.
+
+"And you trust Ramon, Se�or Baeza?"
+
+Lopez Baeza leaned back with a gesture of unqualified assent.
+
+"As often and often you can trust the peasant of my country," he said.
+
+Hillyard agreed with a nod. He gazed about the room.
+
+"There is no one interesting here to-night," he said idly.
+
+"No," answered Lopez Baeza. "The theatres are closed, the gay people
+have gone to St. Sebastian, the families to the seaside. Ouf, but it is
+hot."
+
+"Yes."
+
+Hillyard dropped his voice to a whisper and returned to the subject of
+his thoughts.
+
+"You see, my friend, it is of so much importance that we should make no
+mistake here."
+
+"_Claro!_" returned Lopez Baeza. "But listen to me, se�or. You know that
+our banks are behind the times and our post offices not greatly trusted.
+We have therefore a class of messengers."
+
+Hillyard nodded.
+
+"I know of them."
+
+"Good. They are not educated. Most of them can neither read nor write.
+They are simply peasants. Yet they are trusted to carry the most
+important letters and great sums of money in gold and silver from place
+to place. And never do they betray their trust. It is unknown. Why,
+se�or, I know myself of cases where rich men have entrusted their
+daughters to the care of the messengers, sure that in this way their
+daughters will arrive safely at their destination."
+
+"Yes," said Hillyard. "I know of these men."
+
+"Ramon Castillo is as honest as the best of them."
+
+"Yes, but he is not one of them," said Hillyard. "He is a stevedore with
+thirty years of the quayside and at the port of Barcelona, where there
+are German ships with their officers and crews on board."
+
+Hillyard was troubled. He drew from his pocket creased letters and read
+them for the twentieth time with a frowning countenance.
+
+"There is so much at stake. Two hundred feluccas--two hundred
+motor-driven feluccas! And eighteen thousand men, on shore and sea? See
+what it means! On our side, the complete surveillance of the Western
+Mediterranean! On the other side--against us--two hundred travelling
+supply bases for submarines, two hundred signal stations. I want to be
+sure! I want neither to give the enemy the advantage by putting him upon
+his guard, nor to miss the great opportunity myself."
+
+Lopez Baeza nodded.
+
+"Why not talk with Ramon Castillo yourself?" he asked.
+
+"That is what I want to do."
+
+"I will arrange for it. When?"
+
+"To-night," said Hillyard.
+
+Lopez Baeza lifted his hands in deprecation.
+
+"Yes. I can take you to his house--now. But, se�or, Ramon is a poor man.
+He lives in a little narrow street."
+
+Hillyard looked quietly at Lopez Baeza. He had found men on the
+Mediterranean littoral whom he could trust with his life and everything
+that was his. But a good working principle was to have not overmuch
+faith in any one. A noisome little street in the lower quarters of
+Barcelona--who could tell what might happen after one had plunged into
+it?
+
+"I will come with you," he said.
+
+"Good," said Lopez. "I will go on ahead." And once more Hillyard's quiet
+eyes rested upon Baeza's face. "It is not wise that we should walk out
+together. There is no one here, it is true, but in the chairs outside
+the caf�s--who shall say?"
+
+"Yes. You go on ahead," Hillyard agreed. "That is wise."
+
+Lopez rose.
+
+"Give me five minutes, se�or. Then down the Rambla. The second turning
+to the right, beyond the Opera House. You will see me at the corner.
+When you see me, follow!"
+
+Hillyard rose and shook hands cordially with Lopez Baeza with the air of
+a man who might never see his friend again for years. Baeza commended
+him to God and went out of the restaurant on to the lighted footway.
+
+Hillyard read through the two creased letters again, though he knew them
+by heart. They had reached him from William Lloyd, an English merchant
+at Barcelona, at two different dates. The first, written six weeks ago,
+related how Pontiana Tabor, a servant of the firm, had come into Lloyd's
+private office and informed him that on the night of the 27th June a
+German submarine had entered a deep cove at the lonely north-east point
+of the island of Mallorca, and had there been provisioned by Jos�
+Medina's men, with Jos� Medina's supplies, and that Jos� Medina had
+driven out of Palma de Mallorca in his motor-car, and travelling by
+little-known tracks, had been present when the operation was in process.
+The name of a shoemaker in a street of Palma was given as corroboration.
+
+The second letter, which had brought Hillyard post-haste off the sea
+into Barcelona, was only three days old. Once more Pontiana Tabor had
+been the bearer of bad news. Jos� Medina had been seen entering the
+German Consulate in Barcelona, between eleven and twelve o'clock of the
+morning of August 22nd.
+
+Hillyard was greatly troubled by these two letters.
+
+"We can put Jos� Medina out of business, of course," he reflected. For
+Jos� Medina's tobacco factories were built at a free port in French
+territory. "But I want the man for my friend."
+
+He put the letters back in his pocket and paid his bill. As he went out
+of the Maison Dor�e, he felt in the right-hand pocket of his jacket to
+make sure that a little deadly life preserver lay ready to his hand.
+
+He did not distrust Lopez Baeza. All the work which Baeza had done for
+him had, indeed, been faithfully and discreetly done. But--but there was
+always a certain amount of money for the man who would work the double
+cross--not so very much, but still, a certain amount. And Hillyard was
+always upon his guard against the intrusion of a contempt for the
+German effort. That contempt was easy enough for a man who, having read
+year after year of the wonders of the loud-vaunted German system of
+espionage, had come fresh from his reading into contact with the actual
+agents. Their habit of lining their pockets at the expense of their
+Government, their unfulfilled pretensions, their vanity and
+extravagance, and, above all, their unimaginative stupidity in their
+estimation of men--these things were apt in the early years of the war
+to bewilder the man who had been so often told to fall down before the
+great idol of German efficiency.
+
+"The German agent works on the assumption that the mind of every
+foreigner reasons on German lines, but with inferior intelligence. But
+behind the agent is the cunning of Berlin, with its long-deliberated
+plans and its concocted ingenuity of method. And though on the whole
+they are countered, as with amazement they admit, by the amateurs from
+England, still every now and then--not very often--they do bring
+something off."
+
+Thus Hillyard reasoned as he turned the corner of the Plaza Catalu�a
+into the wide Rambla. It might be that the narratives of Pontiana Tabor
+and the denials of Ramon Castillo were all just part of one little
+subsidiary plan in the German scheme which was to reach its achievement
+by putting an inconvenient Englishman out of the way for good in one of
+the dark, narrow side streets of Barcelona.
+
+After the hot day the Rambla, with its broad tree-shaded alley in the
+middle, its carriage-ways on each side of the alley, and its shops and
+footwalks beyond the carriage-ways, was crowded with loiterers. The
+Spaniard, to our ideas, is simple in his pleasure. To visit a
+cinematograph, to take a cooling temperance drink at the Municipal
+Kiosque at the top of the Rambla, and to pace up and down the broad walk
+with unending chatter--until daybreak--here were the joys of Barcelona
+folk in the days of summer. Further down at the lower end of the Rambla
+you would come upon the dancing halls and supper-caf�s, with separate
+rooms for the national gambling game, "Siete y Media," but they had
+their own clientele amongst the bloods and the merchant captains from
+the harbour. The populace of Barcelona walked the Rambla under the
+great globes of electric light.
+
+Hillyard could only move slowly through the press. Every one dawdled.
+Hillyard dawdled too. He passed the Opera House, and a little further
+down saw across the carriage-way, Lopez Baeza in front of a lighted
+tobacco shop at the corner of a narrow street. Hillyard crossed the
+carriage-way and Baeza turned into the street, a narrow thoroughfare
+between tall houses and dark as a cavern. Hillyard followed him. The
+lights of the Rambla were left behind, the houses became more slatternly
+and disreputable, the smells of the quarter were of rancid food and bad
+drains. Before a great door Baeza stopped and clapped his hands.
+
+A jingle of keys answered him, and rising from the step of another house
+the watchman of the street crossed the road. He put a key into the door,
+opened it, and received the usual twopence. Baeza and Hillyard passed
+in.
+
+"Ramon is on the top floor. We have to climb," said Baeza.
+
+He lit a match, and the two men mounted a staircase with a carved
+balustrade, made for a king. Two stories up, the great staircase ended,
+and another of small, steep and narrow steps succeeded it. When Baeza's
+match went out there was no light anywhere; from a room somewhere above
+came a sound of quarrelling voices--a woman's voice high and shrill, a
+man's voice hoarse and drunken, and, as an accompaniment, the wailing of
+a child wakened from its sleep.
+
+At the very top of the house Baeza rapped on a door. The door was
+opened, and a heavy, elderly man, wearing glasses on his nose, stood in
+the entrance with the light of an unshaded lamp behind him.
+
+"Ramon, it is the chief," said Baeza.
+
+Ramon Castello crossed the room and closed an inner door. Then he
+invited Hillyard to enter. The room was bare but for a few pieces of
+necessary furniture, but all was scrupulously clean. Ramon Castillo set
+forward a couple of chairs and asked his visitors to be seated. He was
+in his shirt-sleeves, and he wore the rope-soled sandals of the Spanish
+peasant, but he was entirely at his ease. He made the customary little
+speech of welcome with so simple a dignity and so manifest a sincerity
+that Hillyard could hardly doubt him afterwards.
+
+"It is my honour to welcome you not merely as my chief, but as an
+Englishman. I am poor, and I take my pay, but Se�or Baeza will assure
+you that for twenty-five years I have been the friend of England. And
+there are thousands and thousands of poor Spaniards like myself, who
+love England, because its law-courts are just, because there is a real
+freedom there, because political power is not the opportunity of
+oppression."
+
+The little speech was spoken with great rapidity and with deep feeling;
+and, having delivered it, Ramon seated himself on the side of the table
+opposite to Hillyard and Baeza and waited.
+
+"It is about Pontiana Tabor," said Hillyard. "He is making a mistake?"
+
+"No, se�or; he is lying," and he used the phrase which has no exact
+equivalent in the English. "He is a _sin verguenza_."
+
+"Tell me, my friend," said Hillyard.
+
+"Pontiana Tabor swears that Jos� Medina was seen to enter the German
+Consulate before noon on August the 22nd. But on August the 21st Medina
+was in Palma, Mallorca; he was seen there by a captain of the Islana
+Company, and a friend of mine spoke to him on the quay. If, therefore,
+he was in the German Consulate here on the 22nd, he must have crossed
+that night by the steamer to Barcelona. But he did not. His name was not
+on the list of passengers, and although he might have avoided that, he
+was not seen on board or to come on board. I have spoken with officers
+and crew. Jos� Medina did not cross on the 21st. Moreover, Se�or Baeza
+has seen a letter which shows that he was certainly in Palma on the
+23rd."
+
+"That is true," said Baeza. "Medina was in Palma on the 21st, and in
+Palma on the 23rd, and he did not cross to Barcelona on the night of the
+21st, nor back again to Palma on the night of the 22nd. Therefore he was
+not seen to visit the German Consulate on the morning of the 22nd, and,
+as Ramon says, Pontiana is lying."
+
+"Why should Pontiana lie?" asked Hillyard.
+
+Ramon took his pince-nez from the bridge of his nose, and, holding them
+between his finger and thumb, tapped with them upon his knee.
+
+"Because, se�or, there are other contrabandists besides Jos� Medina; one
+little group at Tarragona and another near Garucha--and they would all
+be very glad to see Jos� Medina get into trouble with the British and
+the French. His feluccas fly the British flag and his factories are on
+French soil. There would be an end of Jos� Medina."
+
+The letters were put in front of Hillyard. He read them over carefully,
+and at the end he said:
+
+"If Pontiana Tabor lied in this case of the Consulate--and that seems
+clear--it is very likely that he lied also in the other. Yes."
+
+As a matter of fact, Hillyard had reasons of his own to doubt the truth
+of the story which ascribed to Medina the actual provisioning of a
+submarine--reasons which had nothing whatever to do with Jos� Medina
+himself.
+
+The destruction of shipping by German submarines in this western section
+of the Mediterranean had an intermittent regularity. There would be ten
+successive days--hardly ever more than ten days--during which ships were
+sunk. Thereafter for three weeks, steamships and sailing ships would
+follow the course upon which they were ordered, without hurt or loss.
+After three weeks, the murderous business would begin again. There was
+but one explanation in Hillyard's opinion.
+
+"The submarines come out of Pola. When they reach the line between the
+Balearics and the Spanish coast, they have oil for ten days' cruising,
+and then return to their base," he argued.
+
+Now, if a submarine had been provisioned by Jos� Medina in a creek of
+Mallorca, the ten days' cruise would be extended to three weeks. This
+had never happened. Moreover, the date fixed by Pontiana Tabor happened
+to fall precisely in the middle of one of those periods of three weeks
+during which the terror did not haunt those seas. Pontiana Tabor had not
+known enough. He had fixed his date at a venture.
+
+"Yes," said Hillyard, rising from his chair. "I agree with you, Se�or
+Ramon. Tabor is a liar. What troubled me was that I had no clue as to
+why he should lie. You have given me it, and with all my heart I thank
+you."
+
+He shook the stevedore's hand and stood for a moment talking and joking
+with him upon other subjects. Hillyard knew the value of a smile and a
+jest and a friendly manner. Your very enemy in Spain will do you a good
+turn if you meet him thus. Then he turned to Baeza.
+
+"I shall be back, perhaps, in a week, but perhaps not. I will let you
+know in the usual way."
+
+The two men went down the stairs and into the street. It was empty now
+and black, but at the far end, as at the end of a tunnel, the Rambla
+blazed and roared and the crowds swung past like a procession.
+
+"It is best that we should separate here," said Lopez Baeza, "if you
+have no further instructions."
+
+"Touching the matter of those ships," Hillyard suggested.
+
+"Se�or Fairbairn has it in hand."
+
+"Good. Then, my friend, I have no further instructions," said Hillyard.
+"I agree with you about Ramon. I will go first."
+
+He shook hands with Baeza, crossed the road and disappeared into the
+mouthway of an alley which ran up the hill parallel to the Rambla. The
+alley led into another side street, and turning to the right, Hillyard
+slipped out into the throng beneath the trees. He sauntered, as idle and
+as curious as any in that broad walk. He took a drink at a caf�, neither
+hiding himself unnaturally nor ostentatiously occupying a chair at the
+edge of the awning. He sat there for half an hour. But when he rose
+again he made sure that no one was loitering to watch his movements. He
+sauntered up to the very end of the Rambla past the ice-cream kiosque.
+The great Plaza spread in front of him, and at the corner across the
+road stood a double line of motor-cars, some for hire, others waiting
+for parties in the restaurants opposite. He walked across the roadway
+and disappeared in between the motor-cars as if he intended to cross the
+Plaza by the footway to the Paseo de la Reforma. A second later a
+motor-car shot out from the line and took the road to Tarragona.
+
+Hillyard was inside the car. The tall houses of the city gave place to
+villas draped in bougainvillea behind gardens of trees. Then the villas
+ceased and the car sped across the flats of Llobegrat and climbed to the
+finest coast-road in the world. It was a night for lovers. A full moon,
+bright as silver, sailed in the sky; the broad, white road rose and
+dipped and wound past here and there a blue cottage, here and there a
+peasant mounted on his donkey and making his journey by night to escape
+the burning day. Far below the sea spread out most gently murmuring, and
+across a great wide path of glittering jewels, now a sailing-ship glided
+like a bird, now the black funnels of a steamer showed. So light was the
+wind that Hillyard could hear the kick of its screw, like the beating of
+some gigantic clock. He took his hat from his head and threw wide open
+his thin coat. After the heavy days of anxiety he felt a nimbleness of
+heart and spirit which set him in tune with the glory of that night.
+Suspicions, vague and elusive, had for so long clustered about Jos�
+Medina, and then had come the two categorical statements, dates and
+hours, chapter and verse! He was still not sure, he declared to himself
+in warning. But he was sure enough to risk the great move--the move
+which he alone could make! He should no doubt have been dreaming of Joan
+Whitworth and fitting her into the frame of that August night. But he
+had not thought of her by one o'clock in the morning; and by one o'clock
+in the morning his motor-car had come to a stop on the deserted quay of
+Tarragona harbour under the stern of an English yacht.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+OLD ACQUAINTANCE
+
+
+At six o'clock on the second morning after Hillyard's visit to
+Barcelona, the steam-yacht _Dragonfly_ swept round the point of La
+Dragonera and changed her course to the south-east. She steamed with a
+following breeze over a sea of darkest sapphire which broke in sparkling
+cascades of white and gold against the rocky creeks and promontories on
+the ship's port side. Peasants working on the green terraces above the
+rocks stopped their work and stared as the blue ensign with the Union
+Jack in the corner broke out from the flagstaff at the stern.
+
+"But it's impossible," cried one. "Only yesterday a French mail-steamer
+was chased in the passage between Mallorca and Minorca. It's
+impossible."
+
+Another shaded his eyes with his hand and looked upon the neat yacht
+with its white deck and shining brass in contemptuous pity.
+
+"Loco Ingl�s," said he.
+
+The tradition of the mad Englishman has passed away from France, but it
+has only leaped the Pyrenees. Some crazy multi-millionaire was just
+running his head into the German noose. They gave up their work and
+settled down contentedly to watch the yacht, multi-millionaire, captain
+and crew and all go up into the sky. But the _Dragonfly_ passed from
+their sight with the foam curling from her bows and broadening out into
+a pale fan behind her; and over the headlands for a long time they saw
+the streamer of her smoke as she drove in to Palma Bay.
+
+Hillyard, standing by the captain's side upon the bridge, watched the
+great cathedral rise from out of the water at the end of the bay, towers
+and flying buttresses and the mass of brown stone, before even a house
+was visible. The _Dragonfly_ passed a German cargo steamer which had
+sought refuge here at the outbreak of war. She was a large ship, full of
+oil, and she had been moved from the quay-side to an anchorage in the
+bay by the captain of the port, lest by design or inadvertence she
+should take fire and set the town aflame. There she lay, a source of
+endless misgiving to every allied ship which sailed these waters, kept
+clean and trim as a yacht, her full crew on board, her dangerous cargo
+below, in the very fairway of the submarine; and there the scruples of
+the Allies allowed her to remain while month followed month. Historians
+in later years will come across in this or that Government office in
+Paris, in London and in Rome, warnings, appeals, and accounts of the
+presence of this ship; and those anxious for a picturesque contrast may
+set against the violation of Belgium and all the "scrap of paper"
+philosophy, the fact that for years in the very centre of the German
+submarine effort in the Western Mediterranean, the German steamer
+_Fangturm_, with her priceless cargo of oil, was allowed by the
+scrupulous honour of the Allies to swing unmolested at her anchor in
+Palma Bay. Hillyard could never pass that great black ship in those
+neutral waters without a hope that his steering-gear would just at this
+moment play him false and swing his bows at full speed on to her side.
+The _Dragonfly_ ran past her to the arm of the great mole and was moored
+with her stern to the quay. A small crowd of gesticulating idlers
+gathered about the ropes, and all were but repeating the phrases of the
+peasants upon the hill-side, as Hillyard walked ashore down the gangway.
+
+"But it's impossible that you should have come."
+
+"Just outside there is one. The fisherman saw her yesterday."
+
+"She rose and spoke to one of the fishing-boats."
+
+"But it is impossible that you should have come here."
+
+"Yet I am here," answered Hillyard, the very mad multi-millionaire.
+"What will you, my friends? Shall I tell you a secret? Yes, but tell no
+one else! The Germans would be most enraged if they found out that we
+knew it. There aren't any submarines."
+
+A little jest spoken in a voice of good-humour, with a friendly smile,
+goes a long way anywhere, but further in Spain than anywhere else in
+the world. The small crowd laughed with Hillyard, and made way for him.
+
+A man offered to him with a flourish and a bow a card advertising a
+garage at which motor-cars could be hired for expeditions in the island.
+Hillyard accepted it and put it into his pocket. He paid a visit to his
+consul, and thereafter sat in a caf� for an hour. Then he strolled
+through the narrow streets, admired this and that massive archway, with
+its glimpse of a great stone staircase within, and mounted the hill.
+Almost at the top, he turned sharply into a doorway and ran up the
+stairs to the second floor. He knocked upon the door, and a maid-servant
+answered.
+
+"Se�or Jos� Medina lives here?"
+
+"Yes, se�or."
+
+"He is at home?"
+
+"No, se�or. He is in the country at his _finca_."
+
+Hillyard thanked the girl, and went whistling down the stairs. Standing
+in the archway, he looked up and down the street with something of the
+air of a man engaged upon a secret end. One or two people were moving in
+the street; one or two were idling on the pavement. Hillyard smiled and
+walked down the hill again. He took the advertisement card from his
+pocket and, noting the address, walked into the garage.
+
+"It will please me to see something of the island," he said. "I am not
+in Mallorca for long. I should like a car after lunch." He gave the name
+of a caf� between the cathedral and the quay. "At half-past two? Thank
+you. And by which road shall I go for all that is most of Mallorca?"
+
+This was Spain. A small group of men had already invaded the garage and
+gathered about Hillyard and the proprietor. They proceeded at once to
+take a hand in the conversation and offer their advice. They suggested
+the expedition to Miramar, to Alcudia, to Manacor, discussing the time
+each journey would take, the money to be saved by the shorter course,
+the dust, and even the gradients of the road. They had no interest in
+the business in the garage, and they were not at all concerned in the
+success of Hillyard's excursion. That a stranger should carry away with
+him pleasant recollections of the beauties of Mallorca, was a matter of
+supreme indifference to them all. But they were engaged in the favourite
+pursuit of the Spaniards of the towns. They were getting through a
+certain small portion of the day, without doing any work, and without
+spending any money. The majority favoured the road past Valdemosa, over
+the Pass of Soller to Miramar and its rocky coast on the north-east side
+of the island, as indeed Hillyard knew the majority must. For there is
+no road like it for beauty in the Balearics, and few in all Spain.
+
+"I will go that way, then," said Hillyard, and he strolled off to his
+luncheon.
+
+He drove afterwards over the plain, between groves of olive and almond
+trees with gnarled stems and branches white with dust, mounted by the
+twisting road, terraces upon his left and pine-clothed mountainside upon
+his right, past Valdemosa to the Pass. The great sweep of rock-bound
+coast and glittering sea burst upon his view, and the boom of water
+surging into innumerable caves was like thunder to his ears. At a little
+gate upon the road the car was stopped at a word from Hillyard.
+
+"I am going in here," he said. "I may be a little while."
+
+The chauffeur looked at Hillyard with surprise. Hillyard had never been
+to the house before, but he could not mistake it from the description
+which he had been given. He passed through an orchard to the door of an
+outrageous villa, built in the style of a Swiss chalet and glaring with
+yellow paint. A man in his shirt-sleeves came to the door.
+
+"Se�or Jos� Medina?" Hillyard inquired.
+
+He held out his card and was ushered into the room of ceremony which
+went very well with the exterior of the yellow chalet. A waxed floor,
+heavy white lace curtains at the windows, a table of walnut-wood, chairs
+without comfort, but with gold legs, all was new and never to be used
+and hideous. Hillyard looked around him with a nod of comprehension.
+This is what its proprietor would wish for. With a hundred old houses to
+select from for a model--no! This is the way his fancies would run. The
+one beauty of the place, its position, was Nature's. Hillyard went to
+the window, which was on the side of the house opposite to the door. He
+looked down a steep terraced garden of orange trees and bright flowers
+to the foam sparkling on the rocks a thousand feet below.
+
+"You wished to see me, se�or," and Hillyard turned with curiosity.
+
+Twelve years had passed since he had seen Jos� Medina, but he had
+changed less than Hillyard expected. Martin remembered him as small and
+slight, with a sharp mobile face and a remarkable activity which was the
+very badge of the man; and these characteristics he retained. He was
+still like quick-silver. But he was fast losing his hair, and he wore
+pince-nez. The dress of the peasant and the cautious manner of the
+peasant, both were gone. In his grey lounge suit he had the look of a
+quick-witted clerk.
+
+"You wished to see me, se�or," he repeated, and he laid the card upon
+the table.
+
+"For a moment. I shall hope not to detain you long."
+
+"My time and my house are yours."
+
+Jos� Medina had clearly become a _caballero_ since those early days of
+adventure. Hillyard noted the point for his own guidance, thanking his
+stars meanwhile that the gift of the house was a meaningless politeness.
+
+"I arrived at Palma this morning, in a yacht," said Hillyard.
+
+Jos� Medina was prepared for the information. He bowed. There had been
+neither smile nor, indeed, any expression whatever upon his face since
+he had entered the room.
+
+"I have heard of the yacht," he said. "It is a fine ship."
+
+"Yes."
+
+Jos� Medina looked at Hillyard.
+
+"It flies the English flag."
+
+Hillyard bowed.
+
+"As do your feluccas, se�or, I believe."
+
+A mere twitch of the lips showed that Medina appreciated the point.
+
+"But I," continued Hillyard, "am an Englishman, while you, se�or----"
+
+Jos� Medina was not, if he could help it, to be forced to cry "a hit"
+again.
+
+"Whereas I, se�or, am a neutral," he answered. The twitch of the lips
+became a smile. He invited Hillyard to a chair, he drew up another
+himself, and the two men sat down over against one another in the middle
+of that bare and formal room.
+
+That one word neutral, so delicately emphasised, warned Hillyard that
+Jos� Medina was quite alive to the reason of his visit. He could, of
+course, have blurted it out at once. He could have said in so many
+words, "Your tobacco factories are on French soil, and your two hundred
+feluccas are nominally owned in Gibraltar. Between French and English we
+shall close you down unless you help." But he knew very well that he
+would have got no more than fair words if he had. It is not thus that
+delicate questions are approached in Spain. Even the blackmailer does
+not dream of bluntly demanding money, or exposing his knowledge that he
+will get it. He pleads decently the poverty of his family and the long
+illness of his mother-in-law; and with the same decency the blackmailed
+yields to compassion and opens his purse. There is a gentlemanly
+reticence to be observed in these matters and Hillyard was well aware of
+the rules. He struck quite a different note.
+
+"I shall speak frankly to you, Se�or Medina, as one _caballero_ to
+another"; and Jos� Medina bowed and smiled.
+
+"I put my cards upon the table. I ask you whether in your heart you are
+for the Germans or for us."
+
+Jos� Medina hitched his chair a little closer and holding up one hand
+with fingers spread ticked off his points, as he spoke them, with the
+other.
+
+"Let us see! First, you come to me, se�or, saying you are English, and
+speaking Spanish with the accent of Valencia. Good! I might reply,
+se�or, how do I know? I might ask you how I am to be sure that when that
+British flag is hauled down from your yacht outside the bay over there,
+it is not a German one which should take its place. Good! But I do not
+make these replies. I accept your word as a _caballero_ that you are
+English and not an enemy of England laying a trap for me. Good!" He took
+off his eye-glasses and polished them.
+
+"Now listen to me!" he continued. "I am a Spaniard. We of Spain have
+little grievances against England and France. But these are matters for
+the Government, not for a private person. And the Government bids us be
+neutral. Good! Now I speak as a private person. For me England means
+opportunity for poor men to become great and rich. You may say I have
+become rich without the opportunities of England. I answer I am one in
+many thousands. England means Liberty, and within the strict limits of
+my neutrality I will do what a man may for that great country."
+
+Hillyard listened and nodded. The speech was flowing and spoken with
+great fervour. It might mean much. It might mean nothing at all. It
+might be the outcome of conviction. But it might again be nothing more
+than the lip-service of a man who knew very well that England and France
+could squeeze him dry if they chose.
+
+"I wish," said Hillyard cordially, "that the captains of the ports of
+Spain spoke also with your voice."
+
+Jos� Medina neither assumed an ignorance of the German leanings of the
+port officials nor expressed any assent. But, as if he had realised the
+thought which must be passing in Hillyard's mind, he said:
+
+"You know very well, se�or, that I should be mad if I gave help to the
+Germans. I am in your hands. You and France have but to speak the word,
+and every felucca of mine is off the seas. But what then! There are
+eighteen thousand men at once without food or work thrown adrift upon
+the coast of Spain. Will not Germany find use for those eighteen
+thousand men?"
+
+Hillyard agreed. The point was shrewd. It was an open, unanswerable
+reply to the unuttered threat which perhaps Hillyard might be prompted
+to use.
+
+"I have spoken," continued Jos� Medina. "Now it is for you, se�or. Tell
+me what within the limits of my neutrality I can do to prove to you the
+sincerity of my respect for England?"
+
+Hillyard took a sheet of paper and a pencil from his pocket. He drew a
+rough map.
+
+"Here are the Balearic Islands; here, farther to the west, the
+Columbretes; here the African coast; here the mainland of Spain. Now
+watch, I beg you, se�or, whilst I sketch in the routes of your feluccas.
+At Oran in Africa your factories stand. From them, then, we start. We
+draw a broad thick line from Oran to the north-east coast of Mallorca,
+that coast upon which we look down from these windows, a coast
+honeycombed with caves and indented with creeks like an edge of fine
+lace--a very storehouse of a coast. Am I not right, Se�or Don Jos�?" He
+laughed, in a friendly good-humoured way, but the face of Jos� Medina
+did not lose one shade of its impassiveness. He did not deny that the
+caves of this coast were the storehouse of his tobacco; nor did he
+agree.
+
+"Let us see!" he said.
+
+"So I draw a thick line, since all your feluccas make for this island
+and this part of the island first of all. From here they diverge--you
+will correct me, I hope, if I am wrong."
+
+"I do not say that I shall correct you if you are wrong," said Jos�
+Medina.
+
+Hillyard was now drawing other and finer lines which radiated like the
+sticks of an outspread fan from the north-east coast of Mallorca to the
+Spanish mainland; and he went on drawing them, unperturbed by Jos�'s
+refusal to assist in his map-making. Some of the lines--a few--ended at
+the Islands of the Columbretes, sixty miles off Valencia.
+
+"Your secret storehouse, I believe, se�or," he remarked pleasantly.
+
+"A cruiser of our Government examined these islands most carefully a
+fortnight ago upon representations from the Allies, and found nothing of
+any kind to excite interest," replied Jos� Medina.
+
+"The cruiser was looking for submarine bases, I understand, not
+tobacco," Martin Hillyard observed. "And since it was not the cruiser's
+commission to look for tobacco, why should it discover it?"
+
+Jos� Medina shrugged his shoulders. Jos� Medina's purse was very long
+and reached very high. It would be quite impolitic for that cruiser to
+discover Jos� Medina's tobacco stores, as Medina himself and Martin
+Hillyard, and the captain of the cruiser, all very well knew.
+
+Martin Hillyard continued to draw fine straight lines westwards from the
+northern coast of Mallorca to the mainland of Spain, some touching the
+shore to the north of Barcelona, some striking it as far south as
+Almeria and Garrucha. When he had finished his map-making he handed the
+result to Jos� Medina.
+
+"See, se�or! Your feluccas cut across all the trade-routes through the
+Mediterranean. Ships going east or going west must pass between the
+Balearics and Africa, or between the Balearics and Spain. We are here in
+the middle, and, whichever course those ships take, they must cross the
+lines on which your feluccas continually come and go."
+
+Jos� Medina looked at the map. He did not commit himself in any way. He
+contented himself with a question: "And what then?"
+
+"So too with the German submarines. They also must cross and cross again
+in their cruises, those lines along which your feluccas continually come
+and go."
+
+Jos� Medina threw up his hands.
+
+"The submarines! Se�or, if you listen to the babblers on the quays, you
+would think that the seas are stiff with them! Schools of them like
+whales everywhere! Only yesterday Palma rang with the account of one. It
+pursued a French steamer between Minorca and Mallorca. It spoke to a
+fishing boat! What did it not do? Se�or, there was no submarine
+yesterday in the channel between Minorca and Mallorca. If there had been
+I must have known."
+
+And he sat back as though the subject were disposed of.
+
+"But submarines do visit these waters, Se�or Medina, and they do sink
+ships," replied Hillyard.
+
+Jos� Medina shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands.
+
+"_Claro!_ And it is said that I supply them with their oil." He turned
+swiftly to Hillyard. "Perhaps you have heard that story, se�or?"
+
+Hillyard nodded.
+
+"Yes. I did not believe it. It is because I did not believe it that I am
+here, asking your help."
+
+"I thank you. It is the truth. I will tell you something now. Not one of
+my captains has ever seen one of those submarines, neither on this side
+nor on that," and Medina touched the lines which Hillyard had drawn on
+both sides of the Balearics on his chart. "Now, what can I do?"
+
+"One simple thing, and well within your scruples as a neutral," replied
+Hillyard. "These submarines doubly break the laws of nations. They
+violate your territorial waters, and they sink merchant ships without
+regard for the crews."
+
+"Yes," said Jos� Medina.
+
+"You have agents along the coast. I have friends too in every town,
+Englishmen who love both England and Spain, Spaniards who love both
+Spain and England. We will put, if you permit, your agents in touch with
+my friends."
+
+"Yes," said Jos� Medina innocently. "How shall we do that? We must have
+lists prepared."
+
+Hillyard smiled gently.
+
+"That is not necessary, se�or. We know your agents already. If you will
+secretly inform them that those who speak in my name," and he took his
+card from the table, and gave it into Medina's hands, "are men to be
+trusted, it will be enough."
+
+Jos� Medina agreed.
+
+"I will give them instructions."
+
+"And yet another instruction if you will be so kind, to all your
+captains."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"That they shall report at the earliest possible moment to your nearest
+agent ashore, the position of any submarine they have seen."
+
+Jos� Medina assented once more.
+
+"But it will take a little time, se�or, for me to pass that instruction
+round. It shall go from captain to captain, but it will not be prudent
+to give it out more widely. A week or two--no more--and every captain in
+my fleet shall be informed. That is all?"
+
+Hillyard was already rising from his chair. He stood straight up.
+
+"All except that they will be forbidden too," he added with a smile,
+"to supply either food or drink or oil to any enemy vessel."
+
+Jos� Medina raised his hands in protest.
+
+"That order was given months ago. But it shall be repeated, and you can
+trust me, it shall be obeyed."
+
+The two men went to the door of the villa, and stood outside in the
+garden. It seemed the interview was over, and the agreement made. But
+indeed the interview as Hillyard had planned it had hardly begun. He had
+a series of promises which might be kept or broken, and the keeping or
+breaking of them could not be checked. Jos� Medina was very likely to be
+holding the common belief along that coast that Germany would surely win
+the war. He was in the perfect position to keep in with both sides were
+he so minded. It was not to content himself with general promises that
+Hillyard had brought the _Dragonfly_ to Palma.
+
+He turned suddenly towards Jos� Medina with a broad laugh, and clapped
+him heartily upon the back.
+
+"So you do not remember me, Se�or Jos�?"
+
+Medina was puzzled. He took a step nearer to Hillyard. Then he shook his
+head, and apologised with a smile.
+
+"I am to blame, se�or. As a rule, my memory is not at fault. But on this
+occasion--yes."
+
+Through the apology ran a wariness, some fear of a trick, some hint of
+an incredulity.
+
+"Yet we have met."
+
+"Se�or, it must be so."
+
+"Do you remember, Se�or Jos�, your first venture?" asked Hillyard.
+
+"Surely."
+
+"A single sailing-felucca beached at one o'clock in the morning on the
+flat sand close to Benicassim."
+
+Jos� Medina did not answer. But the doubt which his politeness could not
+quite keep out of his face was changing into perplexity. This history of
+his first cargo so far was true.
+
+"That was more than thirteen years ago," Hillyard continued. "Thirteen
+years last April."
+
+Jos� Medina nodded. Date, place, hour, all were correct. His eyes were
+fixed curiously upon his visitor, but there was no recognition in them.
+
+"There were two carts waiting, to carry the tobacco up to the hills."
+
+"Two?" Jos� Medina interrupted sharply. "Let me think! That first cargo!
+It is so long ago."
+
+Medina reflected carefully. Here was a detail of real importance which
+would put this Se�or Hillyard to the test--if only he could himself
+remember. It was his first venture, yes! But there had been so many like
+to it since. Still--the very first. He ought to remember that! And as he
+concentrated his thoughts the veil of the years was rent, and he saw, he
+saw quite clearly the white moonlit beach, the felucca with its mast
+bent like a sapling in a high wind, and the great yard of the sail
+athwart the beam of the boat, the black shadow of it upon the sand, and
+the carts--yes, the carts!
+
+"There were two carts," he agreed, and a change was just faintly audible
+in his voice--a change for which up till now Hillyard had listened with
+both his ears in vain. A ring of cordiality, a suggestion that the
+barriers of reserve were breaking down.
+
+"Yes, se�or, there were two carts."
+
+Medina was listening intently now. Would his visitor go on with the
+history of that night!
+
+And Hillyard did go on.
+
+"The tobacco barrels were packed very quickly into the carts, and the
+carts were driven up the beach and across the Royal road, and into a
+track which led back to the hills."
+
+Jos� Medina suddenly laughed. He could hear the groaning and creaking of
+those thin-wheeled springless carts which had carried all his fortunes
+on that night thirteen years ago, the noise of them vibrating for miles
+in the air of that still spring night! What terror they had caused him!
+How his heart had leaped when--and lo! Hillyard was carrying on the
+tale.
+
+"Two of the Guardia Civil stepped from behind a tree, arrested your
+carts, and told the drivers to turn back to the main road and the
+village."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You ran in front of the leading cart, and stood there blocking the way.
+The Guardia told you to move or he would fire. You stood your ground."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why the Guardia did not fire," continued Hillyard, "who shall say? But
+he did not."
+
+"No, he did not," Jos� Medina repeated with a smile. "Why? It was
+Fate--Fortune--what you will."
+
+"You sent every one aside, and remained alone with the guards--for a
+long time. Oh, for a long time! Then you called out, and your men came
+back, and found you alone with your horses and your carts. How you had
+persuaded the guards to leave you alone----"
+
+"Quien sabe?" said Medina, with a smile.
+
+"But you had persuaded them, even on that first venture. So," and now
+Hillyard smiled. "So we took your carts up in to the mountains."
+
+"We?" exclaimed Jos�. He took a step forward, and gazed keenly into
+Martin Hillyard's face. Hillyard nodded.
+
+"I was one of your companions on that first night venture of yours
+thirteen years ago."
+
+"_Claro!_ You were certainly there," returned Jos� Medina, and he was no
+longer speaking either with doubt or with the exaggerated politeness of
+a Spaniard towards a stranger. He was not even speaking as _caballero_
+to _caballero_ the relationship to which, in the beginning, Hillyard had
+most wisely invited him. He was speaking as associate to associate, as
+friendly man to friendly man. "On that night you were certainly with me!
+No, let me think! There were five men, yes, five and a boy from
+Valencia--Martin."
+
+He pronounced the word in the Spanish way as Marteen.
+
+"Who led the horse in the first cart," said Hillyard, and he pointed to
+his visiting card which Jos� Medina still held in his hand. Jos� Medina
+read it again.
+
+"Marteen Hillyard." He came close to Hillyard, and looked in his eyes,
+and at the shape of his features, and at the colour of his hair. "Yes,
+it is the little Marteen," he cried, "and now the little Marteen swings
+into Palma in his great steam yacht. Dios, what a change!"
+
+"And Jos� Medina owns two hundred motor-feluccas and employs eighteen
+thousand men," answered Hillyard.
+
+Jos� Medina held out his hand suddenly with a great burst of cordial,
+intimate laughter.
+
+"Yes, we were companions in those days. You helped me to drive my carts
+up into the mountains. Good!" He patted Hillyard on the shoulder. "That
+makes a difference, eh? Come, we will go in again. Now I shall help
+you."
+
+That reserve, that intense reserve of the Spaniard who so seldom admits
+another into real intimacy, and makes him acquainted with his private
+life, was down now. Hillyard had won. Jos� Medina's house and his
+chattels were in earnest at Martin Hillyard's disposal. The two men went
+back through the house into a veranda above the steep fall of garden and
+cliff, where there were chairs in which a man could sit at his ease.
+
+Jos� Medina fetched out a box of cigars.
+
+"You can trust these. They are good."
+
+"Who should know if you do not?" answered Hillyard as he took one; and
+again Jos� Medina patted him on the shoulder, but this time with a
+gurgle of delight.
+
+"_El peque�o_ Martin," he said, and he clapped his hands. From some
+recess of the house his wife appeared with a bottle of champagne and two
+glasses on a tray.
+
+"Now we will talk," said Jos� Medina, "or rather I will talk and you
+shall listen."
+
+Hillyard nodded his head, as he raised the glass to his lips.
+
+"I have learnt in the last years that it is better to listen than to
+talk," said he. "_Salut!_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+"TOUCHING THE MATTER OF THOSE SHIPS"
+
+
+It has been said that Hillyard joined a service with its traditions to
+create. Indeed, it had everything to create, its rules, its methods, its
+whole philosophy. And it had to do this quickly during the war, and just
+for the war; since after the war it would cease to be. Certain
+conclusions had now been forced by experience quite definitely on
+Hillyard's mind. Firstly, that the service must be executive. Its
+servants must take their responsibility and act if they were going to
+cope with the intrigues and manoeuvres of the Germans. There was no
+time for discussions with London, and London was overworked in any case.
+The Post Office, except on rare occasions, could not be used; telegrams,
+however ingenious the cipher, were dangerous; and even when London
+received them, it had not the knowledge of the sender on the spot,
+wherewith to fill them out. London, let it be admitted, or rather that
+one particular small section of London with which Hillyard dealt, was at
+one with Hillyard. Having chosen its men it trusted them, until such
+time as indiscretion or incapacity proved the trust misplaced; in which
+case the offender was brought politely home upon some excuse, cordially
+thanked, and with a friendly shake of the hand, shown the door.
+
+Hillyard's second conclusion was that of one hundred trails, ten at the
+most would lead to any result: but you must follow each one of the
+hundred up until you reach proof that you are in a blind alley.
+
+The third was the sound and simple doctrine that you can confidently
+look to Chance to bring you results, probably your very best results, if
+you are prepared and equipped to make all your profit out of chance the
+moment she leans your way. Chance is an elusive goddess, to be seized
+and held prisoner with a swift, firm hand. Then she'll serve you. But if
+the hand's not ready and the eye unexpectant, you'll see but the trail
+of her robe as she vanishes to offer her assistance to another more
+wakeful than yourself.
+
+In pursuit of this conviction, Hillyard steamed out of Palma Bay on the
+morning of the day after his interview with Jos� Medina, and crossing to
+the mainland cruised all the next night southwards. At six o'clock in
+the morning he was off a certain great high cape. The sea was smooth as
+glass. The day a riot of sunlight and summer, and the great headland
+with its high lighthouse thrust its huge brown knees into the water.
+
+The _Dragonfly_ slowed down and dawdled. Three men stood in the stern
+behind the white side-awning. Hillyard was on the bridge with his
+captain.
+
+"I don't really expect much," he said, seeking already to discount a
+possible disappointment. "It's only a possibility, I don't count on it."
+
+"Six o'clock off the cape," said the captain. "We are on time."
+
+"Yes."
+
+Both men searched the smooth sea for some long, sluggish, inexplicable
+wave which should break, or for a V-shaped ripple such as a fixed stake
+will make in a swiftly running stream.
+
+"Not a sign," said the captain, disconsolately.
+
+"No. Yet it is certainly true that the keeper of that lighthouse paid an
+amount equal to three years' salary into a bank three weeks ago. It is
+true that oil could be brought into that point, and stored there, and no
+one but the keeper be the wiser. And it is true that the _Acquitania_ is
+at this moment in this part of the Mediterranean steaming east for
+Salonika with six thousand men on board. Let's trail our coat a bit!"
+said Hillyard, and the captain with a laugh gave an order to the signal
+boy by his side.
+
+The boy ran aft and in a few seconds the red ensign fluttered up the
+flagstaff, and drooped in the still air. But even that provocation
+produced no result. For an hour and a half the _Dragonfly_ steamed
+backwards and forwards in front of the cape.
+
+"No good!" Hillyard at last admitted. "We'll get on to the
+_Acquitania_, and advise her. Meanwhile, captain, we had better make for
+Gibraltar and coal there."
+
+Hillyard went to the wireless-room, and the yacht was put about for the
+great scarped eastern face of the Rock.
+
+"One of the blind alleys," said Hillyard, as he ate his breakfast in the
+deck-saloon. "Next time perhaps we'll have better luck. Something'll
+turn up for sure."
+
+Something was always turning up in those days, and the yacht had not
+indeed got its coal on board in Gibraltar harbour when a message came
+which sent Hillyard in a rush by train through Madrid to Barcelona. He
+reached Barcelona at half past nine in the morning, took his breakfast
+by the window of the smaller dining-room in the hotel at the corner of
+the Plaza Catalu�a, and by eleven was seated in a flat in one of the
+neighbouring streets. The flat was occupied by Lopez Baeza who turned
+from the window to greet him.
+
+"I was not followed," said Hillyard as he put down his hat and stick.
+Habit had bred in him a vigilance, or rather an instinct which quickly
+made him aware of any who shadowed him.
+
+"No, that is true," said Baeza, who had been watching Hillyard's
+approach from the window.
+
+"But I should like to know who our young friend is on the kerb opposite,
+and why he is standing sentinel."
+
+Lopez Baeza laughed.
+
+"He is the sign and token of the commercial activity of Spain."
+
+From behind the curtains, stretched across the window, both now looked
+down into the street. A youth in a grey suit and a pair of
+orange-coloured buttoned boots loitered backwards and forwards over
+about six yards of footwalk; now he smoked a cigarette, now he leaned
+against a tree and idly surveyed the passers by. He apparently had
+nothing whatever to do. But he did not move outside the narrow limits of
+his promenade. Consequently he had something to do.
+
+"Yes," continued Baeza with a chuckle, "he is a proof of our initiative.
+I thought as you do three days ago. For it is just three days since he
+took his stand there. But he is not watching this flat. He is not
+concerned with us at all. He is an undertaker's tout. In the house
+opposite to us a woman is lying very ill. Our young friend is waiting
+for her to die, so that he may rush into the house, offer his
+condolences and present the undertaker's card."
+
+Hillyard left the youth to his gruesome sentry-go and turned back into
+the room. A man of fifty, with a tawny moustache, a long and rather
+narrow face and eyeglasses, was sitting at an office table with some
+papers in front of him.
+
+"How do you do, Fairbairn?" Hillyard asked.
+
+Fairbairn was a schoolmaster from the North of England, with a knowledge
+of the Spanish tongue, who had thrown up schoolmastering, prospects,
+everything, in October of 1914.
+
+"Touching the matter of those ships," said Hillyard, sitting down
+opposite to Fairbairn.
+
+Fairbairn grinned.
+
+"It worked very well," said he, "so far."
+
+Hillyard turned towards Lopez and invited him to a seat. "Let me hear
+everything," he said.
+
+Spanish ships were running to England with the products of Catalu�a and
+returning full of coal, and shipowners made their fortunes and wages ran
+high. But not all of them were content. Here and there the captains and
+the mates took with them in their cabin to England lists of questions
+thoughtfully compiled by German officers; and from what they saw in
+English harbours and on English seas and from what secret news was
+brought to them, they filled up answers to the questions and brought
+them back to the Germans in Spain. So much Hillyard already knew.
+
+"A pilot, Juan de Maestre, went on board the ships, collected the
+answers, made a report and took it up to the German headquarters here.
+That Ramon Castillo found out," said Fairbairn. "Steps were taken with
+the crew. The ships would be placed on the black list. There would be no
+coal for them. They must be laid up and the crews dismissed. The crew of
+the _Saragossa_ grasped the position, and the next time Juan de Maestre
+stepped on board he was invited to the forecastle, thumped, dropped
+overboard into the salubrious waters of the dock and left to swim
+ashore. Juan de Maestre has had enough. He won't go near the Germans any
+more. He is in a condition of extreme terror and neutrality. Oh, he's
+wonderfully neutral just now."
+
+"We might catch him perhaps on the rebound!" Hillyard suggested.
+
+"Lopez thinks so," said Fairbairn, with a nod towards Baeza.
+
+"I can find him this evening," Baeza remarked.
+
+The three men conferred for a little while, and as a consequence of that
+conference Lopez Baeza walked through the narrow streets of the old town
+to a caf� near the railway station. In a corner a small, wizened, square
+man was sitting over his beer, brooding unhappily. Baeza took a seat by
+his side and talked with Juan de Maestre. He went out after a few
+minutes and hired a motor-car from the stand in front of the station. In
+the car he drove to the park and went once round it. At a junction of
+two paths on the second round the car was stopped. A short, small man
+stepped out from the shadow of a great tree and swiftly stepped in.
+
+"Drive towards Tibidabo," Baeza directed the driver, and inside the
+dark, closed car Baeza and Juan de Maestre debated, the one persuading,
+the other refusing. It was long before any agreement was reached, but
+when Baeza, with the perspiration standing in beads upon his face,
+returned to his flat in the quiet, respectable street, he found Martin
+Hillyard and Fairbairn waiting for him anxiously.
+
+"_Hecho!_" he cried. "It is done! Juan de Maestre will continue to go on
+board the ships and collect the information and write it out for the
+Germans. But we shall receive an exact copy."
+
+"How?" asked Hillyard.
+
+"Ramon will meet a messenger from Juan. At eight in the morning of every
+second day Ramon is to be waiting at a spot which from time to time we
+will change. The first place will be the cinema opposite to the old Bull
+Ring."
+
+"Good," said Hillyard. "In a fortnight I will return."
+
+He departed once more for Gibraltar, cruised up the coast, left his
+yacht once more in the harbour of Tarragona and travelled by motor-car
+into Barcelona.
+
+Fairbairn and Lopez Baeza received him. It was night, and hot with a
+staleness of the air which was stifling. The windows all stood open in
+the quiet, dark street, but the blinds and curtains were closely drawn
+before the lamps were lit.
+
+"Now!" said Hillyard. "There are reports."
+
+Fairbairn nodded grimly as he went to the safe and unlocked it.
+
+"Pretty dangerous stuff," he answered.
+
+"Reliable?" asked Hillyard.
+
+Fairbairn returned with some sheets of blue-lined paper written over
+with purple ink, and some rough diagrams.
+
+"I am sure," he replied. "Not because I trust Juan de Maestre, but
+because he couldn't have invented the information. He hasn't the
+knowledge."
+
+Lopez Baeza agreed.
+
+"Juan de Maestre is keeping faith with us," he said shortly, and, to the
+judgment of Lopez Baeza, Hillyard had learnt to incline a ready ear.
+
+"This is the real thing, Hillyard," said Fairbairn, pulling at his
+moustache. "Look!"
+
+He handed to Martin a chart. The points of the compass were marked in a
+corner. Certain courses and routes were given, and fixed lights
+indicated by which the vessel might be guided. There was a number of
+patches as if to warn the navigator of shallows, and again a number of
+small black cubes and squares which seemed to declare the position of
+rocks. There was no rough work in this chart. It was elaborately and
+skilfully drawn, the work of an artist.
+
+"This is a copy made by me. Juan de Maestre left the original document
+with us for an hour," said Fairbairn, and he allowed Hillyard to
+speculate for a few seconds upon the whereabouts of that dangerous and
+reef-strewn sea. "It's not a chart of any bay or water at all. It's a
+plan of Cardiff by night for the guidance of German airships. Those
+patches are not shallows, but the loom in the sky of the furnaces. The
+black spots are the munition factories. Here are the docks," he pointed
+with the tip of his pencil. "The _Jesus-Maria_ brought that back a week
+ago. Let it get from here to Germany, as it will do, eh? and a Zeppelin
+coming across England on a favourable night could make things hum in
+Cardiff."
+
+Hillyard laid the sketch down and took another which Fairbairn held out
+to him.
+
+"Do you see this?" Fairbairn continued. "This gives the exact line of
+the nets between the English and the Irish coasts, and the exact points
+of latitude and longitude where they are broken for the passage of
+ships, and the exact number and armament of the trawlers which guard
+those points."
+
+Hillyard gazed closely at the chart. It gave the positions clearly
+enough, but it was a roughly-made affair, smudged with dingy fingers and
+uneven in its drawing. He laid it upon the table by the side of the map
+of Cardiff and compared one with the other.
+
+"This," he said, touching the roughly-drawn map of a section of the
+Channel, "this is the work of the ship's captain?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But what of this?" and Hillyard lifted again the elaborate chart of
+Cardiff by night. "Some other hand drew this."
+
+Fairbairn agreed.
+
+"Yes. Here is the report which goes with the charts. The chart of
+Cardiff was handed to the captain in an inn on shore. It came from an
+unknown person, who is mentioned as B.45."
+
+Hillyard seized upon the report and read it through, and then the others
+upon the top of that. Cloth, saddlery, equipment of various kinds were
+needed in England, and a great sea-borne trade had sprung up between the
+two countries, so that ships constantly went to and fro. In more than
+one of these reports the hieroglyph B.45 appeared. But never a hint
+which could lead to his detection--never anything personal, not a clue
+to his age, his business, his appearance, even his abode--nothing but
+this baffling symbol B.45.
+
+"You have cabled all this home, of course," Hillyard observed to
+Fairbairn.
+
+"Yes. They know nothing of the B.45. They are very anxious for any
+details."
+
+"He seems to be a sort of letter-box," said Hillyard, "a centre-point
+for the gathering in of information."
+
+Fairbairn shook his head.
+
+"He is more active than that," he returned, and he pointed to a passage
+here and there, which bore him out. It was the first time that Martin
+Hillyard had come across this symbol, and he was utterly at a loss to
+conjecture the kind of man the symbol hid. He might be quite obscure,
+the tenant of some suburban shop, or, again, quite prominent in the
+public eye, the owner of a fine house, and generous in charities; he
+might be of any nationality. But there he was, somewhere under the
+oak-trees of England, doing his secret, mean work for the ruin of the
+country. Hillyard dreamed that night of B.45. He saw him in his dreams,
+an elusive figure without a face, moving swiftly wherever people were
+gathered together, travelling in crowded trains, sitting at the
+dinner-tables of the great, lurking at the corners of poor tenements.
+Hillyard hunted him, saw him deftly pocket a letter which a passing
+stranger as deftly handed him, or exchange some whispered words with
+another who walked for a few paces without recognition by his side, but
+though he hurried round corners to get in front of him and snatch a
+glance at his face, he could never come up with him. He waked with the
+sunlight pouring in between the lattices of his shutters from the Plaza
+Catalu�a, tired and unrefreshed. B.45! B.45! He was like some figure
+from a child's story-book! Some figure made up of tins and sticks and
+endowed with malevolent life. B.45. London asked news of him, and he
+stalked through London. Where should Hillyard find his true image and
+counterpart?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is not the purpose of this narrative to describe how one Christobal
+Quesada, first mate of the steamship _Mondragon_, utterly overreached
+himself by sending in a report of a British hospital ship, sure to leave
+the harbour of Alexandria with gun-carriages upon her deck; how the
+report was proved to be a lie; how it was used as the excuse for the
+barbarous sinking of the great ships laden with wounded, and ablaze from
+stern to stern with green lights, the red cross glowing amidships like a
+wondrous jewel; how Christobal Quesada was removed from his ship in a
+French port, and after being duly arraigned for his life, met his death
+against a prison wall. Fairbairn wrote to Martin Hillyard:
+
+     "_The execution of Quesada has put an end to the whole
+     wicked question. So long as the offender was only put in
+     prison with the certainty of release at the end of the war,
+     whilst his family lived comfortably on German money, the
+     game went merrily on. But the return of the "Mondragon,"
+     minus her executed mate, has altered the whole position.
+     Juan de Maestre has nothing whatever to do nowadays._"
+
+Hillyard smiled with contentment. He could understand a German going to
+any lengths for Germany. He was prepared to do the same himself for his
+country. But when a neutral under the cloak of his neutrality meddles in
+this stupendous conflict for cash, for his thirty miserable pieces of
+silver, he could feel no inclination of mercy.
+
+"Let the neutrals keep out!" he murmured. "This is not their affair. Let
+them hold their tongues and go about their own business!"
+
+He received Fairbairn's letter in the beginning of the year 1916. He was
+still no nearer at that date to the discovery of B.45; nor were they any
+better informed in London. Hillyard could only wait upon Chance to slip
+a clue into his hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+IN A SLEEPING-CAR
+
+
+The night express from Paris to Narbonne and the Spanish frontier was
+due to leave the Quai d'Orsay station at ten. But three-quarters of an
+hour before that time the platform was already crowded, and many of the
+seats occupied. Hillyard walked down the steps a little before half-past
+nine with the latest of the evening papers in his hand.
+
+"You have engaged your seat, monsieur," the porter asked, who was
+carrying Hillyard's kit-bag.
+
+"Yes," said Martin absently. He was thinking that on the boulevards the
+newsboys might now be crying a later edition of the papers than that
+which he held, an edition with still more details. He saw them
+surrounded in the darkened street by quiet, anxious groups.
+
+"Will you give me your ticket, monsieur?" the porter continued, and as
+Hillyard looked at him vacantly, "the ticket for your seat."
+
+Hillyard roused himself.
+
+"I beg your pardon. I have a compartment in the sleeping-car, numbers
+eleven and twelve."
+
+Amongst many old principles of which Martin Hillyard had first learned
+the wisdom during these last years, none had sunk deeper than this--that
+the head of an organisation cannot do the work of any of its members and
+hope that the machine will run smoothly. His was the task of supervision
+and ultimate direction. He held himself at the beck and call of those
+who worked under him. He responded to their summons. And it was in
+response to a very urgent summons from Fairbairn that he had hurried the
+completion of certain arrangements with the French authorities in Paris
+and was now returning to the south! But he was going very reluctantly.
+
+It was July, 1916. The first battle of the Somme, launched some days
+past, was at its very climacteric. The casualties had been and were
+terrible. Even at this moment of night the fury of the attack was not
+relaxed. All through the day reports, exasperating in their brevity, had
+been streaming into Paris, and rumour, as of old, circled swift-winged
+above the city, making good or ill the deficiencies of the telegrams.
+One fact, however, had leaped to light, unassailably true. The
+Clayfords, stationed on the north of the line at Thiepval, had redeemed
+their name and added a new lustre to their erstwhile shining record. The
+devotion of the officers, the discipline of the men, had borne their
+fruits. At a most critical moment the Clayfords had been forced to
+change front against a flank attack, under a galling fire and in the
+very press of battle, and the long extended line had swung to its new
+position with the steadiness of veterans, and, having reached it, had
+stood fast. Hillyard rejoiced with a sincerity as deep as if he himself
+held his commission in that regiment. But the losses had been terrible;
+and Martin Hillyard was troubled to the roots of his heart by doubts
+whether Harry Luttrell were at this moment knowing the deep contentment
+that the fixed aim of his boyhood and youth had been fulfilled; or
+whether he was lying out on the dark ground beneath the stars unaware of
+it and indifferent. Hillyard nursed a hope that some blunder had been
+made, and that he would find his compartment occupied.
+
+The controller, in his brown uniform with the brass buttons and his
+peaked cap, stood at the steps of the car with the attendant.
+
+"Eleven and twelve," said Hillyard, handing to him his ticket.
+
+The attendant, a middle-aged, stout man with a black moustache and a
+greasy face, shot one keen glance from under the peak of his cap at the
+occupant of numbers 11 and 12, and then led the way along the corridor.
+
+The compartment was empty. Hillyard looked around it with a grudging
+eye.
+
+"I am near the middle of the coach here, I think," he said.
+
+"Yes, monsieur, quite in the middle."
+
+"That is well," answered Hillyard. "I am an invalid, and cannot sleep
+when there is much motion."
+
+He spoke irritably, with that tone of grievance peculiar to the man who
+thinks his health is much worse than it is.
+
+"Can I get coffee in the morning?" he asked.
+
+"At half-past six, monsieur. But you must get out of the train for it."
+
+Hillyard uttered an exclamation of disgust, and shrugged his shoulders.
+"What a country!" the gesture said as plainly as speech.
+
+"But it is the war, monsieur!" the attendant expostulated with
+indignation.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know! The war!" Hillyard retorted with ill-humour. "Do I
+want a bath? I cannot have it. It is the war. If a waiter is rude to me,
+it is the war. If my steak is over-cooked it is the war. The war! It is
+the excuse for everything."
+
+He told the porter to place his bag upon the upper berth, and, still
+grumbling, gave him some money. He turned sharply on the attendant, who
+was smiling in the doorway.
+
+"Ah, it seems to you funny that an invalid should be irritable, eh?" he
+cried. "I suppose it must be--damnably funny."
+
+"Monsieur, there are very many men who would like to-night to be
+invalids with a sleeping compartment to themselves," returned the
+attendant severely.
+
+"Well, I don't want to talk about it any more," said Hillyard roughly,
+and he shouldered his way out again on to the platform.
+
+The attendant followed him. The smile upon his face was sleeker than
+ever. He was very amused and contented with his passenger in the
+compartment numbers 11 and 12. He took the cap off his head and wiped
+the perspiration from his forehead.
+
+"Ouf! It is hot to-night." He looked after Hillyard with a chuckle, and
+remarked to the controller, "This is a customer who does not like his
+little comforts to be disarranged!"
+
+The controller nodded contemptuously.
+
+"They must travel--the English! The tourism--that is sacred, even if all
+Europe burns."
+
+Hillyard strolled towards the stairs, and as he drew near to them his
+eyes brightened. A man about six years older than himself, tall,
+broad-shouldered, slim of waist, with a short, fair moustache, was
+descending towards him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The war has killed many foolish legends, but none more foolish than the
+legend of the typical Frenchman, conceived as a short, rotund, explosive
+person, with a square, brown beard of curly baby-hair and a shiny silk
+hat with a flat brim. There have been too many young athletes of clean
+build on view whose nationality, language and the uniforms of
+powder-blue and khaki could alone decide. The more curious might,
+perhaps, if the youth were in mufti, cast a downward glance at the
+boots; but even boots were ceasing to be the sure tell-tale they once
+used to be. This man descending the stairs with a limp was the
+Commandant Marnier, of the 193rd Regiment, wounded in 1915, and now
+attached to the General Staff. He was in plain clothes; he was looking
+for Martin Hillyard, and no stranger but would have set him and the man
+for whom he was looking in the same category of races.
+
+The Commandant Marnier saw Martin Hillyard clearly enough long before he
+reached the foot of the stairs. But nevertheless he greeted him with an
+appearance of surprise.
+
+"But what luck!" he said aloud. "You leave by this train?"
+
+"Yes. It may be that I shall find health."
+
+"Yes, yes. So your friends will pray," returned the Commandant, falling
+into Hillyard's pace.
+
+"The telegram we sent for you----" Marnier began.
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"There is an answer already. Your friend is unhurt. I have brought you a
+copy. I thought that perhaps I might catch you before your train
+started."
+
+He gave the slip of typewritten message into Hillyard's hand.
+
+"That was most kind of you," said Hillyard. "You have removed a great
+anxiety. It would have been many days before I should have received this
+good news if you had not gone out of your way to hurry with it here."
+
+Hillyard was moved, partly by the message, partly by the consideration
+of Marnier, who now waved his thanks aside.
+
+"Bah! We may not say 'comrade' as often as the Boche, but perhaps we are
+it all the more. I will not come further with you towards your carriage,
+for I have still a few things to do."
+
+He shook Hillyard by the hand and departed. Hillyard turned from him
+towards his sleeping-car, but though his chief anxiety was dispelled,
+his reluctance to go was not. And he looked at the long, brightly-lit
+train which was to carry him from this busy and high-hearted city with a
+desire that it would start before its time, and leave him a derelict
+upon the platform. He could not bend his thoughts to the work which was
+at his hand. The sapphire waters of the South had quite lost their
+sparkle and enchantment. Here, here, was the place of life! The
+exhilaration of his task, its importance, the glow of thankfulness when
+some real advantage was won, a plot foiled, a scheme carried to
+success--these matters were all banished from his mind. Even the
+war-risk of it was forgotten. He thought with envy of the men in
+trenches. Yet the purpose of his yacht was long since known to the
+Germans; the danger of the torpedo was ever present on her voyages, and
+the certainty that if she were sunk, and he captured, any means would be
+taken to force him to speak before he was shot, was altogether beyond
+dispute. Even at this moment he carried hidden in a match-box a little
+phial, which never left him, to put the sure impediment between himself
+and a forced confession of his aims and knowledge. But he was not aware
+of it. How many times had he seen the red light at Europa Point on
+Gibraltar's edge change to white, sometimes against the scarlet bars of
+dawn, sometimes in the winter against a wall of black! But on the
+platform of the Quai d'Orsay station, in a bustle of soldiers going on
+short leave to their homes, and rattling with pannikins and
+iron-helmets, he could remember none of these consolations.
+
+He reached his carriage.
+
+"Messieurs les voyageurs, en route!" cried the controller.
+
+"What a crowd!" Hillyard grumbled. "Really, it almost disposes one to
+say that one will never travel again until this war is over."
+
+He walked along the corridor to his compartment and sat down as the
+train started with a jerk. The door stood open, and in a few minutes the
+attendant came to it.
+
+"Who is in the next compartment on the other side of the lavatory?"
+Hillyard asked.
+
+"A manufacturer of Perpignan and his wife."
+
+"Does he snore?" Hillyard asked. "If he snores I shall not sleep. It
+should be an offence against your bye-laws for a traveller to snore."
+
+He crossed one leg across his knee and unlaced his shoe.
+
+The attendant came into the room.
+
+"It is possible, monsieur, that I might hurry and fetch you your coffee
+in the morning," he said.
+
+"It is worth five francs to you if you do," replied Hillyard.
+
+"Then monsieur will not move from his compartment until luncheon. I will
+see to it. Monsieur will bolt his door, and in the morning I will knock
+when I bring the coffee."
+
+"Good," returned Hillyard ungraciously.
+
+The attendant retired, and Hillyard closed the door. But the ventilating
+lattice in the lower part of the door was open, and Hillyard could see
+the legs of the attendant. He was waiting outside--waiting for what?
+Hillyard smiled to himself and took down his bag from the upper berth.
+He had hardly opened it when the attendant knocked and entered.
+
+"You will not forget, monsieur, to bolt your door. In these days it is
+not wise to leave it on the latch."
+
+"I won't forget," Hillyard replied surlily, and once more the attendant
+retired; and again he stood outside the door. He did not move until the
+bolt was shot. The attendant seemed very pleased that this fool of a
+tourist who thought of nothing but his infirmities should safely bolt
+the door of the compartments numbers 11 and 12; and very pleased, too,
+to bring to this churlish, discontented traveller his coffee in the
+morning, so that he need not leave compartments numbers 11 and 12
+unguarded. Hillyard chuckled as the attendant moved away.
+
+"I am to be your watch-dog, am I? Your sentinel? Very well! Come, let me
+deserve your confidence, my friend."
+
+The train thundered out of the tunnel and through the suburbs of Paris.
+Hillyard drew a letter from Fairbairn out of his pocket and read it
+through.
+
+"Compartments numbers 11 and 12 on the night train from the Quai d'Orsay
+station to Cerb�re. Good!" murmured Hillyard. "Here I am in compartments
+numbers 11 and 12. Now we wait until the married couple from Perpignan
+and the attendant are comfortably asleep."
+
+He undressed and went to bed, but he did not sleep. He lay in the berth
+in the darkness, listening intently as the train rushed out of Paris
+across the plains of France. Once or twice, as the hours passed, he
+heard a stealthy footstep in the corridor outside, and once the faintest
+possible little click told that the latch of his door had been lifted to
+make sure that the bolt was still shot home in its socket. Hillyard
+smiled.
+
+"You are safe, my friend," he breathed the words towards the anxious one
+in the corridor. "No one can get in. The door is locked. The door of the
+dressing-room too. Sleep in your corner in peace."
+
+The train sped over a moonlit country, spacious, unhurt by war. It moved
+with a steady, rhythmical throb, like an accompaniment to a tune or a
+phrase, ever repeated and repeated Hillyard found himself fitting words
+to the pulsation of the wheels. "Berlin ... Berne ... Paris ... Cerb�re
+... Barcelona ... Madrid ... Aranjuez and the world"; and back again,
+reversing the order: "Madrid ... Barcelona ... Cerb�re ... Paris ...
+Berne ... Berlin."
+
+But the throb of the train set the interrogation at the end of the
+string of names. So that the sequence of them was like a question
+demanding confirmation....
+
+Towards three in the morning, when there was no movement in the corridor
+and the lights were blue and dim, Hillyard silently folded back his
+bedclothes and rose. In the darkness he groped gently for the door of
+the lavatory between his compartment and the compartment of the
+manufacturer of Perpignan. He found the handle, and pressed it down
+slowly; without a creak or a whine of the hinges the door swung open
+towards him. Through the clatter he could hear that the manufacturer of
+Perpignan was snoring. But Hillyard did not put his trust in snores. He
+crept with bare feet across the washing-room, and, easing over the
+handle of the further door, locked the manufacturer out. Again there had
+been no sound. He shut the door of his own compartment lest the swing of
+the train should set it banging and arouse the sleepers. Towards the
+corridor there was a window of painted glass, and through this window a
+pale, dim light filtered in. Hillyard noticed, for the first time, that
+a small diamond-shaped piece of the coloured glass was missing, at about
+the level of a man's head. It was advisable that Martin Hillyard should
+be quick--or he might find the tables turned. With his ears more than
+ever alert, he set up the steps for the upper berth, in the lavatory,
+and whilst he worked his eyes watched that little aperture at the level
+of a man's head, which once a diamond-shaped piece of coloured glass had
+closed....
+
+The door of the manufacturer was unlocked, the steps folded in their
+place, and Hillyard back again in his bed before two minutes had passed.
+And once more the throb of the train beat into a chain of towns which
+went backwards and forwards like a shuttle in his brain. But there was
+no note of interrogation now.
+
+"Berlin ... Berne ... Paris ... Cerb�re ... Barcelona ... Madrid ...
+Aranjuez and the world"; and with a thump the train set a firm full stop
+to the sequence. Across the broad plain, meadowland and plough,
+flower-garden and fruit the train thundered down to the Pyrenees. Paris
+was far away now, and the sense of desolation at quitting it quite gone
+from Hillyard's breast.
+
+"Berlin ... Berne ... Paris ... Cerb�re ... Barcelona ... Madrid."
+
+Here was one of the post-roads by which Germany reached the outer world.
+Others there were beyond doubt. Sweden and Rotterdam, Mexico and South
+America--but here was one, and to-morrow, nay, to-day, the communication
+would be cut, and Germany so much the poorer.
+
+The train steamed into Cerb�re at one o'clock of the afternoon.
+
+"Every one must descend here, monsieur, for the examination of luggage
+and passports," said the attendant.
+
+"But I am leaving France!" cried Hillyard. "I go on into Spain. Why
+should France, then, examine my luggage?"
+
+"It is the war, monsieur."
+
+Hillyard lifted up his hands in indignation too deep for words. He
+gathered together his bag and his coat and stick, handed them to a
+porter and descended. He passed into the waiting-room, and was directed
+by a soldier with a fixed bayonet to take his place in the queue of
+passengers. But he said quietly to the soldier:
+
+"I would like to see M. de Cassaud, the Commissaire of Police."
+
+Hillyard was led apart; his card was taken from him; he was ushered
+instantly into an office where an elderly French officer sat in mufti
+before a table. He shook Hillyard cordially by the hand.
+
+"You pass through? I myself hope to visit Barcelona again very soon.
+Jean, wait outside with monsieur's baggage," this to the porter who had
+pushed in behind Hillyard. M. de Cassaud rose and closed the door. He
+had looked at Hillyard's face and acted quickly.
+
+"It is something more than compliments you want from me, monsieur. Well,
+what can I do?"
+
+"The second sleeping-car, compartments numbers 11 and 12," said Hillyard
+urgently. "In the water-tank of the lavatory there is a little metal
+case with letters from Berlin for Barcelona and Madrid. But wait,
+monsieur!"
+
+M. de Cassaud was already at the door.
+
+"It is the attendant of the sleeping-car who hides them there. If he can
+be called into an office quietly on some matter of routine and held
+there whilst your search is made, then those in Madrid and Barcelona to
+whom these letters are addressed may never know they have been sent at
+all!"
+
+M. de Cassaud nodded and went out. Hillyard waited nervously in the
+little whitewashed room. It was impossible that the attendant should
+have taken fright and bolted. Even if he bolted, it would be impossible
+that he should escape across the frontier. It was impossible that he
+should recover the metal case from the water-tank, while the carriage
+stood openly at the platform of Cerb�re station. He would be certain to
+wait until it was shunted into the cleaning shed. But so many
+certainties had been disproved, so many possibilities had come to pass
+during the last two years, that Hillyard was sceptical to his
+finger-tips. M. de Cassaud was a long time away. Yes, certainly M. de
+Cassaud was a very long----and the door opened, and M. de Cassaud
+appeared.
+
+"He is giving an account of his blankets and his towels. There are two
+soldiers at the door. He is safe. Come!" said the Commissaire.
+
+They crossed the platform to the carriage, whilst Hillyard described the
+attendant's anxiety that he should bolt his door. "No doubt he gave the
+same advice to the manufacturer of Perpignan," Hillyard added.
+
+It was M. de Cassaud who arranged and mounted the steps in the tiny
+washing-room.
+
+"Look, monsieur," said Hillyard, and he pointed to the little aperture
+in the coloured glass of the window. "One can see from the corridor what
+is going on in this room. That is useful. If a traveller complains--bah,
+it is the war!" and Hillyard laughed.
+
+M. de Cassaud looked at the window.
+
+"Yes, that is ingenious," he said.
+
+He drained off the water, folded back his sleeve, and plunged his arm
+into the tank. Then he uttered a little cry. He drew up into the light
+an oblong metal can, like a sandwich-case, with the edges soldered
+together to make it water-tight. He slipped it into his pocket and
+turned again to the window. He looked at it again curiously.
+
+"Yes, that is ingenious," he said softly, like a man speaking to
+himself. Then he led the way back to his office, looking in at the
+guard-room on the platform to give an order on the way.
+
+The soldered edges of the case were quickly split asunder and a small
+package of letters written on very thin paper revealed.
+
+"You will let me take these on with me," pleaded Martin. "You shall have
+them again. But some of them may want a special treatment of which we
+have the secret."
+
+M. de Cassaud was doubtful about the propriety of such a procedure.
+
+"After all I found them," Martin urged.
+
+"It would be unusual," said M. de Cassaud. "The regulations, you
+know----"
+
+Martin Hillyard smiled.
+
+"The regulations, for you and me, my friend, are those we make
+ourselves."
+
+M. de Cassaud would admit nothing so outrageous to his trained and
+rather formal mind. But he made a list of these letters and of their
+addresses as though he was undecided. He had not finished when a
+sergeant entered and saluted. The attendant of the sleeping-car had been
+taken to the depot. He had been searched and a pistol had been found
+upon him. The sergeant laid a very small automatic Colt upon the table
+and retired. M. de Cassaud took up the little weapon and examined it.
+
+"Do you know these toys, Monsieur Hillyard?" he asked.
+
+"Yes. They are chiefly used against the mosquitoes."
+
+"Oh, they will kill at twenty-five paces," continued the Commissaire;
+and he looked quickly at Hillyard. "I will tell you something. You ran
+some risk last night when you explored that water-tank. Yes, indeed! It
+would have been so easy. The attendant had but to thrust the muzzle of
+this through the opening of the window, shoot you dead, raise an alarm
+that he had caught you hiding something, and there was he a hero and you
+a traitor. Yes, that is why I said to you the little opening in the
+window was ingenious! Ah, if he had caught you! Yes, if he had caught
+you!"
+
+Martin was quick to take advantage.
+
+"Then let me have those letters! I will keep my French colleagues
+informed of everything."
+
+"Very well," said M. de Cassaud, and he suddenly swept the letters
+across to Hillyard, who gathered them up hastily and buttoned them away
+in his pocket before de Cassaud could change his mind.
+
+"It is all very incorrect," said the Commissaire reproachfully.
+
+"Yes, but it is the war," replied Hillyard. "I have the authority of the
+attendant of the sleeping-car for saying so."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+TRICKS OF THE TRADE
+
+
+"Now!" said Hillyard.
+
+Fairbairn fetched a couple of white porcelain developing dishes to the
+table. Hillyard unlocked a drawer in his bureau. They were in the
+deck-saloon of the _Dragonfly_, steaming southwards from Valencia.
+Outside the open windows the brown hill-sides, the uplands of olive
+trees and the sun-flecked waves slipped by in a magical clear light; and
+the hiss of the beaded water against the ship's planks filled the cabin
+with a rustle as of silk. Hillyard drew a deep breath of excitement as
+he took out from the drawer the letters he had carried off from M. de
+Cassaud. He had travelled straight through Barcelona to Valencia with
+the letters in his pocket, picking up Fairbairn at the Estaci�n de
+Francia on the way, and now, in the sunlight and in the secrecy of the
+open sea, they were to appraise the value of their catch.
+
+They sat at the table and examined them, opening the envelopes with the
+skill and the care which experience had taught them. For, even though
+this post-road was henceforth closed it might possibly be worth while to
+send forward these letters. One or two were apparently family letters
+for German soldiers, interned at Pampluna; one or two were business
+communications from firms in Berlin to their agents in Spain; and these
+seemed genuine enough.
+
+"They may be of value to the War Trade Board," said Fairbairn; and he
+put them aside for dispatch to London. As he turned back Hillyard cried
+suddenly:
+
+"Here we are!"
+
+He had come to the last letter of the little heap. He was holding the
+envelope in front of him and he read out the address:
+
+     _"Mr. Jack Williams,_
+           _"Alfredo Menandez, 6,_
+                  _"Madrid."_
+
+Fairbairn started up, and tugging at his moustache, stared at the
+envelope over Hillyard's shoulder.
+
+"By Jove!" he said. "We may have got something."
+
+"Let us see!" returned Hillyard, and he opened the envelope.
+
+As he spread out the letter both men laughed. The date of the month had
+been corrected by the writer--thus:
+
+              8
+     "_July_ 27th, 1916."
+
+[Transcriber's note: The original text has a slash through the 7.]
+
+There was no doubt any longer in either of these two men's minds that
+hidden away under the commonplaces of a letter of affection was a
+message of grave importance.
+
+"They are full of clever tricks in Berlin," said Hillyard cheerfully. He
+could afford to contemplate that cleverness with complacency, for it was
+now to serve his ends.
+
+There was a German official of high importance living in the Calle
+Alfredo Menandez, although not at number 6 in that street. The street
+was a short one with very few numbers in it; and it had occurred to the
+German official to point out to the postman in that street that if
+letters came to English names in that street of which the owners could
+not be discovered, they were probably for the governess of his children,
+who had a number of English relations moving about Spain, and was
+accustomed to receive their letters for them, and in any case, five
+pesetas would be paid for each of them. Shortly after, letters had begun
+to arrive addressed to English nonexistent people in the quiet little
+Calle Alfredo Menandez, sometimes from Allied countries, sometimes from
+Holland, or from Port-Bou over against Cerb�re in Spain; and every one
+of these found its natural way to the house of the German official. The
+choice of English names had a certain small ingenuity in that, when
+passing through the censorship of Allied countries, they were a little
+more likely to be taken at their face value than letters addressed to
+foreigners.
+
+So far so good. But the German high official was a very busy person; and
+letters might find their way into his hands which were really intended
+for English persons and not for him at all. Accordingly, to make all
+clear, to warn him that here indeed was a letter deserving his kind
+attention, that little trifling alteration in the date was adopted; as
+though a man writing on the 28th had mislaid the calendar or newspaper
+and assigned the 27th to the day of writing, and afterwards had
+discovered his mistake. It was no wonder accordingly that hope ran high
+in both Fairbairn and Hillyard as they read through this letter;
+although, upon the face of it, it was nothing but a sentimental effusion
+from a sister to a brother.
+
+"We have got to clear all this nonsense away first," said Hillyard.
+
+Fairbairn took the letter, and placing it on one of the developing
+dishes, poured over it a liquid from a bottle.
+
+"That won't take very long," he said.
+
+Meanwhile Hillyard busied himself with the second of the two white
+porcelain dishes. He brought out a cruet stand from a cupboard at the
+side of the stove and filled the dish half full of vinegar. He added
+water until the liquid rose within half an inch of the rim, and rocked
+the dish that the dilution might be complete. Next he took a new
+copying-pencil from the pen-tray on his bureau and stripping the wood
+away with his knife, dropped the blue lead into the vinegar and water.
+This lead he carefully dissolved with the help of a glass pestle.
+
+"There! It's ready," he said.
+
+"I, too," added Fairbairn.
+
+He lifted out of the developing dish a wet sheet of writing paper which
+was absolutely blank. Not one drop of the black ink which had recorded
+those sentimental effusions remained. It was just a sheet of notepaper
+which had accidentally fallen into a basin of water.
+
+"That's all right," said Hillyard; and Fairbairn gently slid the sheet
+into the dish in front of Hillyard. And for a while nothing happened.
+
+"It's a clever trick, isn't it?" Hillyard used the words again, but now
+with a note of nervousness. "No unlikely paraphernalia needed. Just a
+copying pencil and some vinegar, which you can get anywhere. Yes, it's a
+clever trick!"
+
+"If it works," Fairbairn added bluntly.
+
+Both men watched the dish anxiously. The paper remained blank. The
+solution did not seem to work. It was the first time they had ever made
+use of it. The coast slid by unnoticed.
+
+"Lopez was certain," said Fairbairn, "quite certain that this was the
+developing formula."
+
+Hillyard nodded gloomily, but he did not remove his eyes from that
+irresponsive sheet.
+
+"There may be some other ingredient, something kept quite
+secret--something known only to one man or two."
+
+He sat down, hooking his chair with his foot nearer to the table.
+
+"We must wait."
+
+"That's all there is to be done," said Fairbairn, and they waited; and
+they waited. They had no idea, even if the formula should work, whether
+the writing would flash up suddenly like an over-exposed photographic
+plate, or emerge shyly and reluctantly letter by letter, word by word.
+Then, without a word spoken, Fairbairn's finger pointed. A brown stain
+showed on the whiteness of the paper--just a stroke. It was followed by
+a curve and another stroke. Hillyard swiftly turned the oblong
+developing dish so that the side of it, and not the end, was towards him
+now.
+
+"The writing is across the sheet," he said, and then with a cry, "Look!"
+
+A word was coming out clear, writing itself unmistakably in the middle
+of the line, at the bottom of the sheet--a signature. Zimmermann!
+
+"From the General Staff!" said Hillyard, in a whisper of excitement. "My
+word!" He looked at Fairbairn with an eager smile of gratitude. "It's
+your doing that we have got this--yours and Lopez Baeza's!"
+
+Miraculously the brown strokes and curves and dots and flourishes
+trooped out of nothing, and fell in like sections and platoons and
+companies with their due space between them, some quick and trim, some
+rather slovenly in their aspect, some loitering; but in the end the
+battalion of words stood to attention, dressed for inspection. The brown
+had turned black before Hillyard lifted the letter from the solution and
+spread it upon a sheet of blotting paper.
+
+"Now let us see!" and they read the letter through.
+
+One thousand pounds in English money were offered for reliable
+information as to the number of howitzers and tanks upon the British
+front.
+
+A second sum of a thousand pounds for reliable information as to the
+manufacture of howitzers and tanks in England.
+
+"So far, it's not very exciting," Hillyard remarked with disappointment,
+as he turned the leaf. But the letter progressed in interest.
+
+A third sum of a thousand pounds was offered for a list of the postal
+sections on the British front, with the name, initials and rank of a
+really good and reliable British soldier in each section who was
+prepared to receive and answer correspondence.
+
+Fairbairn chuckled and observed:
+
+"I think Herr Zimmermann might be provided with a number of such good
+and reliable soldiers selected by our General Staff," and he added with
+a truculent snort, "We could do with that sum of a thousand pounds here.
+You must put in a claim for it, Hillyard. Otherwise they'll snaffle it
+in London."
+
+Fairbairn, once a mild north-country schoolmaster, of correct
+phraseology and respectable demeanour, had, under the pressure of his
+service, developed like that white sheet of notepaper. He had suffered
+
+               "A sea-change
+     Into something rich and strange"
+
+and from a schoolmaster had become a buccaneer with a truculent manner
+and a mind of violence. London, under which name he classed all
+Government officials, offices, departments, and administrations,
+particularly roused his ire. London was ignorant, London was stupid,
+London was always doing him and the other buccaneers down, was always
+snaffling something which he ought to have. Fairbairn, uttering one
+snort of satisfaction, would have shot it with his Browning.
+
+"Get it off your chest, old man," said Hillyard soothingly, "and we'll
+go on with this letter. It looks to me as if----" He was glancing
+onwards and checked himself with an exclamation. His face became grave
+and set.
+
+"Listen to this," and he read aloud, translating as he went along.
+
+     "_Since the tubes have been successful in France, the device
+     should be extended to England. B45 is obviously suitable for
+     the work. A submarine will sink letters for the Embassy in
+     Madrid and a parcel of the tubes between the twenty-seventh
+     and the thirtieth of July, within Spanish territorial waters
+     off the Cabo de Cabron. A green light will be shown in three
+     short flashes from the sea and it should be answered from
+     the shore by a red and a white and two reds._"
+
+Hillyard leaned back in his chair.
+
+"B45," he cried in exasperation. "We get no nearer to him."
+
+"Wait a bit!" Fairbairn interposed. "We are a deal nearer to him through
+Zimmermann's very letter here. What are these tubes which have been so
+successful in France? Once we get hold of them and understand them and
+know what end they are to serve, we may get an idea of the kind of man
+obviously suitable for handling them."
+
+"Like B45," said Hillyard.
+
+"Yes! The search will be narrowed to one kind of man. Oh, we shall be
+much nearer, if only we get the tubes--if only the Germans in Madrid
+don't guess this letter's gone astray to us."
+
+Hillyard had reflected already upon that contingency.
+
+"But why should they? The sleeping-car man is held _incomunicado_. There
+is no reason why they should know anything about this letter at all, if
+we lay our plans carefully."
+
+He folded up the letter and locked it away in the drawer. He looked for
+a while out of the window of the saloon. The yacht had rounded the Cabo
+San Antonio. It was still the forenoon.
+
+"This is where Jos� Medina has got to come in," he declared. "You must
+go to Madrid, Fairbairn, and keep an eye on Mr. Jack Williams.
+Meanwhile, here Jos� Medina has got to come in."
+
+Fairbairn reluctantly agreed. He would much rather have stayed upon the
+coast and shared in the adventure, but it was obviously necessary that a
+keen watch should be kept in Madrid.
+
+"Very well," he said, "unless, of course, you would like to go to Madrid
+yourself."
+
+Hillyard laughed.
+
+"I think not, old man."
+
+He mounted the ladder to the bridge and gave the instructions to the
+Captain, and early that evening the _Dragonfly_ was piloted into the
+harbour of Alicante. Hillyard and Fairbairn went ashore. They had some
+hours to get through before they could take the journey they intended.
+They sauntered accordingly along the esplanade beneath the palm trees
+until they came to the Casino. Both were temporary members of that club,
+and they sat down upon the cane chairs on the broad side-walk. A
+military band was playing on the esplanade a little to their right, and
+in front of them a throng of visitors and townspeople strolled and sat
+in the evening air. Hillyard smiled as he watched the kaleidoscopic
+grouping and re-grouping of men and children and women. The revolutions
+of his life, a subject which in the press of other and urgent matters
+had fallen of late into the background of his thoughts, struck him again
+as wondrous and admirable. He began to laugh with enjoyment. He looked
+at Fairbairn. How dull in comparison the regular sequences of his
+career!
+
+"I wandered about here barefoot and penniless," he said, "not so very
+long ago. On this very pavement!" He struck it with his foot, commending
+to Fairbairn the amazing fact. "I have cleaned boots," and he called to
+a boy who was lying in wait with a boot-black's apparatus on his back
+for any dusty foot. "Chico, come and clean my shoes." He jested with the
+boy with the kindliness of a Spaniard, and gave him a shining peseta.
+Hillyard was revelling in the romance of his life under the spur of the
+excitement which the affair of the letter had fired in him. "Yes, I
+wandered here, passing up and down in front of this very Casino."
+
+And Fairbairn saw his face change and his eyes widen as though he
+recognised some one in the throng beneath the trees.
+
+"What is it?" Fairbairn asked, and for a little while Hillyard did not
+answer. His eyes were not following any movements under the trees. They
+saw no one present in Alicante that day. Slowly he turned to Fairbairn,
+and answered in voice of suspense:
+
+"Nothing! I was just remembering--and wondering!"
+
+He remained sunk in abstraction for a long time. "It can't be!" at grips
+with "If it could be!" and a rising inspiration that "It was!" A man had
+once tried him out with questions about Alicante, a man who was afraid
+lest he should have seen too much. But Hillyard had learnt to hold his
+tongue when he had only inspirations to go upon, and he disclosed
+nothing of this to Fairbairn.
+
+Later on, when darkness had fallen, the two men drove in a motor-car
+southwards round the bay and through a shallow valley to the fishing
+village of Torrevieja. When you came upon its broad beach of shingle and
+sand, with its black-tarred boats hauled up, and its market booths, you
+might dream that you had been transported to Broadstairs--except for one
+fact. The houses are built in a single story, since the village is
+afflicted with earthquakes. Two houses rise higher than the rest, the
+hotel and the Casino. In the Casino Hillyard found Jos� Medina's agent
+for those parts sitting over his great mug of beer; and they talked
+together quietly for a long while.
+
+Thus Martin Hillyard fared in those days. He played with life and death,
+enjoying vividly the one and ever on the brink of the other, but the
+deep, innermost realities of either had as yet touched him not at all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+ON A CAPE OF SPAIN
+
+
+The great cape thrusts its knees far out into the Mediterranean, and
+close down by the sea on the very point a lighthouse stands out from the
+green mass like a white pencil. South-westwards the land runs sharply
+back in heights of tangled undergrowths and trees, overhangs a wide bay
+and drops at the end of the bay to the mouth of a spacious, empty
+harbour. Eastwards the cape slopes inland at a gentler angle with an
+undercliff, a narrow plateau, and behind the plateau mountain walls. Two
+tiny fishing villages cluster a mile or two apart at the water's edge,
+and high up on the cape's flanks here and there a small rude settlement
+clings to the hillside. There are no roads to the cape. From the east
+you may ride a horse towards it, and lose your way. From the west you
+must approach by boat. So remote and unvisited is this region that the
+women in these high villages, their homes cut out of the actual brown
+rock, still cover their faces with the Moorish veil.
+
+There are no roads, but Jos� Medina was never deterred by the lack of
+roads. His business, indeed, was a shy one, and led him to prefer wild
+country. A high police official in one great town said of him:
+
+"For endurance and activity there is no one like Jos� Medina between the
+sea and the Pyrenees. You think him safe in Mallorca and look! He lands
+one morning from the steamer, jumps into a motor-car, and in five
+minutes--whish!--he is gone like the smoke of my cigarette. He will
+drive his car through our mountains by tracks, of which the guardia
+civil does not even know the existence."
+
+By devious tracks, then, now through narrow gullies in brown and barren
+mountains, now striking some village path amidst peach trees and
+marguerites, Jos� Medina drove Martin Hillyard down to the edge of the
+sea. Here amongst cactus bushes in flower, with turf for a carpet, a
+camp had been prepared near to one of the two tiny villages. Jos� Medina
+was king in this region. The party arrived in the afternoon of the
+twenty-sixth day of the month, all of the colour of saffron from the
+dust-clouds the car had raised, and Hillyard so stiff and bruised with
+the intolerable jolting over ruts baked to iron, that he could hardly
+climb down on to the ground. He slept that night amidst such a music of
+birds as he had never believed possible one country could produce.
+Through the night of the twenty-sixth he and Jos� Medina watched; their
+lanterns ready to their hands. Lights there were in plenty on the sea,
+but they were the lights of acetylene lamps used by the fishermen of
+those parts to attract the fish; and the morning broke with the
+lighthouse flashing wanly over a smooth sea, pale as fine jade.
+
+"There are three more nights," said Hillyard. He was a little dispirited
+after the fatigue of the day before and the long, empty vigil on the top
+of the day.
+
+The next watch brought no better fortune. There was no moon; the night
+was of a darkness so clear that the stars threw pale and tremulous paths
+over the surface of the water, and from far away the still air vibrated
+from time to time with the throbbing of propellers as the ships without
+lights passed along the coast.
+
+Hillyard rose from the blanket on which he and Jos� Medina had been
+lying during the night. It had been spread on a patch of turf in a break
+of the hill some hundreds of feet above the sea. He was cold. The
+blanket was drenched and the dew hung like a frost on bush and grass.
+
+"It looks as if they had found out," he said.
+
+"This is only the second night," said Jos� Medina.
+
+"It all means so much to me," replied Hillyard, shivering in the
+briskness of the morning.
+
+"Courage, the little Marteen!" cried Jos� Medina. "After breakfast and a
+few hours' sleep, we shall take a rosier view."
+
+Hillyard, however, could not compose himself to those few hours. The
+dread lest the Germans should have discovered the interception of their
+letters weighed too heavily upon him. Even in the daylight he needs
+must look out over that placid sunlit sea and imagine here and there
+upon its surface the low tower and grey turtle-back of a submarine.
+Success here might be so great a thing, so great a saving of lives, so
+dire a blow to the enemy. Somehow that day slowly dragged its burning
+hours to sunset, the coolness of the evening came, and the swift
+darkness upon its heels, and once more, high up on the hillside, the
+vigil was renewed. And at half-past one in the morning, far away at sea,
+a green light, bright as an emerald, flashed thrice and was gone.
+
+"Did I not say to you, 'Have courage'?" said Jos� Medina.
+
+"Quick! the Lanterns!" replied Hillyard. "The red first! Good! Now the
+white. So! And the red again. Now we must wait!" and he sank down again
+upon the blanket. All the impatience and languor were gone from him. The
+moment had come. He was at once steel to meet it.
+
+"Yes," said Jos� Medina, "we shall see nothing more now for a long
+while."
+
+They heard no sound in that still night; they saw no gleam of lights. It
+seemed to Hillyard that �ons passed before Jos� touched him on the elbow
+and pointed downwards.
+
+"Look!" he whispered excitedly.
+
+Right at their very feet the long, grim vessel lay, so near that
+Hillyard had the illusion he could pitch a stone on to the conning
+tower. He now held his breath, lest his breathing should be heard. Then
+the water splashed, and a moment afterwards the submarine turned and
+moved to sea. They gave it five minutes, and then climbed down to a tiny
+creek. A rowing-boat lay in readiness there, with one man at the tiller
+and two at the oars.
+
+"You saw it, Manuel?" said Medina as he and Hillyard stepped in.
+
+"Yes, Se�or Jos�. It was very close. Oh, they know these waters!"
+
+The oars churned the phosphorescent water into green fire, and the foam
+from the stem of the boat sparkled as though jewels were scattered into
+it by the oarsmen as they rowed. They stopped alongside a little white
+buoy which floated on the water. The buoy was attached to a rope; that
+again to a chain. A mat was folded over the side of the boat and the
+chain drawn cautiously in and coiled without noise. Hillyard saw the two
+men who were hauling it in bend suddenly at their work and heave with a
+greater effort.
+
+"It is coming," said one of them, and the man at the tiller went forward
+to help them. Hillyard leaned over the side of the heavy boat and stared
+down into the water. But the night was too dark for him to see anything
+but the swirl of green fire made by the movement of the chain and the
+fire-drops falling from the links. At last something heavy knocked
+against the boat's flanks.
+
+"Once more," whispered the man from the tiller. "Now!"
+
+And the load was perched upon the gunwale and lowered into the boat. It
+consisted of three square and bulky metal cases, bound together by the
+chain.
+
+"We have it, my friend Marteen," whispered Jos� Medina, with a laugh of
+sheer excitement. He was indeed hardly less stirred than Hillyard
+himself. "Not for nothing did the little Marteen lead the horse across
+the beach of Benicassim. Now we will row back quickly. We must be far
+away from here by the time the world is stirring."
+
+The boatmen bent to their oars with a will, and the boat leaped upon the
+water. They had rowed for fifty yards when suddenly far away a cannon
+boomed. The crew stopped, and every one in the boat strained his eyes
+seawards. Some one whispered, and Hillyard held up his hand for silence.
+Thus they sat immobile as figures of wax for the space of ten minutes.
+Then Hillyard relaxed from his attention.
+
+"They must have got her plump with the first shot," he said; and,
+indeed, there was no other explanation for that boom of a solitary
+cannon across the midnight sea.
+
+Jos� Medina laughed.
+
+"So the little Marteen had made his arrangements?"
+
+"What else am I here for?" retorted the little Marteen, and though he
+too laughed, a thrill of triumph ran through the laugh. "It just needed
+that shot to round all off. I was so afraid that we should not hear it,
+that it might never be fired. Now it will never be known, if your men
+keep silent, whether they sunk their cargo or were sunk with it on
+board."
+
+The crew once more drove the blades of their oars through the water, and
+did not slacken till the shore was reached. They clambered up the rocks
+to their camp bearing their treasure, and up from the camp again to the
+spot where Jos�'s motor-car was hidden. Jos� talked to the boatmen while
+the cans were stowed away in the bottom of the car, and then turned to
+Hillyard.
+
+"There will be no sign of our camp at daybreak. The tent will be
+gone--everything. If our luck holds--and why should it not?--no one need
+ever know that the Se�or Marteen and his friend Jos� Medina picnicked
+for three days upon that cape."
+
+"But the lighthouse-keepers! What of them?" objected Hillyard. In him,
+too, hope and excitement were leaping high. But this objection he
+offered up on the altars of the gods who chastise men for the insolence
+of triumph.
+
+"What of them?" Jos� Medina repeated gaily. "They, too, are my friends
+this many a year." He seated himself at the wheel of the car. "Come, for
+we cannot drive fast amongst these hills in the dark."
+
+Hillyard will never forget to the day of his death that wild passage
+through the mountains. Now it was some sudden twist to avoid a
+precipice, now a jerk and a halt whilst Jos� stared into the darkness
+ahead of him; here the car jolted suddenly over great stones, then it
+sank to the axle in soft dust; at another place the bushes whipped their
+faces; and again they must descend and build a little bridge of boughs
+and undergrowth over a rivulet. But so high an elation possessed him
+that he was unconscious both of the peril and the bruises. He could have
+sung aloud. They stopped an hour after daybreak and breakfasted by the
+side of the car in a high country of wild flowers. The sun was hidden
+from them by a barrier of hills.
+
+"We shall strike an old mine-road in half an hour," said Jos� Medina,
+"and make good going."
+
+They came into a district of grey, weathered rock, and, making a wide
+circuit all that day, crept towards nightfall down to the road between
+Aguilas and Cartagena; and once more the sea lay before them.
+
+"We are a little early," said Medina. "We will wait here until it is
+dark. The carabineros are not at all well disposed to me, and there are
+a number of them patrolling the road."
+
+They were above the road and hidden from it by a hedge of thick bushes.
+Between the leaves Hillyard could see a large felucca moving westwards
+some miles from the shore and a long way off on the road below two tiny
+specks. The specks grew larger and became two men on horses. They became
+larger still, and in the failing light Hillyard was just able to
+distinguish that they wore the grey uniform of the Guardia Civil.
+
+"Let us pray," said Medina with a note of anxiety in his voice, "that
+they do not become curious about our fishing-boat out there!"
+
+As he spoke the two horsemen halted, and did look out to sea. They
+conversed each with the other.
+
+"If I were near enough to hear them!" said Jos� Medina, and he suddenly
+turned in alarm upon Hillyard. "What are you doing?" he said.
+
+Hillyard had taken a large.38 Colt automatic pistol from his pocket. His
+face was drawn and white and very set.
+
+"I am doing nothing--for the moment," he answered. "But those two men
+must ride on before it is dark and too late for me to see them."
+
+"But they are of the Guardia Civil," Jos� Medina expostulated in awed
+tones.
+
+To the Spaniard, the mere name of the Guardia Civil, so great is its
+prestige, and so competent its personnel, inspires respect.
+
+"I don't care," answered Hillyard savagely. "In this war why should two
+men on a road count at all? Let them go on, and nothing will happen."
+
+Jos� Medina, who had been assuming the part of protector and adviser to
+his young English friend, had now the surprise of his life. He found
+himself suddenly relegated to the second place and by nothing but sheer
+force of character. Hillyard rested the point of his elbow on the earth
+and supported the barrel of his Colt upon his left forearm. He aimed
+carefully along the sights.
+
+"Let them go on!" he said between his teeth. "I will give them until the
+last moment--until the darkness begins to hide them. But not a moment
+longer. I am not here, my friend, for my health. I am here because there
+is a war."
+
+"The little Marteen" was singularly unapparent at this moment. Here was
+just the ordinary appalling Englishman who had not the imagination to
+understand what a desperately heinous crime it would be to kill two of
+the Guardia Civil, who was simply going to do it the moment it became
+necessary, and would not lose one minute of his sleep until his dying
+day because he had done it. Jos� Medina was completely at a loss as he
+looked into the grim indifferent face of his companion. The two horsemen
+were covered. The Colt would kill at more than five hundred yards, and
+it had no more to do than carry sixty. And still those two fools sat on
+their horses, and babbled to one another, and looked out to sea.
+
+"What am I to do with this loco Ingl�s?" Jos� Medina speculated,
+wringing his hands in an agony of apprehension. He had no share in those
+memories which at this moment invaded Martin Hillyard, and touched every
+fibre of his soul. Martin Hillyard, though his eye never left the sights
+of his Colt nor his mind wavered from his purpose, was with a
+subordinate consciousness stealing in the dark night up the footpath
+between the big, leafy trees over the rustic railway bridge to the
+summit of the hill. He was tramping once more through lanes, between
+fields, and stood again upon a hillock of Peckham Rye, and saw the
+morning break in beauty and in wonder over London. The vision gained
+from the foolish and romantic days of his boyhood, steadied his finger
+upon the trigger after all these years.
+
+Then to Jos�'s infinite relief the two horsemen rode on. The long,
+black, shining barrel of the Colt followed them as they dwindled on the
+road. They turned a corner, and as Hillyard replaced his pistol in his
+pocket, Jos� Medina rolled over on his back, and clapped his hands to
+his face.
+
+"You might have missed," he gasped. "One of them at all events."
+
+Hillyard turned to him with a grin. The savage was not yet exorcised.
+
+"Why?" he asked. "Why should I have missed one of them? It was my
+business not to."
+
+Jos� Medina flung up his hands.
+
+"I will not argue with you. We are not made of the same earth."
+
+Hillyard's face changed to gentleness.
+
+"Pretty nearly, my friend," he said, and he laid a hand on Jos� Medina's
+shoulder. "For we are good friends--such good friends that I do not
+scruple to drag you into the same perils as myself."
+
+Hillyard had not wasted his time during those three years when he loafed
+and worked about the quays of Southern Spain. He touched the right chord
+now with an unerring skill. Hillyard might be the mad Englishman, the
+loco Ingl�s! But to be reckoned by one of them as one of them--here was
+an insidious flattery which no one of Jos� Medina's upbringing could
+possibly resist.
+
+At nightfall they drove down across the road on to the beach. A
+rowing-boat was waiting, and Medina's manager from Alicante beside the
+boat on the sand. The cases were quickly transferred from the car to the
+boat.
+
+"We will take charge of the car," said Jos� to his manager, and he
+stepped into the boat, and sat down beside Hillyard. "This is my
+adventure. I see it through to the end," he explained.
+
+A mile away the felucca picked them up. Hillyard rolled himself up in a
+rug in the bows of the boat. He looked up to the stars tramping the sky
+above his head.
+
+     "And gentlemen in England now a-bed."
+
+Drowsily he muttered the immemorial line, and turning on his side slept
+as only the tired men who know they have done their work can sleep. He
+was roused in broad daylight. The felucca was lying motionless upon the
+water; no land was anywhere in sight; but above the felucca towered the
+tall side of the steam yacht _Dragonfly_.
+
+Fairbairn was waiting at the head of the ladder. The cases were carried
+into the saloon and opened. The top cases were full of documents and
+letters, some private, most of them political.
+
+"These are for the pundits," said Hillyard. He put them back again, and
+turned to the last case. In them were a number of small glass tubes,
+neatly packed in cardboard boxes with compartments lined with cotton
+wool.
+
+"This is our affair, Fairbairn," he said. He took one out, and a look of
+perplexity crept over his face. The tube was empty. He tried another and
+another, and then another; every one of the tubes was empty.
+
+"Now what in the world do you make of that?" he asked.
+
+The tubes had yet to be filled and there was no hint of what they were
+to be filled with.
+
+"What I am wondering about is why they troubled to send the tubes at
+all?" said Fairbairn slowly. "There's some reason, of course, something
+perhaps in the make of the glass."
+
+He held one of the tubes up to the light. There was nothing to
+distinguish it from any one of the tubes in which small tabloids are
+sold by chemists.
+
+Hillyard got out of his bureau the letter in which these tubes were
+mentioned.
+
+"'They have been successful in France,'" he said, quoting from the
+letter. "The scientists may be able to make something of them in Paris.
+This letter and the tubes together may give a clue. I think that I had
+better take one of the boxes to Paris."
+
+"Yes," said Fairbairn gloomily. "But----" and he shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"But it's one of the ninety per cent, which go wrong, eh?" Hillyard
+finished the sentence with bitterness. Disappointment was heavy upon
+both men. Hillyard, too, was tired by the tension of these last
+sleepless days. He had not understood how much he had counted upon
+success.
+
+"Yes, it's damnably disheartening," he cried. "I thought these tubes
+might lead us pretty straight to B45."
+
+"B45!"
+
+The exclamation came from Jos� Medina, who was leaning against the
+doorpost of the saloon, half in the room, half out on the sunlit deck.
+He had placed himself tactfully aloof. The examination of the cases was
+none of his business. Now, however, his face lit up.
+
+"B45." He shut the door and took a seat at the table. "I can tell you
+about B45."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE USES OF SCIENCE
+
+
+It was Hillyard's creed that chance will serve a man very capably, if he
+is equipped to take advantage of its help; and here was an instance. The
+preparation had begun on the morning when Hillyard took the _Dragonfly_
+into the harbour of Palma. Chance had offered her assistance some months
+later in an hotel at Madrid; as Medina was now to explain.
+
+"The day after you left Mallorca," said Jos� Medina, "it was known all
+over Palma that you had come to visit me."
+
+"Of course," answered Martin.
+
+"I was in consequence approached almost immediately, by the other side."
+
+"I expected that. It was only natural."
+
+"There is a young lady in Madrid," continued Jos� Medina.
+
+"Carolina Muller?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Rosa Hahn, then."
+
+"Yes," said Jos� Medina.
+
+Jos� rose and unlocking a drawer in his bureau took out from it a sheaf
+of photographs. He selected one and handed it with a smile to Hillyard.
+It was the portrait of a good-looking girl, tall, dark, and intelligent,
+but heavy about the feet, dressed in Moorish robes, and extended on a
+divan in Oriental indolence against a scene cloth which outdid the
+luxuries of Llalla Rookh.
+
+"That's the lady, I think."
+
+Medina gazed at the picture with delight. He touched his lips with his
+fingers, and threw a kiss to it. His sharp, sallow face suddenly
+flowered into smiles.
+
+"Yes. What a woman! She has real intelligence," he exclaimed fervently.
+
+Jos� Medina was in the habit of losing his heart and keeping his head a
+good many times in an ordinary year.
+
+"It's an extraordinary thing," Martin Hillyard remarked, "that however
+intelligent they are, not one of these young ladies can resist the
+temptation to have her portrait taken in Moorish dress at the
+photographer's in the Alhambra."
+
+Jos� Medina saw nothing at all grotesque or ridiculous in this
+particular foible.
+
+"They make such charming pictures," he cried.
+
+"And it is very useful for us, too," remarked Hillyard. "The
+photographer is a friend of mine."
+
+Jos� was still gazing at the photograph.
+
+"Such a brain, my friend! She never told a story the second time
+differently, however emotional the moment. She never gave away a
+secret."
+
+"She probably didn't know any," said Hillyard.
+
+But Jos� would not hear of such a reason.
+
+"Oh, yes! She has great influence. She knows people in Berlin--great
+people. She is their friend, and I cannot wonder. What an intelligence!"
+
+Martin Hillyard laughed.
+
+"She seems to have fairly put it over you at any rate," he said. He was
+not alarmed at Jos� Medina's fervour. For he knew that remarkable man's
+capacity for holding his tongue even in the wildest moments of his
+temporary passions. But he took the photograph away from Medina and
+locked it up again. The rapturous reminiscences of Rosa Hahn's
+intelligence checked the flow of that story which was to lead him to
+B45.
+
+"So you know about her?" Jos� said with an envious eye upon the locked
+drawer.
+
+"A little," said Martin Hillyard.
+
+Rosa Hahn was a clerk in the office of the Hamburg-Amerika Line before
+the war, and in the Spanish Department. She was sent to Spain in the
+last days of July, 1914, upon Government work, and at a considerable
+salary, which she enjoyed. She seemed indeed to have done little else,
+and Berlin, after a year, began to complain. Berlin had a lower opinion
+of both her social position and her brains than Jos� Medina had formed.
+Berlin needed results, and failing to obtain them, proceeded to hint
+more and more definitely that Rosa had better return to her clerk's
+stool in Hamburg. Rosa, however, had been intelligent enough to make
+friends with one or two powerful Germans in Spain; and they pleaded for
+her with this much success. She was given another three months within
+which period she must really do something to justify her salary. So much
+Martin Hillyard already knew; he learnt now that Jos� Medina had
+provided the great opportunity. To snatch him with his two hundred motor
+feluccas and his eighteen thousand men from the English--here was
+something really worth doing.
+
+"What beats me," said Hillyard, "is why they didn't try to get at you
+before."
+
+"They didn't," said Medina.
+
+Rosa, it seemed, used the argument which is generally sound; that the
+old and simple tricks are the tricks which win. She discovered the hotel
+at which Jos� Medina stayed in Madrid, and having discovered it she went
+to stay there herself. She took pains to become friendly with the
+manager and his staff, and by professing curiosity and interest in the
+famous personage, she made sure not only that she would have
+fore-warning of his arrival, but that Jos� Medina himself would hear of
+a charming young lady to whom he appealed as a hero of romance. She knew
+Jos� to be of a coming-on disposition--and the rest seemed easy. Only,
+she had not guarded against the workings of Chance.
+
+The hotel was the Hotel de Napoli, not one of the modern palaces of
+cement and steel girders, built close to the Prado, but an old house
+near the Puerto del Sol, a place of lath and plaster walls and thin
+doors; so that you must not raise your voice unless you wish your
+affairs to become public property. To this house Jos� Medina came as he
+had many times come before, and Chance willed that he should occupy the
+next room to that occupied by Rosa Hahn. It was the merest accident. It
+was the merest accident, too, that Jos� Medina whilst he was unpacking
+his bag heard his name pronounced in the next room. Jos� Medina, with
+all his qualities, was of the peasant class with much of the peasant
+mind. He was inquisitive, and he was suspicious. Let it be said in his
+defence that he had enemies enough ready to pull him down, not only, as
+we have seen, amongst his rivals on the coast, but here, amongst the
+Government officials of Madrid. It cost him a pretty penny annually to
+keep his balance on the tight-rope, as it was. He stepped noiselessly
+over to the door and listened. The voices were speaking in Spanish, one
+a woman's voice with a guttural accent.
+
+"Rosa Hahn," said Hillyard as the story was told to him in the cabin of
+the yacht.
+
+"The other a man's voice. But again it was a foreign voice, not a
+Spaniard's. But I could not distinguish the accent."
+
+"Greek, do you think?" asked Hillyard. "There is a Levantine Greek high
+up in the councils of the Germans."
+
+Jos� Medina, however, did not know.
+
+"Here were two foreigners talking about me, and fortunately in Spanish.
+I was to arrive immediately; Rosa was to make my acquaintance. What my
+relations were with this man, Hillyard--yes, you came into the
+conversation, my friend, too--I was quickly to be persuaded to tell.
+Oh--you have a saying--everything in your melon patch was lovely."
+
+"Not for nothing has the American tourist come to Spain," Hillyard
+murmured.
+
+"Then their voices dropped a little, and your B45 was mentioned--once or
+twice. And a name in connection with B45 once or twice. I did not
+understand what it was all about."
+
+"But you remember the name!" Fairbairn exclaimed eagerly.
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Well, what was it?"
+
+It was again Fairbairn who spoke. Hillyard had not moved, nor did he
+even look up.
+
+"It was Mario Escobar," said Jos� Medina; and as he spoke he knew that
+the utterance of the name awakened no surprise in Martin Hillyard.
+Hillyard filled his pipe from the tobacco tin, and lighted it before he
+spoke.
+
+"Do you know anything of this Mario Escobar?" he asked, "you who know
+every one?"
+
+Jos� Medina shrugged his shoulders, and threw up his hands.
+
+"There was some years ago a Mario Escobar at Alicante," and Jos� Medina
+saw Hillyard's eyes open and fix themselves upon him with an unblinking
+steadiness. Just so Jos� Medina imagined might some savage animal in a
+jungle survey the man who had stumbled upon his lair.
+
+"That Mario Escobar, a penniless, shameless person, was in business with
+a German, the German Vice-Consul. He went from Alicante to London."
+
+"Thank you," said Hillyard. He rose from his chair and went to the
+window. But he saw nothing of the deck outside, or the sea beyond. He
+saw a man at a supper party in London a year before the war began,
+betraying himself by foolish insistent questions uttered in fear lest
+his close intimacy with Germans in Alicante should be known.
+
+"I have no doubt that Mario Escobar came definitely to England, long
+before the war, to spy," said Hillyard gravely. He returned to the
+table, and took up again one of the empty glass tubes.
+
+"I wonder what he was to do with these."
+
+Jos� Medina had opened the door of the saloon once more. A beam of
+sunlight shot through the doorway, and enveloped Hillyard's arm and
+hand. The tiny slim phial glittered like silver; and to all of them in
+the cabin it became a sinister engine of destruction.
+
+"That, as you say, is your affair. I must go," said Jos�, and he shook
+hands with Hillyard and Fairbairn, and went out on to the deck. "_Hasta
+luego!_"
+
+"_Hasta ahora!_" returned Hillyard; and Jos� Medina walked down the
+steps of the ladder to his felucca. The blue sea widened between the two
+vessels; and in a week, Hillyard descended from a train on to the
+platform of the Quai D'Orsay station in Paris. He had the tubes in his
+luggage, and one box of them he took that morning to Commandant Marnier
+at his office on the left bank of the river with the letter which gave
+warning of their arrival.
+
+"You see what the letter says," Hillyard explained. "These tubes have
+been very successful in France."
+
+Marnier nodded his head:
+
+"If you will leave them with me, I will show them to our chemists, and
+perhaps, in a few days, I will have news for you."
+
+For a week Hillyard took his ease in Paris and was glad of the rest in
+the midst of those strenuous days. He received one morning at his hotel,
+a batch of letters, many of which had been written months before. But
+two were of recent date. Henry Luttrell wrote to him:
+
+     "_My battalion did splendidly and our debt to old Oakley is
+     great. There is only a handful of us left and we are
+     withdrawn, of course, from the lines. By some miracle I
+     escaped without a hurt. Everybody has been very generous,
+     making it up to us for our bad times. The Corps Commander
+     came and threw bouquets in person, and we hear that D.H.
+     himself is going out of his way to come and inspect us. I go
+     home on leave in a fortnight and hope to come back in
+     command of the battalion. Perhaps we may meet in London. Let
+     me hear if that is possible._"
+
+The second letter had been sent from Rackham Park, and in it Millie
+Splay wrote:
+
+     "_We have not heard from you for years. Will you be in
+     England this August? We are trying to gather again our old
+     Goodwood party. Both Dennis Brown and Harold Jupp will be
+     home on leave. There will be no Goodwood of course, but
+     there is a meeting at Gatwick which is easily reached from
+     here. Do come if you can and bring your friend with you, if
+     he is in London and has nothing better to do. We have all
+     been reading about him in the papers, and Chichester is very
+     proud of belonging to the same mess, and says what a
+     wonderful thing it must be to be able to get into the papers
+     like that, without trying to._"
+
+Hillyard could see the smile upon Lady Splay's face as she wrote that
+sentence. Hillyard laughed as he read it but it was less in amusement as
+from pleasure at the particular information which this sentence
+contained. Harry Luttrell had clearly won a special distinction in the
+hard fighting at Thiepval. There was not a word in Harry's letter to
+suggest it. There would not be. All his pride and joy would be engrossed
+by the great fact that his battalion had increased its good name.
+
+There was a closing sentence in Millie Splay's letter which brought
+another smile to his lips.
+
+     "_Linda Spavinsky is, alas, going as strong as ever. She was
+     married last week, in violet, as you will remember, to the
+     Funeral March of a Marionette and already she is in the
+     throes of domestic unhappiness. Her husband, fleshy, of
+     course, red in the face, and accustomed to sleep after
+     dinner, simply_ WON'T _understand her._"
+
+Here again Hillyard was able to see the smile on Millicent Splay's face,
+but it was a smile rather rueful and it ended, no doubt, in a sigh of
+annoyance. Hillyard himself was caught away to quite another scene. He
+was once more in the small motor-car on the top of Duncton Hill, and
+looked out over the Weald of Sussex to the Blackdown and Hindhead, and
+the slopes of Leith Hill, imagined rather than seen, in the summer haze.
+He saw Joan Whitworth's rapt face, and heard her eager cry.
+
+"Look out over the Weald of Sussex, so that you can carry it away with
+you in your breast. Isn't it worth everything--banishment,
+suffering--everything? Not the people so much, but the earth itself and
+the jolly homes upon it!"
+
+A passage followed which disturbed him:
+
+     "_There are other things too. My magnolia is still in bud. I
+     dread a blight before the flower opens._"
+
+It was a cry of distress--nothing less than that--uttered in some moment
+of intense depression. Else it would never have been allowed to escape
+at all.
+
+Hillyard folded up the letter. He would be going home in any case. There
+were those tubes. There was B45. He had enjoyed no leave since he had
+left England. Yes, he would go down to Rackham Park, and take Harry
+Luttrell with him if he could.
+
+Two days later the Commandant Marnier came to see him at the Ritz Hotel.
+They dined together in a corner of the restaurant.
+
+"We have solved the problem of those tubes," said Marnier. "They are
+nothing more nor less than time-fuses."
+
+"Time-fuses!" Hillyard repeated. "I don't understand."
+
+"Listen!"
+
+Marnier looked around. There was no one near enough to overhear him, if
+he did not raise his voice; and he was careful to speak in a whisper.
+
+"Two things." He ticked them off upon his fingers. "First, hydrofluoric
+acid when brought into contact with certain forms of explosive will
+create a fire. Second, hydrofluoric acid will bite its way through
+glass. The thicker the glass, the longer the time required to set the
+acid free. Do you follow?"
+
+"Yes," said Hillyard.
+
+"Good! Make a glass tube of such thickness that it will take
+hydrofluoric acid four hours and a half to eat its way through. Then
+fill it with acid and seal it up. You have a time-fuse which will act
+precisely in four hours and a half."
+
+"If it comes into contact with the necessary explosive," Hillyard added.
+
+"Exactly. Now attend to this! Our workmen in our munition factories work
+three hours and a half. Then they go to their luncheon."
+
+"Munition factories!" said Hillyard with a start.
+
+"Yes, my friend. Munition factories. We are short of labour as you know.
+Our men are in the firing line. We must get labour from some other
+source. And there is only one source."
+
+"The neutrals," Hillyard exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, the neutrals, and especially the neutrals who are near to us, who
+can come without difficulty and without much expense. We have a good
+many Spanish workmen in our munition factories and three of these
+factories have recently been burnt down. We have the proof now, thanks
+to you, that those little glass tubes so carefully manufactured in
+Berlin to last four hours and a half and no more, set the fires going."
+
+"Proof, you say?" Hillyard asked earnestly. "It is not probability or
+moral certainty? It is actual bed-rock proof?"
+
+"Yes. For once our chemists had grasped how these tubes could be used,
+we knew what to look for when the workmen were searched on entering the
+factory. Two days ago we caught a man. He had one of these little tubes
+in his mouth and in the lining of his waistcoat, just a little high
+explosive, so little was necessary that it must escape notice unless you
+knew what to search for. Yes, we caught him and he, the good fellow, the
+good honest neutral"--it would be difficult to describe the bitterness
+and scorn which rang through Marnier's words, "has been kind enough to
+tell me how he earned his German pay as well as his French wages."
+
+Hillyard leaned forward.
+
+"Yes, tell me that!"
+
+"On his way to the factory in the morning, he makes a call."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The one on whom he calls fills the tube or has it just filled and gives
+it to the workman. The time fuse is set for four hours and a half. The
+workman has so arranged it that he will reach the factory half an hour
+after the tube is filled. He passes the searcher. At his place he takes
+off his waistcoat and hangs it up and in the pocket, just separated from
+the explosive by the lining of the waistcoat, he places, secretly, the
+tube. The tube has now four hours of life and the workman three and a
+half hours of work. When the whistle goes to knock off for luncheon, the
+workman leaves his waist coat still hanging up on the peg and goes out
+in the stream. But half an hour afterwards, half-way through the hour of
+luncheon, the acid reaches the explosive. There is a tiny explosion in
+that empty hall, not enough to make a great noise, but quite enough to
+start a big fire; and when the workmen return, the building is ablaze.
+No lives are lost, but the factory is burnt down."
+
+Hillyard sat for a little while in thought.
+
+"Perhaps you can tell me," he said at length. "I hear nothing from
+England or very little; and naturally. Are we obtaining Spanish workmen,
+too, for our munition factories?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+It was clear now why B45 was especially suitable for this work. B45 was
+Mario Escobar, a Spaniard himself.
+
+"And filling the tubes! That is simple?"
+
+"A child could do it," answered Marnier.
+
+"Thank you," said Martin Hillyard.
+
+The next evening he left Paris and travelling all night to Boulogne,
+reached London in the early afternoon of the following day. Twenty
+months had passed since he had set foot there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+UNDER GREY SKIES AGAIN
+
+
+Hillyard landed in England athirst for grey skies. Could he have chosen
+the season of the year which should greet him, he would have named
+October. For the ceaseless bright blue of sea and heaven had set him
+dreaming through many a month past, of still grey mornings sweet with
+the smell of earth and thick hedgerows and the cluck of pheasants. But
+there were at all events the fields wondrously green after the brown
+hill-sides and rusty grass, the little rich fields in the frames of
+their hedges, and the brown-roofed houses and the woods splashing their
+emerald branches in the sunlight. Hillyard travelled up through Kent
+rejoicing. He reached London in the afternoon, and leaving his luggage
+in his flat walked down to the house in the quiet street behind the
+Strand whence Commodore Graham overlooked the Thames.
+
+But even in this backwater the changes of the war were evident. The
+brass plates had all gone from the door post and girls ran up and down
+the staircases in stockings which some Allied fairies had woven on
+Midsummer morning out of cobwebs of dew. They were, however, as unaware
+as of old of any Commodore Graham. Was he quite certain that he wanted
+to see Commodore Graham. And why? And, after all, was there a Commodore
+Graham? Gracious damsels looked blandly at one another, with every
+apparent desire to assist this sunburnt stranger. It seemed to Hillyard
+that they would get for him immediately any one else in the world whom
+he chose to name. It was just bitterly disappointing and contrarious
+that the one person he wished to see was a Commodore Graham. Oh,
+couldn't he be reasonable and ask for somebody else?
+
+"Very well," said Hillyard with a smile. "There was a pretty girl with
+grey eyes, and I'll see her."
+
+"The description is vague," said the young lady demurely.
+
+"She is Miss Cheyne."
+
+"Oh!" said one.
+
+"Oh!" said another; and
+
+"Will you follow me, please?" said a third, who at once became
+business-like and brisk, and led him up the stairs. The door was still
+unvarnished. Miss Cheyne opened it, wearing the composed expression of
+attention with which she had greeted Hillyard when he had sought
+admission first. But her face broke up into friendliness and smiles,
+when she recognised him, and she drew him into the room.
+
+"The Commodore's away for a week," she said. "He had come to the end: no
+sleep, nerves all jangled. He is up in Scotland shooting grouse."
+
+Hillyard nodded. His news could wait a week very well, since it had
+waited already two years.
+
+"And you?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, I had a fortnight," replied Miss Cheyne, her eyes dancing at the
+recollection. It was her pleasure to sail a boat in Bosham Creek and out
+towards the Island. "Not a day of rain during the whole time."
+
+"I think that I might have a month then, don't you?" said Hillyard, and
+Miss Cheyne opined that there would be no objection.
+
+"But you will come back in a week," she stipulated, "won't you? The
+Commodore will be here on Thursday, and there are things accumulating
+which he must see to. So will you come on Friday?"
+
+"Friday morning," Hillyard suggested.
+
+Thursday was the day on which he should have travelled down to Rackham
+Park, but if he could finish his business on Friday morning, he would
+only lose one day.
+
+"Friday morning then," said Miss Cheyne, and made a note of it.
+
+Hillyard had thus a week in which to resume his friendships, arrange to
+write, at some distant time, a play, revisit his club and his tailor,
+and revel, as at a pageant, in the fresh beauty, the summer clothes, the
+white skin and clean-limbed boyishness of English girls. He went
+through, in a word, the first experiences of most men returned from a
+long sojourn in other climes; and they were ordinary enough. But the
+week was made notable for him by one small incident.
+
+It was on the Monday and about five o'clock in the afternoon. He was
+walking from the Charing Cross Road towards Leicester Square, when, from
+a doorway ahead of him, a couple emerged. They did not turn his way but
+preceded him, so that he only saw their backs. But he had no doubt who
+one of the couple was. The fair hair, the tall, slim, long-limbed
+figure, the perverse sloppiness of dress which could not quite obscure
+her grace of youth, betrayed the disdainful prodigy of Rackham Park. The
+creator of Linda Spavinsky swam ahead of him. Had he doubted her
+identity, a glance at the door from which she had emerged would have
+dispelled the doubt. It was the entrance to a picture gallery, where,
+cubes and curves having served their turn and gone, the rotundists were
+having an innings. Everybody and everything was in rounds, palaces and
+gardens and ships and Westminster Bridge, and men and women were all in
+circles. The circle was the principle of life and art. Joan Whitworth
+would be drawn to the exhibition as a filing to a magnet. Undoubtedly
+Joan Whitworth was ahead of Hillyard and he began to hurry after her.
+But he checked himself after a few paces. Or rather the aspect of her
+companion checked him. His appearance was vaguely familiar, but that was
+all. It was not certainly Sir Chichester Splay, for the all-sufficient
+reason that the Private View had long gone by; since the very last week
+of the exhibition was announced in the window. Moreover, the man in
+front of him was younger than Sir Chichester.
+
+The couple, however, crossed the road to the Square Garden, and Hillyard
+saw the man in profile. He stopped so suddenly that a man walking behind
+him banged heavily against his back. The man walked on and turned round
+after he had passed to stare at Hillyard. For Hillyard stood stock
+still, he was unaware that any one had run into him, in all his body his
+lips alone moved.
+
+"Mario," he whispered. "Mario Escobar!"
+
+The man who had been so far the foremost in his thoughts during the last
+weeks that he never thought that he could have failed to recognise him.
+Mario Escobar! And with Joan Whitworth. Millicent Splay's letter flashed
+back into his memory. The distress which he had seemed to hear loud
+behind the written words--was this its meaning and explanation? Joan
+Whitworth and Mario Escobar! Certainly Joan knew him! He was sitting
+next to her on the night when "The Dark Tower" was produced, sitting
+next to her, and talking to her. Sir Charles Hardiman had used some
+phrase to describe that conversation. Hillyard was strangely anxious to
+recapture the phrase. Escobar was talking to her with an air of intimacy
+a little excessive in a public place. Yes, that was the sentence.
+
+Hillyard walked on quickly to his club.
+
+"Is Sir Charles Hardiman here?" he asked of the hall porter.
+
+"He is in the card-room, sir."
+
+Martin Hillyard went up the stairs with a sense of relief. His position
+was becoming a little complicated. Mario Escobar was B45, and a friend
+of Joan Whitworth, and a friend of the Splays. There was one point upon
+which Martin Hillyard greatly needed information.
+
+Hardiman, a little heavier and broader and more obese than when Hillyard
+had last seen him, was sitting by a bridge table overlooking the
+players. He never played himself, nor did he ever bet upon the game, but
+he took a curious pleasure in looking on, and would sit in the card-room
+by the hour engrossed in the fall of the cards. The sight of Hillyard,
+however, plucked him out of his occupation.
+
+"So you're back!" he cried, heaving himself heavily out of his chair and
+shaking hands with Martin.
+
+"For a month."
+
+"I hear you have done very well," Sir Charles continued. "Have a
+whisky-and-soda."
+
+"Thanks."
+
+Hardiman touched the bell and led the way over to a sofa.
+
+"Lucky man! The doctor's read the Riot Act to me! I met Luttrell in the
+Mall this morning, on his way back from Buckingham Palace. He had just
+been given his D.S.O."
+
+Hardiman began to sit down, but the couch was low, and though he began
+the movement lazily, it went suddenly with a run, so that the springs
+of the couch jumped and twanged and his feet flew from beneath him.
+
+"Yes, he has done splendidly," said Martin. "His battalion too. That's
+what he cares about."
+
+Sir Charles needed a moment or two after he had set down to recover his
+equipoise. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.
+
+"Luttrell told me you were both off to Rackham Park this week for
+Gatwick."
+
+"That's right! But I shan't get down until Friday afternoon," said
+Hillyard.
+
+The waiter put the glass of whisky-and-soda at his side, and he took a
+drink from it.
+
+"Perhaps you are going too," he suggested.
+
+Hardiman shook his head.
+
+Hillyard was silent for a minute. Then he asked another question.
+
+"Do you know who is going to be there beside Luttrell and myself?"
+
+Sir Charles smiled.
+
+"I don't know, but I fancy that you won't find him amongst the guests."
+
+Hillyard was a little startled by the answer, but he did not betray the
+least sign of surprise. He pursued his questions.
+
+"You know whom I have in my mind?"
+
+"I drew a bow at a venture," answered Sir Charles.
+
+"Shall I name him?" asked Hillyard.
+
+"I will," returned Sir Charles. "Mario Escobar."
+
+Hillyard nodded. He took another pull at his whisky-and-soda. Then he
+lit a cigarette and leaned forward, with his elbows upon his knees; and
+all the while Sir Charles Hardiman, his body in a majestic repose,
+contemplated him placidly. Hardiman had this great advantage in any
+little matter of debate; he never wished to move. Place him in a chair,
+and he remained, singularly immobile.
+
+"Since you were so quick to guess at once the reason of my question,"
+continued Hillyard, "I can draw an inference. Mario Escobar has been at
+Rackham Park a good deal?"
+
+Sir Charles Hardiman's smile broadened.
+
+"Even now you don't express your inference," he retorted. "You mean that
+Mario Escobar has been at Rackham Park too much." He paused whilst he
+drew out his cigarette-case and selected a cigarette from it. "And I
+agree," he added. "Mario Escobar is too picturesque a person for these
+primitive days."
+
+Hillyard was not sure what Sir Charles Hardiman precisely meant. But on
+the other hand he was anxious to ask no direct questions concerning
+Escobar. He sought to enter in by another gate.
+
+"Primitive?" he said.
+
+"Yes. We have become rather primitive, especially the women. They have
+lost a deal of self-consciousness. They exact less. They give more--oh,
+superbly more! It's the effect of war, of course. They have jumped down
+off their little pinnacles. Let me put it coarsely. They are saved from
+rape by the fighting man, and they know it. Consequently all men benefit
+and not least," Sir Charles lit his cigarette, "that beast of
+abomination, the professional manipulator of women, the man who lives by
+them and on them, who cajoles them first and blackmails them afterwards,
+who has the little attentions, the appealing voice, in fact all the
+tricks of his trade ready at his fingers' ends. However, Millie Splay's
+awake to the danger now."
+
+"Danger!" Hillyard sharply exclaimed.
+
+"Quite right. It's too strong a word. I take it back," Hardiman agreed
+at once. But he was not in the habit of using words wildly. He had said
+exactly what he meant to say, and having aroused the attention which he
+meant to arouse, he calmly withdrew the word. "I rubbed it into
+Chichester's thick head that Escobar was overmuch at Rackham Park, and
+in the end--it percolated."
+
+Much the same account of Escobar, with this instance of Rackham Park
+omitted, was given to Hillyard by Commodore Graham on the Friday
+morning.
+
+"He is the kind of man whom men loathe and women like. He runs about
+London, gets a foot in here and there. You know what London is, even now
+in the midst of this war, with its inability to be surprised, and its
+indifference to strange things. You might walk down Regent Street
+dressed up as a Cherokee Indian, feathers and tomahawk and all, and how
+many Cockneys would take the trouble to turn round and look at you
+twice? It was pretty easy for Escobar to slip about unnoticed."
+
+Commodore Graham bent his head over the case of tubes which Hillyard had
+brought with him.
+
+"We'll have a look-out kept for these things. There have been none of
+them in England up till now."
+
+Martin Hillyard returned to the personality of Mario Escobar.
+
+"Did you suspect him before?" he asked.
+
+Commodore Graham pushed the cigarettes towards Hillyard.
+
+"Scotland Yard has kept an eye on him. That sort of adventurer is always
+dangerous."
+
+He rang the bell, and on Miss Cheyne's appearance called for what
+information the office had concerning Mario Escobar. Miss Cheyne
+returned with a book in which Escobar's dossier was included.
+
+"Here he is," said Graham, and Hillyard, moving across to the bureau,
+followed Graham's forefinger across the written page. He was agent for
+the Compania de Navigacion del Sur d'Espa�a--a German firm on the black
+list, headquarters at Alicante. Escobar severed his connection with the
+company on the outbreak of war.
+
+Graham raised his head to comment on the action.
+
+"That, of course, was camouflage. But it checked suspicion for a time.
+Suspicion was first aroused," and he resumed reading again, "by his
+change of lodging. He lived in a small back bedroom in a boarding-house
+in Clarence Street, off Westbourne Grove, and concealed his address,
+having his letters addressed to his club, until February, 1915, upon
+which date he moved into a furnished flat in Maddox Street. Nothing
+further, however, happened to strengthen that suspicion until, in the
+autumn of that year, a letter signed Mario was intercepted by the
+censor. It was sent to a Diego Perez, the Director of a fruit company at
+Murcia, for Emma Grutsner."
+
+"You sent me a telegram about her," exclaimed Hillyard, "in November."
+
+Commodore Graham's forefinger travelled along the written lines and
+stopped at the number and distinguishing sign of the telegram, sent and
+received.
+
+"Yes," continued Graham. "Here's your answer. 'Emma Grutzner is the
+governess in a Spanish family at Torrevieja, and she goes occasionally,
+once a month or so, to the house of Diego Perez in Murcia.'"
+
+"Yes, yes! I routed that out," said Hillyard. "But I hadn't an idea that
+Mario Escobar was concerned in it."
+
+"That wasn't mentioned?" asked the Commodore.
+
+"No. I already knew, you see, of B45. If just a word had been added that
+it was Mario who was writing to Emma Grutzner we might have identified
+him months ago."
+
+"Yes," answered Graham soothingly and with a proper compunction. He was
+not unused to other fiery suggestions from his subordinates that if only
+the reasons for his telegrams and the information on which his questions
+were based, were sent out with the questions themselves, better results
+in quicker time could be obtained. Telegrams, however, were going out
+and coming in all day; a whole array of cipherers and decipherers lived
+in different rookeries in London. Commodore Graham's activities embraced
+the high and the narrow seas, great Capitals and little tucked-away
+towns and desolate stretches of coast where the trade-winds blew. No
+doubt full explanations would have led in many cases to more
+satisfactory conclusions. But fuller explanations were out of all
+possibility. Even with questions fined down to the last succinct
+syllable the cables groaned. None of the objections were raised,
+however, by Commodore Graham. It was his business to keep men like
+Hillyard who were serving him well to their own considerable cost, in a
+good humour. Remorse was the line, not argument.
+
+"What a pity! I _am_ sorry," protested the Commodore. "It's my fault!
+There's nothing else to be said. I am to blame about it."
+
+Martin Hillyard began to feel some compunction that he had ever
+suggested a fault in the composition of the telegram. But then, it was
+his business not to betray any such tenderness.
+
+"If we could have in the future a little more information from London,
+it would save us a good deal of time," he said stonily. "Sometimes a
+surname is hurled at us, and will we find him, please, and cable home
+all details?"
+
+"Yes, that is very wrong," the Commodore agreed. "We will have that
+changed." Then a bright idea appeared to occur to him. His face lighted
+up. "After all, in this instance the mistake hasn't done any real harm.
+For we have got our friend Mario Escobar now, and without these tubes
+and this letter from Berlin about the use of them and Jos� Medina's
+account of the conversation in the next room we shouldn't have got him.
+The German governess wasn't enough. He's, after all, a neutral. Besides,
+there was nothing definite in his letter. But now----"
+
+"Now you can deal with him?" asked Hillyard eagerly.
+
+"To be sure," replied the Commodore. "We have no proof here to put him
+on his trial. But we have reasonable ground for believing him to be in
+communication with our enemies for the purpose of damaging us, and
+that's quite enough to lock him up until the end of the war."
+
+He reached out his hand for the telephone and asked for a number.
+
+"I am ringing up Scotland Yard," he said to Hillyard over the top of the
+instrument; and immediately Hillyard heard a tiny voice speaking as if
+summoned from another planet.
+
+"Hallo!" cried Graham. "Is that you, A.C.? You remember Mario Escobar?
+Good. I have Hillyard here from the Mediterranean with a clear case.
+I'll come over and see you."
+
+Mr. "A.C.", whose real name was Adrian Carruthers, thereupon took up the
+conversation at the other end of the line. The lines deepened upon the
+Commodore's forehead as he listened. Then he turned to Hillyard, and
+swore softly and whole-heartedly.
+
+"Mario Escobar has vanished."
+
+"But I saw him myself," Hillyard exclaimed. "I saw him in London."
+
+"When?"
+
+"On Monday afternoon."
+
+Graham lifted the mouthpiece to his lips again.
+
+"Wait a bit, A.C. Hillyard saw the man in London on Monday afternoon."
+
+Again A.C. spoke at the other end from an office in Scotland Yard.
+Graham put down the instrument with a bang and hung up the receiver.
+
+"He vanished yesterday. Could he have seen you?"
+
+Hillyard shook his head.
+
+"I think not."
+
+"Oh, we'll get him, of course. He can't escape from the country. And we
+will get him pretty soon," Graham declared. He looked out of the window
+on to the river. "I wonder what in the world alarmed him, since it
+wasn't you?" he speculated slowly.
+
+But both Scotland Yard and Commodore Graham were out of their reckoning
+for once. Mario Escobar was not alarmed at all. He had packed his bag,
+taken the tube to his terminus, bought his ticket and gone off in a
+train. Only no one had noticed him go; and that was all there was to
+it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+LADY SPLAY'S PREOCCUPATIONS
+
+
+"It's a good race to leave alone, Miranda," said Dennis Brown. "But if
+you want to back something, I should put a trifle on Kinky Jane."
+
+"Thank you, Dennis," Miranda answered absently. She was standing upon
+the lawn at Gatwick with her face towards the line of bookmakers upon
+the far side of the railings. These men were shouting at the full frenzy
+of their voices, in spite of the heat and the dust. The ring was
+crowded, and even the enclosure more than usually full.
+
+"But you won't get any price," Harold Jupp continued, and he waved an
+indignant arm towards the bookmakers. "I never saw such a crowd of
+pinchers in my life."
+
+"Thank you, Harold," Miranda replied politely. She was aware that he was
+advising her, but the nature of the advice did not reach her mind. She
+was staring steadily in front of her.
+
+Dennis Brown and Harold Jupp looked at one another in alarm. They knew
+well that sibylline look on the face of Miranda Brown. She was awaiting
+the moment of inspiration. She was all wrapped up in expectation of it.
+At times she glanced at her race-card, whilst a thoughtful frown
+puckered her pretty forehead, as though the name of the winning filly
+might leap out in letters of gold.
+
+Dennis shook his head dolefully. For the one thing sure and certain was
+that the fatal moment of inspiration would come to Miranda in time to
+allow her to reach the railings before the start. Suddenly a name
+uttered by an apoplectic gentleman in a voice breaking with fine passion
+reached her ears, with the odds attached to it of nine to one.
+
+Miranda's face cleared of all its troubles.
+
+"Oh, why didn't I think of that before?" she said in an extremity of
+self-reproach. She walked straight to the apoplectic gentleman, followed
+by the unhappy pair of scientific punters.
+
+"Callow Girl is nine to one, isn't it?"
+
+The apoplectic gentleman smiled winningly.
+
+"To you, missie."
+
+Miranda laughed.
+
+"I'll have ten pounds on it," she said, and did not hear the gasp of her
+husband behind her. She made a note of the bet in her little
+pocket-book.
+
+"That's ninety pounds, anyway," she said, turning to her companions.
+"They will just buy that simple little Callot frock with the
+embroidery."
+
+Yes, racing was as easy as that to Miranda Brown. She wanted a simple
+little Callot frock which would cost ninety pounds, and Callow Girl was
+obviously marked out to win it for her.
+
+"Then I shall be a Callot girl," she said gaily, and as neither of her
+companions enjoyed her witticism she stamped her small foot in vexation.
+
+"Oh, how dull you both are!" she cried.
+
+"Well, you see," Dennis rejoined, "we've had rather a bad day."
+
+"So have I," returned Miranda indignantly. "Yet I keep up my spirits."
+
+A look of blank amazement overspread the face of Dennis Brown. He gazed
+around as one who should say, "Did you ever see anything so amazing
+outside the Ark?"
+
+Miranda corrected her remark with a laugh.
+
+"Well, I mean I haven't won as much as I should have if I had backed
+winners." For she had really mastered the science of the race-course.
+She knew how to go racing. Her husband paid her losses and she kept her
+winnings.
+
+Harold Jupp took her seriously by the arm.
+
+"You ought to go into a home, Miranda," he advised. "You really ought.
+That little head was never meant for all this weighty thought."
+
+Miranda walked across to the little stone terrace which looks down the
+course.
+
+"Don't be foolish, Harold, but go and collect Colonel Luttrell if you
+can find him, whilst I see my filly win," she said. "Dennis has already
+gone to find the car and we propose to start immediately this race is
+over."
+
+Miranda ascended the grass slope and saw the fillies canter down towards
+the starting post. From the chatter about her she gathered that the odds
+on Callow Girl had shortened. It was understood that a sum of money had
+been laid on her at the last moment. She was favourite before the flag
+was dropped and won by half a length. Miranda ran joyously down the
+slope.
+
+"What did I tell you, Harold? Aren't I wonderful? And have you found
+Colonel Luttrell? You know Millie told us to look out for him?" she
+cried all in a breath.
+
+Luttrell had written to Lady Splay to say that he would try to motor to
+Gatwick in time for the last races; and that he would look out for Jupp
+and Dennis Brown, whom he had already met earlier in the week at a
+dinner party given by Martin Hillyard.
+
+"There's no sign of him," Harold Jupp answered.
+
+There were two more races, but the party from Rackham Park did not wait
+for them. They drove over the flat country through Crawley and Horsham
+and came to the wooded roads between high banks where the foliage met
+overhead, and to the old stone bridges over quiet streams. Harold Jupp
+was home from Egypt, Dennis Brown from Salonika, and as the great downs,
+with their velvet forests, seen now over a thick hedge, now in an
+opening of branches like the frame of a locket, the marvel of the
+English countryside in summer paid them in full for their peril and
+endurance.
+
+"I have a fortnight, Miranda," said Dennis, dropping a hand upon his
+wife's. "Think of it!"
+
+"My dear, I have been thinking of nothing else for months," she said
+softly. Terrors there had been, nights and days of them, terrors there
+would be, but she had a fortnight now, perfect in its season, and in the
+meeting of old friends upon familiar ground--a miniature complete in
+beauty, like the glimpses of the downs seen through the openings amongst
+the boughs.
+
+"Yes, a whole fortnight," she cried and laughed, and just for a second
+turned her head away, since just for a second the tears glistened in her
+eyes.
+
+The car turned and twisted through the puzzle of the Petworth streets
+and mounted on to the Midhurst road. The three indefatigable race-goers
+found Lady Splay sitting with Martin Hillyard in the hall of Rackham
+Park.
+
+"You had a good day, I hope," she said.
+
+"It was wonderful," exclaimed Dennis Brown. "We didn't make any money
+except Miranda. But that didn't matter."
+
+"All our horses were down the course," Harold Jupp explained. "They
+weren't running in their form at all"; and he added cheerfully: "But the
+war may be over before the winter, and then we'll go chasing and get it
+all back."
+
+Millicent Splay rang for tea, just as Joan Whitworth came into the hall.
+
+"You didn't see Colonel Luttrell then?" asked Lady Splay.
+
+"No."
+
+"He'll come down later then." She had an eye for Joan Whitworth as she
+spoke, but Joan was so utterly indifferent as to whether Colonel
+Luttrell would arrive or not that she could not stifle a sigh. She had
+gathered Luttrell into the party with some effort and now it seemed her
+effort was to be fruitless. Joan persisted in her mood of austere
+contempt for the foibles of the world. She was dressed in a gown of an
+indeterminate shade between drab and sage-green, which did its best to
+annul her. She had even come to sandals. There they were now sticking
+out beneath the abominable gown.
+
+"She can't ruin her complexion," thought Millicent Splay. "That's one
+thing. But if she could, she would. Oh, I would love to smack her!"
+
+Joan, quite unaware of Millie Splay's tingling fingers and indignant
+eyes, sat reading "Ferishtah's Fancies." Other girls might set their
+caps at the soldiers. Joan had got to be different. She had even dallied
+with the pacifists. Martin Hillyard had carried away so close a
+recollection of her on that afternoon when she had driven him through
+the golden sunset over Duncton Hill and of the brave words she had then
+spoken that he had to force himself to realise that this was indeed
+she.
+
+Millicent Splay had three preoccupations that afternoon but none pressed
+upon her with so heavy a load of anxiety as her preoccupation concerning
+Joan Whitworth.
+
+Martin crossed the room to Joan and sat upon the couch beside her.
+
+"Didn't I see you in London, Miss Whitworth, on Monday afternoon?" he
+asked.
+
+Joan met his gaze steadily.
+
+"Did you? It was possible. I was in London on Monday. Where did you
+think you saw me?"
+
+"Coming out of a picture gallery in Green Street."
+
+Joan did not flinch, nor drop her eyes from his.
+
+"Yes, you saw me," she replied. Then with a challenge in her voice she
+added distinctly, so that the words reached, as they were meant to
+reach, every one in that room. "I was with Mario Escobar."
+
+The room suddenly grew still. Two years ago, Martin Hillyard reflected,
+Harold Jupp or Dennis would have chaffed her roundly about her conquest,
+and she would have retorted with good humour. Now, no one spoke, but a
+little sigh, a little movement of uneasiness came from Millie Splay.
+Joan did not take her eyes from Hillyard's face. But the blood mounted
+slowly over her throat and cheeks.
+
+"Well?" she asked, and the note of challenge was a trifle more audible
+in her quiet voice. And since he was challenged, Hillyard answered:
+
+"He is a German spy."
+
+The words smote upon all in the room like a blow. Joan herself grew
+pale. Then she replied:
+
+"People say that nowadays of every foreigner."
+
+The moment of embarrassment was prolonged to a full minute--during which
+no one spoke. Then to the relief of every one, Sir Chichester Splay
+entered the hall. He had been sitting all day upon the Bench. He had to
+attend the Flower Show in Chichester during the next week. Really the
+life of a country notable was a dog's life.
+
+"You are going to make a speech at Chichester, Sir Christopher?" Jupp
+inquired.
+
+"Oh no, my boy," replied Sir Chichester. "Make a speech indeed! And in
+this weather! Nothing would induce me. Me for the back benches, as our
+cousins across the Atlantic would say."
+
+He spoke pompously, yet with a certain gratification as though Harold
+Jupp had asked him to dignify the occasion with a speech.
+
+"Have the evening papers not arrived yet?" he asked, looking with
+suspicious eyes on Dennis Brown.
+
+"No, I am not sitting on them this time," said Dennis.
+
+"And Colonel Luttrell?"
+
+After the evening papers, Sir Chichester thought politely of his guests.
+Millie Splay replied with hesitation. While the others of the company
+were shaking off their embarrassment, she was sinking deeper into hers.
+
+"Colonel Luttrell has not come yet. Nor--nor--the other guest who
+completes our party."
+
+Her voice trailed off lamentably into a plea for kind treatment and
+gentleness. Here was Millie Splay's second preoccupation. As it was Sir
+Chichester's passion to see his name printed in the papers, so it was
+Millie's to gather in the personages of the moment under her roof. She
+had promised that this party should be just a small one of old friends
+with Luttrell as the only new-comer. But personages were difficult to
+come by at this date, since they were either deep in work or out of the
+country altogether. They had to be brought down by a snap shot, and very
+often the bird brought down turned out to be a remarkably inferior
+specimen of his class. Millie Splay had been tempted and had fallen; and
+she was not altogether easy about the quality of her bird, now on its
+descent to her feet.
+
+"I didn't know any one else was coming," said Sir Chichester, who really
+didn't care how much Lady Splay gratified her passion, so long as he got
+full satisfaction for his.
+
+"No, nor any one else," said Dennis Brown severely. "He is a stranger."
+
+"To you," replied Millie Splay, showing fight.
+
+Harold Jupp advanced and planted himself firmly before her.
+
+"Do you know him yourself, Lady Splay?" he asked.
+
+"But of course I do," the poor lady exclaimed. "How absurd of you,
+Harold, to ask such a question! I met him at a party when Joan and I
+were in London at the beginning of this week." She caught again at her
+fleeting courage. "So I invited him, and he's coming this afternoon. I
+shall send the motor to meet him in an hour from now. So there's an end
+of the matter."
+
+Harold Jupp shook his head sagely.
+
+"We must see that the plate is all locked up safely to-night."
+
+"There! I knew it would be like this," cried Millie Splay, wringing her
+hands. She remembered, from a war correspondent's article, that to
+attack is the only successful defence. She turned on Jupp.
+
+"I won't be bullied by you, Harold! He's a most charming person, with
+really nice manners," she emphasised her praise of the absent guest,
+"and if only you will study him whilst he is here--all of you, you will
+be greatly improved at the end of your visit."
+
+Harold Jupp was quite unimpressed by Millie Splay's outburst. He
+remained severely in front of her, judge, prosecutor and jury all in
+one, and all relentlessly against her.
+
+"And what is his name?"
+
+Lady Splay looked down and looked up.
+
+"Mr. Albany Todd," she said.
+
+"I don't like it," said Harold Jupp.
+
+"No," added Dennis Brown sadly from a corner. "We can't like it, Lady
+Splay."
+
+Lady Splay turned with her most insinuating smile towards Brown.
+
+"Oh, Dennis, do be nice and remember this isn't your house," she cried.
+"You can be so unpleasant if you find any one here you don't like. Mr.
+Albany Todd's quite a famous person."
+
+Harold Jupp, of the inquiring mind, still stood looking down on Lady
+Splay without any softening of his face.
+
+"What for?" he asked.
+
+Lady Splay groaned in despair.
+
+"Oh, I was sure you were going to ask that. You are so unpleasant." She
+put her hand to her forehead. "But I know quite well. Yes, I do." Her
+face suddenly cleared. "He is a conversationalist--that's it--a great
+conversationalist. He is the sort of man," she spoke as one repeating a
+lesson, "who would have been welcome at the breakfast table of Mr.
+Rogers."
+
+"Rogers?" Harold Jupp asked sternly. "I don't know him."
+
+"And probably never will, Harold, I am sorry to say," said Lady Splay
+triumphantly. "Mr. Rogers was in heaven many years ago." She suddenly
+changed her note and began to implore. "Oh, do be pleasant, you and
+Dennis!"
+
+Harold Jupp's mouth began to twitch, but he composed it again, with an
+effort, to the stern lines befitting the occasion.
+
+"I'll tell you what I think, Lady Splay," said he, pronouncing judgment.
+"Your new guest's a Plater."
+
+The dreadful expected word was spoken. Lady Splay broke into appeals,
+denials, threats. "Oh, he isn't, he isn't!" She turned to her husband.
+"Chichester, exert your authority! He's not a Plater really. He's not
+right down the course. And even if he were, they've got to be polite to
+him."
+
+Sir Chichester, however, was the last man who could be lured into the
+expression of a definite opinion.
+
+"My dear, I never interfere in the arrangements of the house. You have
+your realm. I have mine. I am sure those papers are being kept in the
+servants' hall," and he left the room hurriedly.
+
+"Oh, how mean men are!" cried Millie; and they all began to laugh.
+
+Lady Splay saw a glimpse of hope in their laughter and became much more
+cheerful.
+
+"As you are not racing, dear," she said to Joan, "he will be quite a
+pleasant companion for you."
+
+Sir Chichester returned with the evening papers. Dennis and Miranda and
+Harold Jupp rose to go upstairs and change into flannels; and suddenly,
+a good hour before his time, Harper, the butler, announced:
+
+"Mr. Albany Todd."
+
+Mr. Albany Todd was a stout, consequential personage, and ovoid in
+appearance. Thin legs broadened out to very wide hips, and from the hips
+he curved in again to a bald and shiny head, which in its turn curved
+inwards to a high, narrow crown. Lady Splay casting a look of appeal
+towards her refractory young guests hurried forward to meet him.
+
+"This is my husband." She presented him to the others. "I was going to
+send the motor-car to meet the seven o'clock train."
+
+"Oh, thank you, Lady Splay," Mr. Albany Todd returned in a booming
+voice. "I have been staying not more than twenty miles from here, with a
+dear old friend, a rare and inestimable being, Lord Bilberry, and he was
+kind enough to send me in."
+
+"What, old man Bilberry," cried Harold Jupp. "Isn't he balmy?"
+
+"Balmy, sir?" Mr. Todd asked in surprise. "He takes the air every
+morning, if that is what you mean." He turned again to Lady Splay. "He
+keeps the most admirable table. You must know him, Lady Splay. I will
+see to it."
+
+"Thank you," said Millie Splay humbly.
+
+"Ah, muffins!" said Mr. Albany Todd with glistening eyes. He ate one and
+took another. "These are really as good as the muffins I ate at a
+wonderful week-end party a fortnight ago."
+
+The chatter of the others ceased. The great conversationalist, it
+seemed, was off. Miranda, Dennis, Harold Jupp, Sir Chichester, even Joan
+looked up with expectation.
+
+"Yes," said Lady Splay, encouraging him. She looked around at her
+guests. "Now you shall see," she seemed to say.
+
+"How we laughed! What sprightly talk! The fine flavour of that party is
+quite incommunicable. Just dear old friends, you see, intimate,
+congenial friends."
+
+Mr. Albany Todd stopped. It appeared that he needed a question to be put
+to him. Lady Splay dutifully put it.
+
+"And where did this party take place, Mr. Albany Todd?"
+
+Mr. Albany Todd smiled and dusted the crumbs from his knees.
+
+"At the Earl of Wimborough's little place in the north. Do you know the
+Earl of Wimborough? No? You must, dear lady! I will see to it."
+
+"Thank you," said Millie Splay.
+
+Harold Jupp looked eagerly at the personage, and said, "I hope
+Wimborough won't go jumping this winter."
+
+"Jumping!" cried Mr. Albany Todd turning indignantly. "I should think
+not indeed! Jumping! Why, he is seventy-three!"
+
+He was utterly scandalised that any one should attribute the possibility
+of such wayward behaviour to the venerable Earl. In his agitation he ate
+another muffin. After all, if the nobleman did go jumping in the winter
+why should this young and horsey man presume to criticise him.
+
+"Harold Jupp was drawing a distinction between flat racing and
+steeple-chasing, Mr. Albany Todd," Sir Chichester suavely explained.
+
+"Oh, I see." Mr. Albany Todd was appeased. He turned a condescending
+face upon Joan Whitworth.
+
+"And what are you reading, Miss Whitworth?"
+
+"What ho!" interposed Harold Jupp.
+
+Joan shot at him a withering glance.
+
+"It wouldn't interest you." She smiled on Mr. Albany Todd. "It's
+Browning."
+
+"Well, that's just where you are wrong," returned Jupp. "Browning's the
+only poet I can stick. There's a ripping thing of his I learnt at
+school."
+
+     "'I sprang to the saddle and Joris and he,
+       I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three.'"
+
+"Oh," exclaimed Miranda eagerly, "a horse race!"
+
+"Nothing of the sort, Miranda. I am thoroughly ashamed of you," said
+Harold in reproof. "It's 'How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to
+Aix.'"
+
+Here Joan intervened disdainfully.
+
+"But that's not Browning!"
+
+Lady Splay looked perplexed.
+
+"Are you sure, Joan?"
+
+Joan tossed her head.
+
+"Of course, it's Browning all right," she explained, "but it's not
+Browning if you understand me."
+
+The explanation left that company mystified. Harold Jupp shook his head
+mournfully at Joan, and tapped his forehead.
+
+"Excessive study, Joan, has turned that little head. The moment I saw
+you in sandals I said to myself, 'Joan couldn't take the hill.'"
+
+Joan wrinkled her nose, and made a grimace at him. What rejoinder she
+would have made no one was to know. For Mr. Albany Todd finding himself
+unduly neglected burst into the conversation with a complete
+irrelevance.
+
+"I am so happy. I shot a stag last autumn."
+
+Both Dennis Brown and Harold Jupp turned to the great conversationalist
+with real interest.
+
+"How many stone?" asked Dennis.
+
+"I used a rifle," replied Mr. Albany Todd coldly. He did not like to be
+made fun of; and suddenly a ripple of clear laughter broke deliciously
+from Joan.
+
+Lady Splay looked agitatedly around for succour. Oh, what a mistake she
+had made in bringing Mr. Albany Todd into the midst of these ribald
+young people. And after all--she had to admit it ruefully, he was a bit
+of a Plater. Dennis Brown, however, hurried to the rescue. He came
+across the room to Joan, and sat down at her side.
+
+"I haven't had a word with you, Joan."
+
+"No," she answered.
+
+"And how's the little book going on? Do tell me! I won't laugh, upon my
+word."
+
+Joan herself tried not to. "Oh, pig, pig!" she exclaimed, but she got no
+further in her anathema for Miranda drew up a stool, and sat in
+admiration before her.
+
+"Yes, do tell us," she pleaded. "It's all so wonderful."
+
+Miranda, however, was never to hear. Mr. Albany Todd leaned forward with
+an upraised forefinger, and a smile of keen discernment.
+
+"You are writing a book, Miss Whitworth," he said, as if he had
+discovered the truth by his own intuition, and expected her to deny the
+impeachment. "Ah, but you are! And I see that you _can_ write one."
+
+"Now, how?" asked Harold Jupp.
+
+Mr. Albany Todd waved the question aside. "The moment I entered the
+hall, and saw Miss Whitworth, I said to myself, 'There's a book there!'
+Yes, I said that. I knew it! I know women."
+
+Mr. Albany Todd closed his eyelids, and peeped out through the narrowest
+possible slits in the cunningest fashion. "Some experience you know. I
+am the last man to boast of it. A certain almost feminine
+sensibility--and there you have my secret. I read the character of women
+in their eyebrows. A woman's eyebrows. Oh, how loud they speak! I looked
+at Miss Whitworth's eyebrows, and I exclaimed, 'There is a book
+there--and I will read it!'"
+
+Joan flamed into life. She clasped her hands together.
+
+"Oh, will you?" The question was half wonder, half prayer.
+
+No man could have shown a more charming condescension than did Mr.
+Albany Todd at this moment.
+
+"Indeed, I will. I read one book a year--never more. A few sentences in
+bed in the morning, and a few sentences in bed at night. Yours shall be
+my book for 1923." He took a little notebook and a pencil from his
+pocket. "Now what title will it have?"
+
+"'A Woman's Heart, and Who Broke It,'" replied Joan, blushing from her
+temples to her throat.
+
+Miranda repeated the title in an ecstasy of admiration, and asked the
+world at large: "Isn't it all wonderful?"
+
+"'And Who Broke It,'" quoted Mr. Albany Todd as he wrote the title down.
+He put his pocket-book away.
+
+"The volume I am reading now----"
+
+"Yes?" said Joan eagerly. With what master was she to find herself in
+company? She was not to know.
+
+"----was given to me exquisitely bound by a very dear friend of mine,
+now alas! in precarious health!--the Marquis of Bridlington," said Mr.
+Albany Todd--an audible groan from Harold Jupp; an imploring glance from
+Millie Splay, and to her immense relief the butler ushered in Harry
+Luttrell. He was welcomed by Millie Splay, presented to Sir Chichester,
+and surrounded by his friends. He was a trifle leaner than of old, and
+there were lines now where before there had been none. His eyes, too,
+had the queer, worn and sunken look which was becoming familiar in the
+eyes of the young men on leave. Joan Whitworth watched him as he
+entered, carelessly--for perhaps a second. Then her book dropped from
+her hand upon the carpet--that book which she had so jealously read a
+few minutes back. Now it lay where it had fallen. She leaned forward, as
+though above all she wished to hear the sound of his voice. And when she
+heard it, she drew in a little breath. He was speaking and laughing with
+Sir Chichester, and the theme was nothing more important than Sir
+Chichester's Honorary Membership of the Senga Mess.
+
+"Lucky fellow!" cried Sir Chichester. "No trouble for you to get into
+the papers, eh! Publicity waits on you like a valet."
+
+"But that's just the kind of valet I can't afford in my profession,"
+said Harry.
+
+The conversation was all trivial and customary. But Joan Whitworth
+leaned forward with a light upon her face that had never yet burnt
+there. Colonel Luttrell was presented to Mr. Albany Todd, who was most
+kind and condescending. Joan looked suddenly down at her bilious frock,
+and the horror of her sandals was something she could hardly bear. They
+would turn to her next. Yes, they would turn to her! She looked
+desperately towards the great staircase with its broad, shallow steps
+which ran up round two sides of the hall. Millie Splay was actually
+beginning to turn to her, when Dennis Brown came unconsciously to her
+rescue.
+
+"We looked out for you at Gatwick," he said.
+
+"I only just reached the race course in time for the last race," said
+Harry Luttrell. "Luckily for me."
+
+"Why luckily?" asked Harold Jupp in surprise.
+
+"Because I backed the winner," replied Luttrell.
+
+The indefatigable race-goers gathered about him a little closer; and
+Joan Whitworth rose noiselessly from her chair.
+
+"Which horse won?" asked Harold Jupp.
+
+"Loman!" Harold Jupp stared at Dennis Brown. Incredulity held them as in
+bonds.
+
+"But he couldn't win!" they both cried in a breath.
+
+"He did, you know, and at a long price."
+
+"What on earth made you back him?" asked Dennis Brown.
+
+"Well," Luttrell answered, "he was the only white horse in the race."
+
+Miranda uttered a cry of pleasure. She recognised a brother. "That's an
+awfully good reason," she cried. But science fell with a crash. Dennis
+Brown took his "Form at a Glance" from his pocket, and sadly began to
+tear the pages across. Harold Jupp looked on at that act of sacrilege.
+
+"It doesn't matter," he said, and offered his invariable consolation.
+"Flat racing's no use. We'll go jumping in the winter."
+
+But Harold Jupp was never again to go jumping in the winter. Long before
+steeple chasing began that year, he was lying out on the flat land
+beyond the Somme, with a bullet through his heart.
+
+Dennis Brown returned "Form at a Glance" to his pocket; and Millie Splay
+drew Harry Luttrell away from the group.
+
+"I want to introduce you to Joan Whitworth," she said, and she turned to
+the chair in which Joan had been sitting a few moments ago.
+
+It was empty.
+
+"Why, where in the world has Joan gone to?" she exclaimed.
+
+"She has fled," explained Jupp. "Joan saw his 'Form at a Glance,'
+without any book. She saw that he was incapable of the higher Life, and
+she has gone."
+
+"Nonsense, Harold," cried Millicent Splay in vexation. She turned
+towards the stairs, and she gave a little gasp. A woman was standing on
+the second step from the floor. But it was not Joan, it was Stella
+Croyle.
+
+"I thought you had such a bad headache," said Lady Splay, after a
+perceptible pause.
+
+"It's better now, thank you," said Stella, and coming down the remaining
+steps, she advanced towards Harry.
+
+"How do you do, Colonel Luttrell?" she asked.
+
+For a moment he was taken aback. Then with the blood mounting in his
+face, he took a step forwards and shook hands with her easily.
+
+"So you know one another!" said Lady Splay.
+
+"We have known each other for a long while," returned Stella Croyle.
+
+So that was why Stella Croyle had proposed herself for the week! Lady
+Splay had been a little surprised; so persistently had Stella avoided
+anything in the shape of a party. But this time Stella had definitely
+wished to come, and Millie Splay in her loyalty had not hesitated to
+welcome her. But she had been a little curious. Stella's visit, indeed,
+was the third, though the least, of her preoccupations. The Ball on the
+Thursday of next week at the Willoughby's! Well, Stella was never
+lacking in tact. That would arrange itself. But as Millie Splay looked
+at her, recognised her beauty, her eager advance to Harry Luttrell, and
+Harry Luttrell's embarrassment, she said to herself, for quite other
+reasons:
+
+"If I had guessed why she wanted to come, nothing would have persuaded
+me to have her."
+
+Millie Splay had more reason to repeat the words before the week was
+out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE MAGNOLIA FLOWERS
+
+
+"I hadn't an idea that we should find her here," said Hillyard. "Lady
+Splay told me so very clearly that Mrs. Croyle always timed her visits
+to avoid a party."
+
+Hillyard was a little troubled lest he should be thought by his friend
+to have concurred in a plot to bring about this meeting.
+
+"I suppose that Hardiman told her you were coming to Rackham Park. I
+haven't seen her until this moment, since I returned."
+
+"That's all right, Martin," Luttrell answered.
+
+The two men were alone in the hall. The tennis players had changed, and
+were out upon the court. Millie Splay had dragged Stella Croyle away
+with her to play croquet. Luttrell moved to a writing-table.
+
+"You are going to join the tennis players," he said. Hillyard was
+already dressed for the game, and carried a racket in his hand. "I must
+write a letter, then I will come out and watch you."
+
+"Right," said Martin, and he left his friend to his letter.
+
+The hall was very still. A bee came buzzing in at the open window, made
+a tour of the flower-vases, and flew out again into the sunshine. From
+the lawn the cries of the tennis players, the calls of thrush and
+blackbird and dishwasher, were wafted in on waves of perfume from the
+roses. It was very pleasant and restful to Harry Luttrell after the
+sweat and labour of France. He sighed as he folded his letter and
+addressed it to a friend in the War Office.
+
+A letter-box stood upon a table close to the staircase. He was carrying
+his letter over to it, when a girl came running lightly down the stairs
+and halted suddenly a step or two from the bottom. She stood very still
+where Stella Croyle had stood a few minutes ago, and like Stella, she
+looked over the balustrade at Harry Luttrell. Harry Luttrell had reached
+the letter-box when he caught sight of her, but he quite forgot to drop
+his letter through the slit. He stood transfixed with wonder and
+perplexity; wonder at her beauty; perplexity as to who she was.
+
+Martin Hillyard had spoken to him of Joan Whitworth. By the delicious
+oval of her face, the deep blue of her eyes, the wealth of rippling
+bright hair, the soft bloom of colour on her cheeks, and her slim,
+boyish figure--the girl should rightly be she. But it couldn't be! No,
+it couldn't! This girl's lips were parted in a whimsical friendly smile;
+her eyes danced; she was buoyant with joy singing at her heart.
+Besides--besides----! Luttrell looked at her clothes. She wore a little
+white frock of chiffon and lace, as simple as could be, but even to a
+man's eyes it was that simplicity which is the last word of a good
+dressmaker. A huge rose of blue and silver at her waist was its only
+touch of colour. With it she wore a white, broad-brimmed hat of straw
+with a great blue bow and a few narrow streamers of blue ribbon floating
+jauntily, white stockings and shoes, cross-gartered round her slender
+ankles with shining ribbons. Was it she? Was it not? Was Martin Hillyard
+crazy or the whole world upside down?
+
+"You must be Colonel Luttrell," his gracious vision exclaimed, with
+every appearance of surprise.
+
+"I am," replied Luttrell. He was playing with his letter, half slipping
+it in, and then drawing it back from the box, and quite unaware of what
+he was doing.
+
+"We had better introduce ourselves, I think. I am Joan Whitworth."
+
+She held out her hand to him over the balustrade. He had but to reach up
+and take it. It was a cool hand, and a cordial one.
+
+"Martin Hillyard has talked to me about you," he said.
+
+"I like him," she replied. "He's a dear."
+
+"He told me enough to make me frightened at the prospect of meeting
+you."
+
+Joan leaned over the banister.
+
+"But now that we have met, you aren't really frightened, are you?" she
+asked in so wistful a voice, and with a look so deeply pleading in her
+big blue eyes that no young man could have withstood her.
+
+Harry Luttrell laughed.
+
+"I am not. I am not a bit frightened. In fact I am almost bold enough to
+ask you a question."
+
+"Yes, Colonel Luttrell?"
+
+The invitation was clear enough. But the Colonel was suddenly aware of
+his audacity and faltered.
+
+"Oh, do ask me, Colonel Luttrell!" she pleaded. The old-fashioned would
+have condemned Joan Whitworth as a minx at this moment, but would have
+softened the condemnation with a smile forced from them by her winning
+grace.
+
+"Well, I will," replied Luttrell, and with great solemnity he asked,
+"How is Linda Spavinsky?"
+
+Joan ran down the remaining steps, and dropped into a chair. A peal of
+laughter, silvery and clear, and joyous rang out from her mouth.
+
+"Oh, she's not at all well to-day. I believe she's going. Her health was
+never very stable."
+
+Then her mood changed altogether. The laughter died away, the very look
+of it faded from her face. She stood up and faced Harry Luttrell. In the
+depths of her eyes there appeared a sudden gravity, a certain
+wistfulness, almost a regret.
+
+She spoke simply:
+
+     "Iram indeed is gone with all his rose,
+      And Jamshyd's seven-ringed cup--where, no one knows!
+      But still a ruby kindles in the vine,
+      And many a garden by the water blows."
+
+She had the air of one saying good-bye to many pleasant follies which
+for long had borne her company--and saying good-bye with a sort of doubt
+whether that which was in store for her would bring a greater happiness.
+
+Harry Luttrell had no answer, and no very distinct comprehension of her
+mood. But he was stirred by it. For a little while they looked at one
+another without any words. The air about them in that still hall
+vibrated with the emotions of violins. Joan Whitworth was the first to
+break the dangerous silence.
+
+"I am afraid that up till now, what I have liked, I have liked
+tremendously, but I have not always liked it for very long. You will
+remember that in pity, won't you?" she said lightly.
+
+Harry Luttrell was quick to catch her tone.
+
+"I shall remember it with considerable apprehension if I am fortunate
+enough ever to get into your good books." His little speech ended with a
+gasp. The letter which he was holding carelessly in his fingers had
+almost slipped from them into the locked letter box.
+
+Joan crossed to where he stood.
+
+"That's all right," she said. "You can post your letter there. The box
+is cleared regularly."
+
+"No doubt," Harry Luttrell returned. "But I am no longer sure that I am
+going to post it."
+
+The letter to his friend at the War Office contained an earnest prayer
+that a peremptory telegram should be sent to him at Rackham Park, at an
+early hour on the next morning, commanding his return to London.
+
+He looked up at Joan.
+
+"You despise racing, don't you?"
+
+"I am going to Gatwick to-morrow."
+
+"You are!" he cried eagerly.
+
+"Of course."
+
+He stood poising the letter in the palm of his open hand. The thought of
+Stella Croyle bade him post it. The presence of Joan Whitworth, and he
+was so conscious of her, paralysed his arm. Some vague sense of the
+tumult within him passed out from him to her. An intuition seized upon
+her that that letter was in some way vital to her, in some way a menace
+to her. Any moment he might post it! Once posted he might let it go. She
+drew a little sharp breath. He was standing there, so still, so quiet
+and slow in his decision. It became necessary to her that words should
+be spoken. She spoke the first which rose to her lips.
+
+"You are going to stay for the Willoughbys' ball, aren't you?"
+
+Harry Luttrell smiled.
+
+"But you despise dancing."
+
+"I? I adore it!"
+
+She smiled as she spoke, but she spoke with a queer shyness which took
+him off his feet. He slowly tore the letter across and again across and
+then into little pieces and carried them to the waste-paper basket.
+
+The action brought home to her with a shock that there was a letter
+which she, in her turn, must write, must write and post in that glass
+letter-box, oh, without any hesitation or error, this very evening. She
+thought upon it with repugnance, but it had to be written and done with.
+It was the consequence of her own folly, her own vanity. Harry Luttrell
+returned to her but he did not remark the trouble in her face.
+
+"When I left England," he said slowly, "people were dancing the tango.
+That is--one couple which knew the dance, was dancing it in the
+ball-room, and all the others were practising in the passage. That's
+done with, I suppose?"
+
+"Quite," said Joan.
+
+Harry Luttrell heaved a sigh.
+
+"I should have liked to have practised with you in the passage," he said
+ruefully.
+
+"Still, there are other dances," Joan Whitworth suggested. "The
+one-step?"
+
+"That's going for a walk," said Harry Luttrell.
+
+"In an unusual attitude," Joan added demurely. "Do you know the
+fox-trot?"
+
+"A little."
+
+"The twinkle step?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"I might teach you that," Joan suggested.
+
+"Oh, do! Teach it me now! Then we'll dance it in the passage."
+
+"But every one will be dancing it in the ball-room," Joan objected.
+
+"That's why," said Harry Luttrell, and they both laughed.
+
+Joan looked towards the gramophone in the corner of the room. She was
+tempted, but she must have that letter written first. She would dance
+with Harry Luttrell with an uneasy mind unless that letter were written
+and posted first.
+
+"Will you put a record ready on the gramophone, whilst I write a note,"
+she suggested. "Then I'll teach you. It's quite a short note."
+
+Joan sat in her turn at the writing table. She wrote the first lines
+easily and quickly enough. But she came to explanations, and of
+explanations she had none to offer. She sat and framed a sentence and it
+would not do. Meanwhile the gramophone was open and ready, the record
+fitted on to the disc of green baize and her cavalier in impatient
+attendance. She must be quick. But the quicker she wanted to be, the
+more slowly her thoughts moved amongst awkward sentences which she must
+write. She dashed off in the end the standard phrase for such
+emergencies. "I will write to you to-morrow," addressed and stamped her
+letter and dropped it into the letter box. The letter fell in the glass
+box with the address uppermost. But Joan did not trouble about that, did
+not even notice it; a weight was off her mind.
+
+"I am ready," she said, and a few seconds later the music of "The Long
+Trail" was wafted to the astonished ears of the tennis players in the
+garden. They paused in their game and then Dennis Brown crept to the
+window of the hall and looked cautiously in. He stood transfixed; then
+turned and beckoned furiously. The lawn-tennis players forsook their
+rackets, Lady Splay and Stella Croyle their croquet mallets. Dennis
+Brown led them by a back way up to the head of the broad stairs. Here a
+gallery ran along one side of the hall. Voices rose up to them from the
+floor above the music of the gramophone.
+
+Joan's: "That's the twinkle."
+
+Luttrell's: "It's pretty difficult."
+
+"Try it again," said Joan. "Oh, that's ever so much better."
+
+"I shall never dare to dance it with any one else," said Luttrell.
+
+"I really don't mind very much about that," Joan responded dryly.
+
+Millie Splay could hardly believe her ears. Cautiously she and her party
+advanced on tiptoe to the balustrade and looked down. Yes, there the
+pair of them were, now laughing, now in desperate earnest, practising
+the fox-trot to the music of the gramophone.
+
+"Do I hold you right?" asked Harry.
+
+"Well--I shan't break, you know," Joan answered demurely, and then with
+a little sigh, "That's better."
+
+Under her breath Stella Croyle murmured passionately, "Oh, you minx!"
+
+As the record ran out a storm of applause burst from the gallery.
+
+"Oh, Joan, Joan," cried Harold Jupp, shaking his head reproachfully.
+"There's the poet kicked right across the room."
+
+"Where?" asked Harry Luttrell, looking round for the book.
+
+"Oh, it doesn't matter," said Joan impatiently. "It's only an old volume
+of Browning."
+
+Cries of "Shame" broke indignantly from the race-goers, and Joan
+received them with imperturbable indifference. Harry Luttrell, however,
+went on his knees and discovering the book beneath a distant sofa,
+carefully dusted it.
+
+"Did you ever read 'How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix'?"
+he asked.
+
+The audience in the gallery waited in dead silence for Joan Whitworth's
+answer. It came unhesitatingly clear and in a voice of high enthusiasm.
+
+"Isn't it the most wonderful poem he ever wrote?"
+
+The gallery broke into screams, catcalls, hisses and protests against
+Joan's shameless recantation.
+
+"It's Browning, of course, but it's not Browning at all, if you
+understand me," Dennis Brown exclaimed with every show of indignation;
+and the whole party trooped away again to their tennis and their
+croquet.
+
+Harry Luttrell placed the book upon a table and turned to Joan.
+
+"Now what would you like to do?" he asked.
+
+Joan shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"We might cut into the next tennis set," she said doubtfully.
+
+"You could hardly play in those shoes," said Harry Luttrell.
+
+Joan contemplated a heel of formidable height. Oh, where were the
+sandals of the higher Life?
+
+"No, I suppose not. Of course, there's a--but it wouldn't probably
+interest you."
+
+"Wouldn't it?" cried Harry Luttrell.
+
+"Well, it's a maze. Millie Splay is rather proud of it. The hedges are
+centuries old." She turned innocent eyes on Harry Luttrell. "I don't
+know whether you are interested in old hedges."
+
+It is to be feared that "minx" was the only right word for Joan
+Whitworth on this afternoon. Harry Luttrell expressed an intense
+enthusiasm for great box hedges.
+
+"But they aren't box, they are yew," said Joan, stopping at once.
+
+Harry Luttrell's enthusiasm for yew hedges, however, was even greater
+and more engrossing than his enthusiasm for box ones. A pagoda perched
+upon a bank overlooked the maze and a narrow steep path led down into it
+between the hedges. Joan left it to her soldier to find the way. There
+was a stone pedestal with a small lead figure perched upon the top of it
+in the small clear space in the middle. But Harry Luttrell took a deal
+of time in reaching it. If, however, their progress was slow, with many
+false turnings and sudden stops against solid walls of hedge, it was not
+so with their acquaintanceship; each turn in the path brought them on by
+a new stage. They wandered in the dawn of the world.
+
+"Suppose that I had never come to Rackham Park!" said Harry Luttrell,
+suddenly turning at the end of a blind alley. "I almost didn't come. I
+might have altogether missed knowing you."
+
+The terrible thought smote them both. What risks people ran to be sure.
+They might never have met. They might have never known what it was to
+meet. They might have lived benighted, not knowing what lovely spirit
+had passed them by. They looked at one another with despairing eyes.
+Then a happy thought occurred to Joan.
+
+"But, after all, you did come," she exclaimed.
+
+Harry Luttrell drew a breath. He was relieved of a great oppression.
+
+"Why, yes," he answered in wonderment. "So I did!"
+
+They retraced their steps. As the sun drew towards its late setting, by
+an innocent suggestion from Joan here, a little question there, Harry
+Luttrell was manoeuvred towards the centre of the maze. Suddenly he
+stopped with a finger on the lips. A voice reached to them from the
+innermost recess--a voice which intoned, a voice which was oracular.
+
+"What's that?" he asked in a whisper.
+
+Joan shook her head.
+
+"I haven't an idea."
+
+As yet they could hear no words. Words were flung from wall to wall of
+the centre space and kept imprisoned there. It seemed that the presiding
+genius of the maze was uttering his invocation as the sun went down.
+Joan and Harry Luttrell crept stealthily nearer, Harry now openly guided
+by a light touch upon his arm as the paths twisted. Words--amazing
+words--became distinctly audible; and a familiar voice. They came to the
+last screen of hedge and peered through at a spot where the twigs were
+thin. In the very middle of the clear space stood Sir Chichester Splay,
+one hand leaning upon the pedestal, the other hidden in his bosom, in
+the very attitude of the orator; and to the silent spaces of the maze
+thus he made his address:
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen! When I entered the tent this afternoon and took
+my seat upon the platform, nothing was further from my thoughts than
+that I should hear myself proposing a vote of thanks to our
+indefatigable chairman!"
+
+Sir Chichester was getting ready for the Chichester Flower Show, at
+which, certainly, he was not going to make a speech. Oh dear, no! He
+knew better than that.
+
+"In this marvellous collection of flowers, ladies and gentlemen, we can
+read, if so we will, a singular instance of co-ordination and
+organisation--the Empire's great needs to-day----"
+
+Harry Luttrell and Joan stifled their laughter and stole away out of
+hearing.
+
+"We won't breathe a word of it," said Joan.
+
+"No," said Harry.
+
+They had a little secret now between them--that wonderful link--a little
+secret; and to be sure they made the most of it. They could look across
+the dinner-table at one another with a smile in which no one else could
+have a share. If Sir Chichester spoke, it would be just to kindle that
+swift glance in lovers' eyes from which the heart takes fire.
+Love-making went at a gallop in nineteen hundred and sixteen; it jumped
+the barriers; it danced to a lively and violent tune. Maidens, as Sir
+Charles Hardiman had pronounced, had become more primeval. Insecurity
+had dropped them down upon the bed-rock elemental truths. Men were for
+women, women for men, especially for those men who went out with a
+cheery song in their mouths to save them from the hideous destiny of
+women in ravaged lands. The soldier was here to-day on leave, and God
+alone knew where he would be to-morrow, and whether alive, or perhaps a
+crippled thing like a child!
+
+Joan Whitworth and Harry Luttrell had been touched by the swift magic of
+those days; he, when he had first seen her in the shining armour of her
+youth upon the steps of the stairs; she, when Harry had first entered
+the hall and spoken his few commonplace words of greeting. This was the
+hour for them, the hour at the well with the desert behind them and the
+desert in front, the hour within the measure of which was to be forced
+the essence of many days. When they returned to the hall they found most
+of the small party gathered there before going up to dress for dinner;
+and there was that in the faces of the pair which betrayed them.
+Hillyard looked quickly round the hall, as a qualm of pity for Stella
+Croyle seized him. But he could not see her. "Thank Heaven she has
+already gone up to dress," he said to himself. A marriage between Joan
+Whitworth and the Harry Luttrell of to-day, the man freed now from the
+great obsession of his life and trained now to the traditional paths,
+was a fitting thing, a thing to be welcomed. Hillyard readily
+acknowledged it. But he had more insight into the troubled soul of
+Stella Croyle than any one else in that company.
+
+"No one's bothering about her," he reflected. "She came here to set up
+her last fight to win back Harry. She is now putting on her armour for
+it. And she hasn't a chance--no, not one!"
+
+For Harry's sake he was glad. But he was a creator of plays; and his
+training led him to seek to understand, and to understand with the
+sympathy of his emotions, the points of view of others who might stand
+in a contrast or a relation. He walked up the stairs with a heart full
+of pity when Millicent Splay caught him up.
+
+"What did I tell you?" she said, brimful with delight. "Just look at
+Joan! Is there a girl anywhere who can match her?"
+
+Martin looked down over the balustrade at Joan in the hall below.
+
+"No," he said slowly. "Not one whom I have ever seen."
+
+The little note of melancholy in his voice moved Millie Splay. She was
+all kindness in that moment of her triumph. She turned to Martin
+Hillyard in commiseration. "Oh, don't tell me that you are in love with
+her too! I should be so sorry."
+
+"No, I am not," Martin Hillyard hastened to reassure her, "not one bit."
+
+The commiseration died on the instant in Millicent Splay.
+
+"Well, really I don't see why you shouldn't be," she said coldly. "You
+will go a long way before you find any one to equal her."
+
+Her whole attitude demanded of him an explanation of how he dared not to
+be in love with her darling.
+
+"A very long way," Martin Hillyard agreed humbly. "All the way
+probably."
+
+Lady Splay was mollified, and went on to her room. Down in the hall,
+Harry Luttrell turned to Joan.
+
+"This is going to be a wonderful week for me."
+
+"I am very glad," answered Joan, and they went up the stairs side by
+side.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+JENNY PRASK
+
+
+"I have put out the blue dress with the silver underskirt, madam," said
+Jenny Prask, knowing well that nothing in Stella Croyle's wardrobe set
+off so well her dark and fragile beauty.
+
+"Very well, Jenny."
+
+Stella Croyle answered listlessly. She was discouraged by her experience
+of that afternoon. She had come to Rackham Park, certain of one factor
+upon her side, but very certain of that. She would find no competitor,
+and lo! the invincible competitor, youth, had put on armour against her!
+Stella looked in the mirror. She was thirty, and in the circle within
+which she moved, thirty meant climbing reluctantly on to the shelf.
+
+"Don't you think, Jenny, the blue frock makes me look old?"
+
+Jenny Prask laughed scornfully.
+
+"Old, madam! You! Just fancy!"
+
+Stella Croyle, living much alone, had made a companion of her maid.
+There was nothing of Mrs. Croyle's history which Jenny Prask did not
+know, and very few of her hopes and sorrows were hidden from her.
+
+"My gracious me, madam! There will be nobody to hold a candle to you
+here!" she said, with a sniff, as she helped Stella to undress.
+
+Stella looked in the glass. Certainly there was not a line upon the
+smoothness of her cheeks; her dark hair had lost none of its gloss. She
+took her features one by one, and found no trace of change. Nor, indeed,
+scrutinised in that way did Stella show any change. It was when you saw
+her across a room that you recognised that girlhood had gone, and that
+there was a woman in the full ripeness of her beauty.
+
+"Yes," she said, and her listlessness began to disappear. She turned
+away from the mirror. "Come, Jenny!" she cried, with a hopeful smile.
+She was saying to herself, "I have still a chance."
+
+Jenny rattled on while she assisted her mistress. Stella's face changed
+with her mood, more than most faces. Disappointment and fatigue aged her
+beyond due measure. Jenny Prask was determined that she could go down to
+dinner to-night looking her youngest and best.
+
+"I went for a walk this evening with Mr. Marvin. He's Colonel Luttrell's
+soldier-servant, and quite enthusiastic, he was, madam."
+
+"Was he, Jenny?"
+
+"Quite! The men in his company loved him--a captain he was then. He
+always looked after their dinner. A bit strict, too, but they don't mind
+that."
+
+Jenny was busy with Stella Croyle's hair; and the result satisfied her.
+
+"There won't be anybody else to-night, madam," she said.
+
+"Won't there, Jenny?" said Mrs. Croyle, incredulously. "There'll be Miss
+Whitworth."
+
+Jenny Prask sniffed disdainfully.
+
+"Miss Whitworth! A fair sight I call her, madam, if I may say so. I
+never did see such clothes! And how she keeps a maid for more than a
+week beats me altogether. What I say, madam, is those who button in
+front when they should hook behind are a fair washout."
+
+Stella laughed.
+
+"I'm afraid that you'll find, Jenny, that Miss Whitworth will hook
+behind to-night."
+
+Jenny went on unaffected by the rejoinder. She had her little item of
+news to contribute to the contentment of her mistress.
+
+"Besides, Miss Whitworth is in love with the foreign gentleman. Oh,
+madam, if you turn as sharp as that, I can't but pull your hair."
+
+"Which foreigner?"
+
+"That Mario Escobar." Jenny looked over Stella's head and into the
+reflection of her eyes upon the mirror. "I don't hold with foreigners
+myself, madam. A little ridiculous they always seem to me, with their
+chatter and what not."
+
+"And you believe Miss Whitworth's in love with him."
+
+"Outrageous, Mr. Harper says. Quite the talk of the servants' hall, it
+is. Why, even this afternoon she wrote him a letter. Mr. Harper showed
+it me after he took it out of the letter-box to post it. 'That's her
+'and,' says he--and there it was, Mario Escobar, Esquire, the Golden Sun
+Hotel, Midhurst----"
+
+"Midhurst?" cried Stella with a start. She looked eagerly at the
+reflection of Jenny Prask. "Mr. Escobar is staying in an hotel at
+Midhurst?"
+
+"Yes, madam."
+
+"And Miss Whitworth wrote to him there this afternoon?"
+
+"It's gospel truth, madam. May it be my last dying word, if it isn't!"
+said Jenny Prask.
+
+The blood mounted into Stella Croyle's face. Since that was true--and
+she did not doubt Jenny Prask for a moment--Jenny would have given
+anything she had to save her mistress trouble, and Stella knew it. Since
+it was true, then, that Mario Escobar was staying hidden away in a
+country hotel five miles off, and that Joan was writing to him, why,
+after all, she had no rival.
+
+Her spirits rose with a bound. She had a week, a whole week, in the
+company of Harry Luttrell; and what might she not do in a week if she
+used her wits and used her beauty! Stella Croyle ran down the stairs
+like a girl.
+
+Jenny Prask shut the door, and, opening a wardrobe, took from a high
+shelf Mrs. Croyle's dressing-bag. She opened it, and from one of the
+fittings she lifted out a bottle. The bottle was quite full of a white,
+colourless liquid. Jenny Prask nodded to herself and carefully put the
+bottle back. There was very little she did not know about the
+proceedings of her mistress. Then she went out of the room into the
+gallery, and peeped down to watch the other guests assemble. She saw
+Miranda Brown, Stella, Sir Chichester Splay, Dennis and Harry Luttrell
+come from their different rooms and gather in the hall below. From a
+passage behind her, a girl, butterfly-bright, flashed out and danced
+joyously down the stairs. A new-comer, thought Jenny, with a pang of
+alarm for her mistress! But she heard the new-comer speak, and heard her
+spoken to. It was Joan Whitworth.
+
+"Oh!" Jenny Prask gasped.
+
+Undoubtedly Joan "hooked behind" to-night. What had come over her? Jenny
+asked. Her quick mind realised that Mario Escobar was not answerable for
+the change since Mario Escobar was miles away at Midhurst. Besides,
+according to Mr. Harper, this flirtation with Escobar had been going on
+a year and more.
+
+Jenny Prask looked from Joan to Harry Luttrell. She saw them drawn to
+one another across the hall and move into the dining-room side by side.
+She turned back with a little moan of disappointment into Stella
+Croyle's bedroom; and whilst she tidied it, more than once she stopped
+to wring her hands.
+
+Stella Croyle, however, kept her good spirits through the evening. For
+after dinner Harry Luttrell, of his own will, came straight to her in
+the drawing-room.
+
+"Oh, Wub," she said in a whisper as she drew her skirt aside to make
+room for him upon the couch. "Oh, Wub, what years it is since I have
+seen you."
+
+When the old nickname fell upon Harry's ears, he looked quickly about
+him to see where Joan Whitworth sat. But she was at the other end of the
+room.
+
+"Yes, it is a long time."
+
+"Stockholm!" said Stella, dwelling upon the name. She lowered her voice.
+"Wub, I suffered terribly after you went away. Oh, it wasn't a good
+time. No, it wasn't!"
+
+"Stella, I am very sorry," he said gently. He knew himself this day the
+glories and the pangs of love. He was sunk ocean-deep one moment in the
+sense of his unworthiness, the next he knocked his head against the
+stars on the soaring billow of his pride. He could not but feel for
+Stella, who had passed through the same furnace. He could not but grieve
+that the wondrous book of which he was racing through the first pages
+had been closed for her by him. Might she not open it again, some time,
+with another at her side?
+
+"Wub, tell me what you have been doing all these years," she said.
+
+He began the tale of them in the short, reluctant, colloquial phrases
+which the English use to strip their achievements of any romantic
+semblance until Millicent Splay sailed across the room and claimed him
+for a table of bridge.
+
+"He will be safer there," she said to herself.
+
+"Yes, but she had to take him away," Stella's thoughts responded. She
+was dangerous then in Millie Splay's judgment. The sweet flattery set
+Stella smiling. She went up to her room rejoicing that she had chosen
+that week to visit Rackham Park. She was playing a losing game, but she
+did not know it.
+
+Thus the very spirit of summer seemed to inform the gathering. Saturday
+brought up no clouds to darken the clear sky. Harold Jupp and Dennis
+Brown actually scored four nice wins at Gatwick on horses which, to
+celebrate the week, miraculously ran to form. Miranda under these
+conditions would have inevitably lost, but by another stroke of fortune
+no horse running had any special blemish, name, colour or trick
+calculated to inspire her. Sir Chichester was happy too, for he saw a
+lady reporter write down his name in her notebook. So was Mr. Albany
+Todd. For he met the Earl of Eltringham, with whom he had a passing
+acquaintance; and his lordship, being complimented upon his gardens, of
+which _Country Life_ had published an account, was moved to say in the
+friendliest manner: "You must propose yourself for a week-end, Mr. Todd,
+and see them."
+
+As for Joan and Harry Luttrell, it mattered little where they were, so
+that they were together. They walked in their own magical garden.
+
+It fell to Martin Hillyard to look after Stella Croyle, and the task was
+not difficult. She kept her eyes blindfold to what she did not wish to
+see. She had a chance, she said to herself, recollecting her talk with
+Harry last night, and the news of Joan which Jenny Prask had given to
+her. She had a chance, if she walked delicately.
+
+"Old associations--give them opportunity, and they renew their
+strength," she thought. "Harry is afraid of them--that's all."
+
+On the Monday evening Jenny Prask brought a fresh piece of gossip which
+strengthened her hopes.
+
+"Miss Whitworth had a letter from him this morning," said Jenny. "She
+wouldn't open it at the breakfast-table, Mr. Harper says. Quite upset
+she was, he says. She took it upstairs to her room just as it was."
+
+"It might have been from some one else," answered Stella.
+
+"Oh, no, madam," replied Jenny. "It had the Midhurst postmark, and Mr.
+Harper knows his handwriting besides. Mr. Harper's very observant."
+
+"He seems to be," said Stella.
+
+"Miss Whitworth answered the letter at once, and took it out to the
+village and posted it with her own hands," Jenny continued.
+
+"Are you sure?" cried Mrs. Croyle.
+
+"I saw her go with my own eyes, I did. She went in her own little
+runabout, and was back in a jiffy, with a sort of 'There-I've-done-it!'
+look about her. Oh, there's something going on there, madam--take my
+word for it! She's a deep one, Miss Whitworth is, and no mistake. Will
+you wear the smoke-grey to-night, madam? I am keeping the pink for the
+ball on Thursday."
+
+Stella allowed a moment or two to pass before she answered.
+
+"I shan't go to the Willoughbys' ball, Jenny."
+
+Jenny Prask stared in dismay.
+
+"You won't, madam!"
+
+"No, Jenny. But I want you to be careful not to mention it to any one. I
+shall dress as if I was going, but at the last moment I shall plead a
+headache and stay behind."
+
+"Very well, madam," said Jenny. But it seemed to her that Stella was
+throwing down her arms. Stella, however, had understood, upon hearing of
+the invitation for Lady Splay's party, that she could do nothing else.
+The Willoughbys were strict folk. Mrs. Croyle could hardly hope to go
+without some rumour of her history coming afterwards to the ears of that
+family; and the family would hold her presence as a reproach against
+Millie Splay. Stella had herself proposed her plan to Millie, and she
+noted the relief with which it was received.
+
+"You will be careful not to mention it to a soul, Jenny," Stella
+insisted.
+
+"My goodness me, madam, I never talk," replied Jenny. "I keep my ears
+open and let the others do that."
+
+"I know, Jenny," said Stella, with a smile. "I can't imagine what I
+should do without you."
+
+"And you never will, madam, unless it's your own wish and doin'," said
+Jenny heartily. "I have talked it over with Brown"--Brown was Mrs.
+Croyle's chauffeur--"and he's quite willin' that I should go on with you
+after we are married."
+
+"Then, that's all right," said Stella.
+
+Many a one looking backwards upon some terrible and unexpected tragedy
+will have noticed with what care the great dramaturgist so wove his play
+that every little unheeded event in the days before helped directly to
+create the final catastrophe. It happened on this evening that Stella
+went downstairs earlier than the other guests, and in going into the
+library in search of an evening paper, found Sir Chichester standing by
+the telephone instrument.
+
+"Am I in your way?" she asked.
+
+"Not a bit, Stella," he answered. "In fact, you might help me by looking
+up the number I want." He raised the instrument, and playing with the
+receiver as he stood erect, remarked, "Although I am happy to think that
+I shall not be called upon to deliver any observations on the occasion
+of the Chichester flower show next Thursday, I may as well ask one of
+the newspapers if their local correspondent would give the ceremony some
+little attention."
+
+Stella Croyle took up the telephone book.
+
+"Which newspaper is it to be, Sir Chichester?"
+
+"The _Harpoon_, I think. Yes, I am sure. The _Harpoon_."
+
+Stella Croyle looked up the number and read out:
+
+"Gerrard, one, six, two, double three."
+
+Sir Chichester accordingly called upon the trunk line and gave the
+number.
+
+"You will ring me up? Thank you," he said, and replacing the receiver,
+stood in anxious expectancy.
+
+"I thought that your favourite paper was the _Daily Flashlight_?" Stella
+observed.
+
+"That's quite true, Stella. It was," Sir Chichester explained na�vely.
+"But I have noticed lately a regrettable tendency to indifference on the
+part of the _Flashlight_. The management is usually too occupied to
+converse with me when I ring it up. On the other hand, I am new to the
+_Harpoon_. Hallo! Hallo! This is Sir Christopher Splay speaking," and he
+delivered his message. "Thank you very much," said Sir Chichester as he
+hung up the receiver. "Really most courteous people. Yes, most
+courteous. What is their number, Stella? I must remember it."
+
+Stella read it out again.
+
+"Gerrard, one, six, two, double three," and thus she, too, committed the
+number to memory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+PLANS FOR THE EVENING
+
+
+The library at Rackham Park was a small, oblong room, with a big window
+upon the garden. It opened into the hall on the one side and into the
+dining-room on the other, and in one corner the telephone was installed.
+At half-past eight on the night of the dance at Harrel, this room was
+empty and in darkness. But a second afterwards the door from the hall
+was opened, and Joan stood in the doorway, the light shimmering upon her
+satin cloak and the silver embroidery of her frock. She cast an anxious
+look behind her and up the staircase. It seemed as if some movement at
+the angle made by the stairs and the gallery caught her eye, for she
+stepped back for a clearer view, and listened with a peculiar
+intentness. She saw nothing, however, and heard nothing. She entered the
+library swiftly and closed the door behind her, so that the room fell
+once more upon darkness save for a thread of gold at the bottom of the
+other door behind which the men of the party were still sitting over
+their wine. She crossed the room towards the window, stepping cautiously
+to avoid the furniture. She was quite invisible. But for a tiny rustle
+of the lace flounces on her dress one would have sworn the room was
+empty. But when she was half-way across a sudden burst of laughter from
+the dining-room brought her to a stop with her hand upon her heart and a
+little sob not altogether stifled in her throat. It meant so much to her
+that the desperate adventure of this night should be carried through! If
+all went well, as it must--oh, as it surely must!--by midnight she would
+be free of her terrors and distress.
+
+The laughter in the dining room died down. Joan stole forward again. She
+drew away the heavy curtains from the long window, and the moonlight,
+clear and bright like silver, poured into the room and clothed her in
+its soft radiance. She drew back the bolts at the top and bottom of the
+glass door and turned the key in the lock. She touched the glass and the
+door swung open upon the garden, easily, noiselessly. She drew it close
+again and leaving it so, raised her hands to the curtains at the side.
+As she began carefully to draw them together, so that the rings should
+not rattle on the pole, the door from the hall was softly and quickly
+opened, and the switch of the electric lights by the side of the door
+pressed down. The room leapt into light.
+
+Joan swung round, her face grown white, her eyes burning with fire. She
+saw only Jenny Prask.
+
+"I hope I don't intrude, miss," said Jenny respectfully. "I came to find
+a book."
+
+The blood flowed back into Joan's cheeks.
+
+"Certainly, Jenny, take what you like," said Joan, and she draped the
+curtains across the window.
+
+"Thank you, miss."
+
+Jenny chose a book from the case upon the table and without a glance at
+Joan or at the window, went out of the room again. Joan watched her go.
+After all, what had Jenny seen? A girl whose home was there, drawing the
+curtains close. That was all. Joan shook her anxiety off. Jenny had left
+the door of the library open and some one came running down the stairs
+whistling as she ran. Miranda Brown dashed into the room struggling with
+a pair of gloves.
+
+"Oh, how I hate gloves in this weather!" she cried. "Well, here I am,
+Joan. You wanted to speak to me before the others had finished powdering
+their noses. What is it?"
+
+"I want you to help me."
+
+"Of course I will," Miranda answered cheerily. "How?"
+
+Joan closed the door and returned to Miranda, who, having drawn the
+gloves over her arm, was now struggling with the buttons.
+
+"I want you, when we reach Harrel----"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"To lend me your motor-car for an hour."
+
+Miranda turned in amazement towards her friend. But one glance at her
+face showed that the prayer was made in desperate earnest. Miranda Brown
+caught her friend by the arm.
+
+"Joan!"
+
+"Yes," Joan Whitworth answered, nodding her head miserably. "That's the
+help I want and I want it dreadfully. Just for an hour--no more."
+
+"Joan, my dear--what's the matter?" asked Miranda gazing into Joan
+Whitworth's troubled face.
+
+"I don't want you to ask me," the girl answered. "I want you to help me
+straight off without any questions. Otherwise----" and Joan's voice
+shook and broke, "otherwise--oh, I don't know what will happen to me!"
+
+Miranda put her arm round Joan Whitworth's waist. "Joan! You are in real
+trouble!"
+
+"For the first time!" said Joan.
+
+"Can't I----?"
+
+"No," Joan interrupted. "There's only the one way, Miranda."
+
+She sat down upon a couch at Miranda's side and feverishly caught her
+hand. "Do help me! You can't tell what it means to me!... And I should
+hate telling you! Oh, I have been such a fool!"
+
+Joan's face was quivering, and so deep a compunction was audible in her
+voice, so earnest a prayer was to be read in her troubled eyes, that
+Miranda's doubt and anxiety were doubled.
+
+"I don't know what I shall do, if you don't help me," Joan said
+miserably as she let go of Miranda. Her hands fluttered helplessly in
+the air. "No, I don't know!"
+
+Miranda was thoroughly disturbed. The contrast between the Joan she had
+known until this week, good-humoured, a little aloof, contented with
+herself and her ambitions, placid, self-contained, and this lovely girl,
+troubled to the heart's core, with her beseeching eyes and trembling
+lips touched her poignantly, meltingly.
+
+"Oh, Joan, I don't like it!" she whispered. "What mad thing have you
+done?"
+
+"Nothing that can't be put right! Nothing! Nothing!" Joan caught eagerly
+at the argument. "Oh, I was a fool! But if you'll only help me
+to-night, I am sure everything will be arranged."
+
+The words were bold enough, but the girl's voice trailed off into a low,
+unsteady whisper, as terror at the rash plan which she had made and must
+now carry through caught at her heart. "Oh, Miranda, do be kind!"
+
+"When do you want the car?" asked Miranda.
+
+"Immediately after we get to Harrel."
+
+"Joan!"
+
+Miranda herself was growing frightened. She stood torn with indecision.
+Joan's distress pleaded on the one side, dread of some tragic mystery
+upon the other. For the first time in her life Joan was in some
+desperate crisis of destiny. Her feet and hands twitched as though she
+were bound fast in the coils of a net she could not break. What wisdom
+of experience could she bring to help her to escape? On what wild and
+hopeless venture might she not be set?
+
+"Yes, yes," Joan urged eagerly. "I have thought it all out. I want you
+to tell your chauffeur privately to return along the avenue after he has
+set you down. There's a road on the right a few yards down. If he will
+turn into that and wait behind the big clump of rhododendrons I will
+join him immediately."
+
+"But it will be noticed that you have gone. People will ask for you,"
+Miranda objected.
+
+"No, I shall be back again within the hour. There will be a crowd of
+people. And lots won't imagine that I should ever come to the dance at
+all." Even at that moment a little smile played about the lips. "And if
+the ball had been a week ago, I shouldn't have gone, should I? I should
+still be wearing sandals," she explained, as she looked down at the
+buckles of her trim satin slippers, "and haughtily wishing you all good
+night in the hall here. No, it will be easy enough. I shall just shake
+hands with Mrs. Willoughby, pass on with the rest of our party into the
+ball-room and then slip out by the corridor at the side of the park."
+
+"It's dangerous, Joan!" said Miranda.
+
+"Oh, I know, but----" Joan rose suddenly with her eyes upon the door.
+"The others are coming. Miranda, will you help me? I would have driven
+over to Harrel in my own little car. But it's open and I should have got
+blown about until everybody would have begun asking why in the world I
+used it. Oh, Miranda, quick!"
+
+Her ears had heard the voices already in the hall. Miranda heard them
+too. In a moment the door would be thrown open. She must make up her
+mind now.
+
+"Very well. The first turning to the right down the avenue and behind
+the rhododendrons. I'll tell the chauffeur."
+
+"And no one else! Not even Dennis!"
+
+"Joan!"
+
+"No, not even Dennis! Promise me!"
+
+Millie Splay was heard to be inquiring for them both.
+
+"Very well. I promise!"
+
+"Oh, thank you! Thank you."
+
+The door from the hall was opened upon that cry of gratitude and Millie
+Splay looked in.
+
+"Oh, there you are." A movement of chairs became audible in the
+dining-room. "And those men are still sitting over their miserable
+cigars."
+
+"They are coming," said Joan, and the next moment the dining-room door
+was thrown open and Sir Chichester with his guests trooped out from it.
+
+"Now then, you girls, we ought to be off," he cried as if he had been
+waiting with his coat on for half an hour. "This is none of your London
+dances. We are in the country. You won't any of you get any partners if
+you don't hurry."
+
+"Well, I like that!" returned Millie Splay. "Here we all are, absolutely
+waiting for you!"
+
+Mr. Albany Todd approached Joan.
+
+"You will keep a dance for me?"
+
+"Of course. The third before supper," answered Joan.
+
+Already Sir Chichester was putting on his coat in the hall.
+
+"Come on! Come on!" he cried impatiently, and then in quite another
+tone, "Oh!"
+
+The evening papers had arrived late that evening. They now lay neatly
+folded on the hall table. Sir Chichester pounced upon them. The
+throbbing motor-cars at the door, the gay figures of his guests were
+all forgotten. He plumped down upon a couch.
+
+"There!" cried Millie Splay in despair. "Now we can all sit down for
+half an hour."
+
+"Nonsense, my dear, nonsense! I just want to see whether there is any
+report of my little speech at the Flower Show yesterday." He turned over
+the leaves. "Not a word apparently, here! And yet it was an occasion of
+some importance. I can't understand these fellows."
+
+He tossed the paper aside and took up another. "Just a second, dear!"
+
+Millie Splay looked around at her guests with much the same expression
+of helpless wonderment which was so often to be seen on the face of
+Dennis Brown, when Miranda went racing.
+
+"It's the limit!" she declared.
+
+There were two, however, of the party, who were not at all distressed by
+Sir Chichester's procrastination. When the others streamed into the
+hall, Joan lingered behind, sedulously buttoning her gloves which were
+buttoned before; and Harry Luttrell returned to assist her. The door was
+three-quarters closed. From the hall no one could see them.
+
+"You are going to dance with me in the passage," he said.
+
+Joan smiled at him and nodded. Now that Miranda had given way, Joan's
+spirits had revived. The colour was bright in her cheeks, her eyes were
+tender.
+
+"Yes, but not at once."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I'll finish my duty dances first," said Joan in a low voice. She did
+not take her eyes from his face. She let him read, she meant him to
+read, in her eyes what lay so close at her heart. Harry Luttrell read
+without an error, the print was so large, the type so clear. He took a
+step nearer to her.
+
+"Joan!" he whispered; and at this, his first use of her Christian name,
+her face flowered like a rose.
+
+"Thank you!" she said softly. "Oh, thank you!"
+
+Harry Luttrell looked over his shoulder. They had the room to
+themselves, so long as they did not raise their voices.
+
+"Joan," he began with a little falter in his voice. Could he have
+pleaded better in a thousand fine speeches, he who had seen his men
+wither about him on the Somme, than by that little timorous quaver in
+his voice? "Joan, I have something to ask of you to-night. I meant to
+ask it during a dance, when you couldn't run away. But I am going to ask
+it now."
+
+Joan drew back sharply.
+
+"No! Please wait!" and as she saw his face cloud, she hurried on. "Oh,
+don't be hurt! You misunderstand. How you misunderstand! Take me in to
+supper to-night, will you? And then you shall talk to me, and I'll
+listen." Her voice rose like clear sweet music in a lilt of joy. "I'll
+listen with all my heart, my hands openly in yours if you will, so that
+all may see and know my pride!"
+
+"Joan!" he whispered.
+
+"But not now! Not till then!"
+
+Harry Luttrell did not consider what scruple in the girl's conscience
+held him off. The delay did not trouble him at all. She stood before
+him, radiant in her beauty, her happiness like an aura about her.
+
+"Joan," he whispered again, and--how it happened who shall say?--in a
+second she was within his arms, her heart throbbing against his; her
+hands stole about his shoulders; their lips were pressed together.
+
+"Harry! Oh, Harry!" she murmured. Then very gently she pushed him from
+her. She shook her head with a wistful little smile.
+
+"I didn't mean you to do that," she said in self-reproach, "until after
+supper."
+
+In the hall Sir Chichester threw down the last of the newspapers in a
+rage. "Not a word! Not one single miserable little word! I don't ask
+much, goodness knows, but----" and his voice went up in an angry
+incredulity. "Not one word! And I thought the _Harpoon_ was such a good
+paper too!"
+
+Sir Chichester sprang to his feet. He glanced at his guests. He turned
+upon his wife.
+
+"God bless my soul, Millie, what _are_ we waiting for? I'll tell you
+girls what it is. Unless we get off at once, we had better not go at
+all. Where's Joan? Where's Luttrell?"
+
+"Here we are!" cried Luttrell from the library, and in a lower tone to
+Joan, he observed, "What a bore people are to be sure, aren't they?"
+
+The guilty couple emerged into the hall. Sir Chichester surveyed them
+with severity.
+
+"I don't know whether you have heard about it, Luttrell, but there's a
+ball to-night at Harrel, and we all rather thought of going to it," he
+remarked with crushing sarcasm.
+
+"I am quite ready, sir," replied Harry humbly. Sir Chichester was
+mollified.
+
+"Very well then. We'll go."
+
+"But Mrs. Croyle isn't down yet," said Miranda.
+
+"Stella isn't going, dear," answered Millie Splay; and a cry of dismay
+burst from Joan.
+
+"Not going!"
+
+The consternation in the girl's voice was so pronounced that every eye
+in that hall turned to her in astonishment. There was consternation,
+too, most legible in her widely-opened eyes. Her cheeks had lost their
+colour. She stood for a fleeting moment before them all, an image of
+terror. Then she caught at an excuse.
+
+"Stella's ill then--since she's not going."
+
+"It's not as bad as all that, dear," Lady Splay hastened to reassure
+her. "She complained of a racking headache at dinner. She has gone to
+bed."
+
+The blood flowed back into Joan's cheeks.
+
+"Oh, I see!" she observed slowly. "That is why her maid came to the
+library for a book!"
+
+But she was very silent throughout the quarter of an hour, which it took
+them to drive to Harrel. There was somebody left behind at Rackham Park
+that night. Joan had overlooked one possibility in contriving her plan,
+and that possibility, now developed into fact, threatened to ruin all.
+One guest remained behind in the house, and that one Joan's rival.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+JENNY PRASK IS INTERESTED
+
+
+Rackham was a red Georgian mansion with great windows in flat rows, and
+lofty rooms made beautiful by the delicate tracery of the ceilings. It
+has neither wings nor embellishments but stood squarely in its gardens,
+looking southwards to the Downs. The dining-room was upon the east side,
+between that room and the hall was the library, of which the window
+faced the north. Mrs. Croyle's bedroom, however, was in the south-west
+corner and from its windows one could see the smoke of the train as it
+climbed from Midhurst to the Cocking tunnel, and the gap where the road
+runs through to Singleton.
+
+"You won't be going to bed yet, madam, I suppose," said Jenny.
+
+She had not troubled to bring upstairs into the room the book which she
+had picked out at random from the stand that was lying on the hall
+table.
+
+"No, Jenny. I will ring for you when I want you," said Stella.
+
+Stella was dispirited. Her week was nearly at an end. To-morrow would be
+the last day and she had gained nothing, it seemed, by all her care.
+Harry was kind--oh, ever so much kinder than in the old days when they
+had been together--more considerate, more thoughtful. But the skies of
+passion are stormily red, and so effulgent that one walks in gold.
+Consideration, thoughtfulness--what were these pale things worth against
+one spurt of fire? Besides, there was the ball to-night. He would dance
+with _her_, would seek the dim open spaces of the lawns, the dark
+shadows of the great elms, with her--with Joan.
+
+"I'll ring for you, Jenny," she repeated, as her maid stood doubtfully
+by the door. "I am quite right."
+
+"Very well, madam."
+
+Stella Croyle's eyes were drawn when she was left alone to that cupboard
+in which her dressing-bag was stowed away. But she arrested them and
+covered them with her hands.
+
+"This is my last chance," she said to herself aloud in the anguish of
+her spirit. If it failed, there was nothing in front of her but a
+loneliness which each year must augment. Youth and high spirits or the
+assumption of high spirits--these she must have if she were to keep her
+place in her poor little circle--and both were slipping from her fast.
+"This is my last chance." She stood in front of her mirror in her
+dancing frock, her dark hair exquisitely dressed, her face hauntingly
+wistful. After all, she was beautiful. Why shouldn't she win? Jenny
+thought that she could.
+
+At that moment Jenny was slipping noiselessly along a corridor to the
+northern side of the house. The lights were all off; a pencil of
+moonlight here and there from an interstice in the curtains alone
+touched her as she passed. At one window she stopped, and softly lifted
+the blind. She looked out and was satisfied.
+
+"Thought so!" she murmured, with a little vindictive smile. Just beneath
+her was that long window of the library which Joan had been at such
+pains to arrange.
+
+Jenny stationed herself by the window. The night was very still. She
+could hear the voices of the servants in the dining-room round the angle
+of the house, and see the light from its windows lying in frames upon
+the grass. Then the light went out, and silence fell.
+
+From time to time the hum of a motor-car swelled and diminished to its
+last faint vibrations on the distant road; and as each car passed Jenny
+stiffened at her post. She looked at her watch, turning the dial to the
+moonlight. It was ten minutes past nine now. The cars had left Rackham
+Park well before nine. She would not have long to wait now! As she
+slipped her watch again into her waistband she drew back with an
+instinctive movement, although the window at which she stood had been
+this last half-hour in shadow. For under a great copper beech on the
+grass in front of her a man was standing. The sight of him was a shock
+to her.
+
+She wondered how he had come, how long he had been there--and why? Some
+explanation flashed upon her.
+
+"My goodness me!" she whispered. "You could knock me down with a
+hairpin. So you could!"
+
+Whilst she watched that solitary figure beneath the tree, another motor
+whizzed along the road. The noise of its engine grew louder--surely
+louder than any which, standing at this window, she had heard before.
+Had it turned into the park? off the main road. Was it coming to the
+house? Before Jenny could answer these questions in her mind, the noise
+ceased altogether. Jenny held her breath; and round the angle of the
+house a girl came running swiftly, her skirt sparkling like silver in
+the moonlight, and a white cloak drawn about her shoulders. She drew
+open the window of the library and passed in. A few seconds passed.
+Jenny imagined her stealthily opening the door into the hall, and
+listening to make sure that the servants were in their own quarters and
+this part of the house deserted. Then the girl reappeared at the window
+and made a sign. From beneath the tree the man ran across the grass. His
+face was turned towards Jenny, and the moonlight revealed it. The man
+was Mario Escobar.
+
+Jenny drew a little sharp breath. She heard the window ever so gently
+latched. Suddenly the light blazed out from the room and then, strip by
+strip, vanished, as if the curtains had been cautiously drawn. The
+garden, the house resumed its aspect of quiet; all was as it had been
+when Jenny Prask first lifted the window of the corridor. Jenny Prask
+crept cautiously away.
+
+"Fancy that!" she said to herself, with a little chuckle of triumph.
+
+In the room below Mario Escobar and Joan Whitworth were talking.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+IN A LIBRARY
+
+
+"You insisted that I should see you. You have something to say to me,"
+said Joan. She was breathing more quickly than usual and the blood
+fluttered in her cheeks, but she faced Mario Escobar with level eyes,
+and spoke without a tremor in her voice. So far everything had happened
+just as she had planned. There were these few difficult minutes now to
+be grappled with, and afterwards the ordeal would be ended, that foolish
+chapter in her life altogether closed. "Will you please be quick?" she
+pleaded.
+
+But Mario Escobar was in no hurry to answer. He had never imagined that
+Joan Whitworth could look so beautiful. He had never dreamed that she
+would take so much trouble. Mario Escobar understood women's clothes,
+and his eyes ran with a sensation of pleasure over her delicate frock
+with its shining bands, its embroidery of silver and flounces of fine
+lace, down to her slim brocaded shoes. He had not, indeed, thought very
+much of her in the days when Linda Spavinsky was queen. She had been a
+sort of challenge to him, because of her aloofness, her indifference.
+Women were his profession, and here was a queer outlandish one whom it
+would be amusing to parade as his. So he had set to work; he had a sense
+of art, he could talk with ingenuity on artistic matters, and he had
+flattered Joan by doing so; but always with a certain definite laughter
+and contempt for her. Now her beauty rather swept him off his feet. He
+looked at her in amazement. Why this change? And--the second question
+for ever in his mind--how could he profit by it?
+
+"I don't understand," he said slowly, feeling his way. "We were good
+friends--very good friends." Joan neither denied nor agreed. "We had
+certain things in common, a love of art, of the finer things of life. I
+made enemies, of course, in consequence. Your racing friends----" He
+paused. "Milly Splay, who would have matched you with some dull,
+tiresome squire accustomed to sleep over his port after dinner, the sort
+of man you are drawing so brilliantly in your wonderful book." A
+movement of impatience on Joan's part perplexed him. Authors! You can
+generally lay your praise on with a trowel. What in the world was the
+matter with Joan? He hurried on. "I understood that I was making
+enemies. I understood, too, why I was no longer invited to Rackham Park.
+I was a foreigner. I would as soon visit a picture gallery as shoot a
+pheasant. I would as soon appreciate your old gates and houses in the
+country as gallop after a poor little fox on the downs. Oh, yes, I
+wasn't popular. That I understand. But you!" and his voice softened to a
+gentle reproach. "You were different! And you had the courage of your
+difference! Since I was not invited to Rackham Park, I was to come down
+to the inn at Midhurst. I was to drive over--publicly, most
+publicly--and ask for you. We would show them that there were finer
+things in the world than horse-racing and lawn tennis. Oh, yes. We
+arranged it all at that wonderful exhibition of the New School in Green
+Street."
+
+Joan writhed a little at her recollection of the pictures of the
+rotundists and of the fatuous aphorisms to which she had given
+utterance.
+
+"I come to Midhurst accordingly, and what happens? You scribble me out a
+curt little letter. I am not to come to Rackham Park. I am not to try to
+see you. And you are writing to-morrow. But to-morrow comes, and you
+don't write--no, not one line!"
+
+"It was so difficult," Joan answered. She spoke diffidently. Some of her
+courage had gone from her; she was confronted with so direct, so
+unanswerable an accusation. "I thought that you would understand that I
+did not wish to see you again. I thought that you would accept my wish."
+
+Mario Escobar laughed unpleasantly.
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"Because most men have that chivalry," said Joan.
+
+Mario Escobar only smiled this time. He smiled with narrowed eves and a
+gleam of white teeth behind his black moustache. He was amused, like a
+man who receives ridiculous answers from a child.
+
+"It is easy to see that you have read the poets--Joan," he replied
+deliberately.
+
+Joan's face flamed. Never had she been addressed with so much insolence.
+Chaff she was accustomed to, but it was always chaff mitigated by a
+tenderness of real affection. Insolence and disdain were quite new to
+her, and they hurt intolerably. Joan, however, was learning her lessons
+fairly quickly. She had to get this meeting over as swiftly and quietly
+as she could, and high words would not help.
+
+"It's true," she admitted meekly. "I know very little."
+
+Joan looked very lovely as she stood nervously drumming with her gloved
+fingers on a little table which stood between them, all her assurance
+gone.
+
+Mario Escobar lived always on the whirling edge of passion. The least
+extra leap of the water caught him and drew him in. He gazed at Joan,
+and the computing look which cast up her charms made her suddenly hot
+from head to foot. The good-looking, pretentious fool whom it had been
+amusing to exhibit amidst the black frowns of her circle had suddenly
+become exquisitely desirable for herself as a prize, with her beauty,
+her dainty care to tend it, and her delicious clothes. She would now be
+a real credit! Escobar took a step towards her.
+
+"After all," he said, "we were such good friends. We had little private
+interests which we did not share with other people. Surely it was
+natural that I should wish to see you again."
+
+Mario was speaking smoothly enough now. His voice, his eyes actually
+caressed her. She was at pains to repress a shiver of physical
+repulsion. But she remembered his letter very clearly. It had expressed
+no mere wish to see her. It had claimed a right with a vague threat of
+making trouble if the right were not conceded. She had recognised the
+right, not out of the fear of the threat so much--although that weighed
+with her, as out of a longing to have done with him for good and all.
+Instinct had told her that this was the last type of man to find favour
+in Harry Luttrell's eyes, that she herself would be lowered from her
+high pedestal in his heart, if he knew of the false friendship.
+
+"Well, I agreed to see you," she replied. "But I have to go back to the
+ball. Will you please to be quick?"
+
+"The time and the place were of your own choice."
+
+"My choice!" Joan answered. "I had no choice. A girl amongst visitors in
+a country house--when is she free? When is she alone? She can keep to
+her room--yes! But that's all her liberty. Let her go out, there will be
+some one at her side."
+
+"If she is like you--no doubt," said Escobar, and again he smiled at her
+covetously. Joan shook the compliment off her with a hitch of her
+shoulders.
+
+"We could have met in a hundred places," Mario continued.
+
+"I could have come to call on you as we arranged."
+
+"No!" cried Joan with more vigour than wisdom in her voice. She had a
+picture of him, of the embarrassment of the Splays and her friends, of
+the disapproval of Harry Luttrell.
+
+Escobar was quick when he dealt with women, quick and sensitive. The
+passionate denial did not escape him. He began to divine the true cause
+of this swift upheaval and revolution in her.
+
+"You could have sent me a card for the Willoughbys' dance. It would have
+been easy enough for us to meet there."
+
+Again she replied, "No!" A note of obstinacy was audible.
+
+"Why?"
+
+Joan did not answer at all.
+
+"I'll tell you," Escobar flashed out at her angrily. "You wouldn't be
+seen with me any more! Suddenly, you would not be seen with me--no, not
+for the world! That's the truth, isn't it? That's why you come secretly
+back and bid me meet you in an empty house."
+
+"Hush!" pleaded Joan.
+
+Mario Escobar's voice had risen as his own words flogged him to a keener
+indignation.
+
+"Why should I care if all the world hears me?" he replied roughly. "Why
+should I consider you, who turn me down the moment it suits you,
+without a reason? It's fairly galling to me, I assure you."
+
+Joan nodded her head. Mario Escobar had some right upon his side, she
+was ready to acknowledge.
+
+"I beg your pardon," she said simply. "Won't you please be content with
+that and leave things as they are?"
+
+"When you are a little older you will know that you can never leave
+things as they are," answered Mario. "I was looking forward to a week of
+happiness. I have had a week of torment. For lesser insults than yours,
+men kill in my country."
+
+There were other differences, too, between her country and his. Joan did
+not cry out, or burst into tears or flinch in any way. She was alone in
+this room; there was no one, as far as she knew, within the reach of her
+voice. She had chosen this meeting-place, not altogether because the
+house would be empty, but because in this first serious difficulty of
+her life she would be amongst familiar things and draw from them
+confidence and strength, and a sense of security. With Mario Escobar in
+front of her, his face ablaze with passion, the security vanished
+altogether. Yet all the more she was raised to the top of her courage.
+
+"Then I shall tell you the truth," she answered gently. "You speak to me
+of our friendship. It was never anything serious to me. It was a
+taunt--a foolish taunt to other people."
+
+Mario Escobar flinched, as if she had struck him in the face.
+
+"Yes, I hurt you," she went on in the same gentle voice, which was not
+the least element in Escobar's humiliation. "I am very sorry. I tried
+not to hurt you. I am very ignorant, as you have told me, but I wouldn't
+believe it till a week ago. I made it my pride to be different from
+anybody else. I believed that I was different. I was a fool. I wouldn't
+listen. Even during the war. I have shut myself up away from it, trying
+not to share in the effort, not to feel the pride and the sorrow,
+pretending that it was just a horrible, sordid business altogether
+beneath lofty minds! That's one of the reasons why I chose you for my
+friend! I was flinging my glove in the face of the little world I knew.
+I had _got_ to be different. It's all very shameful to tell, and I am
+sorry. Oh, how I am sorry!"
+
+Her sorrow was most evident. She had sunk down upon a couch, her fair
+head drooping and the tears now running down her cheeks in the
+bitterness of her shame. But Mario Escobar was untouched by any pity. If
+any thought occurred to him outside his burning humiliation, it was
+prompted by the economy of the Spaniard.
+
+"She'll spoil that frock if she goes on crying," he said to himself,
+"and it was very expensive."
+
+"I have nothing but remorse to offer in atonement," she went on. "But
+that remorse is very sincere----"
+
+Mario Escobar swept her plea aside with a furious gesture.
+
+"So that's it!" he cried. "You were just making a fool of me!" That she,
+this pretty pink and white girl, should have been making a show of him,
+parading him before her friends, exhibiting him, using him as a
+challenge--just as in fact he had been using her, and with more success!
+Only to think of it hurt him like a knife. "Your remorse!" he cried
+scornfully. "There's some one else, of course!"
+
+Joan sat up straight and stiff. Escobar might have laid a lash across
+her delicate shoulders.
+
+"Yes," she said defiantly.
+
+"Some one who was not here a week ago?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+To Escobar's humiliation was now added a sudden fire of jealousy. For
+the first time to-night, as woman, as flesh and blood, she was adorable,
+and she owed this transformation, not to him, no, not in the tiniest
+fraction of a degree to him, but to some one else, some dull boor
+without niceties or deftness, who had stormed into her life within the
+week. Who was it? He had got to know. But Joan was hardly thinking of
+Escobar. Her eyes were turned from him.
+
+"He has set me free from many vanities and follies. If I am grieved and
+ashamed now, I owe it thankfully to him. If my remorse is bitter, it is
+because through him I have a gleam of light which helps me to
+understand."
+
+"And you have told him what you have told me?"
+
+"No, but I shall to-night when all this is over, when I go back to
+Harrel."
+
+Mario Escobar moved closer to her.
+
+"Are you so sure that you are going back to Harrel to-night?" he asked
+in a low voice.
+
+"Yes," she replied, and only after she had spoken did the menace of his
+voice force itself into her mind as something which she must take into
+account. She looked up at him startled, and as she looked her wonderment
+turned into stark fear. The cry that in his country men killed had left
+her unmoved. But she was afraid now, desperately afraid, all the more
+afraid because she thought of the man searching for her through the
+reception-rooms at Harrel.
+
+"We are alone here in an empty quarter of the house. So you arranged
+it," he continued. "Good! Women do not amuse themselves at my expense
+without being paid for it."
+
+Joan started up in a panic, but Escobar seized her shoulders and forced
+her down again.
+
+"Sit still," he cried savagely. Then his face changed. For the first
+time for many minutes his lips parted in a smile of pleasure.
+
+"You are very lovely, Joan. I love to see you like
+that--afraid--trembling. It is the beginning of recompense."
+
+Joan had tumbled into a deeper pit than any she had dreamed of. In
+desperation she cast about for means to climb out of it. The secrecy of
+this meeting--that must go. But, even so, was there escape? The bell?
+Before she could be half-way across the room, he would be holding her in
+his arms. A cry? Before it was half uttered, he would have stifled her
+mouth. No, she must sit very still and provoke no movement by him.
+
+Mario Escobar was a creature of unhealthy refinements. He wanted to
+know, first, who was the man who had touched this indifferent maiden
+into warm life. The knowledge would be an extra spice to his pleasure.
+
+"Who are staying in the house?" he asked. It would be amusing to make
+his selection, and discover if he were right.
+
+"Dennis Brown, Harold Jupp"--Joan began, puzzled by his question, yet
+welcoming it as so much delay.
+
+"I don't want to hear about them," Mario Escobar replied. "Tell me of
+the new-comers!"
+
+"Martin Hillyard----" Joan began again, and was aware that Mario Escobar
+made a quick startled movement and gasped. Martin Hillyard's name was a
+pail of cold water for Escobar.
+
+"Does Hillyard know that I am at Midhurst?" he asked sharply.
+
+"No," Joan answered.
+
+There was something which Hillyard had told her about Mario Escobar,
+something which she had rejected and dismissed altogether from her
+thoughts. Then she remembered. Escobar was an enemy working in England
+against England. She had given the statement no weight whatever. It was
+the sort of thing people said of unconventional people they disliked in
+order to send them to Coventry. But Escobar's start and Escobar's
+question put a different value upon it. Joan caught at it. Of what use
+could it be to her? Of some use, surely, if only she had the wit to
+divine it. But she was in such a disorder of fear and doubt that every
+idea went whirling about and about in her mind. She raised her hand to
+her forehead, keeping her eyes upon Escobar. She felt as helpless as a
+child. Almost she regretted the love which had so violently mastered
+her. It had made clear to her her ignorance and so stripped her of all
+assurance and left her defenceless.
+
+But even in the tumult of her thoughts, she began to recognise a change.
+The air was less charged with terror. There was less of passion and
+anger in Mario Escobar, and more of speculation. He watched her in a
+gloomy silence, and each moment she took fresh heart. With a swift
+movement he seated himself on the couch beside her.
+
+Joan sprang up with a little cry, and her heart thumping in her breast.
+
+"Hush!" said Escobar. Yes, it was now he who pleaded for secrecy and a
+quiet voice.
+
+There was a stronger passion in Mario than the love of women, and that
+was the love of money. Women were to him mainly the means to money. They
+were easier to get, too, if you were not over particular. Money was a
+rare, shy thing, except to an amazing few who accumulated it by some
+obscure, magnetic attraction; and opportunities of acquisition were not
+to be missed.
+
+"Hush!" he said. "You treated me badly, Joan. It was right that I should
+teach you a lesson--frighten you a little, eh?"
+
+He smiled at her with eyes half closed and eyelids cunningly blinking.
+Now that her fears were weakening Joan found his impertinence almost
+insufferable. But she held her tongue and waited.
+
+"But you owe me a return, don't you?"
+
+Joan did not move.
+
+"A little return--which will cost you nothing at all. You know that I
+represent a line of ships. You can help me. We have rivals, with active
+agents. You shall find out for me exactly what Martin Hillyard is doing
+in the Mediterranean, and why he visits in a yacht the ports of Spain.
+You will find this out for me, so that I may know whether he is acting
+for my rivals. Yes."
+
+"He is not," answered Joan.
+
+"You will find this out for me, so that I may know," Escobar repeated
+smoothly. "Exactly what he is doing in the Mediterranean, what special
+plans, and why he visits in a yacht the ports of Spain. You promise me
+that knowledge, and you can go straight back to your dancing."
+
+"I have no knowledge," said Joan quietly.
+
+"But you can obtain it," Escobar insisted. "He is a friend of yours.
+Exactly what he is doing--is it not so?"
+
+So Martin's accusation was true. Joan nodded her head, and Escobar, with
+a smile of relief, took the gesture as a consent to his proposal.
+
+"Good!" he said, rising from the couch. "Then all is forgiven! You will
+make some notes----"
+
+"I will do nothing of the kind," said Joan quietly, but she was white to
+the edge of her lips, and she trembled from head to foot. But there was
+no room any more for fear in her. She was in a heat of anger which she
+had never known. "Oh, that you should dare!" and her words choked her.
+
+Mario Escobar stared at her.
+
+"You refuse?"
+
+"With all my soul."
+
+Escobar took a step towards her, but she did not move.
+
+"You are alone with me, when you should be dancing at the ball. You made
+the appointment, chose the hour, the place ... even if you scream, there
+will be a scandal, a disgrace."
+
+"I don't care."
+
+"And the man you are in love with, eh? That makes a difference," he
+said, as he saw the girl falter. "Do we think of him?"
+
+"No," said Joan. "We incur the disgrace."
+
+She saw his eyes open wide with terror. He drew a step away from her.
+"Oh!" he exclaimed, in a long-drawn whisper; and he looked at Joan with
+incredulity and hatred. "You----" he used some Spanish word which Joan
+did not catch. It would have told her little if she had caught it. It
+was "Cabron," a harmless, inoffensive word which has become in Spain the
+ultimate low word of abuse. "You have laid a trap for me."
+
+Joan answered him in a bewilderment. "I have laid no trap for you," and
+there was so much scorn and contempt in her voice that Escobar could
+hardly disbelieve her.
+
+But he was shaken. He was in a panic. He was in a haste to go.
+Money--yes. But you must live in order to enjoy it.
+
+"I will give you a day to think over my proposal," he said, stammering
+the words in his haste. And then, "Don't write to me! I will find a
+means," and, almost before she was aware of his movements, he had
+snatched up his cap, and the room was empty. The curtain was torn aside;
+the glass door stood open; beyond it the garden lay white in the light
+of the moon.
+
+"A trap?" Joan repeated his accusation in a perplexity. She turned and
+she saw the door, the door behind her, which Escobar had faced, the door
+into the hall, slowly open. There had been no turning of the handle, it
+was unlatched before. Yet Joan had seen to it that it was shut before
+ever she beckoned Mario Escobar into the room. Some one, then, had been
+listening. Mario Escobar had seen the handle move, the door drawn ajar.
+Joan saw it open now to its full width, and in the entrance Stella
+Croyle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+A FATAL KINDNESS
+
+
+Joan picked up her cloak and arranged it upon her shoulders. She did not
+give one thought to Stella, or even hear the words which Stella began
+nervously to speak. Her secret appointment would come to light now in
+any case. It would very likely cost her--oh, all the gold and glamour of
+the world. It would be bandied about in gossip over the tea-tables, in
+the street, at the Clubs, in the Press. Sir Chichester ought to be
+happy, at all events. The thought struck her with a wry humour, and
+brought a smile to her lips. He would accomplish his dream. Without
+effort, without a letter or a telephone call, or a rebuff, he would have
+such publicity as he could hardly have hoped for. "Who is that?" Joan
+made up a little scene. "That? Oh, don't you know? That's Sir Chichester
+Splay. You must have heard of Sir Chichester! Why, it was in his house
+that the Whitworth girl, rather pretty but an awful fool, carried on
+with the spy-man."
+
+Joan was a little overstrung. All the while she was powdering her nose
+in front of a mirror and removing as best she could the traces of tears,
+and all the while Mrs. Croyle was stammering words and words and words
+behind her. Joan regretted that Stella was not going to the Willoughbys'
+ball. If she had been, she would probably be carrying some rouge in her
+little hand-bag, and Joan might have borrowed some.
+
+"Well, since you haven't got any with you, I must go," said Joan,
+bursting suddenly into Stella's monologue. But she had caught a name
+spoken just before Stella stopped in her perplexity at Joan's outbreak.
+
+"Harry Luttrell!" Joan repeated. What in the world had Stella Croyle got
+to say to her about Harry Luttrell? But Stella resumed her faltering
+discourse and the sense of her words penetrated at last to Joan's brain
+and amazed her.
+
+Joan was to leave Harry Luttrell alone.
+
+"You are quite young," said Stella, "only twenty. What does he matter to
+you? You have everything in front of you. With your looks and your
+twenty years you can choose where you will. You have lovers already----"
+
+"I?" Joan interrupted.
+
+"Mario Escobar."
+
+Joan repeated the name with such a violence of scorn that for a moment
+Stella Croyle was silenced.
+
+"Mario Escobar!"
+
+"He was here with you a moment ago."
+
+Joan answered quietly and quite distinctly:
+
+"I wish he were dead!"
+
+Stella Croyle fell back upon her first declaration.
+
+"You must leave my Wub alone."
+
+Joan laughed aloud, harshly and without any merriment. She checked
+herself with an effort lest she should go on laughing, and her laughter
+turn uncontrollably into hysteria and tears. Here was Mrs. Croyle, a
+grown woman, standing in front of her like a mutinous obstinate child,
+looking like one too, talking like one and bidding Joan leave her Wub
+alone. Whence did she get that ridiculous name? It was all degrading and
+grotesque.
+
+"Your Wub! Your Wub!" she cried in a heat. "Yes, I am only twenty, and
+probably I am quite wrong and stupid. But it seems to me horrible that
+we two women should be wrangling over a man neither of us had met a week
+ago. I'll have no more of it."
+
+She flung towards the window, but Stella Croyle cried out, "A week ago!"
+and the cry brought her to a stop. Joan turned and looked doubtfully at
+Mrs. Croyle. After all, that ridiculous label had not been pasted on to
+Harry Luttrell as a result of a week's acquaintance. Harry Luttrell had
+certainly talked to Stella through the greater part of an evening, his
+first evening in the house, but they had hardly been together at all
+since then. Joan came back slowly into the room.
+
+"So you knew Colonel Luttrell before this week?"
+
+"We were great friends a few years ago."
+
+It was disturbing to Joan that Harry Luttrell had never spoken to her of
+this friendship. Was it possible that Stella had a claim upon him of
+which she herself knew nothing? She sat down at a table in front of Mrs.
+Croyle.
+
+"Tell me," she said.
+
+Once, long ago, upon the deck of the _Dragonfly_ at Stockholm, Stella
+had cried out to Harry Luttrell, "Oh, what a cruel mistake you made when
+you went out of your way to be kind!" Joan was now to hear how that cry
+had come to be uttered by a woman in the nethermost distress. She knew,
+of course, that Stella was married at the age of seventeen and had been
+divorced, but little more than that.
+
+"There was a little girl," said Stella, "my baby. I lost her."
+
+She spoke very simply. She had come to the end of efforts and schemes,
+and was very tired. Joan's anger died away altogether in her heart.
+
+"Oh, I am very sorry," she replied. "I didn't know that you had a little
+girl."
+
+"Yes. Look, here is her portrait." Stella Croyle drew out from her bosom
+a locket which hung night and day against her heart, and showed it to
+Joan across the table. "But I don't know whether she is little any more.
+She is thirteen now."
+
+Joan gazed at the painted miniature of a lovely child with the eyes and
+the hair of Stella Croyle.
+
+"And you lost her altogether?" she asked with a rising pity.
+
+"Not at first," answered Stella. "I was allowed by the Court to have her
+with me for one month in every year. And I lived the other eleven months
+for the one, the wonderful one."
+
+Stella's face softened indescribably. The memory of her child did for
+her what all her passion for Harry Luttrell could not do. It restored
+her youth. Her eyes grew tender, her mouth quivered, the look of
+conflict vanished altogether.
+
+"We had good times together, my baby and I. I took her to the sea. It
+sounds foolish, but we were more like a couple of children together than
+mother and daughter"; and Joan, looking at the delicate, porcelain-like
+figure in front of her, smiled in response.
+
+"Yes, I can understand that."
+
+"She was with me every minute," Stella Croyle resumed. "I watched her
+so, I gave her so much of me that when I had seen her off at the station
+with her nurse at the end of the month, I was left behind, as weak and
+limp as an invalid. I lived for her, Joan, believe that at all events in
+my favour! There was no one else."
+
+"I do believe it."
+
+"Then one year in the winter she did not come to me."
+
+"They kept her back!" cried Joan. "But you had the right to her."
+
+"Yes. And I went down to Exeter to her father's house, to fetch her
+away."
+
+It was curious that Stella Croyle, who was speaking of her own
+distressful life, told her story with a quiet simplicity of tone, as if
+she had bent her neck in submission to the hammer strokes of her
+destiny; whereas Joan, who was but listening to griefs of another, was
+stirred to a compassion which kindled her face and made her voice shake.
+
+"Oh, they hadn't sent her away! She was waiting for you," she cried
+eagerly.
+
+"She was waiting for me. Yes! But it was no longer my baby who was
+waiting. They had worked on her, Robert, my husband--and his sisters.
+They had told her--oh, more than they need! That I was bad."
+
+"Oh!" breathed Joan.
+
+"Yes, they were a little cruel. They had changed baby altogether. She
+was just eight at that time." Stella stopped for a moment or two. Her
+voice did not falter but her eyes suddenly swam with tears. "She used to
+adore me--she really and truly did. Now her little face and her eyes
+were like flint. And what do you think she said to me? Just this!
+'Mummy, I don't want to go with you. If you take me with you, you'll
+spoil my holidays!'"
+
+Joan shot back in her chair.
+
+"But they had taught her to say that?"
+
+Stella Croyle shook her head.
+
+"They had taught her to dislike me. My little girl has character. She
+wouldn't have repeated the words, because she had been taught them. No,
+she meant them."
+
+"But a day or two with you and she would have forgotten them. Oh, she
+_did_ forget them!"
+
+In her great longing to comfort the woman, whose deep anguish she
+divined beneath the quiet desolation of her voice, Joan overleapt her
+own knowledge. She was still young enough to will that past events had
+not occurred, and that things true were false.
+
+"I didn't take her," replied Stella Croyle. "I wouldn't take her. I knew
+baby--besides she had struck me too hard."
+
+"You came away alone!" whispered Joan.
+
+"In the cab which I had kept waiting at the door to take us both away."
+
+"That's terrible!" said Joan. The child with her lovely face set like
+flint in the room, the mother creeping out of the house and stumbling
+alone into the fly at the door--the picture was vivid before her eyes.
+Joan wrung her hands with a little helpless gesture, and a moan upon her
+lips. Almost it seemed that these sad things were actually happening to
+_her_; so poignantly she felt them.
+
+"Oh, and you had all that long journey back to London, the journey you
+had dreamt of for eleven months with your baby at your side--you had now
+to take it alone."
+
+Stella Croyle shook her head.
+
+"No! There was just one and only one of my friends--and not at all a
+great friend--who had the imagination to understand, as you understand
+too, Joan, just what that journey would have meant to me, if anything
+had gone wrong, and the kindness to put himself out to make its
+endurance a little easier."
+
+Joan drew back quickly.
+
+"Harry Luttrell," she whispered.
+
+"Yes. He had once been stationed at Exeter. He knew Robert Croyle and
+the sisters. He guessed what might happen to me. Perhaps he knew that it
+was going to happen."
+
+So, when Stella, having pulled down her veil that none might see her
+face, was stumbling along the platform in search of an empty carriage,
+a hand was very gently laid upon her and Harry Luttrell was at her side.
+He had come all the way from London to befriend her, should she need it.
+If he had seen her with her little girl, he would have kept out of sight
+and himself have returned to London by a later train.
+
+"That was fine," cried Joan.
+
+"Fine, yes!" answered Stella. "You realise that, Joan, and you have
+never been in real trouble, or known what men are when kindness
+interferes with their comfort. I am not blaming people, but women do get
+the worst of it, if they are fools enough--wicked enough if you like, to
+do as I did. I knew men--lots of them. I was bound to. I was fair game,
+you see."
+
+Joan's forehead wrinkled. The doors of knowledge had been opening very
+rapidly for her during the last few minutes. But she was still often at
+a loss.
+
+"Fair game. Why? I don't understand."
+
+"I had been divorced. Therefore I wasn't dangerous. Complications
+couldn't follow from a little affair with me." Stella explained
+bitterly. "I had men on my doorstep always. But not one of these men who
+protested and made love to me, would have put themselves out to do what
+Harry Luttrell did. It was fine--yes. But for three years I have been
+wondering whether Harry Luttrell would not really have been kinder if he
+had thought of his own comfort too, and had never travelled to Exeter to
+befriend me."
+
+"Why?" asked Joan.
+
+"I should have thrown myself out of the carriage and saved myself--oh,
+so much sorrow afterwards," Stella Croyle answered in so simple and
+natural a voice that Joan could not disbelieve her.
+
+Joan clasped her hands before her eyes and then gazed again at Stella
+sitting in front of her, with pity and wonder. It was so hard for her to
+understand that this pretty woman, who made it her business to be gay,
+whom she had met from time to time in this house and had chatted with
+and forgotten, had passed through so dreadful an ordeal of suffering and
+humiliation. She was to look closer still into the mysteries which were
+being revealed to her.
+
+Harry Luttrell had held Stella in his arms just as if she had been a
+child herself whilst the train rushed through the bleak winter country.
+Stella had behaved like a child, now sobbing in a passion of grief, now
+mutinous in a passion of rage, now silent and despairing under the
+weights that nothing, neither sympathy, nor grief, nor revolt, can lift.
+
+"He took me home. He stayed with me. Oh, it wasn't love," cried Stella.
+"He was afraid."
+
+"Afraid!" asked Joan. She wished to know every least detail of the story
+now.
+
+"Afraid lest I should take--something ... as I wished to do ... as
+during the trouble of the divorce I learned to do."
+
+She related little ridiculous incidents which Joan listened to with a
+breaking heart. Stella could not sleep at all after her return. She
+lived in a little house with a big garden on the northern edge of
+London, and all night she lay awake, listening to the patter of rain on
+melancholy trees, and thinking and thinking. Harry Luttrell kept her
+from the drugs in her dressing-case. She had no anodyne for her
+sorrows--but one.
+
+"You will laugh," said Stella with a little wry smile of her own, "when
+I tell you what it was. It was a gramophone. I got Harry to set it
+going, whilst I lay in bed--to set it playing rag-time. While it was
+playing, I stopped thinking. For I had to keep time in my brain with the
+beat of the tune. And so, at last, since I couldn't think, or remember,
+I fell asleep. The gramophone saved me"; and again Joan was smitten by
+the incongruity of Stella with her life. She had eaten of all that
+nature allots to women--love, marriage, the birth of children, the loss
+of them--and there she was, to this day half-child, and quite
+incompatible with what she had suffered and endured.
+
+"After a fortnight I got quieter of course," said Stella. "And suddenly
+a change sadder than anything I have told you took place in me. I
+suppose that I had gone through too much on baby's account for me. I
+lost something more than my baby, I lost my want to have her with me."
+
+She remained silent for a little while reviewing the story which she had
+told.
+
+"There, that's all," she said, rising suddenly. "It's no claim at all,
+of course. I know that very well. Harry left me at Stockholm four years
+ago;" and suddenly Joan's face flushed scarlet. She had been absorbed in
+Stella's sorrows, she had admired that kind action of Harry Luttrell's
+which had brought so much trouble in its train. It needed that reminder
+that Harry had only left Stella Croyle at Stockholm to bring home the
+whole part which Harry had taken in the affair. Now she understood; a
+flame of sudden jealousy confused her; and with it came a young girl's
+distaste as though some ugly reptile had raised its head amongst
+flowers.
+
+"I never saw Harry again until this week, except for a minute outside a
+shop one morning in Piccadilly. But he hasn't married during those four
+years, so I always kept a hope that we should be somewhere together
+again for a few days, and that afterwards he would come back to me."
+
+"That's why you chose this week to come to Rackham Park?"
+
+"Yes," answered Stella Croyle; and she laughed harshly. "But I hadn't
+considered you."
+
+Joan looked helplessly at her companion. Stella had not one small chance
+of the fulfilment of her hope--no, not one--even if she herself stood a
+million miles away. Of that Joan was sure. But how was she to say so to
+one who was blind and deaf to all but her hope, who would not listen,
+who would not see? Mario Escobar had left his gloves behind him on a
+couch. Joan saw them, and remembered to whom they belonged, and her
+thoughts took another complexion. Harry Luttrell! What share had she now
+in his life? She rose abruptly and pushed back her chair.
+
+"Oh, I'll stand aside," she said, "never fear! We are to talk things
+over to-night. I shall say 'No.'"
+
+She had turned again to the window, but a startled question from Stella
+Croyle stayed her feet.
+
+"Harry has asked you to marry him?"
+
+"He was going to," Joan faltered. The sense of her own loss returned
+upon her, she felt utterly alone, all the more alone because of the
+wondrous week which had come to so desolate an end to-night. "Here in
+this little room, not two hours ago. But I asked him to wait until
+supper time to-night. Here--it was here we stood!"
+
+Joan looked down. Yes, she had been standing in this very spot, the
+table here upon her left, that chair upon her right, that trifolium in
+the pattern of the carpet under her feet, when Harry Luttrell had taken
+her in his arms. What foolish thing was Stella Croyle saying now?
+
+"I take back all that I have said to you. If Harry has spoken to you
+already I have lost--that's all. I didn't know," she said. Her cheeks
+were white, her eyes suddenly grown large with a horror in them which
+Joan could not understand.
+
+"Yes, it's all over. I have lost," she kept repeating in a dreadful
+whisper, moistening her dry lips with her tongue between her sentences.
+
+"Oh, don't think that I am standing aside out of pity," Joan answered
+her. "To-morrow I shall be impossible as a wife for Harry Luttrell." The
+words fell upon ears which did not hear. It would not have mattered if
+Stella had heard. Since Harry Luttrell was that night asking Joan to
+marry him, the hopes upon which she had so long been building, which
+Jenny Prask had done so much to nurse and encourage, withered and
+crumbled in an instant.
+
+"I must go back and dance," said Joan with a shiver.
+
+She left Stella Croyle standing in the room like one possessed with
+visions of terrible things. Her tragic face and moving lips were to
+haunt Joan for many a month afterwards. She went out by the window and
+ran down the drive to the spot where she had left Miranda's car half-way
+between the lodge and the house. The gates had been set open that night
+against the return of the party from Harrel. Joan drove back again under
+the great over-arching trees of the road. It was just ten o'clock when
+she slipped into the ball-room and was claimed by a neighbour for a
+dance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE RANK AND FILE
+
+
+Martin Hillyard crammed a year's enjoyment into the early hours of that
+night. He danced a great deal and had supper a good many times; and even
+the girl who had passed the season of 1914 in London and said languidly,
+"Tell me more," before he had opened his mouth, failed to ruffle his
+enjoyment.
+
+"If I did, you would scream for your mother," he replied, "and I should
+be turned out of the house and Sir Chichester would lose his position in
+the county. No, I'll tell you less. That means we'll go and have some
+supper."
+
+He led a subdued maiden into the supper-room and from that moment his
+enjoyment began to wane. For, at a little table near to hand, sat Joan
+Whitworth and Harry Luttrell, and it was clear to him from the distress
+upon their faces that their smooth courtship had encountered its
+obstacles. A spot of anger, indeed, seemed to burn in Joan's cheeks.
+They hardly spoke at all.
+
+Half an hour later, he came face to face with Joan in a corridor.
+
+"I have been looking for you for a long while," she cried in a quick,
+agitated voice. "Are you free for this dance?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Martin Hillyard lied without compunction.
+
+"Then will you take me into the garden?"
+
+He found a couple of chairs in a corner of the terrace out of the
+hearing of the rest.
+
+"We shall be quiet here," he said. He hoped that she would disclose the
+difficulty which had risen between herself and Harry, and seek his
+counsel as Harry's friend. It might be one of the little trifling
+discords which love magnifies until they blot out the skies and drape
+the earth in temporary mourning. But Joan began at once nervously upon
+a different topic.
+
+"You made a charge against Mario Escobar the other day. I did not
+believe it. But you spoke the truth. I know that now."
+
+She stopped and gazed woefully in front of her. Then she hurried on.
+
+"I can prove it. He demands news of your movements in the Mediterranean.
+If it is necessary I must come forward publicly and prove it. It will be
+horrible, but of course I will."
+
+Martin looked at her quickly. She kept her eyes averted from him. Her
+fingers plucked nervously at her dress. There was an aspect of shame in
+her attitude.
+
+"It will not be necessary, Joan," he answered. "I have quite enough
+evidence already to put him away until the end of the war."
+
+Joan turned to him with quivering lips.
+
+"You are sure. It means so much to me to escape--what I have no right to
+escape, I can hardly believe it."
+
+"I am quite sure," replied Martin Hillyard.
+
+Joan breathed a long, fluttering sigh of relief. She sat up as though a
+weight had been loosed from her shoulders. The trouble lifted from her
+face.
+
+"You need not call upon me at all?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I don't want to shirk--any more," she insisted. "I should not
+hesitate."
+
+"I know that, Joan," he said with a smile. She looked out over the
+gardens to the great line of hills, dim and pleasant as fairyland in the
+silver haze of the moonlight. Her eyes travelled eastwards along the
+ridge and stopped at the clump of Bishop's Ring which marks the crest of
+Duncton Hill, and the dark fold below where the trees flow down to
+Graffham.
+
+"You ask me no questions," she said in a low, warm voice. "I am very
+grateful."
+
+"I ask you one. Where is Mario Escobar to-night?"
+
+"At Midhurst," and she gave him the name of the hotel.
+
+Martin Hillyard laughed. Whilst the police were inquiring here and
+searching there and watching the ports for him, he was lying almost
+within reach of his hand, snugly and peacefully at Midhurst.
+
+"But I expect that he will go from Midhurst now," Joan added,
+remembering his snarl of fear when the door had opened behind her, and
+the haste with which he had fled.
+
+Hillyard looked at his watch. It was one o'clock in the morning.
+
+"You are in a hurry?" she asked.
+
+"I ought to send a message." He turned to Joan. "You know this house, of
+course. Is there a telephone in a quiet room, where I shall not be
+interrupted or be drowned out, voice and ears by the music?"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Willoughby's sitting-room upstairs. Shall I ask her if you
+may use it?"
+
+"If you please."
+
+Joan left Martin standing in one of the corridors and rejoined him after
+a few minutes. "Come," she said, and led the way upstairs to the room.
+Martin called up the trunk line and gave a number.
+
+"I shall have to wait a few minutes," he said.
+
+"You want me to go," answered Joan, and she moved towards the door
+reluctantly.
+
+"No. But you will be missing your dances."
+
+Joan shook her head. She did not turn back to him, but stood facing the
+door as she replied; so that he could not see her face.
+
+"I had kept all the dances after supper free. If I am not in the way I
+would rather wait with you."
+
+"Of course."
+
+He was careful to use the most commonplace tone with the thought that it
+would steady her. The trouble which this telephone message would finally
+dispel was clearly not all which distressed her. She needed
+companionship; her voice broke, as though her heart were breaking too.
+He saw her raise a wisp of handkerchief to her eyes; and then the
+telephone bell rang at his side. He was calling at a venture upon the
+number which Commodore Graham had rung up in the office above the old
+waterway of the Thames.
+
+"Is that Scotland Yard?" he asked, and he gave the address at which
+Mario Escobar was to be found. "But he may be gone to-morrow," he added,
+and hearing a short "That's all right," he rang off.
+
+"Now, if you will get your cloak, we might go back into the garden."
+
+They found their corner of the terrace unoccupied and sat for a while in
+silence. Hillyard recognised that neither questions nor any conversation
+at all were required from him, but simply the sympathy of his
+companionship. He smoked a cigarette while Joan sat by his side.
+
+She stretched out her hand towards the Bishop's Ring, small as a button
+upon the great shoulder of the Down.
+
+"Do you remember the afternoon when I drove you back from Goodwood?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You said to me, 'If the great trial is coming, I want to fall back into
+the rank and file.' And I cried out, 'Oh, I understand that!'"
+
+"I remember."
+
+"What a fool I was!" said Joan. "I didn't understand at all. I thought
+that it sounded fine, and that was why I applauded. I am only beginning
+to understand now. Even after I had agreed with you, my one ambition was
+to be different."
+
+Her voice died remorsefully away. From the window further down the
+terrace the yellow light poured from the windows and fought with the
+moonlight. The music of a waltz floated out upon the yearning of many
+violins. There was a ripple of distant voices.
+
+"All this week," Joan began again, "I have found myself standing
+unexpectedly in a strong light before a mirror and utterly scared by the
+revelation of what I was ... by the memory of the foolish things which I
+had done. From one of the worst of them, you have saved me to-night. You
+are very kind to me, Martin."
+
+It was the first time he had ever heard her use his Christian name.
+
+"I should like to be kinder, if you'll let me," he said. "I am not
+blind. I was in the supper-room when you and Harry were there. It was
+for him that you had kept all the last dances free. And you are here,
+breaking your heart. Why?"
+
+Joan shook her head. A little sob broke from her against her will. But
+this matter was between her and Harry Luttrell. She sought no counsel
+from any other.
+
+"Then I am very grieved for both of you," said Hillyard. Joan made a
+movement as if she were about to rise. "Will you wait just a moment?"
+Martin asked.
+
+He guessed that some hint of Stella Croyle's story had reached the
+girl's ears. He understood that she would be hurt, and affronted; that
+she would feel herself suddenly steeped in vulgarities; and that she
+would visit her resentment sharply upon her lover, and upon herself at
+the same time. And all this was true. But Martin was not sure of it. He
+meant to tread warily, lest if he stumbled, the harm should be the more
+complete.
+
+"I have known Harry Luttrell a long while," he said. "No woman ever
+reached his heart until he came home from France this summer. No woman I
+believe, could have reached it--not even you, Joan, I believe, if you
+had met him a year ago. He was possessed by one great shame and one
+great longing--shame that the regiment with which he and his father were
+bound up, had once disgraced itself--longing for the day to come when it
+would recover its prestige. Those two emotions burnt in him like white
+flames. I believe no other could have lived beside them."
+
+Joan would not speak, but she concentrated all her senses to listen. A
+phrase which Stella Croyle had used--Harry had feared to become "the
+slovenly soldier"--began to take on its meaning.
+
+"On the Somme the shame was wiped out. Led by such men as Harry--well,
+you know what happened. Harry Luttrell came home freed at last from an
+overwhelming obsession. He looked about him with different eyes, and
+there you were! It seems to me a thing perfectly ordained, as so few
+things are. I brought him down here just for a pleasant week in the
+country--without another thought beyond that. All this week I have been
+coming to think of myself as an unconscious agent, who just at the right
+time is made to do the right thing. Here was the first possible moment
+for Harry Luttrell--and there you were in the path--just as if you
+without knowing it, had been set there to wait until he came over the
+fields to you."
+
+He turned to her and took her hand in his. He had his sympathies for
+Stella Croyle, but her hopes held no positive promise of happiness for
+either her or Harry Luttrell--a mere flash and splutter of passion at
+the best, with all sorts of sordid disadvantages to follow, quarrels,
+the scorn of his equals, the loss of position, the check to advancement
+in his profession. Here, on the other hand, was the fitting match.
+
+"It would be a great pity," he said gently, "if anything were now to
+interfere."
+
+He stood up and after a moment Joan rose to her feet. There was a tender
+smile upon her lips and her eyes were shining. She laid a hand upon his
+arm.
+
+"I shall have to get you a wife, Martin," she said, midway between
+laughter and tears. "It wouldn't be fair on us if you were to escape."
+
+This was her way of thanking him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE LONG SLEEP
+
+
+The amazing incident which cut so sharply into these tangled lives
+occurred the next morning at Rackham Park. Some of the house party
+straggled down to a late breakfast, others did not descend at all. Harry
+Luttrell joined Millie Splay upon the stairs and stopped her before she
+entered the breakfast-room.
+
+"I should like to slip away this morning, Lady Splay," he said. "My
+servant is packing now."
+
+Millie Splay looked at him in dismay.
+
+"Oh, I am so sorry," she said. "I was hoping that this morning you and
+Joan would have something to say to me."
+
+"I did too," replied Harry with a wry smile. "But Joan turned me down
+with a bang last night."
+
+Lady Splay plumped herself down on a chair in the hall.
+
+"Oh, she is the most exasperating girl!" she cried. "Are you sure that
+you didn't misunderstand her?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+Lady Splay sat for a little while with her cheek propped upon her hand
+and her brows drawn together in a perplexity.
+
+"It's very strange," she said at length. "For Joan meant you to ask her
+to marry you. She has been deliberately showing you that you weren't
+indifferent to her. Joan would never have done that if she hadn't meant
+you to ask her; or if she hadn't meant to accept you." She rose with a
+gesture of despair.
+
+"I give it up. But oh, how I'd love to smack her!" and with that
+unrealisable desire burning furiously in her breast, Lady Splay marched
+into the breakfast-room. Dennis Brown and Jupp were already in their
+white flannels at the table. Miranda ran down into the room a moment
+afterwards.
+
+"Joan's the lazy one," she said, looking round the table. She had got
+to bed at half-past four and looked as fresh as if she had slept the
+clock round. "What are you going to eat, Colonel Luttrell?"
+
+Luttrell was standing by her at the side table, and as they inspected
+the dishes they were joined by Mr. Albany Todd.
+
+"You were going it last night," Jupp called to him, with a note of
+respect in his voice. "For a top-weight you're the hottest thing I have
+seen in years. Stay another week in our academic company, and we shall
+discover so many excellent qualities in you that we shall be calling you
+Toddles."
+
+"And then in the winter, I suppose, we'll go jumping together," said Mr.
+Albany Todd.
+
+Like many another round and heavy man, Mr. Albany Todd was an
+exceptionally smooth dancer. His first dance on the night before he had
+owed to the consideration of his hostess. Sheer merit had filled the
+rest of his programme; and he sat down to breakfast now in a high good
+humour. Sir Chichester stumped into the room when the serious part of
+the meal was over, and all the newspapers already taken. He sat down in
+front of his kidney and bacon and grunted.
+
+"Any news in _The Times_, Mr. Albany Todd?"
+
+"No! No!" replied Mr. Albany Todd in an abstracted voice, with his head
+buried between the pages. "Would you like it, Sir Chichester?"
+
+He showed no intention of handing it over; and Sir Chichester replied
+with as much indifference as he could assume,
+
+"Oh, there's no hurry."
+
+"No, we have all the morning, haven't we?" said Mr. Albany Todd
+pleasantly.
+
+Sir Chichester ate some breakfast and drank some tea. "No news in your
+paper is there, Dennis, my boy?" he asked carelessly.
+
+"Oh, isn't there just?" cried Dennis Brown. "Oppifex and Hampstead
+Darling are both running in the two-thirty at Windsor."
+
+Sir Chichester grunted again.
+
+"Racing! It's wonderful, Mr. Albany Todd, that you haven't got the
+disease during the week. There's a racing microbe at Rackham."
+
+"But I am not so sure that I have escaped," returned Mr. Albany Todd. "I
+am tempted to go jumping in the winter."
+
+"You must keep your old Lords out if you do," Harold Jupp urged
+earnestly. "Bring in your Dukes and your Marquises, and we poor men are
+all up the spout."
+
+Thus they rattled on about the breakfast table; cigarettes were lighted,
+Miranda pushed back her chair; in a minute the room would be deserted.
+But Millie Splay uttered a little cry of horror, so sharp and startling
+that it froze each person into a sudden immobility. She dropped the
+newspaper upon her knees. Her hands flew to her face and covered it.
+
+"What's the matter, Millie?" cried Sir Chichester, starting up in alarm.
+He hurried round the table. Some stab of physical pain had caused
+Millie's cry--he shared that conviction with every one else in the room.
+But Millie lifted her head quickly.
+
+"Oh, it's intolerable!" she exclaimed. "Chichester, look at this!" She
+thrust the paper feverishly into his hands. Sir Chichester smoothed its
+crumpled leaves as he stood beside her.
+
+"Ah, the _Harpoon_," he said, his fear quite allayed. He knew his wife
+to have a somewhat thinner skin than himself. "You are exaggerating no
+doubt, my dear. The _Harpoon_ is a good paper and quite friendly."
+
+But Millie Splay broke in upon his protestations in a voice as shrill as
+a scream.
+
+"Oh, stop, Chichester, and look! There, in the third column! Just under
+your eyes!"
+
+And Sir Chichester Splay read. As he read his face changed.
+
+"Yes, that won't do," he said, very quietly. He carried the newspaper
+back with him to his chair and sat down again. He had the air of a man
+struck clean out of his wits. "That won't do," he repeated, and again,
+with a rush of angry blood into his face, "No, that won't do." It seemed
+that Sir Chichester's harmless little foible had suddenly received more
+than its due punishment.
+
+The newspaper slipped from his fingers on to the floor, whilst he sat
+staring at the white tablecloth in front of him. But no sooner did
+Harold Jupp at his side make a movement to pick the paper up than Sir
+Chichester swooped down upon it in a flash.
+
+"No!" he said. "No!" and he began to fold it up very carefully. "It's as
+Millie says, a rather intolerable invention which has crept into the
+social news. I must consider what steps we should take."
+
+There was another at that table who was as disturbed as Sir Chichester
+and Lady Splay. Martin Hillyard knew nothing of the paragraph which had
+caused this consternation in his hosts; and he had asked no questions
+last night. But he remembered every word that Joan had said. She had
+seen Mario Escobar somewhere since leaving Rackham Park--that was
+certain; and Mario Escobar had demanded information. "Demanded" was the
+word which Joan had used. Mario Escobar was of the blackmailing type.
+Martin's heart was in his mouth.
+
+"An invention about us here?" he asked.
+
+"About one of us," answered Sir Chichester; and Martin dared ask no
+more.
+
+Harry Luttrell, however, had none of Martin's knowledge to restrain him.
+
+"In that case, sir, wouldn't it be wiser to read it now, aloud?" he
+suggested. "It can't be suppressed now. Sooner or later every one will
+hear of it."
+
+Every one agreed except Hillyard. To him Harry Luttrell seemed wilfully
+to be rushing towards catastrophe.
+
+"Yes ... yes," said Sir Chichester slowly. He unfolded his newspaper
+again and read; and of all those who listened no one was more amazed
+than Hillyard himself. Mario Escobar had no hand in this abominable
+work. For this is what Sir Chichester read:
+
+"'A mysterious and tragic event has occurred at Rackham Park, where Sir
+Chichester Splay, the well-known Baronet----'" He broke off to observe,
+"Really, it's put quite civilly, Millie. It's a dreadful mistake, but so
+far as the wording of the Editor is concerned it's put really more
+considerately than I noticed at first."
+
+"Oh, please go on," cried Millie.
+
+"Very well, my dear," and he resumed--"where Sir Chichester Splay, the
+well-known Baronet is entertaining a small party. At an early hour this
+morning Mrs. Croyle, one of Sir Chichester's guests, died under strange
+circumstances."
+
+Miranda uttered a little scream.
+
+"Died!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, listen to this," said Sir Chichester. "Mrs. Croyle was discovered
+lying upon her side with her face bent above a glass of chloroform. The
+glass was supported between her pillows and Mrs. Croyle's fingers were
+still grasping it when she was discovered."
+
+A gasp of indignation and horror ran round that breakfast table when Sir
+Chichester had finished.
+
+"It's so atrociously circumstantial," said Mr. Albany Todd.
+
+"Yes." Sir Chichester seized upon the point. "That's the really damnable
+point about it. That's real malice. This report will linger and live
+long after the denial and apology are published."
+
+Lady Splay raised her head.
+
+"I can't imagine who can have sent in such a cowardly lie. Enemies of
+us? Or enemies of Stella?"
+
+"We can think that out afterwards, Lady Splay," said Harold Jupp. He was
+of a practical matter-of-fact mind and every one turned to listen to his
+suggestion. "The first thing to do is to get the report contradicted in
+the evening papers."
+
+"Of course."
+
+There was something to be done. All grasped at the doing of it in sheer
+relief--except one. For as the men rose, saying; one "I'll look after
+it"; and another "No, you'd better leave it to me," Luttrell's voice
+broke in upon them all, with a sort of dreadful fatality in the quiet
+sound of it.
+
+"Where is Mrs. Croyle now?" he asked, and he was as white as the
+tablecloth in front of him.
+
+There was no further movement towards the door. Slowly the men resumed
+their seats. A silence followed in which person after person looked at
+Stella's empty place as though an intensity of gaze would materialise
+her there. Miranda was the first bravely to break through it.
+
+"She hasn't come down yet," she said, and Millie Splay seized upon the
+words.
+
+"No, she never comes down for breakfast--never has all this week."
+
+"Yes, that's true," returned Dennis Brown with an attempt at
+cheerfulness.
+
+"Besides--what makes--the idea--impossible," said Sir Chichester, "is
+the publication this morning. There wouldn't have been time.... It's
+clearly an atrocious piece of malice." He was speaking with an obvious
+effort to convince himself that the monstrous thing was false. But he
+collapsed suddenly and once more discomfort and silence reigned in the
+room.
+
+"Stella's not well," Millie Splay took up the tale. "That's why she is
+seldom seen before twelve. Those headaches of hers----" and suddenly she
+in her turn broke off. She leaned forward and pressed the electric bell
+upon the tablecloth beside her. That small trivial action brought its
+relief, lightened the vague cloud of misgiving which since Luttrell had
+spoken, had settled upon all.
+
+"You rang, my lady," said Harper in the doorway.
+
+"Yes, Harper. We were making some plans for a picnic to-day and we
+should like to know if Mrs. Croyle will join us. Can you find out from
+her maid whether she is awake?"
+
+It was superbly done. There was not a quaver in Lady Splay's voice, not
+a sign of agitation in her manner.
+
+"I'll inquire, my lady," replied Harper, and he left the room upon his
+errand.
+
+"One thing is certain," Mr. Albany Todd broke in. "I was watching Harper
+over your shoulder, Lady Splay. He hasn't seen the paragraph. There's
+nothing known of it in the servants' hall."
+
+Sir Chichester nodded, and Millie Splay observed:
+
+"Harper's so imperturbable that he always inspires me with confidence. I
+feel that nothing out of the way could really happen whilst he was in
+the house." And her attitude of tension did greatly relax as she
+thought, illogically enough, of that stolid butler. A suggestion made by
+Martin Hillyard set them to work whilst they waited.
+
+"Let us see if the report is in any of the other papers," and all
+immediately were busy with that examination--except one again. And that
+one again, Harry Luttrell. He sat in his place motionless, his eyes
+transfixed upon some vision of horror--as if he _knew_, Martin said to
+himself, yes, as if all these questions were futile, as if he _knew_.
+
+But no other newspaper had printed the paragraph. They had hardly
+assured themselves of this fact, when Harper once more stood in the
+doorway.
+
+"Mrs. Croyle gave orders last night to her maid that she was not to be
+disturbed until she rang, my lady," he said.
+
+"And she has not rung?" Millie asked.
+
+"No, my lady."
+
+Miranda suddenly laughed in an odd fashion and swayed in her chair.
+
+"Miranda!" Millie Splay brought her back to her self-control with a
+sharp cry of rebuke. Then she resumed to Harper.
+
+"I will take the responsibility of waking Mrs. Croyle. Will you please,
+ask her maid to rouse Mrs. Croyle, and inquire whether she will join us
+this morning. We shall start at twelve."
+
+"Very well, my lady."
+
+There was no longer any pretence of ease amongst the people seated round
+the table. A queer panic passed from one to the other. They were awed by
+the imminence of dreadful uncomprehended things. They waited in silence,
+like people under a spell, and from somewhere in the house above their
+heads, there sounded a loud rapping upon a door. They held their breath,
+straining to hear the grate of a key in a lock, and the opening of that
+door. They heard only the knocking repeated and repeated again. It was
+followed by a sound of hurrying feet.
+
+Jenny Prask ran down the great main staircase, and burst into the
+breakfast room, her face mottled with terror, her hand spread above her
+heart to still its wild beating.
+
+"My lady! My lady! The door's locked. I can get no answer. I am afraid."
+
+Sir Chichester rose abruptly from his chair. But Jenny Prask had more to
+say.
+
+"The key had been removed. My lady, I looked through the keyhole. The
+lights are still burning in the room."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+Martin Hillyard had started to his feet. He remembered another time when
+the lights had been burning in Stella Croyle's room in the full blaze of
+a summer morning. She was sitting at the writing-table then. She had
+been sitting there all through the night making meaningless signs and
+figures upon the paper and the blotting-pad in front of her. The full
+significance of that flight of the unhappy Stella to the little hotel
+below the Hog's Back was now revealed to him. But between that morning
+and this, there was an enormous difference. She had opened her door then
+in answer to the knocking.
+
+"We must get through that door, Lady Splay," he said. Sir Chichester was
+already up and about in a busy agitation.
+
+"Yes, to be sure. It's just an ordinary lock. We shall easily find a key
+to fit it. I'll take Harper with me, and perhaps, Millie, you will
+come."
+
+"Yes, I'll come," said Millie quietly. After her first shock of horror
+and surprise when she had first chanced upon the paragraph in the
+_Harpoon_, she had been completely, wonderfully, mistress of herself.
+
+"The rest of you will please stay downstairs," said Sir Chichester, as
+he removed the key from the door of the room. Jenny Prask was not thus
+to be disposed of.
+
+"Oh, my lady, I must go up too!" she cried, twisting her hands together.
+"Mrs. Croyle was always very kind to me, poor lady. I must come!"
+
+"She won't keep her head," Sir Chichester objected, who was fast losing
+his. But Milly Splay laid her hand upon the girl's arm.
+
+"Yes, you shall come with us, Jenny," she said gently, and the four of
+them moved out of the room.
+
+The others followed them as far as the hall, and stood grouped at the
+foot of the staircase.
+
+"Miranda, would you like to go out into the air?" Dennis Brown asked
+with solicitude of his wife.
+
+"No, dear, I am all right. I--oh, poor woman!" and with a sob she
+dropped her face in her hands.
+
+"Hush!" Luttrell called sharply for silence, and a moment afterwards, a
+loud shrill scream rent the air like lightning.
+
+Miranda cowered from it.
+
+"Jenny Prask!" said Hillyard.
+
+"Then--then--the news is true," faltered Miranda, and she would have
+fallen but for the arm of her husband about her waist.
+
+They waited until Sir Chichester came down the stairs to them. He was
+shaken and trembling. He, the spectator of dramas, was now a character
+in one most tragically enacted under his own roof.
+
+"The report is true to the letter," he said in a low voice. "Dennis,
+will you go for McKerrel, the doctor. You know his house in Midhurst.
+Will you take your car, and bring him back. There is nothing more that
+we can do until he comes." He stood for a little while by the table in
+the hall, staring down at it, and taking particular note of its grain.
+
+"A curious thing," he said. "The key of her room is missing altogether."
+
+To no one did it come at this moment that the disappearance of the key
+was to prove a point of vast importance. No one made any comment, and
+Sir Chichester fell to silence again. "She looked like a child
+sleeping," he said at length, "a child without a care."
+
+Then he sat down and took the newspaper from his pocket. Mr. Albany Todd
+suddenly advanced to Harry Luttrell. He had been no less observant than
+Martin Hillyard.
+
+"You alone, Colonel Luttrell," he said, "were not surprised."
+
+"I was not," answered Harry frankly. "I was shocked, but not surprised.
+For I knew Mrs. Croyle at a time when she was so tormented that she
+could not sleep at all. During that time she learnt to take drugs, and
+especially that drug in precisely that way that the newspaper
+described."
+
+The men drifted out of the hall on to the lawn, leaving Sir Chichester
+brooding above the outspread sheets of the _Harpoon_. Here was the
+insoluble sinister question to which somehow he had to find an answer.
+Stella Croyle died late last night, in the country, at Rackham Park; and
+yet in this very morning's issue of the newspaper, her death with every
+circumstance and detail was truthfully recorded, hours before it was
+even known by anybody in the house itself.
+
+"How can that be?" Sir Chichester exclaimed in despair. "How can it
+be?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+JENNY PUTS UP HER FIGHT
+
+
+Stella, the undisciplined! She had flung out of the rank and file, as
+long ago Sir Charles Hardiman had put it, and to this end she had come,
+waywardness exacting its inexorable price. Harry Luttrell, however, was
+not able to lull his conscience with any such easy reflections. He
+walked with Martin Hillyard apart in the garden.
+
+"I am to blame," he cried. "I took on a responsibility for Stella when I
+went out of my way to do one kind, foolish thing.... Yet, she would have
+killed herself if I hadn't--as she has done five years afterwards!... I
+couldn't leave her when I had brought her home ... she was in such
+misery!... and it couldn't have gone on.... Old Hardiman was right about
+that.... It would have ended in a quarrel when unforgivable words would
+have been used.... Yet, perhaps, if that had happened she wouldn't have
+killed herself.... Oh, I don't know!"
+
+Martin Hillyard had never seen Harry Luttrell so moved or sunk in such
+remorse. He did not argue, lest he should but add fuel to this high
+flame of self-reproach. Life had become so much easier as a problem with
+him, so much inner probing and speculation and worry about small
+vanities had been smoothed away since he had been engaged day after day
+in a definite service which was building up by a law deduced here, an
+inspired formula there, a tradition for its servants. The service, the
+tradition, would dissolve and blow to nothing, when peace came again.
+Meanwhile there was the worth of traditional service made clear to him,
+in an indifference to the little enmities which before would have hurt
+and rankled, in a freedom from doubt when decision was needed, above all
+in a sort of underlying calm which strengthened as his life became more
+turbulently active.
+
+"It's a clear principle of life which make the difference," he said,
+hesitating, because to say even so much made him feel a prig. "Stella
+just drifted from unhappiness to unhappiness----"
+
+But Harry Luttrell had no attention to give to him.
+
+"I simply couldn't have gone on," he cried. "It wasn't a question of my
+ruin or not.... It was simply beyond me to go on.... There were other
+things more powerful.... You know! I once told you on the river above
+Kennington Island.... Oh, my God, I am in such a tangle of argument--and
+there she is up there--only thirty, and beautiful--such a queer, wayward
+kid--'like a child sleeping.'"
+
+He quoted Sir Chichester's phrase, and hurried away from his friend.
+
+"I shall be back in a little while," he muttered. His bad hour was upon
+him, and he must wrestle with it alone.
+
+Martin Hillyard returned to the hall, and found Sir Chichester with the
+doctor, a short, rugged Scotsman. Dr. McKerrel was saying:
+
+"There's nothing whatever for me to do, Sir Chichester," he said. "The
+poor creature must have died somewhere about one o'clock of the
+morning." He saw Sir Chichester with a start fall once more to reading
+the paragraph in the _Harpoon_, and continued with a warmth of
+admiration, "Eh, but those newspaper fellows are quick! I saw the
+_Harpoon_ this morning, and it was lucky I did. For I'd ha' been on my
+rounds otherwise when that young fellow called for me."
+
+"It was good of you to come so quickly," said Sir Chichester.
+
+"I shall charge for it," replied Dr. McKerrel. "I'll just step round to
+the Peace Officer at once, and I'll be obliged if you'll not have that
+glass with the chloroform touched again. I have put it aside."
+
+Martin Hillyard was disturbed.
+
+"There will have to be an inquest then?" he asked.
+
+"Aye, but there wull."
+
+"In a case of this kind," Sir Chichester suggested, "it would be better
+if it could be avoided."
+
+"But it can't," answered Dr. McKerrel bluntly. "And for my part, I tell
+you frankly, Sir Chichester, I have no great pity for poor neurotic
+bodies like the young lady upstairs. If she had had a little of my work
+to do, she would have been too tired in the evening to think about her
+worries." He looked at the disconsolate Baronet with a sudden twinkle in
+his eye. "Eh, man, but you'll get all the publicity you want over this
+case."
+
+Sir Chichester had no rejoinder to the quip; and his unwonted meekness
+caused McKerrel to relent. He stopped at the door, and said:
+
+"I'll give you a hint. The coroner can cut the inquest down to the
+barest necessary limits, if he has got all the facts clear beforehand.
+If he has got to explore in the dark, he'll ask questions here and
+questions there, and you never know, nor does he, what he's going to
+drag out to light in the end. But let him have it all clear and straight
+first! There's only one character I know of, more free from regulations
+and limitations and red-tape than a coroner, and that's the
+police-sergeant who runs the coroner. Goodday to you."
+
+A telegram was brought to Martin Hillyard whilst McKerrel was yet
+speaking; and Hillyard read it with relief. Mario Escobar had been taken
+that morning as he was leaving the hotel for the morning train to
+London. He was now on his way to an internment camp. So that
+complication was smoothed out at all events. He agreed with Sir
+Chichester Splay that it would be prudent to carry out McKerrel's
+suggestion at once.
+
+"I will make the document out," said Sir Chichester importantly. Give
+him a little work which set him in the limelight as the leader of the
+Chorus, and nothing could keep down his spirits. He took a sheet of
+foolscap, a blotting pad, a heavy inkstand, and a quill pen--Sir
+Chichester never used anything but a quill pen--to the big table in the
+middle of the hall, and wrote in a fair, round hand:
+
+"The case of Mrs. Croyle."
+
+and looked at his work and thought it good.
+
+"It looks quite like a _cause c�l�bre_, doesn't it?" he said buoyantly.
+But he caught Martin Hillyard's eye, and recovered his more becoming
+despondency. Harry Luttrell came in as the baronet settled once more to
+his task. He laid a shining key upon the table and said:
+
+"I found this upon the lawn. It looked as if it might be the key of Mrs.
+Croyle's room."
+
+It was undoubtedly the key of a door. "We'll find out," said the
+baronet. Harper was sent for and commissioned to inquire. He returned in
+a few minutes.
+
+"Yes, sir, it is the key of Mrs. Croyle's room." He laid it upon the
+table and went out of the room.
+
+"I suppose it is then," said Harry Luttrell. "But I am a little
+puzzled."
+
+"Oh?"
+
+"It wasn't lying beneath Mrs. Croyle's window as one might have
+expected. But at the east side of the house, below the corridor, and
+almost in front of the glass door of the library."
+
+Both of his hearers were disturbed. Sir Chichester took up the key, and
+twisted it this way and that, till it flashed like a point of fire in
+the sunlight; as though under such giddy work it would yield up its
+secret for the sake of peace. He flung it on the table again, where it
+rattled and lay still.
+
+"I can't make head or tail of it," Sir Chichester cried. Martin Hillyard
+opened his mouth to speak and thought better of it. He could not falter
+in his belief that Stella had destroyed herself. The picture of her that
+morning in Surrey, with the lamps burning in her room and the bed
+untouched, was too vivid in his memory. What she had tried to do two
+years ago, she had found the courage to do to-day.
+
+That was sure. But it was not all. There was some one in the shadows who
+meant harm, more harm than was already accomplished. There was
+malevolence at work. The discovery of the key in that position far from
+Stella's window assured him of it. The aspect of the key itself as it
+lay upon the table made the assurance still more sure. But whom was this
+malevolence to hurt? And how? At what moment would the hand behind the
+curtain strike? And whose hand would it be? These were questions which
+locked his lips tight. It was for him to watch and discover, for he
+alone overlooked the battle-field, and if he failed, God help his
+friends at Rackham Park. Mario Escobar? Mario Escobar could at all
+events do no harm now.
+
+Sir Chichester explained to Harry Luttrell Dr. McKerrel's suggestion.
+
+"Just a clear, succinct statement of the facts. The witnesses, and what
+each one knows and is ready to depose. I shall put the statement before
+the coroner, who is a very good fellow, and we shall escape with as
+little scandal as possible. Now, let me see----" Sir Chichester put on
+his glasses. "The most important witness, of course, will be Stella's
+maid."
+
+Sir Chichester rang the bell, and in answer to his summons Jenny came
+down the stairs. Her eyes were red with weeping and she was very pale.
+But she bore herself steadily.
+
+"You wanted me, sir?" she asked. Her eyes travelled from one to the
+other of the three men in the hall. They rested for a little moment
+longer upon Harry Luttrell than upon the rest; and it seemed to Hillyard
+that as they rested there they glittered strangely, and that the ghost
+of a smile flickered about her mouth.
+
+"Yes," said Sir Chichester, pompously. "You understand that there will
+have to be an inquiry into the cause of Mrs. Croyle's death; and one
+wants for the sake of everybody, your dead mistress more than any one,
+that there should be as little talk as possible."
+
+Jenny's voice cut in like ice.
+
+"Mrs. Croyle had no reason that I know of to fear the fullest inquiry."
+
+"Quite so! Quite so!" returned Sir Chichester, shifting his ground. "But
+it will save time if we get the facts concisely together."
+
+Jenny stepped forward, and stood at the end of the table opposite to the
+baronet.
+
+"I am quite willing, sir," she said respectfully, "to answer any
+question now or at any time"; and throughout the little interrogatory
+which followed she never once changed from her attitude of respect.
+
+"Your name first."
+
+"Jenny Prask," and Sir Chichester wrote it down.
+
+"You have been Mrs. Croyle's maid for some time."
+
+"For three and a half years, sir."
+
+"Good!" said Sir Chichester, with the air of one who by an artful
+question has elicited a most important piece of evidence.
+
+"Now!" But now he fumbled. He had come to the real examination, and was
+at a loss how to begin. "Yes, now then, Jenny!" and again he came to a
+halt.
+
+Whilst Jenny waited, her eyes once glittered strangely under their
+half-dropped lids; and Martin Hillyard followed the direction of their
+gaze to the door-key lying upon the table beside Sir Chichester's hand.
+
+"Jenny," said Sir Chichester, who had at last formulated a question.
+"You informed us that Mrs. Croyle instructed you last night not to call
+her until she rang. That, no doubt, was an unusual order for her to
+give."
+
+"No, sir."
+
+Sir Chichester leaned back in his chair.
+
+"Oh, it wasn't?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+Sir Chichester looked a little blank. He cast about for another line of
+examination.
+
+"You are aware, of course, Jenny, that your mistress was in the habit of
+taking drugs--chloroform especially."
+
+"Never, sir," answered Jenny.
+
+"You weren't aware of it?" exclaimed Sir Chichester.
+
+"She never took them."
+
+Harry Luttrell made a little movement. He stared in perplexity at Jenny
+Prask, who did not once remove her calm and respectful eyes from Sir
+Chichester Splay. She waited in absolute composure for the next
+question. But the question took a long time to formulate. Sir Chichester
+had framed no interrogatory in a sequence; whereas Jenny's answers were
+pat, as though, sitting by the bed whereon her dead mistress lay, she
+had thought out the questions which might be asked of her and got her
+answers ready. Sir Chichester began to get flurried. At every conjecture
+which he expressed, Jenny Prask slammed a door in his face.
+
+"But you told me----" he cried, turning to Harry Luttrell and so broke
+off. "Are you speaking the truth, Jenny?"
+
+Suddenly Jenny's composure broke up. The blood rushed into her face. She
+shouted violently:
+
+"I swear it! If it was my last dying word, I do! Chloroform indeed!" She
+became sarcastic. "What an idea! Just fancy!"
+
+Sir Chichester threw down his pen. He was aghast before the conclusion
+to which his examination was leading him.
+
+"But, if Stella didn't put that glass of chloroform between her
+pillows--herself--of her own accord--why then, whilst she was
+asleep----" He would not utter the inevitable induction. But it was
+clear enough, hideous enough to all of them. Why then, whilst she was
+asleep, some one entered the room, placed the chloroform where its
+deadly fumes would do their work, locked her door upon her and tossed
+the key out on to the lawn. A charge of murder--nothing less.
+
+"Don't you see what you are suggesting, Jenny," Sir Chichester
+spluttered helplessly.
+
+"I am suggesting nothing, sir," the maid answered stolidly. "I am
+answering questions."
+
+She was lying, of course! Hillyard had not a doubt of it. Jenny Prask
+was the malevolent force of which he was in search. So much had, at all
+events, sprung clear from Sir Chichester's blunderings. And some hint,
+too, of the plan which malevolence had formed--not more than a hint!
+That Jenny Prask intended to sustain a charge of murder Martin did not
+believe. She was of too strong a brain for that folly. But she had some
+clear purpose to harm somebody; and Martin's heart sank as he
+conjectured who that some one might, nay must, be. Meanwhile, he
+thought, let Sir Chichester pursue his questioning. He got glimpses
+through that clouded medium into Jenny Prask's mind.
+
+"You must realise, Jenny, the unfortunate position into which your
+answers are leading you," said Sir Chichester with a trace of bluster.
+
+Hillyard could have laughed. As if she didn't realise exactly the drift
+and meaning of every word which she uttered. Jenny was not at all
+perturbed by Sir Chichester's manner. Her face took on a puzzled look.
+
+"I don't understand, sir."
+
+"No? Let me make it clear! If your mistress never took drugs, if she did
+not place the glass of chloroform in the particular position which would
+ensure her death, then, since you, her maid, were alone in this part of
+the house with her and were the last person to see her alive----"
+
+"No, sir," Jenny Prask interrupted.
+
+Sir Chichester stared. He was more and more out of his depth, and these
+were waters in which expert swimming was required.
+
+"I don't understand. Do you say that somebody saw Mrs. Croyle after she
+had dismissed you for the night?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Will you please explain?"
+
+The explanation was as simple as possible. Jenny had first fetched a
+book for her mistress from the library, before the house-party left for
+the ball. She then had supper and went to Mrs. Croyle's room. It was
+then about half-past nine, so far as she could conjecture. Her mistress,
+however, was not ready for bed, and dismissed Jenny, saying that she
+would look after herself. Jenny thereupon retired to her own bedroom and
+wrote a letter. After writing it, she remembered that she had not put
+out the distilled water which Mrs. Croyle was in the habit of using for
+her toilet. She accordingly returned to Mrs. Croyle's bedroom, and to
+her surprise found it empty. She waited for a quarter of an hour, and
+then becoming uneasy, went downstairs into the hall. She heard her
+mistress and some one else talking in the library. Their voices were
+raised a little as though they were quarrelling.
+
+"Quarrelling!" Sir Chichester Splay cried out the word in dismay. His
+hand flapped feebly on the table. "I am afraid to go on.... What do you
+think, Hillyard? I am afraid to go on...."
+
+"We must go on," said Luttrell quietly. He was very white. Did he guess
+what was coming, Hillyard wondered? At all events he did not falter. He
+took the business of putting questions altogether out of his host's
+hands.
+
+"Was the somebody a man or a woman?"
+
+"A woman, sir."
+
+"Did you recognise her voice?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Who was it?"
+
+"Miss Whitworth."
+
+Harry Luttrell nodded his head as if he had, during these last minutes,
+come to expect that answer and no other. But Sir Chichester rose up in
+wrath and, leaning forward over the table, shook his finger
+threateningly at the girl.
+
+"Now you know you are not speaking the truth. Miss Whitworth was at
+Harrel last night with the rest of us."
+
+"Yes, sir, but she came back to Rackham Park almost at once," said
+Jenny; and Harry Luttrell's face showed a sign of anxiety. After all, he
+hadn't seen Joan himself in the ball-room until well after ten o'clock.
+"I should have known that it was Miss Whitworth even if I had not heard
+her voice," and Jenny described how, on fetching Mrs. Croyle's book, she
+had seen Joan unlatch the glass door of the library.
+
+Sir Chichester was shaken, but he pushed his blotting-paper here and his
+pen there, and pished and tushed like a refractory child.
+
+"And how did she get back? I suppose she ran all the way in her satin
+shoes and back again, eh?"
+
+"No, sir, she came back in Mrs. Brown's motor-car. I saw it from my
+bedroom window waiting in the drive."
+
+"Ah! Now that we can put to the test, Jenny," cried Sir Chichester
+triumphantly. "And we will----" He caught Hillyard's eye as he moved
+towards the door in order to summon Miranda from the garden. Hillyard
+warned him with an almost imperceptible shake of the head. "Yes, we
+will, in our own time," he concluded lamely. His anger burst out again.
+"Joan, indeed! We won't have her mixed up in this sordid business, it's
+bad enough as it is. But Joan, no! To suggest that Joan came straight
+back from the Willoughbys' dance in order to quarrel with a woman whom
+she was seeing every day here, and, having quarrelled with her,
+afterwards----No, I won't speak the word. It's preposterous!"
+
+"But I don't suggest, sir, that Miss Whitworth came back in order to
+quarrel with my mistress," Jenny Prask returned, as soon as Sir
+Chichester's spate of words ran down. "I only give you the facts I know.
+I am quite sure that Miss Whitworth can quite easily explain why she
+came back to Rackham Park last night. There can't be any difficulty
+about that!"
+
+Jenny Prask had kept every intonation of her voice under her control.
+There was no hint of irony or triumph. She was a respectful lady's maid,
+frankly answering questions about her dead mistress. But she did not so
+successfully keep sentinel over her looks. She could not but glance from
+time to time at Harry Luttrell savouring his trouble and anxiety; and
+when she expressed her conviction that Joan could so easily clear up
+these mysteries, such a flame of hatred burnt suddenly in her eyes that
+it lit Martin Hillyard straight to the heart of her purpose.
+
+"So that's it," he thought, and was terrified as he grasped its reach.
+An accusation of murder! Oh, nothing so crude. But just enough
+suggestion of the possibility of murder to make it absolutely necessary
+that Joan Whitworth should go into the witness box at the coroner's
+inquest and acknowledge before the world that she had hurried secretly
+back from Harrel to meet Mario Escobar in an empty house. Mario Escobar
+too! Of all people, Mario Escobar! Jenny Prask had builded better than
+she knew. That telegram which Martin had welcomed with so much relief
+but an hour ago taunted him now. The scandal would have been bad enough
+if Mario Escobar were nothing more than the shady hunter of women he was
+supposed to be. It would be ten times louder now that Mario Escobar had
+been interned as a traitor within twelve hours of the secret meeting!
+
+Some escape must be discovered from the peril. Else the mud of it would
+cling to Joan all her life. She would be spoilt. Harry Luttrell, too! If
+he married her, if he did not. But Martin could not think of a way out.
+The whole plan was an artful, devilish piece of hard-headed cunning.
+Martin fell to wondering where was Jenny Prask's weak joint. She
+certainly looked, with her quiet strength, as if she had not one at all.
+
+To make matters worse, Miranda Brown chose this moment to re-enter the
+hall. Sir Chichester, warned already by Martin, threw the warning to the
+winds.
+
+"Miranda, you are the very person to help us," he cried. "Now listen to
+me, my dear, and don't get flurried. Think carefully, for your answer
+may have illimitable consequences! After your arrival at Harrel last
+night, did Joan return here immediately in your car?"
+
+Sir Chichester had never been so impressive. Miranda was frightened and
+changed colour. But she had given her promise and she kept it pluckily.
+
+"No," she answered.
+
+Jenny Prask permitted herself to smile her disbelief. Sir Chichester was
+triumphant.
+
+"Well, there's an end of your pretty story, my girl," he said. "You
+wanted to do a little mischief, did you? Well, you haven't! And here, by
+a stroke of luck, is Joan herself to settle the matter."
+
+He sat down and once more he drew his sheet of foolscap in front of him.
+He could write his clear succinct statement now, write it in "nervous
+prose." He was not quite sure what nervous prose actually was, but he
+knew it to be the correct medium to use on these occasions.
+
+Meanwhile Joan ran down the stairs.
+
+"I am afraid I have been very lazy this morning," she cried. She saw
+Harry Luttrell, she coloured to the eyes, she smiled doubtfully and said
+in a little whimsical voice, "We didn't after all, practise in the
+passage."
+
+Then, and only then, did she realise that something was amiss. Millie
+Splay in her desire to spare her darling the sudden shock of learning
+what calamity had befallen the house that night had bidden Joan's maid
+keep silence. She herself would break the news. But Millie Splay was
+busy with telegrams to Robert Croyle and Stella's own friends, and all
+the sad little duties which wait on death; and Joan ran down into the
+midst of the debate without a warning.
+
+Martin Hillyard would have given it to her, but Sir Chichester was hot
+upon his report.
+
+"Joan, my dear," he said confidently. "There's a little point--not in
+dispute really--but--well there's a little point. It has been said that
+you came straight back here last night from Harrel?"
+
+Joan's face turned slowly white. She stood with her great eyes fixed
+upon Sir Chichester, still as an image, and she did not answer a word.
+Harry Luttrell drew in a quick breath like a man in pain. Sir Chichester
+was selecting a new pen and noticed nothing.
+
+"It's ridiculous, of course, my dear, but I must put to you the formal
+question. Did you?"
+
+"Yes," answered Joan, and the pen fell from Sir Chichester's hand.
+
+"But--but--how did you come back?"
+
+"I borrowed Miranda's car."
+
+Miranda's legs gave under her and she sank down with a moan in a chair.
+
+"But Miranda denies that she lent it," said Sir Chichester in
+exasperation.
+
+"I asked her to deny it."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Joan's eyes for one swift instant swept round to Harry Luttrell. She
+swayed. Then she answered:
+
+"I can't tell you."
+
+Sir Chichester rose to his feet and tore his sheet of foolscap across.
+
+"God bless my soul!" he said to himself rather than to any of that
+company. "God bless my soul!" He moved away from the table. "I think
+I'll go and see Millie. Yes! I'll consult with Millie," and he ascended
+the stairs heavily, a very downcast and bewildered man. It seemed as
+though old age had suddenly found him out, and bowed his shoulders and
+taken the spring from his limbs. Something of this he felt himself, for
+he was heard to mutter as he passed along the landing to his wife's
+sitting-room:
+
+"I am not the man I was. I feel difficulties more"; and so he passed
+from sight.
+
+Harry Luttrell turned then to Joan.
+
+"Miss Whitworth," he began and got no further. For the blood rushed up
+into the girl's face and she exclaimed in a trembling voice:
+
+"Colonel Luttrell, I trust that you are not going to ask me any
+questions."
+
+"Why?" he asked, taken aback by the little touch of violence in her
+manner.
+
+"Because, at twelve o'clock last night, I refused you the right to ask
+them."
+
+The words were not very generous. They were meant to hurt and they did.
+They were meant to put a sharp, quick end to any questioning; and in
+that, too, they succeeded. Harry Luttrell bowed his head in assent and
+went out into the garden. For a moment afterwards Martin Hillyard, Joan
+and Jenny Prask stood in silence; and in that silence once more Martin's
+eyes fell upon the key of Stella's room. The earth had moved since the
+interrogatory had begun and the sunlight now played upon the key and
+transmuted it into a bright jewel. Martin Hillyard stepped forward and
+lifted it up. A faint, a very faint light, as from the far end of a long
+tunnel began to glimmer in his mind.
+
+"I must think it out," he whispered to himself; and at once the key
+filled all his thoughts. He turned to Joan:
+
+"Will you watch, please?" He opened the drawer in the table and laid the
+key inside it. Then he closed the drawer and locked it and took the key
+of the drawer out of the lock.
+
+"You see, Joan, what I have done? That key is locked in this drawer, and
+I hold the key of the drawer. It may be important."
+
+Joan nodded.
+
+"I see what you have done. And now, will you please leave me with Jenny
+Prask?"
+
+The smile was very easy to read now in Jenny's face. She could ask
+nothing better than to be left alone with Joan.
+
+Martin hesitated.
+
+"I think, Joan, that you ought to see Lady Splay before you talk to any
+one," he counselled gently.
+
+"Is everybody going to give me orders in this house?" Joan retorted with
+a quiet, dangerous calm.
+
+Martin Hillyard turned and ran swiftly up the stairs. There was but one
+thing to do. Lady Splay must be fetched down. But hurry as he might, he
+was not in time. For a few seconds Joan and Jenny Prask were alone in
+the hall, and all Jenny's composure left her on the instant. She stepped
+quickly over to Joan, and in a voice vibrating with hatred and passion,
+she hissed:
+
+"But you'll have to say why you came back. You'll have to say who you
+came back to see. You'll have to say it publicly too--right there in
+court. It'll be in all the papers. Won't you like it, Miss Whitworth?
+Just fancy!"
+
+Joan was staggered by the attack. The sheer hatred of Jenny bewildered
+her.
+
+"In court?" she faltered. "What do you mean?"
+
+"That Mrs. Croyle died of poison last night in her room," answered
+Jenny.
+
+Joan stared at her. "Last night, after we had talked--she killed
+herself--oh!" The truth reached her brain and laid a chill hand upon her
+heart. She rocked backwards and forwards as she stood, and with a
+gasping moan fell headlong to the ground. She had fainted. For a little
+while Jenny surveyed her handiwork with triumph. She bent down with a
+laugh.
+
+"Yes, it's your turn, you pretty doll. You've got to go through it! You
+won't look so young and pretty when they have done with you in the
+witness-box. Bah!"
+
+Jenny Prask was a strenuous hater. She drew back her foot to kick the
+unconscious girl as she lay at her feet upon the floor. But that insult
+Millie Splay was in time to prevent.
+
+"Jenny," she cried sharply from the balustrade of the landing.
+
+Jenny was once more the quiet, respectful maid.
+
+"Yes, my lady. You want me? I am afraid that Miss Whitworth has
+fainted."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+A REVOLUTION IN SIR CHICHESTER
+
+
+Upon that house which had yesterday rung with joyous life now fell gloom
+and sorrow and grave disquiet. Millie Splay drew Miranda, Dennis Brown
+and Harold Jupp aside.
+
+"You three had better go," she said. "You have such a little time for
+holidays now; and I can always telegraph for you if you should be
+wanted."
+
+Miranda bubbled into little sympathetic explosions.
+
+"Oh, Millie, I'll stay, of course. These boys can go. But Joan will want
+some one."
+
+Millie, however, would not hear of it.
+
+"You're a brick, Miranda. But I have ordered the car for you all
+immediately after luncheon. Joan's in bed, and wants to see no one. She
+seems heartbroken. She will say nothing. I can't understand her."
+
+There was only one at Rackham Park who did, and to him Millie Splay
+turned instinctively.
+
+"I should like you to stay, if you will put up with us. I think
+Chichester feels at a loss, and he likes you very much."
+
+"Of course I'll stay," replied Hillyard.
+
+Mr. Albany Todd drifted away to the more congenial atmosphere of a
+dowager duchess's dower-house in the Highlands, where it is to be hoped
+that his conversational qualities were more brilliantly displayed than
+in the irreverent gaiety of Rackham. Millie Splay meant to keep Harry
+Luttrell too. She hoped against hope. This was the man for her Joan, and
+whether he was wasting his leave miserably in that melancholy house
+troubled her not one jot.
+
+"It would be so welcome to me if you would put off your departure," she
+said. "I am sure there is some dreadful misunderstanding."
+
+Luttrell consented willingly to stay, and they went into the library,
+where Sir Chichester was brooding over the catastrophe with his head in
+his hands and the copy of the _Harpoon_ on the floor beside him.
+
+"No, I can't make head or tail of it," he said, and Harper the butler
+came softly into the room, closing the door from the hall.
+
+"There's a reporter from the _West Sussex Advertiser_, sir, asking to
+see you," he said, and Sir Chichester raised his head, like an old
+hunter which hears a pack of hounds giving tongue in the distance.
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"In the hall, sir."
+
+The baronet's head sank again between his shoulders.
+
+"Tell him that I can't see him," he said in a dull voice.
+
+The butler was the only man in the room who could hear that
+pronouncement with an unmoved face, and he owed his imperturbability
+merely to professional pride. Indeed, it was almost unthinkable that a
+couple of hours could produce so vast a revolution in a man. Here was a
+reporter who had come, without being asked, to interview Sir Chichester
+Splay, and the baronet would not see him! The incongruity struck Sir
+Chichester himself.
+
+"Perhaps it will seem rather impolite, eh, Luttrell? Rather hard
+treatment on a man who has come so far? What do you think, Hillyard? I
+suppose I ought to see him for a moment--yes." Sir Chichester raised his
+voice in a sharp cry which contrasted vividly with the deliberative
+sentences preceding it. "Harper! Harper!" and Harper reappeared. "I have
+been thinking about it, Harper. The unfortunate man may lose his whole
+morning if I don't see him. We all agree that to send him away would be
+unkind."
+
+"He has gone, sir."
+
+"Gone?" exclaimed Sir Chichester testily. "God bless my soul! Did he
+seem disappointed, Harper?"
+
+"Not so much disappointed, sir, as, if I may utilise a vulgarism, struck
+of all a heap, sir."
+
+"That will do, Harper," said Millie Splay, and Harper again retired.
+
+"Struck all of a heap!" said Sir Chichester sadly. "Well he might be!"
+He looked up and caught Harry's eye. "They say, Luttrell, that breaking
+a habit is only distressing during the first few days. With each refusal
+of the mind to yield, the temptation diminishes in strength. I believe
+that to be so, Luttrell."
+
+"It is very likely, sir," Harry replied.
+
+Harper seemed to be perpetually in and out of the library that morning.
+For he appeared with a little oblong parcel in his hand. Sir Chichester
+did not notice the parcel. He sprang up, and with a distinct note of
+eager pleasure in his voice, he cried:
+
+"He has come back! Then I really think----"
+
+"No, sir," Harper interrupted. "These are cigarettes."
+
+"Oh, yes," Hillyard stepped forward and took the parcel from the table.
+"I had run out, so I sent to Midhurst for a box."
+
+"Oh, cigarettes!" Sir Chichester's voice sagged again. He contemplated
+the little parcel swinging by a loop of string from Martin's finger. His
+face became a little stern. "That's a bad habit, Hillyard," he observed,
+shaking his head. "It will grow on you--nicotine poisoning may supervene
+at any moment. You had better begin to break yourself of it at once. I
+think so."
+
+"Chichester!" cried Millie Splay. "What in the world are you doing?"
+
+Sir Chichester was gently but firmly removing the parcel from Martin's
+hands, whilst Martin himself looked on, paralysed by the aggression.
+
+"A little strength of character, Hillyard.... You saw me a minute
+ago.... The first few days, I believe, are trying."
+
+Martin sought to retrieve his cigarettes, but Sir Chichester laid them
+aside upon a high mantelpiece, as if Hillyard were a child and could not
+reach them.
+
+"No, don't disappoint me, Hillyard! I am sure that you, too, can rise
+above a temptation. Why should I be the only one?"
+
+But Hillyard did not answer. Sir Chichester's desire that he should have
+a companion in sacrifice set a train of thought working in his mind. In
+the hurry and horror of that morning something had been
+forgotten--something of importance, something which perhaps, together
+with the key locked away in the hall table, might set free Joan's feet
+from the net in which they were entangled. He looked at his watch.
+
+"Will you lend me your car, Harry, for a few hours?" he asked suddenly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then I'll go," said Martin. "I will be back this afternoon or evening,
+Lady Splay." He went to the door, but was delayed by a box of Corona
+cigars upon a small table. "I'll take one of your cigars, Sir
+Chichester," he said drily.
+
+"Anything in the house, of course, my boy," began the baronet
+hospitably, and pulled himself up. "A very bad habit, Hillyard. You
+disappoint me."
+
+A trick of secrecy grows quickly upon men doing the work to which Martin
+Hillyard had been assigned during the last two years. Nothing is easier
+than to reach a frame of mind which drives you about with your finger to
+your lips, whispering "Hush! hush!" over the veriest trifles. Hillyard
+had not reached that point, but, like many other persons of his service,
+he was on the way to it. He gave no information now to any one of his
+purpose or destination, not even to Millie Splay, who came out with him
+alone into the hall, yearning for some crumb of hope. All that he said
+to her was:
+
+"It is possible that I may be later than I think; but I shall certainly
+be back to-night." And he drove off in Luttrell's powerful small car.
+
+It was, in fact, ten o'clock when Hillyard returned to Rackham Park.
+There was that in his manner which encouraged the inmates to hope some
+way out had been discovered. Questions were poured upon him, and some
+information given. The date of the inquest had been fixed for the next
+Monday, and meanwhile no statement of any kind had been put before the
+coroner. Jenny had not yielded by an inch. She would certainly tell her
+story with all the convincing force behind it of her respectful quiet
+manner and her love for her mistress.
+
+"I have something to tell you," said Martin. "But I have had no dinner,
+and am starving. I will tell you whilst I eat."
+
+"Shall I fetch Joan down?" Millie Splay asked eagerly.
+
+"Better to wait," said Martin. He imagined in what a fever of anxiety
+Joan would be. It would be time enough to lift her to hope when it was
+certain that the hope would not crumble away to dust.
+
+Joan was at that moment lying on her bed in the darkness of her room,
+her face towards the moonlit garden, and such a terror of the ordeal to
+be faced the next Monday in her thoughts as turned her cold and sent her
+heart fluttering into her throat. Mario Escobar had been taken away that
+morning. The news had reached Rackham, as it had reached every other
+house in the country-side. Joan knew of it, and she felt soiled and
+humiliated beyond endurance as she thought upon her association with the
+spy.
+
+The picture of the room crowded with witnesses, and people whom she
+knew, and strangers, whilst she gave the evidence which would turn their
+liking for her into contempt and suspicion would fade away from before
+her eyes, and the summer afternoon on Duncton Hill glow in its place.
+She had bidden Hillyard look at the Weald of Sussex, that he might carry
+the smell of its soil, the aspect of its blooms and dark woodlands and
+brown cottages away with him as a treasure to which he could secretly
+turn like a miser to his gold; and she herself, with them ever before
+her eyes, had forgotten them altogether. To sink back into the rank and
+file--how fine she had thought it, and how little she had heeded it! Now
+she had got to pay for her heedlessness, and she buried her face in her
+pillows and lay shivering.
+
+Meanwhile, in the dining-room downstairs, Millie Splay, Sir Chichester
+and Harry Luttrell gathered about Martin at the table whilst he ate cold
+beef and drank a pint of champagne.
+
+"I went up to London to see some one on the editorial staff of the
+_Harpoon_," Martin explained. "There were two questions I wanted answers
+for, if I could get them. You see, according to McKerrel--and you, Sir
+Chichester, say that he is a capable man--Stella Croyle died at one in
+the morning."
+
+"Yes," Sir Chichester agreed.
+
+"_About_ one," Harry Luttrell corrected, with the exactness of the
+soldierly mind.
+
+"'About' will do," Martin rejoined. "For newspapers go to press early
+nowadays. The _Harpoon_ would have been made up, and most of the
+editorial staff would have gone home an hour--yes, actually an
+hour--before Mrs. Croyle died here at Rackham in Sussex. Yet the news is
+in that very issue. How did that happen? How did the news reach the
+office of the _Harpoon_ an hour before the event occurred?"
+
+"Yes, that is what has been bothering me," added Sir Chichester.
+
+"Well, that was one question," Martin resumed. "Here's the other. How,
+when the news had reached the _Harpoon_ office, did it get printed in
+the paper?"
+
+Millie Splay found no difficulty in providing an explanation of that.
+
+"It's sensational," she said disdainfully.
+
+Martin shook his head.
+
+"I don't think that's enough. The _Harpoon_, like lots of other
+newspapers, has its social column, and in that column, no doubt, a
+paragraph like this one about Stella would have a certain sensational
+value. But supposing it wasn't true! A libel action follows, follows
+inevitably. A great deal would be said about the unscrupulous
+recklessness involved; the judge would come down like a cartload of
+bricks and the paper would get badly stung. No editor of any reliable
+paper would run such a risk. No sub-editor, left behind with power to
+alter and insert, would have taken the responsibility. Before he printed
+that item of news he would want corroboration of its truth. That's
+certain. How did he get it? It was true news, and it was corroborated.
+But, again, it was corroborated before the event happened. How?"
+
+"I haven't an idea," cried Sir Chichester. "I thought I knew something
+about getting things into the papers, but I see that I am a baby at it."
+
+"It's much the more difficult question of the two," Hillyard agreed.
+"But we will go back to the first one. How did the news reach the
+_Harpoon_ office yesterday night? Perhaps you can guess?" and he looked
+towards Harry Luttrell.
+
+Luttrell, however, was at a loss.
+
+"It's beyond me," he replied, and Martin Hillyard understood how that
+one morning at the little hotel under the Hog's Back had given to him
+and him alone the key by which the door upon these dark things might be
+unlocked.
+
+"The news arrived in the form of a letter marked urgent, which was
+handed in by the chauffeur of a private motor-car just after midnight.
+Of the time there is no doubt. I saw the editor myself. The issue would
+already have gone to press, but late news was expected that night from
+France, and the paper was waiting for it. Instead this letter came."
+
+A look of bewilderment crept into the faces of the group about the
+table.
+
+"But who in the world could have written it?" cried Sir Chichester in
+exasperation.
+
+"It was written over your name."
+
+"Mine?"
+
+The bewilderment in Millie Splay's face deepened into anxiety. She
+looked at her husband with a sudden sinking of her heart. Had his foible
+developed into a madness? Such things had been. A little gasp broke from
+her lips.
+
+"But not in your handwriting," Hillyard hastened to add.
+
+"Whose then?" asked Harry Luttrell suddenly.
+
+"Stella's," answered Hillyard.
+
+A shiver ran from one to the other of that small company, and discomfort
+kept them silent. A vague dread stole in upon their minds. It was as
+though some uncanny presence were in the room. They had eaten with
+Stella Croyle in this room, played with her out there in the sunlit
+garden, and only one of them had suspected the overwhelming despair
+which had driven her so hard. They began to blame themselves. "Poor
+woman! Poor woman!" Millie Splay whispered in a moan.
+
+Sir Chichester broke the silence.
+
+"But we left Stella here when we went to Harrel," he began, and Hillyard
+interrupted him.
+
+"There's no doubt that Stella sent the message," he said. "Your car,
+Mrs. Brown's and Luttrell's, were all used to take us to Harrel. One car
+remained in your garage--Stella's."
+
+"But there wouldn't be time for that car to reach London." Sir
+Chichester fought against Hillyard's statement. He did not want to
+believe it. He did not want to think of it. It brought him within too
+near a view of that horrid brink where overtried nature grows dizzy and
+whirls down into blackness.
+
+"Just time," Hillyard answered relentlessly, "if you will follow me.
+Joan certainly returned here last night--that I know, as you know. But
+she was back again in the ball-room at Harrel within a few minutes of
+ten o'clock. She must have left Mrs. Croyle a quarter before ten--that,
+at the latest."
+
+"Yes," Millie Splay agreed.
+
+"Well, I have myself crossed Putney Bridge after leaving here, within
+ten minutes under the two hours. And that in the daytime. Stella had
+time enough for her purpose. It was night and little traffic on the
+road. She writes her letter, sends Jenny with it to the garage, and the
+car reaches the _Harpoon_ office by twelve."
+
+"But its return?" asked Sir Chichester.
+
+"Simpler still. Your gates were left open last night, and we returned
+from Harrel at four in the morning. Stella's chauffeur hands in his
+letter, comes back by the way he went and is home here at Rackham an
+hour and a half before we thought of saying good-bye to Mrs. Willoughby.
+That is the way it happened. That is the way it must have happened,"
+Hillyard concluded energetically. "For it's the only way it could have
+happened."
+
+Luttrell, though he had been a listener and nothing else throughout
+Martin's statement, had cherished a hope that somehow it might be
+discovered that Stella had died by an accident. That she should die by
+her own hand, in this house, under the same roof as Joan, and because of
+one year which had ended at Stockholm--oh, to him a generation
+back!--was an idea of irrepressible horror. He could not shake off some
+sense of guiltiness. He had argued with it all that day, discovering the
+most excellent contentions, but at the end, not one of them had
+succeeded in weakening in the least degree his inward conviction that he
+had his share in Stella's death. Unless her death was an accident,
+unless, using her drug, she fell asleep and so drifted unintentionally
+out of life! He still caught at that hope.
+
+"Are you sure that the handwriting was Stella's?" he asked.
+
+"Quite. I saw the letter."
+
+"Did the editor give it to you?"
+
+"No, he had to keep it for his own protection."
+
+"That's a pity," said Harry. A pity--or a relief, since, without that
+evidence before his eyes, he could still insist upon his pretence.
+
+"Not such a great pity," answered Martin, and taking a letter from his
+pocket he threw it down upon the table, with the ghost of a smile upon
+his face. "What do you think I have been doing during the last two
+years?" he asked drily.
+
+Harry pounced upon the letter and his first glance dispelled his
+illusion--nay, proved to him that he had never had faith in it. For he
+saw, without surprise, the broad strokes and the straight up-and-down
+letters familiar to him of old. Stella had always written rather like a
+man, a man without character. He had made a joke of it to her in the
+time before the little jokes aimed by the one at the other had begun to
+rasp.
+
+"Yes, she wrote the letter and signed it with Sir Chichester's name."
+
+Millie Splay reached out for the letter.
+
+"Stella took a big risk," she said. "I don't understand it. She must
+have foreseen that Chichester's hand was likely to be familiar in the
+office."
+
+"No, Millie," said Sir Chichester suddenly, and he spurred his memory.
+"Of course! Of course! Stella helped me with the telephone one day this
+week in the library there. I told her that I was new to the _Harpoon_."
+He suddenly beat upon the table with his fist. "But why should she write
+the letter at all? Why should she want her death here, under these
+strange conditions, announced to the world? A little cruel I call
+it--yes, Millie, a little cruel."
+
+"Stella wasn't cruel," said Lady Splay.
+
+"She wasn't," Hillyard agreed. "I know why she wrote that. She wrote it
+to strengthen her hand and will at the last moment. The message was
+sent, the announcement of her death would be published in the morning,
+was already in print. Just that knowledge would serve as the final
+compulsion to do what she wished to do. She wrote lest her courage and
+nerve should at the last moment fail her, as to my knowledge they had
+failed her before."
+
+"Before!" cried Millie. "She had tried before! Oh, poor woman!"
+
+"Yes," said Hillyard, and he told them all of the vague but very real
+fear which had once driven him into Surrey in chase of her; of her
+bedroom with the bed unslept in and the lights still burning in the
+blaze of a summer morning; of herself sitting all night at her
+writing-table, making dashes and figures upon the notepaper and unable
+to steel herself to the last dreadful act.
+
+Martin Hillyard gave no reason for her misery upon that occasion, nor
+did any one think to inquire. He just told the story from his heart, and
+therefore with a great simplicity of words. There was not one of those
+who heard him, but was moved.
+
+"Yet there were perhaps a couple of hours in her life more grim and
+horrible than any in that long night," he went on, "the hours between
+ten o'clock and midnight yesterday."
+
+"Ah, but we don't know how they were spent," began Sir Chichester.
+
+"We know something," returned Martin gravely. "I told you that that
+letter was corroborated before the paragraph it contained was inserted
+in the paper."
+
+"Yes," said Lady Splay.
+
+"Whilst they were waiting for the news from France, which did not come,
+they rang you up from the _Harpoon_ office. Yes: they rang up Rackham
+Park."
+
+Harry Luttrell snatched up the letter once more from the table. Yes,
+there across the left-hand corner was printed Sir Chichester's telephone
+number and the district exchange.
+
+"They were answered by a woman. Of that there's no doubt. And the woman
+assured them that Stella Croyle was dead. This was at a quarter-past
+twelve."
+
+There was a movement of horror about the table, and then, with dry lips,
+Millie Splay whispered:
+
+"Stella!"
+
+"Yes. It must have been," answered Hillyard. "Oh, she had thought out
+her plan to its last detail. She knew the letter might not be enough.
+So, whilst we were all dancing at Harrel, she sat alone from ten to
+midnight in that library, waiting for the telephone to ring, hoping
+perhaps--for all we know--at the bottom of her heart that it would not
+ring. But it did, and she answered."
+
+The picture rose vividly before them all. Harrel, with its lighted
+ball-room and joyous dancers on the one side; the silent library on the
+other, with Stella herself in all her finery, sitting with her haggard
+eyes fixed upon the telephone, whilst the slow minutes passed.
+
+"That's terrible," said Millie Splay in a low voice; and such a wave of
+pity swept over the four people that for a long while no further word
+was said. Joan upstairs in her room was forgotten. Any thought of
+resentment in that Stella had used Sir Chichester's name was overlooked
+by the revelation of the long travail of her soul.
+
+"I remember that she once said to me, 'Women do get the worst of it when
+they kick over the traces,'" Hillyard resumed. "And undoubtedly they do.
+On the other hand you have McKerrel's hard-headed verdict, 'If these
+poor neurotic bodies had any work to do they wouldn't have so much time
+to worry about their troubles.' Who shall choose between them? And what
+does it matter now? Stella's gone. She will strain her poor little
+unhappy heart no more against the bars."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+JENNY AND MILLIE SPLAY
+
+
+After a time their thoughts reverted to the living.
+
+"There's Joan," said Millie Splay. "Jenny Prask hates her. She means to
+drag her into some scandal."
+
+"If she can," said Martin. He went out into the hall and returned with
+the key of Stella Croyle's room. He held it up before them all.
+
+"This key was found on the lawn outside the library window this morning
+by Luttrell. Jenny has never referred to it since she ran downstairs
+this morning crying out that the key was not in the lock. It was lying
+on the hall table all through the time when Sir Chichester was
+questioning her, and she said never a word about it. She was much too
+clever. But she saw it. I was watching her when she did see it. There
+was no concealing the swift look of satisfaction which flashed across
+her face. I haven't a doubt that she herself dropped the key where it
+was found."
+
+"Nor I," Luttrell agreed with a despairing vehemence, "but we can't
+prove it. Jenny Prask is going to know nothing of that key. 'No, no, no,
+no!' she is going to say, 'Ask Miss Whitworth! Miss Whitworth came back
+from Harrel. Miss Whitworth was the last person to see Mrs. Croyle
+alive. Ask her!' It is Jenny Prask or Miss Whitworth. We are up against
+that alternative all the time. And Jenny holds all the cards. For she
+knows, damn her, what happened here last night."
+
+"She did hold all the cards this morning," Hillyard corrected. "She
+doesn't now. Look at this key! There was a heavy dew last night. It was
+wet underfoot in the garden at Harrel."
+
+"Yes," said Millie.
+
+"How is it then that there's no rust upon the key?" and as he asked the
+question he twirled the key so that the light flashed upon stem and
+wards until they shone like silver. "No, this key was placed where you
+found it, Luttrell, not last night, but this morning after the sun had
+dried the grass."
+
+"But we came home by daylight," Sir Chichester interposed. "They might
+argue that Joan might have slipped downstairs before she went to bed,
+with the key in her hand."
+
+"But she wouldn't have chosen that spot in front of the library window.
+She might have flung it from her window, she might conceivably have
+slipped round the house and laid it under Mrs. Croyle's window. But to
+place it in front of the library to which room she returned from
+Harrel--no."
+
+"Yes," said Sir Chichester doubtfully. "I see. Joan can make good that
+point. Yes, she can explain that." And Millie Splay broke in with
+impatience:
+
+"Explain it! Of course. But what we want is to avoid that she should
+have to explain anything, that she should be called as a witness at
+all!"
+
+There lay the point of trouble. To it, they came ceaselessly back,
+revolving in the circle of their vain argument. Joan had something to
+conceal, and Jenny Prask was determined that she should disclose it, and
+Jenny Prask held the means by which to force her.
+
+"But that's just what I am driving at," continued Martin. "We can't
+afford to be gentle here. There's no lie Jenny Prask wouldn't tell to
+force Joan into the witness box. We have got to deal relentlessly with
+Jenny Prask. A woman's voice spoke from this house over the telephone to
+London at a quarter-past twelve last night, and said that Stella was
+dead. Whose voice? Not Joan's. Joan was having supper with Luttrell at
+twelve o'clock. I saw her, others, too, saw her of course. Whose voice
+then? Stella's, as we say--as we know. But if not Stella's, as Jenny
+Prask says--why then there is only one other woman's voice which could
+have given the news."
+
+"Jenny's," cried Millie with a sudden upspring of hope.
+
+"Yes, Jenny Prask's."
+
+Millie Splay rose from her chair swiftly and rang the bell; and when
+Harper answered it, she said:
+
+"Will you ask Jenny to come here?"
+
+"Now, my lady?"
+
+"Now."
+
+Harper went out of the room and Millie turned again to her friends.
+
+"Will you leave this to me?" she asked.
+
+Sir Chichester was inclined to demur. A few deft and pointed questions,
+very clear, such as might naturally occur to Hillyard or Luttrell, or
+Sir Chichester himself might come in usefully to put the polish, as it
+were, on Millie's spade work. Harry Luttrell smiled grimly.
+
+"We didn't exactly cover ourselves with glory this morning," he said. "I
+think that we had better leave it to Lady Splay."
+
+Sir Chichester reluctantly consented, and they all waited anxiously for
+Jenny's appearance. That she would fight to the last no one doubted.
+Would she fight even to her own danger?
+
+Jenny came into the room, quietly respectful, and without a trace of
+apprehension.
+
+"You sent for me, my lady."
+
+"Yes, Jenny."
+
+Jenny closed the door and came forward to the table.
+
+"Do you still persist in your story of this morning?" Lady Splay asked.
+
+"Yes, my lady."
+
+"You did not see your mistress at all after Miss Whitworth had talked
+with her in the library?"
+
+"No, my lady."
+
+"Jenny, I advise you to be quite sure before you speak."
+
+"I am not to be frightened, my lady," said Jenny Prask, with a spot of
+bright colour showing suddenly in her cheeks.
+
+"I am not trying to frighten you," Millie Splay returned. "But some
+unexpected news has reached us which, if you persist, will place you in
+an awkward position."
+
+Jenny Prask smiled. She turned again to the door.
+
+"Is that all, my lady?"
+
+"You had better hear what the news is."
+
+"As you please, my lady."
+
+Jenny stopped and resumed her position.
+
+"The announcement of Mrs. Croyle's death appeared in the _Harpoon_ this
+morning. The news was left at the _Harpoon_ office by a chauffeur with a
+private car at midnight--Mrs. Croyle's car."
+
+"It never left the garage last night," said Jenny fiercely.
+
+"You know that for certain?"
+
+"I am engaged to the chauffeur," she replied with a smile; and Millie
+Splay looked sharply up.
+
+"Oh," she murmured slowly, after a pause. "Thank you, Jenny. Yes, thank
+you."
+
+The quiet satisfaction of Millie Splay's voice puzzled Jenny and
+troubled her security. She watched Lady Splay warily. From that moment
+her assurance faltered, and with the loss of her ease, she lost
+something, too, of her respectful manner. A note of impertinence became
+audible.
+
+"Very happy, I'm sure," she said.
+
+"The motor-car delivered the message at midnight," Lady Splay resumed,
+"and--this is what I ask your attention to, Jenny--the editor, in order
+to obtain corroboration of the message before he inserted it in his
+paper, rang up Rackham Park."
+
+Lady Splay paused for Jenny's comment, but none was uttered then. Jenny
+was listening with a concentration of all her thoughts. Here was a new
+fact of which she was ignorant, creeping into the affair. Whither did it
+lead? Did it strike her weapon from her hand? Upset her fine plan of
+avenging her dear mistress's most unhappy life? She would not believe
+it.
+
+"He rang up Rackham Park--mark the time, Jenny--at a few minutes after
+twelve," said Lady Splay impressively, and Jenny's uneasiness was
+markedly increased.
+
+"Fancy that!" she returned flippantly. "But I don't see, my lady, what
+that has to do with me."
+
+"You will see, Jenny," Lady Splay continued with gentleness. "He got an
+answer."
+
+Jenny turned that announcement over in her mind.
+
+"An answer, did he?"
+
+"Yes, Jenny, and an answer in a woman's voice."
+
+A startled cry broke from the lips of Jenny Prask. Her cheeks blanched
+and horror stared suddenly from her eyes. She understood whose voice it
+must have been which answered the question from London. Before her, too,
+the pitiful vision of the lonely woman waiting for the shrill summons of
+the telephone bell to close the door of life upon her, rose clear; and
+such a flood of grief and compassion welled up in her as choked her
+utterance.
+
+"Oh!" she whispered, moaning.
+
+"Whose voice was it, Jenny?"
+
+At the question Jenny rallied. All the more dearly because of that
+vision, should Joan Whitworth pay, the shining armour of her young
+beauty be pierced, her pride be humbled, her indifference turned to
+shame.
+
+"I can't think, my lady--unless it was Miss Whitworth's."
+
+"I asked you to mark the time, Jenny. A few minutes after midnight. Miss
+Whitworth was at that moment in the supper-room at Harrel. She was seen
+there. The woman's voice which answered was either Mrs. Croyle's or
+yours."
+
+Nothing could have been quieter or gentler than Millie Splay's
+utterance. But it was like a searing iron to the shoulders of Jenny
+Prask.
+
+"Mine!" The word was launched in a cry of incredulous anger. "It wasn't
+mine. Oh, as if I would do such a thing! The idea! Well, I never did!"
+
+"I don't believe it was yours, Jenny," said Millie Splay.
+
+"Granted, I'm sure," returned Jenny Prask, tossing her head.
+
+"But how many people will agree with me?" Millie Splay went on.
+
+"I don't care, my lady."
+
+"Don't you? You will, Jenny," said Millie in a hard and biting tone
+which contrasted violently with the smoothness of her earlier questions.
+"You are trying, very maliciously, to do a great injury to a young girl
+who had never a thought of hurting your mistress, and you have only
+succeeded in placing yourself in real danger."
+
+Jenny tried to laugh contemptuously.
+
+"Me in danger! Goodness me, what next, I wonder?"
+
+"Just listen how your story works out, Jenny," and Millie Splay set it
+out succinctly step by step.
+
+"Mrs. Croyle never took chloroform as a drug. Mrs. Croyle had no
+troubles. Mrs. Croyle was quite gay this week. Yet she was found dead
+with a glass of chloroform arranged between her pillows, so that the
+fumes must kill her--and Jenny Prask was her maid. A motor-car took the
+news of Mrs. Croyle's death to London before it had occurred and took
+the news from Rackham Park. There was only one motor-car in the
+garage--Mrs. Croyle's--and Mrs. Croyle's chauffeur was engaged to Jenny
+Prask, Mrs. Croyle's maid. London then telephones to Rackham Park for
+corroboration of the news, and a woman's voice confirms it--an hour
+before it was true. There are only two women to choose from, Mrs. Croyle
+and Jenny Prask, her maid. But since Mrs. Croyle never took drugs, and
+had no troubles or thoughts of suicide and was quite gay, it follows
+that Jenny Prask----"
+
+At this point Jenny interrupted in a voice in which fear was now very
+distinctly audible. "Why, you can't mean--Oh, my lady, you are telling
+me that--oh!"
+
+"Yes, it begins to look black, Jenny, but I am not at the end," Millie
+Splay continued implacably. Jenny was not the only woman in that house
+who could fight if her darling was attacked. "You proceed to direct
+suspicion at a young girl with the statement that you never saw your
+mistress after half past nine that night or helped her to undress; and
+to complete your treachery, you take the key of Mrs. Croyle's door which
+you found inside her room this morning, and threw it where it may avert
+inquiry from you and point it against another."
+
+Jenny Prask flinched. The conviction with which Lady Splay announced as
+a fact the opinion of the small conclave about the table quite deceived
+her.
+
+"So you know about the key?" she said sullenly. And about the table ran
+a little quiver of relief. With that question, Jenny Prask had delivered
+herself into their hands.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Jenny stood with a mutinous face and silent lips. Lady Splay had
+marshalled in their order the items of the case which would be made
+against her, if she persisted in her lie. How would she receive them?
+Persist, reckless of her own overthrow, so long as she overthrew Joan
+Whitworth too? Or surrender angrily? The four people watched for her
+answer with anxiety; and it was given in a way which they least
+expected. For Jenny covered her face with her hands, her shoulders began
+to heave and great tears burst out between her fingers and trickled down
+the backs of her hands.
+
+"It's unbearable," she sobbed. "I would have given my life for
+her--that's the truth. Oh, I know that most maids serve their mistresses
+for what they can get out of them. But she was so kind to me--wherever
+she went she was thoughtful of my comfort. Oh, if I had guessed what she
+meant to do! And I might have!"
+
+The truth came out now. Stella Croyle had given the letter to Jenny, and
+Jenny herself had taken it to the garage and sent the chauffeur off upon
+his journey. She had no idea of what the letter contained. Stella was in
+the habit of inhaling chloroform; she carried a bottle of it in her
+dressing-case--a bottle which Jenny had taken secretly from the room and
+smashed into atoms after Doctor McKerrel's departure. She had already
+conceived her plan to involve Joan in so much suspicion that she must
+needs openly confess that she had returned from Harrel to meet Mario
+Escobar in the empty house.
+
+"Mario Escobar!" Millie Splay exclaimed. "It was he." She turned pale.
+Sir Charles Hardiman had spoken frankly to her of Escobar. A creature of
+the shadows--it was rumored that he lived on the blackmailing of women.
+Joan was not out of the wood then! Martin Hillyard was quick to appease
+her fears.
+
+"He will not trouble you," and when Jenny had gone from the room he
+added, "Mario Escobar was arrested this morning. He will be interned
+till the end of the war and deported afterwards."
+
+Lady Splay rose, her face bright with relief.
+
+"Thank you," she said warmly to Hillyard. "I am going up to Joan." At
+the door she stopped to add, "Now that it's over, I don't mind telling
+you that I admire Jenny Prask. Out-and-out loyalty like hers is not so
+common that we can think lightly of it."
+
+Martin Hillyard turned to Sir Chichester.
+
+"And now, if you will allow me, I will open my box of cigarettes."
+
+Harry Luttrell went back to his depot the next morning, without seeing
+Joan again. Millicent Splay wrote to him during the next week. The
+inquest had been confined within its proper limits. Jenny Prask had
+spoken the truth in the witness box, and from beginning to end there had
+been no mention of Joan or Mario Escobar. A verdict of temporary
+insanity had been returned, and Stella now lay in the village
+churchyard. Harry Luttrell drew a breath of relief and turned to his
+work. For six weeks his days and nights were full; and then came
+twenty-four hours' leave and a swift journey into Sussex. He arrived at
+Rackham Park in the dusk of the evening. By a good chance he found Joan
+with Millie Splay and Sir Chichester alone.
+
+Sir Chichester welcomed him with cordiality.
+
+"My dear fellow, I am delighted to see you. You will stay the night, of
+course."
+
+"No," Harry answered. "I must get back to London this evening."
+
+He took a cup of tea, and Sir Chichester, obtuse to the warning glances
+of his wife, plunged into an account of the events which had followed
+his departure.
+
+"I drew out a statement. Nothing could have been more concise, the
+coroner said. What's the matter, Millie? Why don't you leave me alone?
+Oh--ah--yes," and he hummed a little and spluttered a little, and then
+with an air of the subtlest craft he remarked, "There are those plans
+for the new pig-sties, Millie, which I am anxious to show you."
+
+He was manoeuvred at last from the room. Harry Luttrell and Joan
+Whitworth were left standing opposite to one another in the room.
+
+"Joan," Harry Luttrell said, "in ten days I go back to France."
+
+With a queer little stumble and her hands fluttering out she went
+towards him blinded by a rush of tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+"BUT STILL A RUBY KINDLES IN THE VINE"
+
+
+Between the North and South Downs in the east of Sussex lies a wide
+tract of pleasant homely country which, during certain months of those
+years, was subject to a strange phenomenon. Listen on a still day when
+the clouds were low, or at night when the birds were all asleep, and you
+heard a faint, soft thud, so very faint that it was rather a convulsion
+of the air than an actual sound. Fancy might paint it as the tap of an
+enormous muffled drum beaten at a giant's funeral leagues and leagues
+away. It was not the roll of thunder. There was no crash, however
+distant, along the sky. It was just the one soft impact with a
+suggestion of earth-wide portentous force; and an interval followed; and
+the blurred sound again. The dwellers in those parts, who had sons and
+husbands at the war, made up no fancies to explain it. They listened
+with a sinking of the heart; for what they heard was the roar of the
+British guns at Ypres.
+
+Into this country Martin Hillyard drove a small motor-car on a day of
+October two years afterwards. Until this week he had not set foot in his
+country of the soft grey skies since he had left Rackham Park. He had
+hurried down to Rackham as soon as he had reported to his Chief, but not
+with the high anticipation of old days. In what spirit would he find his
+friends? How would Joan meet him? For sorrow had marked her cross upon
+the door of that house as upon so many others in the land.
+
+Martin had arrived before luncheon.
+
+"Joan is hunting to-day," said Millie, "on the other side of the county.
+She will catch a train back."
+
+"I can fetch her," Hillyard returned. "She is well?"
+
+"Yes. She was overworked and ordered a rest. She has been with us a
+fortnight and is better. She was very grateful for your letters. She
+sent you a telegram because she could not bear to write."
+
+Martin had understood that. He had had little news of her during the two
+years--a few lines about Harry in the crowded obituaries of the
+newspapers after the attack in 1917 on the Messines Ridge, where he met
+his death, and six months afterwards the announcement that a son was
+born.
+
+"Joan's distress was terrible," said Millie. "At first she refused to
+believe that Harry was killed. He was reported as 'missing' for weeks;
+and during those weeks Joan, with a confident face--whatever failings of
+the heart beset her during the night vigils none ever knew--daily sought
+for news of him at the Red Cross office at Devonshire House. There had
+been the usual rumours. One officer in one prison camp had heard of
+Harry Luttrell in another. A sergeant had seen him wounded, not
+mortally. A bullet had struck him in the foot. Joan lived upon these
+rumours. Finally proof came--proof irrefutable.
+
+"Joan collapsed then," said Millie Splay. "We brought her down here and
+put her to bed. She cried--oh, day and night!--she who never cried! We
+were afraid for her--afraid for the child that was coming."
+
+Millie Splay smiled wistfully. "She had just two weeks with Harry. They
+were married before he left for France in 'sixteen, and then had another
+week together in the January of 'seventeen at his house in the Clayford
+country. That was all." Millie Splay was silent for a few minutes. Then
+she resumed cheerfully:
+
+"But she is better now. She will talk of him, indeed, likes at times to
+talk of him; she is comforted by it, and the boy"--Millie's face became
+radiant--"the boy is splendid. You shall see him."
+
+Martin was shown the boy. He seemed to him much like any other boy of
+his age, but such remarkable things in the way of avoirdupois poundage
+and teething, serenity of temper and quickness of apprehension were
+explained to him that he felt that he must be in the presence of a
+prodigy.
+
+"Chichester will want to see you. He is in the library. He is Chairman
+of our Food Committee. You may have seen it in the papers," said Millie
+with a smile. "He is back in the papers again, you know."
+
+"Good. Then he won't object to me smoking a cigarette," said Martin.
+
+He motored over in the afternoon to the house on the other side of
+Sussex where he was to find Joan. He drove her away with him, and as
+they came to the top of a little crest in the flat country, Martin
+stopped the car and looked about him.
+
+"I never cease to be surprised by the beauty of this country when I come
+home to it."
+
+"Yes, but I wish _that_ would stop."
+
+_That_ was the dull and muffled boom of the great guns across the sea.
+They sat and listened to it in silence.
+
+"There it comes again!" said Joan in a quiet voice. "Oh, I do wish it
+would stop! What has happened to me, has happened to enough of us."
+
+As Millie had said, she was glad to talk of Harry Luttrell to his
+friends; and she talked simply and naturally, with a little note of
+wistfulness heard in all the words.
+
+"We were going to have a small house in London and spend our time
+between it and the old Manor at Clayford.... Harry had seen the
+house.... He was always writing that I must watch for it to come into
+the market.... It had a brass front door. There we should be. We could
+go out when we wished, and when we wished we could be snug behind our
+own brass door." Joan laughed simply and lovingly as she spoke. Hillyard
+had never seen her more beautiful than she was at this moment. If grief
+had taken from her just the high brilliancy of her beauty, it had added
+to it a most appealing tenderness.
+
+"After all," she said again, "Harry fulfilled himself. I love to think
+of that. The ambition of his life--young as he was he saw it realised
+and helped--more than all others, except perhaps one old Colonel--to
+realise it. And he left me a son ... to carry on.... There will be no
+stigma on the Clayfords when my boy gets his commission. Won't I tell
+him why? Won't I just tell him!"
+
+And the soft October evening closed in upon them as they drove.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Summons, by A.E.W. Mason
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Summons, by A.E.W. Mason.
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Summons, by A.E.W. Mason
+
+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: The Summons
+
+Author: A.E.W. Mason
+
+Release Date: July 28, 2005 [EBook #16381]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SUMMONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<p><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4"></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>THE</h1>
+<h1>SUMMONS</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>A.E.W. MASON</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>AUTHOR OF "THE FOUR FEATHERS," "THE TURNSTILE," ETC.</div>
+
+
+<div class='center'>NEW YORK</div>
+
+<div class='center'>GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5"></a></p><div class='center'>
+COPYRIGHT, 1920.<br />
+BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY<br />
+<br />
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA<br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+TO THOSE<br />
+WHO SERVED WITH ME ABROAD<br />
+THROUGH THE FOUR YEARS<br />
+</div><p><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6"></a><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td align='center'><span class="smcap">chapter</span></td>
+<td align='right'></td>
+<td align='right'><span class="smcap">page</span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>I</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Olympic Games</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_11"><b>11</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>II</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">An Anthem Intervenes</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_18"><b>18</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>III</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Mario Escobar</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_28"><b>28</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>IV</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Secret of Harry Luttrell</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_35"><b>35</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>V</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Hillyard's Messenger</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_47"><b>47</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>VI</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Honorary Member</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_55"><b>55</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>VII</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">In the Garden of Eden</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_65"><b>65</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>VIII</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Hillyard Hears News of an Old Friend</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_70"><b>70</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>IX</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Enter the Heroine in Anything but White Satin</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_80"><b>80</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>X</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Summons</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_91"><b>91</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XI</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Stella Runs To Earth</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_100"><b>100</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XII</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Barcelona</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_111"><b>111</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XIII</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Old Acquaintance</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_121"><b>121</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XIV</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">"Touching the Matter of Those Ships"</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_135"><b>135</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XV</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">In a Sleeping-Car</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_144"><b>144</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XVI</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Tricks of the Trade</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_155"><b>155</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XVII</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">On a Cape of Spain</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_163"><b>163</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XVIII</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Uses of Science</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_173"><b>173</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XIX</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Under Grey Skies Again</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_183"><b>183</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XX</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Lady Splay's Preoccupations</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_193"><b>193</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XXI</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Magnolia Flowers</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_208"><b>208</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XXII</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Jenny Prask</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_219"><b>219</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XXIII</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Plans for the Evening</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_227"><b>227</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XXIV</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Jenny Prask is Interested</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_235"><b>235</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XXV</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">In a Library</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_238"><b>238</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XXVI</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Fatal Kindness</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_248"><b>248</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XXVII</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Rank and File</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_257"><b>257</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XXVIII</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Long Sleep</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_263"><b>263</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XXIX</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Jenny Puts Up Her Fight</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_273"><b>273</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XXX</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Revolution in Sir Chichester</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_287"><b>287</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XXXI</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Jenny and Millie Splay</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_298"><b>298</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'>XXXII</td>
+<td align='left'><span class="smcap">"But Still a Ruby Kindles in the Vine"</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_306"><b>306</b></a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+<p><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></a><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></a><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE SUMMONS</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Olympic Games</span></h3>
+
+<p>"Lutrell! Lutrell!"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles Hardiman stood in the corridor of his steam yacht and bawled
+the name through a closed door. But no answer was returned from the
+other side of the door. He turned the handle and went in. The night was
+falling, but the cabin windows looked towards the north and the room was
+full of light and of a low and pleasant music. For the tide tinkled and
+chattered against the ship's planks and, in the gardens of the town
+across the harbour, bands were playing. The town was Stockholm in the
+year nineteen hundred and twelve, and on this afternoon, the Olympic
+games, that unfortunate effort to promote goodwill amongst the nations,
+which did little but increase rancours and disclose hatreds, had ended,
+never, it is to be hoped, to be resumed.</p>
+
+<p>"Luttrell," cried Hardiman again, but this time with perplexity in his
+voice. For Luttrell was there in the cabin in front of him, but sunk in
+so deep a contemplation of memories and prospects that the cabin might
+just as well have been empty. Sir Charles Hardiman touched him on the
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Wake up, old man!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I am doing&mdash;waking up," said Luttrell, turning without any
+start. He was seated in front of the writing-desk, a young man, as the
+world went before the war, a few months short of twenty-eight.</p>
+
+<p>"The launch is waiting and everybody's on deck," con<a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a>tinued Hardiman.
+"We shall lose our table at Hasselbacken if we don't get off."</p>
+
+<p>Then he caught sight of a telegram lying upon the writing-table.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" and the impatience died out of his voice. "Is anything the
+matter?"</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell pushed the telegram towards his host.</p>
+
+<p>"Read it! I have got to make up my mind&mdash;and now&mdash;before we start."</p>
+
+<p>Hardiman read the telegram. It was addressed to Captain Harry Luttrell,
+Yacht <i>The Dragonfly</i>, Stockholm, and it was sent from Cairo by the
+Adjutant-General of the Egyptian Army.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>"I can make room for you, but you must apply immediately to
+be transferred."</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Hardiman sat down in a chair by the side of the table against the wall,
+with his eyes on Luttrell's face. He was a big, softish, overfed man of
+forty-five, and the moment he began to relax from the upright position,
+his body went with a run; he collapsed rather than sat. The little veins
+were beginning to show like tiny scarlet threads across his nose and on
+the fullness of his cheeks; his face was the colour of wine; and the
+pupils of his pale eyes were ringed with so pronounced an <i>arcus
+senilis</i> that they commanded the attention like a disfigurement. But the
+eyes were shrewd and kindly enough as they dwelt upon the troubled face
+of his guest.</p>
+
+<p>"You have not answered this?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No. But I must send an answer to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"You are in doubt?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I was quite sure when I cabled to Cairo on the second day of the
+games. I was quite sure, whilst I waited for the reply. Now that the
+reply has come&mdash;I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me hear," said the older man. "The launch must wait, the table at
+the Hasselbacken restaurant must be assigned, if need be, to other
+customers." Hardiman had not swamped all his kindliness in good living.
+Luttrell was face <a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a>to face with one of the few grave decisions which
+each man has in the course of his life to make; and Hardiman understood
+his need better than he understood it himself. His need was to formulate
+aloud the case for and against, to another person, not so much that he
+might receive advice as, that he might see for himself with truer eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"The one side is clear enough," said Luttrell with a trace of
+bitterness. "There was a Major I once heard of at Dover. He trained his
+company in night-marches by daylight. The men held a rope to guide them
+and were ordered to shut their eyes. The Major, you see, hated stirring
+out at night. He liked his bridge and his bottle of port. Well, give me
+another year and that's the kind of soldier I shall become&mdash;the worst
+kind&mdash;the slovenly soldier. I mean slovenly in mind, in intention. Even
+now I come, already bored, to the barrack square and watch the time to
+see if I can't catch an earlier train from Gravesend to London."</p>
+
+<p>"And when you do?" asked Hardiman.</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"When I do," he agreed, "I get no thrill out of my escape, I assure you.
+I hate myself a little more&mdash;that's all."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Hardiman. He was too wise a man to ask questions. He just
+sat and waited, inviting Luttrell to spread out his troubles by his very
+quietude.</p>
+
+<p>"Then there are these games," Luttrell cried in a swift exasperation,
+"&mdash;these damned games! From the first day when the Finns marched out
+with their national flag and the Russians threatened to withdraw if they
+did it again&mdash;&mdash;" he broke off suddenly. "Of course you know soldiers
+have believed that trouble's coming. I used to doubt, but by God I am
+sure of it now. Just a froth of fine words at the opening and
+afterwards&mdash;honest rivalry and let the best man win? Not a bit of it!
+Team-running&mdash;a vile business&mdash;the nations parked together in different
+sections of the Stadium like enemies&mdash;and ill-will running here and
+there like an infection! Oh, there's trouble coming, and if I don't go I
+shan't be fit for it. There, that's the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"The whole truth and nothing but the truth?" Hardiman asked with a
+smile. He leaned across the table and drew to<a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a>wards him a case of
+telegraph forms. But whilst he was drawing them towards him, Luttrell
+spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing but the truth&mdash;<i>yes</i>," he said. He was speaking shyly,
+uncomfortably, and he stopped abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"The whole truth&mdash;no." Hardiman added slowly, and gently. He wanted the
+complete story from preface to conclusion, but he was not to get it. He
+received no answer of any kind for a considerable number of moments and
+Luttrell only broke the silence in the end, to declare definitely,</p>
+
+<p>"That, at all events, is all I have to say."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles nodded and drew the case of forms close to him. There was
+something more then. There always is something more, which isn't told,
+he reflected, and the worst of it is, the something more which isn't
+told is always the real reason. Men go to the confessional with a
+reservation; the secret chamber where they keep their sacred vessels,
+their real truths and inspirations, as also their most scarlet
+sins&mdash;that shall be opened to no one after early youth is past unless it
+be&mdash;rarely&mdash;to one woman. There was another reason at work in Harry
+Luttrell, but Sir Charles Hardiman was never to know it. With a shrug of
+his shoulders he took a pencil from his pocket, filled up one of the
+forms and handed it to Luttrell.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I should reply."</p>
+
+<p>He had written:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>I am travelling to London to-morrow to apply for
+transfer.</i>&mdash;<span class="smcap">Luttrell</span>."</p></div>
+
+<p>Luttrell read the telegram with surprise. It was not the answer which he
+had expected from the victim of the flesh-pots in front of him.</p>
+
+<p>"You advise that?" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. My dear Luttrell, as you know, you are a guest very welcome to me.
+But you don't belong. We&mdash;Maud Carstairs, Tony Marsh and the rest of
+us&mdash;even Mario Escobar&mdash;we are the Come-to-nothings. We are the people
+of the stage door, we grow fat in restaurants. From three to seven, you
+may find us in the card-rooms of our clubs&mdash;we are jolly fine
+<a name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></a>fellows&mdash;and no good. You don't belong, and should get out while you
+can."</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell moved uncomfortably in his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all very well. But there's another side to the question," he
+said, and from the deck above a woman's voice called clearly down the
+stairway.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you two coming?"</p>
+
+<p>Both men looked towards the door.</p>
+
+<p>"That side," said Hardiman.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Hardiman nodded his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Stella Croyle doesn't belong either," he said. "But she kicked over the
+traces. She flung out of the rank and file. Oh, I know Croyle was a
+selfish, dull beast and her footprints in her flight from him were
+littered with excuses. I am not considering the injustice of the world.
+I am looking at the cruel facts, right in the face of them, as you have
+got to do, my young friend. Here Stella Croyle is&mdash;with us&mdash;and she
+can't get away. You can."</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell was not satisfied. His grey eyes and thin, clean features were
+troubled like those of a man in physical pain.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know the strange, queer tie between Stella Croyle and me," he
+said. "And I can't tell you it."</p>
+
+<p>Hardiman grew anxious. Luttrell had the look of a man overtrained, and
+it was worry which had overtrained him. His face was a trifle too
+delicate, perhaps, to go with those remorseless sharp decisions which
+must be made by the men who win careers.</p>
+
+<p>"I know that you can't go through the world without hurting people,"
+cried Hardiman. "Neither you nor any one else, except the limpets. And
+you won't escape hurting Stella Croyle, by abandoning your chances. Your
+love-affair will end&mdash;all of that kind do. And yours will end in a
+bitter, irretrievable quarrel after you have ruined yourself, and
+because you have ruined yourself. You are already on the rack&mdash;make no
+doubt about it. Oh, I have seen you twitch and jump with irritation&mdash;how
+many times on this yacht!&mdash;for trumpery, little, unimportant things she
+has said and done, <a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a>which you would never have noticed six months ago;
+or only noticed to smile at with a pleased indulgence."</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell's face coloured. "Why, that's true enough," he said. He was
+remembering the afternoon a week ago, when the yacht steamed between the
+green islands with their bathing stations and ch&acirc;lets, over a tranquil,
+sunlit sea of the deepest blue. Rounding a wooded corner towards sunset
+she came suddenly upon the bridges and the palace and the gardens of
+Stockholm. The women of the party were in the saloon. A rush was made
+towards it. They were summoned to this first wonderful view of the city
+of beauty. Would they come? No! Stella Croyle was in the middle of a
+game of Russian patience. She could play that game any day, every day,
+all day. This exquisite vision was vouchsafed to her but the once, and
+she had neglected it with the others. She had not troubled, even to move
+so far as the saloon door. For she had not finished her game.</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell recalled his feeling of scorn; the scorn had grown into
+indignation; in the end he had made a grievance of her indifference to
+this first view of the city of Stockholm; a foolish, exasperating
+grievance, which would rankle, which would not be buried, which sprang
+to fresh life at each fresh sight of her. Yes, of a certainty, sooner or
+later Stella Croyle and he would quarrel, so bitterly that all the
+king's horses and all the king's men could never bring them again
+together; and over some utterly unimportant matter like the first view
+of Stockholm.</p>
+
+<p>"Youth has many privileges over age," continued Hardiman, "but none
+greater than the vision, the half-interpreted recurring vision of wider
+spaces and greater things, towards which you sail on the wind of a great
+emotion. Sooner or later, a man loses that vision and then only knows
+his loss. Stay here, and you'll lose it before your time."</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell looked curiously at his companion, wondering what manner of man
+he had been in his twenties. Hardiman answered the look with a laugh.
+"Oh, I, too, had my ambitions once."</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell folded the cablegram which Hardiman had written out and placed
+it in the breast pocket of his dinner-jacket.<a name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I will talk to Stella to-night at dinner. Then, if I decide to send it,
+I can send it from the hotel over there at the landing-steps before we
+return to the yacht."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles Hardiman rose cumbrously with a shrug of his shoulders. He
+had done his best, but since Luttrell would talk the question over with
+Stella Croyle, shoulder to shoulder with her amongst the lights and
+music, the perfume of her hair in his nostrils and the pleading of her
+eyes within his sight&mdash;he, Charles Hardiman, might as well have held his
+tongue.</p>
+
+<p>So very likely it would have been. But when great matters are ripe for
+decisions one way or the other, the little accident as often as not
+decides. There was a hurrying of light feet in the corridor outside, a
+swift, peremptory knocking upon the door. The same woman's voice called
+in rather a shrill note through the panels! "Harry! Why don't you come?
+We are waiting for you."</p>
+
+<p>And in the sound of the voice there was not merely impatience, but a
+note of ownership&mdash;very clear and definite; and hearing it Luttrell
+hardened. He stood up straight. He had the aspect of a man in revolt.<a name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">An Anthem Intervenes</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Upon the entrance of Hardiman's party a wrinkle was smoothed away from
+the forehead of a <i>ma&icirc;tre d'h&ocirc;tel</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"So! You have come!" he cried. "I began to despair."</p>
+
+<p>"You have kept my table?" Sir Charles insisted.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but with what an effort of diplomacy!"; and the <i>ma&icirc;tre d'h&ocirc;tel</i>
+led his guests to the very edge of the great balcony. Here the table was
+set endwise to the balustrade, commanding the crowded visitors, yet
+taking the coolness of the night. Hardiman was contented with his choice
+of its position. But when he saw his guests reading the cards which
+assigned them their places, he was not so contented with the order of
+their seating.</p>
+
+<p>"If I had known an hour before!" he said to himself, and the astounding
+idea crept into his mind that perhaps it was, after all, a waste to
+spend so much time on the disposition of a dinner-table and the ordering
+of food.</p>
+
+<p>However, the harm was done now. There was Luttrell already seated at the
+end against the balustrade. He had the noise of a Babel of tongues and
+the glitter of a thousand lights upon his left hand; upon his right, the
+stars burning bright in a cool gloom of deepest purple, and far below
+the riding-lamps of the yachts tossing on the water like yellow flowers
+in a garden; whilst next to him, midway between the fragrant darkness
+and the hard glitter, revealing, as she always did, a kinship with each
+of them, sat Stella Croyle.</p>
+
+<p>"I should have separated them," Hardiman reflected uneasily as he raised
+and drank his cocktail. "But how the deuce could I without making
+everybody stare? This party wasn't got up to separate people. All the
+same&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The hushed wonder of a summer night. The gaiety of a bright thronged
+restaurant! In either setting Stella Croyle <a name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></a>was a formidable
+antagonist. But combine the settings and she took to herself, at once by
+nature, the seduction of both!</p>
+
+<p>"Poor devil, he won't have a dog's chance!" the baronet concluded; and
+he watched approvingly what appeared to him to be Luttrell's endeavour
+to avoid joining battle on this unfavourable field. He could only trust
+feebly in that and in the strength of the "something else," the secret
+reason he was never to know.</p>
+
+<p>It was about half-way through dinner when Stella Croyle, who had
+directed many a furtive, anxious glance to the averted face of her
+companion, attacked directly.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter with you to-night?" she asked, interrupting him in
+the midst of a rattle of futilities. "Why should you recite to me from
+the guide-book about the University of Upsala?"</p>
+
+<p>"It appears to be most interesting, and quaint," replied Luttrell
+hastily.</p>
+
+<p>"Then we might hire a motor-car and run out there to luncheon.
+To-morrow! Just you and I."</p>
+
+<p>"No." Harry Luttrell exclaimed suddenly and Stella Croyle drew back. Her
+face clouded. She had won the first round, but victory brought her no
+ease. She knew now from the explosion of his "No" and the swift alarm
+upon his face that something threatened her.</p>
+
+<p>"You must tell me what has happened," she cried. "You must! Oh, you turn
+away from me!"</p>
+
+<p>From the dark steep garden at their feet rose a clamour of cheers&mdash;to
+Luttrell an intervention of Providence.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Here and there a man or a woman rose at the dinner tables and looked
+down. Upwards along a glimmering riband of path, a group of students
+bore one of their number shoulder-high. Luttrell leaned over the
+balustrade. The group below halted; speeches were made; cheers broke out
+anew.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the Swedish javelin-thrower. He won the championship of the world
+this afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he?" asked Stella Croyle in a soft voice at his side. "Does he
+throw javelins as well as you? You wound me every time."<a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a></p>
+
+<p>Luttrell raised his head. It was not fear of defeat which had kept his
+looks averted from Stella's dark and starry eyes. No thought of lists
+set and a contest to be fought out had even entered his head. But he did
+fear to see those eyes glisten with tears&mdash;for she so seldom shed them!
+And even more than the evidence of her pain he feared the dreadful
+submission with which women in the end receive the stroke of fortune. He
+had to meet her gaze now, however.</p>
+
+<p>"I put off telling you," he began lamely.</p>
+
+<p>"So that this evening of mine with you might not be spoilt," she
+returned. "But, my dear, my evening was already spoilt before the launch
+left the yacht gangway. I am not so blind."</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle was at this date twenty-six years old; and it was
+difficult to picture her any older. Partly because of her vivid
+colouring and because she was abrim with life; partly because in her
+straightness of limb and the clear treble of her voice, she was boyish.
+"What a pretty boy she would make!" was the first thought until you
+noticed the slim delicacy of her hands and feet, the burnish of gold on
+the dark wealth of her hair, the fine chiselling of brow and nose and
+chin. Then it was seen that she was all woman. She was tall and yet
+never looked tall. It seemed that you could pick her up with a finger,
+but try and she warned you of the weakness of your arm. She was a
+baffling person. She ran and walked with the joyous insolence of
+eighteen, yet at any moment some veil might be rolled up in her eyes and
+face to show you for one tragic instant a Lady of Sorrows.</p>
+
+<p>She leaned towards Luttrell, and as Hardiman had foreseen the perfume of
+her hair stormed his senses.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me!" she breathed, and Luttrell, with his arguments and reasons
+cut and dried and conned over pat for delivery, began nevertheless to
+babble. There were the Olympic Games. She herself must have seen how
+they were fatal to their own purpose. Troubles were coming&mdash;battles
+behind the troubles. All soldiers knew! They knew this too&mdash;the phrase
+of a young Lieutenant-Colonel lecturing at the Staff College.</p>
+
+<p>"Battles are not won either by sheer force or pure right, but by the one
+or the other of those two Powers which has Discipline as its Chief of
+Staff."<a name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></a></p>
+
+<p>He was implying neither very tactfully nor clearly that he was on the
+way to dwindling into an undisciplined soldier. But it did not matter in
+the least. For Stella Croyle was not listening. All this was totally
+unimportant. Men always went about and about when they had difficult
+things to say to women. Her eyes never left his face and she would know
+surely enough when those words were rising to his lips which it was
+necessary that she should mark and understand. Meanwhile her
+perplexities and fears grew.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it can't be <i>that</i>," she assured herself again and again, but
+with a dreadful catch at her heart. "Oh no, it can't be <i>that</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"That," was the separation which some day or another&mdash;after a long and
+wondrous period&mdash;both were agreed, must come. But, consoling herself
+with the thought that she would be prepared, she had always set the day
+on so distant an horizon that it had no terrors for her. Now it suddenly
+dismayed her, a terror close at hand. Here on this crowded balcony
+joyous with lights and gay voices and invaded by all the subtle
+invitations of a summer night above the water! Oh no, it was not
+possible!</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell put his hand to his breast pocket and Stella watched and
+listened now with all her soul. More than once during dinner she had
+seen him touch that pocket in an abstraction. He drew from it two
+papers, one the cablegram which he had received from Cairo, the other
+Hardiman's reply. He handed her the first of the two.</p>
+
+<p>"This reached me this morning."</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle studied the paper with her heart in her mouth. But the
+letters would not be still.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what does it mean?" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"It offers me service abroad."</p>
+
+<p>Stella's face flushed and turned white. She bent her head over the
+cablegram.</p>
+
+<p>"At Cairo," she said, with a little gasp of relief. After all Cairo was
+not so far. A week, and one was at Cairo.</p>
+
+<p>"Further south, in the Sudan&mdash;Heaven knows where!"</p>
+
+<p>"Too far then?" she suggested. "Too far."</p>
+
+<p>"For you? Yes! Too far," Luttrell replied.<a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a></p>
+
+<p>Stella lifted a tragic face towards him; and though he winced he met her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"But you are not going! You can't go!"</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell handed to her the second paper.</p>
+
+<p>"You never wrote this," she said very quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet it is what I would have written."</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle shot one swift glance at Sir Charles Hardiman. She had
+recognised his handwriting. Hardiman was in Luttrell's cabin while the
+rest of the party waited on the deck and the launch throbbed at the
+gangway. If a woman's glance had power, he would have been stricken that
+instant. But she wasted no more than a glance upon the worldly-wiseman
+at the head of their table. She turned again to the first telegram.</p>
+
+<p>"This is an answer, this cablegram from Cairo?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"To a cable of yours?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sent three days ago."</p>
+
+<p>The answers she received were clear, unhesitating. It was a voice from a
+rock speaking! So utterly mistaken was she; and so completely Luttrell
+bent every nerve to the service of shortening the hour of misery. The
+appalling moment was then actually upon her. She had foreseen it&mdash;so she
+thought. But it caught her nevertheless unprepared as death catches a
+sinner on his bed.</p>
+
+<p>She stared at the telegrams&mdash;not reading them. His arguments and
+prefaces&mdash;the Olympic Games, Discipline and the rest of it&mdash;what she had
+caught of them, she blew away as so much froth. She dived to the
+personal reason.</p>
+
+<p>"You are tired of me."</p>
+
+<p>"No," Luttrell answered hotly. "That's not true&mdash;not even a half-truth.
+If I were tired of you, it would all be so easy, so brutally easy."</p>
+
+<p>"But you are!" Her voice rose shrill in its violence. "You know you are
+but you are too much of a coward to say so&mdash;oh, like all men!" and as
+Luttrell turned to her a face startled by her outcry and uttered a
+remonstrant "Hush!", she continued bitterly, "What do I care if they all
+hear? I am impossible! You know that, don't you? I am quite impossible!<a name="Page_23" id="Page_23"></a>
+I have gone my own way. I am one of the people you hate&mdash;one of the
+Undisciplined."</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle hardly knew in her passion what she was saying, and
+Luttrell could only wait in silence for the storm to pass. It passed
+with a quickness which caught him at loss; so quickly she swept from
+mood to mood.</p>
+
+<p>He heard her voice at his ear, remorseful and most appealing. "Oh, Wub,
+what have I done that you should treat me so?"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles Hardiman, watchful of the duel, guessed from the movement of
+her lips what she was saying.</p>
+
+<p>"These nicknames are the very devil," he exclaimed, apparently about
+nothing, to his startled neighbour. "The first thing a woman does when
+she's fond of a man is to give him some ridiculous name, which doesn't
+belong to him. She worries her wits trying this one and that one, as a
+tailor tries on you a suit of clothes, and when she has got your fit,
+she uses it&mdash;publicly. So others use it too and so it no longer contents
+her. Then she invents a variation, a nickname within a nickname, and
+that she keeps to herself, for her own private use. That's the nickname
+I am referring to, my dear, when I say it's the very devil."</p>
+
+<p>The lady to whom he spoke smiled vaguely and surmised that he might be
+very right. For herself, she said, she had invented no nicknames; which
+was to assert that she had never been in love. For the practice seems
+invariable, and probably Dido in times long since gone by had one for
+&AElig;neas, and Virgil knew all about it. But since she was a woman, it would
+be a name at once so absurd and so intimate that it would never have
+gone with the dignified rhythm of the hexameter. "Wobbles" had been the
+first name which Stella Croyle had invented for Harry Luttrell, though
+by what devious process she had lighted upon it, psychology could not
+have discovered. "Wub" was the nickname within the nickname, the
+cherished sign that the two of them lived apart in a little close-hedged
+garden of their own. Luttrell's eyes were upon her as she spoke it. And
+she spoke it with a curious little wistful pursing of soft lips so that
+it came to him winged with the memory of all her kisses.<a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Wub, must you leave me?" she pleaded in a breaking whisper. "What
+will be left to me if you do?"</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell dropped his forehead in his hands. All the character which he
+had in those untried days bade him harden himself against the appeal.
+But his resolution was melting like metal in a furnace. He tried to
+realise the truth which Hardiman had uttered three or four hours before.
+There would be sooner or later a quarrel, a humiliating, hateful quarrel
+over some miserable trifle which neither Stella nor he would ever
+afterwards forgive. But her voice was breaking with a sob in a whisper
+at his ear and how could he look forward so far?</p>
+
+<p>"Stella!"</p>
+
+<p>He turned impulsively towards her.</p>
+
+<p>"The game's up," reflected Sir Charles Hardiman at the end of the table.
+"Calypso wins&mdash;no, by God!"</p>
+
+<p>For before Luttrell could speak another word, the music crashed and all
+that assemblage was on its feet. The orchestra was playing the Swedish
+National Anthem; and upon that, one after the other, followed the hymns
+of the peoples who had taken part in the Games. In turn the
+representatives of each people stood and resumed their seat, the music
+underlining their individuality and parking them in sections, even as
+rivalry had parked them in the Stadium. The majestic anthem of Russia,
+the p&aelig;an of the Marseillaise, the livelier march of Italy, the song of
+Germany, the Star-Spangled Banner; and long before the band struck into
+the solemn rhythm of "God save the King," Stella Croyle at all events
+knew that Calypso had lost. For she saw a flame illumine Luttrell's face
+and transfigure him. He had slipped out of her reach. The doubts and
+perplexities which had so troubled him during the last months were now
+resolved. As he listened to the Hymns, he saw as in a vision the nations
+advancing abreast over a vast plain like battalions in line with their
+intervals for man&oelig;uvring spaced out between them. In front of each
+nation rolled a grey vapour, which gradually took shape before
+Luttrell's eyes; and there was made visible to him a shadowy legion of
+men marching in the van, the men who had left ease and women and all the
+grace of life behind them and had <a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a>gone out to die in the harness of
+service&mdash;one in this, one in that corner of the untravelled world, and
+now all reunited in a strong fellowship. The vision remained with him
+after the last strains of music had died away, and faded slowly. He
+waked to the lights and clamour of the restaurant and turned to Stella
+Croyle.</p>
+
+<p>"Stella," he began, and&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I know," she interrupted in a small voice. She was sitting with her
+head downcast and her hands clenched upon her lap so tightly that the
+skin was white about the points where the tips of her fingers pressed.
+"Perhaps I shan't suffer so very much."</p>
+
+<p>She was careful not to lift her head, and when a few moments later their
+host gave the signal to move, she rose quickly and turned her back on
+Luttrell.</p>
+
+<p>The party motored back through the Dyurgarden, past the glimmering tents
+where the Boy-Scouts were encamped to the great hotel by the
+landing-stage. There a wait of a few minutes took place whilst Hardiman
+settled for the cars, and during that wait Luttrell disappeared. He
+rejoined his friends at the harbour steps and when the launch put off
+towards the <i>Dragonfly</i>, he found himself side by side with Stella
+Croyle. In the darkness she relaxed her guard. Luttrell saw the great
+tears glisten on her dark eyelashes and fall down her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry, Stella," he whispered, dropping his hand on hers, and she
+clutched it and let it go.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I shan't suffer so very much," she repeated and the next moment
+the gangway light shone down upon their faces. Stella dropped her head
+and furtively dried her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to go up last," she said, "and just behind you, so that no one
+shall see what a little fool I am making of myself."</p>
+
+<p>But by some subtle understanding already it was felt amongst that group
+of people, quick to perceive troubles of the emotions, that something
+was amiss between the pair. They were left alone upon the deck. Stella
+by chance looking southwards to the starlit gloom, Luttrell to the
+north, where still the daylight played in blue and palest green and the
+delicate changing fires of the opal.</p>
+
+<p>"What will you do, Stella?" Luttrell asked gently.<a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I think I will go and live in the country," she replied.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be lonely, child."</p>
+
+<p>"There will be ghosts, my dear, to keep me company," she answered with a
+wan smile. "People like me always have to be a good deal alone, anyway.
+I shall be, of course, lonelier, now that I have no one to play with,"
+and the smile vanished from her lips. She flung up her face towards the
+skies, letting her grief have its way upon that empty deck.</p>
+
+<p>"So we shall never be together&mdash;just you and I&mdash;alone again," she said,
+forcing herself to realise that unintelligible thing. Her thoughts ran
+back over the year&mdash;the year of their alliance&mdash;and she saw all of its
+events flickering vividly before her, as they say drowning people do.
+"Oh, Wub, what a cruel mistake you made when you went out of your way to
+be kind," she cried, with the tears streaming down her face; and
+Luttrell winced.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's true," he admitted remorsefully. "I never dreamed what
+would come of it."</p>
+
+<p>"You should have left me alone."</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the flickering pictures of the year the first was the clearest.
+A great railway station in the West of England, a train drawn up at the
+departure platform, herself with a veil drawn close over her face, half
+running, half walking in a pitiful anguish towards the train; and then a
+man at her elbow. Harry Luttrell.</p>
+
+<p>"I have reserved a compartment. I suspected that things were not going
+to turn out well. I thought the long journey to London alone would be
+terrible. If things had turned out right, you would not have seen me."</p>
+
+<p>She had let him place her in a carriage, look after her wants as if she
+had been a child, hold her in his arms, tend her with the magnificent
+sympathy of his silence. That had been the real beginning. Stella had
+known him as the merest of friends before. She had met him here and
+there at a supper party, at a dancing club, at some Bohemian country
+house; and then suddenly he had guessed what others had not, and
+foolishly had gone out of his way to be kind.</p>
+
+<p>"She would have died if I hadn't travelled with her," Luttrell argued
+silently. "She would have thrown herself out of <a name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></a>the carriage, or when
+she reached home she would have&mdash;&mdash;" and his argument stopped, and he
+glanced at her uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>Undisciplined, was the epithet she had used of herself. You never knew
+what crazy thing she might do. There was daintiness but no order in her
+life; the only law she knew was given to her by a fastidious taste.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, Wub, I have always known that you never cared for me as I do
+for you. So it was bound to end some time." She caught his hand to her
+heart for a second, and then, dropping it, ran from his side.<a name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Mario Escobar</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Late in the autumn of the following year a new play, written by Martin
+Hillyard and named "The Dark Tower," was produced at the Rubicon Theatre
+in Panton Street, London. It was Hillyard's second play. His first,
+produced in April of the same year, had just managed to limp into July;
+and that small world which concerns itself with the individualities of
+playwrights was speculating with its usual divergencies upon Hillyard's
+future development.</p>
+
+<p>"The Dark Tower" was a play of modern days, built upon the ancient
+passions. The first act was played to a hushed house, and while the
+applause which greeted the fall of the curtain was still rattling about
+the walls of the theatre, Sir Charles Hardiman hoisted himself heavily
+out of his stall and made his way to a box on the first tier, which he
+entered without knocking.</p>
+
+<p>There was but one person in the box, a young man hidden behind a side
+curtain. Hardiman let himself collapse into a chair by the side of the
+young man.</p>
+
+<p>"Seems all right," he said. "You have a story to tell. It's clear in
+every word, too, that you know where you are going. That makes people
+comfortable and inclined to go along with you."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard turned with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"We haven't come to the water jump yet," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Hardiman remained in the box during the second act. He watched the stage
+for a while, took note of the laughter which welcomed this or that line,
+and of the silence which suddenly enclosed this or that scene from the
+rest of the play; and finally, with a certain surprise, and a certain
+amusement he fixed his attention upon the play's author. The act ended
+in laughter and Hillyard leaned back, and himself laughed, with<a name="Page_29" id="Page_29"></a>out pose
+or affectation, as heartily as any one in the theatre.</p>
+
+<p>"You beat me altogether, my young friend," said Hardiman. "You ought to
+be walking up and down the pavement outside in the classical state of
+agitation. But you appear to be enjoying the play, as if you never had
+seen it before."</p>
+
+<p>"And I haven't," Hillyard returned. "This isn't quite the play which we
+have been learning and rehearsing during the last month. Here's the
+audience at work, adding a point there, discovering an
+interpretation&mdash;yes, actually an interpretation&mdash;there, bringing into
+importance one scene, slipping over the next which we thought more
+important&mdash;altering it, in fact. Of course," and he returned to his
+earlier metaphor, "I know the big fences over which we may come a
+cropper. I can see them ahead before we come up to them and know the
+danger. We are over two of them, by the way. But on the whole I am more
+interested than nervous. It's the first time I have ever been to a first
+night, you see."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, upon my word," cried Hardiman, "you are the coolest hand at it I
+ever saw." But he could have taken back his words the next moment.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of Hillyard's aloof and disinterested air, the night had
+brought its excitement and in a strength of which he himself was
+unaware. It lifted now the veils behind which a man will hide his secret
+thoughts! He turned swiftly to Hardiman with a boyish light upon his
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am not in doubt of what to-night means to me! Not for a moment.
+If it's failure, it means that I begin again to-morrow on something
+else; and again after that, and again after that, until success does
+come. Playwriting is my profession, and failures are a necessary part of
+it&mdash;just as much a part as the successes. But even if the great success
+were to come now, it wouldn't mean quite so much to me perhaps as it
+might to other people." He paused, and a smile broke upon his face. "I
+live expecting a messenger. There! That's my secret delivered over to
+you under the excitement of a first night."</p>
+
+<p>And as he spoke the colour mounted into his face. He turned away in
+confusion. His play was nearer at his heart <a name="Page_30" id="Page_30"></a>than he had thought; the
+enthusiasm which seemed to be greeting it had stirred him unwisely.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me," he said hurriedly, "who all these people in the stalls are."</p>
+
+<p>He peeped down between the edge of the curtain and the side wall of the
+box whilst Hardiman stood up behind him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will be your man from Cook's," said Hardiman genially.</p>
+
+<p>His heart warmed to the young man both on account of his outburst and of
+the shame which had followed upon the heels of it. Few beliefs had
+survived in Hardiman after forty years of wandering up and down the
+flowery places of the earth; but one&mdash;he had lectured Harry Luttrell
+upon it on a night at Stockholm&mdash;continually gained strength in him.
+Youth must beget visions and man must preserve them if great work were
+to be done; and so easily the visions lost their splendour and their
+inspiration. Of all the ways of tarnishing the vision, perhaps talk was
+the most murderous. Hillyard possessed them. Hillyard was ashamed that
+he had spoken of them. Therefore he had some chance of retaining them.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will show you the celebrities." He pointed out the leading
+critics and the blue stockings of the day. His eyes roamed over the
+stalls. "Do you see the man with the broad face and the short whiskers
+in the fourth row? The man who looks just a little too like a country
+gentleman to be one? That is Sir Chichester Splay. He made a fortune in
+a murky town of Lancashire, and, thirsting for colour, came up to London
+determined to back a musical comedy. That is the way the craving for
+colour takes them in the North. His wish was gratified. He backed 'The
+Patchouli Girl,' and in that shining garden he got stung. He is now what
+they call an amateur. No first night is complete without him. He is the
+half-guinea Mec&aelig;nas of our days."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard looked down at Sir Chichester Splay and smiled at his
+companion's description.</p>
+
+<p>"You will meet him to-night at supper, and if your play is a
+success&mdash;not otherwise&mdash;you will stay with him in Sussex."<a name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></a></p>
+
+<p>"No!" cried Hillyard; but Sir Charles was relentless in his insistence.</p>
+
+<p>"You will. His wife will see to that. Who the pretty girl beside him is
+I do not know. But the more or less young man on the other side of her,
+talking to her with an air of intimacy a little excessive in a public
+place, is Mario Escobar. He is a Spaniard, and has the skin-deep
+politeness of his race. He is engaged in some sort of business,
+frequents some sort of society into which he is invited by the women,
+and he is not very popular amongst men. He belongs, however, to some
+sort of club. That is all I know about him. One would think he had
+guessed we were speaking of him," Hardiman added.</p>
+
+<p>For at that moment Mario Escobar raised his dark, sleek head, and his
+big, soft eyes&mdash;the eyes of a beautiful woman&mdash;looked upwards to the
+box. It seemed to Hillyard for a moment that they actually exchanged a
+glance, though he himself was out of sight behind the curtain, so direct
+was Escobar's gaze. It was, however, merely the emptiness of the box
+which had drawn the Spaniard's attention. He was neatly groomed, of a
+slight figure, tall, and with his eyes, his thin olive face, his small
+black moustache and clean-cut jaw he made without doubt an effective and
+arresting figure.</p>
+
+<p>"Now turn your head," said Hardiman, "the other way, and notice the big,
+fair man in the back row of the stalls. He is a rival manager, and he is
+explaining in a voice loud enough to be heard by the first rows of the
+pit, the precise age of your leading lady. Now look down! There is a
+young girl flitting about the stalls. She is an actress, not very
+successful. But to-night she is as busy as a bee. She is crabbing your
+play. Yesterday her opinion on the subject was of no value, and it will
+be again of no value to-morrow. But as one of the limited audience on a
+first night, she can do just a tiny bit of harm. But don't hold it
+against her, Hillyard! She has no feeling against you. This is her
+little moment of importance."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles rattled on through the interval&mdash;all good nature with just a
+slice of lemon&mdash;and it had happened that he had pointed out one who was
+to be the instrument of great trouble <a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a>for Hillyard and a few others,
+with whom this story is concerned.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard interrupted Hardiman.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is the girl at the end of the sixth row, who seems to have stepped
+down from a china group on a mantelpiece?"</p>
+
+<p>"That one?" said Hardiman, and all the raillery faded from his face.
+"That is Mrs. Croyle. You will meet her to-night at my supper party." He
+hesitated as to what further he should say. "You might do worse than be
+a friend to her. She is not, I am afraid, very happy."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard was surprised at the sudden gentleness of his companion's
+voice, and looked quickly towards him. Hardiman answered the look as he
+got heavily up from his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"I sometimes fear that I have some responsibility for her unhappiness.
+But there are things one cannot help."</p>
+
+<p>The light in the auditorium went down while Hardiman was leaving the
+box, and the curtain rose on the third act of "The Dark Tower." Of that
+play, however, you may read in the files of the various newspapers, if
+you will. This story is concerned with Martin Hillyard, not his work. It
+is sufficient to echo the words of Sir Chichester Splay when Hillyard
+was introduced to him an hour and a half later in the private
+supper-room at the Semiramis Hotel.</p>
+
+<p>"A good play, Mr. Hillyard. Not a great play, of course, but quite a
+good play," said Sir Chichester with just the necessary patronage to
+tickle Hillyard to an appreciation of Hardiman's phrases&mdash;a ten and
+six-penny Mec&aelig;nas.</p>
+
+<p>"I am grateful that it has earned your good opinion," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not at all!" cried Sir Chichester, and catching a lady who passed
+by the arm. "Stella, Mr. Hillyard should know you. This is Mrs. Croyle.
+I hope you will meet him some day at Rackham Park."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester trotted away to greet the manager of the <i>Daily Harpoon</i>,
+who was at that moment shaking hands with Hardiman.</p>
+
+<p>"I congratulate you," said Stella Croyle, as she gave him her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you. So you know Sir Chichester well?"<a name="Page_33" id="Page_33"></a></p>
+
+<p>"His wife has been a friend of mine for a long time." Her eyes twinkled.
+"I wonder you have not been seen at his house."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am only just hatched out," said Hillyard. They both laughed. "I
+hardly know a soul here except my leading lady and our host."</p>
+
+<p>They were summoned to the supper table. Hillyard found himself with the
+leading lady on one side of him and Stella Croyle opposite, and Mario
+Escobar a couple of seats away. Supper was half through when Escobar
+leaned suddenly forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Hillyard, I have seen you before, somewhere and not in England."</p>
+
+<p>"That is possible."</p>
+
+<p>"In Spain?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>A certain curiosity in Escobar's voice, a certain reticence in
+Hillyard's, arrested the attention of those about.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see!" continued Escobar. "It was in the Opera House at Barcelona
+on the first performance of Manon Lescaut."</p>
+
+<p>"No," replied Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"Then&mdash;I know&mdash;it was under the palm-trees in front of the sea at
+Alicante one night."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"That may well have been. I was up and down the south coast of Spain for
+three years. Eighteen months of it were spent at Alicante."</p>
+
+<p>He turned to his neighbour, but Escobar persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"It was for your health?"</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard did not answer directly.</p>
+
+<p>"My lungs have always been my trouble," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Hardiman bent towards Stella Croyle.</p>
+
+<p>"I think our new friend has had a curious life, Stella. He should
+interest you."</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle replied with a shrewd look towards the Spaniard.</p>
+
+<p>"At present he is interesting Escobar. One would say Esco<a name="Page_34" id="Page_34"></a>bar was
+suspicious lest Mr. Hillyard should know too much of him."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"The Mario Escobars are always suspicious. Let us see!" he said in a low
+voice, and leaning across the table, he shot a question sharply at the
+Spaniard.</p>
+
+<p>"And what were you doing under the palm trees, in front of the sea at
+Alicante, Se&ntilde;or Escobar?"</p>
+
+<p>Mario Escobar sat back. The challenge had startled him. He reflected,
+and as the recollection came he turned slowly very white.</p>
+
+<p>"I?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Hardiman, leaning forward. But it was not at Hardiman that
+Escobar was looking. His eyes were fixed warily on Hillyard. He answered
+the question warily too, fragment by fragment, ready to stop, ready to
+take the words back, if a sign of recollection kindled in Hillyard's
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"It is what we should call here the esplanade&mdash;the sea and harbour on
+one side, the houses on the other. The band plays under the palms in
+front of the Casino on summer nights. I&mdash;&mdash;" and he took the last words
+at a rush&mdash;"I was sitting in a lounge chair in front of the club, when I
+saw Mr. Hillyard pass. An Englishman is noticeable in Alicante. There
+are so few of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Hillyard agreed. No recollection was stirred in him by Escobar's
+description. Escobar turned away, but he could not quite conceal the
+relief he felt.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my friend," said Hardiman to himself, "you have taken your
+water-jump too. And you're uncommonly glad that you haven't come a
+cropper."</p>
+
+<p>After that noticeable moment of tension, the talk swept on into
+sprightlier channels.<a name="Page_35" id="Page_35"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Secret of Harry Luttrell</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>"Shall I take you home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, will you?" cried Stella Croyle, with a little burst of pleasure.
+After all, Hillyard was the great man of the evening, and that he should
+consider her out of all that company was pleasant. "I will get my
+cloak."</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the supper-party Hillyard had been at a loss to discover in
+Stella Croyle the woman whom Hardiman had led him to expect. Her spirits
+were high, but unforced. She chattered away with more gaiety than wit,
+like the rest of Hardiman's guests, but the gaiety was apt to the
+occasion. She had the gift of a clear and musical laugh, and her small
+delicate face would wrinkle and pout into grimaces which gave to her a
+rather attractive air of <i>gaminerie</i>&mdash;Hillyard could find no word but
+the French one to express her on that evening. He drove her to a small
+house in the Bayswater Road, overlooking Kensington Gardens.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you come in for a moment?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard followed her up a paved pathway, through a tiny garden enclosed
+in a high wall, to her door. She led him into a room bright with flowers
+and pictures. Curtains of purple brocade were drawn across the window, a
+fire burned on the hearth, and thick soft cushions on broad couches gave
+the room a look of comfort.</p>
+
+<p>"You live here alone?" Hillyard asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>She turned suddenly towards him as he gazed about the room.</p>
+
+<p>"I married a long while ago." She stood in front of him like a slim
+child. It seemed impossible. "Yes, before I knew anything&mdash;to get away
+from home. Our marriage did not go smoothly. After three years I ran
+away&mdash;oh, not with any <a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a>one I cared for; he happened to be there, that
+was all. After a month he deserted me in Italy. I have fortunately some
+money of my own and a few friends who did not turn me down&mdash;Lady Splay,
+for instance. There!"</p>
+
+<p>She moved to a table and poured out for Hillyard a whisky-and-soda.</p>
+
+<p>"My question was thoughtless," he said. "I did not mean that you should
+answer it as you did."</p>
+
+<p>"I preferred you to know."</p>
+
+<p>"I am honoured," Hillyard replied.</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle sat down upon a low stool in front of the fire. Hillyard
+sank into one of the deep-cushioned chairs. The day of tension was over,
+and there was no doubt about the success of "The Dark Tower." Stella
+Croyle sat very quietly, with the firelight playing upon her face and
+her delicate dress. Her vivacity had dropped from her like the pretty
+cloak she had thrown aside. Both became her well, but they were for use
+out-of-doors, and Hillyard was grateful that she had discarded them.</p>
+
+<p>"You are tired, no doubt," he said, reluctantly. "I ought to go."</p>
+
+<p>"No," she answered. "It is pleasant before the fire here."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you. I should like to stay for a little while. I did not know
+until I came into this room with how much anxiety I had been looking
+forward to this night."</p>
+
+<p>He leaned forward with his hands clenched, and saw pass in the bright
+coals glimpses of the long tale of days when endeavour was fruitless and
+hopes were disappointed. "Success! Lord, how I wanted it!" he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle looked at him with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"It was sure to come to you, since you wanted it enough," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but in time?" exclaimed Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"In time for what?"</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard broke into a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," he answered. He was silent for a little while, and the
+comfort of the room, the quiet of the night, the pleasant sympathy of
+Stella Croyle, all wrought upon him. "I don't know," he repeated slowly.
+"I am waiting. But out <a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a>of my queer life something more has got to
+come&mdash;something more and something different. I have always been sure of
+it, but I used to be afraid that the opportunity would come while I was
+still chained to the handles of the barrow."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard's life, though within a short time its vicissitudes had been
+many and most divergent, had probably not been as strange as he imagined
+it to be. He looked back upon it with too intense an interest to be its
+impartial judge. Certainly its distinctive feature had escaped him
+altogether. At the age of twenty-nine he was a man absolutely without
+tradition.</p>
+
+<p>His father, a partner in a small firm of shipping agents which had not
+the tradition of a solid, old-fashioned business, had moved in Martin's
+boyhood from a little semi-detached villa with its flight of front steps
+in one suburb, to a house in a garden of trees in another. The boy had
+been sent to a brand new day-school of excessive size, which gathered
+its pupils into its class-rooms at nine o'clock in the morning and
+dispersed them to their homes at four. No boy was proud that he went to
+school at St. Eldred's, or was deterred from any meanness by the thought
+that it was a breach of the school's traditions. The school meant so
+many lessons in so many class-rooms, and no more.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard was the only child. Between himself and his parents there was
+little sympathy and understanding. He saw them at meals, and fled from
+the table to his own room, where he read voraciously.</p>
+
+<p>"You never heard of such a jumble of books," he said to Stella Croyle.
+"Matthew Arnold, Helps, Paradise Lost, Ten Thousand a Year, The Revolt
+of Islam, Tennyson. I knew the whole of In Memoriam by heart&mdash;absolutely
+every line of it, and pages of Browning. The little brown books! I would
+walk miles to pick one of them up. My people would find the books lying
+about the house, and couldn't make head or tail of why I wanted to read
+them. There were two red-letter days: one when I first bought the two
+volumes of Herrick, the second when I tumbled upon De Quincey. That's
+the author to bowl a boy over. The Stage-Coach, the Autobiography, the
+Confessions&mdash;I could never get tired of them. I remember buying an ounce
+of laudanum at a chemist's on<a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a> London Bridge and taking it home, with
+the intention of following in the steps of my hero and qualifying to
+drink it out of a decanter."</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle had swung round from the fireplace, and was listening now
+with parted lips.</p>
+
+<p>"And did you?" she exclaimed, in a kind of eager suspense.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"The taste was too unpleasant. I drank about half an ounce and threw the
+rest away. I was saved from that folly."</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle turned again to the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said rather listlessly.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Hillyard might almost have become a consumer of drugs, such queer
+and wayward fancies took him in charge. It became a fine thing to him to
+stay up all night just for the sake of staying up, and many a night he
+passed at his open window, even in winter time, doing nothing, not even
+dreaming, simply waiting for the day to break. It seemed to him soft and
+wrong that a man should take his clothes off and lie comfortably between
+sheets. And then came another twist. When all the house was quiet, he
+would slip out of a ground-floor window and roam for hours about the
+lonely roads, a solitary boy revelling even then in the extraordinary
+conduct of his life. There was in the neighbourhood a footpath through a
+thick grove of trees which ran up a long, high hill, and, midway in the
+ascent, crossed a railway cutting by a rustic bridge.</p>
+
+<p>"That was my favourite walk, though I always entered by the swing-gate
+in fear, and trembled at every movement of the branches, and continually
+expected an attack. I would hang over that railway bridge, especially on
+moonlit nights, and compose poems and thoughts&mdash;you know&mdash;great, short
+thoughts." Hillyard laughed. "I was going to be a poet, you
+understand&mdash;a clear, full voice such as had seldom been heard; my poems
+were all about the moon sailing in the Empyrean and Death. Death was my
+strong suit. I sent some of my poems to the local Press, signed 'Lethe,'
+but I could never hear that they were published."</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle laughed, and Hillyard went on. "From the top of the hill I
+would strike off to the west, and see the morning break over London. In
+summer that was wonderful! The<a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></a> Houses of Parliament. St Paul's like a
+silver bubble rising out of the mist, then, as the mist cleared over the
+river, a London clean and all silver in the morning light! I was going
+to conquer all that, you know&mdash;I&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"'Silent upon a peak of Peckham Rye.'"<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"I wonder you didn't kill yourself," cried Stella.</p>
+
+<p>"I very nearly did," answered Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't your parents interfere?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. They never knew of my wanderings. They did know, of course, that I
+used not to go to bed. But they left me alone. I was a bitter
+disappointment in every way. They wanted a reasonable son, who would go
+into the agency business, and they had instead&mdash;me. I should think that
+I was pretty odious, too, and we were all of passionate tempers.
+Besides, with all this reading, I didn't do particularly well at school.
+How could I when day after day I would march off from the house, leaving
+a smooth bed behind me in my room? We were thorny people. Quarrels were
+frequent. My mother had a phrase which set my teeth on edge&mdash;'Don't you
+talk, Martin, until you are earning your living'&mdash;the sort of remark
+that stings and stays in a boy's memory as something unfair. There was a
+great row in the end, one night at ten o'clock, when I was sixteen, and
+I left the house and tramped into London."</p>
+
+<p>"What in the world did you do?" cried Stella.</p>
+
+<p>"I shipped as a boy on a fruit-tramp for Valencia in Spain. And I
+believe that saved my life. For my lungs were beginning to be
+troublesome."</p>
+
+<p>The fruit-tramp had not been out more than two days when the fo'c'sle
+hands selected the lad, since he had some education, to be their
+spokesman on a deputation to the captain. Martin Hillyard went aft with
+the men and put their case for better food and less violence. He was not
+therefore popular with the old man, and at Valencia he thought it
+prudent to desert.</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle had turned towards him again. There was a vividness in his
+manner, an enjoyment, too, which laid hold upon her. It was curious to
+her to realise that this man talk<a name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></a>ing to her here in the Bayswater Road,
+had been so lately a ragged youth scouting for his living on the quays
+of Southern Spain.</p>
+
+<p>"You were at that place&mdash;Alicante!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Part of the time."</p>
+
+<p>"And there Mario Escobar saw you. I wonder why he was frightened lest
+you too should have seen him," she added slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Was he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He was sitting on the same side of the table as you, so you
+wouldn't have noticed. But he was opposite to me; and he was afraid."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard was puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't think of a reason. I was a shipping clerk of no importance. I
+can't remember that I ever came across his name in all the eighteen
+months I spent in Alicante."</p>
+
+<p>When Martin Hillyard was nineteen, Death intervened in the family feud.
+His parents died within a few weeks of each other.</p>
+
+<p>"I was left with a thousand pounds."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you do with them?"</p>
+
+<p>"I went to Oxford."</p>
+
+<p>"You? After those years of independence?"</p>
+
+<p>"It had been my one passionate dream for years."</p>
+
+<p>"The Scholar Gipsy," "Thyrsis," the Preface to the "Essays in
+Criticism," one or two glimpses of the actual city, its grey spires and
+towers, caught from the windows of a train, had long ago set the craving
+in his heart. Oxford had grown dim in unattainable mists, no longer a
+desire so much as a poignant regret, yet now he actually walked its
+sacred streets.</p>
+
+<p>"And you enjoyed it?" asked Stella.</p>
+
+<p>"I had the most wondrous time," Hillyard replied fervently. "There was
+one bad evening, when I realised that I couldn't write poetry. After
+that I cut my hair and joined the Wine Club. I stroked the Torpid and
+rowed three in my College Eight. I had friends for the first time. One
+above all"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped over-abruptly. Stella Croyle had the impression of a careless
+sentinel suddenly waked, suddenly standing to attention at the door of a
+treasure-house of memories. She <a name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></a>was challenged. Very well. It was her
+humour to take the challenge up just to prove to herself that she could
+slip past a man's guard if the spirit moved her. She turned on Hillyard
+a pair of most friendly sympathetic eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me of your friend."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there's not much to tell. He rowed in the same boat with me. He had
+just what I had not&mdash;traditions. From his small old brown manor-house in
+a western county to his very choice of a career, he was wrapped about in
+tradition. He went into the army. He had to go."</p>
+
+<p>"What is his name?"</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle interrupted him. She was not looking at him any more. She
+was staring into the fire, and her body was very still. But there was
+excitement in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Harry Luttrell," replied Hillyard, and Stella Croyle did not move. "I
+don't know what has become of him. You see, I had ninety pounds left out
+of the thousand when I left Oxford. So I just dived."</p>
+
+<p>"But you have come up again now. You will resume your friends at the
+point where you dived."</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet. I am going away in a week's time."</p>
+
+<p>"For long?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eight months."</p>
+
+<p>"And far?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry," said Stella.</p>
+
+<p>It had been the intention of Hillyard to use his first months of real
+freedom in a great wandering amongst wide spaces. The journey had been
+long since planned, even details of camp outfit and equipment and the
+calibre of rifles considered.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been at my preparations for years," he said. "I lived in a
+cubbyhole in Westminster, writing and writing and writing, but when I
+thought of this journey to be, certain to be, the walls would dissolve,
+and I would walk in magical places under the sun."</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Now the New Year">
+<tr><td align='left'>"Now the New Year reviving old desires,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: .5em;">The thoughtful soul to solitude retires"</span></td></tr>
+</table></div><p><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></a></p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle quoted the verses gaily, and Hillyard, lost in the
+anticipation of his journey, never noticed that the gaiety rang false.</p>
+
+<p>"And where are you going?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"To the Sudan."</p>
+
+<p>It seemed that Stella expected just that answer and no other. She gazed
+into the fire without moving, seeking to piece together a picture in the
+coals of that unknown country which held all for which she yearned.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall travel slowly up the White Nile to Renk," Hillyard continued,
+blissfully. He was delighted at the interest which Mrs. Croyle was
+taking in his itinerary. She was clearly a superior person. "From Renk,
+I shall cross to the Blue Nile at Rosaires, and travel eastward again to
+the River Dinder&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You are most fortunate," Stella interrupted wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, am I not?" cried Hillyard. It looked as if nothing would break
+through his obtuseness.</p>
+
+<p>"I should love to be going in your place."</p>
+
+<p>"You?"</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard smiled. She was for a mantelshelf in a boudoir, not for a camp.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;I," and her voice suddenly broke.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard sprang up from his chair, but Stella held up her hand to check
+him, and turned her face still further away. Hillyard resumed his seat
+uncomfortably.</p>
+
+<p>"You may meet your friend Harry Luttrell in the Sudan," she explained.
+"He is stationed somewhere in that country&mdash;where exactly I would give a
+great deal to know."</p>
+
+<p>They sat without speaking for a little while, Stella once more turning
+to the fire. Hillyard watching her wistful face and the droop of her
+shoulders understood at last the truth of Hardiman's description. The
+mask was lain aside. Here indeed was a Lady of Sorrows.</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle was silent until she was quite sure that she had once more
+the mastery of her voice. It was important to her that her next words
+should not be forgotten. But even so she did not dare to speak above a
+whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to do me a favour. If you should meet Harry,<a name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></a> I should like
+him to have news of me. I should like him also&mdash;oh, not so often&mdash;but
+just every now and then to write me a little line."</p>
+
+<p>There were tears glistening on her dark eyelashes. Hillyard fell into a
+sort of panic as he reflected upon his own vaunting talk. Compared with
+this woman's poignant distress, all the vicissitudes of his life seemed
+now quite trivial and small. Here were tears falling and Hillyard was
+unused to tears. Nor had he ever heard so poignant a longing in any
+human voice as that on which Stella's prayer to him was breathed. He was
+ashamed. He was also a little envious of Harry Luttrell. He was also a
+little angry with Harry Luttrell.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't forget?"</p>
+
+<p>Stella clasped her hands together imploringly.</p>
+
+<p>"No," Hillyard replied. "Be very sure of that, Mrs. Croyle! If I meet
+Luttrell he shall have your message."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you."</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle dried the tears from her cheeks and stood up.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been foolish. You won't find me like that again," she cried, and
+she helped Hillyard on with his coat. She went to the door to see him
+out, but stopped as she grasped the handle.</p>
+
+<p>All Hillyard's talk about himself had passed in at one ear and out at
+the other. But every word which he had spoken about Harry Luttrell was
+written on her heart. And one phrase had kindled a tiny spark of hope.
+She had put it aside by itself, wanting more knowledge about it, and
+meaning to have that knowledge before Hillyard departed. She put her
+question now, with the door still closed and her back to it.</p>
+
+<p>"You said that Harry <i>had</i> to join the army. What did you mean by that?"</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Did he not tell you himself?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard stood between loyalty to his friend and the recollection of
+Stella Croyle's tears. If Luttrell had not told her&mdash;why then&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Then I don't well see how I can," he said uncomfortably.</p>
+
+<p>"But I want to know," said Stella, bending her brows at <a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></a>him in
+astonishment that he should refuse her so small a thing. Then her manner
+changed. "Oh, I do want to know," she cried, and Hillyard's obstinacy
+broke down.</p>
+
+<p>Men have the strangest fancies which compel them to do out of all
+reason, even the things which they hate to do, and to put aside what
+they hold most dear. Fancies unintelligible to practical people like
+women&mdash;thus Stella Croyle's thoughts ran&mdash;but to be taken note of very
+carefully. High-flown motives from a world of white angels, where no
+doubt they are very suitable. But men will use them as working motives
+here below, with the result that they wreck women's hearts and cause
+themselves a great deal of useless misery.</p>
+
+<p>Stella's hopes and her self-esteem had for long played with the thought
+that it might possibly be one of those impracticable notions which had
+whipped Harry Luttrell up to the rupture of their alliance; that after
+all, it was not that he was tired of a chain. Yes, she wanted to know.</p>
+
+<p>"Luttrell only told me once, only spoke about it once," said Hillyard
+shifting from one foot to the other. "The week after the eights. We
+rowed down to Kennington Island in a racing pair, had supper there&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," Stella Croyle interrupted. Oh, how dense men could be to be
+sure! What in the world did it matter, how or when the secret was told?</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon," said Hillyard. "But really it does matter a little.
+You see, it was on our way back, when it was quite dark, so dark that
+really you could see little but the line of sky above the trees, and the
+flash of the water at the end of the stroke. I doubt if Luttrell would
+have ever told me at all, if it hadn't been for just that one fact, that
+we were alone together in the darkness and out on the river."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I was wrong," said Stella penitently. "I was impatient. I am
+sorry."</p>
+
+<p>More and more, just because of this detail, she was ready to believe
+that Harry Luttrell had left her for some reason quite outside
+themselves, for some other reason than weariness and the swift end of
+passion.</p>
+
+<p>"Luttrell's father, his grandfather and many others of his name had
+served in the Clayford Regiment. It was his home <a name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></a>regiment and the
+tradition of the family binding from father to son, was that there
+should always be Luttrells amongst its officers."</p>
+
+<p>"And for that reason Harry&mdash;&mdash;" Stella interrupted impetuously.</p>
+
+<p>"No, there is more compulsion than that in Harry's case," Hillyard took
+her up. "Much more! The Clayfords <i>ran</i> in the South African War, and
+ran badly. They returned to England a disgraced regiment. Now do you see
+the compulsion?"</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle turned the problem over in her mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think I do," she said, but still was rather doubtful. Then she
+looked at the problem through Harry Luttrell's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I understand. The regiment must recover its good name in the next
+war. It was an obligation of honour on Harry to take his commission in
+it, to bear his part in the recovery."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I told you, didn't I? Harry Luttrell was cradled in tradition."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard saw Mrs. Croyle's face brighten. Now she had the key to Harry
+Luttrell. He had joined the Clayfords. And what was his fear at
+Stockholm? The slovenly soldier! Yes, he had given her the real reason
+after all during that dinner on the balcony at Hasselbacken. He feared
+to become the slovenly soldier if he idled longer in England. It was not
+because he was tired of her, that the separation had come. Thus she
+reasoned, and she reasoned just in one little respect wrong. She had the
+real secret without a doubt, that "something else," which Sir Charles
+Hardiman divined but could not interpret. But she did not understand
+that Harry Luttrell saw in her, one of the factors, nay the chief of the
+factors which were converting him into that thing of contempt, the
+slovenly soldier.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," she said to Hillyard with a smile. She stood aside now from
+the door. "It was kind of you to bring me home and talk with me for a
+little while."</p>
+
+<p>But it seems that her recovery of spirits did not last out the night.
+Doubts assailed her&mdash;Harry Luttrell was beneath other skies with other
+preoccupations and no message from <a name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></a>him had ever come to her. Even if
+his love was unchanged at Stockholm, it might not be so now. Hillyard
+rang her up on the telephone the next morning and warm in his sympathy
+asked her to lunch with him. But it was a pitiful little voice which
+replied to him. Stella Croyle answered from her bed. She was not well.
+She would stay in bed for a day and then go to a little cottage which
+she owned in the country. She would see Hillyard again next year when he
+returned from the East.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's her way," said Sir Charles Hardiman. He met Hillyard the
+day before he sailed for Port Said and questioned him about Stella
+Croyle discreetly. "She runs to earth when she's unhappy. We shall not
+see her for a couple of months. No one will."<a name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Hillyard's Messenger</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Hillyard turned his back upon the pools of the Khor Galagu at the end of
+April and wandered slowly down the River Dinder. From time to time his
+shikari would lead his camels and camp-servants out on to an open
+clearing on the high river bank and announce a name still marked upon
+the maps. Once there had been a village here, before the Kalifa sent his
+soldiers and herded the tribes into the towns for his better security.
+Now there was no sign anywhere of habitation. The red boles of the
+mimosa trees, purple-brown cracked earth, yellow stubble of burnt grass,
+the skimming of myriads of birds above the tree-tops and shy wild
+animals gliding noiselessly in the dark of the forest&mdash;there was nothing
+more now. It seemed that no human foot had ever trodden that region.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard's holiday was coming to an end, for in a month the rainy season
+would begin and this great park become a marsh. He went fluctuating
+between an excited eagerness for a renewal of rivalry and the
+interchange of ideas and the companionship of women; and a reluctance to
+leave a country which had so restored him to physical well-being. Never
+had he been so strong. He had recaptured, after his five years of London
+confinement, the swift spring of the muscles, the immediate response of
+the body to the demand made upon it, and the glorious cessation of
+fatigue when after arduous hours of heat and exertion he stretched
+himself upon his camp-chair in the shadow of his tent. On the whole he
+travelled northwards reluctantly; until he came to a little open space
+ten days away from the first village he would touch.</p>
+
+<p>He camped there just before noon, and at three o'clock on the following
+morning, in the company of his shikari, his skinner and his donkey-boy
+he was riding along a narrow path <a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></a>high above the river. It was very
+dark, so that even with the vast blaze of stars overhead, Hillyard could
+hardly see the flutter of his shikari's white robe a few paces ahead of
+him. They passed a clump of bushes and immediately afterwards heard a
+great shuffling and lapping of water below them. The shikari stopped
+abruptly and seized the bridle of Hillyard's donkey. The night was so
+still that the noise at the water's edge below seemed to fill the world.
+Hillyard slipped off the back of his donkey and took his rifle from his
+boy.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Gamus!</i>" whispered the shikari.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard almost swore aloud. There was a creek, three hours' march away,
+where the reed buck came down to drink in the morning. For that creek
+Hillyard was now making with a little Mannlicher sporting rifle&mdash;and he
+had tumbled suddenly upon buffalo! He was on the very edge of the
+buffalo country, he would see no more between here and the houses of
+Senga.</p>
+
+<p>It was his last chance and he had nothing but a popgun! He was still
+reproaching himself when a small but startling change took place. The
+snuffling and lapping suddenly ceased; and with the cessation of all
+sound, the night became sinister.</p>
+
+<p>The shikari whispered again.</p>
+
+<p>"Now they in their turn know that we are here." He enveloped the
+donkey's head in a shawl that he was carrying. "Do not move," he
+continued. "They are listening."</p>
+
+<p>Shikari, skinner, donkey-boy, donkey and Hillyard stood together,
+motionless, silent. Hillyard had come out to hunt. Down below the herd
+in its dumb parliament was debating whether he should be the hunted.
+There was little chance for any one of them if the debate went against
+them. Hillyard might bring down one&mdash;perhaps two, if by some miraculous
+chance he shot a bullet through both forelegs. But it would make no
+difference to the herd. Hillyard pictured them below by the water's
+edge, their heads lifted, their tails stiffened, waiting in the
+darkness. Once the lone, earth-shaking roar of a lion spread from far
+away, booming over the dark country. But the herd below never stirred.
+It no more feared the lion than it feared the four men on the river bank
+above.<a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></a> An hour passed before at last the river water plashed under the
+trampling hoofs.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard threw his rifle forward, but the shikari touched him on the
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>"They are going," he whispered, and again the four men waited, until the
+shikari raised his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be good for us to move! They are very near." He looked towards
+the east, but there was no sign yet of the dawn.</p>
+
+<p>"We will go very cautiously into the forest. We shall not know where
+they are, but they will know everything we are doing."</p>
+
+<p>In single file they moved from the bank amongst the mimosas, the donkey
+with his head covered, still led by the boy. Under the cavern of the
+branches it was black as pitch&mdash;so black that Hillyard did not see the
+hand which the shikari quietly laid upon his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen."</p>
+
+<p>On his left a branch snapped, ahead of them a bush that had been bent
+aside swished back on its release.</p>
+
+<p>"They are moving with us. They are all round us," the shikari whispered.
+"They know everything we do. Let us wait here. When the morning breaks
+they will charge or they will go."</p>
+
+<p>So once again the little party came to a halt. Hillyard stood listening
+and wondering if the morning would ever come; and even in that time of
+tension the habit of his mind reasserted its sway. This long, silent
+waiting for the dawn in the depths of an African forest with death at
+his very elbow&mdash;here was another sharp event of life in vivid contrast
+with all the others which had gone before. The years in London, the
+letter-box opposite the Abbey where he had posted his manuscripts at
+three in the morning and bought a cup of coffee at the stall by the
+kerb&mdash;times so very close to him&mdash;the terms at Oxford, the strange
+hungry days on the quays of Spain, the moonlit wanderings on the
+footpath over the rustic ridge and up the hill, when he composed poems
+to the moon and pithy short, great thoughts&mdash;here was something fresh to
+add to them if he didn't go down at daybreak under the hoofs <a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a>of the
+herd! Here was yet a further token, that out of the vicissitudes of his
+life something more, something new, something altogether different and
+unimagined was to come, as the crown and ultimate reason of all that had
+gone before. Once more the shikari's hand touched him and pointed
+eastwards. The tree-trunks were emerging from the darkness. Beyond them
+the black cup of the sky was thinning to translucency. Very quickly the
+grey light widened beyond this vast palisade of trees. Even in here
+below the high branches, it began to steal vaporous and dim. About them
+on every side now the buffalo were moving. The shikari's grip tightened
+on Hillyard's arm. The moment of danger had come. It would be the smash
+of his breast-bone against the forehead of the beast, hoofs and knees
+kneading his broken body and the thrust and lunge of the short curled
+horns until long after he was dead, or&mdash;the new test and preparation to
+add to those which had gone before!</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the shikari cried aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"They are off"; and while he spoke came a loud snapping of boughs, the
+sound of heavy bodies crashing against trees and for a moment against
+the grey light in that cathedral of a forest the huge carcases of the
+buffalo in mad flight were dimly visible. Then silence came again for a
+few moments, till the boughs above them shrilled with birds and the
+morning in a splendour of gold and scarlet, like a roar of trumpets
+stormed the stars.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard drew a breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go on," he said.</p>
+
+<p>They advanced perhaps fifty yards before the second miracle of that
+morning smote upon his eyes. A solitary Arab, driving a tiny, overladen
+donkey, was advancing towards him, his white robes flickering in and out
+among the tree-boles.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard looked at his shikari. But the shikari neither spoke nor
+altered the regularity of his face. Hillyard put no question in
+consequence. The Arab was ten days' journey from the nearest village
+and, even so, his back was turned towards it. He was moving from
+solitude into solitude still more silent and remote. It was impossible.
+Hillyard's eyes were playing him false.<a name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></a></p>
+
+<p>He shut them for an instant and opened them again, thinking that the
+vision would have gone. But there was the Arab still nearer to them and
+moving with a swift agility. A ray of sunlight struck through the
+branches of a tree and burned suddenly like a dancing flame on something
+the man carried&mdash;a carbine with a brass hammer. And the next moment a
+sound proved beyond all doubt to Hillyard that his eyes did not deceive
+him. For he heard the slapping of the Arab's loose slippers upon the
+hard-caked earth.</p>
+
+<p>Oh yes, the man was real enough. For the shikari suddenly swerved from
+the head of the file towards the stranger and stopped. The two men
+talked together and meanwhile Hillyard and the rest of his party halted.
+Hillyard lit his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is it, Hamet?" he cried, and the shikari turned with his companion
+and came back.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the postman," he said as though the delivery of letters along the
+Dinder River were the most commonplace of events.</p>
+
+<p>"The postman!" cried Hillyard. "What in the world do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Hamet explained. "He carries letters between Abyssinia and Senga
+on the Blue Nile. He is now on his way back to Abyssinia."</p>
+
+<p>"But how long does it take him?" Hillyard asked in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"He goes and returns once a year. The journey takes him four months each
+way unless he meets with a party shooting. Then it takes longer for he
+goes with the party to get meat."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard stared at the Arab in amazement. He was a lean slip of a man,
+almost as black as a negro, with his hair running back above the
+temples, and legs like walking-sticks. He stood wreathed in smiles and
+nodding confirmation of Hamet's words. But to Hillyard, with the
+emotions of the dark hour just past still shivering about him, he seemed
+something out of nature. Hillyard leaned from his donkey and took the
+carbine from the postman's hand. It was an ancient thing of Spanish
+manufacture, heavy as a pig of lead.</p>
+
+<p>"But this can't be of any use," he cried. "Is the man never attacked?"<a name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></a></p>
+
+<p>Hamet talked with the Arab in a dialect Hillyard did not understand at
+all; and interpreted the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"No. He has only once fired his rifle. One night&mdash;oh, a long way farther
+to the south&mdash;he waked up to see an elephant fighting his little donkey
+in the moonlight and he fired his rifle and the elephant ran away. You
+must know that all these little Korans he carries on his arms and round
+his neck have been specially blessed by a most holy man."</p>
+
+<p>The postman's shoulders, elbows, wrists and neck were circled about by
+chaplets on which little wooden Korans were strung. He fingered them and
+counted them, smiling like a woman displaying her jewels to her less
+fortunate friends.</p>
+
+<p>"So he is safe," continued Hamet. "Yes, he will even have his picture
+taken. Yes, he can afford to suffer that. He will stand in front of the
+great eye and the machine shall go click, and it will not do him any
+harm at all. He has a letter for you." Hamet dropped from his enthusiasm
+over the wonderful immunity of the postman from the dangers of
+photography into a most matter-of-fact voice.</p>
+
+<p>"A letter for me? That's impossible," cried Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>But the Arab was thrusting his hand here and there in the load on the
+donkey's back and finally drew out a goatskin bag. Hillyard, like other
+Englishmen, had been brought up in a creed which included the
+inefficiency of all Postmasters-general. A blight fell upon such
+persons, withering their qualities and shrivelling them into the meanest
+caricatures of bureaucrats. It could not be that the postal service was
+now to reveal resource and become the servant of romance. Yet the Arab
+drew forth a sealed envelope and handed it to Hillyard. And it bore the
+inscription of his name.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, but it bore much more than that! It was written in a hand which
+Hillyard had not seen for seven years, and the mere sight of it swept
+him back in a glory of recollections to Oxford, its towers and tall
+roofs, which mean so much more to the man who has gone down than to the
+youth who is up. The forest, with its patterns of golden sunlight and
+its colonnades of trees crowding away into darkness, was less visible
+than those towers to Hillyard, as he stood with the envelope in his
+hand. Once more he swung down the High and across <a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a>the Broad from a
+lecture with a ragged gown across his arm. Merton and the House, New
+College and Magdalen Tower&mdash;he saw the enchanted city across Christ
+Church meadows from the river, he looked down upon it from Headington,
+and again from those high fields where, at twilight, the scholar-gipsy
+used to roam. For the letter was in the hand of Harry Luttrell.</p>
+
+<p>He tore it open and read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>Some one in London is asking for you. Who it is I don't
+know. But the message came through in a secret cipher and it
+might be important. I think you should pack your affs. and
+hurry along to Senga, where I shall expect you.</i>"</p></div>
+
+<p>Martin Hillyard folded the letter and put it away in his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"He will find food in our camp," he said to Hamet, with a nod towards
+the postman. "We may as well go on."</p>
+
+<p>Even if he returned to camp at once, it would be too late to start that
+day. The sun would be high long before the baggage could be packed upon
+the camels. The little party went on to the creek and built a tiny house
+of reeds and boughs, in which Hillyard sat down to wait for the deer to
+gather. He had one of the green volumes of "The Vicomte de Bragelonne"
+in his pocket, but this morning the splendid Four for once did not
+enchain him. Who was it in London who wanted him&mdash;wanted him so much
+that cipher telegrams must find him out on the banks of the Dinder
+River? Was this letter the summons to the something more and something
+different? Was the postman to Abyssinia the expected messenger? The
+miracle of that morning predisposed him to think so.</p>
+
+<p>He sat thus for an hour, and then stepping daintily, with timid eyes
+alert, a tall reed-buck and his doe came through the glade towards the
+water. But they did not drink; they waited, cropping the grass.
+Gradually, through a long hour, others gathered, tawny and yellow, and
+dappled-brown, and stood and fed until&mdash;perhaps a signal was given,
+perhaps a known <a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></a>moment had come&mdash;all like soldiers at a command, moved
+down to the water's edge.</p>
+
+<p>Six nights later Hillyard camped at Lueisa, near to that big tree under
+which it is not wise to spread your bed. He took his bath at ten o'clock
+at night under the moon, and the water from the river was hot. He
+stretched himself out in his bed and waked again that night after the
+moon had set, to fix indelibly in his memory the blazing dome of stars
+above his head, and the Southern Cross burning in a corner of the sky.
+The long, wonderful holiday was ended. To-morrow night he would sleep in
+a house. Would he ever come this way again?</p>
+
+<p>In the dark of the morning he struck westwards from the Dinder, across a
+most tedious neck of land, for Senga and the Blue Nile.<a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Honorary Member</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>At six o'clock in the evening Colin Rayne, a young civilian in the Sudan
+Service, heard, as he sat on the balcony of the mess at Senga, the
+rhythmical thud of camels swinging in to their rest in the freshness of
+the night air.</p>
+
+<p>"There's our man," he exclaimed, and running downstairs, he reached the
+door just as Hillyard's twelve camels and his donkeys trooped into the
+light. Hillyard was riding bareheaded, with his helmet looped to his
+saddle, a young man, worn thin by sun and exercise, with fair burnt
+hair, and a brown clean shaven face. Colin Rayne went up to him as he
+dismounted.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Luttrell asked me to look after you. He has got some work on
+hand for the moment. We'll see after your affs."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you."</p>
+
+<p>"You might show me, by the way, where your cartridges are."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard selected the camel on which they were packed and Rayne called a
+Sudanese sergeant to take them into the mess.</p>
+
+<p>"Now we will go upstairs. I expect that you can do with a
+whisky-and-soda," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard was presented to a Doctor Mayle, who was conducting a special
+research into the cause of an obscure fever; and to the other officers
+of this headquarters of a Province. They were all young, Hillyard
+himself was older than any of them.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we have got some married ones, too," said Rayne, "but they live in
+houses of their own like gentlefolk."</p>
+
+<p>"There are some Englishwomen here then?" said Hillyard, and for an
+appreciable moment there was silence. Then a <a name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></a>shortish, square man, with
+a heavy moustache explained, if explanation it could be called.</p>
+
+<p>"No. They were sent off to Senaar this morning&mdash;to be out of the way.
+Wiser."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard asked no questions but drank his whisky-and-soda.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't seen Luttrell since we were at Oxford together," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"And it's by an accident that you see him now," said Rayne. "The
+Governor of Senga was thrown from his horse and killed on the spot down
+by the bridge there six weeks ago. The road gave way suddenly under his
+horse's hoofs. Some one was wanted here immediately."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, there's no doubt of that," said Mr. Blacker, the short square man,
+with emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Luttrell had done very well in Kordofan," Rayne resumed. "He
+was fetched up here in a hurry as Acting-Governor. But no doubt the
+appointment will be confirmed."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Blacker added another croak.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it'll be confirmed all right, if&mdash;&mdash;" and he left his sentence in
+the air; but his gesture finished it.</p>
+
+<p>"If there is any Luttrell left to confirm," Martin Hillyard interpreted,
+though he kept his interpretation to himself.</p>
+
+<p>There certainly was in that room with the big balcony a grim expectation
+of trouble. It was apparent, not so much in words as in an attention to
+distant noises, and a kind of strained silence. The sound of a second
+caravan was heard. It was coming from the north. Rayne ran to the rail
+of the balcony and looked anxiously out. The street here was very broad
+and the huts upon the opposite side already dark except at one point,
+where an unshaded kerosene lamp cast through on open door a panel of
+glaring light upon the darkness. Rayne saw the caravan emerge spectrally
+into the light and disappear again.</p>
+
+<p>"They are our beasts," he said in a voice of relief, and a minute later
+he called down to the soldier in charge. He spoke in the Dinka language
+and the soldier replied in the same tongue. Hillyard understood enough
+of it now to learn that the women had arrived safely at Senaar without
+any incident or annoyance.<a name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></a></p>
+
+<p>"That's good," said Colin Rayne. He turned to Hillyard. "Luttrell's a
+long time. Shall we go and find him?"</p>
+
+<p>Both Blacker and Dr. Mayle looked up with surprise, but Hillyard had
+risen quickly, and they raised no objection. Rayne walked down the
+stairs first and led the way towards the rear of the building across an
+open stretch of ground. The moon had not yet risen, and it was pitch
+dark so that Hillyard had not an idea whither he was being led. Colin
+Rayne stopped at a small, low door in a high big wall and knocked. A
+heavy key grated in a lock and the door was opened by a soldier.
+Hillyard found himself standing inside a big compound, in the midst of
+which stood some bulky, whitish erection, from which a light gleamed.</p>
+
+<p>Colin Rayne led the way towards the light. It was shining through the
+doorway of a chamber of new wood planks with a flat roof and some
+strange, dimly-seen superstructure. Hillyard looked through the doorway
+and saw a curious scene. Two Sudanese soldiers were present, one of whom
+carried the lantern. The other, a gigantic creature with a skin like
+polished mahogany, was stripped to the waist and held poised in his
+hands a huge wooden mallet with a long handle. He stood measuring his
+distance from the stem of a young tree which was wedged tightly between
+a small square of stone on the ground and the flat roof above. Standing
+apart, and watching everything with quiet eyes was Harry Luttrell.</p>
+
+<p>Even at this first glance in the wavering light of the lantern Hillyard
+realised that a change had come in the aspect of his friend. It was not
+a look of age, but authority clothed him as with a garment. Rayne and
+Hillyard passed into the chamber. Luttrell turned his head and welcomed
+Hillyard with a smile. But he did not move and immediately afterwards he
+raised his face to the roof.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you ready up there?"</p>
+
+<p>An English voice replied through the planks.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," and immediately afterwards a dull and heavy weight like a
+full sack was dumped upon the platform above their heads.</p>
+
+<p>"Good!"</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell turned towards the giant.<a name="Page_58" id="Page_58"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Are you ready? And you know the signal?"</p>
+
+<p>The Sudanese soldier grinned in delighted anticipation, with a flash of
+big white teeth, and took a firmer grip of his mallet and swung it over
+his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Good. Now pay attention," said Luttrell, "so that all may be well and
+seemly done."</p>
+
+<p>The Sudanese fixed his eyes upon Luttrell's foot and Luttrell began to
+talk, rapidly and rather to himself than to his audience. Hillyard could
+make neither head nor tail of the strange scene. It was evident that
+Luttrell was rehearsing a speech, but why? And what had the Sudanese
+with the mallet to do with it?</p>
+
+<p>A sudden and rapid sequence of events brought the truth home to him with
+a shock. At a point of his speech Luttrell stamped twice, and the
+Sudanese soldier swung his mallet with all his force. The head of it
+struck the great support full and square. The beam jumped from its
+position, hopped once on its end, and fell with a crash. And from above
+there mingled with the crash a most horrid clang, for, with the removal
+of the beam, two trap-doors swung downwards. Hillyard looked up; he saw
+the stars, and something falling. Instinctively he stepped back and shut
+his eyes. When he looked again, within the chamber, midway between the
+floor and roof, two sacks dangling at the end of two ropes spun and
+jerked&mdash;as though they lived.</p>
+
+<p>Rayne had stepped back and stood quivering from head to foot by
+Hillyard's side; Hillyard himself felt sick. He knew very well now what
+he was witnessing&mdash;the rehearsal of an execution. The Sudanese soldiers
+were grinning from ear to ear with delight and pride. The one person
+quite unmoved was Harry Luttrell, whose ingenuity had invented the
+device.</p>
+
+<p>"Let it be done just so," he said to the soldiers. "I shall not forgive
+a mistake."</p>
+
+<p>They saluted, and he dismissed them and turned at last to Martin
+Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"It's good to see you again," he said, as he shook hands; and then he
+looked sharply into Hillyard's face and laughed. "Shook you up a bit,
+that performance, eh? Well, they bungled <a name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></a>things in Khartum a little
+while ago. I can't afford awkwardness here."</p>
+
+<p>Senga was in the centre of that old Khalifa's tribe which not so many
+years ago ruled in Omdurman. It was always restless, always on the
+look-out for a Messiah.</p>
+
+<p>"Messiahs are most unsettling," said Luttrell, "especially when they
+don't come. The tribe began sharpening its spear-heads a few weeks ago.
+Then two of them got excited and killed. That's the consequence," and he
+jerked his head towards the compound, from which the two friends were
+walking away.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard was to hear more of the matter an hour later, as they all sat
+at dinner in the mess-room. There were thousands of the tribe, all in a
+ferment, and just half a battalion of Sudanese soldiers under Luttrell's
+command to keep them in order.</p>
+
+<p>"Blacker thinks we ought to have temporised, and that we shall get
+scuppered," said Luttrell. He was the one light-hearted man at that
+table, though he was staking his career, his life, and the life of the
+colony on the correctness of his judgment. Sir Charles Hardiman would
+never have recognised in the man who now sat at the head of the mess
+table the young man who had been so torn by this and that discrimination
+in the cabin of his yacht at Stockholm. There was something of the
+joyous savage about him now&mdash;a type which England was to discover
+shortly in some strength amongst the young men who were to officer its
+armies.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't agree. I have invited the chiefs to see justice done. I am
+going to pitch them a speech myself from the scaffold&mdash;cautionary tales
+for children, don't you know&mdash;and then, if old Fee-Fo-Fum with the
+mallet don't get too excited and miss his stroke, everything will go
+like clockwork."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard wondered how in the world he was going to deliver Stella
+Croyle's message&mdash;a flimsy thing of delicate sentimentality&mdash;to this man
+concerned with life and death, and discharging his responsibilities
+according to the just rules of his race, without fear and without too
+much self-questioning. Indeed, the Luttrell, Acting-Governor of Senga,
+was a more familiar figure to Hillyard than he would have been to
+Stella<a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a> Croyle. For he had shaken off, under the pressure of immediate
+work and immediate decisions, the thin and subtle emotions which were
+having their way with him two years before. He had recaptured the high
+spirit of Oxford days, and was lit along his path by that clear flame.</p>
+
+<p>But there were tact and discretion too, as Hillyard was to learn. For
+Mr. Blacker still croaked at the other end of the table.</p>
+
+<p>"It's right and just and all that of course. But you are taking too high
+a risk, Luttrell."</p>
+
+<p>The very silence at the table made it clear to Hillyard that Luttrell
+stood alone in his judgment. But Luttrell only smiled and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, old man, since I disagree, the only course is to refer the whole
+problem to our honorary member."</p>
+
+<p>And at once every countenance lightened, and merriment began to flick
+and dance from one to other of that company like the beads on the
+surface of champagne. Only Hillyard was mystified.</p>
+
+<p>"Your honorary member!" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell nodded solemnly, and raised his glass.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen, the Honorary Member of the Senga Mess&mdash;Sir Chichester
+Splay."</p>
+
+<p>The toast was drunk with enthusiasm by all but Hillyard, who sat staring
+about him and wondering what in the world the Mec&aelig;nas of the First
+Nights had in common with these youthful administrators far-flung to the
+Equator.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't drink, Martin," cried Luttrell. A Socialist at a Public
+Dinner who refused to honour the Royal Toast could only have scandalised
+the chairman by a few degrees more than Hillyard's indifference did now.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon," said Hillyard with humility. "I repair my error
+now. It was due to amazement."</p>
+
+<p>"Amazement!" Colin Rayne repeated, as Hillyard drained his glass.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. For I know the man."</p>
+
+<p>There was the silence that follows some stupendous happening; eyes were
+riveted upon Hillyard in admiration; and then the silence burst.<a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></a></p>
+
+<p>"He knows him!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's incredible!"</p>
+
+<p>"Actually knows him!"</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly above the din Blacker's voice rose warningly.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let's lose our heads! That's the great thing! Let us keep as calm
+as we can and think out our questions very carefully lest the
+Heaven-sent Bearer of Great Tidings should depart without revealing all
+he knows."</p>
+
+<p>Chairs were hitched a little closer about Hillyard. The care which had
+brooded in that room was quite dispelled.</p>
+
+<p>"Have some more port, sir," said the youngest of that gathering, eagerly
+pushing across the bottle. Hillyard filled his glass. Port was his, and
+prestige too. He might write a successful play. That was all very well.
+He might go shooting for eight months along by the two Niles and the
+Dinder. That was all very well too. He was welcome at the Senga Mess.
+But he knew Sir Chichester Splay! He acquired in an instant the
+importance of a prodigy.</p>
+
+<p>"But, since he is an honorary member of your mess, you must know him
+too," cried Hillyard. "He must have come this way."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Martin!" Luttrell expostulated, as one upbraiding a child. "Sir
+Chichester Splay out of London! The thing's inconceivable!"</p>
+
+<p>"Inconceivable! Why, he lives in the country."</p>
+
+<p>A moment of consternation stilled all voices. Then the Doctor spoke in a
+whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it possible that we are all wrong?"</p>
+
+<p>"He lives at Rackham Park, in Sussex."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Blacker fell back in relief.</p>
+
+<p>"I know the house. He is a new resident. It is near to Chichester. He
+went there on the Hom&oelig;opathic principle."</p>
+
+<p>The conjecture was actually true. Sir Chichester Splay, spurred by his
+ambition to be a country gentleman with a foot in town, had chosen the
+neighbourhood on account of his name, so that it might come to be
+believed that he had a territorial connection.</p>
+
+<p>"Describe him to us," they all cried, and, when Hillyard had finished:<a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Well, he might be like that," Luttrell conceded. "It was not our idea."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Colin Rayne. "You will remember I always differed from all of
+you, but it seems that I am wrong too. I pictured him as a tall,
+melancholy man, with a conical bald head and with a habit of plucking at
+a black straggling beard&mdash;something like the portraits of Tennyson."</p>
+
+<p>"To me," said Luttrell, "he was always fat and fussy, with white spats."</p>
+
+<p>"But why are you interested in him at all?" cried Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"We will explain the affair to you on the balcony," answered Luttrell,
+as he rose.</p>
+
+<p>They moved into the dark and coolness of this spacious place, and,
+stretching themselves in comfort on the long cane chairs, they explained
+to Hillyard this great mystery. Rayne began the tale.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, we don't get a mail here so very often. Consequently we pay
+attention when it comes. We read the <i>Searchlight</i>, for instance, with
+care."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Blacker snatched the narrative away at this point.</p>
+
+<p>"And Sir Chichester Splay occurs in most issues and in many columns. At
+first we merely noticed him. Some one would say, 'Oh, here's old Splay
+again,' as if&mdash;it seems incredible now&mdash;the matter was of no importance.
+It needed Luttrell to discover the real significance of Sir Chichester,
+the man's unique and astounding quality."</p>
+
+<p>Harry Luttrell interrupted now.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it was I," he said with pride. "Sir Chichester one day was seen at
+a Flower Show in Chelsea. On another he attended the first performance
+of a play. On a third day he honoured the Private View of an Exhibition
+of Pictures. On a fourth he sat amongst the Distinguished Strangers in
+the Gallery of the House of Commons. But that was all! This is what I
+alone perceived. Always that was all!"</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell leaned back and relit his cigar.</p>
+
+<p>"When other people come to be mentioned in the newspapers day after day,
+sooner or later some information about them slips out, some
+characteristic thing. If you don't get to know their appearance, you
+learn at all events their profes<a name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></a>sions, their opinions. But of Sir
+Chichester Splay&mdash;never anything at all. Yet he is there always, nothing
+can happen without his presence, a man without a shadow, a being without
+a history. To me, a simple soldier, he is admirable beyond words. For he
+has achieved the inconceivable. He combines absolute privacy of life
+with a world-wide notoriety. He may be a stamp-collector. Do I know
+that? No. All I know is that if there were an Exhibition of Stamp
+Collections, he would be the first to pass the door." Luttrell rose from
+his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Therefore," he added in conclusion, "Sir Chichester is of great value
+to us at Senga. We elected him to the mess with every formality, and
+some day, when we have leisure, we shall send a deputation up the Nile
+to shoot a Mrs. Grey's Antelope to decorate Rackham Park." He turned to
+Hillyard. "We have a few yards to walk, and it is time."</p>
+
+<p>The two friends walked down the stairs and turned along the road,
+Hillyard still debating what was, after all, the value of Sir Chichester
+Splay to the Senga mess. It had seemed to him that Luttrell had not
+wished for further questions on the balcony, but, now that the two were
+alone, he asked:</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see it," he said; and Luttrell stopped abruptly and turned to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you, Martin?" he asked gently. All the merriment had gone from
+his face and voice. "If you were with us for a week you would. It's just
+the value of a little familiar joke always on tap. Here are a handful of
+us. We eat together, morning, noon, and night; we work together; we play
+polo together&mdash;we can never get away from each other. And in consequence
+we get on each other's nerves, especially in the months of hot weather.
+Ill-temper comes to the top. We quarrel. Irreparable things might be
+said. That's where Sir Chichester Splay comes in. When the quarrel's
+getting bitter, we refer it to his arbitration. And, since he has no
+opinions, we laugh and are saved." Luttrell resumed his walk to the
+Governor's house.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I see now," said Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"You had an instance to-night," Luttrell added, as they <a name="Page_64" id="Page_64"></a>went in at the
+door. "It's a serious matter&mdash;the order of a Province and a great many
+lives, and the cost of troops from Khartum, and the careers of all of us
+are at stake. I think that I am right, and it is for me to say. They
+disagree. Yes, Sir Chichester Splay saved us to-night, and"&mdash;a smile
+suddenly broke upon his serious face&mdash;"I really should like to meet
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"I will arrange it when we are both in London," Hillyard returned.</p>
+
+<p>He did not forget that promise. But he was often afterwards to recall
+this moment when he made it&mdash;the silent hall, the door open upon the
+hot, still night, the moon just beginning to gild the dark sky, and the
+two men standing together, neither with a suspicion of the life-long
+consequences which were to spring from the casual suggestion and the
+careless assent.</p>
+
+<p>"You are over there," said Luttrell, pointing to the other side of the
+hall. He turned towards his own quarters, but a question from Hillyard
+arrested him.</p>
+
+<p>"What about that message for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know nothing about it," Luttrell answered, "beyond what I wrote. The
+telegram came from Khartum. No doubt they can tell you more at
+Government House. Good night!"<a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">In the Garden of Eden</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Just outside Senga to the north, in open country, stands a great walled
+zareba, and the space enclosed is the nearest approach to the Garden of
+Eden which this wicked world can produce. The Zoological Gardens of
+Cairo and Khartum replenish their cages from Senga. But there are no
+cages at Senga, and only the honey-badger lives in a tub with a chain
+round his neck, like a bull-dog. The buffalo and the elephant, the
+wart-hog and the reed-buck, roam and feed and sleep together. Nor do
+they trouble, after three days' residence in that pleasant sanctuary,
+about man&mdash;except that specimen of man who brings them food.</p>
+
+<p>All day long you may see, towering above the wall close to the little
+wooden door, the long necks and slim heads of giraffes looking towards
+the city and wondering what in the world is the matter with the men
+to-day, and why they don't come along with the buns and sugar. Once
+within the zareba, once you have pushed your way between the giraffes
+and got their noses out of your jacket-pockets, you have really only to
+be wary of the ostrich. He, mincing delicately around you with his
+little wicked red eye blinking like a camera shutter, may try with an
+ill-assumed air of indifference to slip up unnoticed close behind you.
+If he succeeds he will land you one. And one is enough.</p>
+
+<p>Into this zareba Harry Luttrell led Martin Hillyard on the next morning.
+Luttrell had an hour free, and the zareba was the one spectacle in
+Senga. He kicked the honey-badger's tub in his little reed-house and
+brought out that angry animal to the length of his strong chain and to
+within an inch of his own calves.</p>
+
+<p>"Charming little beast, isn't he? See the buffalo in the middle? The
+little elephant came in a week ago from just <a name="Page_66" id="Page_66"></a>south of the Khor Galagu.
+You had something private to say to me? Now's your time. Mind the
+ostrich, that's all. He looks a little ruffled."</p>
+
+<p>They were quite alone in the zareba. The giraffes had fallen in behind
+and were following them, and level with them, on Hillyard's side, the
+ostrich stepped like a delicate lady in a muddy street. Hillyard found
+it a little difficult to concentrate his thoughts on Stella Croyle's
+message. But he would have delivered it awkwardly in any case. He had
+seen enough of Harry Luttrell last night to understand that an ocean now
+rolled between those two.</p>
+
+<p>"On the first night of my play, 'The Dark Tower,'" he began, and
+suddenly faced around as the ostrich fell back.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!" said Luttrell, and he eyed the ostrich indifferently. "That
+animal's a brute, isn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>He took a threatening step towards it, and the ostrich sidled away as if
+it really didn't matter to him where he took his morning walk.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" Luttrell repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"I went to a supper-party given by Sir Charles Hardiman."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh?"</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell's voice was careless enough. But his eyes went watchfully to
+Hillyard's face, and he seemed to shut suddenly all expression out of
+his own.</p>
+
+<p>"Hardiman introduced me to a friend of yours."</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Croyle?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"She was well?"</p>
+
+<p>"In health, yes!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am very glad." Unexpectedly some feeling of relief had made itself
+audible in Luttrell's voice. "It would have troubled me if you had
+brought me any other news of her. Yes, that would have troubled me very
+much. I should not have been able to forget it," he said slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"But she is unhappy."</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell walked on in silence. His forehead contracted, a look of
+trouble came into his face. Yet he had an eye all the while for the
+movements of the animals in the zareba. At last <a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></a>he halted, struck out
+at the ostrich with his stick, and turned to Hillyard with a gesture of
+helplessness.</p>
+
+<p>"But what can one do&mdash;except the single thing one can't do?"</p>
+
+<p>"She gave me a message, if I should chance to meet you," answered
+Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell's face hardened perceptibly.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me hear it, Martin."</p>
+
+<p>"She said that she would like you to have news of her, and that from
+time to time she would like to have a little line from you."</p>
+
+<p>"That was all?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Harry Luttrell nodded, but he made no reply. He walked back with
+Hillyard to the door of the zareba, and the ostrich bore them company,
+now on this side, now on that. The elephant was rolling in the grass
+like a dog, the giraffes crowded about the little door like beggars
+outside a restaurant. The two friends walked back towards the town in an
+air shimmering with heat. The Blue Nile glittered amongst its sand-banks
+like so many ribands of molten steel. They were close upon the house
+before Luttrell answered Stella Croyle's message.</p>
+
+<p>"All <i>that</i>," he cried, with a sharp gesture as of a man sweeping
+something behind him, "all that happened in another age when I was
+another man."</p>
+
+<p>The gesture was violent, but the words were pitiful. He was not a man
+exasperated by a woman's unseasonable importunity, but angry with the
+grim, hard, cruel facts of life.</p>
+
+<p>"It's no good, Martin," he added, with a smile. "Not all the king's
+horses nor all the king's men&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard was sure now that no little line would ever go from Senga to
+the house in the Bayswater Road. The traditions of his house and of his
+regiment had Harry Luttrell in their keeping. Messages? Martin Hillyard
+might expect them, might indeed respond to and obey them, and with
+advantage, just because they came out of the blue. But the men of
+tradition, no! The messenger had knocked upon the doors of their
+fathers' houses before ever they were born.</p>
+
+<p>At the door of the Governor's house Harry Luttrell stopped.<a name="Page_68" id="Page_68"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I expect you'll want to do some marketing, and I shall be busy, and
+to-night we shall have the others with us. So I'll say now," and his
+face brightened with a smile, as though here at all events were a matter
+where the bitter laws of change could work no cruelties, "it has been
+really good to see you again."</p>
+
+<p>Certain excellent memories were busy with them both&mdash;Nuneham and Sanford
+Lasher and the Cherwell under its overhanging branches. Then Luttrell
+looked out across to the Blue Nile and those old wondrous days faded
+from his vision.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like you to get away bukra, bukra, Martin," he said.
+"Half-past one at the latest, to-morrow morning. Can you manage it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course," answered Hillyard in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, I postponed that execution, whilst you were here. I think
+it'll go off all right, but since it's no concern of yours, I would just
+as soon you were out of the way. I have fixed it for eight. If you start
+at half-past one you will be a good many miles away by then."</p>
+
+<p>He turned and went into the house and to his own work. Martin Hillyard
+walked down the road along the river bank to the town. Harry Luttrell
+had said his last word concerning Stella Croyle. Of that he was sure and
+was glad, though Stella's tear-stained face would rise up between his
+eyes and the water of the Nile. Sooner or later Harry Luttrell would
+come home, bearing his sheaves, and then he would marry amongst his own
+people; and a new generation of Luttrells would hold their commissions
+in the Clayfords. He had said his last word concerning Stella Croyle.</p>
+
+<p>But Hillyard was wrong. For in the dark of the morning, when he had
+bestridden his donkey and given the order for his caravan to march, he
+was hailed by Luttrell's voice. He stopped, and Luttrell came down in
+his pyjamas from the door of the house to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Good luck," he said, and he patted the donkey's neck. "Good luck, old
+man. We'll meet in England some time."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>It was not to speak these words that Harry Luttrell had <a name="Page_69" id="Page_69"></a>risen, after
+wishing him good-bye the night before. So he waited.</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell was still, his hand on the little donkey's neck.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll remember me to our honorary member, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't forget."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't."</p>
+
+<p>Nor was it for this reminder, either. So Hillyard still waited, and at
+last the words came, jerkily.</p>
+
+<p>"One thing you said yesterday.... I was very glad to hear it. That
+Stella was well&mdash;quite well. You meant that, didn't you? It's the
+truth?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you ... I was a little afraid ... thank you!"</p>
+
+<p>He took his hand from the donkey's neck, and Hillyard rode forward on
+the long and dreary stage to the one camping ground between Senga and
+Senaar.</p>
+
+<p>For a little while he wondered at this insistence of Harry Luttrell upon
+the physical health of Stella Croyle, and why he had been afraid. But
+when the dawn came his thoughts reverted to his own affairs. The message
+delivered to him in the forest of the River Dinder! It might mean
+nothing. It was the part of prudence to make light of his hopes and
+conjectures. But the hopes would not be stilled, now that he was alone.
+This was the Summons, the great Summons for which, without his
+knowledge, the experiences of his life, detail by detail, had builded
+him.<a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Hillyard Hears News of an Old Friend</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>At Khartum, however, disappointment awaited him. He was received without
+excitement by a young aide-de-camp at the Palace.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard that you had come in last night. A good trip? Dine with me
+to-night and you shall show me your heads. The Governor-General's in
+England."</p>
+
+<p>"There's a telegram."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes. It came up to us from Cairo. Some one wanted to know where you
+were. They'll know about it at Cairo. We just pushed it along, you
+know," said the aide-de-camp. He dined with Hillyard, admired his heads,
+arranged for his sleeping compartment, and assured him that the
+execution had gone off "very nicely" at Senga.</p>
+
+<p>"Luttrell made a palaver, and his patent drop worked as well as anything
+in Pentonville, and every one went home cheered up and comfortable.
+Luttrell's a good man."</p>
+
+<p>Thus Hillyard took the train to Wadi Haifa in a chastened mood.
+Obviously the message was of very little, if indeed of any, importance.
+A man can hardly swing up to extravagant hopes without dropping to
+sarcastic self-reproaches on his flightiness and vanity. He was not
+aware that the young aide-de-camp pushed aside some pressing work to
+make sure that he did go on the train; or that when the last carriage
+disappeared towards the great bridge, the aide-de-camp cried, "Well,
+that's that," like a man who has discharged one task at all events of
+the many left to his supervision.</p>
+
+<p>One consequence of Hillyard's new humility was that he now loitered on
+his journey. He stayed a few days at Assouan and yet another few in
+Luxor, in spite of the heat, and reached Cairo in the beginning of June
+when the streets were thick with dust-storms and the Government had
+moved to<a name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></a> Alexandria. Hillyard was in two minds whether to go straight
+home, but in the end he wandered down to the summer seat of government.</p>
+
+<p>If Khartum had been chilly to the enthusiast, Alexandria was chillier.
+It was civil and polite to Hillyard and made him a member of the Club.
+But it was concerned with the government of Egypt, and gently allowed
+Hillyard to perceive it. Khartum had at all events stated "There is a
+cablegram." At Alexandria the statement became a question: "Is there a
+cablegram?" In the end a weary and indifferent gentleman unearthed it.
+He did not show it to Hillyard, but held it in his hand and looked over
+the top of it and across a roll-top desk at the inquirer.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes. This seems to be what you are asking about. It is for us, you
+know"&mdash;this with a patient smile as Hillyard's impatient hand reached
+out for it. "Do you know a man called Bendish&mdash;Paul Bendish?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bendish?" cried Hillyard. "He was my tutor at Oxford."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Then it does clearly refer to you. Bendish has a friend who needs
+your help in London."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard stared.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to say that I was sent for from the borders of Abyssinia
+because Bendish has a friend in London who wants my help?"</p>
+
+<p>The indifferent gentleman stroked his chin.</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly looks like it, doesn't it? But I do hope that you didn't
+cut your expedition short on that account." He looked remorsefully into
+Hillyard's face. "In any case, the rainy season was coming on, wasn't
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my expedition was really ended when the message reached me,"
+Hillyard was forced to admit.</p>
+
+<p>"That's good," said the indifferent gentleman, brightening. "You will
+see Bendish, of course, in England. By what ship do you sail? It's not
+very pleasant here, is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall sail on the <i>Himalaya</i> in a week's time."</p>
+
+<p>"Right!" said the official, and he nodded farewell and dipped his nose
+once more into his papers.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard walked to the door, conscious that he looked the <a name="Page_72" id="Page_72"></a>fool he felt
+himself to be. But at the door he turned in a sort of exasperation.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you tell me at all why Bendish's friend wants my help?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this moment that the indifferent gentleman had the inspiration
+of his life.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't an idea, Mr. Hillyard," he replied. "Perhaps he has got into
+difficulties in the writing of a revue."</p>
+
+<p>The answer certainly drove Hillyard from the room without another word.
+He stood outside the door purple with heat and indignation. Hillyard
+neither overrated nor decried his work. But to be dragged away from the
+buffalo and the reed-buck of the Dinder River in order to be told that
+he was a writer of revues. No! That was carrying a bad joke too far.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard stalked haughtily along the corridor towards the outer door,
+but not so fast but that a youth passed him with a sheet of paper in his
+hand. The youth went into the room where Government cablegrams were
+coded. The sheet of paper which he held in his hand was inscribed with a
+message that Martin Hillyard would leave Alexandria in a week's time on
+the s.s. <i>Himalaya</i>. And the message strangely enough was not addressed
+to Paul Bendish at all. It was headed, "For Commodore Graham.
+Admiralty." The great Summons had in fact come, although Hillyard knew
+it not.</p>
+
+<p>He travelled in consequence leisurely by sea. He started from Alexandria
+after half the month of June had gone, and he was thus in the Bay of
+Biscay on that historic morning of June the twenty-eighth, when the
+Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia Duchess of Hohenberg, were
+murdered in the streets of Saravejo. London, when he reached it, was a
+choir of a million voices not yet tuned to the ringing note of one. It
+was incredible that the storm, foreseen so often over the port wine,
+should really be bursting at last. Mediation will find a way. Not this
+time; the moment has been chosen. And what will England do? Ride safe in
+the calm centre of the hurricane? No ship ever did, and England won't.</p>
+
+<p>A few degenerate ones threw up their hands and cried that all was
+over&mdash;<i>they knew</i>.<a name="Page_73" id="Page_73"></a></p>
+
+<p>Of these a gaunt-visaged man, stubborn and stupid and two generations
+back a German, held forth in the hall of Hillyard's club.</p>
+
+<p>"German organisation, German thoroughness and German brains&mdash;we are no
+match for them. The country's thick with spies&mdash;wonderful men. Where
+shall <i>we</i> find their equals?"</p>
+
+<p>A sailor slipped across the hall and dropped into a chair by Hillyard's
+side.</p>
+
+<p>"You take no part in these discussions? The crackling of thorns&mdash;what?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have been a long time away."</p>
+
+<p>"Thought so," continued the sailor. "A man was inquiring for you
+yesterday&mdash;a man of the name of Graham."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know him."</p>
+
+<p>"No, but he is a friend of a friend of yours."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard sat up in his chair. He had been four days in London, and the
+engrossing menace of those days had quite thrust from his recollections
+the telegram which had, as he thought, befooled him.</p>
+
+<p>"The friend of mine is possibly Paul Bendish," he said stiffly.</p>
+
+<p>"Think that was the name. Graham's the man I am speaking of," and the
+sailor paused. "Commodore Graham," he added.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard's indignation ebbed away. What if he had not been fooled? The
+quenched hopes kindled again in him. There was all this talk of
+war&mdash;alarums and excursions as the stage-directions had it. Service!
+Suddenly he realised that ever since he had left Senga, a vague envy of
+Harry Luttrell had been springing up in his heart. The ordered life of
+service&mdash;authority on the one hand, the due execution of details on the
+other! Was it to that glorious end in this crisis that all his life's
+experience had slowly been gathering? He looked keenly at his companion.
+Was it just by chance that he had crossed the hall in the midst of all
+this thistle-down discussion and dropped in the chair by his side?</p>
+
+<p>"But what could I do?"<a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></a></p>
+
+<p>He spoke aloud, but he was putting the question to himself. The sailor,
+however, answered it.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask Graham."</p>
+
+<p>He wrote an address upon a sheet of notepaper and handed it to Hillyard.
+Then he looked at the clock which marked ten minutes past three.</p>
+
+<p>"You will find him there now."</p>
+
+<p>The sailor went after his cap and left the club. Hillyard read the
+address. It was a number in a little street of the Adelphi, and as he
+read it, suspicion again seized upon Hillyard. After all, why should a
+Commodore want to see him in a little street of the Adelphi. Perhaps,
+after all, the indifferent official of Alexandria was right and the
+Commodore had ambitions in the line of revues!</p>
+
+<p>"I had better go and have it out with him," he decided, and, taking his
+hat and stick, he walked eastwards to Charing Cross. He turned into a
+short street. At the bottom a stone arch showed where once the Thames
+had lapped. Now, beyond its grey-white curve, were glimpses of green
+lawns and the cries of children at their play. Hillyard stopped at a
+house by the side of the arch. A row of brass plates confronted him, but
+the name of Commodore Graham was engraved on none of them. Hillyard rang
+the housekeeper's bell and inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"On the top floor on the left," he was told.</p>
+
+<p>He climbed many little flights of stairs, and at the top of each his
+heart sank a little lower. When the stairs ended he confronted a mean,
+brown-varnished door; and he almost turned and fled. After all, the
+monstrous thing looked possible. He stood upon the threshold of a set of
+chambers. Was he really to be asked to collaborate in a revue? He rang
+the bell, and a young woman opened the door and barred the way.</p>
+
+<p>"Whom do you wish to see?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Commodore Graham."</p>
+
+<p>"Commodore Graham?" she repeated with an air of perplexity, as though
+this was the first time she had ever heard the name.</p>
+
+<p>Across her shoulder Hillyard looked into a broad room, where three other
+girls sat at desks, and against one wall stood a great bureau with many
+tiny drawers like pigeon-holes. Sev<a name="Page_75" id="Page_75"></a>eral of these drawers stood open and
+disclosed cards standing on their edges and packed against each other.
+Hillyard's hopes revived. Not for nothing had he sat from seven to ten
+in the office of a shipping agent at Alicante. Here was a card-index,
+and of an amazing volume. But his interlocutor still barred the way.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you an appointment with Commodore Graham?" she asked, still with
+that suggestion that he had lunched too well and had lost his way.</p>
+
+<p>"No. But he sent for me across half the world."</p>
+
+<p>The girl raised a pair of steady grey eyes to his.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you write your name here?"</p>
+
+<p>She allowed him to pass and showed him some slips of paper on a table in
+the middle of the room. Hillyard obeyed, and waited, and in a few
+moments she returned, and opened a door, crossed a tiny ante-room and
+knocked again. Hillyard entered a room which surprised him, so greatly
+did its size and the wide outlook from its windows contrast with the
+dinginess of its approach. A thin man with the face of a French abb&eacute; sat
+indolently twiddling his thumbs by the side of a big bureau.</p>
+
+<p>"You wanted to see me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Hillyard?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Commodore Graham nodded to the girl, and Hillyard heard the door close
+behind him.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you sit down? There are cigarettes beside you. A match? Here is
+one. I hope that I didn't bring you home before your time."</p>
+
+<p>"The season had ended," replied Hillyard, who was in no mood to commit
+himself. "In what way can I help you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bendish tells me that you know something of Spain."</p>
+
+<p>"Spain?" cried Hillyard in surprise. "Spain means Madrid, Bilbao, and a
+host of places, and a host of people, politicians, merchants, farmers.
+What should I know of them?"</p>
+
+<p>"You were in Spain for some years."</p>
+
+<p>"Three," replied Hillyard, "and for most of the three years picking up a
+living along the quays. Oh, it's not so difficult in Spain, especially
+in summer time. Looking after a felucca <a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"></a>while the crew drank in a caf&eacute;,
+holding on to a dinghy from a yacht and helping the ladies to step out,
+a little fishing here, smuggling a box of cigars past the customs
+officer there&mdash;oh, it wasn't so difficult. You can sleep out in comfort.
+I used to enjoy it. There was a coil of rope on the quay at Tarragona;
+it made a fine bed. Lord, I can feel it now, all round me as I curled up
+in it, and the stars overhead, seen out of a barrel, so to speak!"</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard's face changed. He had the spark of the true wanderer within
+him. Even recollections of days long gone could blow it into clear, red
+flame. All the long glowing days on the hot stones of the water-side,
+the glitter of the Mediterranean purple-blue under the sun, the coming
+of night and the sudden twinkling of lights in the cave-dwellings above
+Almeria and across the bay from Aguilas, the plunge into the warm sea at
+midnight, the glorious evenings at water-side caf&eacute;s when he had half a
+dozen coppers in his pocket; the good nature of the people! All these
+recollections swept back on him in a rush. The actual hardships, the
+hunger, the biting winds of January under a steel-cold sky, these things
+were all forgotten. He remembered the freedom.</p>
+
+<p>"There weren't any hours to the day," he cried, and spoke the creed of
+all the wanderers in the world. "I saw the finest bull-fights in the
+world, and made money out of them by selling dulces and membrilla and
+almond rock from Alicante. Oh, the life wasn't so bad. But it came to an
+end. A shipping agent at Alicante used me as a messenger, and finally,
+since I knew English and no one else in his office did, turned me into a
+shipping clerk."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard had quite forgotten Commodore Graham, who sat patiently
+twiddling his thumbs throughout the autobiography, and now came with
+something of a start to a recognition of where he sat. He sprang up and
+reached for his hat.</p>
+
+<p>"So, you see, you might as well ask a Chinaman at Stepney what he knows
+of England as ask me what I know of Spain. I am just wasting your time.
+But I have to thank you," and he bowed with a winning pleasantness, "for
+reviving in me some very happy recollections which were growing dim."</p>
+
+<p>The Commodore, however, did not stir.<a name="Page_77" id="Page_77"></a></p>
+
+<p>"But it is possible," he said quietly, "that you do know the very places
+which interest me&mdash;the people too."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard looked at the Commodore. He put down his hat and resumed his
+seat.</p>
+
+<p>"For instance?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Columbretes."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Islands sixty miles from Valencia."</p>
+
+<p>"With a lighthouse," interrupted Graham.</p>
+
+<p>"And a little tumble-down inn with a vine for an awning."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I didn't know there was an inn," said Graham. "Already you have
+told me something."</p>
+
+<p>"I fished round the Columbretes all one summer," said Hillyard, with a
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Graham nodded two or three times quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"And the Balearics?"</p>
+
+<p>"I worked on one of Island Line ships between Barcelona and Palma
+through a winter."</p>
+
+<p>"There's a big wireless," said Commodore Graham.</p>
+
+<p>"At Soller. On the other side of Mallorca from Palma. You cross a
+wonderful pass by the old monastery where Georges Sand and Chopin stayed
+and quarrelled."</p>
+
+<p>The literary reminiscence left Commodore Graham unmoved.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever go to Iviza?"</p>
+
+<p>"For a month with a tourist who dug for ancient pottery."</p>
+
+<p>Graham swung round to his bureau and drummed with the tips of his
+fingers upon the leather pad. He made no sign which could indicate
+whether he was satisfied or no. He lit a cigarette and handed the box to
+Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever come across a man called Jos&eacute; Medina?"</p>
+
+<p>Eleven years had passed since the strange days in Spain, and those
+eleven years not without their sharp contrasts and full hours.
+Hillyard's act of memory was the making of a picture. One by one he
+called up the chain of coast cities wherein he had wandered. Malaga,
+with its brown cathedral; Almeria and its ancient castle and bright
+blue-painted houses glowing against the brown and barren hills; Aguilas,
+with its islets; Cartagena, Gandia, Alicante of the palms; Valencia&mdash;and
+<a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a>under the trees and on the quays, the boatmen and the captains and the
+resplendent officials whom he had known! They took shape before him and
+assumed their names. He dived amongst them for one Jos&eacute; Medina.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he replied at last, "there was a Jos&eacute; Medina. He was a young
+peasant of Mallorca. He always said jo for yo."</p>
+
+<p>Graham's eyes brightened and his lips twitched to a smile. He glanced
+aside to his bureau, whereon lay a letter written by Paul Bendish at
+Oxford.</p>
+
+<p>"He probably has a larger acquaintance with the queer birds of the
+Mediterranean ports than any one else in England. But he does not seem
+to be aware of it. But if you persist in sitting quiet his knowledge
+will trickle out."</p>
+
+<p>Commodore Graham persisted, and facts concerning Jos&eacute; Medina began to
+trickle out. Jos&eacute;'s father had left him, the result of a Spanish
+peasant's thrift, a couple of thousand pesetas. With this Jos&eacute; Medina
+had gone to Gibraltar, where he bought a felucca, with a native of
+Gibraltar as its nominal owner; so that Jos&eacute; Medina might fly the flag
+of Britain and sleep more surely for its protection. At Gibraltar, with
+what was left of his two thousand pesetas and the credit which his
+manner gained him, he secured a cargo of tobacco.</p>
+
+<p>"Gibraltar's a free port, you see," said Hillyard. "Jos&eacute; ran the cargo
+along the coast to Benicassim, a little watering-place with a good beach
+about thirty kilometres east of Valencia. He ran the felucca ashore one
+dark night." Suddenly he stopped and smiled to himself. "I expect Jos&eacute;
+Medina's in prison now."</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary," said Graham, "he's a millionaire."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard stared. Then he laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, those were the two alternatives for Jos&eacute; Medina. But I am judging
+by one night's experience. I never saw him again."</p>
+
+<p>Commodore Graham touched with his heel a bell by the leg of his bureau.
+The bell did not ring, but displaced a tiny shutter in front of the desk
+of his secretary in the ante-room; and Hillyard had hardly ended when
+the girl was in the room and announced:</p>
+
+<p>"Admiral Carstairs."<a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></a></p>
+
+<p>Commodore Graham looked annoyed.</p>
+
+<p>"What a nuisance! I am afraid that I must see him, Mr. Hillyard."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," said Hillyard. "Admirals are admirals."</p>
+
+<p>"And they know it!" said Commodore Graham with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard rose and took his hat.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I am very grateful to you, Mr. Hillyard," said Graham. "I can't
+say anything more to you now. Things, as you know, are altogether very
+doubtful. We may slip over into smooth water. On the other hand," and he
+twiddled his thumbs serenely, "we may be at war in a month. If that were
+to be the case, I might want to talk with you again. Will you leave your
+address with Miss Chayne?"</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard was led out by another door, no doubt so that he might not meet
+the impatient admiral. He might have gone away disheartened from that
+interview with its vague promises. But there are other and often surer
+indications than words. When Miss Chayne took down his address, her
+manner had quite changed towards him. She had now a frank and pleasant
+comradeship. The official had gone. Her smile said as plainly as print
+could do: "You are with us now."</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Commodore Graham read through once more the letter of Paul
+Bendish. He turned from that to a cabled report from Khartum of the
+opinion which various governors of districts had formed concerning the
+ways and the discretion of Martin Hillyard. Then once more he rang his
+bell.</p>
+
+<p>"There was a list of suitable private yachts to be made out," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"It is ready," replied Miss Chayne, and she brought it to him.</p>
+
+<p>Over that list Commodore Graham spent a great deal of time. In the end
+his finger rested on the name of the steam-yacht <i>Dragonfly</i>, owned by
+Sir Charles Hardiman, Baronet.<a name="Page_80" id="Page_80"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Enter the Heroine in anything but White Satin</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Goodwood in the year nineteen hundred and fourteen! There were some,
+throwers of stones, searchers after a new thing on which to build a
+reputation, who have been preaching these many years past that the
+temper of England had changed, its solidity all dissolved into froth,
+and that a new race of neurotics was born on Mafeking night. Just
+ninety-nine years before this Goodwood meeting, when Napoleon and the
+veterans of the Imperial Guard were knocking at the gates of Brussels, a
+famous ball was given. Goodwood of the year nineteen-fourteen, <i>mutatis
+mutandis</i>, did but repeat that scene, the same phlegmatic enjoyment of
+the festival, the same light-heartedness and sure confidence under the
+great shadow, and the same ending.</p>
+
+<p>The whispered word went round so that there should be no panic or alarm,
+and of a sudden every officer was gone. Goodwood of nineteen fourteen
+and a July so perfect with sunlight and summer that it seemed some bird
+at last must break the silence of the famed beech-grove! All the world
+went to it. The motor-cars and the coaches streamed up over Duncton Hill
+and wound down the Midhurst Road to pleasant Charlton, with its cottages
+and gardens of flowers. Martin Hillyard went too.</p>
+
+<p>As he walked away from Captain Graham's eyrie he met Sir Chichester
+Splay in Pall Mall.</p>
+
+<p>"Where have you been these eight months?" inquired Sir Chichester. "'The
+Dark Tower' is still running, I see. A good play, Mr. Hillyard."</p>
+
+<p>"But not a great play, of course," said Martin, his lips twitching to a
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been looking for you everywhere," remarked Sir<a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></a> Chichester. "You
+must stay with us for Goodwood. My wife will never forgive me if I don't
+secure you."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard gladly consented. It would be his first visit to the high
+racecourse on the downs&mdash;and&mdash;and he might find Stella Croyle among the
+company. It would be a little easier for him and for her too, if they
+met this second time in a house of many visitors. He had no comfortable
+news to give to her, and he had shrunk from seeking her out in the
+Bayswater Road. Wrap the truth in words however careful, he could not
+but wound her. Yet sooner or later she must hear of his return, and
+avoidance of her would but tell the story more cruelly than his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will gladly come," he said, "if I may come down on the first
+day."</p>
+
+<p>He was delayed in London until midday, and so motored after luncheon
+through Guildford and Chiddingfold and Petworth to Rackham Park. The
+park ran down to the Midhurst Road, and when Hillyard was shown into the
+drawing-room he walked across to the window and looked out over a valley
+of fields and hedges and low, dark ridges to the downs lying blue in the
+sunlight and the black forests on their slopes.</p>
+
+<p>From an embrasure a girl rose with a book in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me introduce myself, Mr. Hillyard. I am Joan Whitworth, and make my
+home here with my aunt. They are all at Goodwood, of course, but they
+should be back at any moment."</p>
+
+<p>She rang the bell and ordered tea. Somewhere Hillyard realised he had
+seen the girl before. She was about eighteen years old, he guessed, very
+pretty, with a wealth of fair hair deepening into brown, dark blue eyes
+shaded with long dark lashes and a colour of health abloom in her
+cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"You have been in Egypt, uncle tells me."</p>
+
+<p>"In the Sudan," Hillyard corrected. "I have been shooting for eight
+months."</p>
+
+<p>"Shooting!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan Whitworth's eyes were turned on him in frank disappointment. "The
+author of 'The Dark Tower'&mdash;shooting!"</p>
+
+<p>There was more than disappointment in her voice. There was a hint of
+disdain.<a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></a></p>
+
+<p>Hillyard did not pursue the argument.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew that I had seen you before. I remember where now. You were with
+Sir Chichester at the first performance of 'The Dark Tower.' I peeped
+out behind the curtain of my box and saw you."</p>
+
+<p>Joan's face relaxed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I was there."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;&mdash;" Hillyard began, and caught himself up. He had been on the
+point of saying that she had a very different aspect in the stalls of
+the Rubicon Theatre. But he looked her up and down and held his peace.
+Yet what he did substitute left him in no better case.</p>
+
+<p>"So you have not gone to the races," he said, and once more her lip
+curled in disdain. She drew herself up to her full height&mdash;she was not
+naturally small, but a good honest piece of English maidenhood.</p>
+
+<p>"Do I look as if I were likely to go to the races?" she asked superbly.</p>
+
+<p>She was dressed in a sort of shapeless flowing gown, saffron in colour,
+and of a material which, to Hillyard's inexperienced eye, seemed canvas.
+It spread about her on the ground, and it was high at the throat. A
+broad starched white collar, like an Eton boy's, surmounted it, and a
+little black tie was fastened in a bow, and scarves floated untidily
+around her.</p>
+
+<p>"No, upon my word you do not," cried Hillyard, nettled at last by her
+haughtiness, and with such a fervour of agreement, that suddenly all her
+youth rose into Joan Whitworth's face and got the better of her pose.
+She laughed aloud, frankly, deliciously. And her laugh was still
+rippling about the room when motor-horns hooted upon the drive.</p>
+
+<p>At once the laughter vanished.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall be amongst horses in a minute," she observed with a sigh. "I
+can smell the stables already," and she retired to her book in the
+embrasure of the window.</p>
+
+<p>A joyous and noisy company burst into the room. Sir Chichester, with
+larger mother-of-pearl buttons on his fawn-coloured overcoat than ever
+decorated even a welshing bookmaker on Brighton Downs, led Hillyard up
+to Lady Splay.</p>
+
+<p>"My wife. Millie, Mr. Hillyard."<a name="Page_83" id="Page_83"></a></p>
+
+<p>Hints of Lady Splay's passion for the last new person had prepared
+Hillyard for a lady at once gushing and talkative. He was surprised to
+find himself shaking hands with a pleasant, unassuming woman of distinct
+good looks. Hillyard was presented to Dennis and Miranda Brown, a young
+couple two years married, and to Mr. Harold Jupp, a man of Hillyard's
+age. Harold Jupp was a queer-looking person with a long, thin, brown
+face, and a straight, wide mouth too close to a small pointed chin.
+Harold Jupp carried about with him a very aura of horses. Horses were
+his only analogy; he thought in terms of horses; and perhaps, as a
+consequence, although he could give no reasons for his judgments upon
+people, those judgments as a rule were conspicuously sound. Jupp shook
+hands with Hillyard, and turned to the student at the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Joan, how have you lived without us? Aren't you bored with your
+large, beautiful self?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan looked at him with an annihilating glance, and crossed the room to
+Millie Splay.</p>
+
+<p>"Bored! How could I be? When I have so many priceless wasted hours to
+make up for!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, my dear," said Millie Splay soothingly. "Come and have some
+tea."</p>
+
+<p>"That's it, Joan," cried Jupp, unrepressed by the girl's contempt. "Come
+and have tea with the barbarians."</p>
+
+<p>Joan addressed herself to Dennis Brown, as one condescending from
+Olympus.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you had a good day."</p>
+
+<p>"Awful," Dennis Brown admitted. "We ought to have had five nice wins on
+form. But they weren't trying, Joan. The way Camomile was pulled. I
+expected to see his neck shut up like a concertina."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, boys," said Sir Chichester. "You'll get it back before
+Friday."</p>
+
+<p>Harold Jupp shook his head doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Never sure about flat-racing. Jumping's the only thing for the poor and
+honest backer."</p>
+
+<p>Joan Wentworth looked about her regretfully.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand now why you have all come back so early."<a name="Page_84" id="Page_84"></a></p>
+
+<p>Miranda Brown ran impulsively to her. She was as pretty as a picture,
+and spoke as a rule in a series of charming explosions. At this moment
+she was deeply wronged.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Joan," she cried. "They would go! And I know that I have backed
+the winner for the last race."</p>
+
+<p>Dennis Brown contemplated his wife with amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"Miranda, you are crazy," he cried. "He can't win."</p>
+
+<p>Harold Jupp agreed regretfully.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a Plater. That's the truth. A harmless, unnecessary Plater. I sit
+at the feet of Miranda Brown, Joan, but as regards horses, she doesn't
+know salt from sugar."</p>
+
+<p>Miranda looked calmly at her watch.</p>
+
+<p>"He has already won."</p>
+
+<p>Tea was brought in and consumed. At the end of it Dennis Brown observed
+to Harold Jupp:</p>
+
+<p>"We ought to arrange what we are going to do to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>Both men rose, and each drew from one pocket a programme of the next
+day's events, and from the other a little paper-covered volume called
+"Form at a Glance." Armed with their paraphernalia, they retired to a
+table in a window.</p>
+
+<p>"Come and live the higher life with us, Joan," cried Harold Jupp. "What
+are you reading?"</p>
+
+<p>"Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society," Joan returned icily.
+But pride burned through the ice, and was audible.</p>
+
+<p>"He sounds just like a Plater," replied Harold Jupp.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Dennis Brown was immersed in his programme.</p>
+
+<p>"The first race is too easy," he announced.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Jupp. "It's sticking out a foot. Peppercorn."</p>
+
+<p>Dennis Brown stared at his friend.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be silly! Simon Jackson will romp home."</p>
+
+<p>Harold Jupp consulted his little brown book.</p>
+
+<p>"Peppercorn ran second to Petronella at Newbury, giving her nine pounds.
+Petronella met Simon Jackson at even weights at Newcastle, and Simon
+Jackson was left in the country. Peppercorn must win."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us hear the names of the others," interrupted Miranda, running up
+to the table.</p>
+
+<p>Harold Jupp read out the names.<a name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Smoky Boy, Paper Crown, House on Fire, Jemima Puddleduck&mdash;&mdash;" and
+Miranda clapped her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Jemima Puddleduck's going to win."</p>
+
+<p>Both the young men stared at her, then both plunged their noses into
+their books.</p>
+
+<p>"Jemima Puddleduck," Dennis Brown read, "out of Side Springs, by the
+Quack."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what a pedigree!" cried Miranda. "She must win."</p>
+
+<p>Jupp wrinkled his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"But she's done nothing. Why must she win?" asked Dennis.</p>
+
+<p>Miranda shrugged her shoulders at the ineffable stupidity of the young
+man with whom she was linked.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to her name! Jemima Puddleduck! She can't lose!"</p>
+
+<p>Both the young men dropped their books and gazed at one another
+hopelessly. Here was the whole scientific business of spotting winners,
+through research into pedigrees, weights, records, the favourite
+distances and race courses of this or that runner, so completely
+disregarded that racing might really be a matter of chance.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you, Miranda," said Harold Jupp. "Jemima Puddleduck's a
+Plater."</p>
+
+<p>The awful condemnation had no sooner been pronounced than the butler,
+with his attendant footman, appeared to remove the tea.</p>
+
+<p>"We have just heard over the telephone, sir," he said to Sir Chichester,
+"the winner of the last race."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" cried Miranda breathlessly. "Which was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Chewing Gum."</p>
+
+<p>Miranda swept round to her husband, radiant. "There, what did I tell
+you? Chewing Gum. What were the odds, Harper?" She turned again to the
+butler. "Oh, you do know, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, madam, twelve to one. They say he rolled home."</p>
+
+<p>Miranda Brown jumped in the air.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I have won a hundred and twenty pounds."</p>
+
+<p>Harold Jupp was sympathetic and consolatory.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it's a mistake, Miranda. I am awfully sorry!<a name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></a> Chewing Gum ran
+nowhere to Earthly Paradise in the Newberry Stakes this year, and
+Earthly Paradise, all out to win, was beaten a month ago by seven
+lengths at Warwick, by Rollicking Lady. And Rollicking Lady was in this
+race too. So you see it's impossible. Chewing Gum's a Plater."</p>
+
+<p>Miranda wrung her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Harold, he <i>did</i> win; didn't he, Harper?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's no doubt about it, madam," replied the butler with dignity. "I
+'av verified the hinformation from other sources."</p>
+
+<p>He left the two experts blinking. Dennis was the first to recover from
+the blow.</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth made you back him, Miranda?"</p>
+
+<p>Miranda sailed to the side of Joan Whitworth.</p>
+
+<p>"You are both of you so very unpleasant that I am seriously inclined not
+to tell you. But I always back horses with the names of things to eat."</p>
+
+<p>The two scientists were dumb. They stared open-mouthed. Somewhere, it
+seemed, a religion tottered upon its foundations. Sacrilege itself could
+hardly have gone further than Miranda Brown had gone.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;but," Harold Jupp stammered feebly, "you don't <i>eat</i> chewing gum."</p>
+
+<p>Miranda flattened him out with a question.</p>
+
+<p>"What becomes of it, then?" and there was no answer. But Miranda was not
+content with her triumph. She must needs carry the war unwisely into the
+enemy's camp.</p>
+
+<p>"After all, what in the world can have possessed you, Dennis, to back a
+silly old mare like Barmaid?"</p>
+
+<p>Dennis Brown saw his opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>"I always back horses with the names of things to kiss," he declared.</p>
+
+<p>Jupp laughed aloud; Sir Chichester chuckled; Miranda looked as haughty
+as good-humour and a dainty personality enabled her to do.</p>
+
+<p>"Vulgar, don't you think?" she asked of Joan. "But racing men <i>are</i>
+vulgar. Oh, Joan! have you thought out your book to-day? Can you now
+begin to write it? Will you write it in the window, with the South Downs
+in front of your eyes? Oh, it'll be wonderful!"<a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a></p>
+
+<p>"What ho!" cried Mr. Jupp. "Miranda has joined the highbrows."</p>
+
+<p>Dennis Brown was too seriously occupied to waste his time upon Miranda's
+enthusiasms.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a pity we can't get the evening papers," he said gloomily. "I
+should dearly like to see the London forecasts for to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"I brought some evening papers down with me," said Hillyard, and "Did
+you?" cried Sir Chichester, and his eyes flashed with interest. But
+Harold Jupp was already out of the room. He came back from the hall with
+a bundle of newspapers in his hands, pink and white and yellow and
+green. He carried them all relentlessly past Sir Chichester to the table
+in the window. Sir Chichester to a newspaper, was a needle to a magnet;
+and while Dennis Brown read out the selections for the morrow's races of
+"The Man of Iron" in the <i>Evening Patriot</i>, and "Hitchy Koo" in <i>The
+Lamppost</i>, Sir Chichester edged nearer and nearer.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Splay invited Hillyard to play croquet with her in the garden; and
+half-way through the game Hillyard approached the question which
+troubled him.</p>
+
+<p>"I was wondering whether I should meet Mrs. Croyle here."</p>
+
+<p>Millicent Splay drove her ball before she answered, and missed her hoop.</p>
+
+<p>"What a bore!" she cried. "Now I shall have to come back again. I didn't
+know that you had met Stella."</p>
+
+<p>"I met her only once. I liked her."</p>
+
+<p>Millie Splay nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad. There's always a room here for Stella. I told her so
+immediately after I met her, and she took me at my word, as I meant her
+to do. But she avoids Goodwood week and festivals generally, and she is
+wise. For though I would take her anywhere myself, you know what long
+memories people have for other people's sins. There might be
+humiliations."</p>
+
+<p>"I understand that," said Hillyard, and he added, "I gathered from Mrs.
+Croyle that you had remained a very staunch friend."</p>
+
+<p>Millie Splay shrugged her shoulders.<a name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I am a middle-aged woman with a middle-aged woman's comprehension.
+There are heaps of things I loathe more and more each day, meanness, for
+instance, and an evil tongue. But, for the other sins, more and more I
+see the case for compassion. Stella was hungry of heart, and she let the
+hunger take her. She had her blind, wild hour or two; she was a fool;
+she was&mdash;well, everything the moralists choose to call her. But she has
+been paying for her hour ever since, and will go on paying. Now, if I
+can only hit your yellow ball from here, I shall have rather a good game
+on."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Splay succeeded and, carrying the four croquet balls with her, went
+round the rest of the hoops and pegged out.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go in and change," she said, and suddenly, in a voice of
+melancholy, she cried, "Oh, I do wish&mdash;&mdash;" and stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it doesn't matter," she answered. But her eyes were upon the
+window, where Joan Whitworth stood in full view in all her disfiguring
+panoply. Lady Splay wrung her hands helplessly. "Oh, dear, dear, if she
+weren't so thorough!" she moaned.</p>
+
+<p>When they returned into the drawing-room, Sir Chichester was still
+standing near to Harold Jupp and Dennis Brown, shifting from one foot to
+another, and making little inarticulate sounds in his throat.</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you two finished yet?" asked Millicent Splay.</p>
+
+<p>"Just," said Dennis Brown, rubbing his hands together with a laugh, "and
+we ought to have four nice wins to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" said Sir Chichester. "Then might I have a newspaper?"</p>
+
+<p>"But of course," said Dennis Brown, and he handed one over the table to
+him. "You haven't been waiting for it all this time, Sir Chichester?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, no, no," exclaimed Sir Chichester, quickly. He glanced with a
+swift and experienced eye down the columns, and tossed the paper aside.</p>
+
+<p>"Might I have another?"</p>
+
+<p>"But of course, sir."<a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></a></p>
+
+<p>The second paper was disposed of as rapidly as the first, and the others
+followed in their turn.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing in them," said Sir Chichester with a resigned air. "Nothing in
+them at all."</p>
+
+<p>Millie Splay laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"All that my husband means is that his name is not to be found in any
+one of them."</p>
+
+<p>"The occurrence seems so rare that he has no great reason to complain,"
+said Hillyard; and, in order to assuage any disappointment which might
+still be rankling in the baronet's bosom, Hillyard related at the
+dinner-table, with the necessary discretions, his election to the mess
+at Senga.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester was elated. "So far away my name is known! Really, that
+is very pleasant hearing!"</p>
+
+<p>There was no offence to him in the reason of his honorary membership of
+the Senga mess, which, however carefully Hillyard sought to hide it,
+could not but peep out. Sir Chichester neither harboured illusions
+himself as to his importance nor sought to foster them in others. There
+was none of the "How do these things get into the papers?" about <i>him</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not a public character. So I have to take trouble to keep myself
+in print. And I do&mdash;a deuce of a lot of trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, why?" asked Harold Jupp, who possessed an inquiring mind and was
+never satisfied by anything but the most definite statements.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I like it," replied Sir Chichester. "I am used to it, and I
+like it. Unless I see my name in real print every morning, I have all
+day the uncomfortable sensation that I am not properly dressed."</p>
+
+<p>Millie Splay and the others round the table, with the exception of one
+person, laughed. To that one person, Sir Chichester here turned
+good-humouredly:</p>
+
+<p>"All right, you can turn your nose up, Joan. It seems extraordinary to
+you that I should like to see my name in print. I can tell you something
+more extraordinary than that. The public likes it too. Just because I am
+not a public character, every reference to me must be of an exclusively
+personal kind. And that's just the sort of reference which the public
+eats. It is much more thrilled by the simple announcement that a Sir<a name="Page_90" id="Page_90"></a>
+Chichester Splay, of whom it has never heard, has bought a new pair of
+purple socks with white stripes than it would be by a full account of a
+Cabinet crisis."</p>
+
+<p>Once more the company laughed at Sir Chichester's apology for his
+foible.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Splay turned to Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"And who is the ingenious man who discovered this way of keeping the
+peace at Senga?"</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard suddenly hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"A great friend of mine," he answered with his eyes on Millie Splay's
+face. "He was with me at Oxford. A Captain Luttrell."</p>
+
+<p>But it was clear almost at once that the name had no associations in
+Lady Splay's mind. She preferred to entertain her friends in the country
+than to live in town. She knew little of what gossip might run the
+streets of London; and since Luttrell was, as yet, like Sir Chichester,
+in that he was not a public character, there had been no wide-run gossip
+about Stella Croyle or himself which Millicent Splay was likely to meet.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard thought at first, that with a woman's self-control she turned a
+blank face to him of a set purpose. But one little movement of hers
+reassured him. Her eyes turned towards Joan Whitworth, as though asking
+whether this Harry Luttrell was a match for her, and she said:</p>
+
+<p>"You must bring your friend down to see us, when he comes back to
+England. We are almost acquainted as it is."</p>
+
+<p>No! Millicent Splay did not connect Harry Luttrell with Stella Croyle.
+It would have been better if Hillyard, that very night, had enlightened
+her. But he was neither a gossip nor a meddler. It was not possible that
+he should.<a name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Summons</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>It is curious to recollect how smoothly the surface water ran during
+that last week of peace. Debates there were, of course, and much
+argument across the table. It was recognised that great changes, social,
+economic, military, would come and great adaptations have to be made.
+But, meanwhile, to use the phrase which was soon to be familiar in half
+a million mouths, people carried on. The Brown couple, for instance.
+Each morning they set out gaily, certain of three or four nice wins;
+each evening they returned after a day which was "simply awful." Harold
+Jupp was at hand with his unfailing remedy.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll go jumping in the winter and get it all back easily. Flat
+racing's no good for the poor. The Lords don't come jumping."</p>
+
+<p>Joan Whitworth carried on too, in her sackcloth and sashes. She was
+moved by the enthusiastic explosions of Miranda Brown to reveal some
+details of the great novel which was then in the process of incubation.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>She</i> insists on being married in a violet dress," said Joan, "with the
+organ playing the 'Funeral March of a Marionette.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, isn't that thrilling!" cried Miranda.</p>
+
+<p>"But why does she insist upon these unusual arrangements?" asked Harold
+Jupp.</p>
+
+<p>Joan brushed his question aside.</p>
+
+<p>"It was symbolical of her."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Linda would have done that," said Miranda. "I suppose her marriage
+turns out very unhappily?"</p>
+
+<p>"It had to," said Joan, quite despondent over this unalterable
+necessity.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, why?" asked Jupp in a perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>"Her husband never understood her."<a name="Page_92" id="Page_92"></a></p>
+
+<p>"What ho!" cried Dennis Brown, looking up from his scientific researches
+into "Form at a Glance."</p>
+
+<p>"I expect that he talked racing all day," said Miranda.</p>
+
+<p>Dennis Brown treated the rejoinder with contempt. His eyes were fixed
+sympathetically on the young writer-to-be.</p>
+
+<p>"I hate crabbing any serious effort to elevate us, Joan, but, honestly,
+doesn't it all sound a little conventional?"</p>
+
+<p>He could have used no epithet more deplorable. Joan shot at him one
+annihilating glance. Miranda bubbled with indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't notice them, Joan dear! They don't know the meaning of words.
+They are ribald, uneducated people. You call your heroine Linda?
+Linda&mdash;what?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Jupp supplied a name.</p>
+
+<p>"Linda Spavinsky," said he. "She comes of the ancient Scottish family of
+that name."</p>
+
+<p>"Pig! O pig!" cried Joan, routed at last from her superior serenity; and
+a second afterwards her eyes danced and with a flash of sound white
+teeth she broke into honest laughter. She did her best to suppress her
+sense of fun, but it would get the better of her from time to time.</p>
+
+<p>This onslaught upon Joan Whitworth took place on the Wednesday evening.
+Sir Chichester came into the room as it ended, with a telegram in his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Mario Escobar wires, Millie, that he is held up in London by press of
+work and will only be able to run down here on Friday for the night."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"Mario Escobar?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know him?" asked Millie Splay.</p>
+
+<p>"Slightly," answered Hillyard. "Press of work! What does he do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Runs about with the girls," said Dennis Brown.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester Splay would not have the explanation.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, my dear Dennis, nonsense, nonsense! He has a great many
+social engagements of the most desirable kind. He is, I believe,
+interested in some shipping firms."</p>
+
+<p>"I like him," said Millie Splay.<a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></a></p>
+
+<p>"And so do I," added Joan, "very much indeed." The statement was
+defiantly thrown at Harold Jupp.</p>
+
+<p>"I think he is charming," said Miranda.</p>
+
+<p>Harold Jupp looked from one to the other.</p>
+
+<p>"That seems to settle it, doesn't it? But&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But what?" asked Sir Chichester.</p>
+
+<p>"Need we listen to the ridiculous exhibitions of male jealousy?" Miranda
+asked plaintively.</p>
+
+<p>"But," Harold Jupp repeated firmly, "I do like a man to have another
+address besides his club. Now, I will lay a nice five to one that no one
+in this room knows where Mario Escobar goes when he goes home."</p>
+
+<p>A moment's silence followed upon Harold Jupp's challenge. To the men,
+the point had its importance. The women did not appreciate the
+importance, but they recognised that their own menfolk did, and they did
+not interrupt.</p>
+
+<p>"It's true," said Sir Chichester, "I always hear from him with his club
+as his address. But it simply means that he lives at an hotel and is not
+sure that he will remain on."</p>
+
+<p>Thus the little things of every day occupied the foreground of Rackham
+Park. Millicent Splay had her worries of which Joan Whitworth was the
+cause. She loved Joan; she was annoyed with Joan; she admired Joan; she
+was amused at Joan; and she herself could never have told you which of
+these four emotions had the upper hand. So inextricably were they
+intermingled.</p>
+
+<p>She poured them out to Martin Hillyard, as they drove through the Park
+at Midhurst on the Thursday morning.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of Joan?" she asked. "She is beautiful, isn't she,
+with that mass of golden hair and her eyes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she is," answered Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"And what a fright she is making of herself! She isn't <i>dressed</i> at all,
+is she? She is just&mdash;protected by her clothes."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard laughed and Millicent Splay sighed. "And I did hope she would
+have got over it all by Goodwood. But no! Really I could slap her. But I
+might have known! Joan never does things by halves."</p>
+
+<p>"She seems thorough," said Hillyard, although he remem<a name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></a>bered, with some
+doubts as to the truth of his comment, moments now and again when more
+primitive impulses had bubbled up in Joan Whitworth.</p>
+
+<p>"Thorough! Yes, that's the word. Oh, Mr. Hillyard, there was a time when
+she really dressed&mdash;<i>dressed</i>, you understand. My word, she was thorough
+then, too. I remember coming out of the Albert Hall on a Melba
+afternoon, when we could get nothing but a hansom cab, and a policeman
+actually had to lift her up into it like a big baby because her skirt
+was so tight. And look at her now!"</p>
+
+<p>Millicent Splay thumped the side of the car in her vexation.</p>
+
+<p>"But you mustn't think she's a fool." Lady Splay turned menacingly on
+the silent Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't," he protested.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the last thing to say about her."</p>
+
+<p>"I never said it," declared Martin Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"I should have lost my faith in you, if you had," rejoined Millicent
+Splay, even now hardly mollified.</p>
+
+<p>But she could not avoid the subject. Here was a new-comer to Rackham
+Park. She could not bear that he should carry away a wrong impression of
+her darling.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you the truth about Joan. She has lived her sheltered life
+with us, and no real things have yet come near her. No real troubles, no
+deep joys. Her parents even died when she was too young to know them.
+But she is eighteen and alive to her finger-tips. Therefore
+she's&mdash;expectant."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Hillyard agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"She is searching for the meaning, for the secrets of life, sure that
+there is a meaning, sure that there are secrets, if only she could get
+hold of them. But she hasn't got hold of them. She runs here. She runs
+there. She explores, she experiments. That's why she's dressed like a
+tramp and thinking out a book where the heroine gets married to the
+Funeral March of a Marionette. Oh, my dear person, it just means, as it
+always means with us poor creatures, that the right man hasn't come
+along."</p>
+
+<p>Millie Splay leaned back in her seat.</p>
+
+<p>"When he does!" she cried. "When he does! Did you see the magnolia this
+morning? It burst into flower during <a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></a>the night. Joan! I thought once
+that it might be Harold Jupp. But it isn't."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Splay spoke with discouragement. She had the matchmaking fever in
+her blood. Martin Hillyard remembered her glance when he had casually
+spoken of Harry Luttrell. Then she startled him with words which he was
+never to forget, and in which he chose to find a real profundity.</p>
+
+<p>"The right man has not come along. So Joan mistakes anything odd for
+something great, and thinks that to be unusual is to be strong. It's a
+mood of young people who have not yet waked up."</p>
+
+<p>They drove to the private stand and walked through into the paddock.
+Millie Splay looked round at the gay and brilliant throng. She sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"There she is, moping in the drawing-room over Prince
+Hohenstiel&mdash;whatever his name is. She <i>won't</i> come to Goodwood. No, she
+just won't."</p>
+
+<p>Yet Joan Whitworth did come to Goodwood that year, though not upon this
+day.</p>
+
+<p>No one in that household had read the newspapers so carefully each day
+as Martin Hillyard. As the prospect darkened each morning, he was in a
+distress lest a letter should not have been forwarded from his flat in
+London, or should have been lost in the post. Each evening when the
+party returned from the races his first question asked whether there was
+no telegram awaiting him. So regular and urgent were his inquiries that
+the house-party could not be ignorant of his preoccupation. And on the
+afternoon of the Thursday a telegram in its orange envelope was lying
+upon the hall-table.</p>
+
+<p>"It's for you, Mr. Hillyard," said Lady Splay.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard held it in his hands. So the summons had come, the summons
+hoped for, despaired of, made so often into a whip wherewith he lashed
+his arrogance, the summons to serve.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to go up to town this evening," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Anxious faces gathered about him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't do that!" said Harold Jupp. "We have just got to like you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, wait until to-morrow, my dear boy," Sir Chichester <a name="Page_96" id="Page_96"></a>suggested.
+Even Joan Whitworth descended to earth and requested that he should
+stay.</p>
+
+<p>"It's awfully kind of you," stammered Martin. "But I am afraid that this
+is very important."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Splay was practical.</p>
+
+<p>"Hadn't you better see first?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard, with his thoughts playing swiftly in the future like a rapier,
+was still standing stock-still with the unopened telegram in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," he said. "But I know already what it is."</p>
+
+<p>The anxious little circle closed nearer as he tore open the envelope. He
+read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>I have refused the Duke. Money is cash&mdash;I mean trash.
+Little one I am yours.</i>&mdash;<span class="smcap">Linda Spavinsky</span>."</p></div>
+
+<p>The telegram had been sent that afternoon from Chichester.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard gazed around at the serious faces which hemmed him in. It
+became a contest as to whose face should hold firm longest. Joan herself
+was the first to flee, and she was found rocking to and fro in silent
+laughter in a corner of the library. Then Hillyard himself burst into a
+roar.</p>
+
+<p>"I bought that fairly," he admitted, and he went up several points in
+the estimation of them all.</p>
+
+<p>The last day of the races came&mdash;all sunshine and hot summer; lights and
+shadows chasing across the downs, the black slopes of Charlton forest on
+the one side, parks and green fields and old brown houses, sloping to
+the silver Solent, upon the other; and in the centre of the plain, by
+Bosham water, the spire of Chichester Cathedral piercing the golden air.
+Paddock and lawn and the stands were filled until about two in the
+afternoon. Then the gaps began to show to those who were concerned to
+watch. Especially about the oval railings in the paddock, within which,
+dainty as cats and with sleek shining skins, the racehorses stepped, the
+crowd grew thin. And in a few moments, the word had run round like fire,
+"The officers had gone."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard stood reflecting upon the stupendous fact. Never <a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></a>had he so
+bitterly regretted that physical disqualification which banned him from
+their company. Never had he so envied Luttrell. He was in the uttermost
+depression when a small, brown-gloved hand touched his arm. He turned
+and saw Joan Whitworth at his side, her lovely face alive with
+excitement, her eyes most friendly. It was hardly at all the Joan he
+knew. Joan had courage, but to face Goodwood in the clothes she affected
+at Rackham Park was beyond it. From her grey silk stockings and su&egrave;de
+shoes to the little smart blue hat which sat so prettily on her hair,
+she was, as Millicent Splay would have admitted, really dressed.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a real telegram for you," she said. She held it out to him
+enclosed in an envelope which had been already opened.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Please come to see me&mdash;Graham</i>," he read, and the actual receipt of
+the message stirred within him such a whirl of emotion that, for a
+moment or two, Joan Whitworth spoke and he was not aware of it.
+Suddenly, however, he understood that she was speaking words of
+importance.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope I did right to open it," she said. "Colonel Brockley rode over
+this morning to tell us that his son had been recalled to his battalion
+by a telegram. I knew you were expecting one. When this one came, I
+thought that it might be important and that you ought to have it at
+once. On the other hand it might be another telegram," and her face
+dimpled into smiles, "from Linda Spavinsky. I didn't know what to do
+about it. But Mario Escobar was quite certain that I ought to open it."</p>
+
+<p>"Mario Escobar?" cried Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He had just arrived. He was quite certain that we ought to open
+it, so we did."</p>
+
+<p>"We?" A note of regret in his voice made her ask anxiously:</p>
+
+<p>"Was I wrong?"</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard hastened to reassure her.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit. Of course you were quite right, and I am very grateful."</p>
+
+<p>Joan's face cleared again.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, I thought that if it was important I could bring it over and
+drive you back again."<a name="Page_98" id="Page_98"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Will you?" Hillyard asked eagerly. "But now you are here you ought to
+stay."</p>
+
+<p>Joan would not hear of the proposal, and Hillyard himself was in a fever
+to be off. They found Sir Chichester and his wife in the paddock, and
+Hillyard wished his hosts good-bye. Mario Escobar, who had driven over
+with Joan Whitworth, was talking to them. Escobar turned to Martin
+Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"We met at Sir Charles Hardiman's supper party. You have not forgotten?
+You are off? A new play, I hope, to go into rehearsal."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled and bowed, and waved his hands. Hillyard went away with Joan
+Whitworth and mounted beside her into a little two-seated car which she
+had been accustomed to drive in her unregenerate days. She had not
+forgotten her skill, and she sent the little car spinning up and down
+the road into the hills. It was an afternoon of blue and gold, with the
+larks singing out of sight in the sky. The road wound up and down, dark
+hedges on one side, fields yellow with young wheat upon the other, and
+the scent of the briar-rose in the air. Joan said very little, and
+Hillyard was content to watch her as she drove, the curls blowing about
+her ears and her hands steady and sure upon the wheel as she swung the
+car round the corners and folds of the hills. Once she asked of him:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you glad to go?"</p>
+
+<p>He made no pretence of misunderstanding her.</p>
+
+<p>"Very," he answered. "If the great trial is coming, I want to fall back
+into the rank and file. Pushing and splashing is for peace times."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I understand that!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>These were the young days. The jealousies of Departments, the intrigues
+to pull this man down and put that man up, not because of his capacity
+or failure, but because he fitted or did not fit the inner politics of
+the Office, the capture of honours by the stay-at-homes&mdash;all the little
+miseries and horrors that from time immemorial have disfigured the
+management of wars&mdash;they lay in the future. With millions of people, as
+with this couple speeding among the uplands, the one thought was&mdash;the
+great test is at hand.</p>
+
+<p>"You go up to London to-night, and it may be a long <a name="Page_99" id="Page_99"></a>while before we see
+you," said Joan. She brought the car to a halt on the edge of Duncton
+Hill. "Look for luck and for memory at the Weald of Sussex," she cried
+with a little catch in her throat.</p>
+
+<p>Fields and great trees, and here and there the white smoke of a passing
+train and beyond the Blackdown and the misty slopes of Leith
+Hill&mdash;Hillyard was never to forget it, neither that scene nor the eager
+face and shining eyes of Joan Whitworth against the blue and gold of the
+summer afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>"You will remember that you have friends here, who will be glad to hear
+news of you," she said, and she threw in the clutch and started the car
+down the hill.<a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Stella Runs To Earth</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>"You have been back in England long?" asked Stella Croyle.</p>
+
+<p>"A little while," said Hillyard evasively.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first week of September. But since his return from Rackham
+Park to London his days had been passed in the examination of files of
+documents; and what little time he had enjoyed free from that labour had
+been given to quiet preparations for his departure.</p>
+
+<p>"You might have come to see me," Stella Croyle suggested. "You knew that
+I wished to see you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but I have been very busy," he answered. "I am going away."</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle looked at him curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"You too! You have joined up?"</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"No good," he answered. "I told you my lungs were my weak point. I am
+turned down&mdash;and I am going abroad. It's not very pleasant to find
+oneself staying on in London, going to a little dinner party here and
+there where all the men are oldish, when all of one's friends have
+gone."</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle's face and voice softened.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I can understand that," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard watched her narrowly, but there was no doubt that she was
+sincere. She had received him with an air of grievance, and a hard
+accent in her voice. But she was entering now into a comprehension of
+the regrets which must be troubling him.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry," she continued. "I never cared very much for women. I have
+very few friends amongst them. And so I am losing&mdash;every one." She held
+out her hand to him in sympathy. "But if I were a man and had been
+turned down <a name="Page_101" id="Page_101"></a>by the doctors, I don't think that I could stay. I should
+go like you and hide."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled and poured out two cups of tea.</p>
+
+<p>"That is a habit of yours, even though you are not a man," Hillyard
+replied.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"You run away and hide."</p>
+
+<p>Stella looked at her visitor in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Who told you that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sir Charles Hardiman."</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle was silent for a few moments.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's true," and she laughed suddenly. "When things go wrong, I
+become rather impossible. I have often made up my mind to live entirely
+in the country, but I never carry the plan out."</p>
+
+<p>She let Hillyard drink his tea and light a cigarette before she
+approached the question which was torturing her.</p>
+
+<p>"You had a good time in the Sudan!" she began. "Lots of heads?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I had a perfect time."</p>
+
+<p>"And your friend? Captain Luttrell. Did you meet him?"</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard had pondered on the answer which he would give to her when she
+asked that question. If he answered, "Yes,"&mdash;why, then he must go on, he
+must tell her something of what passed between Luttrell and himself, how
+he delivered his message and what answer he received. Let him wrap that
+answer up in words, however delicate and vague, she would see straight
+to the answer. Her heart would lead her there. To plead forgetfulness
+would be merely to acknowledge that he slighted her; and she would not
+believe him. So he lied.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I never met Luttrell. He was away down in Khordofan when I was on
+the White Nile."</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle had turned a little away from Hillyard when she put the
+question; and she sat now with her face averted for a long while.
+Nothing broke the silence but the ticking of the clock.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry," said Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt her disappointment was bitter. She had counted very much, no
+doubt, on this chance of the two men meeting; <a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></a>on her message reaching
+her lover, and a "little word" now and again from him coming to her
+hands. Some morning she would wake up and find an envelope in the
+familiar writing waiting upon the tray beside her tea&mdash;that, no doubt,
+had been the hope which she had lived on this many a day. Hillyard was
+not fool enough to hold that he understood either the conclusions at
+which women arrived, or the emotions by which they jumped to them. But
+he attributed these hopes and thoughts with some confidence to Stella
+Croyle&mdash;until she turned and showed him her face. The sympathy and
+gentleness had gone from it. She was white with passion and her eyes
+blazed.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you lie to me?" she cried. "I met Harry this morning."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard was more startled by the news of Luttrell's presence in London
+than confused by the detection of his lie.</p>
+
+<p>"Harry Luttrell!" he exclaimed. "You are sure? He is in England?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I met him in Piccadilly outside Jerningham's"&mdash;she mentioned the
+great outfitters and provision merchants&mdash;"he told me that he had run
+across you in the Sudan. What made you say that you hadn't?"</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard was taken at a loss.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" she insisted.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard could see no escape except by the way of absolute frankness.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I gave him your message, Mrs. Croyle," he replied slowly, "and
+I judged that he was not going to answer it."</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle was inclined to think that the world was banded against
+her, to deceive her and to do her harm. They had all been engaged,
+Hardiman and the rest of them, in keeping Harry Luttrell away from her:
+in defending him, whether he wished it or not, from the wiles of the
+enchantress. Stella Croyle was quick enough in the up-take where her
+wounded heart was not concerned, but she was never very clear in any
+judgment which affected Harry Luttrell. Passion and disappointment and
+hope drew veils between the truth and her, and she dived below the plain
+reason to this <a name="Page_103" id="Page_103"></a>or that far-fetched notion for the springs of his
+conduct. Almost she had persuaded herself that Harry Luttrell, by the
+powerful influence of friends, was being kept against his will from her
+side. Her anger against Hillyard had sprung, not from the mere fact that
+he had lied to her, but from her fancy that he had joined the imaginary
+band of her enemies. She understood now that in this she had been wrong.</p>
+
+<p>"I see," she said gently. "It was to spare me pain?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Stella Croyle laughed&mdash;and with triumph. She showed to Hillyard
+a face from which all the anger had gone.</p>
+
+<p>"You need not have been so anxious to spare me. Harry is coming here
+this afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>She saw the incredulity flicker in Hillyard's eyes, but she did not
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she asserted. "He goes down this evening to a camp in the New
+Forest where his battalion is waiting to go to France. He starts at six
+from Waterloo. He promised to run in here first."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard looked at the clock. It was already half-past four. He had not
+the faintest hope that Luttrell would come. Stella had no doubt pressed
+him to come. She had probably been a little importunate. Luttrell's
+promise was an excuse, just an excuse to be rid of her&mdash;nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>"Luttrell has probably a great deal to do on this last afternoon," he
+suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, he won't be able to stay long," Stella Croyle agreed.
+"Still, five minutes are worth a good deal, aren't they, if you have
+waited for them two years?"</p>
+
+<p>She was impenetrable in her confidence. It clothed her about like
+armour. Not for a moment would she doubt&mdash;she dared not! Harry was
+coming back to the house that afternoon. Would he break something&mdash;some
+little china ornament upon the mantel-shelf? He generally knocked over
+something. What would it be to-day, the mandarin with the nodding head,
+or the funny little pot-bellied dwarf which she had picked up at
+Christie's the day before? Stella smiled delightedly as she selected
+this and that of her little treasures for destruction. Oh, to-day Harry
+Luttrell could sweep every <a name="Page_104" id="Page_104"></a>glass or porcelain trinket she possessed
+into the grate&mdash;when once he had passed through the doorway&mdash;when once
+again he stood within her room. She sat with folded hands, hope like a
+rose in her heart, sure of him, so sure of him that she did not even
+watch the hands of her clock.</p>
+
+<p>But the hands moved on.</p>
+
+<p>"I will stay, if I may," said Hillyard uncomfortably. "I will go, of
+course, when&mdash;&mdash;" and he could not bring himself to complete the
+sentence.</p>
+
+<p>Stella, however, added the words, though in a quieter voice and with
+less triumph than she had used before.</p>
+
+<p>"When he comes. Yes, do stay. I shall be glad."</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the day drew in. The sunlight died away from the trees in the
+park. In the tiny garden great shadows fell. The dusk gathered and
+Hillyard and Stella Croyle sat without a word in the darkening room. But
+Stella had lost her pride of carriage. On the mantelpiece the clock
+struck the hour&mdash;six little tinkling silvery strokes. At that moment a
+guard was blowing his whistle on a platform of Waterloo and a train
+beginning slowly to move.</p>
+
+<p>"He will have missed his train," said Stella in an unhappy whisper. "He
+will be here later."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear," replied Hillyard, and leaning forward he took and gently
+shook her hand. "Soldiers don't miss their trains."</p>
+
+<p>Stella did not answer. She sat on until the lamps were lit in the
+streets outside and in this room the dusk had changed to black night.</p>
+
+<p>"No, he will not come," she said at last, in a low wail of anguish. She
+rose and turned to Hillyard. Her face glimmered against the darkness
+deathly white and her eyes shone with sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>"It was kind and wise of you to wish to spare me," she said. "Oh, I can
+picture to myself how coldly he heard you. He never meant to come here
+this afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle was wrong, just as Hillyard had been. Harry Luttrell had
+meant to pay his farewell visit to Stella Croyle, knowing well that he
+was unlikely ever to come back, and understanding that he owed her it.
+But an incident drove the whole matter from his thoughts, and the
+incident was just <a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></a>one instance to show how wide a gulf now separated
+these two.</p>
+
+<p>He had called at a nursing home close to Portland Place where a Colonel
+Oakley lay dying of a malignant disease. Oakley had been the chief
+spirit of reviving the moral and the confidence of the disgraced
+Clayfords. He had laboured unflinchingly to restore its discipline, to
+weld it into one mind, with dishonour to redeem, and a single arm to
+redeem it. He had lived for nothing else&mdash;until the internal trouble
+laid him aside. Luttrell called at half-past three to tell him that all
+was well with his old battalion, and was met by a nurse who shook her
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"The last two days he has been lying, except for a minute here and
+there, in a coma. You may see him if you like, but it is a question of
+hours."</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell went into the bedroom where the sick man lay, so thin of face
+and hand, so bloodless. But it seemed that the Fates wished to deal the
+Colonel one last ironic stroke, before they let him die. For, while
+Luttrell yet stood in the room, Colonel Oakley's eyes opened. This last
+moment of consciousness was his, the very last; and while it still
+endured, suddenly, down Portland Place, with its drums beating, its
+soldiers singing, marched a battalion. The song and the music swelled,
+the tramp of young, active, vigorous soldiers echoed and reached down
+the quiet street. Colonel Oakley turned his face to his pillow and burst
+into tears; the bitterness of death was given him to drink in
+overflowing measure. It seemed as though a jibe was flung at him.</p>
+
+<p>The tramp of the battalion had not yet died away when Oakley sank again
+into unconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p>"It was pretty rough that he should just wake up to hear that and to
+know that he would never have part in it, eh?" said Luttrell, speaking
+in a low voice more to himself than to the nurse. "What he did for us!
+Pretty hard treatment, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell left the home with one thought filling his mind&mdash;the regiment.
+It had got to justify all Oakley's devotion; it had got somehow to make
+amends to him, even if he never was to know of it, for this last unfair
+stroke of destiny. Luttrell walked across London, dwelling upon the
+qualities of individual men in the company which was his command&mdash;how
+this <a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></a>man was quick, and that man stupid, and that other inclined to
+swank, and a fourth had a gift for reading maps, and a fifth would make
+a real marksman; and so he woke up to find himself before the bookstall
+in the station at Waterloo. Then he remembered the visit he had
+promised, but there was no longer any time. He took the train to the New
+Forest, and three days later went to France.</p>
+
+<p>But of Luttrell's visit to Colonel Oakley, Stella Croyle never knew.
+And, again, very likely it would not have mattered if she had. They were
+parted too widely for insight and clear vision.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Hillyard carried away with him a picture of Stella's haunted and
+despairing face. It was over against him as he dined at his club,
+gleaming palely from out of darkness, the lips quivering, the eyes sad
+with all the sorrows of women. He could blame neither the one nor the
+other&mdash;neither Stella Croyle nor Harry Luttrell. One heart called to the
+other across too wide a gulf, and this heart on the hither side was
+listening to quite other voices and was deaf to her cry for help. But
+Hillyard was on the road along which Millicent Splay had already
+travelled. More and more he felt the case for compassion. He carried the
+picture of Stella's face home with him. It troubled his sleep; by
+constant gazing upon it he became afraid....</p>
+
+<p>He waked with a start to hear a question whispered at his ear. "Where is
+she? How has she passed this night?" The morning light was glimmering
+between the curtains. The room was empty. Yet surely those words had
+been spoken, actually spoken by a human voice.... He took his telephone
+instrument in his hand and lifted the receiver. In a little while&mdash;but a
+while too long for his impatience&mdash;his call was acknowledged at the
+exchange. He gave Stella Croyle's number and waited. Whilst he waited he
+looked at his watch. The time was a quarter past seven.</p>
+
+<p>An unfamiliar and sleepy voice answered him from her house.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you put me on to Mrs. Croyle?" he requested, and the reply came
+back:<a name="Page_107" id="Page_107"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Croyle went away with her maid last night."</p>
+
+<p>"Last night?" cried Hillyard incredulously. "But I did not leave the
+house myself until well after six, and she had then no plans for
+leaving."</p>
+
+<p>Further details, however, were given to him. Mrs. Croyle had called up a
+garage whence cars can be hired. She had packed hurriedly. She had left
+at nine by motor.</p>
+
+<p>"Where for?" asked Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>The name of an hotel in the pine country of Surrey was given.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Hillyard, and he rang off.</p>
+
+<p>She had run to earth in her usual way, when trouble and grief broke
+through her woman's armour and struck her down&mdash;that was all! Hillyard
+lighted a cigarette and rang for his tea. Yes, that was all! She was
+acting true to her type, as the jargon has it. But against his will, her
+face took shape before him, as he had seen it in the darkness of her
+room and ever since&mdash;ever since!</p>
+
+<p>He rang again, and more insistently. He possessed a small, swift
+motor-car. Before the clocks of London had struck eight he was
+travelling westwards along the King's Road. Hillyard was afraid. He did
+not formulate his fears. He was not sure of what he feared. But he was
+afraid&mdash;terribly afraid; and for the first time anger rose up in his
+heart against his friend. Luttrell! Harry Luttrell! At this very moment
+he was changing direction in columns of fours upon the drill ground,
+happy in the smooth execution of the man&oelig;uvre by his men and
+untroubled by any thought of the distress of Stella Croyle. Well, little
+things must give way to great&mdash;women to the exigencies of drill!</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Hillyard grew more afraid, and yet more afraid. He swept down
+the hill to Cobham, passed between the Hut and the lake, and was through
+Ripley before the shutters in the shops were down. The dew was heavy in
+the air; all the fresh, clean smell of the earth was in that September
+morning. And as yet the morning itself was only half awake. At last the
+Hog's Back rose, and at a little inn, known for its comfort&mdash;and its
+<i>chef</i>&mdash;Hillyard's car was stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Croyle?" Hillyard asked at the office.<a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Her maid is here," said the girl clerk, and pointed.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard turned to a girl, pretty and, by a few years, younger than
+Stella Croyle.</p>
+
+<p>"I have orders not to wake Mrs. Croyle until she rings," said the maid.
+Jenny Prask, she was called, and she spoke with just a touch of pleasant
+Sussex drawl. "Mrs. Croyle has not been sleeping well, and she looked
+for a good night's rest in country air."</p>
+
+<p>The maid was so healthful in her appearance, so reasonable in her
+argument, that Hillyard's terrors, fostered by solitude, began to lose
+their vivid colours.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand that," he stammered. "Yet, Jenny&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Jenny Prask smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"You are Mr. Hillyard, I think?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard my mistress speak of you." Hillyard knew enough of maids
+to understand that "mistress" was an unusual word with them. Here, it
+seemed, was a paragon of maids, who was quite content to be publicly
+Stella Croyle's maid, whose gentility suffered no offence by the
+recognition of a mistress.</p>
+
+<p>"If you wish, I will wake her."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny Prask went up the stairs, Hillyard at her heels. She knocked upon
+the door. No answer was returned. She opened it and entered.</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle was up and dressed. She was sitting at a table by the
+window with some sheets of notepaper and some envelopes in front of her,
+and her back was towards Hillyard and the open door. But she was dressed
+as she had been dressed the evening before when he had left her; the
+curtains in the room were drawn, and the electric lights on the
+writing-table and the walls were still burning. The bed had not been
+slept in.</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle rose and turned towards her visitors. She tottered a
+little as she stood up, and her eyes were dazed.</p>
+
+<p>"Why have you come here?" she asked faintly, and she fell rather than
+sat again in her chair.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard sprang forward and tore the curtains aside so <a name="Page_109" id="Page_109"></a>that the
+sunlight poured into the room, and Stella opened and shut her eyes with
+a contraction of pain.</p>
+
+<p>"I had so many letters to write," she explained, "I thought that I would
+sit up and get through with them."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard looked at the table. There were great black dashes on the
+notepaper and lines, and here and there a scribbled picture of a face,
+and perhaps now and again half a word. She had sat at that table all
+night and had not even begun a letter. Hillyard's heart was torn with
+pity as he looked from her white, tired face to the sheets of notepaper.
+What misery and unhappiness did those broad, black dashes and idle lines
+express?</p>
+
+<p>"You must have some breakfast," he said. "I'll order it and have it
+ready for you downstairs by the time you are ready. Then I'll take you
+back to London."</p>
+
+<p>The blood suddenly mounted into her face.</p>
+
+<p>"You will?" she cried wildly. "In a reserved compartment, so that I may
+do nothing rash and foolish? Are you going to be kind too?"</p>
+
+<p>She broke into a peal of shrill and bitter laughter. Then her head went
+down upon her hands, and she gave herself up to such a passion of
+sobbing and tears as was quite beyond all Hillyard's experience. Yet he
+would rather hear those sobs and see her bowed shoulders shaking under
+the violence of them than listen again to the dreadful laughter which
+had gone before. He had not the knowledge which could enable him to
+understand her sudden outburst, nor did he acquire that knowledge until
+long afterwards. But he understood that quite unwittingly he had touched
+some painful chord in that wayward nature.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to take you back in my motor-car," he said. "I'll be
+downstairs with the breakfast ready."</p>
+
+<p>She had probably eaten nothing, he reckoned, since teatime the day
+before. Food was the steadying thing she needed now. He went to the door
+which Jenny Prask held open for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't leave her!" he breathed in a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny Prask smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Not me, sir," she said fervently.<a name="Page_110" id="Page_110"></a></p>
+
+<p>Hillyard remembered with comfort some words which she had spoken in
+appreciation of the loving devotion of her maid.</p>
+
+<p>"In three-quarters of an hour," said Jenny; and later on that morning,
+with a great fear removed from his heart, Hillyard drove Stella Croyle
+back to London.<a name="Page_111" id="Page_111"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">In Barcelona</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>It was nine o'clock on a night of late August.</p>
+
+<p>The restaurant of the Maison Dor&eacute;e in the Plaza Catalu&ntilde;a at Barcelona
+looks across the brilliantly-lighted square from the south side. On the
+pavement in front of it and of its neighbour, the Caf&eacute; Continental, the
+vendors of lottery tickets were bawling the lucky numbers they had for
+sale. Even in this wide space the air was close and stale. Within, a few
+people left over in the town had strayed in to dine at tables placed
+against the walls under flamboyant decorations in the style of
+Fragonard. At a table Hillyard was sitting alone over his coffee. Across
+the room one of the panels represented a gleaming marble terrace
+overlooking a country-side bathed in orange light; and on the terrace
+stood a sedan chair with drawn curtains, and behind the chair stood a
+saddled white horse. Hillyard had dined more than once during the last
+few months at the Maison Dor&eacute;e; and the problem of that picture had
+always baffled him. A lovers' tryst! But where were the lovers? In some
+inner room shaded from the outrage of that orange light which never was
+on sea or land? Or in the sedan chair? Or were their faces to be
+discovered, as in the puzzle pictures, in the dappling of the horse's
+flanks, or the convolutions of the pillars which supported the terrace
+roof, or the gilded ornamentations of the chair itself? Hillyard was
+speculating for the twentieth time on these important matters with a
+vague hope that one day the door of the sedan chair would open, when
+another door opened&mdash;the door of the restaurant. A sharp-visaged man
+with a bald forehead, a clerk, one would say, or a commercial traveller,
+looked round the room and went forward to Hillyard's table. He went
+quite openly.<a name="Page_112" id="Page_112"></a></p>
+
+<p>The two men shook hands, and the new-comer seated himself in front of
+Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"You will take coffee and a cigar?" Hillyard asked in Spanish, and gave
+the order to the waiter.</p>
+
+<p>The two men talked of the heat, the cinematograph theatres at the side
+of the Plaza, the sea-bathing at Caldetas, and then the sharp-faced man
+leaned forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Ramon says there is no truth in the story, se&ntilde;or."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard struck a match and held it to his companion's cigar.</p>
+
+<p>"And you trust Ramon, Se&ntilde;or Baeza?"</p>
+
+<p>Lopez Baeza leaned back with a gesture of unqualified assent.</p>
+
+<p>"As often and often you can trust the peasant of my country," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard agreed with a nod. He gazed about the room.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no one interesting here to-night," he said idly.</p>
+
+<p>"No," answered Lopez Baeza. "The theatres are closed, the gay people
+have gone to St. Sebastian, the families to the seaside. Ouf, but it is
+hot."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard dropped his voice to a whisper and returned to the subject of
+his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, my friend, it is of so much importance that we should make no
+mistake here."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Claro!</i>" returned Lopez Baeza. "But listen to me, se&ntilde;or. You know that
+our banks are behind the times and our post offices not greatly trusted.
+We have therefore a class of messengers."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"I know of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Good. They are not educated. Most of them can neither read nor write.
+They are simply peasants. Yet they are trusted to carry the most
+important letters and great sums of money in gold and silver from place
+to place. And never do they betray their trust. It is unknown. Why,
+se&ntilde;or, I know myself of cases where rich men have entrusted their
+daughters to the care of the messengers, sure that in this way their
+daughters will arrive safely at their destination."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Hillyard. "I know of these men."<a name="Page_113" id="Page_113"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Ramon Castillo is as honest as the best of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but he is not one of them," said Hillyard. "He is a stevedore with
+thirty years of the quayside and at the port of Barcelona, where there
+are German ships with their officers and crews on board."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard was troubled. He drew from his pocket creased letters and read
+them for the twentieth time with a frowning countenance.</p>
+
+<p>"There is so much at stake. Two hundred feluccas&mdash;two hundred
+motor-driven feluccas! And eighteen thousand men, on shore and sea? See
+what it means! On our side, the complete surveillance of the Western
+Mediterranean! On the other side&mdash;against us&mdash;two hundred travelling
+supply bases for submarines, two hundred signal stations. I want to be
+sure! I want neither to give the enemy the advantage by putting him upon
+his guard, nor to miss the great opportunity myself."</p>
+
+<p>Lopez Baeza nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not talk with Ramon Castillo yourself?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"That is what I want to do."</p>
+
+<p>"I will arrange for it. When?"</p>
+
+<p>"To-night," said Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>Lopez Baeza lifted his hands in deprecation.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I can take you to his house&mdash;now. But, se&ntilde;or, Ramon is a poor man.
+He lives in a little narrow street."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard looked quietly at Lopez Baeza. He had found men on the
+Mediterranean littoral whom he could trust with his life and everything
+that was his. But a good working principle was to have not overmuch
+faith in any one. A noisome little street in the lower quarters of
+Barcelona&mdash;who could tell what might happen after one had plunged into
+it?</p>
+
+<p>"I will come with you," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Good," said Lopez. "I will go on ahead." And once more Hillyard's quiet
+eyes rested upon Baeza's face. "It is not wise that we should walk out
+together. There is no one here, it is true, but in the chairs outside
+the caf&eacute;s&mdash;who shall say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. You go on ahead," Hillyard agreed. "That is wise."</p>
+
+<p>Lopez rose.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me five minutes, se&ntilde;or. Then down the Rambla.<a name="Page_114" id="Page_114"></a> The second turning
+to the right, beyond the Opera House. You will see me at the corner.
+When you see me, follow!"</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard rose and shook hands cordially with Lopez Baeza with the air of
+a man who might never see his friend again for years. Baeza commended
+him to God and went out of the restaurant on to the lighted footway.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard read through the two creased letters again, though he knew them
+by heart. They had reached him from William Lloyd, an English merchant
+at Barcelona, at two different dates. The first, written six weeks ago,
+related how Pontiana Tabor, a servant of the firm, had come into Lloyd's
+private office and informed him that on the night of the 27th June a
+German submarine had entered a deep cove at the lonely north-east point
+of the island of Mallorca, and had there been provisioned by Jos&eacute;
+Medina's men, with Jos&eacute; Medina's supplies, and that Jos&eacute; Medina had
+driven out of Palma de Mallorca in his motor-car, and travelling by
+little-known tracks, had been present when the operation was in process.
+The name of a shoemaker in a street of Palma was given as corroboration.</p>
+
+<p>The second letter, which had brought Hillyard post-haste off the sea
+into Barcelona, was only three days old. Once more Pontiana Tabor had
+been the bearer of bad news. Jos&eacute; Medina had been seen entering the
+German Consulate in Barcelona, between eleven and twelve o'clock of the
+morning of August 22nd.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard was greatly troubled by these two letters.</p>
+
+<p>"We can put Jos&eacute; Medina out of business, of course," he reflected. For
+Jos&eacute; Medina's tobacco factories were built at a free port in French
+territory. "But I want the man for my friend."</p>
+
+<p>He put the letters back in his pocket and paid his bill. As he went out
+of the Maison Dor&eacute;e, he felt in the right-hand pocket of his jacket to
+make sure that a little deadly life preserver lay ready to his hand.</p>
+
+<p>He did not distrust Lopez Baeza. All the work which Baeza had done for
+him had, indeed, been faithfully and discreetly done. But&mdash;but there was
+always a certain amount of money for the man who would work the double
+cross&mdash;not so very much, but still, a certain amount. And Hillyard was
+<a name="Page_115" id="Page_115"></a>always upon his guard against the intrusion of a contempt for the
+German effort. That contempt was easy enough for a man who, having read
+year after year of the wonders of the loud-vaunted German system of
+espionage, had come fresh from his reading into contact with the actual
+agents. Their habit of lining their pockets at the expense of their
+Government, their unfulfilled pretensions, their vanity and
+extravagance, and, above all, their unimaginative stupidity in their
+estimation of men&mdash;these things were apt in the early years of the war
+to bewilder the man who had been so often told to fall down before the
+great idol of German efficiency.</p>
+
+<p>"The German agent works on the assumption that the mind of every
+foreigner reasons on German lines, but with inferior intelligence. But
+behind the agent is the cunning of Berlin, with its long-deliberated
+plans and its concocted ingenuity of method. And though on the whole
+they are countered, as with amazement they admit, by the amateurs from
+England, still every now and then&mdash;not very often&mdash;they do bring
+something off."</p>
+
+<p>Thus Hillyard reasoned as he turned the corner of the Plaza Catalu&ntilde;a
+into the wide Rambla. It might be that the narratives of Pontiana Tabor
+and the denials of Ramon Castillo were all just part of one little
+subsidiary plan in the German scheme which was to reach its achievement
+by putting an inconvenient Englishman out of the way for good in one of
+the dark, narrow side streets of Barcelona.</p>
+
+<p>After the hot day the Rambla, with its broad tree-shaded alley in the
+middle, its carriage-ways on each side of the alley, and its shops and
+footwalks beyond the carriage-ways, was crowded with loiterers. The
+Spaniard, to our ideas, is simple in his pleasure. To visit a
+cinematograph, to take a cooling temperance drink at the Municipal
+Kiosque at the top of the Rambla, and to pace up and down the broad walk
+with unending chatter&mdash;until daybreak&mdash;here were the joys of Barcelona
+folk in the days of summer. Further down at the lower end of the Rambla
+you would come upon the dancing halls and supper-caf&eacute;s, with separate
+rooms for the national gambling game, "Siete y Media," but they had
+their own clientele amongst the bloods and the merchant captains from
+<a name="Page_116" id="Page_116"></a>the harbour. The populace of Barcelona walked the Rambla under the
+great globes of electric light.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard could only move slowly through the press. Every one dawdled.
+Hillyard dawdled too. He passed the Opera House, and a little further
+down saw across the carriage-way, Lopez Baeza in front of a lighted
+tobacco shop at the corner of a narrow street. Hillyard crossed the
+carriage-way and Baeza turned into the street, a narrow thoroughfare
+between tall houses and dark as a cavern. Hillyard followed him. The
+lights of the Rambla were left behind, the houses became more slatternly
+and disreputable, the smells of the quarter were of rancid food and bad
+drains. Before a great door Baeza stopped and clapped his hands.</p>
+
+<p>A jingle of keys answered him, and rising from the step of another house
+the watchman of the street crossed the road. He put a key into the door,
+opened it, and received the usual twopence. Baeza and Hillyard passed
+in.</p>
+
+<p>"Ramon is on the top floor. We have to climb," said Baeza.</p>
+
+<p>He lit a match, and the two men mounted a staircase with a carved
+balustrade, made for a king. Two stories up, the great staircase ended,
+and another of small, steep and narrow steps succeeded it. When Baeza's
+match went out there was no light anywhere; from a room somewhere above
+came a sound of quarrelling voices&mdash;a woman's voice high and shrill, a
+man's voice hoarse and drunken, and, as an accompaniment, the wailing of
+a child wakened from its sleep.</p>
+
+<p>At the very top of the house Baeza rapped on a door. The door was
+opened, and a heavy, elderly man, wearing glasses on his nose, stood in
+the entrance with the light of an unshaded lamp behind him.</p>
+
+<p>"Ramon, it is the chief," said Baeza.</p>
+
+<p>Ramon Castello crossed the room and closed an inner door. Then he
+invited Hillyard to enter. The room was bare but for a few pieces of
+necessary furniture, but all was scrupulously clean. Ramon Castillo set
+forward a couple of chairs and asked his visitors to be seated. He was
+in his shirt-sleeves, and he wore the rope-soled sandals of the Spanish
+peasant, but he was entirely at his ease. He made the customary little
+<a name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></a>speech of welcome with so simple a dignity and so manifest a sincerity
+that Hillyard could hardly doubt him afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>"It is my honour to welcome you not merely as my chief, but as an
+Englishman. I am poor, and I take my pay, but Se&ntilde;or Baeza will assure
+you that for twenty-five years I have been the friend of England. And
+there are thousands and thousands of poor Spaniards like myself, who
+love England, because its law-courts are just, because there is a real
+freedom there, because political power is not the opportunity of
+oppression."</p>
+
+<p>The little speech was spoken with great rapidity and with deep feeling;
+and, having delivered it, Ramon seated himself on the side of the table
+opposite to Hillyard and Baeza and waited.</p>
+
+<p>"It is about Pontiana Tabor," said Hillyard. "He is making a mistake?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, se&ntilde;or; he is lying," and he used the phrase which has no exact
+equivalent in the English. "He is a <i>sin verguenza</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, my friend," said Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"Pontiana Tabor swears that Jos&eacute; Medina was seen to enter the German
+Consulate before noon on August the 22nd. But on August the 21st Medina
+was in Palma, Mallorca; he was seen there by a captain of the Islana
+Company, and a friend of mine spoke to him on the quay. If, therefore,
+he was in the German Consulate here on the 22nd, he must have crossed
+that night by the steamer to Barcelona. But he did not. His name was not
+on the list of passengers, and although he might have avoided that, he
+was not seen on board or to come on board. I have spoken with officers
+and crew. Jos&eacute; Medina did not cross on the 21st. Moreover, Se&ntilde;or Baeza
+has seen a letter which shows that he was certainly in Palma on the
+23rd."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true," said Baeza. "Medina was in Palma on the 21st, and in
+Palma on the 23rd, and he did not cross to Barcelona on the night of the
+21st, nor back again to Palma on the night of the 22nd. Therefore he was
+not seen to visit the German Consulate on the morning of the 22nd, and,
+as Ramon says, Pontiana is lying."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should Pontiana lie?" asked Hillyard.<a name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></a></p>
+
+<p>Ramon took his pince-nez from the bridge of his nose, and, holding them
+between his finger and thumb, tapped with them upon his knee.</p>
+
+<p>"Because, se&ntilde;or, there are other contrabandists besides Jos&eacute; Medina; one
+little group at Tarragona and another near Garucha&mdash;and they would all
+be very glad to see Jos&eacute; Medina get into trouble with the British and
+the French. His feluccas fly the British flag and his factories are on
+French soil. There would be an end of Jos&eacute; Medina."</p>
+
+<p>The letters were put in front of Hillyard. He read them over carefully,
+and at the end he said:</p>
+
+<p>"If Pontiana Tabor lied in this case of the Consulate&mdash;and that seems
+clear&mdash;it is very likely that he lied also in the other. Yes."</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, Hillyard had reasons of his own to doubt the truth
+of the story which ascribed to Medina the actual provisioning of a
+submarine&mdash;reasons which had nothing whatever to do with Jos&eacute; Medina
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>The destruction of shipping by German submarines in this western section
+of the Mediterranean had an intermittent regularity. There would be ten
+successive days&mdash;hardly ever more than ten days&mdash;during which ships were
+sunk. Thereafter for three weeks, steamships and sailing ships would
+follow the course upon which they were ordered, without hurt or loss.
+After three weeks, the murderous business would begin again. There was
+but one explanation in Hillyard's opinion.</p>
+
+<p>"The submarines come out of Pola. When they reach the line between the
+Balearics and the Spanish coast, they have oil for ten days' cruising,
+and then return to their base," he argued.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if a submarine had been provisioned by Jos&eacute; Medina in a creek of
+Mallorca, the ten days' cruise would be extended to three weeks. This
+had never happened. Moreover, the date fixed by Pontiana Tabor happened
+to fall precisely in the middle of one of those periods of three weeks
+during which the terror did not haunt those seas. Pontiana Tabor had not
+known enough. He had fixed his date at a venture.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Hillyard, rising from his chair. "I agree with <a name="Page_119" id="Page_119"></a>you, Se&ntilde;or
+Ramon. Tabor is a liar. What troubled me was that I had no clue as to
+why he should lie. You have given me it, and with all my heart I thank
+you."</p>
+
+<p>He shook the stevedore's hand and stood for a moment talking and joking
+with him upon other subjects. Hillyard knew the value of a smile and a
+jest and a friendly manner. Your very enemy in Spain will do you a good
+turn if you meet him thus. Then he turned to Baeza.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be back, perhaps, in a week, but perhaps not. I will let you
+know in the usual way."</p>
+
+<p>The two men went down the stairs and into the street. It was empty now
+and black, but at the far end, as at the end of a tunnel, the Rambla
+blazed and roared and the crowds swung past like a procession.</p>
+
+<p>"It is best that we should separate here," said Lopez Baeza, "if you
+have no further instructions."</p>
+
+<p>"Touching the matter of those ships," Hillyard suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Se&ntilde;or Fairbairn has it in hand."</p>
+
+<p>"Good. Then, my friend, I have no further instructions," said Hillyard.
+"I agree with you about Ramon. I will go first."</p>
+
+<p>He shook hands with Baeza, crossed the road and disappeared into the
+mouthway of an alley which ran up the hill parallel to the Rambla. The
+alley led into another side street, and turning to the right, Hillyard
+slipped out into the throng beneath the trees. He sauntered, as idle and
+as curious as any in that broad walk. He took a drink at a caf&eacute;, neither
+hiding himself unnaturally nor ostentatiously occupying a chair at the
+edge of the awning. He sat there for half an hour. But when he rose
+again he made sure that no one was loitering to watch his movements. He
+sauntered up to the very end of the Rambla past the ice-cream kiosque.
+The great Plaza spread in front of him, and at the corner across the
+road stood a double line of motor-cars, some for hire, others waiting
+for parties in the restaurants opposite. He walked across the roadway
+and disappeared in between the motor-cars as if he intended to cross the
+Plaza by the footway to the Paseo de la Reforma. A second later a
+motor-car shot out from the line and took the road to Tarragona.<a name="Page_120" id="Page_120"></a></p>
+
+<p>Hillyard was inside the car. The tall houses of the city gave place to
+villas draped in bougainvillea behind gardens of trees. Then the villas
+ceased and the car sped across the flats of Llobegrat and climbed to the
+finest coast-road in the world. It was a night for lovers. A full moon,
+bright as silver, sailed in the sky; the broad, white road rose and
+dipped and wound past here and there a blue cottage, here and there a
+peasant mounted on his donkey and making his journey by night to escape
+the burning day. Far below the sea spread out most gently murmuring, and
+across a great wide path of glittering jewels, now a sailing-ship glided
+like a bird, now the black funnels of a steamer showed. So light was the
+wind that Hillyard could hear the kick of its screw, like the beating of
+some gigantic clock. He took his hat from his head and threw wide open
+his thin coat. After the heavy days of anxiety he felt a nimbleness of
+heart and spirit which set him in tune with the glory of that night.
+Suspicions, vague and elusive, had for so long clustered about Jos&eacute;
+Medina, and then had come the two categorical statements, dates and
+hours, chapter and verse! He was still not sure, he declared to himself
+in warning. But he was sure enough to risk the great move&mdash;the move
+which he alone could make! He should no doubt have been dreaming of Joan
+Whitworth and fitting her into the frame of that August night. But he
+had not thought of her by one o'clock in the morning; and by one o'clock
+in the morning his motor-car had come to a stop on the deserted quay of
+Tarragona harbour under the stern of an English yacht.<a name="Page_121" id="Page_121"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Old Acquaintance</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>At six o'clock on the second morning after Hillyard's visit to
+Barcelona, the steam-yacht <i>Dragonfly</i> swept round the point of La
+Dragonera and changed her course to the south-east. She steamed with a
+following breeze over a sea of darkest sapphire which broke in sparkling
+cascades of white and gold against the rocky creeks and promontories on
+the ship's port side. Peasants working on the green terraces above the
+rocks stopped their work and stared as the blue ensign with the Union
+Jack in the corner broke out from the flagstaff at the stern.</p>
+
+<p>"But it's impossible," cried one. "Only yesterday a French mail-steamer
+was chased in the passage between Mallorca and Minorca. It's
+impossible."</p>
+
+<p>Another shaded his eyes with his hand and looked upon the neat yacht
+with its white deck and shining brass in contemptuous pity.</p>
+
+<p>"Loco Ingl&eacute;s," said he.</p>
+
+<p>The tradition of the mad Englishman has passed away from France, but it
+has only leaped the Pyrenees. Some crazy multi-millionaire was just
+running his head into the German noose. They gave up their work and
+settled down contentedly to watch the yacht, multi-millionaire, captain
+and crew and all go up into the sky. But the <i>Dragonfly</i> passed from
+their sight with the foam curling from her bows and broadening out into
+a pale fan behind her; and over the headlands for a long time they saw
+the streamer of her smoke as she drove in to Palma Bay.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard, standing by the captain's side upon the bridge, watched the
+great cathedral rise from out of the water at the end of the bay, towers
+and flying buttresses and the mass of brown stone, before even a house
+was visible. The <i>Dragonfly</i><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122"></a> passed a German cargo steamer which had
+sought refuge here at the outbreak of war. She was a large ship, full of
+oil, and she had been moved from the quay-side to an anchorage in the
+bay by the captain of the port, lest by design or inadvertence she
+should take fire and set the town aflame. There she lay, a source of
+endless misgiving to every allied ship which sailed these waters, kept
+clean and trim as a yacht, her full crew on board, her dangerous cargo
+below, in the very fairway of the submarine; and there the scruples of
+the Allies allowed her to remain while month followed month. Historians
+in later years will come across in this or that Government office in
+Paris, in London and in Rome, warnings, appeals, and accounts of the
+presence of this ship; and those anxious for a picturesque contrast may
+set against the violation of Belgium and all the "scrap of paper"
+philosophy, the fact that for years in the very centre of the German
+submarine effort in the Western Mediterranean, the German steamer
+<i>Fangturm</i>, with her priceless cargo of oil, was allowed by the
+scrupulous honour of the Allies to swing unmolested at her anchor in
+Palma Bay. Hillyard could never pass that great black ship in those
+neutral waters without a hope that his steering-gear would just at this
+moment play him false and swing his bows at full speed on to her side.
+The <i>Dragonfly</i> ran past her to the arm of the great mole and was moored
+with her stern to the quay. A small crowd of gesticulating idlers
+gathered about the ropes, and all were but repeating the phrases of the
+peasants upon the hill-side, as Hillyard walked ashore down the gangway.</p>
+
+<p>"But it's impossible that you should have come."</p>
+
+<p>"Just outside there is one. The fisherman saw her yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>"She rose and spoke to one of the fishing-boats."</p>
+
+<p>"But it is impossible that you should have come here."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet I am here," answered Hillyard, the very mad multi-millionaire.
+"What will you, my friends? Shall I tell you a secret? Yes, but tell no
+one else! The Germans would be most enraged if they found out that we
+knew it. There aren't any submarines."</p>
+
+<p>A little jest spoken in a voice of good-humour, with a friendly smile,
+goes a long way anywhere, but further in<a name="Page_123" id="Page_123"></a> Spain than anywhere else in
+the world. The small crowd laughed with Hillyard, and made way for him.</p>
+
+<p>A man offered to him with a flourish and a bow a card advertising a
+garage at which motor-cars could be hired for expeditions in the island.
+Hillyard accepted it and put it into his pocket. He paid a visit to his
+consul, and thereafter sat in a caf&eacute; for an hour. Then he strolled
+through the narrow streets, admired this and that massive archway, with
+its glimpse of a great stone staircase within, and mounted the hill.
+Almost at the top, he turned sharply into a doorway and ran up the
+stairs to the second floor. He knocked upon the door, and a maid-servant
+answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Se&ntilde;or Jos&eacute; Medina lives here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, se&ntilde;or."</p>
+
+<p>"He is at home?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, se&ntilde;or. He is in the country at his <i>finca</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard thanked the girl, and went whistling down the stairs. Standing
+in the archway, he looked up and down the street with something of the
+air of a man engaged upon a secret end. One or two people were moving in
+the street; one or two were idling on the pavement. Hillyard smiled and
+walked down the hill again. He took the advertisement card from his
+pocket and, noting the address, walked into the garage.</p>
+
+<p>"It will please me to see something of the island," he said. "I am not
+in Mallorca for long. I should like a car after lunch." He gave the name
+of a caf&eacute; between the cathedral and the quay. "At half-past two? Thank
+you. And by which road shall I go for all that is most of Mallorca?"</p>
+
+<p>This was Spain. A small group of men had already invaded the garage and
+gathered about Hillyard and the proprietor. They proceeded at once to
+take a hand in the conversation and offer their advice. They suggested
+the expedition to Miramar, to Alcudia, to Manacor, discussing the time
+each journey would take, the money to be saved by the shorter course,
+the dust, and even the gradients of the road. They had no interest in
+the business in the garage, and they were not at all concerned in the
+success of Hillyard's excursion. That a stranger should carry away with
+him pleasant recol<a name="Page_124" id="Page_124"></a>lections of the beauties of Mallorca, was a matter of
+supreme indifference to them all. But they were engaged in the favourite
+pursuit of the Spaniards of the towns. They were getting through a
+certain small portion of the day, without doing any work, and without
+spending any money. The majority favoured the road past Valdemosa, over
+the Pass of Soller to Miramar and its rocky coast on the north-east side
+of the island, as indeed Hillyard knew the majority must. For there is
+no road like it for beauty in the Balearics, and few in all Spain.</p>
+
+<p>"I will go that way, then," said Hillyard, and he strolled off to his
+luncheon.</p>
+
+<p>He drove afterwards over the plain, between groves of olive and almond
+trees with gnarled stems and branches white with dust, mounted by the
+twisting road, terraces upon his left and pine-clothed mountainside upon
+his right, past Valdemosa to the Pass. The great sweep of rock-bound
+coast and glittering sea burst upon his view, and the boom of water
+surging into innumerable caves was like thunder to his ears. At a little
+gate upon the road the car was stopped at a word from Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going in here," he said. "I may be a little while."</p>
+
+<p>The chauffeur looked at Hillyard with surprise. Hillyard had never been
+to the house before, but he could not mistake it from the description
+which he had been given. He passed through an orchard to the door of an
+outrageous villa, built in the style of a Swiss chalet and glaring with
+yellow paint. A man in his shirt-sleeves came to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Se&ntilde;or Jos&eacute; Medina?" Hillyard inquired.</p>
+
+<p>He held out his card and was ushered into the room of ceremony which
+went very well with the exterior of the yellow chalet. A waxed floor,
+heavy white lace curtains at the windows, a table of walnut-wood, chairs
+without comfort, but with gold legs, all was new and never to be used
+and hideous. Hillyard looked around him with a nod of comprehension.
+This is what its proprietor would wish for. With a hundred old houses to
+select from for a model&mdash;no! This is the way his fancies would run. The
+one beauty of the place, its position, was Nature's. Hillyard went to
+the window, which was <a name="Page_125" id="Page_125"></a>on the side of the house opposite to the door. He
+looked down a steep terraced garden of orange trees and bright flowers
+to the foam sparkling on the rocks a thousand feet below.</p>
+
+<p>"You wished to see me, se&ntilde;or," and Hillyard turned with curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>Twelve years had passed since he had seen Jos&eacute; Medina, but he had
+changed less than Hillyard expected. Martin remembered him as small and
+slight, with a sharp mobile face and a remarkable activity which was the
+very badge of the man; and these characteristics he retained. He was
+still like quick-silver. But he was fast losing his hair, and he wore
+pince-nez. The dress of the peasant and the cautious manner of the
+peasant, both were gone. In his grey lounge suit he had the look of a
+quick-witted clerk.</p>
+
+<p>"You wished to see me, se&ntilde;or," he repeated, and he laid the card upon
+the table.</p>
+
+<p>"For a moment. I shall hope not to detain you long."</p>
+
+<p>"My time and my house are yours."</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina had clearly become a <i>caballero</i> since those early days of
+adventure. Hillyard noted the point for his own guidance, thanking his
+stars meanwhile that the gift of the house was a meaningless politeness.</p>
+
+<p>"I arrived at Palma this morning, in a yacht," said Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina was prepared for the information. He bowed. There had been
+neither smile nor, indeed, any expression whatever upon his face since
+he had entered the room.</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard of the yacht," he said. "It is a fine ship."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina looked at Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"It flies the English flag."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard bowed.</p>
+
+<p>"As do your feluccas, se&ntilde;or, I believe."</p>
+
+<p>A mere twitch of the lips showed that Medina appreciated the point.</p>
+
+<p>"But I," continued Hillyard, "am an Englishman, while you, se&ntilde;or&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina was not, if he could help it, to be forced to cry "a hit"
+again.<a name="Page_126" id="Page_126"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Whereas I, se&ntilde;or, am a neutral," he answered. The twitch of the lips
+became a smile. He invited Hillyard to a chair, he drew up another
+himself, and the two men sat down over against one another in the middle
+of that bare and formal room.</p>
+
+<p>That one word neutral, so delicately emphasised, warned Hillyard that
+Jos&eacute; Medina was quite alive to the reason of his visit. He could, of
+course, have blurted it out at once. He could have said in so many
+words, "Your tobacco factories are on French soil, and your two hundred
+feluccas are nominally owned in Gibraltar. Between French and English we
+shall close you down unless you help." But he knew very well that he
+would have got no more than fair words if he had. It is not thus that
+delicate questions are approached in Spain. Even the blackmailer does
+not dream of bluntly demanding money, or exposing his knowledge that he
+will get it. He pleads decently the poverty of his family and the long
+illness of his mother-in-law; and with the same decency the blackmailed
+yields to compassion and opens his purse. There is a gentlemanly
+reticence to be observed in these matters and Hillyard was well aware of
+the rules. He struck quite a different note.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall speak frankly to you, Se&ntilde;or Medina, as one <i>caballero</i> to
+another"; and Jos&eacute; Medina bowed and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I put my cards upon the table. I ask you whether in your heart you are
+for the Germans or for us."</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina hitched his chair a little closer and holding up one hand
+with fingers spread ticked off his points, as he spoke them, with the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us see! First, you come to me, se&ntilde;or, saying you are English, and
+speaking Spanish with the accent of Valencia. Good! I might reply,
+se&ntilde;or, how do I know? I might ask you how I am to be sure that when that
+British flag is hauled down from your yacht outside the bay over there,
+it is not a German one which should take its place. Good! But I do not
+make these replies. I accept your word as a <i>caballero</i> that you are
+English and not an enemy of England laying a trap for me. Good!" He took
+off his eye-glasses and polished them.<a name="Page_127" id="Page_127"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Now listen to me!" he continued. "I am a Spaniard. We of Spain have
+little grievances against England and France. But these are matters for
+the Government, not for a private person. And the Government bids us be
+neutral. Good! Now I speak as a private person. For me England means
+opportunity for poor men to become great and rich. You may say I have
+become rich without the opportunities of England. I answer I am one in
+many thousands. England means Liberty, and within the strict limits of
+my neutrality I will do what a man may for that great country."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard listened and nodded. The speech was flowing and spoken with
+great fervour. It might mean much. It might mean nothing at all. It
+might be the outcome of conviction. But it might again be nothing more
+than the lip-service of a man who knew very well that England and France
+could squeeze him dry if they chose.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish," said Hillyard cordially, "that the captains of the ports of
+Spain spoke also with your voice."</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina neither assumed an ignorance of the German leanings of the
+port officials nor expressed any assent. But, as if he had realised the
+thought which must be passing in Hillyard's mind, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"You know very well, se&ntilde;or, that I should be mad if I gave help to the
+Germans. I am in your hands. You and France have but to speak the word,
+and every felucca of mine is off the seas. But what then! There are
+eighteen thousand men at once without food or work thrown adrift upon
+the coast of Spain. Will not Germany find use for those eighteen
+thousand men?"</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard agreed. The point was shrewd. It was an open, unanswerable
+reply to the unuttered threat which perhaps Hillyard might be prompted
+to use.</p>
+
+<p>"I have spoken," continued Jos&eacute; Medina. "Now it is for you, se&ntilde;or. Tell
+me what within the limits of my neutrality I can do to prove to you the
+sincerity of my respect for England?"</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard took a sheet of paper and a pencil from his pocket. He drew a
+rough map.</p>
+
+<p>"Here are the Balearic Islands; here, farther to the west, <a name="Page_128" id="Page_128"></a>the
+Columbretes; here the African coast; here the mainland of Spain. Now
+watch, I beg you, se&ntilde;or, whilst I sketch in the routes of your feluccas.
+At Oran in Africa your factories stand. From them, then, we start. We
+draw a broad thick line from Oran to the north-east coast of Mallorca,
+that coast upon which we look down from these windows, a coast
+honeycombed with caves and indented with creeks like an edge of fine
+lace&mdash;a very storehouse of a coast. Am I not right, Se&ntilde;or Don Jos&eacute;?" He
+laughed, in a friendly good-humoured way, but the face of Jos&eacute; Medina
+did not lose one shade of its impassiveness. He did not deny that the
+caves of this coast were the storehouse of his tobacco; nor did he
+agree.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us see!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"So I draw a thick line, since all your feluccas make for this island
+and this part of the island first of all. From here they diverge&mdash;you
+will correct me, I hope, if I am wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not say that I shall correct you if you are wrong," said Jos&eacute;
+Medina.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard was now drawing other and finer lines which radiated like the
+sticks of an outspread fan from the north-east coast of Mallorca to the
+Spanish mainland; and he went on drawing them, unperturbed by Jos&eacute;'s
+refusal to assist in his map-making. Some of the lines&mdash;a few&mdash;ended at
+the Islands of the Columbretes, sixty miles off Valencia.</p>
+
+<p>"Your secret storehouse, I believe, se&ntilde;or," he remarked pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>"A cruiser of our Government examined these islands most carefully a
+fortnight ago upon representations from the Allies, and found nothing of
+any kind to excite interest," replied Jos&eacute; Medina.</p>
+
+<p>"The cruiser was looking for submarine bases, I understand, not
+tobacco," Martin Hillyard observed. "And since it was not the cruiser's
+commission to look for tobacco, why should it discover it?"</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina shrugged his shoulders. Jos&eacute; Medina's purse was very long
+and reached very high. It would be quite impolitic for that cruiser to
+discover Jos&eacute; Medina's tobacco stores, as Medina himself and Martin
+Hillyard, and the captain of the cruiser, all very well knew.<a name="Page_129" id="Page_129"></a></p>
+
+<p>Martin Hillyard continued to draw fine straight lines westwards from the
+northern coast of Mallorca to the mainland of Spain, some touching the
+shore to the north of Barcelona, some striking it as far south as
+Almeria and Garrucha. When he had finished his map-making he handed the
+result to Jos&eacute; Medina.</p>
+
+<p>"See, se&ntilde;or! Your feluccas cut across all the trade-routes through the
+Mediterranean. Ships going east or going west must pass between the
+Balearics and Africa, or between the Balearics and Spain. We are here in
+the middle, and, whichever course those ships take, they must cross the
+lines on which your feluccas continually come and go."</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina looked at the map. He did not commit himself in any way. He
+contented himself with a question: "And what then?"</p>
+
+<p>"So too with the German submarines. They also must cross and cross again
+in their cruises, those lines along which your feluccas continually come
+and go."</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina threw up his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"The submarines! Se&ntilde;or, if you listen to the babblers on the quays, you
+would think that the seas are stiff with them! Schools of them like
+whales everywhere! Only yesterday Palma rang with the account of one. It
+pursued a French steamer between Minorca and Mallorca. It spoke to a
+fishing boat! What did it not do? Se&ntilde;or, there was no submarine
+yesterday in the channel between Minorca and Mallorca. If there had been
+I must have known."</p>
+
+<p>And he sat back as though the subject were disposed of.</p>
+
+<p>"But submarines do visit these waters, Se&ntilde;or Medina, and they do sink
+ships," replied Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Claro!</i> And it is said that I supply them with their oil." He turned
+swiftly to Hillyard. "Perhaps you have heard that story, se&ntilde;or?"</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I did not believe it. It is because I did not believe it that I am
+here, asking your help."<a name="Page_130" id="Page_130"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I thank you. It is the truth. I will tell you something now. Not one of
+my captains has ever seen one of those submarines, neither on this side
+nor on that," and Medina touched the lines which Hillyard had drawn on
+both sides of the Balearics on his chart. "Now, what can I do?"</p>
+
+<p>"One simple thing, and well within your scruples as a neutral," replied
+Hillyard. "These submarines doubly break the laws of nations. They
+violate your territorial waters, and they sink merchant ships without
+regard for the crews."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Jos&eacute; Medina.</p>
+
+<p>"You have agents along the coast. I have friends too in every town,
+Englishmen who love both England and Spain, Spaniards who love both
+Spain and England. We will put, if you permit, your agents in touch with
+my friends."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Jos&eacute; Medina innocently. "How shall we do that? We must have
+lists prepared."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard smiled gently.</p>
+
+<p>"That is not necessary, se&ntilde;or. We know your agents already. If you will
+secretly inform them that those who speak in my name," and he took his
+card from the table, and gave it into Medina's hands, "are men to be
+trusted, it will be enough."</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"I will give them instructions."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet another instruction if you will be so kind, to all your
+captains."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"That they shall report at the earliest possible moment to your nearest
+agent ashore, the position of any submarine they have seen."</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina assented once more.</p>
+
+<p>"But it will take a little time, se&ntilde;or, for me to pass that instruction
+round. It shall go from captain to captain, but it will not be prudent
+to give it out more widely. A week or two&mdash;no more&mdash;and every captain in
+my fleet shall be informed. That is all?"</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard was already rising from his chair. He stood straight up.</p>
+
+<p>"All except that they will be forbidden too," he added with <a name="Page_131" id="Page_131"></a>a smile,
+"to supply either food or drink or oil to any enemy vessel."</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina raised his hands in protest.</p>
+
+<p>"That order was given months ago. But it shall be repeated, and you can
+trust me, it shall be obeyed."</p>
+
+<p>The two men went to the door of the villa, and stood outside in the
+garden. It seemed the interview was over, and the agreement made. But
+indeed the interview as Hillyard had planned it had hardly begun. He had
+a series of promises which might be kept or broken, and the keeping or
+breaking of them could not be checked. Jos&eacute; Medina was very likely to be
+holding the common belief along that coast that Germany would surely win
+the war. He was in the perfect position to keep in with both sides were
+he so minded. It was not to content himself with general promises that
+Hillyard had brought the <i>Dragonfly</i> to Palma.</p>
+
+<p>He turned suddenly towards Jos&eacute; Medina with a broad laugh, and clapped
+him heartily upon the back.</p>
+
+<p>"So you do not remember me, Se&ntilde;or Jos&eacute;?"</p>
+
+<p>Medina was puzzled. He took a step nearer to Hillyard. Then he shook his
+head, and apologised with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I am to blame, se&ntilde;or. As a rule, my memory is not at fault. But on this
+occasion&mdash;yes."</p>
+
+<p>Through the apology ran a wariness, some fear of a trick, some hint of
+an incredulity.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet we have met."</p>
+
+<p>"Se&ntilde;or, it must be so."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember, Se&ntilde;or Jos&eacute;, your first venture?" asked Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely."</p>
+
+<p>"A single sailing-felucca beached at one o'clock in the morning on the
+flat sand close to Benicassim."</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina did not answer. But the doubt which his politeness could not
+quite keep out of his face was changing into perplexity. This history of
+his first cargo so far was true.</p>
+
+<p>"That was more than thirteen years ago," Hillyard continued. "Thirteen
+years last April."</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina nodded. Date, place, hour, all were correct.<a name="Page_132" id="Page_132"></a> His eyes were
+fixed curiously upon his visitor, but there was no recognition in them.</p>
+
+<p>"There were two carts waiting, to carry the tobacco up to the hills."</p>
+
+<p>"Two?" Jos&eacute; Medina interrupted sharply. "Let me think! That first cargo!
+It is so long ago."</p>
+
+<p>Medina reflected carefully. Here was a detail of real importance which
+would put this Se&ntilde;or Hillyard to the test&mdash;if only he could himself
+remember. It was his first venture, yes! But there had been so many like
+to it since. Still&mdash;the very first. He ought to remember that! And as he
+concentrated his thoughts the veil of the years was rent, and he saw, he
+saw quite clearly the white moonlit beach, the felucca with its mast
+bent like a sapling in a high wind, and the great yard of the sail
+athwart the beam of the boat, the black shadow of it upon the sand, and
+the carts&mdash;yes, the carts!</p>
+
+<p>"There were two carts," he agreed, and a change was just faintly audible
+in his voice&mdash;a change for which up till now Hillyard had listened with
+both his ears in vain. A ring of cordiality, a suggestion that the
+barriers of reserve were breaking down.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, se&ntilde;or, there were two carts."</p>
+
+<p>Medina was listening intently now. Would his visitor go on with the
+history of that night!</p>
+
+<p>And Hillyard did go on.</p>
+
+<p>"The tobacco barrels were packed very quickly into the carts, and the
+carts were driven up the beach and across the Royal road, and into a
+track which led back to the hills."</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina suddenly laughed. He could hear the groaning and creaking of
+those thin-wheeled springless carts which had carried all his fortunes
+on that night thirteen years ago, the noise of them vibrating for miles
+in the air of that still spring night! What terror they had caused him!
+How his heart had leaped when&mdash;and lo! Hillyard was carrying on the
+tale.</p>
+
+<p>"Two of the Guardia Civil stepped from behind a tree, arrested your
+carts, and told the drivers to turn back to the main road and the
+village."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."<a name="Page_133" id="Page_133"></a></p>
+
+<p>"You ran in front of the leading cart, and stood there blocking the way.
+The Guardia told you to move or he would fire. You stood your ground."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Why the Guardia did not fire," continued Hillyard, "who shall say? But
+he did not."</p>
+
+<p>"No, he did not," Jos&eacute; Medina repeated with a smile. "Why? It was
+Fate&mdash;Fortune&mdash;what you will."</p>
+
+<p>"You sent every one aside, and remained alone with the guards&mdash;for a
+long time. Oh, for a long time! Then you called out, and your men came
+back, and found you alone with your horses and your carts. How you had
+persuaded the guards to leave you alone&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Quien sabe?" said Medina, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"But you had persuaded them, even on that first venture. So," and now
+Hillyard smiled. "So we took your carts up in to the mountains."</p>
+
+<p>"We?" exclaimed Jos&eacute;. He took a step forward, and gazed keenly into
+Martin Hillyard's face. Hillyard nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"I was one of your companions on that first night venture of yours
+thirteen years ago."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Claro!</i> You were certainly there," returned Jos&eacute; Medina, and he was no
+longer speaking either with doubt or with the exaggerated politeness of
+a Spaniard towards a stranger. He was not even speaking as <i>caballero</i>
+to <i>caballero</i> the relationship to which, in the beginning, Hillyard had
+most wisely invited him. He was speaking as associate to associate, as
+friendly man to friendly man. "On that night you were certainly with me!
+No, let me think! There were five men, yes, five and a boy from
+Valencia&mdash;Martin."</p>
+
+<p>He pronounced the word in the Spanish way as Marteen.</p>
+
+<p>"Who led the horse in the first cart," said Hillyard, and he pointed to
+his visiting card which Jos&eacute; Medina still held in his hand. Jos&eacute; Medina
+read it again.</p>
+
+<p>"Marteen Hillyard." He came close to Hillyard, and looked in his eyes,
+and at the shape of his features, and at the colour of his hair. "Yes,
+it is the little Marteen," he cried, "and now the little Marteen swings
+into Palma in his great steam yacht. Dios, what a change!"<a name="Page_134" id="Page_134"></a></p>
+
+<p>"And Jos&eacute; Medina owns two hundred motor-feluccas and employs eighteen
+thousand men," answered Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina held out his hand suddenly with a great burst of cordial,
+intimate laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we were companions in those days. You helped me to drive my carts
+up into the mountains. Good!" He patted Hillyard on the shoulder. "That
+makes a difference, eh? Come, we will go in again. Now I shall help
+you."</p>
+
+<p>That reserve, that intense reserve of the Spaniard who so seldom admits
+another into real intimacy, and makes him acquainted with his private
+life, was down now. Hillyard had won. Jos&eacute; Medina's house and his
+chattels were in earnest at Martin Hillyard's disposal. The two men went
+back through the house into a veranda above the steep fall of garden and
+cliff, where there were chairs in which a man could sit at his ease.</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina fetched out a box of cigars.</p>
+
+<p>"You can trust these. They are good."</p>
+
+<p>"Who should know if you do not?" answered Hillyard as he took one; and
+again Jos&eacute; Medina patted him on the shoulder, but this time with a
+gurgle of delight.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>El peque&ntilde;o</i> Martin," he said, and he clapped his hands. From some
+recess of the house his wife appeared with a bottle of champagne and two
+glasses on a tray.</p>
+
+<p>"Now we will talk," said Jos&eacute; Medina, "or rather I will talk and you
+shall listen."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard nodded his head, as he raised the glass to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I have learnt in the last years that it is better to listen than to
+talk," said he. "<i>Salut!</i>"<a name="Page_135" id="Page_135"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">"Touching the Matter of Those Ships"</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>It has been said that Hillyard joined a service with its traditions to
+create. Indeed, it had everything to create, its rules, its methods, its
+whole philosophy. And it had to do this quickly during the war, and just
+for the war; since after the war it would cease to be. Certain
+conclusions had now been forced by experience quite definitely on
+Hillyard's mind. Firstly, that the service must be executive. Its
+servants must take their responsibility and act if they were going to
+cope with the intrigues and man&oelig;uvres of the Germans. There was no
+time for discussions with London, and London was overworked in any case.
+The Post Office, except on rare occasions, could not be used; telegrams,
+however ingenious the cipher, were dangerous; and even when London
+received them, it had not the knowledge of the sender on the spot,
+wherewith to fill them out. London, let it be admitted, or rather that
+one particular small section of London with which Hillyard dealt, was at
+one with Hillyard. Having chosen its men it trusted them, until such
+time as indiscretion or incapacity proved the trust misplaced; in which
+case the offender was brought politely home upon some excuse, cordially
+thanked, and with a friendly shake of the hand, shown the door.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard's second conclusion was that of one hundred trails, ten at the
+most would lead to any result: but you must follow each one of the
+hundred up until you reach proof that you are in a blind alley.</p>
+
+<p>The third was the sound and simple doctrine that you can confidently
+look to Chance to bring you results, probably your very best results, if
+you are prepared and equipped to make all your profit out of chance the
+moment she leans your way. Chance is an elusive goddess, to be seized
+and held prisoner with a swift, firm hand. Then she'll serve you. But if
+the <a name="Page_136" id="Page_136"></a>hand's not ready and the eye unexpectant, you'll see but the trail
+of her robe as she vanishes to offer her assistance to another more
+wakeful than yourself.</p>
+
+<p>In pursuit of this conviction, Hillyard steamed out of Palma Bay on the
+morning of the day after his interview with Jos&eacute; Medina, and crossing to
+the mainland cruised all the next night southwards. At six o'clock in
+the morning he was off a certain great high cape. The sea was smooth as
+glass. The day a riot of sunlight and summer, and the great headland
+with its high lighthouse thrust its huge brown knees into the water.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Dragonfly</i> slowed down and dawdled. Three men stood in the stern
+behind the white side-awning. Hillyard was on the bridge with his
+captain.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't really expect much," he said, seeking already to discount a
+possible disappointment. "It's only a possibility, I don't count on it."</p>
+
+<p>"Six o'clock off the cape," said the captain. "We are on time."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Both men searched the smooth sea for some long, sluggish, inexplicable
+wave which should break, or for a V-shaped ripple such as a fixed stake
+will make in a swiftly running stream.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a sign," said the captain, disconsolately.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Yet it is certainly true that the keeper of that lighthouse paid an
+amount equal to three years' salary into a bank three weeks ago. It is
+true that oil could be brought into that point, and stored there, and no
+one but the keeper be the wiser. And it is true that the <i>Acquitania</i> is
+at this moment in this part of the Mediterranean steaming east for
+Salonika with six thousand men on board. Let's trail our coat a bit!"
+said Hillyard, and the captain with a laugh gave an order to the signal
+boy by his side.</p>
+
+<p>The boy ran aft and in a few seconds the red ensign fluttered up the
+flagstaff, and drooped in the still air. But even that provocation
+produced no result. For an hour and a half the <i>Dragonfly</i> steamed
+backwards and forwards in front of the cape.</p>
+
+<p>"No good!" Hillyard at last admitted. "We'll get on to the<a name="Page_137" id="Page_137"></a>
+<i>Acquitania</i>, and advise her. Meanwhile, captain, we had better make for
+Gibraltar and coal there."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard went to the wireless-room, and the yacht was put about for the
+great scarped eastern face of the Rock.</p>
+
+<p>"One of the blind alleys," said Hillyard, as he ate his breakfast in the
+deck-saloon. "Next time perhaps we'll have better luck. Something'll
+turn up for sure."</p>
+
+<p>Something was always turning up in those days, and the yacht had not
+indeed got its coal on board in Gibraltar harbour when a message came
+which sent Hillyard in a rush by train through Madrid to Barcelona. He
+reached Barcelona at half past nine in the morning, took his breakfast
+by the window of the smaller dining-room in the hotel at the corner of
+the Plaza Catalu&ntilde;a, and by eleven was seated in a flat in one of the
+neighbouring streets. The flat was occupied by Lopez Baeza who turned
+from the window to greet him.</p>
+
+<p>"I was not followed," said Hillyard as he put down his hat and stick.
+Habit had bred in him a vigilance, or rather an instinct which quickly
+made him aware of any who shadowed him.</p>
+
+<p>"No, that is true," said Baeza, who had been watching Hillyard's
+approach from the window.</p>
+
+<p>"But I should like to know who our young friend is on the kerb opposite,
+and why he is standing sentinel."</p>
+
+<p>Lopez Baeza laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"He is the sign and token of the commercial activity of Spain."</p>
+
+<p>From behind the curtains, stretched across the window, both now looked
+down into the street. A youth in a grey suit and a pair of
+orange-coloured buttoned boots loitered backwards and forwards over
+about six yards of footwalk; now he smoked a cigarette, now he leaned
+against a tree and idly surveyed the passers by. He apparently had
+nothing whatever to do. But he did not move outside the narrow limits of
+his promenade. Consequently he had something to do.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," continued Baeza with a chuckle, "he is a proof of our initiative.
+I thought as you do three days ago. For it is just three days since he
+took his stand there. But he is not watching this flat. He is not
+concerned with us at all.<a name="Page_138" id="Page_138"></a> He is an undertaker's tout. In the house
+opposite to us a woman is lying very ill. Our young friend is waiting
+for her to die, so that he may rush into the house, offer his
+condolences and present the undertaker's card."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard left the youth to his gruesome sentry-go and turned back into
+the room. A man of fifty, with a tawny moustache, a long and rather
+narrow face and eyeglasses, was sitting at an office table with some
+papers in front of him.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do, Fairbairn?" Hillyard asked.</p>
+
+<p>Fairbairn was a schoolmaster from the North of England, with a knowledge
+of the Spanish tongue, who had thrown up schoolmastering, prospects,
+everything, in October of 1914.</p>
+
+<p>"Touching the matter of those ships," said Hillyard, sitting down
+opposite to Fairbairn.</p>
+
+<p>Fairbairn grinned.</p>
+
+<p>"It worked very well," said he, "so far."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard turned towards Lopez and invited him to a seat. "Let me hear
+everything," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Spanish ships were running to England with the products of Catalu&ntilde;a and
+returning full of coal, and shipowners made their fortunes and wages ran
+high. But not all of them were content. Here and there the captains and
+the mates took with them in their cabin to England lists of questions
+thoughtfully compiled by German officers; and from what they saw in
+English harbours and on English seas and from what secret news was
+brought to them, they filled up answers to the questions and brought
+them back to the Germans in Spain. So much Hillyard already knew.</p>
+
+<p>"A pilot, Juan de Maestre, went on board the ships, collected the
+answers, made a report and took it up to the German headquarters here.
+That Ramon Castillo found out," said Fairbairn. "Steps were taken with
+the crew. The ships would be placed on the black list. There would be no
+coal for them. They must be laid up and the crews dismissed. The crew of
+the <i>Saragossa</i> grasped the position, and the next time Juan de Maestre
+stepped on board he was invited to the forecastle, thumped, dropped
+overboard into the salubrious waters of the dock and left to swim
+ashore. Juan de Maestre has had enough. He won't go near the Germans any
+more. He is in a <a name="Page_139" id="Page_139"></a>condition of extreme terror and neutrality. Oh, he's
+wonderfully neutral just now."</p>
+
+<p>"We might catch him perhaps on the rebound!" Hillyard suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Lopez thinks so," said Fairbairn, with a nod towards Baeza.</p>
+
+<p>"I can find him this evening," Baeza remarked.</p>
+
+<p>The three men conferred for a little while, and as a consequence of that
+conference Lopez Baeza walked through the narrow streets of the old town
+to a caf&eacute; near the railway station. In a corner a small, wizened, square
+man was sitting over his beer, brooding unhappily. Baeza took a seat by
+his side and talked with Juan de Maestre. He went out after a few
+minutes and hired a motor-car from the stand in front of the station. In
+the car he drove to the park and went once round it. At a junction of
+two paths on the second round the car was stopped. A short, small man
+stepped out from the shadow of a great tree and swiftly stepped in.</p>
+
+<p>"Drive towards Tibidabo," Baeza directed the driver, and inside the
+dark, closed car Baeza and Juan de Maestre debated, the one persuading,
+the other refusing. It was long before any agreement was reached, but
+when Baeza, with the perspiration standing in beads upon his face,
+returned to his flat in the quiet, respectable street, he found Martin
+Hillyard and Fairbairn waiting for him anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Hecho!</i>" he cried. "It is done! Juan de Maestre will continue to go on
+board the ships and collect the information and write it out for the
+Germans. But we shall receive an exact copy."</p>
+
+<p>"How?" asked Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"Ramon will meet a messenger from Juan. At eight in the morning of every
+second day Ramon is to be waiting at a spot which from time to time we
+will change. The first place will be the cinema opposite to the old Bull
+Ring."</p>
+
+<p>"Good," said Hillyard. "In a fortnight I will return."</p>
+
+<p>He departed once more for Gibraltar, cruised up the coast, left his
+yacht once more in the harbour of Tarragona and travelled by motor-car
+into Barcelona.</p>
+
+<p>Fairbairn and Lopez Baeza received him. It was night, and hot with a
+staleness of the air which was stifling. The win<a name="Page_140" id="Page_140"></a>dows all stood open in
+the quiet, dark street, but the blinds and curtains were closely drawn
+before the lamps were lit.</p>
+
+<p>"Now!" said Hillyard. "There are reports."</p>
+
+<p>Fairbairn nodded grimly as he went to the safe and unlocked it.</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty dangerous stuff," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Reliable?" asked Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>Fairbairn returned with some sheets of blue-lined paper written over
+with purple ink, and some rough diagrams.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure," he replied. "Not because I trust Juan de Maestre, but
+because he couldn't have invented the information. He hasn't the
+knowledge."</p>
+
+<p>Lopez Baeza agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"Juan de Maestre is keeping faith with us," he said shortly, and, to the
+judgment of Lopez Baeza, Hillyard had learnt to incline a ready ear.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the real thing, Hillyard," said Fairbairn, pulling at his
+moustache. "Look!"</p>
+
+<p>He handed to Martin a chart. The points of the compass were marked in a
+corner. Certain courses and routes were given, and fixed lights
+indicated by which the vessel might be guided. There was a number of
+patches as if to warn the navigator of shallows, and again a number of
+small black cubes and squares which seemed to declare the position of
+rocks. There was no rough work in this chart. It was elaborately and
+skilfully drawn, the work of an artist.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a copy made by me. Juan de Maestre left the original document
+with us for an hour," said Fairbairn, and he allowed Hillyard to
+speculate for a few seconds upon the whereabouts of that dangerous and
+reef-strewn sea. "It's not a chart of any bay or water at all. It's a
+plan of Cardiff by night for the guidance of German airships. Those
+patches are not shallows, but the loom in the sky of the furnaces. The
+black spots are the munition factories. Here are the docks," he pointed
+with the tip of his pencil. "The <i>Jesus-Maria</i> brought that back a week
+ago. Let it get from here to Germany, as it will do, eh? and a Zeppelin
+coming across England on a favourable night could make things hum in
+Cardiff."</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141"></a>Hillyard laid the sketch down and took another which Fairbairn held out
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see this?" Fairbairn continued. "This gives the exact line of
+the nets between the English and the Irish coasts, and the exact points
+of latitude and longitude where they are broken for the passage of
+ships, and the exact number and armament of the trawlers which guard
+those points."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard gazed closely at the chart. It gave the positions clearly
+enough, but it was a roughly-made affair, smudged with dingy fingers and
+uneven in its drawing. He laid it upon the table by the side of the map
+of Cardiff and compared one with the other.</p>
+
+<p>"This," he said, touching the roughly-drawn map of a section of the
+Channel, "this is the work of the ship's captain?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"But what of this?" and Hillyard lifted again the elaborate chart of
+Cardiff by night. "Some other hand drew this."</p>
+
+<p>Fairbairn agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Here is the report which goes with the charts. The chart of
+Cardiff was handed to the captain in an inn on shore. It came from an
+unknown person, who is mentioned as B.45."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard seized upon the report and read it through, and then the others
+upon the top of that. Cloth, saddlery, equipment of various kinds were
+needed in England, and a great sea-borne trade had sprung up between the
+two countries, so that ships constantly went to and fro. In more than
+one of these reports the hieroglyph B.45 appeared. But never a hint
+which could lead to his detection&mdash;never anything personal, not a clue
+to his age, his business, his appearance, even his abode&mdash;nothing but
+this baffling symbol B.45.</p>
+
+<p>"You have cabled all this home, of course," Hillyard observed to
+Fairbairn.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. They know nothing of the B.45. They are very anxious for any
+details."</p>
+
+<p>"He seems to be a sort of letter-box," said Hillyard, "a centre-point
+for the gathering in of information."</p>
+
+<p>Fairbairn shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"He is more active than that," he returned, and he pointed <a name="Page_142" id="Page_142"></a>to a passage
+here and there, which bore him out. It was the first time that Martin
+Hillyard had come across this symbol, and he was utterly at a loss to
+conjecture the kind of man the symbol hid. He might be quite obscure,
+the tenant of some suburban shop, or, again, quite prominent in the
+public eye, the owner of a fine house, and generous in charities; he
+might be of any nationality. But there he was, somewhere under the
+oak-trees of England, doing his secret, mean work for the ruin of the
+country. Hillyard dreamed that night of B.45. He saw him in his dreams,
+an elusive figure without a face, moving swiftly wherever people were
+gathered together, travelling in crowded trains, sitting at the
+dinner-tables of the great, lurking at the corners of poor tenements.
+Hillyard hunted him, saw him deftly pocket a letter which a passing
+stranger as deftly handed him, or exchange some whispered words with
+another who walked for a few paces without recognition by his side, but
+though he hurried round corners to get in front of him and snatch a
+glance at his face, he could never come up with him. He waked with the
+sunlight pouring in between the lattices of his shutters from the Plaza
+Catalu&ntilde;a, tired and unrefreshed. B.45! B.45! He was like some figure
+from a child's story-book! Some figure made up of tins and sticks and
+endowed with malevolent life. B.45. London asked news of him, and he
+stalked through London. Where should Hillyard find his true image and
+counterpart?</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It is not the purpose of this narrative to describe how one Christobal
+Quesada, first mate of the steamship <i>Mondragon</i>, utterly overreached
+himself by sending in a report of a British hospital ship, sure to leave
+the harbour of Alexandria with gun-carriages upon her deck; how the
+report was proved to be a lie; how it was used as the excuse for the
+barbarous sinking of the great ships laden with wounded, and ablaze from
+stern to stern with green lights, the red cross glowing amidships like a
+wondrous jewel; how Christobal Quesada was removed from his ship in a
+French port, and after being duly arraigned for his life, met his death
+against a prison wall. Fairbairn wrote to Martin Hillyard:<a name="Page_143" id="Page_143"></a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>The execution of Quesada has put an end to the whole
+wicked question. So long as the offender was only put in
+prison with the certainty of release at the end of the war,
+whilst his family lived comfortably on German money, the
+game went merrily on. But the return of the "Mondragon,"
+minus her executed mate, has altered the whole position.
+Juan de Maestre has nothing whatever to do nowadays.</i>"</p></div>
+
+<p>Hillyard smiled with contentment. He could understand a German going to
+any lengths for Germany. He was prepared to do the same himself for his
+country. But when a neutral under the cloak of his neutrality meddles in
+this stupendous conflict for cash, for his thirty miserable pieces of
+silver, he could feel no inclination of mercy.</p>
+
+<p>"Let the neutrals keep out!" he murmured. "This is not their affair. Let
+them hold their tongues and go about their own business!"</p>
+
+<p>He received Fairbairn's letter in the beginning of the year 1916. He was
+still no nearer at that date to the discovery of B.45; nor were they any
+better informed in London. Hillyard could only wait upon Chance to slip
+a clue into his hand.<a name="Page_144" id="Page_144"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">In a Sleeping-Car</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>The night express from Paris to Narbonne and the Spanish frontier was
+due to leave the Quai d'Orsay station at ten. But three-quarters of an
+hour before that time the platform was already crowded, and many of the
+seats occupied. Hillyard walked down the steps a little before half-past
+nine with the latest of the evening papers in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"You have engaged your seat, monsieur," the porter asked, who was
+carrying Hillyard's kit-bag.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Martin absently. He was thinking that on the boulevards the
+newsboys might now be crying a later edition of the papers than that
+which he held, an edition with still more details. He saw them
+surrounded in the darkened street by quiet, anxious groups.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you give me your ticket, monsieur?" the porter continued, and as
+Hillyard looked at him vacantly, "the ticket for your seat."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard roused himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon. I have a compartment in the sleeping-car, numbers
+eleven and twelve."</p>
+
+<p>Amongst many old principles of which Martin Hillyard had first learned
+the wisdom during these last years, none had sunk deeper than this&mdash;that
+the head of an organisation cannot do the work of any of its members and
+hope that the machine will run smoothly. His was the task of supervision
+and ultimate direction. He held himself at the beck and call of those
+who worked under him. He responded to their summons. And it was in
+response to a very urgent summons from Fairbairn that he had hurried the
+completion of certain arrangements with the French authorities in Paris
+and was now returning to the south! But he was going very reluctantly.</p>
+
+<p>It was July, 1916. The first battle of the Somme, launched <a name="Page_145" id="Page_145"></a>some days
+past, was at its very climacteric. The casualties had been and were
+terrible. Even at this moment of night the fury of the attack was not
+relaxed. All through the day reports, exasperating in their brevity, had
+been streaming into Paris, and rumour, as of old, circled swift-winged
+above the city, making good or ill the deficiencies of the telegrams.
+One fact, however, had leaped to light, unassailably true. The
+Clayfords, stationed on the north of the line at Thiepval, had redeemed
+their name and added a new lustre to their erstwhile shining record. The
+devotion of the officers, the discipline of the men, had borne their
+fruits. At a most critical moment the Clayfords had been forced to
+change front against a flank attack, under a galling fire and in the
+very press of battle, and the long extended line had swung to its new
+position with the steadiness of veterans, and, having reached it, had
+stood fast. Hillyard rejoiced with a sincerity as deep as if he himself
+held his commission in that regiment. But the losses had been terrible;
+and Martin Hillyard was troubled to the roots of his heart by doubts
+whether Harry Luttrell were at this moment knowing the deep contentment
+that the fixed aim of his boyhood and youth had been fulfilled; or
+whether he was lying out on the dark ground beneath the stars unaware of
+it and indifferent. Hillyard nursed a hope that some blunder had been
+made, and that he would find his compartment occupied.</p>
+
+<p>The controller, in his brown uniform with the brass buttons and his
+peaked cap, stood at the steps of the car with the attendant.</p>
+
+<p>"Eleven and twelve," said Hillyard, handing to him his ticket.</p>
+
+<p>The attendant, a middle-aged, stout man with a black moustache and a
+greasy face, shot one keen glance from under the peak of his cap at the
+occupant of numbers 11 and 12, and then led the way along the corridor.</p>
+
+<p>The compartment was empty. Hillyard looked around it with a grudging
+eye.</p>
+
+<p>"I am near the middle of the coach here, I think," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, monsieur, quite in the middle."</p>
+
+<p>"That is well," answered Hillyard. "I am an invalid, and cannot sleep
+when there is much motion."<a name="Page_146" id="Page_146"></a></p>
+
+<p>He spoke irritably, with that tone of grievance peculiar to the man who
+thinks his health is much worse than it is.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I get coffee in the morning?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"At half-past six, monsieur. But you must get out of the train for it."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard uttered an exclamation of disgust, and shrugged his shoulders.
+"What a country!" the gesture said as plainly as speech.</p>
+
+<p>"But it is the war, monsieur!" the attendant expostulated with
+indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I know! The war!" Hillyard retorted with ill-humour. "Do I
+want a bath? I cannot have it. It is the war. If a waiter is rude to me,
+it is the war. If my steak is over-cooked it is the war. The war! It is
+the excuse for everything."</p>
+
+<p>He told the porter to place his bag upon the upper berth, and, still
+grumbling, gave him some money. He turned sharply on the attendant, who
+was smiling in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, it seems to you funny that an invalid should be irritable, eh?" he
+cried. "I suppose it must be&mdash;damnably funny."</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur, there are very many men who would like to-night to be
+invalids with a sleeping compartment to themselves," returned the
+attendant severely.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't want to talk about it any more," said Hillyard roughly,
+and he shouldered his way out again on to the platform.</p>
+
+<p>The attendant followed him. The smile upon his face was sleeker than
+ever. He was very amused and contented with his passenger in the
+compartment numbers 11 and 12. He took the cap off his head and wiped
+the perspiration from his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Ouf! It is hot to-night." He looked after Hillyard with a chuckle, and
+remarked to the controller, "This is a customer who does not like his
+little comforts to be disarranged!"</p>
+
+<p>The controller nodded contemptuously.</p>
+
+<p>"They must travel&mdash;the English! The tourism&mdash;that is sacred, even if all
+Europe burns."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard strolled towards the stairs, and as he drew near to them his
+eyes brightened. A man about six years older than <a name="Page_147" id="Page_147"></a>himself, tall,
+broad-shouldered, slim of waist, with a short, fair moustache, was
+descending towards him.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The war has killed many foolish legends, but none more foolish than the
+legend of the typical Frenchman, conceived as a short, rotund, explosive
+person, with a square, brown beard of curly baby-hair and a shiny silk
+hat with a flat brim. There have been too many young athletes of clean
+build on view whose nationality, language and the uniforms of
+powder-blue and khaki could alone decide. The more curious might,
+perhaps, if the youth were in mufti, cast a downward glance at the
+boots; but even boots were ceasing to be the sure tell-tale they once
+used to be. This man descending the stairs with a limp was the
+Commandant Marnier, of the 193rd Regiment, wounded in 1915, and now
+attached to the General Staff. He was in plain clothes; he was looking
+for Martin Hillyard, and no stranger but would have set him and the man
+for whom he was looking in the same category of races.</p>
+
+<p>The Commandant Marnier saw Martin Hillyard clearly enough long before he
+reached the foot of the stairs. But nevertheless he greeted him with an
+appearance of surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"But what luck!" he said aloud. "You leave by this train?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. It may be that I shall find health."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes. So your friends will pray," returned the Commandant, falling
+into Hillyard's pace.</p>
+
+<p>"The telegram we sent for you&mdash;&mdash;" Marnier began.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!"</p>
+
+<p>"There is an answer already. Your friend is unhurt. I have brought you a
+copy. I thought that perhaps I might catch you before your train
+started."</p>
+
+<p>He gave the slip of typewritten message into Hillyard's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"That was most kind of you," said Hillyard. "You have removed a great
+anxiety. It would have been many days before I should have received this
+good news if you had not gone out of your way to hurry with it here."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard was moved, partly by the message, partly by the consideration
+of Marnier, who now waved his thanks aside.<a name="Page_148" id="Page_148"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Bah! We may not say 'comrade' as often as the Boche, but perhaps we are
+it all the more. I will not come further with you towards your carriage,
+for I have still a few things to do."</p>
+
+<p>He shook Hillyard by the hand and departed. Hillyard turned from him
+towards his sleeping-car, but though his chief anxiety was dispelled,
+his reluctance to go was not. And he looked at the long, brightly-lit
+train which was to carry him from this busy and high-hearted city with a
+desire that it would start before its time, and leave him a derelict
+upon the platform. He could not bend his thoughts to the work which was
+at his hand. The sapphire waters of the South had quite lost their
+sparkle and enchantment. Here, here, was the place of life! The
+exhilaration of his task, its importance, the glow of thankfulness when
+some real advantage was won, a plot foiled, a scheme carried to
+success&mdash;these matters were all banished from his mind. Even the
+war-risk of it was forgotten. He thought with envy of the men in
+trenches. Yet the purpose of his yacht was long since known to the
+Germans; the danger of the torpedo was ever present on her voyages, and
+the certainty that if she were sunk, and he captured, any means would be
+taken to force him to speak before he was shot, was altogether beyond
+dispute. Even at this moment he carried hidden in a match-box a little
+phial, which never left him, to put the sure impediment between himself
+and a forced confession of his aims and knowledge. But he was not aware
+of it. How many times had he seen the red light at Europa Point on
+Gibraltar's edge change to white, sometimes against the scarlet bars of
+dawn, sometimes in the winter against a wall of black! But on the
+platform of the Quai d'Orsay station, in a bustle of soldiers going on
+short leave to their homes, and rattling with pannikins and
+iron-helmets, he could remember none of these consolations.</p>
+
+<p>He reached his carriage.</p>
+
+<p>"Messieurs les voyageurs, en route!" cried the controller.</p>
+
+<p>"What a crowd!" Hillyard grumbled. "Really, it almost disposes one to
+say that one will never travel again until this war is over."</p>
+
+<p>He walked along the corridor to his compartment and sat <a name="Page_149" id="Page_149"></a>down as the
+train started with a jerk. The door stood open, and in a few minutes the
+attendant came to it.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is in the next compartment on the other side of the lavatory?"
+Hillyard asked.</p>
+
+<p>"A manufacturer of Perpignan and his wife."</p>
+
+<p>"Does he snore?" Hillyard asked. "If he snores I shall not sleep. It
+should be an offence against your bye-laws for a traveller to snore."</p>
+
+<p>He crossed one leg across his knee and unlaced his shoe.</p>
+
+<p>The attendant came into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"It is possible, monsieur, that I might hurry and fetch you your coffee
+in the morning," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"It is worth five francs to you if you do," replied Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"Then monsieur will not move from his compartment until luncheon. I will
+see to it. Monsieur will bolt his door, and in the morning I will knock
+when I bring the coffee."</p>
+
+<p>"Good," returned Hillyard ungraciously.</p>
+
+<p>The attendant retired, and Hillyard closed the door. But the ventilating
+lattice in the lower part of the door was open, and Hillyard could see
+the legs of the attendant. He was waiting outside&mdash;waiting for what?
+Hillyard smiled to himself and took down his bag from the upper berth.
+He had hardly opened it when the attendant knocked and entered.</p>
+
+<p>"You will not forget, monsieur, to bolt your door. In these days it is
+not wise to leave it on the latch."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't forget," Hillyard replied surlily, and once more the attendant
+retired; and again he stood outside the door. He did not move until the
+bolt was shot. The attendant seemed very pleased that this fool of a
+tourist who thought of nothing but his infirmities should safely bolt
+the door of the compartments numbers 11 and 12; and very pleased, too,
+to bring to this churlish, discontented traveller his coffee in the
+morning, so that he need not leave compartments numbers 11 and 12
+unguarded. Hillyard chuckled as the attendant moved away.</p>
+
+<p>"I am to be your watch-dog, am I? Your sentinel? Very well! Come, let me
+deserve your confidence, my friend."</p>
+
+<p>The train thundered out of the tunnel and through the sub<a name="Page_150" id="Page_150"></a>urbs of Paris.
+Hillyard drew a letter from Fairbairn out of his pocket and read it
+through.</p>
+
+<p>"Compartments numbers 11 and 12 on the night train from the Quai d'Orsay
+station to Cerb&egrave;re. Good!" murmured Hillyard. "Here I am in compartments
+numbers 11 and 12. Now we wait until the married couple from Perpignan
+and the attendant are comfortably asleep."</p>
+
+<p>He undressed and went to bed, but he did not sleep. He lay in the berth
+in the darkness, listening intently as the train rushed out of Paris
+across the plains of France. Once or twice, as the hours passed, he
+heard a stealthy footstep in the corridor outside, and once the faintest
+possible little click told that the latch of his door had been lifted to
+make sure that the bolt was still shot home in its socket. Hillyard
+smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"You are safe, my friend," he breathed the words towards the anxious one
+in the corridor. "No one can get in. The door is locked. The door of the
+dressing-room too. Sleep in your corner in peace."</p>
+
+<p>The train sped over a moonlit country, spacious, unhurt by war. It moved
+with a steady, rhythmical throb, like an accompaniment to a tune or a
+phrase, ever repeated and repeated Hillyard found himself fitting words
+to the pulsation of the wheels. "Berlin ... Berne ... Paris ... Cerb&egrave;re
+... Barcelona ... Madrid ... Aranjuez and the world"; and back again,
+reversing the order: "Madrid ... Barcelona ... Cerb&egrave;re ... Paris ...
+Berne ... Berlin."</p>
+
+<p>But the throb of the train set the interrogation at the end of the
+string of names. So that the sequence of them was like a question
+demanding confirmation....</p>
+
+<p>Towards three in the morning, when there was no movement in the corridor
+and the lights were blue and dim, Hillyard silently folded back his
+bedclothes and rose. In the darkness he groped gently for the door of
+the lavatory between his compartment and the compartment of the
+manufacturer of Perpignan. He found the handle, and pressed it down
+slowly; without a creak or a whine of the hinges the door swung open
+towards him. Through the clatter he could hear that the manufacturer of
+Perpignan was snoring. But Hillyard did not put his trust in snores. He
+crept with bare <a name="Page_151" id="Page_151"></a>feet across the washing-room, and, easing over the
+handle of the further door, locked the manufacturer out. Again there had
+been no sound. He shut the door of his own compartment lest the swing of
+the train should set it banging and arouse the sleepers. Towards the
+corridor there was a window of painted glass, and through this window a
+pale, dim light filtered in. Hillyard noticed, for the first time, that
+a small diamond-shaped piece of the coloured glass was missing, at about
+the level of a man's head. It was advisable that Martin Hillyard should
+be quick&mdash;or he might find the tables turned. With his ears more than
+ever alert, he set up the steps for the upper berth, in the lavatory,
+and whilst he worked his eyes watched that little aperture at the level
+of a man's head, which once a diamond-shaped piece of coloured glass had
+closed....</p>
+
+<p>The door of the manufacturer was unlocked, the steps folded in their
+place, and Hillyard back again in his bed before two minutes had passed.
+And once more the throb of the train beat into a chain of towns which
+went backwards and forwards like a shuttle in his brain. But there was
+no note of interrogation now.</p>
+
+<p>"Berlin ... Berne ... Paris ... Cerb&egrave;re ... Barcelona ... Madrid ...
+Aranjuez and the world"; and with a thump the train set a firm full stop
+to the sequence. Across the broad plain, meadowland and plough,
+flower-garden and fruit the train thundered down to the Pyrenees. Paris
+was far away now, and the sense of desolation at quitting it quite gone
+from Hillyard's breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Berlin ... Berne ... Paris ... Cerb&egrave;re ... Barcelona ... Madrid."</p>
+
+<p>Here was one of the post-roads by which Germany reached the outer world.
+Others there were beyond doubt. Sweden and Rotterdam, Mexico and South
+America&mdash;but here was one, and to-morrow, nay, to-day, the communication
+would be cut, and Germany so much the poorer.</p>
+
+<p>The train steamed into Cerb&egrave;re at one o'clock of the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>"Every one must descend here, monsieur, for the examination of luggage
+and passports," said the attendant.<a name="Page_152" id="Page_152"></a></p>
+
+<p>"But I am leaving France!" cried Hillyard. "I go on into Spain. Why
+should France, then, examine my luggage?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is the war, monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard lifted up his hands in indignation too deep for words. He
+gathered together his bag and his coat and stick, handed them to a
+porter and descended. He passed into the waiting-room, and was directed
+by a soldier with a fixed bayonet to take his place in the queue of
+passengers. But he said quietly to the soldier:</p>
+
+<p>"I would like to see M. de Cassaud, the Commissaire of Police."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard was led apart; his card was taken from him; he was ushered
+instantly into an office where an elderly French officer sat in mufti
+before a table. He shook Hillyard cordially by the hand.</p>
+
+<p>"You pass through? I myself hope to visit Barcelona again very soon.
+Jean, wait outside with monsieur's baggage," this to the porter who had
+pushed in behind Hillyard. M. de Cassaud rose and closed the door. He
+had looked at Hillyard's face and acted quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"It is something more than compliments you want from me, monsieur. Well,
+what can I do?"</p>
+
+<p>"The second sleeping-car, compartments numbers 11 and 12," said Hillyard
+urgently. "In the water-tank of the lavatory there is a little metal
+case with letters from Berlin for Barcelona and Madrid. But wait,
+monsieur!"</p>
+
+<p>M. de Cassaud was already at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the attendant of the sleeping-car who hides them there. If he can
+be called into an office quietly on some matter of routine and held
+there whilst your search is made, then those in Madrid and Barcelona to
+whom these letters are addressed may never know they have been sent at
+all!"</p>
+
+<p>M. de Cassaud nodded and went out. Hillyard waited nervously in the
+little whitewashed room. It was impossible that the attendant should
+have taken fright and bolted. Even if he bolted, it would be impossible
+that he should escape across the frontier. It was impossible that he
+should recover the metal case from the water-tank, while the carriage
+stood openly at the platform of Cerb&egrave;re station. He would be cer<a name="Page_153" id="Page_153"></a>tain to
+wait until it was shunted into the cleaning shed. But so many
+certainties had been disproved, so many possibilities had come to pass
+during the last two years, that Hillyard was sceptical to his
+finger-tips. M. de Cassaud was a long time away. Yes, certainly M. de
+Cassaud was a very long&mdash;&mdash;and the door opened, and M. de Cassaud
+appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"He is giving an account of his blankets and his towels. There are two
+soldiers at the door. He is safe. Come!" said the Commissaire.</p>
+
+<p>They crossed the platform to the carriage, whilst Hillyard described the
+attendant's anxiety that he should bolt his door. "No doubt he gave the
+same advice to the manufacturer of Perpignan," Hillyard added.</p>
+
+<p>It was M. de Cassaud who arranged and mounted the steps in the tiny
+washing-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Look, monsieur," said Hillyard, and he pointed to the little aperture
+in the coloured glass of the window. "One can see from the corridor what
+is going on in this room. That is useful. If a traveller complains&mdash;bah,
+it is the war!" and Hillyard laughed.</p>
+
+<p>M. de Cassaud looked at the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that is ingenious," he said.</p>
+
+<p>He drained off the water, folded back his sleeve, and plunged his arm
+into the tank. Then he uttered a little cry. He drew up into the light
+an oblong metal can, like a sandwich-case, with the edges soldered
+together to make it water-tight. He slipped it into his pocket and
+turned again to the window. He looked at it again curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that is ingenious," he said softly, like a man speaking to
+himself. Then he led the way back to his office, looking in at the
+guard-room on the platform to give an order on the way.</p>
+
+<p>The soldered edges of the case were quickly split asunder and a small
+package of letters written on very thin paper revealed.</p>
+
+<p>"You will let me take these on with me," pleaded Martin. "You shall have
+them again. But some of them may want a special treatment of which we
+have the secret."</p>
+
+<p>M. de Cassaud was doubtful about the propriety of such a procedure.<a name="Page_154" id="Page_154"></a></p>
+
+<p>"After all I found them," Martin urged.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be unusual," said M. de Cassaud. "The regulations, you
+know&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Martin Hillyard smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"The regulations, for you and me, my friend, are those we make
+ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>M. de Cassaud would admit nothing so outrageous to his trained and
+rather formal mind. But he made a list of these letters and of their
+addresses as though he was undecided. He had not finished when a
+sergeant entered and saluted. The attendant of the sleeping-car had been
+taken to the depot. He had been searched and a pistol had been found
+upon him. The sergeant laid a very small automatic Colt upon the table
+and retired. M. de Cassaud took up the little weapon and examined it.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know these toys, Monsieur Hillyard?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. They are chiefly used against the mosquitoes."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they will kill at twenty-five paces," continued the Commissaire;
+and he looked quickly at Hillyard. "I will tell you something. You ran
+some risk last night when you explored that water-tank. Yes, indeed! It
+would have been so easy. The attendant had but to thrust the muzzle of
+this through the opening of the window, shoot you dead, raise an alarm
+that he had caught you hiding something, and there was he a hero and you
+a traitor. Yes, that is why I said to you the little opening in the
+window was ingenious! Ah, if he had caught you! Yes, if he had caught
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>Martin was quick to take advantage.</p>
+
+<p>"Then let me have those letters! I will keep my French colleagues
+informed of everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said M. de Cassaud, and he suddenly swept the letters
+across to Hillyard, who gathered them up hastily and buttoned them away
+in his pocket before de Cassaud could change his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"It is all very incorrect," said the Commissaire reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but it is the war," replied Hillyard. "I have the authority of the
+attendant of the sleeping-car for saying so."<a name="Page_155" id="Page_155"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Tricks of the Trade</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>"Now!" said Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>Fairbairn fetched a couple of white porcelain developing dishes to the
+table. Hillyard unlocked a drawer in his bureau. They were in the
+deck-saloon of the <i>Dragonfly</i>, steaming southwards from Valencia.
+Outside the open windows the brown hill-sides, the uplands of olive
+trees and the sun-flecked waves slipped by in a magical clear light; and
+the hiss of the beaded water against the ship's planks filled the cabin
+with a rustle as of silk. Hillyard drew a deep breath of excitement as
+he took out from the drawer the letters he had carried off from M. de
+Cassaud. He had travelled straight through Barcelona to Valencia with
+the letters in his pocket, picking up Fairbairn at the Estaci&oacute;n de
+Francia on the way, and now, in the sunlight and in the secrecy of the
+open sea, they were to appraise the value of their catch.</p>
+
+<p>They sat at the table and examined them, opening the envelopes with the
+skill and the care which experience had taught them. For, even though
+this post-road was henceforth closed it might possibly be worth while to
+send forward these letters. One or two were apparently family letters
+for German soldiers, interned at Pampluna; one or two were business
+communications from firms in Berlin to their agents in Spain; and these
+seemed genuine enough.</p>
+
+<p>"They may be of value to the War Trade Board," said Fairbairn; and he
+put them aside for dispatch to London. As he turned back Hillyard cried
+suddenly:</p>
+
+<p>"Here we are!"</p>
+
+<p>He had come to the last letter of the little heap. He was <a name="Page_156" id="Page_156"></a>holding the
+envelope in front of him and he read out the address:</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Address">
+<tr><td align='left'><i>"Mr. Jack Williams,</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>"Alfredo Menandez, 6,</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 6em;"><i>"Madrid."</i></span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>Fairbairn started up, and tugging at his moustache, stared at the
+envelope over Hillyard's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove!" he said. "We may have got something."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us see!" returned Hillyard, and he opened the envelope.</p>
+
+<p>As he spread out the letter both men laughed. The date of the month had
+been corrected by the writer&mdash;thus:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 8.5em;">8</span><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"<i>July</i> 2<span style="text-decoration: line-through">7</span>th, 1916."<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>There was no doubt any longer in either of these two men's minds that
+hidden away under the commonplaces of a letter of affection was a
+message of grave importance.</p>
+
+<p>"They are full of clever tricks in Berlin," said Hillyard cheerfully. He
+could afford to contemplate that cleverness with complacency, for it was
+now to serve his ends.</p>
+
+<p>There was a German official of high importance living in the Calle
+Alfredo Menandez, although not at number 6 in that street. The street
+was a short one with very few numbers in it; and it had occurred to the
+German official to point out to the postman in that street that if
+letters came to English names in that street of which the owners could
+not be discovered, they were probably for the governess of his children,
+who had a number of English relations moving about Spain, and was
+accustomed to receive their letters for them, and in any case, five
+pesetas would be paid for each of them. Shortly after, letters had begun
+to arrive addressed to English nonexistent people in the quiet little
+Calle Alfredo Menandez, sometimes from Allied countries, sometimes from
+Holland, or from Port-Bou over against Cerb&egrave;re in Spain; and every one
+of these found its natural way to the house of the German official. The
+choice of English names had a certain small ingenuity in that, when
+passing through the censorship of Allied <a name="Page_157" id="Page_157"></a>countries, they were a little
+more likely to be taken at their face value than letters addressed to
+foreigners.</p>
+
+<p>So far so good. But the German high official was a very busy person; and
+letters might find their way into his hands which were really intended
+for English persons and not for him at all. Accordingly, to make all
+clear, to warn him that here indeed was a letter deserving his kind
+attention, that little trifling alteration in the date was adopted; as
+though a man writing on the 28th had mislaid the calendar or newspaper
+and assigned the 27th to the day of writing, and afterwards had
+discovered his mistake. It was no wonder accordingly that hope ran high
+in both Fairbairn and Hillyard as they read through this letter;
+although, upon the face of it, it was nothing but a sentimental effusion
+from a sister to a brother.</p>
+
+<p>"We have got to clear all this nonsense away first," said Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>Fairbairn took the letter, and placing it on one of the developing
+dishes, poured over it a liquid from a bottle.</p>
+
+<p>"That won't take very long," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Hillyard busied himself with the second of the two white
+porcelain dishes. He brought out a cruet stand from a cupboard at the
+side of the stove and filled the dish half full of vinegar. He added
+water until the liquid rose within half an inch of the rim, and rocked
+the dish that the dilution might be complete. Next he took a new
+copying-pencil from the pen-tray on his bureau and stripping the wood
+away with his knife, dropped the blue lead into the vinegar and water.
+This lead he carefully dissolved with the help of a glass pestle.</p>
+
+<p>"There! It's ready," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I, too," added Fairbairn.</p>
+
+<p>He lifted out of the developing dish a wet sheet of writing paper which
+was absolutely blank. Not one drop of the black ink which had recorded
+those sentimental effusions remained. It was just a sheet of notepaper
+which had accidentally fallen into a basin of water.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right," said Hillyard; and Fairbairn gently slid <a name="Page_158" id="Page_158"></a>the sheet
+into the dish in front of Hillyard. And for a while nothing happened.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a clever trick, isn't it?" Hillyard used the words again, but now
+with a note of nervousness. "No unlikely paraphernalia needed. Just a
+copying pencil and some vinegar, which you can get anywhere. Yes, it's a
+clever trick!"</p>
+
+<p>"If it works," Fairbairn added bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>Both men watched the dish anxiously. The paper remained blank. The
+solution did not seem to work. It was the first time they had ever made
+use of it. The coast slid by unnoticed.</p>
+
+<p>"Lopez was certain," said Fairbairn, "quite certain that this was the
+developing formula."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard nodded gloomily, but he did not remove his eyes from that
+irresponsive sheet.</p>
+
+<p>"There may be some other ingredient, something kept quite
+secret&mdash;something known only to one man or two."</p>
+
+<p>He sat down, hooking his chair with his foot nearer to the table.</p>
+
+<p>"We must wait."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all there is to be done," said Fairbairn, and they waited; and
+they waited. They had no idea, even if the formula should work, whether
+the writing would flash up suddenly like an over-exposed photographic
+plate, or emerge shyly and reluctantly letter by letter, word by word.
+Then, without a word spoken, Fairbairn's finger pointed. A brown stain
+showed on the whiteness of the paper&mdash;just a stroke. It was followed by
+a curve and another stroke. Hillyard swiftly turned the oblong
+developing dish so that the side of it, and not the end, was towards him
+now.</p>
+
+<p>"The writing is across the sheet," he said, and then with a cry, "Look!"</p>
+
+<p>A word was coming out clear, writing itself unmistakably in the middle
+of the line, at the bottom of the sheet&mdash;a signature. Zimmermann!</p>
+
+<p>"From the General Staff!" said Hillyard, in a whisper of excitement. "My
+word!" He looked at Fairbairn with an eager smile of gratitude. "It's
+your doing that we have got this&mdash;yours and Lopez Baeza's!"<a name="Page_159" id="Page_159"></a></p>
+
+<p>Miraculously the brown strokes and curves and dots and flourishes
+trooped out of nothing, and fell in like sections and platoons and
+companies with their due space between them, some quick and trim, some
+rather slovenly in their aspect, some loitering; but in the end the
+battalion of words stood to attention, dressed for inspection. The brown
+had turned black before Hillyard lifted the letter from the solution and
+spread it upon a sheet of blotting paper.</p>
+
+<p>"Now let us see!" and they read the letter through.</p>
+
+<p>One thousand pounds in English money were offered for reliable
+information as to the number of howitzers and tanks upon the British
+front.</p>
+
+<p>A second sum of a thousand pounds for reliable information as to the
+manufacture of howitzers and tanks in England.</p>
+
+<p>"So far, it's not very exciting," Hillyard remarked with disappointment,
+as he turned the leaf. But the letter progressed in interest.</p>
+
+<p>A third sum of a thousand pounds was offered for a list of the postal
+sections on the British front, with the name, initials and rank of a
+really good and reliable British soldier in each section who was
+prepared to receive and answer correspondence.</p>
+
+<p>Fairbairn chuckled and observed:</p>
+
+<p>"I think Herr Zimmermann might be provided with a number of such good
+and reliable soldiers selected by our General Staff," and he added with
+a truculent snort, "We could do with that sum of a thousand pounds here.
+You must put in a claim for it, Hillyard. Otherwise they'll snaffle it
+in London."</p>
+
+<p>Fairbairn, once a mild north-country schoolmaster, of correct
+phraseology and respectable demeanour, had, under the pressure of his
+service, developed like that white sheet of notepaper. He had suffered</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"A sea-change<br />
+Into something rich and strange"<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>and from a schoolmaster had become a buccaneer with a truculent manner
+and a mind of violence. London, under which name he classed all
+Government officials, offices, departments, and administrations,
+particularly roused his ire.<a name="Page_160" id="Page_160"></a> London was ignorant, London was stupid,
+London was always doing him and the other buccaneers down, was always
+snaffling something which he ought to have. Fairbairn, uttering one
+snort of satisfaction, would have shot it with his Browning.</p>
+
+<p>"Get it off your chest, old man," said Hillyard soothingly, "and we'll
+go on with this letter. It looks to me as if&mdash;&mdash;" He was glancing
+onwards and checked himself with an exclamation. His face became grave
+and set.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to this," and he read aloud, translating as he went along.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>Since the tubes have been successful in France, the device
+should be extended to England. B45 is obviously suitable for
+the work. A submarine will sink letters for the Embassy in
+Madrid and a parcel of the tubes between the twenty-seventh
+and the thirtieth of July, within Spanish territorial waters
+off the Cabo de Cabron. A green light will be shown in three
+short flashes from the sea and it should be answered from
+the shore by a red and a white and two reds.</i>"</p></div>
+
+<p>Hillyard leaned back in his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"B45," he cried in exasperation. "We get no nearer to him."</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a bit!" Fairbairn interposed. "We are a deal nearer to him through
+Zimmermann's very letter here. What are these tubes which have been so
+successful in France? Once we get hold of them and understand them and
+know what end they are to serve, we may get an idea of the kind of man
+obviously suitable for handling them."</p>
+
+<p>"Like B45," said Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! The search will be narrowed to one kind of man. Oh, we shall be
+much nearer, if only we get the tubes&mdash;if only the Germans in Madrid
+don't guess this letter's gone astray to us."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard had reflected already upon that contingency.</p>
+
+<p>"But why should they? The sleeping-car man is held <i>incomunicado</i>. There
+is no reason why they should know anything about this letter at all, if
+we lay our plans carefully."</p>
+
+<p>He folded up the letter and locked it away in the drawer. He looked for
+a while out of the window of the saloon. The <a name="Page_161" id="Page_161"></a>yacht had rounded the Cabo
+San Antonio. It was still the forenoon.</p>
+
+<p>"This is where Jos&eacute; Medina has got to come in," he declared. "You must
+go to Madrid, Fairbairn, and keep an eye on Mr. Jack Williams.
+Meanwhile, here Jos&eacute; Medina has got to come in."</p>
+
+<p>Fairbairn reluctantly agreed. He would much rather have stayed upon the
+coast and shared in the adventure, but it was obviously necessary that a
+keen watch should be kept in Madrid.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," he said, "unless, of course, you would like to go to Madrid
+yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I think not, old man."</p>
+
+<p>He mounted the ladder to the bridge and gave the instructions to the
+Captain, and early that evening the <i>Dragonfly</i> was piloted into the
+harbour of Alicante. Hillyard and Fairbairn went ashore. They had some
+hours to get through before they could take the journey they intended.
+They sauntered accordingly along the esplanade beneath the palm trees
+until they came to the Casino. Both were temporary members of that club,
+and they sat down upon the cane chairs on the broad side-walk. A
+military band was playing on the esplanade a little to their right, and
+in front of them a throng of visitors and townspeople strolled and sat
+in the evening air. Hillyard smiled as he watched the kaleidoscopic
+grouping and re-grouping of men and children and women. The revolutions
+of his life, a subject which in the press of other and urgent matters
+had fallen of late into the background of his thoughts, struck him again
+as wondrous and admirable. He began to laugh with enjoyment. He looked
+at Fairbairn. How dull in comparison the regular sequences of his
+career!</p>
+
+<p>"I wandered about here barefoot and penniless," he said, "not so very
+long ago. On this very pavement!" He struck it with his foot, commending
+to Fairbairn the amazing fact. "I have cleaned boots," and he called to
+a boy who was lying in wait with a boot-black's apparatus on his back
+for any dusty foot. "Chico, come and clean my shoes." He jested with the
+boy with the kindliness of a Spaniard, and gave him <a name="Page_162" id="Page_162"></a>a shining peseta.
+Hillyard was revelling in the romance of his life under the spur of the
+excitement which the affair of the letter had fired in him. "Yes, I
+wandered here, passing up and down in front of this very Casino."</p>
+
+<p>And Fairbairn saw his face change and his eyes widen as though he
+recognised some one in the throng beneath the trees.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" Fairbairn asked, and for a little while Hillyard did not
+answer. His eyes were not following any movements under the trees. They
+saw no one present in Alicante that day. Slowly he turned to Fairbairn,
+and answered in voice of suspense:</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing! I was just remembering&mdash;and wondering!"</p>
+
+<p>He remained sunk in abstraction for a long time. "It can't be!" at grips
+with "If it could be!" and a rising inspiration that "It was!" A man had
+once tried him out with questions about Alicante, a man who was afraid
+lest he should have seen too much. But Hillyard had learnt to hold his
+tongue when he had only inspirations to go upon, and he disclosed
+nothing of this to Fairbairn.</p>
+
+<p>Later on, when darkness had fallen, the two men drove in a motor-car
+southwards round the bay and through a shallow valley to the fishing
+village of Torrevieja. When you came upon its broad beach of shingle and
+sand, with its black-tarred boats hauled up, and its market booths, you
+might dream that you had been transported to Broadstairs&mdash;except for one
+fact. The houses are built in a single story, since the village is
+afflicted with earthquakes. Two houses rise higher than the rest, the
+hotel and the Casino. In the Casino Hillyard found Jos&eacute; Medina's agent
+for those parts sitting over his great mug of beer; and they talked
+together quietly for a long while.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Martin Hillyard fared in those days. He played with life and death,
+enjoying vividly the one and ever on the brink of the other, but the
+deep, innermost realities of either had as yet touched him not at all.<a name="Page_163" id="Page_163"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">On a Cape of Spain</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>The great cape thrusts its knees far out into the Mediterranean, and
+close down by the sea on the very point a lighthouse stands out from the
+green mass like a white pencil. South-westwards the land runs sharply
+back in heights of tangled undergrowths and trees, overhangs a wide bay
+and drops at the end of the bay to the mouth of a spacious, empty
+harbour. Eastwards the cape slopes inland at a gentler angle with an
+undercliff, a narrow plateau, and behind the plateau mountain walls. Two
+tiny fishing villages cluster a mile or two apart at the water's edge,
+and high up on the cape's flanks here and there a small rude settlement
+clings to the hillside. There are no roads to the cape. From the east
+you may ride a horse towards it, and lose your way. From the west you
+must approach by boat. So remote and unvisited is this region that the
+women in these high villages, their homes cut out of the actual brown
+rock, still cover their faces with the Moorish veil.</p>
+
+<p>There are no roads, but Jos&eacute; Medina was never deterred by the lack of
+roads. His business, indeed, was a shy one, and led him to prefer wild
+country. A high police official in one great town said of him:</p>
+
+<p>"For endurance and activity there is no one like Jos&eacute; Medina between the
+sea and the Pyrenees. You think him safe in Mallorca and look! He lands
+one morning from the steamer, jumps into a motor-car, and in five
+minutes&mdash;whish!&mdash;he is gone like the smoke of my cigarette. He will
+drive his car through our mountains by tracks, of which the guardia
+civil does not even know the existence."</p>
+
+<p>By devious tracks, then, now through narrow gullies in brown and barren
+mountains, now striking some village path amidst peach trees and
+marguerites, Jos&eacute; Medina drove Martin<a name="Page_164" id="Page_164"></a> Hillyard down to the edge of the
+sea. Here amongst cactus bushes in flower, with turf for a carpet, a
+camp had been prepared near to one of the two tiny villages. Jos&eacute; Medina
+was king in this region. The party arrived in the afternoon of the
+twenty-sixth day of the month, all of the colour of saffron from the
+dust-clouds the car had raised, and Hillyard so stiff and bruised with
+the intolerable jolting over ruts baked to iron, that he could hardly
+climb down on to the ground. He slept that night amidst such a music of
+birds as he had never believed possible one country could produce.
+Through the night of the twenty-sixth he and Jos&eacute; Medina watched; their
+lanterns ready to their hands. Lights there were in plenty on the sea,
+but they were the lights of acetylene lamps used by the fishermen of
+those parts to attract the fish; and the morning broke with the
+lighthouse flashing wanly over a smooth sea, pale as fine jade.</p>
+
+<p>"There are three more nights," said Hillyard. He was a little dispirited
+after the fatigue of the day before and the long, empty vigil on the top
+of the day.</p>
+
+<p>The next watch brought no better fortune. There was no moon; the night
+was of a darkness so clear that the stars threw pale and tremulous paths
+over the surface of the water, and from far away the still air vibrated
+from time to time with the throbbing of propellers as the ships without
+lights passed along the coast.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard rose from the blanket on which he and Jos&eacute; Medina had been
+lying during the night. It had been spread on a patch of turf in a break
+of the hill some hundreds of feet above the sea. He was cold. The
+blanket was drenched and the dew hung like a frost on bush and grass.</p>
+
+<p>"It looks as if they had found out," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"This is only the second night," said Jos&eacute; Medina.</p>
+
+<p>"It all means so much to me," replied Hillyard, shivering in the
+briskness of the morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Courage, the little Marteen!" cried Jos&eacute; Medina. "After breakfast and a
+few hours' sleep, we shall take a rosier view."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard, however, could not compose himself to those few hours. The
+dread lest the Germans should have discovered the interception of their
+letters weighed too heavily upon him.<a name="Page_165" id="Page_165"></a> Even in the daylight he needs
+must look out over that placid sunlit sea and imagine here and there
+upon its surface the low tower and grey turtle-back of a submarine.
+Success here might be so great a thing, so great a saving of lives, so
+dire a blow to the enemy. Somehow that day slowly dragged its burning
+hours to sunset, the coolness of the evening came, and the swift
+darkness upon its heels, and once more, high up on the hillside, the
+vigil was renewed. And at half-past one in the morning, far away at sea,
+a green light, bright as an emerald, flashed thrice and was gone.</p>
+
+<p>"Did I not say to you, 'Have courage'?" said Jos&eacute; Medina.</p>
+
+<p>"Quick! the Lanterns!" replied Hillyard. "The red first! Good! Now the
+white. So! And the red again. Now we must wait!" and he sank down again
+upon the blanket. All the impatience and languor were gone from him. The
+moment had come. He was at once steel to meet it.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Jos&eacute; Medina, "we shall see nothing more now for a long
+while."</p>
+
+<p>They heard no sound in that still night; they saw no gleam of lights. It
+seemed to Hillyard that &aelig;ons passed before Jos&eacute; touched him on the elbow
+and pointed downwards.</p>
+
+<p>"Look!" he whispered excitedly.</p>
+
+<p>Right at their very feet the long, grim vessel lay, so near that
+Hillyard had the illusion he could pitch a stone on to the conning
+tower. He now held his breath, lest his breathing should be heard. Then
+the water splashed, and a moment afterwards the submarine turned and
+moved to sea. They gave it five minutes, and then climbed down to a tiny
+creek. A rowing-boat lay in readiness there, with one man at the tiller
+and two at the oars.</p>
+
+<p>"You saw it, Manuel?" said Medina as he and Hillyard stepped in.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Se&ntilde;or Jos&eacute;. It was very close. Oh, they know these waters!"</p>
+
+<p>The oars churned the phosphorescent water into green fire, and the foam
+from the stem of the boat sparkled as though jewels were scattered into
+it by the oarsmen as they rowed. They stopped alongside a little white
+buoy which floated on the water. The buoy was attached to a rope; that
+again to a <a name="Page_166" id="Page_166"></a>chain. A mat was folded over the side of the boat and the
+chain drawn cautiously in and coiled without noise. Hillyard saw the two
+men who were hauling it in bend suddenly at their work and heave with a
+greater effort.</p>
+
+<p>"It is coming," said one of them, and the man at the tiller went forward
+to help them. Hillyard leaned over the side of the heavy boat and stared
+down into the water. But the night was too dark for him to see anything
+but the swirl of green fire made by the movement of the chain and the
+fire-drops falling from the links. At last something heavy knocked
+against the boat's flanks.</p>
+
+<p>"Once more," whispered the man from the tiller. "Now!"</p>
+
+<p>And the load was perched upon the gunwale and lowered into the boat. It
+consisted of three square and bulky metal cases, bound together by the
+chain.</p>
+
+<p>"We have it, my friend Marteen," whispered Jos&eacute; Medina, with a laugh of
+sheer excitement. He was indeed hardly less stirred than Hillyard
+himself. "Not for nothing did the little Marteen lead the horse across
+the beach of Benicassim. Now we will row back quickly. We must be far
+away from here by the time the world is stirring."</p>
+
+<p>The boatmen bent to their oars with a will, and the boat leaped upon the
+water. They had rowed for fifty yards when suddenly far away a cannon
+boomed. The crew stopped, and every one in the boat strained his eyes
+seawards. Some one whispered, and Hillyard held up his hand for silence.
+Thus they sat immobile as figures of wax for the space of ten minutes.
+Then Hillyard relaxed from his attention.</p>
+
+<p>"They must have got her plump with the first shot," he said; and,
+indeed, there was no other explanation for that boom of a solitary
+cannon across the midnight sea.</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"So the little Marteen had made his arrangements?"</p>
+
+<p>"What else am I here for?" retorted the little Marteen, and though he
+too laughed, a thrill of triumph ran through the laugh. "It just needed
+that shot to round all off. I was so afraid that we should not hear it,
+that it might never be fired.<a name="Page_167" id="Page_167"></a> Now it will never be known, if your men
+keep silent, whether they sunk their cargo or were sunk with it on
+board."</p>
+
+<p>The crew once more drove the blades of their oars through the water, and
+did not slacken till the shore was reached. They clambered up the rocks
+to their camp bearing their treasure, and up from the camp again to the
+spot where Jos&eacute;'s motor-car was hidden. Jos&eacute; talked to the boatmen while
+the cans were stowed away in the bottom of the car, and then turned to
+Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"There will be no sign of our camp at daybreak. The tent will be
+gone&mdash;everything. If our luck holds&mdash;and why should it not?&mdash;no one need
+ever know that the Se&ntilde;or Marteen and his friend Jos&eacute; Medina picnicked
+for three days upon that cape."</p>
+
+<p>"But the lighthouse-keepers! What of them?" objected Hillyard. In him,
+too, hope and excitement were leaping high. But this objection he
+offered up on the altars of the gods who chastise men for the insolence
+of triumph.</p>
+
+<p>"What of them?" Jos&eacute; Medina repeated gaily. "They, too, are my friends
+this many a year." He seated himself at the wheel of the car. "Come, for
+we cannot drive fast amongst these hills in the dark."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard will never forget to the day of his death that wild passage
+through the mountains. Now it was some sudden twist to avoid a
+precipice, now a jerk and a halt whilst Jos&eacute; stared into the darkness
+ahead of him; here the car jolted suddenly over great stones, then it
+sank to the axle in soft dust; at another place the bushes whipped their
+faces; and again they must descend and build a little bridge of boughs
+and undergrowth over a rivulet. But so high an elation possessed him
+that he was unconscious both of the peril and the bruises. He could have
+sung aloud. They stopped an hour after daybreak and breakfasted by the
+side of the car in a high country of wild flowers. The sun was hidden
+from them by a barrier of hills.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall strike an old mine-road in half an hour," said Jos&eacute; Medina,
+"and make good going."</p>
+
+<p>They came into a district of grey, weathered rock, and, making a wide
+circuit all that day, crept towards nightfall <a name="Page_168" id="Page_168"></a>down to the road between
+Aguilas and Cartagena; and once more the sea lay before them.</p>
+
+<p>"We are a little early," said Medina. "We will wait here until it is
+dark. The carabineros are not at all well disposed to me, and there are
+a number of them patrolling the road."</p>
+
+<p>They were above the road and hidden from it by a hedge of thick bushes.
+Between the leaves Hillyard could see a large felucca moving westwards
+some miles from the shore and a long way off on the road below two tiny
+specks. The specks grew larger and became two men on horses. They became
+larger still, and in the failing light Hillyard was just able to
+distinguish that they wore the grey uniform of the Guardia Civil.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us pray," said Medina with a note of anxiety in his voice, "that
+they do not become curious about our fishing-boat out there!"</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke the two horsemen halted, and did look out to sea. They
+conversed each with the other.</p>
+
+<p>"If I were near enough to hear them!" said Jos&eacute; Medina, and he suddenly
+turned in alarm upon Hillyard. "What are you doing?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard had taken a large.38 Colt automatic pistol from his pocket. His
+face was drawn and white and very set.</p>
+
+<p>"I am doing nothing&mdash;for the moment," he answered. "But those two men
+must ride on before it is dark and too late for me to see them."</p>
+
+<p>"But they are of the Guardia Civil," Jos&eacute; Medina expostulated in awed
+tones.</p>
+
+<p>To the Spaniard, the mere name of the Guardia Civil, so great is its
+prestige, and so competent its personnel, inspires respect.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care," answered Hillyard savagely. "In this war why should two
+men on a road count at all? Let them go on, and nothing will happen."</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina, who had been assuming the part of protector and adviser to
+his young English friend, had now the surprise of his life. He found
+himself suddenly relegated to the second place and by nothing but sheer
+force of character. Hillyard rested the point of his elbow on the earth
+and supported <a name="Page_169" id="Page_169"></a>the barrel of his Colt upon his left forearm. He aimed
+carefully along the sights.</p>
+
+<p>"Let them go on!" he said between his teeth. "I will give them until the
+last moment&mdash;until the darkness begins to hide them. But not a moment
+longer. I am not here, my friend, for my health. I am here because there
+is a war."</p>
+
+<p>"The little Marteen" was singularly unapparent at this moment. Here was
+just the ordinary appalling Englishman who had not the imagination to
+understand what a desperately heinous crime it would be to kill two of
+the Guardia Civil, who was simply going to do it the moment it became
+necessary, and would not lose one minute of his sleep until his dying
+day because he had done it. Jos&eacute; Medina was completely at a loss as he
+looked into the grim indifferent face of his companion. The two horsemen
+were covered. The Colt would kill at more than five hundred yards, and
+it had no more to do than carry sixty. And still those two fools sat on
+their horses, and babbled to one another, and looked out to sea.</p>
+
+<p>"What am I to do with this loco Ingl&eacute;s?" Jos&eacute; Medina speculated,
+wringing his hands in an agony of apprehension. He had no share in those
+memories which at this moment invaded Martin Hillyard, and touched every
+fibre of his soul. Martin Hillyard, though his eye never left the sights
+of his Colt nor his mind wavered from his purpose, was with a
+subordinate consciousness stealing in the dark night up the footpath
+between the big, leafy trees over the rustic railway bridge to the
+summit of the hill. He was tramping once more through lanes, between
+fields, and stood again upon a hillock of Peckham Rye, and saw the
+morning break in beauty and in wonder over London. The vision gained
+from the foolish and romantic days of his boyhood, steadied his finger
+upon the trigger after all these years.</p>
+
+<p>Then to Jos&eacute;'s infinite relief the two horsemen rode on. The long,
+black, shining barrel of the Colt followed them as they dwindled on the
+road. They turned a corner, and as Hillyard replaced his pistol in his
+pocket, Jos&eacute; Medina rolled over on his back, and clapped his hands to
+his face.<a name="Page_170" id="Page_170"></a></p>
+
+<p>"You might have missed," he gasped. "One of them at all events."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard turned to him with a grin. The savage was not yet exorcised.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" he asked. "Why should I have missed one of them? It was my
+business not to."</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina flung up his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not argue with you. We are not made of the same earth."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard's face changed to gentleness.</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty nearly, my friend," he said, and he laid a hand on Jos&eacute; Medina's
+shoulder. "For we are good friends&mdash;such good friends that I do not
+scruple to drag you into the same perils as myself."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard had not wasted his time during those three years when he loafed
+and worked about the quays of Southern Spain. He touched the right chord
+now with an unerring skill. Hillyard might be the mad Englishman, the
+loco Ingl&eacute;s! But to be reckoned by one of them as one of them&mdash;here was
+an insidious flattery which no one of Jos&eacute; Medina's upbringing could
+possibly resist.</p>
+
+<p>At nightfall they drove down across the road on to the beach. A
+rowing-boat was waiting, and Medina's manager from Alicante beside the
+boat on the sand. The cases were quickly transferred from the car to the
+boat.</p>
+
+<p>"We will take charge of the car," said Jos&eacute; to his manager, and he
+stepped into the boat, and sat down beside Hillyard. "This is my
+adventure. I see it through to the end," he explained.</p>
+
+<p>A mile away the felucca picked them up. Hillyard rolled himself up in a
+rug in the bows of the boat. He looked up to the stars tramping the sky
+above his head.</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"And gentlemen in England now a-bed."<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Drowsily he muttered the immemorial line, and turning on his side slept
+as only the tired men who know they have done their work can sleep. He
+was roused in broad daylight. The felucca was lying motionless upon the
+water; no land was <a name="Page_171" id="Page_171"></a>anywhere in sight; but above the felucca towered the
+tall side of the steam yacht <i>Dragonfly</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Fairbairn was waiting at the head of the ladder. The cases were carried
+into the saloon and opened. The top cases were full of documents and
+letters, some private, most of them political.</p>
+
+<p>"These are for the pundits," said Hillyard. He put them back again, and
+turned to the last case. In them were a number of small glass tubes,
+neatly packed in cardboard boxes with compartments lined with cotton
+wool.</p>
+
+<p>"This is our affair, Fairbairn," he said. He took one out, and a look of
+perplexity crept over his face. The tube was empty. He tried another and
+another, and then another; every one of the tubes was empty.</p>
+
+<p>"Now what in the world do you make of that?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>The tubes had yet to be filled and there was no hint of what they were
+to be filled with.</p>
+
+<p>"What I am wondering about is why they troubled to send the tubes at
+all?" said Fairbairn slowly. "There's some reason, of course, something
+perhaps in the make of the glass."</p>
+
+<p>He held one of the tubes up to the light. There was nothing to
+distinguish it from any one of the tubes in which small tabloids are
+sold by chemists.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard got out of his bureau the letter in which these tubes were
+mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>"'They have been successful in France,'" he said, quoting from the
+letter. "The scientists may be able to make something of them in Paris.
+This letter and the tubes together may give a clue. I think that I had
+better take one of the boxes to Paris."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Fairbairn gloomily. "But&mdash;&mdash;" and he shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"But it's one of the ninety per cent, which go wrong, eh?" Hillyard
+finished the sentence with bitterness. Disappointment was heavy upon
+both men. Hillyard, too, was tired by the tension of these last
+sleepless days. He had not understood how much he had counted upon
+success.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's damnably disheartening," he cried. "I thought these tubes
+might lead us pretty straight to B45."<a name="Page_172" id="Page_172"></a></p>
+
+<p>"B45!"</p>
+
+<p>The exclamation came from Jos&eacute; Medina, who was leaning against the
+doorpost of the saloon, half in the room, half out on the sunlit deck.
+He had placed himself tactfully aloof. The examination of the cases was
+none of his business. Now, however, his face lit up.</p>
+
+<p>"B45." He shut the door and took a seat at the table. "I can tell you
+about B45."<a name="Page_173" id="Page_173"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Uses of Science</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>It was Hillyard's creed that chance will serve a man very capably, if he
+is equipped to take advantage of its help; and here was an instance. The
+preparation had begun on the morning when Hillyard took the <i>Dragonfly</i>
+into the harbour of Palma. Chance had offered her assistance some months
+later in an hotel at Madrid; as Medina was now to explain.</p>
+
+<p>"The day after you left Mallorca," said Jos&eacute; Medina, "it was known all
+over Palma that you had come to visit me."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," answered Martin.</p>
+
+<p>"I was in consequence approached almost immediately, by the other side."</p>
+
+<p>"I expected that. It was only natural."</p>
+
+<p>"There is a young lady in Madrid," continued Jos&eacute; Medina.</p>
+
+<p>"Carolina Muller?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Rosa Hahn, then."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Jos&eacute; Medina.</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; rose and unlocking a drawer in his bureau took out from it a sheaf
+of photographs. He selected one and handed it with a smile to Hillyard.
+It was the portrait of a good-looking girl, tall, dark, and intelligent,
+but heavy about the feet, dressed in Moorish robes, and extended on a
+divan in Oriental indolence against a scene cloth which outdid the
+luxuries of Llalla Rookh.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the lady, I think."</p>
+
+<p>Medina gazed at the picture with delight. He touched his lips with his
+fingers, and threw a kiss to it. His sharp, sallow face suddenly
+flowered into smiles.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. What a woman! She has real intelligence," he exclaimed fervently.<a name="Page_174" id="Page_174"></a></p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina was in the habit of losing his heart and keeping his head a
+good many times in an ordinary year.</p>
+
+<p>"It's an extraordinary thing," Martin Hillyard remarked, "that however
+intelligent they are, not one of these young ladies can resist the
+temptation to have her portrait taken in Moorish dress at the
+photographer's in the Alhambra."</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina saw nothing at all grotesque or ridiculous in this
+particular foible.</p>
+
+<p>"They make such charming pictures," he cried.</p>
+
+<p>"And it is very useful for us, too," remarked Hillyard. "The
+photographer is a friend of mine."</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; was still gazing at the photograph.</p>
+
+<p>"Such a brain, my friend! She never told a story the second time
+differently, however emotional the moment. She never gave away a
+secret."</p>
+
+<p>"She probably didn't know any," said Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>But Jos&eacute; would not hear of such a reason.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes! She has great influence. She knows people in Berlin&mdash;great
+people. She is their friend, and I cannot wonder. What an intelligence!"</p>
+
+<p>Martin Hillyard laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"She seems to have fairly put it over you at any rate," he said. He was
+not alarmed at Jos&eacute; Medina's fervour. For he knew that remarkable man's
+capacity for holding his tongue even in the wildest moments of his
+temporary passions. But he took the photograph away from Medina and
+locked it up again. The rapturous reminiscences of Rosa Hahn's
+intelligence checked the flow of that story which was to lead him to
+B45.</p>
+
+<p>"So you know about her?" Jos&eacute; said with an envious eye upon the locked
+drawer.</p>
+
+<p>"A little," said Martin Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>Rosa Hahn was a clerk in the office of the Hamburg-Amerika Line before
+the war, and in the Spanish Department. She was sent to Spain in the
+last days of July, 1914, upon Government work, and at a considerable
+salary, which she enjoyed. She seemed indeed to have done little else,
+and Berlin, after a year, began to complain. Berlin had a lower opinion
+of both her social position and her brains than Jos&eacute;<a name="Page_175" id="Page_175"></a> Medina had formed.
+Berlin needed results, and failing to obtain them, proceeded to hint
+more and more definitely that Rosa had better return to her clerk's
+stool in Hamburg. Rosa, however, had been intelligent enough to make
+friends with one or two powerful Germans in Spain; and they pleaded for
+her with this much success. She was given another three months within
+which period she must really do something to justify her salary. So much
+Martin Hillyard already knew; he learnt now that Jos&eacute; Medina had
+provided the great opportunity. To snatch him with his two hundred motor
+feluccas and his eighteen thousand men from the English&mdash;here was
+something really worth doing.</p>
+
+<p>"What beats me," said Hillyard, "is why they didn't try to get at you
+before."</p>
+
+<p>"They didn't," said Medina.</p>
+
+<p>Rosa, it seemed, used the argument which is generally sound; that the
+old and simple tricks are the tricks which win. She discovered the hotel
+at which Jos&eacute; Medina stayed in Madrid, and having discovered it she went
+to stay there herself. She took pains to become friendly with the
+manager and his staff, and by professing curiosity and interest in the
+famous personage, she made sure not only that she would have
+fore-warning of his arrival, but that Jos&eacute; Medina himself would hear of
+a charming young lady to whom he appealed as a hero of romance. She knew
+Jos&eacute; to be of a coming-on disposition&mdash;and the rest seemed easy. Only,
+she had not guarded against the workings of Chance.</p>
+
+<p>The hotel was the Hotel de Napoli, not one of the modern palaces of
+cement and steel girders, built close to the Prado, but an old house
+near the Puerto del Sol, a place of lath and plaster walls and thin
+doors; so that you must not raise your voice unless you wish your
+affairs to become public property. To this house Jos&eacute; Medina came as he
+had many times come before, and Chance willed that he should occupy the
+next room to that occupied by Rosa Hahn. It was the merest accident. It
+was the merest accident, too, that Jos&eacute; Medina whilst he was unpacking
+his bag heard his name pronounced in the next room. Jos&eacute; Medina, with
+all his qualities, was of the peasant class with much of the peasant
+mind. He was inquis<a name="Page_176" id="Page_176"></a>itive, and he was suspicious. Let it be said in his
+defence that he had enemies enough ready to pull him down, not only, as
+we have seen, amongst his rivals on the coast, but here, amongst the
+Government officials of Madrid. It cost him a pretty penny annually to
+keep his balance on the tight-rope, as it was. He stepped noiselessly
+over to the door and listened. The voices were speaking in Spanish, one
+a woman's voice with a guttural accent.</p>
+
+<p>"Rosa Hahn," said Hillyard as the story was told to him in the cabin of
+the yacht.</p>
+
+<p>"The other a man's voice. But again it was a foreign voice, not a
+Spaniard's. But I could not distinguish the accent."</p>
+
+<p>"Greek, do you think?" asked Hillyard. "There is a Levantine Greek high
+up in the councils of the Germans."</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina, however, did not know.</p>
+
+<p>"Here were two foreigners talking about me, and fortunately in Spanish.
+I was to arrive immediately; Rosa was to make my acquaintance. What my
+relations were with this man, Hillyard&mdash;yes, you came into the
+conversation, my friend, too&mdash;I was quickly to be persuaded to tell.
+Oh&mdash;you have a saying&mdash;everything in your melon patch was lovely."</p>
+
+<p>"Not for nothing has the American tourist come to Spain," Hillyard
+murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"Then their voices dropped a little, and your B45 was mentioned&mdash;once or
+twice. And a name in connection with B45 once or twice. I did not
+understand what it was all about."</p>
+
+<p>"But you remember the name!" Fairbairn exclaimed eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I do."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what was it?"</p>
+
+<p>It was again Fairbairn who spoke. Hillyard had not moved, nor did he
+even look up.</p>
+
+<p>"It was Mario Escobar," said Jos&eacute; Medina; and as he spoke he knew that
+the utterance of the name awakened no surprise in Martin Hillyard.
+Hillyard filled his pipe from the tobacco tin, and lighted it before he
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know anything of this Mario Escobar?" he asked, "you who know
+every one?"<a name="Page_177" id="Page_177"></a></p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina shrugged his shoulders, and threw up his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"There was some years ago a Mario Escobar at Alicante," and Jos&eacute; Medina
+saw Hillyard's eyes open and fix themselves upon him with an unblinking
+steadiness. Just so Jos&eacute; Medina imagined might some savage animal in a
+jungle survey the man who had stumbled upon his lair.</p>
+
+<p>"That Mario Escobar, a penniless, shameless person, was in business with
+a German, the German Vice-Consul. He went from Alicante to London."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Hillyard. He rose from his chair and went to the
+window. But he saw nothing of the deck outside, or the sea beyond. He
+saw a man at a supper party in London a year before the war began,
+betraying himself by foolish insistent questions uttered in fear lest
+his close intimacy with Germans in Alicante should be known.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no doubt that Mario Escobar came definitely to England, long
+before the war, to spy," said Hillyard gravely. He returned to the
+table, and took up again one of the empty glass tubes.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what he was to do with these."</p>
+
+<p>Jos&eacute; Medina had opened the door of the saloon once more. A beam of
+sunlight shot through the doorway, and enveloped Hillyard's arm and
+hand. The tiny slim phial glittered like silver; and to all of them in
+the cabin it became a sinister engine of destruction.</p>
+
+<p>"That, as you say, is your affair. I must go," said Jos&eacute;, and he shook
+hands with Hillyard and Fairbairn, and went out on to the deck. "<i>Hasta
+luego!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Hasta ahora!</i>" returned Hillyard; and Jos&eacute; Medina walked down the
+steps of the ladder to his felucca. The blue sea widened between the two
+vessels; and in a week, Hillyard descended from a train on to the
+platform of the Quai D'Orsay station in Paris. He had the tubes in his
+luggage, and one box of them he took that morning to Commandant Marnier
+at his office on the left bank of the river with the letter which gave
+warning of their arrival.</p>
+
+<p>"You see what the letter says," Hillyard explained. "These tubes have
+been very successful in France."<a name="Page_178" id="Page_178"></a></p>
+
+<p>Marnier nodded his head:</p>
+
+<p>"If you will leave them with me, I will show them to our chemists, and
+perhaps, in a few days, I will have news for you."</p>
+
+<p>For a week Hillyard took his ease in Paris and was glad of the rest in
+the midst of those strenuous days. He received one morning at his hotel,
+a batch of letters, many of which had been written months before. But
+two were of recent date. Henry Luttrell wrote to him:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>My battalion did splendidly and our debt to old Oakley is
+great. There is only a handful of us left and we are
+withdrawn, of course, from the lines. By some miracle I
+escaped without a hurt. Everybody has been very generous,
+making it up to us for our bad times. The Corps Commander
+came and threw bouquets in person, and we hear that D.H.
+himself is going out of his way to come and inspect us. I go
+home on leave in a fortnight and hope to come back in
+command of the battalion. Perhaps we may meet in London. Let
+me hear if that is possible.</i>"</p></div>
+
+<p>The second letter had been sent from Rackham Park, and in it Millie
+Splay wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>We have not heard from you for years. Will you be in
+England this August? We are trying to gather again our old
+Goodwood party. Both Dennis Brown and Harold Jupp will be
+home on leave. There will be no Goodwood of course, but
+there is a meeting at Gatwick which is easily reached from
+here. Do come if you can and bring your friend with you, if
+he is in London and has nothing better to do. We have all
+been reading about him in the papers, and Chichester is very
+proud of belonging to the same mess, and says what a
+wonderful thing it must be to be able to get into the papers
+like that, without trying to.</i>"</p></div>
+
+<p>Hillyard could see the smile upon Lady Splay's face as she wrote that
+sentence. Hillyard laughed as he read it but it was less in amusement as
+from pleasure at the particular in<a name="Page_179" id="Page_179"></a>formation which this sentence
+contained. Harry Luttrell had clearly won a special distinction in the
+hard fighting at Thiepval. There was not a word in Harry's letter to
+suggest it. There would not be. All his pride and joy would be engrossed
+by the great fact that his battalion had increased its good name.</p>
+
+<p>There was a closing sentence in Millie Splay's letter which brought
+another smile to his lips.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>Linda Spavinsky is, alas, going as strong as ever. She was
+married last week, in violet, as you will remember, to the
+Funeral March of a Marionette and already she is in the
+throes of domestic unhappiness. Her husband, fleshy, of
+course, red in the face, and accustomed to sleep after
+dinner, simply</i> <span class="smcap">won't</span> <i>understand her.</i>"</p></div>
+
+<p>Here again Hillyard was able to see the smile on Millicent Splay's face,
+but it was a smile rather rueful and it ended, no doubt, in a sigh of
+annoyance. Hillyard himself was caught away to quite another scene. He
+was once more in the small motor-car on the top of Duncton Hill, and
+looked out over the Weald of Sussex to the Blackdown and Hindhead, and
+the slopes of Leith Hill, imagined rather than seen, in the summer haze.
+He saw Joan Whitworth's rapt face, and heard her eager cry.</p>
+
+<p>"Look out over the Weald of Sussex, so that you can carry it away with
+you in your breast. Isn't it worth everything&mdash;banishment,
+suffering&mdash;everything? Not the people so much, but the earth itself and
+the jolly homes upon it!"</p>
+
+<p>A passage followed which disturbed him:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>There are other things too. My magnolia is still in bud. I
+dread a blight before the flower opens.</i>"</p></div>
+
+<p>It was a cry of distress&mdash;nothing less than that&mdash;uttered in some moment
+of intense depression. Else it would never have been allowed to escape
+at all.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard folded up the letter. He would be going home in any case. There
+were those tubes. There was B45. He had enjoyed no leave since he had
+left England. Yes, he <a name="Page_180" id="Page_180"></a>would go down to Rackham Park, and take Harry
+Luttrell with him if he could.</p>
+
+<p>Two days later the Commandant Marnier came to see him at the Ritz Hotel.
+They dined together in a corner of the restaurant.</p>
+
+<p>"We have solved the problem of those tubes," said Marnier. "They are
+nothing more nor less than time-fuses."</p>
+
+<p>"Time-fuses!" Hillyard repeated. "I don't understand."</p>
+
+<p>"Listen!"</p>
+
+<p>Marnier looked around. There was no one near enough to overhear him, if
+he did not raise his voice; and he was careful to speak in a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"Two things." He ticked them off upon his fingers. "First, hydrofluoric
+acid when brought into contact with certain forms of explosive will
+create a fire. Second, hydrofluoric acid will bite its way through
+glass. The thicker the glass, the longer the time required to set the
+acid free. Do you follow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"Good! Make a glass tube of such thickness that it will take
+hydrofluoric acid four hours and a half to eat its way through. Then
+fill it with acid and seal it up. You have a time-fuse which will act
+precisely in four hours and a half."</p>
+
+<p>"If it comes into contact with the necessary explosive," Hillyard added.</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly. Now attend to this! Our workmen in our munition factories work
+three hours and a half. Then they go to their luncheon."</p>
+
+<p>"Munition factories!" said Hillyard with a start.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my friend. Munition factories. We are short of labour as you know.
+Our men are in the firing line. We must get labour from some other
+source. And there is only one source."</p>
+
+<p>"The neutrals," Hillyard exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the neutrals, and especially the neutrals who are near to us, who
+can come without difficulty and without much expense. We have a good
+many Spanish workmen in our munition factories and three of these
+factories have recently been burnt down. We have the proof now, thanks
+to you, that <a name="Page_181" id="Page_181"></a>those little glass tubes so carefully manufactured in
+Berlin to last four hours and a half and no more, set the fires going."</p>
+
+<p>"Proof, you say?" Hillyard asked earnestly. "It is not probability or
+moral certainty? It is actual bed-rock proof?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. For once our chemists had grasped how these tubes could be used,
+we knew what to look for when the workmen were searched on entering the
+factory. Two days ago we caught a man. He had one of these little tubes
+in his mouth and in the lining of his waistcoat, just a little high
+explosive, so little was necessary that it must escape notice unless you
+knew what to search for. Yes, we caught him and he, the good fellow, the
+good honest neutral"&mdash;it would be difficult to describe the bitterness
+and scorn which rang through Marnier's words, "has been kind enough to
+tell me how he earned his German pay as well as his French wages."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard leaned forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, tell me that!"</p>
+
+<p>"On his way to the factory in the morning, he makes a call."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"The one on whom he calls fills the tube or has it just filled and gives
+it to the workman. The time fuse is set for four hours and a half. The
+workman has so arranged it that he will reach the factory half an hour
+after the tube is filled. He passes the searcher. At his place he takes
+off his waistcoat and hangs it up and in the pocket, just separated from
+the explosive by the lining of the waistcoat, he places, secretly, the
+tube. The tube has now four hours of life and the workman three and a
+half hours of work. When the whistle goes to knock off for luncheon, the
+workman leaves his waist coat still hanging up on the peg and goes out
+in the stream. But half an hour afterwards, half-way through the hour of
+luncheon, the acid reaches the explosive. There is a tiny explosion in
+that empty hall, not enough to make a great noise, but quite enough to
+start a big fire; and when the workmen return, the building is ablaze.
+No lives are lost, but the factory is burnt down."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard sat for a little while in thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you can tell me," he said at length. "I hear noth<a name="Page_182" id="Page_182"></a>ing from
+England or very little; and naturally. Are we obtaining Spanish workmen,
+too, for our munition factories?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>It was clear now why B45 was especially suitable for this work. B45 was
+Mario Escobar, a Spaniard himself.</p>
+
+<p>"And filling the tubes! That is simple?"</p>
+
+<p>"A child could do it," answered Marnier.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Martin Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>The next evening he left Paris and travelling all night to Boulogne,
+reached London in the early afternoon of the following day. Twenty
+months had passed since he had set foot there.<a name="Page_183" id="Page_183"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Under Grey Skies Again</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Hillyard landed in England athirst for grey skies. Could he have chosen
+the season of the year which should greet him, he would have named
+October. For the ceaseless bright blue of sea and heaven had set him
+dreaming through many a month past, of still grey mornings sweet with
+the smell of earth and thick hedgerows and the cluck of pheasants. But
+there were at all events the fields wondrously green after the brown
+hill-sides and rusty grass, the little rich fields in the frames of
+their hedges, and the brown-roofed houses and the woods splashing their
+emerald branches in the sunlight. Hillyard travelled up through Kent
+rejoicing. He reached London in the afternoon, and leaving his luggage
+in his flat walked down to the house in the quiet street behind the
+Strand whence Commodore Graham overlooked the Thames.</p>
+
+<p>But even in this backwater the changes of the war were evident. The
+brass plates had all gone from the door post and girls ran up and down
+the staircases in stockings which some Allied fairies had woven on
+Midsummer morning out of cobwebs of dew. They were, however, as unaware
+as of old of any Commodore Graham. Was he quite certain that he wanted
+to see Commodore Graham. And why? And, after all, was there a Commodore
+Graham? Gracious damsels looked blandly at one another, with every
+apparent desire to assist this sunburnt stranger. It seemed to Hillyard
+that they would get for him immediately any one else in the world whom
+he chose to name. It was just bitterly disappointing and contrarious
+that the one person he wished to see was a Commodore Graham. Oh,
+couldn't he be reasonable and ask for somebody else?</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said Hillyard with a smile. "There was a pretty girl with
+grey eyes, and I'll see her."<a name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></a></p>
+
+<p>"The description is vague," said the young lady demurely.</p>
+
+<p>"She is Miss Cheyne."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said one.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said another; and</p>
+
+<p>"Will you follow me, please?" said a third, who at once became
+business-like and brisk, and led him up the stairs. The door was still
+unvarnished. Miss Cheyne opened it, wearing the composed expression of
+attention with which she had greeted Hillyard when he had sought
+admission first. But her face broke up into friendliness and smiles,
+when she recognised him, and she drew him into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"The Commodore's away for a week," she said. "He had come to the end: no
+sleep, nerves all jangled. He is up in Scotland shooting grouse."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard nodded. His news could wait a week very well, since it had
+waited already two years.</p>
+
+<p>"And you?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I had a fortnight," replied Miss Cheyne, her eyes dancing at the
+recollection. It was her pleasure to sail a boat in Bosham Creek and out
+towards the Island. "Not a day of rain during the whole time."</p>
+
+<p>"I think that I might have a month then, don't you?" said Hillyard, and
+Miss Cheyne opined that there would be no objection.</p>
+
+<p>"But you will come back in a week," she stipulated, "won't you? The
+Commodore will be here on Thursday, and there are things accumulating
+which he must see to. So will you come on Friday?"</p>
+
+<p>"Friday morning," Hillyard suggested.</p>
+
+<p>Thursday was the day on which he should have travelled down to Rackham
+Park, but if he could finish his business on Friday morning, he would
+only lose one day.</p>
+
+<p>"Friday morning then," said Miss Cheyne, and made a note of it.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard had thus a week in which to resume his friendships, arrange to
+write, at some distant time, a play, revisit his club and his tailor,
+and revel, as at a pageant, in the fresh beauty, the summer clothes, the
+white skin and clean-limbed boyishness of English girls. He went
+through, in a word, the <a name="Page_185" id="Page_185"></a>first experiences of most men returned from a
+long sojourn in other climes; and they were ordinary enough. But the
+week was made notable for him by one small incident.</p>
+
+<p>It was on the Monday and about five o'clock in the afternoon. He was
+walking from the Charing Cross Road towards Leicester Square, when, from
+a doorway ahead of him, a couple emerged. They did not turn his way but
+preceded him, so that he only saw their backs. But he had no doubt who
+one of the couple was. The fair hair, the tall, slim, long-limbed
+figure, the perverse sloppiness of dress which could not quite obscure
+her grace of youth, betrayed the disdainful prodigy of Rackham Park. The
+creator of Linda Spavinsky swam ahead of him. Had he doubted her
+identity, a glance at the door from which she had emerged would have
+dispelled the doubt. It was the entrance to a picture gallery, where,
+cubes and curves having served their turn and gone, the rotundists were
+having an innings. Everybody and everything was in rounds, palaces and
+gardens and ships and Westminster Bridge, and men and women were all in
+circles. The circle was the principle of life and art. Joan Whitworth
+would be drawn to the exhibition as a filing to a magnet. Undoubtedly
+Joan Whitworth was ahead of Hillyard and he began to hurry after her.
+But he checked himself after a few paces. Or rather the aspect of her
+companion checked him. His appearance was vaguely familiar, but that was
+all. It was not certainly Sir Chichester Splay, for the all-sufficient
+reason that the Private View had long gone by; since the very last week
+of the exhibition was announced in the window. Moreover, the man in
+front of him was younger than Sir Chichester.</p>
+
+<p>The couple, however, crossed the road to the Square Garden, and Hillyard
+saw the man in profile. He stopped so suddenly that a man walking behind
+him banged heavily against his back. The man walked on and turned round
+after he had passed to stare at Hillyard. For Hillyard stood stock
+still, he was unaware that any one had run into him, in all his body his
+lips alone moved.</p>
+
+<p>"Mario," he whispered. "Mario Escobar!"</p>
+
+<p>The man who had been so far the foremost in his thoughts during the last
+weeks that he never thought that he could have <a name="Page_186" id="Page_186"></a>failed to recognise him.
+Mario Escobar! And with Joan Whitworth. Millicent Splay's letter flashed
+back into his memory. The distress which he had seemed to hear loud
+behind the written words&mdash;was this its meaning and explanation? Joan
+Whitworth and Mario Escobar! Certainly Joan knew him! He was sitting
+next to her on the night when "The Dark Tower" was produced, sitting
+next to her, and talking to her. Sir Charles Hardiman had used some
+phrase to describe that conversation. Hillyard was strangely anxious to
+recapture the phrase. Escobar was talking to her with an air of intimacy
+a little excessive in a public place. Yes, that was the sentence.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard walked on quickly to his club.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Sir Charles Hardiman here?" he asked of the hall porter.</p>
+
+<p>"He is in the card-room, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Martin Hillyard went up the stairs with a sense of relief. His position
+was becoming a little complicated. Mario Escobar was B45, and a friend
+of Joan Whitworth, and a friend of the Splays. There was one point upon
+which Martin Hillyard greatly needed information.</p>
+
+<p>Hardiman, a little heavier and broader and more obese than when Hillyard
+had last seen him, was sitting by a bridge table overlooking the
+players. He never played himself, nor did he ever bet upon the game, but
+he took a curious pleasure in looking on, and would sit in the card-room
+by the hour engrossed in the fall of the cards. The sight of Hillyard,
+however, plucked him out of his occupation.</p>
+
+<p>"So you're back!" he cried, heaving himself heavily out of his chair and
+shaking hands with Martin.</p>
+
+<p>"For a month."</p>
+
+<p>"I hear you have done very well," Sir Charles continued. "Have a
+whisky-and-soda."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks."</p>
+
+<p>Hardiman touched the bell and led the way over to a sofa.</p>
+
+<p>"Lucky man! The doctor's read the Riot Act to me! I met Luttrell in the
+Mall this morning, on his way back from Buckingham Palace. He had just
+been given his D.S.O."</p>
+
+<p>Hardiman began to sit down, but the couch was low, and though he began
+the movement lazily, it went suddenly with a <a name="Page_187" id="Page_187"></a>run, so that the springs
+of the couch jumped and twanged and his feet flew from beneath him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he has done splendidly," said Martin. "His battalion too. That's
+what he cares about."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles needed a moment or two after he had set down to recover his
+equipoise. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>"Luttrell told me you were both off to Rackham Park this week for
+Gatwick."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right! But I shan't get down until Friday afternoon," said
+Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>The waiter put the glass of whisky-and-soda at his side, and he took a
+drink from it.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you are going too," he suggested.</p>
+
+<p>Hardiman shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard was silent for a minute. Then he asked another question.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know who is going to be there beside Luttrell and myself?"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, but I fancy that you won't find him amongst the guests."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard was a little startled by the answer, but he did not betray the
+least sign of surprise. He pursued his questions.</p>
+
+<p>"You know whom I have in my mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"I drew a bow at a venture," answered Sir Charles.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I name him?" asked Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"I will," returned Sir Charles. "Mario Escobar."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard nodded. He took another pull at his whisky-and-soda. Then he
+lit a cigarette and leaned forward, with his elbows upon his knees; and
+all the while Sir Charles Hardiman, his body in a majestic repose,
+contemplated him placidly. Hardiman had this great advantage in any
+little matter of debate; he never wished to move. Place him in a chair,
+and he remained, singularly immobile.</p>
+
+<p>"Since you were so quick to guess at once the reason of my question,"
+continued Hillyard, "I can draw an inference. Mario Escobar has been at
+Rackham Park a good deal?"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles Hardiman's smile broadened.<a name="Page_188" id="Page_188"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Even now you don't express your inference," he retorted. "You mean that
+Mario Escobar has been at Rackham Park too much." He paused whilst he
+drew out his cigarette-case and selected a cigarette from it. "And I
+agree," he added. "Mario Escobar is too picturesque a person for these
+primitive days."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard was not sure what Sir Charles Hardiman precisely meant. But on
+the other hand he was anxious to ask no direct questions concerning
+Escobar. He sought to enter in by another gate.</p>
+
+<p>"Primitive?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. We have become rather primitive, especially the women. They have
+lost a deal of self-consciousness. They exact less. They give more&mdash;oh,
+superbly more! It's the effect of war, of course. They have jumped down
+off their little pinnacles. Let me put it coarsely. They are saved from
+rape by the fighting man, and they know it. Consequently all men benefit
+and not least," Sir Charles lit his cigarette, "that beast of
+abomination, the professional manipulator of women, the man who lives by
+them and on them, who cajoles them first and blackmails them afterwards,
+who has the little attentions, the appealing voice, in fact all the
+tricks of his trade ready at his fingers' ends. However, Millie Splay's
+awake to the danger now."</p>
+
+<p>"Danger!" Hillyard sharply exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right. It's too strong a word. I take it back," Hardiman agreed
+at once. But he was not in the habit of using words wildly. He had said
+exactly what he meant to say, and having aroused the attention which he
+meant to arouse, he calmly withdrew the word. "I rubbed it into
+Chichester's thick head that Escobar was overmuch at Rackham Park, and
+in the end&mdash;it percolated."</p>
+
+<p>Much the same account of Escobar, with this instance of Rackham Park
+omitted, was given to Hillyard by Commodore Graham on the Friday
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>"He is the kind of man whom men loathe and women like. He runs about
+London, gets a foot in here and there. You know what London is, even now
+in the midst of this war, with its inability to be surprised, and its
+indifference to strange <a name="Page_189" id="Page_189"></a>things. You might walk down Regent Street
+dressed up as a Cherokee Indian, feathers and tomahawk and all, and how
+many Cockneys would take the trouble to turn round and look at you
+twice? It was pretty easy for Escobar to slip about unnoticed."</p>
+
+<p>Commodore Graham bent his head over the case of tubes which Hillyard had
+brought with him.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll have a look-out kept for these things. There have been none of
+them in England up till now."</p>
+
+<p>Martin Hillyard returned to the personality of Mario Escobar.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you suspect him before?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Commodore Graham pushed the cigarettes towards Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"Scotland Yard has kept an eye on him. That sort of adventurer is always
+dangerous."</p>
+
+<p>He rang the bell, and on Miss Cheyne's appearance called for what
+information the office had concerning Mario Escobar. Miss Cheyne
+returned with a book in which Escobar's dossier was included.</p>
+
+<p>"Here he is," said Graham, and Hillyard, moving across to the bureau,
+followed Graham's forefinger across the written page. He was agent for
+the Compania de Navigacion del Sur d'Espa&ntilde;a&mdash;a German firm on the black
+list, headquarters at Alicante. Escobar severed his connection with the
+company on the outbreak of war.</p>
+
+<p>Graham raised his head to comment on the action.</p>
+
+<p>"That, of course, was camouflage. But it checked suspicion for a time.
+Suspicion was first aroused," and he resumed reading again, "by his
+change of lodging. He lived in a small back bedroom in a boarding-house
+in Clarence Street, off Westbourne Grove, and concealed his address,
+having his letters addressed to his club, until February, 1915, upon
+which date he moved into a furnished flat in Maddox Street. Nothing
+further, however, happened to strengthen that suspicion until, in the
+autumn of that year, a letter signed Mario was intercepted by the
+censor. It was sent to a Diego Perez, the Director of a fruit company at
+Murcia, for Emma Grutsner."</p>
+
+<p>"You sent me a telegram about her," exclaimed Hillyard, "in November."<a name="Page_190" id="Page_190"></a></p>
+
+<p>Commodore Graham's forefinger travelled along the written lines and
+stopped at the number and distinguishing sign of the telegram, sent and
+received.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," continued Graham. "Here's your answer. 'Emma Grutzner is the
+governess in a Spanish family at Torrevieja, and she goes occasionally,
+once a month or so, to the house of Diego Perez in Murcia.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes! I routed that out," said Hillyard. "But I hadn't an idea that
+Mario Escobar was concerned in it."</p>
+
+<p>"That wasn't mentioned?" asked the Commodore.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I already knew, you see, of B45. If just a word had been added that
+it was Mario who was writing to Emma Grutzner we might have identified
+him months ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered Graham soothingly and with a proper compunction. He was
+not unused to other fiery suggestions from his subordinates that if only
+the reasons for his telegrams and the information on which his questions
+were based, were sent out with the questions themselves, better results
+in quicker time could be obtained. Telegrams, however, were going out
+and coming in all day; a whole array of cipherers and decipherers lived
+in different rookeries in London. Commodore Graham's activities embraced
+the high and the narrow seas, great Capitals and little tucked-away
+towns and desolate stretches of coast where the trade-winds blew. No
+doubt full explanations would have led in many cases to more
+satisfactory conclusions. But fuller explanations were out of all
+possibility. Even with questions fined down to the last succinct
+syllable the cables groaned. None of the objections were raised,
+however, by Commodore Graham. It was his business to keep men like
+Hillyard who were serving him well to their own considerable cost, in a
+good humour. Remorse was the line, not argument.</p>
+
+<p>"What a pity! I <i>am</i> sorry," protested the Commodore. "It's my fault!
+There's nothing else to be said. I am to blame about it."</p>
+
+<p>Martin Hillyard began to feel some compunction that he had ever
+suggested a fault in the composition of the telegram. But then, it was
+his business not to betray any such tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>"If we could have in the future a little more information <a name="Page_191" id="Page_191"></a>from London,
+it would save us a good deal of time," he said stonily. "Sometimes a
+surname is hurled at us, and will we find him, please, and cable home
+all details?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that is very wrong," the Commodore agreed. "We will have that
+changed." Then a bright idea appeared to occur to him. His face lighted
+up. "After all, in this instance the mistake hasn't done any real harm.
+For we have got our friend Mario Escobar now, and without these tubes
+and this letter from Berlin about the use of them and Jos&eacute; Medina's
+account of the conversation in the next room we shouldn't have got him.
+The German governess wasn't enough. He's, after all, a neutral. Besides,
+there was nothing definite in his letter. But now&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Now you can deal with him?" asked Hillyard eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure," replied the Commodore. "We have no proof here to put him
+on his trial. But we have reasonable ground for believing him to be in
+communication with our enemies for the purpose of damaging us, and
+that's quite enough to lock him up until the end of the war."</p>
+
+<p>He reached out his hand for the telephone and asked for a number.</p>
+
+<p>"I am ringing up Scotland Yard," he said to Hillyard over the top of the
+instrument; and immediately Hillyard heard a tiny voice speaking as if
+summoned from another planet.</p>
+
+<p>"Hallo!" cried Graham. "Is that you, A.C.? You remember Mario Escobar?
+Good. I have Hillyard here from the Mediterranean with a clear case.
+I'll come over and see you."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. "A.C.", whose real name was Adrian Carruthers, thereupon took up the
+conversation at the other end of the line. The lines deepened upon the
+Commodore's forehead as he listened. Then he turned to Hillyard, and
+swore softly and whole-heartedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Mario Escobar has vanished."</p>
+
+<p>"But I saw him myself," Hillyard exclaimed. "I saw him in London."</p>
+
+<p>"When?"</p>
+
+<p>"On Monday afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>Graham lifted the mouthpiece to his lips again.<a name="Page_192" id="Page_192"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Wait a bit, A.C. Hillyard saw the man in London on Monday afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>Again A.C. spoke at the other end from an office in Scotland Yard.
+Graham put down the instrument with a bang and hung up the receiver.</p>
+
+<p>"He vanished yesterday. Could he have seen you?"</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I think not."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we'll get him, of course. He can't escape from the country. And we
+will get him pretty soon," Graham declared. He looked out of the window
+on to the river. "I wonder what in the world alarmed him, since it
+wasn't you?" he speculated slowly.</p>
+
+<p>But both Scotland Yard and Commodore Graham were out of their reckoning
+for once. Mario Escobar was not alarmed at all. He had packed his bag,
+taken the tube to his terminus, bought his ticket and gone off in a
+train. Only no one had noticed him go; and that was all there was to
+it.<a name="Page_193" id="Page_193"></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Lady Splay's Preoccupations</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>"It's a good race to leave alone, Miranda," said Dennis Brown. "But if
+you want to back something, I should put a trifle on Kinky Jane."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Dennis," Miranda answered absently. She was standing upon
+the lawn at Gatwick with her face towards the line of bookmakers upon
+the far side of the railings. These men were shouting at the full frenzy
+of their voices, in spite of the heat and the dust. The ring was
+crowded, and even the enclosure more than usually full.</p>
+
+<p>"But you won't get any price," Harold Jupp continued, and he waved an
+indignant arm towards the bookmakers. "I never saw such a crowd of
+pinchers in my life."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Harold," Miranda replied politely. She was aware that he was
+advising her, but the nature of the advice did not reach her mind. She
+was staring steadily in front of her.</p>
+
+<p>Dennis Brown and Harold Jupp looked at one another in alarm. They knew
+well that sibylline look on the face of Miranda Brown. She was awaiting
+the moment of inspiration. She was all wrapped up in expectation of it.
+At times she glanced at her race-card, whilst a thoughtful frown
+puckered her pretty forehead, as though the name of the winning filly
+might leap out in letters of gold.</p>
+
+<p>Dennis shook his head dolefully. For the one thing sure and certain was
+that the fatal moment of inspiration would come to Miranda in time to
+allow her to reach the railings before the start. Suddenly a name
+uttered by an apoplectic gentleman in a voice breaking with fine passion
+reached her ears, with the odds attached to it of nine to one.</p>
+
+<p>Miranda's face cleared of all its troubles.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, why didn't I think of that before?" she said in an <a name="Page_194" id="Page_194"></a>extremity of
+self-reproach. She walked straight to the apoplectic gentleman, followed
+by the unhappy pair of scientific punters.</p>
+
+<p>"Callow Girl is nine to one, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>The apoplectic gentleman smiled winningly.</p>
+
+<p>"To you, missie."</p>
+
+<p>Miranda laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have ten pounds on it," she said, and did not hear the gasp of her
+husband behind her. She made a note of the bet in her little
+pocket-book.</p>
+
+<p>"That's ninety pounds, anyway," she said, turning to her companions.
+"They will just buy that simple little Callot frock with the
+embroidery."</p>
+
+<p>Yes, racing was as easy as that to Miranda Brown. She wanted a simple
+little Callot frock which would cost ninety pounds, and Callow Girl was
+obviously marked out to win it for her.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I shall be a Callot girl," she said gaily, and as neither of her
+companions enjoyed her witticism she stamped her small foot in vexation.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how dull you both are!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you see," Dennis rejoined, "we've had rather a bad day."</p>
+
+<p>"So have I," returned Miranda indignantly. "Yet I keep up my spirits."</p>
+
+<p>A look of blank amazement overspread the face of Dennis Brown. He gazed
+around as one who should say, "Did you ever see anything so amazing
+outside the Ark?"</p>
+
+<p>Miranda corrected her remark with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I mean I haven't won as much as I should have if I had backed
+winners." For she had really mastered the science of the race-course.
+She knew how to go racing. Her husband paid her losses and she kept her
+winnings.</p>
+
+<p>Harold Jupp took her seriously by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to go into a home, Miranda," he advised. "You really ought.
+That little head was never meant for all this weighty thought."</p>
+
+<p>Miranda walked across to the little stone terrace which looks down the
+course.<a name="Page_195" id="Page_195"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Don't be foolish, Harold, but go and collect Colonel Luttrell if you
+can find him, whilst I see my filly win," she said. "Dennis has already
+gone to find the car and we propose to start immediately this race is
+over."</p>
+
+<p>Miranda ascended the grass slope and saw the fillies canter down towards
+the starting post. From the chatter about her she gathered that the odds
+on Callow Girl had shortened. It was understood that a sum of money had
+been laid on her at the last moment. She was favourite before the flag
+was dropped and won by half a length. Miranda ran joyously down the
+slope.</p>
+
+<p>"What did I tell you, Harold? Aren't I wonderful? And have you found
+Colonel Luttrell? You know Millie told us to look out for him?" she
+cried all in a breath.</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell had written to Lady Splay to say that he would try to motor to
+Gatwick in time for the last races; and that he would look out for Jupp
+and Dennis Brown, whom he had already met earlier in the week at a
+dinner party given by Martin Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no sign of him," Harold Jupp answered.</p>
+
+<p>There were two more races, but the party from Rackham Park did not wait
+for them. They drove over the flat country through Crawley and Horsham
+and came to the wooded roads between high banks where the foliage met
+overhead, and to the old stone bridges over quiet streams. Harold Jupp
+was home from Egypt, Dennis Brown from Salonika, and as the great downs,
+with their velvet forests, seen now over a thick hedge, now in an
+opening of branches like the frame of a locket, the marvel of the
+English countryside in summer paid them in full for their peril and
+endurance.</p>
+
+<p>"I have a fortnight, Miranda," said Dennis, dropping a hand upon his
+wife's. "Think of it!"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, I have been thinking of nothing else for months," she said
+softly. Terrors there had been, nights and days of them, terrors there
+would be, but she had a fortnight now, perfect in its season, and in the
+meeting of old friends upon familiar ground&mdash;a miniature complete in
+beauty, like the glimpses of the downs seen through the openings amongst
+the boughs.<a name="Page_196" id="Page_196"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, a whole fortnight," she cried and laughed, and just for a second
+turned her head away, since just for a second the tears glistened in her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The car turned and twisted through the puzzle of the Petworth streets
+and mounted on to the Midhurst road. The three indefatigable race-goers
+found Lady Splay sitting with Martin Hillyard in the hall of Rackham
+Park.</p>
+
+<p>"You had a good day, I hope," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"It was wonderful," exclaimed Dennis Brown. "We didn't make any money
+except Miranda. But that didn't matter."</p>
+
+<p>"All our horses were down the course," Harold Jupp explained. "They
+weren't running in their form at all"; and he added cheerfully: "But the
+war may be over before the winter, and then we'll go chasing and get it
+all back."</p>
+
+<p>Millicent Splay rang for tea, just as Joan Whitworth came into the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't see Colonel Luttrell then?" asked Lady Splay.</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"He'll come down later then." She had an eye for Joan Whitworth as she
+spoke, but Joan was so utterly indifferent as to whether Colonel
+Luttrell would arrive or not that she could not stifle a sigh. She had
+gathered Luttrell into the party with some effort and now it seemed her
+effort was to be fruitless. Joan persisted in her mood of austere
+contempt for the foibles of the world. She was dressed in a gown of an
+indeterminate shade between drab and sage-green, which did its best to
+annul her. She had even come to sandals. There they were now sticking
+out beneath the abominable gown.</p>
+
+<p>"She can't ruin her complexion," thought Millicent Splay. "That's one
+thing. But if she could, she would. Oh, I would love to smack her!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan, quite unaware of Millie Splay's tingling fingers and indignant
+eyes, sat reading "Ferishtah's Fancies." Other girls might set their
+caps at the soldiers. Joan had got to be different. She had even dallied
+with the pacifists. Martin Hillyard had carried away so close a
+recollection of her on that afternoon when she had driven him through
+the golden sunset over Duncton Hill and of the brave words she had then
+spoken that he had to force himself to realise that this was indeed
+she.<a name="Page_197" id="Page_197"></a></p>
+
+<p>Millicent Splay had three preoccupations that afternoon but none pressed
+upon her with so heavy a load of anxiety as her preoccupation concerning
+Joan Whitworth.</p>
+
+<p>Martin crossed the room to Joan and sat upon the couch beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't I see you in London, Miss Whitworth, on Monday afternoon?" he
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>Joan met his gaze steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you? It was possible. I was in London on Monday. Where did you
+think you saw me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Coming out of a picture gallery in Green Street."</p>
+
+<p>Joan did not flinch, nor drop her eyes from his.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you saw me," she replied. Then with a challenge in her voice she
+added distinctly, so that the words reached, as they were meant to
+reach, every one in that room. "I was with Mario Escobar."</p>
+
+<p>The room suddenly grew still. Two years ago, Martin Hillyard reflected,
+Harold Jupp or Dennis would have chaffed her roundly about her conquest,
+and she would have retorted with good humour. Now, no one spoke, but a
+little sigh, a little movement of uneasiness came from Millie Splay.
+Joan did not take her eyes from Hillyard's face. But the blood mounted
+slowly over her throat and cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" she asked, and the note of challenge was a trifle more audible
+in her quiet voice. And since he was challenged, Hillyard answered:</p>
+
+<p>"He is a German spy."</p>
+
+<p>The words smote upon all in the room like a blow. Joan herself grew
+pale. Then she replied:</p>
+
+<p>"People say that nowadays of every foreigner."</p>
+
+<p>The moment of embarrassment was prolonged to a full minute&mdash;during which
+no one spoke. Then to the relief of every one, Sir Chichester Splay
+entered the hall. He had been sitting all day upon the Bench. He had to
+attend the Flower Show in Chichester during the next week. Really the
+life of a country notable was a dog's life.</p>
+
+<p>"You are going to make a speech at Chichester, Sir Christopher?" Jupp
+inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, my boy," replied Sir Chichester. "Make a speech <a name="Page_198" id="Page_198"></a>indeed! And in
+this weather! Nothing would induce me. Me for the back benches, as our
+cousins across the Atlantic would say."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke pompously, yet with a certain gratification as though Harold
+Jupp had asked him to dignify the occasion with a speech.</p>
+
+<p>"Have the evening papers not arrived yet?" he asked, looking with
+suspicious eyes on Dennis Brown.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I am not sitting on them this time," said Dennis.</p>
+
+<p>"And Colonel Luttrell?"</p>
+
+<p>After the evening papers, Sir Chichester thought politely of his guests.
+Millie Splay replied with hesitation. While the others of the company
+were shaking off their embarrassment, she was sinking deeper into hers.</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel Luttrell has not come yet. Nor&mdash;nor&mdash;the other guest who
+completes our party."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice trailed off lamentably into a plea for kind treatment and
+gentleness. Here was Millie Splay's second preoccupation. As it was Sir
+Chichester's passion to see his name printed in the papers, so it was
+Millie's to gather in the personages of the moment under her roof. She
+had promised that this party should be just a small one of old friends
+with Luttrell as the only new-comer. But personages were difficult to
+come by at this date, since they were either deep in work or out of the
+country altogether. They had to be brought down by a snap shot, and very
+often the bird brought down turned out to be a remarkably inferior
+specimen of his class. Millie Splay had been tempted and had fallen; and
+she was not altogether easy about the quality of her bird, now on its
+descent to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know any one else was coming," said Sir Chichester, who really
+didn't care how much Lady Splay gratified her passion, so long as he got
+full satisfaction for his.</p>
+
+<p>"No, nor any one else," said Dennis Brown severely. "He is a stranger."</p>
+
+<p>"To you," replied Millie Splay, showing fight.</p>
+
+<p>Harold Jupp advanced and planted himself firmly before her.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know him yourself, Lady Splay?" he asked.<a name="Page_199" id="Page_199"></a></p>
+
+<p>"But of course I do," the poor lady exclaimed. "How absurd of you,
+Harold, to ask such a question! I met him at a party when Joan and I
+were in London at the beginning of this week." She caught again at her
+fleeting courage. "So I invited him, and he's coming this afternoon. I
+shall send the motor to meet him in an hour from now. So there's an end
+of the matter."</p>
+
+<p>Harold Jupp shook his head sagely.</p>
+
+<p>"We must see that the plate is all locked up safely to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"There! I knew it would be like this," cried Millie Splay, wringing her
+hands. She remembered, from a war correspondent's article, that to
+attack is the only successful defence. She turned on Jupp.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't be bullied by you, Harold! He's a most charming person, with
+really nice manners," she emphasised her praise of the absent guest,
+"and if only you will study him whilst he is here&mdash;all of you, you will
+be greatly improved at the end of your visit."</p>
+
+<p>Harold Jupp was quite unimpressed by Millie Splay's outburst. He
+remained severely in front of her, judge, prosecutor and jury all in
+one, and all relentlessly against her.</p>
+
+<p>"And what is his name?"</p>
+
+<p>Lady Splay looked down and looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Albany Todd," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like it," said Harold Jupp.</p>
+
+<p>"No," added Dennis Brown sadly from a corner. "We can't like it, Lady
+Splay."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Splay turned with her most insinuating smile towards Brown.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Dennis, do be nice and remember this isn't your house," she cried.
+"You can be so unpleasant if you find any one here you don't like. Mr.
+Albany Todd's quite a famous person."</p>
+
+<p>Harold Jupp, of the inquiring mind, still stood looking down on Lady
+Splay without any softening of his face.</p>
+
+<p>"What for?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Splay groaned in despair.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I was sure you were going to ask that. You are so unpleasant." She
+put her hand to her forehead. "But I know <a name="Page_200" id="Page_200"></a>quite well. Yes, I do." Her
+face suddenly cleared. "He is a conversationalist&mdash;that's it&mdash;a great
+conversationalist. He is the sort of man," she spoke as one repeating a
+lesson, "who would have been welcome at the breakfast table of Mr.
+Rogers."</p>
+
+<p>"Rogers?" Harold Jupp asked sternly. "I don't know him."</p>
+
+<p>"And probably never will, Harold, I am sorry to say," said Lady Splay
+triumphantly. "Mr. Rogers was in heaven many years ago." She suddenly
+changed her note and began to implore. "Oh, do be pleasant, you and
+Dennis!"</p>
+
+<p>Harold Jupp's mouth began to twitch, but he composed it again, with an
+effort, to the stern lines befitting the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you what I think, Lady Splay," said he, pronouncing judgment.
+"Your new guest's a Plater."</p>
+
+<p>The dreadful expected word was spoken. Lady Splay broke into appeals,
+denials, threats. "Oh, he isn't, he isn't!" She turned to her husband.
+"Chichester, exert your authority! He's not a Plater really. He's not
+right down the course. And even if he were, they've got to be polite to
+him."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester, however, was the last man who could be lured into the
+expression of a definite opinion.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, I never interfere in the arrangements of the house. You have
+your realm. I have mine. I am sure those papers are being kept in the
+servants' hall," and he left the room hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how mean men are!" cried Millie; and they all began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Splay saw a glimpse of hope in their laughter and became much more
+cheerful.</p>
+
+<p>"As you are not racing, dear," she said to Joan, "he will be quite a
+pleasant companion for you."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester returned with the evening papers. Dennis and Miranda and
+Harold Jupp rose to go upstairs and change into flannels; and suddenly,
+a good hour before his time, Harper, the butler, announced:</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Albany Todd."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Albany Todd was a stout, consequential personage, and ovoid in
+appearance. Thin legs broadened out to very wide hips, and from the hips
+he curved in again to a bald and shiny <a name="Page_201" id="Page_201"></a>head, which in its turn curved
+inwards to a high, narrow crown. Lady Splay casting a look of appeal
+towards her refractory young guests hurried forward to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>"This is my husband." She presented him to the others. "I was going to
+send the motor-car to meet the seven o'clock train."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, thank you, Lady Splay," Mr. Albany Todd returned in a booming
+voice. "I have been staying not more than twenty miles from here, with a
+dear old friend, a rare and inestimable being, Lord Bilberry, and he was
+kind enough to send me in."</p>
+
+<p>"What, old man Bilberry," cried Harold Jupp. "Isn't he balmy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Balmy, sir?" Mr. Todd asked in surprise. "He takes the air every
+morning, if that is what you mean." He turned again to Lady Splay. "He
+keeps the most admirable table. You must know him, Lady Splay. I will
+see to it."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Millie Splay humbly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, muffins!" said Mr. Albany Todd with glistening eyes. He ate one and
+took another. "These are really as good as the muffins I ate at a
+wonderful week-end party a fortnight ago."</p>
+
+<p>The chatter of the others ceased. The great conversationalist, it
+seemed, was off. Miranda, Dennis, Harold Jupp, Sir Chichester, even Joan
+looked up with expectation.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Lady Splay, encouraging him. She looked around at her
+guests. "Now you shall see," she seemed to say.</p>
+
+<p>"How we laughed! What sprightly talk! The fine flavour of that party is
+quite incommunicable. Just dear old friends, you see, intimate,
+congenial friends."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Albany Todd stopped. It appeared that he needed a question to be put
+to him. Lady Splay dutifully put it.</p>
+
+<p>"And where did this party take place, Mr. Albany Todd?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Albany Todd smiled and dusted the crumbs from his knees.</p>
+
+<p>"At the Earl of Wimborough's little place in the north. Do you know the
+Earl of Wimborough? No? You must, dear lady! I will see to it."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Millie Splay.<a name="Page_202" id="Page_202"></a></p>
+
+<p>Harold Jupp looked eagerly at the personage, and said, "I hope
+Wimborough won't go jumping this winter."</p>
+
+<p>"Jumping!" cried Mr. Albany Todd turning indignantly. "I should think
+not indeed! Jumping! Why, he is seventy-three!"</p>
+
+<p>He was utterly scandalised that any one should attribute the possibility
+of such wayward behaviour to the venerable Earl. In his agitation he ate
+another muffin. After all, if the nobleman did go jumping in the winter
+why should this young and horsey man presume to criticise him.</p>
+
+<p>"Harold Jupp was drawing a distinction between flat racing and
+steeple-chasing, Mr. Albany Todd," Sir Chichester suavely explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I see." Mr. Albany Todd was appeased. He turned a condescending
+face upon Joan Whitworth.</p>
+
+<p>"And what are you reading, Miss Whitworth?"</p>
+
+<p>"What ho!" interposed Harold Jupp.</p>
+
+<p>Joan shot at him a withering glance.</p>
+
+<p>"It wouldn't interest you." She smiled on Mr. Albany Todd. "It's
+Browning."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's just where you are wrong," returned Jupp. "Browning's the
+only poet I can stick. There's a ripping thing of his I learnt at
+school."</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="I sprang to the saddle">
+<tr><td align='left'>"'I sprang to the saddle and Joris and he,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three.'"</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>"Oh," exclaimed Miranda eagerly, "a horse race!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing of the sort, Miranda. I am thoroughly ashamed of you," said
+Harold in reproof. "It's 'How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to
+Aix.'"</p>
+
+<p>Here Joan intervened disdainfully.</p>
+
+<p>"But that's not Browning!"</p>
+
+<p>Lady Splay looked perplexed.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure, Joan?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan tossed her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, it's Browning all right," she explained, "but it's not
+Browning if you understand me."</p>
+
+<p>The explanation left that company mystified. Harold Jupp <a name="Page_203" id="Page_203"></a>shook his head
+mournfully at Joan, and tapped his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Excessive study, Joan, has turned that little head. The moment I saw
+you in sandals I said to myself, 'Joan couldn't take the hill.'"</p>
+
+<p>Joan wrinkled her nose, and made a grimace at him. What rejoinder she
+would have made no one was to know. For Mr. Albany Todd finding himself
+unduly neglected burst into the conversation with a complete
+irrelevance.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so happy. I shot a stag last autumn."</p>
+
+<p>Both Dennis Brown and Harold Jupp turned to the great conversationalist
+with real interest.</p>
+
+<p>"How many stone?" asked Dennis.</p>
+
+<p>"I used a rifle," replied Mr. Albany Todd coldly. He did not like to be
+made fun of; and suddenly a ripple of clear laughter broke deliciously
+from Joan.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Splay looked agitatedly around for succour. Oh, what a mistake she
+had made in bringing Mr. Albany Todd into the midst of these ribald
+young people. And after all&mdash;she had to admit it ruefully, he was a bit
+of a Plater. Dennis Brown, however, hurried to the rescue. He came
+across the room to Joan, and sat down at her side.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't had a word with you, Joan."</p>
+
+<p>"No," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"And how's the little book going on? Do tell me! I won't laugh, upon my
+word."</p>
+
+<p>Joan herself tried not to. "Oh, pig, pig!" she exclaimed, but she got no
+further in her anathema for Miranda drew up a stool, and sat in
+admiration before her.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, do tell us," she pleaded. "It's all so wonderful."</p>
+
+<p>Miranda, however, was never to hear. Mr. Albany Todd leaned forward with
+an upraised forefinger, and a smile of keen discernment.</p>
+
+<p>"You are writing a book, Miss Whitworth," he said, as if he had
+discovered the truth by his own intuition, and expected her to deny the
+impeachment. "Ah, but you are! And I see that you <i>can</i> write one."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, how?" asked Harold Jupp.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Albany Todd waved the question aside. "The moment I entered the
+hall, and saw Miss Whitworth, I said to myself,<a name="Page_204" id="Page_204"></a> 'There's a book there!'
+Yes, I said that. I knew it! I know women."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Albany Todd closed his eyelids, and peeped out through the narrowest
+possible slits in the cunningest fashion. "Some experience you know. I
+am the last man to boast of it. A certain almost feminine
+sensibility&mdash;and there you have my secret. I read the character of women
+in their eyebrows. A woman's eyebrows. Oh, how loud they speak! I looked
+at Miss Whitworth's eyebrows, and I exclaimed, 'There is a book
+there&mdash;and I will read it!'"</p>
+
+<p>Joan flamed into life. She clasped her hands together.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, will you?" The question was half wonder, half prayer.</p>
+
+<p>No man could have shown a more charming condescension than did Mr.
+Albany Todd at this moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, I will. I read one book a year&mdash;never more. A few sentences in
+bed in the morning, and a few sentences in bed at night. Yours shall be
+my book for 1923." He took a little notebook and a pencil from his
+pocket. "Now what title will it have?"</p>
+
+<p>"'A Woman's Heart, and Who Broke It,'" replied Joan, blushing from her
+temples to her throat.</p>
+
+<p>Miranda repeated the title in an ecstasy of admiration, and asked the
+world at large: "Isn't it all wonderful?"</p>
+
+<p>"'And Who Broke It,'" quoted Mr. Albany Todd as he wrote the title down.
+He put his pocket-book away.</p>
+
+<p>"The volume I am reading now&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" said Joan eagerly. With what master was she to find herself in
+company? She was not to know.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;&mdash;was given to me exquisitely bound by a very dear friend of mine,
+now alas! in precarious health!&mdash;the Marquis of Bridlington," said Mr.
+Albany Todd&mdash;an audible groan from Harold Jupp; an imploring glance from
+Millie Splay, and to her immense relief the butler ushered in Harry
+Luttrell. He was welcomed by Millie Splay, presented to Sir Chichester,
+and surrounded by his friends. He was a trifle leaner than of old, and
+there were lines now where before there had been none. His eyes, too,
+had the queer, worn and sunken look which was becoming familiar in the
+eyes of the young men on leave. Joan Whitworth watched him as he
+entered, care<a name="Page_205" id="Page_205"></a>lessly&mdash;for perhaps a second. Then her book dropped from
+her hand upon the carpet&mdash;that book which she had so jealously read a
+few minutes back. Now it lay where it had fallen. She leaned forward, as
+though above all she wished to hear the sound of his voice. And when she
+heard it, she drew in a little breath. He was speaking and laughing with
+Sir Chichester, and the theme was nothing more important than Sir
+Chichester's Honorary Membership of the Senga Mess.</p>
+
+<p>"Lucky fellow!" cried Sir Chichester. "No trouble for you to get into
+the papers, eh! Publicity waits on you like a valet."</p>
+
+<p>"But that's just the kind of valet I can't afford in my profession,"
+said Harry.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation was all trivial and customary. But Joan Whitworth
+leaned forward with a light upon her face that had never yet burnt
+there. Colonel Luttrell was presented to Mr. Albany Todd, who was most
+kind and condescending. Joan looked suddenly down at her bilious frock,
+and the horror of her sandals was something she could hardly bear. They
+would turn to her next. Yes, they would turn to her! She looked
+desperately towards the great staircase with its broad, shallow steps
+which ran up round two sides of the hall. Millie Splay was actually
+beginning to turn to her, when Dennis Brown came unconsciously to her
+rescue.</p>
+
+<p>"We looked out for you at Gatwick," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I only just reached the race course in time for the last race," said
+Harry Luttrell. "Luckily for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Why luckily?" asked Harold Jupp in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I backed the winner," replied Luttrell.</p>
+
+<p>The indefatigable race-goers gathered about him a little closer; and
+Joan Whitworth rose noiselessly from her chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Which horse won?" asked Harold Jupp.</p>
+
+<p>"Loman!" Harold Jupp stared at Dennis Brown. Incredulity held them as in
+bonds.</p>
+
+<p>"But he couldn't win!" they both cried in a breath.</p>
+
+<p>"He did, you know, and at a long price."</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth made you back him?" asked Dennis Brown.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Luttrell answered, "he was the only white horse in the race."<a name="Page_206" id="Page_206"></a></p>
+
+<p>Miranda uttered a cry of pleasure. She recognised a brother. "That's an
+awfully good reason," she cried. But science fell with a crash. Dennis
+Brown took his "Form at a Glance" from his pocket, and sadly began to
+tear the pages across. Harold Jupp looked on at that act of sacrilege.</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't matter," he said, and offered his invariable consolation.
+"Flat racing's no use. We'll go jumping in the winter."</p>
+
+<p>But Harold Jupp was never again to go jumping in the winter. Long before
+steeple chasing began that year, he was lying out on the flat land
+beyond the Somme, with a bullet through his heart.</p>
+
+<p>Dennis Brown returned "Form at a Glance" to his pocket; and Millie Splay
+drew Harry Luttrell away from the group.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to introduce you to Joan Whitworth," she said, and she turned to
+the chair in which Joan had been sitting a few moments ago.</p>
+
+<p>It was empty.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, where in the world has Joan gone to?" she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"She has fled," explained Jupp. "Joan saw his 'Form at a Glance,'
+without any book. She saw that he was incapable of the higher Life, and
+she has gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, Harold," cried Millicent Splay in vexation. She turned
+towards the stairs, and she gave a little gasp. A woman was standing on
+the second step from the floor. But it was not Joan, it was Stella
+Croyle.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you had such a bad headache," said Lady Splay, after a
+perceptible pause.</p>
+
+<p>"It's better now, thank you," said Stella, and coming down the remaining
+steps, she advanced towards Harry.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do, Colonel Luttrell?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment he was taken aback. Then with the blood mounting in his
+face, he took a step forwards and shook hands with her easily.</p>
+
+<p>"So you know one another!" said Lady Splay.</p>
+
+<p>"We have known each other for a long while," returned Stella Croyle.</p>
+
+<p>So that was why Stella Croyle had proposed herself for the week! Lady
+Splay had been a little surprised; so persist<a name="Page_207" id="Page_207"></a>ently had Stella avoided
+anything in the shape of a party. But this time Stella had definitely
+wished to come, and Millie Splay in her loyalty had not hesitated to
+welcome her. But she had been a little curious. Stella's visit, indeed,
+was the third, though the least, of her preoccupations. The Ball on the
+Thursday of next week at the Willoughby's! Well, Stella was never
+lacking in tact. That would arrange itself. But as Millie Splay looked
+at her, recognised her beauty, her eager advance to Harry Luttrell, and
+Harry Luttrell's embarrassment, she said to herself, for quite other
+reasons:</p>
+
+<p>"If I had guessed why she wanted to come, nothing would have persuaded
+me to have her."</p>
+
+<p>Millie Splay had more reason to repeat the words before the week was
+out.<a name="Page_208" id="Page_208"></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Magnolia Flowers</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>"I hadn't an idea that we should find her here," said Hillyard. "Lady
+Splay told me so very clearly that Mrs. Croyle always timed her visits
+to avoid a party."</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard was a little troubled lest he should be thought by his friend
+to have concurred in a plot to bring about this meeting.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose that Hardiman told her you were coming to Rackham Park. I
+haven't seen her until this moment, since I returned."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right, Martin," Luttrell answered.</p>
+
+<p>The two men were alone in the hall. The tennis players had changed, and
+were out upon the court. Millie Splay had dragged Stella Croyle away
+with her to play croquet. Luttrell moved to a writing-table.</p>
+
+<p>"You are going to join the tennis players," he said. Hillyard was
+already dressed for the game, and carried a racket in his hand. "I must
+write a letter, then I will come out and watch you."</p>
+
+<p>"Right," said Martin, and he left his friend to his letter.</p>
+
+<p>The hall was very still. A bee came buzzing in at the open window, made
+a tour of the flower-vases, and flew out again into the sunshine. From
+the lawn the cries of the tennis players, the calls of thrush and
+blackbird and dishwasher, were wafted in on waves of perfume from the
+roses. It was very pleasant and restful to Harry Luttrell after the
+sweat and labour of France. He sighed as he folded his letter and
+addressed it to a friend in the War Office.</p>
+
+<p>A letter-box stood upon a table close to the staircase. He was carrying
+his letter over to it, when a girl came running lightly down the stairs
+and halted suddenly a step or two <a name="Page_209" id="Page_209"></a>from the bottom. She stood very still
+where Stella Croyle had stood a few minutes ago, and like Stella, she
+looked over the balustrade at Harry Luttrell. Harry Luttrell had reached
+the letter-box when he caught sight of her, but he quite forgot to drop
+his letter through the slit. He stood transfixed with wonder and
+perplexity; wonder at her beauty; perplexity as to who she was.</p>
+
+<p>Martin Hillyard had spoken to him of Joan Whitworth. By the delicious
+oval of her face, the deep blue of her eyes, the wealth of rippling
+bright hair, the soft bloom of colour on her cheeks, and her slim,
+boyish figure&mdash;the girl should rightly be she. But it couldn't be! No,
+it couldn't! This girl's lips were parted in a whimsical friendly smile;
+her eyes danced; she was buoyant with joy singing at her heart.
+Besides&mdash;besides&mdash;&mdash;! Luttrell looked at her clothes. She wore a little
+white frock of chiffon and lace, as simple as could be, but even to a
+man's eyes it was that simplicity which is the last word of a good
+dressmaker. A huge rose of blue and silver at her waist was its only
+touch of colour. With it she wore a white, broad-brimmed hat of straw
+with a great blue bow and a few narrow streamers of blue ribbon floating
+jauntily, white stockings and shoes, cross-gartered round her slender
+ankles with shining ribbons. Was it she? Was it not? Was Martin Hillyard
+crazy or the whole world upside down?</p>
+
+<p>"You must be Colonel Luttrell," his gracious vision exclaimed, with
+every appearance of surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"I am," replied Luttrell. He was playing with his letter, half slipping
+it in, and then drawing it back from the box, and quite unaware of what
+he was doing.</p>
+
+<p>"We had better introduce ourselves, I think. I am Joan Whitworth."</p>
+
+<p>She held out her hand to him over the balustrade. He had but to reach up
+and take it. It was a cool hand, and a cordial one.</p>
+
+<p>"Martin Hillyard has talked to me about you," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I like him," she replied. "He's a dear."</p>
+
+<p>"He told me enough to make me frightened at the prospect of meeting
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Joan leaned over the banister.<a name="Page_210" id="Page_210"></a></p>
+
+<p>"But now that we have met, you aren't really frightened, are you?" she
+asked in so wistful a voice, and with a look so deeply pleading in her
+big blue eyes that no young man could have withstood her.</p>
+
+<p>Harry Luttrell laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not. I am not a bit frightened. In fact I am almost bold enough to
+ask you a question."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Colonel Luttrell?"</p>
+
+<p>The invitation was clear enough. But the Colonel was suddenly aware of
+his audacity and faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do ask me, Colonel Luttrell!" she pleaded. The old-fashioned would
+have condemned Joan Whitworth as a minx at this moment, but would have
+softened the condemnation with a smile forced from them by her winning
+grace.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I will," replied Luttrell, and with great solemnity he asked,
+"How is Linda Spavinsky?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan ran down the remaining steps, and dropped into a chair. A peal of
+laughter, silvery and clear, and joyous rang out from her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she's not at all well to-day. I believe she's going. Her health was
+never very stable."</p>
+
+<p>Then her mood changed altogether. The laughter died away, the very look
+of it faded from her face. She stood up and faced Harry Luttrell. In the
+depths of her eyes there appeared a sudden gravity, a certain
+wistfulness, almost a regret.</p>
+
+<p>She spoke simply:</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Iram indeed is gone">
+<tr><td align='left'>"Iram indeed is gone with all his rose,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: .5em;">And Jamshyd's seven-ringed cup&mdash;where, no one knows!</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: .5em;">But still a ruby kindles in the vine,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: .5em;">And many a garden by the water blows."</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>She had the air of one saying good-bye to many pleasant follies which
+for long had borne her company&mdash;and saying good-bye with a sort of doubt
+whether that which was in store for her would bring a greater happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Harry Luttrell had no answer, and no very distinct comprehension of her
+mood. But he was stirred by it. For a little while they looked at one
+another without any words. The <a name="Page_211" id="Page_211"></a>air about them in that still hall
+vibrated with the emotions of violins. Joan Whitworth was the first to
+break the dangerous silence.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid that up till now, what I have liked, I have liked
+tremendously, but I have not always liked it for very long. You will
+remember that in pity, won't you?" she said lightly.</p>
+
+<p>Harry Luttrell was quick to catch her tone.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall remember it with considerable apprehension if I am fortunate
+enough ever to get into your good books." His little speech ended with a
+gasp. The letter which he was holding carelessly in his fingers had
+almost slipped from them into the locked letter box.</p>
+
+<p>Joan crossed to where he stood.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right," she said. "You can post your letter there. The box
+is cleared regularly."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt," Harry Luttrell returned. "But I am no longer sure that I am
+going to post it."</p>
+
+<p>The letter to his friend at the War Office contained an earnest prayer
+that a peremptory telegram should be sent to him at Rackham Park, at an
+early hour on the next morning, commanding his return to London.</p>
+
+<p>He looked up at Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"You despise racing, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to Gatwick to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"You are!" he cried eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>He stood poising the letter in the palm of his open hand. The thought of
+Stella Croyle bade him post it. The presence of Joan Whitworth, and he
+was so conscious of her, paralysed his arm. Some vague sense of the
+tumult within him passed out from him to her. An intuition seized upon
+her that that letter was in some way vital to her, in some way a menace
+to her. Any moment he might post it! Once posted he might let it go. She
+drew a little sharp breath. He was standing there, so still, so quiet
+and slow in his decision. It became necessary to her that words should
+be spoken. She spoke the first which rose to her lips.<a name="Page_212" id="Page_212"></a></p>
+
+<p>"You are going to stay for the Willoughbys' ball, aren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>Harry Luttrell smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"But you despise dancing."</p>
+
+<p>"I? I adore it!"</p>
+
+<p>She smiled as she spoke, but she spoke with a queer shyness which took
+him off his feet. He slowly tore the letter across and again across and
+then into little pieces and carried them to the waste-paper basket.</p>
+
+<p>The action brought home to her with a shock that there was a letter
+which she, in her turn, must write, must write and post in that glass
+letter-box, oh, without any hesitation or error, this very evening. She
+thought upon it with repugnance, but it had to be written and done with.
+It was the consequence of her own folly, her own vanity. Harry Luttrell
+returned to her but he did not remark the trouble in her face.</p>
+
+<p>"When I left England," he said slowly, "people were dancing the tango.
+That is&mdash;one couple which knew the dance, was dancing it in the
+ball-room, and all the others were practising in the passage. That's
+done with, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite," said Joan.</p>
+
+<p>Harry Luttrell heaved a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"I should have liked to have practised with you in the passage," he said
+ruefully.</p>
+
+<p>"Still, there are other dances," Joan Whitworth suggested. "The
+one-step?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's going for a walk," said Harry Luttrell.</p>
+
+<p>"In an unusual attitude," Joan added demurely. "Do you know the
+fox-trot?"</p>
+
+<p>"A little."</p>
+
+<p>"The twinkle step?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all."</p>
+
+<p>"I might teach you that," Joan suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do! Teach it me now! Then we'll dance it in the passage."</p>
+
+<p>"But every one will be dancing it in the ball-room," Joan objected.</p>
+
+<p>"That's why," said Harry Luttrell, and they both laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Joan looked towards the gramophone in the corner of the <a name="Page_213" id="Page_213"></a>room. She was
+tempted, but she must have that letter written first. She would dance
+with Harry Luttrell with an uneasy mind unless that letter were written
+and posted first.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you put a record ready on the gramophone, whilst I write a note,"
+she suggested. "Then I'll teach you. It's quite a short note."</p>
+
+<p>Joan sat in her turn at the writing table. She wrote the first lines
+easily and quickly enough. But she came to explanations, and of
+explanations she had none to offer. She sat and framed a sentence and it
+would not do. Meanwhile the gramophone was open and ready, the record
+fitted on to the disc of green baize and her cavalier in impatient
+attendance. She must be quick. But the quicker she wanted to be, the
+more slowly her thoughts moved amongst awkward sentences which she must
+write. She dashed off in the end the standard phrase for such
+emergencies. "I will write to you to-morrow," addressed and stamped her
+letter and dropped it into the letter box. The letter fell in the glass
+box with the address uppermost. But Joan did not trouble about that, did
+not even notice it; a weight was off her mind.</p>
+
+<p>"I am ready," she said, and a few seconds later the music of "The Long
+Trail" was wafted to the astonished ears of the tennis players in the
+garden. They paused in their game and then Dennis Brown crept to the
+window of the hall and looked cautiously in. He stood transfixed; then
+turned and beckoned furiously. The lawn-tennis players forsook their
+rackets, Lady Splay and Stella Croyle their croquet mallets. Dennis
+Brown led them by a back way up to the head of the broad stairs. Here a
+gallery ran along one side of the hall. Voices rose up to them from the
+floor above the music of the gramophone.</p>
+
+<p>Joan's: "That's the twinkle."</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell's: "It's pretty difficult."</p>
+
+<p>"Try it again," said Joan. "Oh, that's ever so much better."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never dare to dance it with any one else," said Luttrell.</p>
+
+<p>"I really don't mind very much about that," Joan responded dryly.<a name="Page_214" id="Page_214"></a></p>
+
+<p>Millie Splay could hardly believe her ears. Cautiously she and her party
+advanced on tiptoe to the balustrade and looked down. Yes, there the
+pair of them were, now laughing, now in desperate earnest, practising
+the fox-trot to the music of the gramophone.</p>
+
+<p>"Do I hold you right?" asked Harry.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;I shan't break, you know," Joan answered demurely, and then with
+a little sigh, "That's better."</p>
+
+<p>Under her breath Stella Croyle murmured passionately, "Oh, you minx!"</p>
+
+<p>As the record ran out a storm of applause burst from the gallery.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Joan, Joan," cried Harold Jupp, shaking his head reproachfully.
+"There's the poet kicked right across the room."</p>
+
+<p>"Where?" asked Harry Luttrell, looking round for the book.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it doesn't matter," said Joan impatiently. "It's only an old volume
+of Browning."</p>
+
+<p>Cries of "Shame" broke indignantly from the race-goers, and Joan
+received them with imperturbable indifference. Harry Luttrell, however,
+went on his knees and discovering the book beneath a distant sofa,
+carefully dusted it.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever read 'How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix'?"
+he asked.</p>
+
+<p>The audience in the gallery waited in dead silence for Joan Whitworth's
+answer. It came unhesitatingly clear and in a voice of high enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it the most wonderful poem he ever wrote?"</p>
+
+<p>The gallery broke into screams, catcalls, hisses and protests against
+Joan's shameless recantation.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Browning, of course, but it's not Browning at all, if you
+understand me," Dennis Brown exclaimed with every show of indignation;
+and the whole party trooped away again to their tennis and their
+croquet.</p>
+
+<p>Harry Luttrell placed the book upon a table and turned to Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"Now what would you like to do?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Joan shrugged her shoulders.<a name="Page_215" id="Page_215"></a></p>
+
+<p>"We might cut into the next tennis set," she said doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"You could hardly play in those shoes," said Harry Luttrell.</p>
+
+<p>Joan contemplated a heel of formidable height. Oh, where were the
+sandals of the higher Life?</p>
+
+<p>"No, I suppose not. Of course, there's a&mdash;but it wouldn't probably
+interest you."</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't it?" cried Harry Luttrell.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's a maze. Millie Splay is rather proud of it. The hedges are
+centuries old." She turned innocent eyes on Harry Luttrell. "I don't
+know whether you are interested in old hedges."</p>
+
+<p>It is to be feared that "minx" was the only right word for Joan
+Whitworth on this afternoon. Harry Luttrell expressed an intense
+enthusiasm for great box hedges.</p>
+
+<p>"But they aren't box, they are yew," said Joan, stopping at once.</p>
+
+<p>Harry Luttrell's enthusiasm for yew hedges, however, was even greater
+and more engrossing than his enthusiasm for box ones. A pagoda perched
+upon a bank overlooked the maze and a narrow steep path led down into it
+between the hedges. Joan left it to her soldier to find the way. There
+was a stone pedestal with a small lead figure perched upon the top of it
+in the small clear space in the middle. But Harry Luttrell took a deal
+of time in reaching it. If, however, their progress was slow, with many
+false turnings and sudden stops against solid walls of hedge, it was not
+so with their acquaintanceship; each turn in the path brought them on by
+a new stage. They wandered in the dawn of the world.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose that I had never come to Rackham Park!" said Harry Luttrell,
+suddenly turning at the end of a blind alley. "I almost didn't come. I
+might have altogether missed knowing you."</p>
+
+<p>The terrible thought smote them both. What risks people ran to be sure.
+They might never have met. They might have never known what it was to
+meet. They might have lived benighted, not knowing what lovely spirit
+had passed them by.<a name="Page_216" id="Page_216"></a> They looked at one another with despairing eyes.
+Then a happy thought occurred to Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"But, after all, you did come," she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>Harry Luttrell drew a breath. He was relieved of a great oppression.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes," he answered in wonderment. "So I did!"</p>
+
+<p>They retraced their steps. As the sun drew towards its late setting, by
+an innocent suggestion from Joan here, a little question there, Harry
+Luttrell was man&oelig;uvred towards the centre of the maze. Suddenly he
+stopped with a finger on the lips. A voice reached to them from the
+innermost recess&mdash;a voice which intoned, a voice which was oracular.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" he asked in a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>Joan shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't an idea."</p>
+
+<p>As yet they could hear no words. Words were flung from wall to wall of
+the centre space and kept imprisoned there. It seemed that the presiding
+genius of the maze was uttering his invocation as the sun went down.
+Joan and Harry Luttrell crept stealthily nearer, Harry now openly guided
+by a light touch upon his arm as the paths twisted. Words&mdash;amazing
+words&mdash;became distinctly audible; and a familiar voice. They came to the
+last screen of hedge and peered through at a spot where the twigs were
+thin. In the very middle of the clear space stood Sir Chichester Splay,
+one hand leaning upon the pedestal, the other hidden in his bosom, in
+the very attitude of the orator; and to the silent spaces of the maze
+thus he made his address:</p>
+
+<p>"Ladies and gentlemen! When I entered the tent this afternoon and took
+my seat upon the platform, nothing was further from my thoughts than
+that I should hear myself proposing a vote of thanks to our
+indefatigable chairman!"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester was getting ready for the Chichester Flower Show, at
+which, certainly, he was not going to make a speech. Oh dear, no! He
+knew better than that.</p>
+
+<p>"In this marvellous collection of flowers, ladies and gentlemen, we can
+read, if so we will, a singular instance of co-ordination and
+organisation&mdash;the Empire's great needs to-day&mdash;&mdash;"<a name="Page_217" id="Page_217"></a></p>
+
+<p>Harry Luttrell and Joan stifled their laughter and stole away out of
+hearing.</p>
+
+<p>"We won't breathe a word of it," said Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Harry.</p>
+
+<p>They had a little secret now between them&mdash;that wonderful link&mdash;a little
+secret; and to be sure they made the most of it. They could look across
+the dinner-table at one another with a smile in which no one else could
+have a share. If Sir Chichester spoke, it would be just to kindle that
+swift glance in lovers' eyes from which the heart takes fire.
+Love-making went at a gallop in nineteen hundred and sixteen; it jumped
+the barriers; it danced to a lively and violent tune. Maidens, as Sir
+Charles Hardiman had pronounced, had become more primeval. Insecurity
+had dropped them down upon the bed-rock elemental truths. Men were for
+women, women for men, especially for those men who went out with a
+cheery song in their mouths to save them from the hideous destiny of
+women in ravaged lands. The soldier was here to-day on leave, and God
+alone knew where he would be to-morrow, and whether alive, or perhaps a
+crippled thing like a child!</p>
+
+<p>Joan Whitworth and Harry Luttrell had been touched by the swift magic of
+those days; he, when he had first seen her in the shining armour of her
+youth upon the steps of the stairs; she, when Harry had first entered
+the hall and spoken his few commonplace words of greeting. This was the
+hour for them, the hour at the well with the desert behind them and the
+desert in front, the hour within the measure of which was to be forced
+the essence of many days. When they returned to the hall they found most
+of the small party gathered there before going up to dress for dinner;
+and there was that in the faces of the pair which betrayed them.
+Hillyard looked quickly round the hall, as a qualm of pity for Stella
+Croyle seized him. But he could not see her. "Thank Heaven she has
+already gone up to dress," he said to himself. A marriage between Joan
+Whitworth and the Harry Luttrell of to-day, the man freed now from the
+great obsession of his life and trained now to the traditional paths,
+was a fitting thing, a thing to be welcomed. Hillyard readily
+acknowledged it. But he had more <a name="Page_218" id="Page_218"></a>insight into the troubled soul of
+Stella Croyle than any one else in that company.</p>
+
+<p>"No one's bothering about her," he reflected. "She came here to set up
+her last fight to win back Harry. She is now putting on her armour for
+it. And she hasn't a chance&mdash;no, not one!"</p>
+
+<p>For Harry's sake he was glad. But he was a creator of plays; and his
+training led him to seek to understand, and to understand with the
+sympathy of his emotions, the points of view of others who might stand
+in a contrast or a relation. He walked up the stairs with a heart full
+of pity when Millicent Splay caught him up.</p>
+
+<p>"What did I tell you?" she said, brimful with delight. "Just look at
+Joan! Is there a girl anywhere who can match her?"</p>
+
+<p>Martin looked down over the balustrade at Joan in the hall below.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said slowly. "Not one whom I have ever seen."</p>
+
+<p>The little note of melancholy in his voice moved Millie Splay. She was
+all kindness in that moment of her triumph. She turned to Martin
+Hillyard in commiseration. "Oh, don't tell me that you are in love with
+her too! I should be so sorry."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I am not," Martin Hillyard hastened to reassure her, "not one bit."</p>
+
+<p>The commiseration died on the instant in Millicent Splay.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, really I don't see why you shouldn't be," she said coldly. "You
+will go a long way before you find any one to equal her."</p>
+
+<p>Her whole attitude demanded of him an explanation of how he dared not to
+be in love with her darling.</p>
+
+<p>"A very long way," Martin Hillyard agreed humbly. "All the way
+probably."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Splay was mollified, and went on to her room. Down in the hall,
+Harry Luttrell turned to Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"This is going to be a wonderful week for me."</p>
+
+<p>"I am very glad," answered Joan, and they went up the stairs side by
+side.<a name="Page_219" id="Page_219"></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Jenny Prask</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>"I have put out the blue dress with the silver underskirt, madam," said
+Jenny Prask, knowing well that nothing in Stella Croyle's wardrobe set
+off so well her dark and fragile beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, Jenny."</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle answered listlessly. She was discouraged by her experience
+of that afternoon. She had come to Rackham Park, certain of one factor
+upon her side, but very certain of that. She would find no competitor,
+and lo! the invincible competitor, youth, had put on armour against her!
+Stella looked in the mirror. She was thirty, and in the circle within
+which she moved, thirty meant climbing reluctantly on to the shelf.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think, Jenny, the blue frock makes me look old?"</p>
+
+<p>Jenny Prask laughed scornfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Old, madam! You! Just fancy!"</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle, living much alone, had made a companion of her maid.
+There was nothing of Mrs. Croyle's history which Jenny Prask did not
+know, and very few of her hopes and sorrows were hidden from her.</p>
+
+<p>"My gracious me, madam! There will be nobody to hold a candle to you
+here!" she said, with a sniff, as she helped Stella to undress.</p>
+
+<p>Stella looked in the glass. Certainly there was not a line upon the
+smoothness of her cheeks; her dark hair had lost none of its gloss. She
+took her features one by one, and found no trace of change. Nor, indeed,
+scrutinised in that way did Stella show any change. It was when you saw
+her across a room that you recognised that girlhood had gone, and that
+there was a woman in the full ripeness of her beauty.<a name="Page_220" id="Page_220"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said, and her listlessness began to disappear. She turned
+away from the mirror. "Come, Jenny!" she cried, with a hopeful smile.
+She was saying to herself, "I have still a chance."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny rattled on while she assisted her mistress. Stella's face changed
+with her mood, more than most faces. Disappointment and fatigue aged her
+beyond due measure. Jenny Prask was determined that she could go down to
+dinner to-night looking her youngest and best.</p>
+
+<p>"I went for a walk this evening with Mr. Marvin. He's Colonel Luttrell's
+soldier-servant, and quite enthusiastic, he was, madam."</p>
+
+<p>"Was he, Jenny?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite! The men in his company loved him&mdash;a captain he was then. He
+always looked after their dinner. A bit strict, too, but they don't mind
+that."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny was busy with Stella Croyle's hair; and the result satisfied her.</p>
+
+<p>"There won't be anybody else to-night, madam," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't there, Jenny?" said Mrs. Croyle, incredulously. "There'll be Miss
+Whitworth."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny Prask sniffed disdainfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Whitworth! A fair sight I call her, madam, if I may say so. I
+never did see such clothes! And how she keeps a maid for more than a
+week beats me altogether. What I say, madam, is those who button in
+front when they should hook behind are a fair washout."</p>
+
+<p>Stella laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid that you'll find, Jenny, that Miss Whitworth will hook
+behind to-night."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny went on unaffected by the rejoinder. She had her little item of
+news to contribute to the contentment of her mistress.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides, Miss Whitworth is in love with the foreign gentleman. Oh,
+madam, if you turn as sharp as that, I can't but pull your hair."</p>
+
+<p>"Which foreigner?"</p>
+
+<p>"That Mario Escobar." Jenny looked over Stella's head and into the
+reflection of her eyes upon the mirror. "I don't <a name="Page_221" id="Page_221"></a>hold with foreigners
+myself, madam. A little ridiculous they always seem to me, with their
+chatter and what not."</p>
+
+<p>"And you believe Miss Whitworth's in love with him."</p>
+
+<p>"Outrageous, Mr. Harper says. Quite the talk of the servants' hall, it
+is. Why, even this afternoon she wrote him a letter. Mr. Harper showed
+it me after he took it out of the letter-box to post it. 'That's her
+'and,' says he&mdash;and there it was, Mario Escobar, Esquire, the Golden Sun
+Hotel, Midhurst&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Midhurst?" cried Stella with a start. She looked eagerly at the
+reflection of Jenny Prask. "Mr. Escobar is staying in an hotel at
+Midhurst?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, madam."</p>
+
+<p>"And Miss Whitworth wrote to him there this afternoon?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's gospel truth, madam. May it be my last dying word, if it isn't!"
+said Jenny Prask.</p>
+
+<p>The blood mounted into Stella Croyle's face. Since that was true&mdash;and
+she did not doubt Jenny Prask for a moment&mdash;Jenny would have given
+anything she had to save her mistress trouble, and Stella knew it. Since
+it was true, then, that Mario Escobar was staying hidden away in a
+country hotel five miles off, and that Joan was writing to him, why,
+after all, she had no rival.</p>
+
+<p>Her spirits rose with a bound. She had a week, a whole week, in the
+company of Harry Luttrell; and what might she not do in a week if she
+used her wits and used her beauty! Stella Croyle ran down the stairs
+like a girl.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny Prask shut the door, and, opening a wardrobe, took from a high
+shelf Mrs. Croyle's dressing-bag. She opened it, and from one of the
+fittings she lifted out a bottle. The bottle was quite full of a white,
+colourless liquid. Jenny Prask nodded to herself and carefully put the
+bottle back. There was very little she did not know about the
+proceedings of her mistress. Then she went out of the room into the
+gallery, and peeped down to watch the other guests assemble. She saw
+Miranda Brown, Stella, Sir Chichester Splay, Dennis and Harry Luttrell
+come from their different rooms and gather in the hall below. From a
+passage behind her, a girl, butterfly-bright, flashed out and danced
+joyously down the stairs. A <a name="Page_222" id="Page_222"></a>new-comer, thought Jenny, with a pang of
+alarm for her mistress! But she heard the new-comer speak, and heard her
+spoken to. It was Joan Whitworth.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Jenny Prask gasped.</p>
+
+<p>Undoubtedly Joan "hooked behind" to-night. What had come over her? Jenny
+asked. Her quick mind realised that Mario Escobar was not answerable for
+the change since Mario Escobar was miles away at Midhurst. Besides,
+according to Mr. Harper, this flirtation with Escobar had been going on
+a year and more.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny Prask looked from Joan to Harry Luttrell. She saw them drawn to
+one another across the hall and move into the dining-room side by side.
+She turned back with a little moan of disappointment into Stella
+Croyle's bedroom; and whilst she tidied it, more than once she stopped
+to wring her hands.</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle, however, kept her good spirits through the evening. For
+after dinner Harry Luttrell, of his own will, came straight to her in
+the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Wub," she said in a whisper as she drew her skirt aside to make
+room for him upon the couch. "Oh, Wub, what years it is since I have
+seen you."</p>
+
+<p>When the old nickname fell upon Harry's ears, he looked quickly about
+him to see where Joan Whitworth sat. But she was at the other end of the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it is a long time."</p>
+
+<p>"Stockholm!" said Stella, dwelling upon the name. She lowered her voice.
+"Wub, I suffered terribly after you went away. Oh, it wasn't a good
+time. No, it wasn't!"</p>
+
+<p>"Stella, I am very sorry," he said gently. He knew himself this day the
+glories and the pangs of love. He was sunk ocean-deep one moment in the
+sense of his unworthiness, the next he knocked his head against the
+stars on the soaring billow of his pride. He could not but feel for
+Stella, who had passed through the same furnace. He could not but grieve
+that the wondrous book of which he was racing through the first pages
+had been closed for her by him. Might she not open it again, some time,
+with another at her side?<a name="Page_223" id="Page_223"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Wub, tell me what you have been doing all these years," she said.</p>
+
+<p>He began the tale of them in the short, reluctant, colloquial phrases
+which the English use to strip their achievements of any romantic
+semblance until Millicent Splay sailed across the room and claimed him
+for a table of bridge.</p>
+
+<p>"He will be safer there," she said to herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but she had to take him away," Stella's thoughts responded. She
+was dangerous then in Millie Splay's judgment. The sweet flattery set
+Stella smiling. She went up to her room rejoicing that she had chosen
+that week to visit Rackham Park. She was playing a losing game, but she
+did not know it.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the very spirit of summer seemed to inform the gathering. Saturday
+brought up no clouds to darken the clear sky. Harold Jupp and Dennis
+Brown actually scored four nice wins at Gatwick on horses which, to
+celebrate the week, miraculously ran to form. Miranda under these
+conditions would have inevitably lost, but by another stroke of fortune
+no horse running had any special blemish, name, colour or trick
+calculated to inspire her. Sir Chichester was happy too, for he saw a
+lady reporter write down his name in her notebook. So was Mr. Albany
+Todd. For he met the Earl of Eltringham, with whom he had a passing
+acquaintance; and his lordship, being complimented upon his gardens, of
+which <i>Country Life</i> had published an account, was moved to say in the
+friendliest manner: "You must propose yourself for a week-end, Mr. Todd,
+and see them."</p>
+
+<p>As for Joan and Harry Luttrell, it mattered little where they were, so
+that they were together. They walked in their own magical garden.</p>
+
+<p>It fell to Martin Hillyard to look after Stella Croyle, and the task was
+not difficult. She kept her eyes blindfold to what she did not wish to
+see. She had a chance, she said to herself, recollecting her talk with
+Harry last night, and the news of Joan which Jenny Prask had given to
+her. She had a chance, if she walked delicately.</p>
+
+<p>"Old associations&mdash;give them opportunity, and they renew their
+strength," she thought. "Harry is afraid of them&mdash;that's all."<a name="Page_224" id="Page_224"></a></p>
+
+<p>On the Monday evening Jenny Prask brought a fresh piece of gossip which
+strengthened her hopes.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Whitworth had a letter from him this morning," said Jenny. "She
+wouldn't open it at the breakfast-table, Mr. Harper says. Quite upset
+she was, he says. She took it upstairs to her room just as it was."</p>
+
+<p>"It might have been from some one else," answered Stella.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, madam," replied Jenny. "It had the Midhurst postmark, and Mr.
+Harper knows his handwriting besides. Mr. Harper's very observant."</p>
+
+<p>"He seems to be," said Stella.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Whitworth answered the letter at once, and took it out to the
+village and posted it with her own hands," Jenny continued.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure?" cried Mrs. Croyle.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw her go with my own eyes, I did. She went in her own little
+runabout, and was back in a jiffy, with a sort of 'There-I've-done-it!'
+look about her. Oh, there's something going on there, madam&mdash;take my
+word for it! She's a deep one, Miss Whitworth is, and no mistake. Will
+you wear the smoke-grey to-night, madam? I am keeping the pink for the
+ball on Thursday."</p>
+
+<p>Stella allowed a moment or two to pass before she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't go to the Willoughbys' ball, Jenny."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny Prask stared in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't, madam!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Jenny. But I want you to be careful not to mention it to any one. I
+shall dress as if I was going, but at the last moment I shall plead a
+headache and stay behind."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, madam," said Jenny. But it seemed to her that Stella was
+throwing down her arms. Stella, however, had understood, upon hearing of
+the invitation for Lady Splay's party, that she could do nothing else.
+The Willoughbys were strict folk. Mrs. Croyle could hardly hope to go
+without some rumour of her history coming afterwards to the ears of that
+family; and the family would hold her presence as a reproach against
+Millie Splay. Stella had herself proposed her plan to Millie, and she
+noted the relief with which it was received.<a name="Page_225" id="Page_225"></a></p>
+
+<p>"You will be careful not to mention it to a soul, Jenny," Stella
+insisted.</p>
+
+<p>"My goodness me, madam, I never talk," replied Jenny. "I keep my ears
+open and let the others do that."</p>
+
+<p>"I know, Jenny," said Stella, with a smile. "I can't imagine what I
+should do without you."</p>
+
+<p>"And you never will, madam, unless it's your own wish and doin'," said
+Jenny heartily. "I have talked it over with Brown"&mdash;Brown was Mrs.
+Croyle's chauffeur&mdash;"and he's quite willin' that I should go on with you
+after we are married."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, that's all right," said Stella.</p>
+
+<p>Many a one looking backwards upon some terrible and unexpected tragedy
+will have noticed with what care the great dramaturgist so wove his play
+that every little unheeded event in the days before helped directly to
+create the final catastrophe. It happened on this evening that Stella
+went downstairs earlier than the other guests, and in going into the
+library in search of an evening paper, found Sir Chichester standing by
+the telephone instrument.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I in your way?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit, Stella," he answered. "In fact, you might help me by looking
+up the number I want." He raised the instrument, and playing with the
+receiver as he stood erect, remarked, "Although I am happy to think that
+I shall not be called upon to deliver any observations on the occasion
+of the Chichester flower show next Thursday, I may as well ask one of
+the newspapers if their local correspondent would give the ceremony some
+little attention."</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle took up the telephone book.</p>
+
+<p>"Which newspaper is it to be, Sir Chichester?"</p>
+
+<p>"The <i>Harpoon</i>, I think. Yes, I am sure. The <i>Harpoon</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle looked up the number and read out:</p>
+
+<p>"Gerrard, one, six, two, double three."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester accordingly called upon the trunk line and gave the
+number.</p>
+
+<p>"You will ring me up? Thank you," he said, and replacing the receiver,
+stood in anxious expectancy.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought that your favourite paper was the <i>Daily Flashlight</i>?" Stella
+observed.<a name="Page_226" id="Page_226"></a></p>
+
+<p>"That's quite true, Stella. It was," Sir Chichester explained na&iuml;vely.
+"But I have noticed lately a regrettable tendency to indifference on the
+part of the <i>Flashlight</i>. The management is usually too occupied to
+converse with me when I ring it up. On the other hand, I am new to the
+<i>Harpoon</i>. Hallo! Hallo! This is Sir Christopher Splay speaking," and he
+delivered his message. "Thank you very much," said Sir Chichester as he
+hung up the receiver. "Really most courteous people. Yes, most
+courteous. What is their number, Stella? I must remember it."</p>
+
+<p>Stella read it out again.</p>
+
+<p>"Gerrard, one, six, two, double three," and thus she, too, committed the
+number to memory.<a name="Page_227" id="Page_227"></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Plans for the Evening</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>The library at Rackham Park was a small, oblong room, with a big window
+upon the garden. It opened into the hall on the one side and into the
+dining-room on the other, and in one corner the telephone was installed.
+At half-past eight on the night of the dance at Harrel, this room was
+empty and in darkness. But a second afterwards the door from the hall
+was opened, and Joan stood in the doorway, the light shimmering upon her
+satin cloak and the silver embroidery of her frock. She cast an anxious
+look behind her and up the staircase. It seemed as if some movement at
+the angle made by the stairs and the gallery caught her eye, for she
+stepped back for a clearer view, and listened with a peculiar
+intentness. She saw nothing, however, and heard nothing. She entered the
+library swiftly and closed the door behind her, so that the room fell
+once more upon darkness save for a thread of gold at the bottom of the
+other door behind which the men of the party were still sitting over
+their wine. She crossed the room towards the window, stepping cautiously
+to avoid the furniture. She was quite invisible. But for a tiny rustle
+of the lace flounces on her dress one would have sworn the room was
+empty. But when she was half-way across a sudden burst of laughter from
+the dining-room brought her to a stop with her hand upon her heart and a
+little sob not altogether stifled in her throat. It meant so much to her
+that the desperate adventure of this night should be carried through! If
+all went well, as it must&mdash;oh, as it surely must!&mdash;by midnight she would
+be free of her terrors and distress.</p>
+
+<p>The laughter in the dining room died down. Joan stole forward again. She
+drew away the heavy curtains from the long window, and the moonlight,
+clear and bright like silver, <a name="Page_228" id="Page_228"></a>poured into the room and clothed her in
+its soft radiance. She drew back the bolts at the top and bottom of the
+glass door and turned the key in the lock. She touched the glass and the
+door swung open upon the garden, easily, noiselessly. She drew it close
+again and leaving it so, raised her hands to the curtains at the side.
+As she began carefully to draw them together, so that the rings should
+not rattle on the pole, the door from the hall was softly and quickly
+opened, and the switch of the electric lights by the side of the door
+pressed down. The room leapt into light.</p>
+
+<p>Joan swung round, her face grown white, her eyes burning with fire. She
+saw only Jenny Prask.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope I don't intrude, miss," said Jenny respectfully. "I came to find
+a book."</p>
+
+<p>The blood flowed back into Joan's cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, Jenny, take what you like," said Joan, and she draped the
+curtains across the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, miss."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny chose a book from the case upon the table and without a glance at
+Joan or at the window, went out of the room again. Joan watched her go.
+After all, what had Jenny seen? A girl whose home was there, drawing the
+curtains close. That was all. Joan shook her anxiety off. Jenny had left
+the door of the library open and some one came running down the stairs
+whistling as she ran. Miranda Brown dashed into the room struggling with
+a pair of gloves.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how I hate gloves in this weather!" she cried. "Well, here I am,
+Joan. You wanted to speak to me before the others had finished powdering
+their noses. What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to help me."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I will," Miranda answered cheerily. "How?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan closed the door and returned to Miranda, who, having drawn the
+gloves over her arm, was now struggling with the buttons.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you, when we reach Harrel&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"To lend me your motor-car for an hour."</p>
+
+<p>Miranda turned in amazement towards her friend. But one <a name="Page_229" id="Page_229"></a>glance at her
+face showed that the prayer was made in desperate earnest. Miranda Brown
+caught her friend by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Joan!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Joan Whitworth answered, nodding her head miserably. "That's the
+help I want and I want it dreadfully. Just for an hour&mdash;no more."</p>
+
+<p>"Joan, my dear&mdash;what's the matter?" asked Miranda gazing into Joan
+Whitworth's troubled face.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want you to ask me," the girl answered. "I want you to help me
+straight off without any questions. Otherwise&mdash;&mdash;" and Joan's voice
+shook and broke, "otherwise&mdash;oh, I don't know what will happen to me!"</p>
+
+<p>Miranda put her arm round Joan Whitworth's waist. "Joan! You are in real
+trouble!"</p>
+
+<p>"For the first time!" said Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't I&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," Joan interrupted. "There's only the one way, Miranda."</p>
+
+<p>She sat down upon a couch at Miranda's side and feverishly caught her
+hand. "Do help me! You can't tell what it means to me!... And I should
+hate telling you! Oh, I have been such a fool!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan's face was quivering, and so deep a compunction was audible in her
+voice, so earnest a prayer was to be read in her troubled eyes, that
+Miranda's doubt and anxiety were doubled.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what I shall do, if you don't help me," Joan said
+miserably as she let go of Miranda. Her hands fluttered helplessly in
+the air. "No, I don't know!"</p>
+
+<p>Miranda was thoroughly disturbed. The contrast between the Joan she had
+known until this week, good-humoured, a little aloof, contented with
+herself and her ambitions, placid, self-contained, and this lovely girl,
+troubled to the heart's core, with her beseeching eyes and trembling
+lips touched her poignantly, meltingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Joan, I don't like it!" she whispered. "What mad thing have you
+done?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing that can't be put right! Nothing! Nothing!" Joan caught eagerly
+at the argument. "Oh, I was a fool!<a name="Page_230" id="Page_230"></a> But if you'll only help me
+to-night, I am sure everything will be arranged."</p>
+
+<p>The words were bold enough, but the girl's voice trailed off into a low,
+unsteady whisper, as terror at the rash plan which she had made and must
+now carry through caught at her heart. "Oh, Miranda, do be kind!"</p>
+
+<p>"When do you want the car?" asked Miranda.</p>
+
+<p>"Immediately after we get to Harrel."</p>
+
+<p>"Joan!"</p>
+
+<p>Miranda herself was growing frightened. She stood torn with indecision.
+Joan's distress pleaded on the one side, dread of some tragic mystery
+upon the other. For the first time in her life Joan was in some
+desperate crisis of destiny. Her feet and hands twitched as though she
+were bound fast in the coils of a net she could not break. What wisdom
+of experience could she bring to help her to escape? On what wild and
+hopeless venture might she not be set?</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," Joan urged eagerly. "I have thought it all out. I want you
+to tell your chauffeur privately to return along the avenue after he has
+set you down. There's a road on the right a few yards down. If he will
+turn into that and wait behind the big clump of rhododendrons I will
+join him immediately."</p>
+
+<p>"But it will be noticed that you have gone. People will ask for you,"
+Miranda objected.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I shall be back again within the hour. There will be a crowd of
+people. And lots won't imagine that I should ever come to the dance at
+all." Even at that moment a little smile played about the lips. "And if
+the ball had been a week ago, I shouldn't have gone, should I? I should
+still be wearing sandals," she explained, as she looked down at the
+buckles of her trim satin slippers, "and haughtily wishing you all good
+night in the hall here. No, it will be easy enough. I shall just shake
+hands with Mrs. Willoughby, pass on with the rest of our party into the
+ball-room and then slip out by the corridor at the side of the park."</p>
+
+<p>"It's dangerous, Joan!" said Miranda.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know, but&mdash;&mdash;" Joan rose suddenly with her eyes upon the door.
+"The others are coming. Miranda, will you <a name="Page_231" id="Page_231"></a>help me? I would have driven
+over to Harrel in my own little car. But it's open and I should have got
+blown about until everybody would have begun asking why in the world I
+used it. Oh, Miranda, quick!"</p>
+
+<p>Her ears had heard the voices already in the hall. Miranda heard them
+too. In a moment the door would be thrown open. She must make up her
+mind now.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. The first turning to the right down the avenue and behind
+the rhododendrons. I'll tell the chauffeur."</p>
+
+<p>"And no one else! Not even Dennis!"</p>
+
+<p>"Joan!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not even Dennis! Promise me!"</p>
+
+<p>Millie Splay was heard to be inquiring for them both.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. I promise!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, thank you! Thank you."</p>
+
+<p>The door from the hall was opened upon that cry of gratitude and Millie
+Splay looked in.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there you are." A movement of chairs became audible in the
+dining-room. "And those men are still sitting over their miserable
+cigars."</p>
+
+<p>"They are coming," said Joan, and the next moment the dining-room door
+was thrown open and Sir Chichester with his guests trooped out from it.</p>
+
+<p>"Now then, you girls, we ought to be off," he cried as if he had been
+waiting with his coat on for half an hour. "This is none of your London
+dances. We are in the country. You won't any of you get any partners if
+you don't hurry."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I like that!" returned Millie Splay. "Here we all are, absolutely
+waiting for you!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Albany Todd approached Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"You will keep a dance for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. The third before supper," answered Joan.</p>
+
+<p>Already Sir Chichester was putting on his coat in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on! Come on!" he cried impatiently, and then in quite another
+tone, "Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>The evening papers had arrived late that evening. They now lay neatly
+folded on the hall table. Sir Chichester pounced upon them. The
+throbbing motor-cars at the door, <a name="Page_232" id="Page_232"></a>the gay figures of his guests were
+all forgotten. He plumped down upon a couch.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" cried Millie Splay in despair. "Now we can all sit down for
+half an hour."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, my dear, nonsense! I just want to see whether there is any
+report of my little speech at the Flower Show yesterday." He turned over
+the leaves. "Not a word apparently, here! And yet it was an occasion of
+some importance. I can't understand these fellows."</p>
+
+<p>He tossed the paper aside and took up another. "Just a second, dear!"</p>
+
+<p>Millie Splay looked around at her guests with much the same expression
+of helpless wonderment which was so often to be seen on the face of
+Dennis Brown, when Miranda went racing.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the limit!" she declared.</p>
+
+<p>There were two, however, of the party, who were not at all distressed by
+Sir Chichester's procrastination. When the others streamed into the
+hall, Joan lingered behind, sedulously buttoning her gloves which were
+buttoned before; and Harry Luttrell returned to assist her. The door was
+three-quarters closed. From the hall no one could see them.</p>
+
+<p>"You are going to dance with me in the passage," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Joan smiled at him and nodded. Now that Miranda had given way, Joan's
+spirits had revived. The colour was bright in her cheeks, her eyes were
+tender.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but not at once."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll finish my duty dances first," said Joan in a low voice. She did
+not take her eyes from his face. She let him read, she meant him to
+read, in her eyes what lay so close at her heart. Harry Luttrell read
+without an error, the print was so large, the type so clear. He took a
+step nearer to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Joan!" he whispered; and at this, his first use of her Christian name,
+her face flowered like a rose.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you!" she said softly. "Oh, thank you!"</p>
+
+<p>Harry Luttrell looked over his shoulder. They had the room to
+themselves, so long as they did not raise their voices.</p>
+
+<p>"Joan," he began with a little falter in his voice. Could <a name="Page_233" id="Page_233"></a>he have
+pleaded better in a thousand fine speeches, he who had seen his men
+wither about him on the Somme, than by that little timorous quaver in
+his voice? "Joan, I have something to ask of you to-night. I meant to
+ask it during a dance, when you couldn't run away. But I am going to ask
+it now."</p>
+
+<p>Joan drew back sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"No! Please wait!" and as she saw his face cloud, she hurried on. "Oh,
+don't be hurt! You misunderstand. How you misunderstand! Take me in to
+supper to-night, will you? And then you shall talk to me, and I'll
+listen." Her voice rose like clear sweet music in a lilt of joy. "I'll
+listen with all my heart, my hands openly in yours if you will, so that
+all may see and know my pride!"</p>
+
+<p>"Joan!" he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"But not now! Not till then!"</p>
+
+<p>Harry Luttrell did not consider what scruple in the girl's conscience
+held him off. The delay did not trouble him at all. She stood before
+him, radiant in her beauty, her happiness like an aura about her.</p>
+
+<p>"Joan," he whispered again, and&mdash;how it happened who shall say?&mdash;in a
+second she was within his arms, her heart throbbing against his; her
+hands stole about his shoulders; their lips were pressed together.</p>
+
+<p>"Harry! Oh, Harry!" she murmured. Then very gently she pushed him from
+her. She shook her head with a wistful little smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't mean you to do that," she said in self-reproach, "until after
+supper."</p>
+
+<p>In the hall Sir Chichester threw down the last of the newspapers in a
+rage. "Not a word! Not one single miserable little word! I don't ask
+much, goodness knows, but&mdash;&mdash;" and his voice went up in an angry
+incredulity. "Not one word! And I thought the <i>Harpoon</i> was such a good
+paper too!"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester sprang to his feet. He glanced at his guests. He turned
+upon his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"God bless my soul, Millie, what <i>are</i> we waiting for? I'll tell you
+girls what it is. Unless we get off at once, we had better not go at
+all. Where's Joan? Where's Luttrell?"<a name="Page_234" id="Page_234"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Here we are!" cried Luttrell from the library, and in a lower tone to
+Joan, he observed, "What a bore people are to be sure, aren't they?"</p>
+
+<p>The guilty couple emerged into the hall. Sir Chichester surveyed them
+with severity.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know whether you have heard about it, Luttrell, but there's a
+ball to-night at Harrel, and we all rather thought of going to it," he
+remarked with crushing sarcasm.</p>
+
+<p>"I am quite ready, sir," replied Harry humbly. Sir Chichester was
+mollified.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well then. We'll go."</p>
+
+<p>"But Mrs. Croyle isn't down yet," said Miranda.</p>
+
+<p>"Stella isn't going, dear," answered Millie Splay; and a cry of dismay
+burst from Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"Not going!"</p>
+
+<p>The consternation in the girl's voice was so pronounced that every eye
+in that hall turned to her in astonishment. There was consternation,
+too, most legible in her widely-opened eyes. Her cheeks had lost their
+colour. She stood for a fleeting moment before them all, an image of
+terror. Then she caught at an excuse.</p>
+
+<p>"Stella's ill then&mdash;since she's not going."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not as bad as all that, dear," Lady Splay hastened to reassure
+her. "She complained of a racking headache at dinner. She has gone to
+bed."</p>
+
+<p>The blood flowed back into Joan's cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I see!" she observed slowly. "That is why her maid came to the
+library for a book!"</p>
+
+<p>But she was very silent throughout the quarter of an hour, which it took
+them to drive to Harrel. There was somebody left behind at Rackham Park
+that night. Joan had overlooked one possibility in contriving her plan,
+and that possibility, now developed into fact, threatened to ruin all.
+One guest remained behind in the house, and that one Joan's rival.<a name="Page_235" id="Page_235"></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Jenny Prask is Interested</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Rackham was a red Georgian mansion with great windows in flat rows, and
+lofty rooms made beautiful by the delicate tracery of the ceilings. It
+has neither wings nor embellishments but stood squarely in its gardens,
+looking southwards to the Downs. The dining-room was upon the east side,
+between that room and the hall was the library, of which the window
+faced the north. Mrs. Croyle's bedroom, however, was in the south-west
+corner and from its windows one could see the smoke of the train as it
+climbed from Midhurst to the Cocking tunnel, and the gap where the road
+runs through to Singleton.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't be going to bed yet, madam, I suppose," said Jenny.</p>
+
+<p>She had not troubled to bring upstairs into the room the book which she
+had picked out at random from the stand that was lying on the hall
+table.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Jenny. I will ring for you when I want you," said Stella.</p>
+
+<p>Stella was dispirited. Her week was nearly at an end. To-morrow would be
+the last day and she had gained nothing, it seemed, by all her care.
+Harry was kind&mdash;oh, ever so much kinder than in the old days when they
+had been together&mdash;more considerate, more thoughtful. But the skies of
+passion are stormily red, and so effulgent that one walks in gold.
+Consideration, thoughtfulness&mdash;what were these pale things worth against
+one spurt of fire? Besides, there was the ball to-night. He would dance
+with <i>her</i>, would seek the dim open spaces of the lawns, the dark
+shadows of the great elms, with her&mdash;with Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll ring for you, Jenny," she repeated, as her maid stood doubtfully
+by the door. "I am quite right."<a name="Page_236" id="Page_236"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Very well, madam."</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle's eyes were drawn when she was left alone to that cupboard
+in which her dressing-bag was stowed away. But she arrested them and
+covered them with her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"This is my last chance," she said to herself aloud in the anguish of
+her spirit. If it failed, there was nothing in front of her but a
+loneliness which each year must augment. Youth and high spirits or the
+assumption of high spirits&mdash;these she must have if she were to keep her
+place in her poor little circle&mdash;and both were slipping from her fast.
+"This is my last chance." She stood in front of her mirror in her
+dancing frock, her dark hair exquisitely dressed, her face hauntingly
+wistful. After all, she was beautiful. Why shouldn't she win? Jenny
+thought that she could.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment Jenny was slipping noiselessly along a corridor to the
+northern side of the house. The lights were all off; a pencil of
+moonlight here and there from an interstice in the curtains alone
+touched her as she passed. At one window she stopped, and softly lifted
+the blind. She looked out and was satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>"Thought so!" she murmured, with a little vindictive smile. Just beneath
+her was that long window of the library which Joan had been at such
+pains to arrange.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny stationed herself by the window. The night was very still. She
+could hear the voices of the servants in the dining-room round the angle
+of the house, and see the light from its windows lying in frames upon
+the grass. Then the light went out, and silence fell.</p>
+
+<p>From time to time the hum of a motor-car swelled and diminished to its
+last faint vibrations on the distant road; and as each car passed Jenny
+stiffened at her post. She looked at her watch, turning the dial to the
+moonlight. It was ten minutes past nine now. The cars had left Rackham
+Park well before nine. She would not have long to wait now! As she
+slipped her watch again into her waistband she drew back with an
+instinctive movement, although the window at which she stood had been
+this last half-hour in shadow. For under a great copper beech on the
+grass in front of her a man was standing. The sight of him was a shock
+to her.<a name="Page_237" id="Page_237"></a></p>
+
+<p>She wondered how he had come, how long he had been there&mdash;and why? Some
+explanation flashed upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"My goodness me!" she whispered. "You could knock me down with a
+hairpin. So you could!"</p>
+
+<p>Whilst she watched that solitary figure beneath the tree, another motor
+whizzed along the road. The noise of its engine grew louder&mdash;surely
+louder than any which, standing at this window, she had heard before.
+Had it turned into the park? off the main road. Was it coming to the
+house? Before Jenny could answer these questions in her mind, the noise
+ceased altogether. Jenny held her breath; and round the angle of the
+house a girl came running swiftly, her skirt sparkling like silver in
+the moonlight, and a white cloak drawn about her shoulders. She drew
+open the window of the library and passed in. A few seconds passed.
+Jenny imagined her stealthily opening the door into the hall, and
+listening to make sure that the servants were in their own quarters and
+this part of the house deserted. Then the girl reappeared at the window
+and made a sign. From beneath the tree the man ran across the grass. His
+face was turned towards Jenny, and the moonlight revealed it. The man
+was Mario Escobar.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny drew a little sharp breath. She heard the window ever so gently
+latched. Suddenly the light blazed out from the room and then, strip by
+strip, vanished, as if the curtains had been cautiously drawn. The
+garden, the house resumed its aspect of quiet; all was as it had been
+when Jenny Prask first lifted the window of the corridor. Jenny Prask
+crept cautiously away.</p>
+
+<p>"Fancy that!" she said to herself, with a little chuckle of triumph.</p>
+
+<p>In the room below Mario Escobar and Joan Whitworth were talking.<a name="Page_238" id="Page_238"></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">In a Library</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>"You insisted that I should see you. You have something to say to me,"
+said Joan. She was breathing more quickly than usual and the blood
+fluttered in her cheeks, but she faced Mario Escobar with level eyes,
+and spoke without a tremor in her voice. So far everything had happened
+just as she had planned. There were these few difficult minutes now to
+be grappled with, and afterwards the ordeal would be ended, that foolish
+chapter in her life altogether closed. "Will you please be quick?" she
+pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>But Mario Escobar was in no hurry to answer. He had never imagined that
+Joan Whitworth could look so beautiful. He had never dreamed that she
+would take so much trouble. Mario Escobar understood women's clothes,
+and his eyes ran with a sensation of pleasure over her delicate frock
+with its shining bands, its embroidery of silver and flounces of fine
+lace, down to her slim brocaded shoes. He had not, indeed, thought very
+much of her in the days when Linda Spavinsky was queen. She had been a
+sort of challenge to him, because of her aloofness, her indifference.
+Women were his profession, and here was a queer outlandish one whom it
+would be amusing to parade as his. So he had set to work; he had a sense
+of art, he could talk with ingenuity on artistic matters, and he had
+flattered Joan by doing so; but always with a certain definite laughter
+and contempt for her. Now her beauty rather swept him off his feet. He
+looked at her in amazement. Why this change? And&mdash;the second question
+for ever in his mind&mdash;how could he profit by it?</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand," he said slowly, feeling his way. "We were good
+friends&mdash;very good friends." Joan neither denied nor agreed. "We had
+certain things in common, a love of art, of the finer things of life. I
+made enemies, of course, in <a name="Page_239" id="Page_239"></a>consequence. Your racing friends&mdash;&mdash;" He
+paused. "Milly Splay, who would have matched you with some dull,
+tiresome squire accustomed to sleep over his port after dinner, the sort
+of man you are drawing so brilliantly in your wonderful book." A
+movement of impatience on Joan's part perplexed him. Authors! You can
+generally lay your praise on with a trowel. What in the world was the
+matter with Joan? He hurried on. "I understood that I was making
+enemies. I understood, too, why I was no longer invited to Rackham Park.
+I was a foreigner. I would as soon visit a picture gallery as shoot a
+pheasant. I would as soon appreciate your old gates and houses in the
+country as gallop after a poor little fox on the downs. Oh, yes, I
+wasn't popular. That I understand. But you!" and his voice softened to a
+gentle reproach. "You were different! And you had the courage of your
+difference! Since I was not invited to Rackham Park, I was to come down
+to the inn at Midhurst. I was to drive over&mdash;publicly, most
+publicly&mdash;and ask for you. We would show them that there were finer
+things in the world than horse-racing and lawn tennis. Oh, yes. We
+arranged it all at that wonderful exhibition of the New School in Green
+Street."</p>
+
+<p>Joan writhed a little at her recollection of the pictures of the
+rotundists and of the fatuous aphorisms to which she had given
+utterance.</p>
+
+<p>"I come to Midhurst accordingly, and what happens? You scribble me out a
+curt little letter. I am not to come to Rackham Park. I am not to try to
+see you. And you are writing to-morrow. But to-morrow comes, and you
+don't write&mdash;no, not one line!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was so difficult," Joan answered. She spoke diffidently. Some of her
+courage had gone from her; she was confronted with so direct, so
+unanswerable an accusation. "I thought that you would understand that I
+did not wish to see you again. I thought that you would accept my wish."</p>
+
+<p>Mario Escobar laughed unpleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because most men have that chivalry," said Joan.</p>
+
+<p>Mario Escobar only smiled this time. He smiled with narrowed eves and a
+gleam of white teeth behind his black <a name="Page_240" id="Page_240"></a>moustache. He was amused, like a
+man who receives ridiculous answers from a child.</p>
+
+<p>"It is easy to see that you have read the poets&mdash;Joan," he replied
+deliberately.</p>
+
+<p>Joan's face flamed. Never had she been addressed with so much insolence.
+Chaff she was accustomed to, but it was always chaff mitigated by a
+tenderness of real affection. Insolence and disdain were quite new to
+her, and they hurt intolerably. Joan, however, was learning her lessons
+fairly quickly. She had to get this meeting over as swiftly and quietly
+as she could, and high words would not help.</p>
+
+<p>"It's true," she admitted meekly. "I know very little."</p>
+
+<p>Joan looked very lovely as she stood nervously drumming with her gloved
+fingers on a little table which stood between them, all her assurance
+gone.</p>
+
+<p>Mario Escobar lived always on the whirling edge of passion. The least
+extra leap of the water caught him and drew him in. He gazed at Joan,
+and the computing look which cast up her charms made her suddenly hot
+from head to foot. The good-looking, pretentious fool whom it had been
+amusing to exhibit amidst the black frowns of her circle had suddenly
+become exquisitely desirable for herself as a prize, with her beauty,
+her dainty care to tend it, and her delicious clothes. She would now be
+a real credit! Escobar took a step towards her.</p>
+
+<p>"After all," he said, "we were such good friends. We had little private
+interests which we did not share with other people. Surely it was
+natural that I should wish to see you again."</p>
+
+<p>Mario was speaking smoothly enough now. His voice, his eyes actually
+caressed her. She was at pains to repress a shiver of physical
+repulsion. But she remembered his letter very clearly. It had expressed
+no mere wish to see her. It had claimed a right with a vague threat of
+making trouble if the right were not conceded. She had recognised the
+right, not out of the fear of the threat so much&mdash;although that weighed
+with her, as out of a longing to have done with him for good and all.
+Instinct had told her that this was the last type of man to find favour
+in Harry Luttrell's eyes, that she <a name="Page_241" id="Page_241"></a>herself would be lowered from her
+high pedestal in his heart, if he knew of the false friendship.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I agreed to see you," she replied. "But I have to go back to the
+ball. Will you please to be quick?"</p>
+
+<p>"The time and the place were of your own choice."</p>
+
+<p>"My choice!" Joan answered. "I had no choice. A girl amongst visitors in
+a country house&mdash;when is she free? When is she alone? She can keep to
+her room&mdash;yes! But that's all her liberty. Let her go out, there will be
+some one at her side."</p>
+
+<p>"If she is like you&mdash;no doubt," said Escobar, and again he smiled at her
+covetously. Joan shook the compliment off her with a hitch of her
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"We could have met in a hundred places," Mario continued.</p>
+
+<p>"I could have come to call on you as we arranged."</p>
+
+<p>"No!" cried Joan with more vigour than wisdom in her voice. She had a
+picture of him, of the embarrassment of the Splays and her friends, of
+the disapproval of Harry Luttrell.</p>
+
+<p>Escobar was quick when he dealt with women, quick and sensitive. The
+passionate denial did not escape him. He began to divine the true cause
+of this swift upheaval and revolution in her.</p>
+
+<p>"You could have sent me a card for the Willoughbys' dance. It would have
+been easy enough for us to meet there."</p>
+
+<p>Again she replied, "No!" A note of obstinacy was audible.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan did not answer at all.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you," Escobar flashed out at her angrily. "You wouldn't be
+seen with me any more! Suddenly, you would not be seen with me&mdash;no, not
+for the world! That's the truth, isn't it? That's why you come secretly
+back and bid me meet you in an empty house."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" pleaded Joan.</p>
+
+<p>Mario Escobar's voice had risen as his own words flogged him to a keener
+indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I care if all the world hears me?" he replied roughly. "Why
+should I consider you, who turn me down <a name="Page_242" id="Page_242"></a>the moment it suits you,
+without a reason? It's fairly galling to me, I assure you."</p>
+
+<p>Joan nodded her head. Mario Escobar had some right upon his side, she
+was ready to acknowledge.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon," she said simply. "Won't you please be content with
+that and leave things as they are?"</p>
+
+<p>"When you are a little older you will know that you can never leave
+things as they are," answered Mario. "I was looking forward to a week of
+happiness. I have had a week of torment. For lesser insults than yours,
+men kill in my country."</p>
+
+<p>There were other differences, too, between her country and his. Joan did
+not cry out, or burst into tears or flinch in any way. She was alone in
+this room; there was no one, as far as she knew, within the reach of her
+voice. She had chosen this meeting-place, not altogether because the
+house would be empty, but because in this first serious difficulty of
+her life she would be amongst familiar things and draw from them
+confidence and strength, and a sense of security. With Mario Escobar in
+front of her, his face ablaze with passion, the security vanished
+altogether. Yet all the more she was raised to the top of her courage.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I shall tell you the truth," she answered gently. "You speak to me
+of our friendship. It was never anything serious to me. It was a
+taunt&mdash;a foolish taunt to other people."</p>
+
+<p>Mario Escobar flinched, as if she had struck him in the face.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I hurt you," she went on in the same gentle voice, which was not
+the least element in Escobar's humiliation. "I am very sorry. I tried
+not to hurt you. I am very ignorant, as you have told me, but I wouldn't
+believe it till a week ago. I made it my pride to be different from
+anybody else. I believed that I was different. I was a fool. I wouldn't
+listen. Even during the war. I have shut myself up away from it, trying
+not to share in the effort, not to feel the pride and the sorrow,
+pretending that it was just a horrible, sordid business altogether
+beneath lofty minds! That's one of the reasons why I chose you for my
+friend! I was flinging my glove in the face of the little world I knew.
+I had <i>got</i> to be <a name="Page_243" id="Page_243"></a>different. It's all very shameful to tell, and I am
+sorry. Oh, how I am sorry!"</p>
+
+<p>Her sorrow was most evident. She had sunk down upon a couch, her fair
+head drooping and the tears now running down her cheeks in the
+bitterness of her shame. But Mario Escobar was untouched by any pity. If
+any thought occurred to him outside his burning humiliation, it was
+prompted by the economy of the Spaniard.</p>
+
+<p>"She'll spoil that frock if she goes on crying," he said to himself,
+"and it was very expensive."</p>
+
+<p>"I have nothing but remorse to offer in atonement," she went on. "But
+that remorse is very sincere&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mario Escobar swept her plea aside with a furious gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"So that's it!" he cried. "You were just making a fool of me!" That she,
+this pretty pink and white girl, should have been making a show of him,
+parading him before her friends, exhibiting him, using him as a
+challenge&mdash;just as in fact he had been using her, and with more success!
+Only to think of it hurt him like a knife. "Your remorse!" he cried
+scornfully. "There's some one else, of course!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan sat up straight and stiff. Escobar might have laid a lash across
+her delicate shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said defiantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Some one who was not here a week ago?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>To Escobar's humiliation was now added a sudden fire of jealousy. For
+the first time to-night, as woman, as flesh and blood, she was adorable,
+and she owed this transformation, not to him, no, not in the tiniest
+fraction of a degree to him, but to some one else, some dull boor
+without niceties or deftness, who had stormed into her life within the
+week. Who was it? He had got to know. But Joan was hardly thinking of
+Escobar. Her eyes were turned from him.</p>
+
+<p>"He has set me free from many vanities and follies. If I am grieved and
+ashamed now, I owe it thankfully to him. If my remorse is bitter, it is
+because through him I have a gleam of light which helps me to
+understand."</p>
+
+<p>"And you have told him what you have told me?"<a name="Page_244" id="Page_244"></a></p>
+
+<p>"No, but I shall to-night when all this is over, when I go back to
+Harrel."</p>
+
+<p>Mario Escobar moved closer to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you so sure that you are going back to Harrel to-night?" he asked
+in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she replied, and only after she had spoken did the menace of his
+voice force itself into her mind as something which she must take into
+account. She looked up at him startled, and as she looked her wonderment
+turned into stark fear. The cry that in his country men killed had left
+her unmoved. But she was afraid now, desperately afraid, all the more
+afraid because she thought of the man searching for her through the
+reception-rooms at Harrel.</p>
+
+<p>"We are alone here in an empty quarter of the house. So you arranged
+it," he continued. "Good! Women do not amuse themselves at my expense
+without being paid for it."</p>
+
+<p>Joan started up in a panic, but Escobar seized her shoulders and forced
+her down again.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit still," he cried savagely. Then his face changed. For the first
+time for many minutes his lips parted in a smile of pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>"You are very lovely, Joan. I love to see you like
+that&mdash;afraid&mdash;trembling. It is the beginning of recompense."</p>
+
+<p>Joan had tumbled into a deeper pit than any she had dreamed of. In
+desperation she cast about for means to climb out of it. The secrecy of
+this meeting&mdash;that must go. But, even so, was there escape? The bell?
+Before she could be half-way across the room, he would be holding her in
+his arms. A cry? Before it was half uttered, he would have stifled her
+mouth. No, she must sit very still and provoke no movement by him.</p>
+
+<p>Mario Escobar was a creature of unhealthy refinements. He wanted to
+know, first, who was the man who had touched this indifferent maiden
+into warm life. The knowledge would be an extra spice to his pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>"Who are staying in the house?" he asked. It would be amusing to make
+his selection, and discover if he were right.</p>
+
+<p>"Dennis Brown, Harold Jupp"&mdash;Joan began, puzzled by his question, yet
+welcoming it as so much delay.<a name="Page_245" id="Page_245"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to hear about them," Mario Escobar replied. "Tell me of
+the new-comers!"</p>
+
+<p>"Martin Hillyard&mdash;&mdash;" Joan began again, and was aware that Mario Escobar
+made a quick startled movement and gasped. Martin Hillyard's name was a
+pail of cold water for Escobar.</p>
+
+<p>"Does Hillyard know that I am at Midhurst?" he asked sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"No," Joan answered.</p>
+
+<p>There was something which Hillyard had told her about Mario Escobar,
+something which she had rejected and dismissed altogether from her
+thoughts. Then she remembered. Escobar was an enemy working in England
+against England. She had given the statement no weight whatever. It was
+the sort of thing people said of unconventional people they disliked in
+order to send them to Coventry. But Escobar's start and Escobar's
+question put a different value upon it. Joan caught at it. Of what use
+could it be to her? Of some use, surely, if only she had the wit to
+divine it. But she was in such a disorder of fear and doubt that every
+idea went whirling about and about in her mind. She raised her hand to
+her forehead, keeping her eyes upon Escobar. She felt as helpless as a
+child. Almost she regretted the love which had so violently mastered
+her. It had made clear to her her ignorance and so stripped her of all
+assurance and left her defenceless.</p>
+
+<p>But even in the tumult of her thoughts, she began to recognise a change.
+The air was less charged with terror. There was less of passion and
+anger in Mario Escobar, and more of speculation. He watched her in a
+gloomy silence, and each moment she took fresh heart. With a swift
+movement he seated himself on the couch beside her.</p>
+
+<p>Joan sprang up with a little cry, and her heart thumping in her breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" said Escobar. Yes, it was now he who pleaded for secrecy and a
+quiet voice.</p>
+
+<p>There was a stronger passion in Mario than the love of women, and that
+was the love of money. Women were to him mainly the means to money. They
+were easier to get, too, if you were not over particular. Money was a
+rare, shy <a name="Page_246" id="Page_246"></a>thing, except to an amazing few who accumulated it by some
+obscure, magnetic attraction; and opportunities of acquisition were not
+to be missed.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" he said. "You treated me badly, Joan. It was right that I should
+teach you a lesson&mdash;frighten you a little, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>He smiled at her with eyes half closed and eyelids cunningly blinking.
+Now that her fears were weakening Joan found his impertinence almost
+insufferable. But she held her tongue and waited.</p>
+
+<p>"But you owe me a return, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan did not move.</p>
+
+<p>"A little return&mdash;which will cost you nothing at all. You know that I
+represent a line of ships. You can help me. We have rivals, with active
+agents. You shall find out for me exactly what Martin Hillyard is doing
+in the Mediterranean, and why he visits in a yacht the ports of Spain.
+You will find this out for me, so that I may know whether he is acting
+for my rivals. Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"He is not," answered Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"You will find this out for me, so that I may know," Escobar repeated
+smoothly. "Exactly what he is doing in the Mediterranean, what special
+plans, and why he visits in a yacht the ports of Spain. You promise me
+that knowledge, and you can go straight back to your dancing."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no knowledge," said Joan quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"But you can obtain it," Escobar insisted. "He is a friend of yours.
+Exactly what he is doing&mdash;is it not so?"</p>
+
+<p>So Martin's accusation was true. Joan nodded her head, and Escobar, with
+a smile of relief, took the gesture as a consent to his proposal.</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" he said, rising from the couch. "Then all is forgiven! You will
+make some notes&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I will do nothing of the kind," said Joan quietly, but she was white to
+the edge of her lips, and she trembled from head to foot. But there was
+no room any more for fear in her. She was in a heat of anger which she
+had never known. "Oh, that you should dare!" and her words choked her.</p>
+
+<p>Mario Escobar stared at her.</p>
+
+<p>"You refuse?"<a name="Page_247" id="Page_247"></a></p>
+
+<p>"With all my soul."</p>
+
+<p>Escobar took a step towards her, but she did not move.</p>
+
+<p>"You are alone with me, when you should be dancing at the ball. You made
+the appointment, chose the hour, the place ... even if you scream, there
+will be a scandal, a disgrace."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care."</p>
+
+<p>"And the man you are in love with, eh? That makes a difference," he
+said, as he saw the girl falter. "Do we think of him?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Joan. "We incur the disgrace."</p>
+
+<p>She saw his eyes open wide with terror. He drew a step away from her.
+"Oh!" he exclaimed, in a long-drawn whisper; and he looked at Joan with
+incredulity and hatred. "You&mdash;&mdash;" he used some Spanish word which Joan
+did not catch. It would have told her little if she had caught it. It
+was "Cabron," a harmless, inoffensive word which has become in Spain the
+ultimate low word of abuse. "You have laid a trap for me."</p>
+
+<p>Joan answered him in a bewilderment. "I have laid no trap for you," and
+there was so much scorn and contempt in her voice that Escobar could
+hardly disbelieve her.</p>
+
+<p>But he was shaken. He was in a panic. He was in a haste to go.
+Money&mdash;yes. But you must live in order to enjoy it.</p>
+
+<p>"I will give you a day to think over my proposal," he said, stammering
+the words in his haste. And then, "Don't write to me! I will find a
+means," and, almost before she was aware of his movements, he had
+snatched up his cap, and the room was empty. The curtain was torn aside;
+the glass door stood open; beyond it the garden lay white in the light
+of the moon.</p>
+
+<p>"A trap?" Joan repeated his accusation in a perplexity. She turned and
+she saw the door, the door behind her, which Escobar had faced, the door
+into the hall, slowly open. There had been no turning of the handle, it
+was unlatched before. Yet Joan had seen to it that it was shut before
+ever she beckoned Mario Escobar into the room. Some one, then, had been
+listening. Mario Escobar had seen the handle move, the door drawn ajar.
+Joan saw it open now to its full width, and in the entrance Stella
+Croyle.<a name="Page_248" id="Page_248"></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">A Fatal Kindness</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Joan picked up her cloak and arranged it upon her shoulders. She did not
+give one thought to Stella, or even hear the words which Stella began
+nervously to speak. Her secret appointment would come to light now in
+any case. It would very likely cost her&mdash;oh, all the gold and glamour of
+the world. It would be bandied about in gossip over the tea-tables, in
+the street, at the Clubs, in the Press. Sir Chichester ought to be
+happy, at all events. The thought struck her with a wry humour, and
+brought a smile to her lips. He would accomplish his dream. Without
+effort, without a letter or a telephone call, or a rebuff, he would have
+such publicity as he could hardly have hoped for. "Who is that?" Joan
+made up a little scene. "That? Oh, don't you know? That's Sir Chichester
+Splay. You must have heard of Sir Chichester! Why, it was in his house
+that the Whitworth girl, rather pretty but an awful fool, carried on
+with the spy-man."</p>
+
+<p>Joan was a little overstrung. All the while she was powdering her nose
+in front of a mirror and removing as best she could the traces of tears,
+and all the while Mrs. Croyle was stammering words and words and words
+behind her. Joan regretted that Stella was not going to the Willoughbys'
+ball. If she had been, she would probably be carrying some rouge in her
+little hand-bag, and Joan might have borrowed some.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, since you haven't got any with you, I must go," said Joan,
+bursting suddenly into Stella's monologue. But she had caught a name
+spoken just before Stella stopped in her perplexity at Joan's outbreak.</p>
+
+<p>"Harry Luttrell!" Joan repeated. What in the world had Stella Croyle got
+to say to her about Harry Luttrell? But<a name="Page_249" id="Page_249"></a> Stella resumed her faltering
+discourse and the sense of her words penetrated at last to Joan's brain
+and amazed her.</p>
+
+<p>Joan was to leave Harry Luttrell alone.</p>
+
+<p>"You are quite young," said Stella, "only twenty. What does he matter to
+you? You have everything in front of you. With your looks and your
+twenty years you can choose where you will. You have lovers already&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I?" Joan interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>"Mario Escobar."</p>
+
+<p>Joan repeated the name with such a violence of scorn that for a moment
+Stella Croyle was silenced.</p>
+
+<p>"Mario Escobar!"</p>
+
+<p>"He was here with you a moment ago."</p>
+
+<p>Joan answered quietly and quite distinctly:</p>
+
+<p>"I wish he were dead!"</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle fell back upon her first declaration.</p>
+
+<p>"You must leave my Wub alone."</p>
+
+<p>Joan laughed aloud, harshly and without any merriment. She checked
+herself with an effort lest she should go on laughing, and her laughter
+turn uncontrollably into hysteria and tears. Here was Mrs. Croyle, a
+grown woman, standing in front of her like a mutinous obstinate child,
+looking like one too, talking like one and bidding Joan leave her Wub
+alone. Whence did she get that ridiculous name? It was all degrading and
+grotesque.</p>
+
+<p>"Your Wub! Your Wub!" she cried in a heat. "Yes, I am only twenty, and
+probably I am quite wrong and stupid. But it seems to me horrible that
+we two women should be wrangling over a man neither of us had met a week
+ago. I'll have no more of it."</p>
+
+<p>She flung towards the window, but Stella Croyle cried out, "A week ago!"
+and the cry brought her to a stop. Joan turned and looked doubtfully at
+Mrs. Croyle. After all, that ridiculous label had not been pasted on to
+Harry Luttrell as a result of a week's acquaintance. Harry Luttrell had
+certainly talked to Stella through the greater part of an evening, his
+first evening in the house, but they had hardly been together at all
+since then. Joan came back slowly into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"So you knew Colonel Luttrell before this week?"<a name="Page_250" id="Page_250"></a></p>
+
+<p>"We were great friends a few years ago."</p>
+
+<p>It was disturbing to Joan that Harry Luttrell had never spoken to her of
+this friendship. Was it possible that Stella had a claim upon him of
+which she herself knew nothing? She sat down at a table in front of Mrs.
+Croyle.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Once, long ago, upon the deck of the <i>Dragonfly</i> at Stockholm, Stella
+had cried out to Harry Luttrell, "Oh, what a cruel mistake you made when
+you went out of your way to be kind!" Joan was now to hear how that cry
+had come to be uttered by a woman in the nethermost distress. She knew,
+of course, that Stella was married at the age of seventeen and had been
+divorced, but little more than that.</p>
+
+<p>"There was a little girl," said Stella, "my baby. I lost her."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke very simply. She had come to the end of efforts and schemes,
+and was very tired. Joan's anger died away altogether in her heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am very sorry," she replied. "I didn't know that you had a little
+girl."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Look, here is her portrait." Stella Croyle drew out from her bosom
+a locket which hung night and day against her heart, and showed it to
+Joan across the table. "But I don't know whether she is little any more.
+She is thirteen now."</p>
+
+<p>Joan gazed at the painted miniature of a lovely child with the eyes and
+the hair of Stella Croyle.</p>
+
+<p>"And you lost her altogether?" she asked with a rising pity.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at first," answered Stella. "I was allowed by the Court to have her
+with me for one month in every year. And I lived the other eleven months
+for the one, the wonderful one."</p>
+
+<p>Stella's face softened indescribably. The memory of her child did for
+her what all her passion for Harry Luttrell could not do. It restored
+her youth. Her eyes grew tender, her mouth quivered, the look of
+conflict vanished altogether.</p>
+
+<p>"We had good times together, my baby and I. I took her to the sea. It
+sounds foolish, but we were more like a couple of children together than
+mother and daughter"; and Joan, <a name="Page_251" id="Page_251"></a>looking at the delicate, porcelain-like
+figure in front of her, smiled in response.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I can understand that."</p>
+
+<p>"She was with me every minute," Stella Croyle resumed. "I watched her
+so, I gave her so much of me that when I had seen her off at the station
+with her nurse at the end of the month, I was left behind, as weak and
+limp as an invalid. I lived for her, Joan, believe that at all events in
+my favour! There was no one else."</p>
+
+<p>"I do believe it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then one year in the winter she did not come to me."</p>
+
+<p>"They kept her back!" cried Joan. "But you had the right to her."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And I went down to Exeter to her father's house, to fetch her
+away."</p>
+
+<p>It was curious that Stella Croyle, who was speaking of her own
+distressful life, told her story with a quiet simplicity of tone, as if
+she had bent her neck in submission to the hammer strokes of her
+destiny; whereas Joan, who was but listening to griefs of another, was
+stirred to a compassion which kindled her face and made her voice shake.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they hadn't sent her away! She was waiting for you," she cried
+eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"She was waiting for me. Yes! But it was no longer my baby who was
+waiting. They had worked on her, Robert, my husband&mdash;and his sisters.
+They had told her&mdash;oh, more than they need! That I was bad."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" breathed Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, they were a little cruel. They had changed baby altogether. She
+was just eight at that time." Stella stopped for a moment or two. Her
+voice did not falter but her eyes suddenly swam with tears. "She used to
+adore me&mdash;she really and truly did. Now her little face and her eyes
+were like flint. And what do you think she said to me? Just this!
+'Mummy, I don't want to go with you. If you take me with you, you'll
+spoil my holidays!'"</p>
+
+<p>Joan shot back in her chair.</p>
+
+<p>"But they had taught her to say that?"</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle shook her head.<a name="Page_252" id="Page_252"></a></p>
+
+<p>"They had taught her to dislike me. My little girl has character. She
+wouldn't have repeated the words, because she had been taught them. No,
+she meant them."</p>
+
+<p>"But a day or two with you and she would have forgotten them. Oh, she
+<i>did</i> forget them!"</p>
+
+<p>In her great longing to comfort the woman, whose deep anguish she
+divined beneath the quiet desolation of her voice, Joan overleapt her
+own knowledge. She was still young enough to will that past events had
+not occurred, and that things true were false.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't take her," replied Stella Croyle. "I wouldn't take her. I knew
+baby&mdash;besides she had struck me too hard."</p>
+
+<p>"You came away alone!" whispered Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"In the cab which I had kept waiting at the door to take us both away."</p>
+
+<p>"That's terrible!" said Joan. The child with her lovely face set like
+flint in the room, the mother creeping out of the house and stumbling
+alone into the fly at the door&mdash;the picture was vivid before her eyes.
+Joan wrung her hands with a little helpless gesture, and a moan upon her
+lips. Almost it seemed that these sad things were actually happening to
+<i>her</i>; so poignantly she felt them.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, and you had all that long journey back to London, the journey you
+had dreamt of for eleven months with your baby at your side&mdash;you had now
+to take it alone."</p>
+
+<p>Stella Croyle shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"No! There was just one and only one of my friends&mdash;and not at all a
+great friend&mdash;who had the imagination to understand, as you understand
+too, Joan, just what that journey would have meant to me, if anything
+had gone wrong, and the kindness to put himself out to make its
+endurance a little easier."</p>
+
+<p>Joan drew back quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Harry Luttrell," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He had once been stationed at Exeter. He knew Robert Croyle and
+the sisters. He guessed what might happen to me. Perhaps he knew that it
+was going to happen."</p>
+
+<p>So, when Stella, having pulled down her veil that none might see her
+face, was stumbling along the platform in search <a name="Page_253" id="Page_253"></a>of an empty carriage,
+a hand was very gently laid upon her and Harry Luttrell was at her side.
+He had come all the way from London to befriend her, should she need it.
+If he had seen her with her little girl, he would have kept out of sight
+and himself have returned to London by a later train.</p>
+
+<p>"That was fine," cried Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine, yes!" answered Stella. "You realise that, Joan, and you have
+never been in real trouble, or known what men are when kindness
+interferes with their comfort. I am not blaming people, but women do get
+the worst of it, if they are fools enough&mdash;wicked enough if you like, to
+do as I did. I knew men&mdash;lots of them. I was bound to. I was fair game,
+you see."</p>
+
+<p>Joan's forehead wrinkled. The doors of knowledge had been opening very
+rapidly for her during the last few minutes. But she was still often at
+a loss.</p>
+
+<p>"Fair game. Why? I don't understand."</p>
+
+<p>"I had been divorced. Therefore I wasn't dangerous. Complications
+couldn't follow from a little affair with me." Stella explained
+bitterly. "I had men on my doorstep always. But not one of these men who
+protested and made love to me, would have put themselves out to do what
+Harry Luttrell did. It was fine&mdash;yes. But for three years I have been
+wondering whether Harry Luttrell would not really have been kinder if he
+had thought of his own comfort too, and had never travelled to Exeter to
+befriend me."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" asked Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"I should have thrown myself out of the carriage and saved myself&mdash;oh,
+so much sorrow afterwards," Stella Croyle answered in so simple and
+natural a voice that Joan could not disbelieve her.</p>
+
+<p>Joan clasped her hands before her eyes and then gazed again at Stella
+sitting in front of her, with pity and wonder. It was so hard for her to
+understand that this pretty woman, who made it her business to be gay,
+whom she had met from time to time in this house and had chatted with
+and forgotten, had passed through so dreadful an ordeal of suffering and
+humiliation. She was to look closer still into the mysteries which were
+being revealed to her.<a name="Page_254" id="Page_254"></a></p>
+
+<p>Harry Luttrell had held Stella in his arms just as if she had been a
+child herself whilst the train rushed through the bleak winter country.
+Stella had behaved like a child, now sobbing in a passion of grief, now
+mutinous in a passion of rage, now silent and despairing under the
+weights that nothing, neither sympathy, nor grief, nor revolt, can lift.</p>
+
+<p>"He took me home. He stayed with me. Oh, it wasn't love," cried Stella.
+"He was afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid!" asked Joan. She wished to know every least detail of the story
+now.</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid lest I should take&mdash;something ... as I wished to do ... as
+during the trouble of the divorce I learned to do."</p>
+
+<p>She related little ridiculous incidents which Joan listened to with a
+breaking heart. Stella could not sleep at all after her return. She
+lived in a little house with a big garden on the northern edge of
+London, and all night she lay awake, listening to the patter of rain on
+melancholy trees, and thinking and thinking. Harry Luttrell kept her
+from the drugs in her dressing-case. She had no anodyne for her
+sorrows&mdash;but one.</p>
+
+<p>"You will laugh," said Stella with a little wry smile of her own, "when
+I tell you what it was. It was a gramophone. I got Harry to set it
+going, whilst I lay in bed&mdash;to set it playing rag-time. While it was
+playing, I stopped thinking. For I had to keep time in my brain with the
+beat of the tune. And so, at last, since I couldn't think, or remember,
+I fell asleep. The gramophone saved me"; and again Joan was smitten by
+the incongruity of Stella with her life. She had eaten of all that
+nature allots to women&mdash;love, marriage, the birth of children, the loss
+of them&mdash;and there she was, to this day half-child, and quite
+incompatible with what she had suffered and endured.</p>
+
+<p>"After a fortnight I got quieter of course," said Stella. "And suddenly
+a change sadder than anything I have told you took place in me. I
+suppose that I had gone through too much on baby's account for me. I
+lost something more than my baby, I lost my want to have her with me."</p>
+
+<p>She remained silent for a little while reviewing the story which she had
+told.</p>
+
+<p>"There, that's all," she said, rising suddenly. "It's no claim <a name="Page_255" id="Page_255"></a>at all,
+of course. I know that very well. Harry left me at Stockholm four years
+ago;" and suddenly Joan's face flushed scarlet. She had been absorbed in
+Stella's sorrows, she had admired that kind action of Harry Luttrell's
+which had brought so much trouble in its train. It needed that reminder
+that Harry had only left Stella Croyle at Stockholm to bring home the
+whole part which Harry had taken in the affair. Now she understood; a
+flame of sudden jealousy confused her; and with it came a young girl's
+distaste as though some ugly reptile had raised its head amongst
+flowers.</p>
+
+<p>"I never saw Harry again until this week, except for a minute outside a
+shop one morning in Piccadilly. But he hasn't married during those four
+years, so I always kept a hope that we should be somewhere together
+again for a few days, and that afterwards he would come back to me."</p>
+
+<p>"That's why you chose this week to come to Rackham Park?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered Stella Croyle; and she laughed harshly. "But I hadn't
+considered you."</p>
+
+<p>Joan looked helplessly at her companion. Stella had not one small chance
+of the fulfilment of her hope&mdash;no, not one&mdash;even if she herself stood a
+million miles away. Of that Joan was sure. But how was she to say so to
+one who was blind and deaf to all but her hope, who would not listen,
+who would not see? Mario Escobar had left his gloves behind him on a
+couch. Joan saw them, and remembered to whom they belonged, and her
+thoughts took another complexion. Harry Luttrell! What share had she now
+in his life? She rose abruptly and pushed back her chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'll stand aside," she said, "never fear! We are to talk things
+over to-night. I shall say 'No.'"</p>
+
+<p>She had turned again to the window, but a startled question from Stella
+Croyle stayed her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Harry has asked you to marry him?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was going to," Joan faltered. The sense of her own loss returned
+upon her, she felt utterly alone, all the more alone because of the
+wondrous week which had come to so desolate an end to-night. "Here in
+this little room, not two <a name="Page_256" id="Page_256"></a>hours ago. But I asked him to wait until
+supper time to-night. Here&mdash;it was here we stood!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan looked down. Yes, she had been standing in this very spot, the
+table here upon her left, that chair upon her right, that trifolium in
+the pattern of the carpet under her feet, when Harry Luttrell had taken
+her in his arms. What foolish thing was Stella Croyle saying now?</p>
+
+<p>"I take back all that I have said to you. If Harry has spoken to you
+already I have lost&mdash;that's all. I didn't know," she said. Her cheeks
+were white, her eyes suddenly grown large with a horror in them which
+Joan could not understand.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's all over. I have lost," she kept repeating in a dreadful
+whisper, moistening her dry lips with her tongue between her sentences.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't think that I am standing aside out of pity," Joan answered
+her. "To-morrow I shall be impossible as a wife for Harry Luttrell." The
+words fell upon ears which did not hear. It would not have mattered if
+Stella had heard. Since Harry Luttrell was that night asking Joan to
+marry him, the hopes upon which she had so long been building, which
+Jenny Prask had done so much to nurse and encourage, withered and
+crumbled in an instant.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go back and dance," said Joan with a shiver.</p>
+
+<p>She left Stella Croyle standing in the room like one possessed with
+visions of terrible things. Her tragic face and moving lips were to
+haunt Joan for many a month afterwards. She went out by the window and
+ran down the drive to the spot where she had left Miranda's car half-way
+between the lodge and the house. The gates had been set open that night
+against the return of the party from Harrel. Joan drove back again under
+the great over-arching trees of the road. It was just ten o'clock when
+she slipped into the ball-room and was claimed by a neighbour for a
+dance.<a name="Page_257" id="Page_257"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Rank and File</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Martin Hillyard crammed a year's enjoyment into the early hours of that
+night. He danced a great deal and had supper a good many times; and even
+the girl who had passed the season of 1914 in London and said languidly,
+"Tell me more," before he had opened his mouth, failed to ruffle his
+enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>"If I did, you would scream for your mother," he replied, "and I should
+be turned out of the house and Sir Chichester would lose his position in
+the county. No, I'll tell you less. That means we'll go and have some
+supper."</p>
+
+<p>He led a subdued maiden into the supper-room and from that moment his
+enjoyment began to wane. For, at a little table near to hand, sat Joan
+Whitworth and Harry Luttrell, and it was clear to him from the distress
+upon their faces that their smooth courtship had encountered its
+obstacles. A spot of anger, indeed, seemed to burn in Joan's cheeks.
+They hardly spoke at all.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later, he came face to face with Joan in a corridor.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been looking for you for a long while," she cried in a quick,
+agitated voice. "Are you free for this dance?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Martin Hillyard lied without compunction.</p>
+
+<p>"Then will you take me into the garden?"</p>
+
+<p>He found a couple of chairs in a corner of the terrace out of the
+hearing of the rest.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall be quiet here," he said. He hoped that she would disclose the
+difficulty which had risen between herself and Harry, and seek his
+counsel as Harry's friend. It might be one of the little trifling
+discords which love magnifies until they blot out the skies and drape
+the earth in temporary <a name="Page_258" id="Page_258"></a>mourning. But Joan began at once nervously upon
+a different topic.</p>
+
+<p>"You made a charge against Mario Escobar the other day. I did not
+believe it. But you spoke the truth. I know that now."</p>
+
+<p>She stopped and gazed woefully in front of her. Then she hurried on.</p>
+
+<p>"I can prove it. He demands news of your movements in the Mediterranean.
+If it is necessary I must come forward publicly and prove it. It will be
+horrible, but of course I will."</p>
+
+<p>Martin looked at her quickly. She kept her eyes averted from him. Her
+fingers plucked nervously at her dress. There was an aspect of shame in
+her attitude.</p>
+
+<p>"It will not be necessary, Joan," he answered. "I have quite enough
+evidence already to put him away until the end of the war."</p>
+
+<p>Joan turned to him with quivering lips.</p>
+
+<p>"You are sure. It means so much to me to escape&mdash;what I have no right to
+escape, I can hardly believe it."</p>
+
+<p>"I am quite sure," replied Martin Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>Joan breathed a long, fluttering sigh of relief. She sat up as though a
+weight had been loosed from her shoulders. The trouble lifted from her
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"You need not call upon me at all?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to shirk&mdash;any more," she insisted. "I should not
+hesitate."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that, Joan," he said with a smile. She looked out over the
+gardens to the great line of hills, dim and pleasant as fairyland in the
+silver haze of the moonlight. Her eyes travelled eastwards along the
+ridge and stopped at the clump of Bishop's Ring which marks the crest of
+Duncton Hill, and the dark fold below where the trees flow down to
+Graffham.</p>
+
+<p>"You ask me no questions," she said in a low, warm voice. "I am very
+grateful."</p>
+
+<p>"I ask you one. Where is Mario Escobar to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"At Midhurst," and she gave him the name of the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>Martin Hillyard laughed. Whilst the police were inquiring here and
+searching there and watching the ports for him, he <a name="Page_259" id="Page_259"></a>was lying almost
+within reach of his hand, snugly and peacefully at Midhurst.</p>
+
+<p>"But I expect that he will go from Midhurst now," Joan added,
+remembering his snarl of fear when the door had opened behind her, and
+the haste with which he had fled.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard looked at his watch. It was one o'clock in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>"You are in a hurry?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I ought to send a message." He turned to Joan. "You know this house, of
+course. Is there a telephone in a quiet room, where I shall not be
+interrupted or be drowned out, voice and ears by the music?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mrs. Willoughby's sitting-room upstairs. Shall I ask her if you
+may use it?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you please."</p>
+
+<p>Joan left Martin standing in one of the corridors and rejoined him after
+a few minutes. "Come," she said, and led the way upstairs to the room.
+Martin called up the trunk line and gave a number.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to wait a few minutes," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"You want me to go," answered Joan, and she moved towards the door
+reluctantly.</p>
+
+<p>"No. But you will be missing your dances."</p>
+
+<p>Joan shook her head. She did not turn back to him, but stood facing the
+door as she replied; so that he could not see her face.</p>
+
+<p>"I had kept all the dances after supper free. If I am not in the way I
+would rather wait with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>He was careful to use the most commonplace tone with the thought that it
+would steady her. The trouble which this telephone message would finally
+dispel was clearly not all which distressed her. She needed
+companionship; her voice broke, as though her heart were breaking too.
+He saw her raise a wisp of handkerchief to her eyes; and then the
+telephone bell rang at his side. He was calling at a venture upon the
+number which Commodore Graham had rung up in the office above the old
+waterway of the Thames.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that Scotland Yard?" he asked, and he gave the ad<a name="Page_260" id="Page_260"></a>dress at which
+Mario Escobar was to be found. "But he may be gone to-morrow," he added,
+and hearing a short "That's all right," he rang off.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, if you will get your cloak, we might go back into the garden."</p>
+
+<p>They found their corner of the terrace unoccupied and sat for a while in
+silence. Hillyard recognised that neither questions nor any conversation
+at all were required from him, but simply the sympathy of his
+companionship. He smoked a cigarette while Joan sat by his side.</p>
+
+<p>She stretched out her hand towards the Bishop's Ring, small as a button
+upon the great shoulder of the Down.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember the afternoon when I drove you back from Goodwood?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"You said to me, 'If the great trial is coming, I want to fall back into
+the rank and file.' And I cried out, 'Oh, I understand that!'"</p>
+
+<p>"I remember."</p>
+
+<p>"What a fool I was!" said Joan. "I didn't understand at all. I thought
+that it sounded fine, and that was why I applauded. I am only beginning
+to understand now. Even after I had agreed with you, my one ambition was
+to be different."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice died remorsefully away. From the window further down the
+terrace the yellow light poured from the windows and fought with the
+moonlight. The music of a waltz floated out upon the yearning of many
+violins. There was a ripple of distant voices.</p>
+
+<p>"All this week," Joan began again, "I have found myself standing
+unexpectedly in a strong light before a mirror and utterly scared by the
+revelation of what I was ... by the memory of the foolish things which I
+had done. From one of the worst of them, you have saved me to-night. You
+are very kind to me, Martin."</p>
+
+<p>It was the first time he had ever heard her use his Christian name.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to be kinder, if you'll let me," he said. "I am not
+blind. I was in the supper-room when you and Harry <a name="Page_261" id="Page_261"></a>were there. It was
+for him that you had kept all the last dances free. And you are here,
+breaking your heart. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan shook her head. A little sob broke from her against her will. But
+this matter was between her and Harry Luttrell. She sought no counsel
+from any other.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I am very grieved for both of you," said Hillyard. Joan made a
+movement as if she were about to rise. "Will you wait just a moment?"
+Martin asked.</p>
+
+<p>He guessed that some hint of Stella Croyle's story had reached the
+girl's ears. He understood that she would be hurt, and affronted; that
+she would feel herself suddenly steeped in vulgarities; and that she
+would visit her resentment sharply upon her lover, and upon herself at
+the same time. And all this was true. But Martin was not sure of it. He
+meant to tread warily, lest if he stumbled, the harm should be the more
+complete.</p>
+
+<p>"I have known Harry Luttrell a long while," he said. "No woman ever
+reached his heart until he came home from France this summer. No woman I
+believe, could have reached it&mdash;not even you, Joan, I believe, if you
+had met him a year ago. He was possessed by one great shame and one
+great longing&mdash;shame that the regiment with which he and his father were
+bound up, had once disgraced itself&mdash;longing for the day to come when it
+would recover its prestige. Those two emotions burnt in him like white
+flames. I believe no other could have lived beside them."</p>
+
+<p>Joan would not speak, but she concentrated all her senses to listen. A
+phrase which Stella Croyle had used&mdash;Harry had feared to become "the
+slovenly soldier"&mdash;began to take on its meaning.</p>
+
+<p>"On the Somme the shame was wiped out. Led by such men as Harry&mdash;well,
+you know what happened. Harry Luttrell came home freed at last from an
+overwhelming obsession. He looked about him with different eyes, and
+there you were! It seems to me a thing perfectly ordained, as so few
+things are. I brought him down here just for a pleasant week in the
+country&mdash;without another thought beyond that. All this week I have been
+coming to think of myself as an unconscious agent, who just at the right
+time is made to do <a name="Page_262" id="Page_262"></a>the right thing. Here was the first possible moment
+for Harry Luttrell&mdash;and there you were in the path&mdash;just as if you
+without knowing it, had been set there to wait until he came over the
+fields to you."</p>
+
+<p>He turned to her and took her hand in his. He had his sympathies for
+Stella Croyle, but her hopes held no positive promise of happiness for
+either her or Harry Luttrell&mdash;a mere flash and splutter of passion at
+the best, with all sorts of sordid disadvantages to follow, quarrels,
+the scorn of his equals, the loss of position, the check to advancement
+in his profession. Here, on the other hand, was the fitting match.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be a great pity," he said gently, "if anything were now to
+interfere."</p>
+
+<p>He stood up and after a moment Joan rose to her feet. There was a tender
+smile upon her lips and her eyes were shining. She laid a hand upon his
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to get you a wife, Martin," she said, midway between
+laughter and tears. "It wouldn't be fair on us if you were to escape."</p>
+
+<p>This was her way of thanking him.<a name="Page_263" id="Page_263"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Long Sleep</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>The amazing incident which cut so sharply into these tangled lives
+occurred the next morning at Rackham Park. Some of the house party
+straggled down to a late breakfast, others did not descend at all. Harry
+Luttrell joined Millie Splay upon the stairs and stopped her before she
+entered the breakfast-room.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to slip away this morning, Lady Splay," he said. "My
+servant is packing now."</p>
+
+<p>Millie Splay looked at him in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am so sorry," she said. "I was hoping that this morning you and
+Joan would have something to say to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I did too," replied Harry with a wry smile. "But Joan turned me down
+with a bang last night."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Splay plumped herself down on a chair in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she is the most exasperating girl!" she cried. "Are you sure that
+you didn't misunderstand her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Splay sat for a little while with her cheek propped upon her hand
+and her brows drawn together in a perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>"It's very strange," she said at length. "For Joan meant you to ask her
+to marry you. She has been deliberately showing you that you weren't
+indifferent to her. Joan would never have done that if she hadn't meant
+you to ask her; or if she hadn't meant to accept you." She rose with a
+gesture of despair.</p>
+
+<p>"I give it up. But oh, how I'd love to smack her!" and with that
+unrealisable desire burning furiously in her breast, Lady Splay marched
+into the breakfast-room. Dennis Brown and Jupp were already in their
+white flannels at the table. Miranda ran down into the room a moment
+afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>"Joan's the lazy one," she said, looking round the table.<a name="Page_264" id="Page_264"></a> She had got
+to bed at half-past four and looked as fresh as if she had slept the
+clock round. "What are you going to eat, Colonel Luttrell?"</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell was standing by her at the side table, and as they inspected
+the dishes they were joined by Mr. Albany Todd.</p>
+
+<p>"You were going it last night," Jupp called to him, with a note of
+respect in his voice. "For a top-weight you're the hottest thing I have
+seen in years. Stay another week in our academic company, and we shall
+discover so many excellent qualities in you that we shall be calling you
+Toddles."</p>
+
+<p>"And then in the winter, I suppose, we'll go jumping together," said Mr.
+Albany Todd.</p>
+
+<p>Like many another round and heavy man, Mr. Albany Todd was an
+exceptionally smooth dancer. His first dance on the night before he had
+owed to the consideration of his hostess. Sheer merit had filled the
+rest of his programme; and he sat down to breakfast now in a high good
+humour. Sir Chichester stumped into the room when the serious part of
+the meal was over, and all the newspapers already taken. He sat down in
+front of his kidney and bacon and grunted.</p>
+
+<p>"Any news in <i>The Times</i>, Mr. Albany Todd?"</p>
+
+<p>"No! No!" replied Mr. Albany Todd in an abstracted voice, with his head
+buried between the pages. "Would you like it, Sir Chichester?"</p>
+
+<p>He showed no intention of handing it over; and Sir Chichester replied
+with as much indifference as he could assume,</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there's no hurry."</p>
+
+<p>"No, we have all the morning, haven't we?" said Mr. Albany Todd
+pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester ate some breakfast and drank some tea. "No news in your
+paper is there, Dennis, my boy?" he asked carelessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, isn't there just?" cried Dennis Brown. "Oppifex and Hampstead
+Darling are both running in the two-thirty at Windsor."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester grunted again.</p>
+
+<p>"Racing! It's wonderful, Mr. Albany Todd, that you haven't got the
+disease during the week. There's a racing microbe at Rackham."<a name="Page_265" id="Page_265"></a></p>
+
+<p>"But I am not so sure that I have escaped," returned Mr. Albany Todd. "I
+am tempted to go jumping in the winter."</p>
+
+<p>"You must keep your old Lords out if you do," Harold Jupp urged
+earnestly. "Bring in your Dukes and your Marquises, and we poor men are
+all up the spout."</p>
+
+<p>Thus they rattled on about the breakfast table; cigarettes were lighted,
+Miranda pushed back her chair; in a minute the room would be deserted.
+But Millie Splay uttered a little cry of horror, so sharp and startling
+that it froze each person into a sudden immobility. She dropped the
+newspaper upon her knees. Her hands flew to her face and covered it.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter, Millie?" cried Sir Chichester, starting up in alarm.
+He hurried round the table. Some stab of physical pain had caused
+Millie's cry&mdash;he shared that conviction with every one else in the room.
+But Millie lifted her head quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's intolerable!" she exclaimed. "Chichester, look at this!" She
+thrust the paper feverishly into his hands. Sir Chichester smoothed its
+crumpled leaves as he stood beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, the <i>Harpoon</i>," he said, his fear quite allayed. He knew his wife
+to have a somewhat thinner skin than himself. "You are exaggerating no
+doubt, my dear. The <i>Harpoon</i> is a good paper and quite friendly."</p>
+
+<p>But Millie Splay broke in upon his protestations in a voice as shrill as
+a scream.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, stop, Chichester, and look! There, in the third column! Just under
+your eyes!"</p>
+
+<p>And Sir Chichester Splay read. As he read his face changed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that won't do," he said, very quietly. He carried the newspaper
+back with him to his chair and sat down again. He had the air of a man
+struck clean out of his wits. "That won't do," he repeated, and again,
+with a rush of angry blood into his face, "No, that won't do." It seemed
+that Sir Chichester's harmless little foible had suddenly received more
+than its due punishment.</p>
+
+<p>The newspaper slipped from his fingers on to the floor, whilst he sat
+staring at the white tablecloth in front of him.<a name="Page_266" id="Page_266"></a> But no sooner did
+Harold Jupp at his side make a movement to pick the paper up than Sir
+Chichester swooped down upon it in a flash.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" he said. "No!" and he began to fold it up very carefully. "It's as
+Millie says, a rather intolerable invention which has crept into the
+social news. I must consider what steps we should take."</p>
+
+<p>There was another at that table who was as disturbed as Sir Chichester
+and Lady Splay. Martin Hillyard knew nothing of the paragraph which had
+caused this consternation in his hosts; and he had asked no questions
+last night. But he remembered every word that Joan had said. She had
+seen Mario Escobar somewhere since leaving Rackham Park&mdash;that was
+certain; and Mario Escobar had demanded information. "Demanded" was the
+word which Joan had used. Mario Escobar was of the blackmailing type.
+Martin's heart was in his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"An invention about us here?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"About one of us," answered Sir Chichester; and Martin dared ask no
+more.</p>
+
+<p>Harry Luttrell, however, had none of Martin's knowledge to restrain him.</p>
+
+<p>"In that case, sir, wouldn't it be wiser to read it now, aloud?" he
+suggested. "It can't be suppressed now. Sooner or later every one will
+hear of it."</p>
+
+<p>Every one agreed except Hillyard. To him Harry Luttrell seemed wilfully
+to be rushing towards catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes ... yes," said Sir Chichester slowly. He unfolded his newspaper
+again and read; and of all those who listened no one was more amazed
+than Hillyard himself. Mario Escobar had no hand in this abominable
+work. For this is what Sir Chichester read:</p>
+
+<p>"'A mysterious and tragic event has occurred at Rackham Park, where Sir
+Chichester Splay, the well-known Baronet&mdash;&mdash;'" He broke off to observe,
+"Really, it's put quite civilly, Millie. It's a dreadful mistake, but so
+far as the wording of the Editor is concerned it's put really more
+considerately than I noticed at first."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, please go on," cried Millie.<a name="Page_267" id="Page_267"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Very well, my dear," and he resumed Sir Chichester Splay, the
+well-known Baronet is entertaining a small party. At an early hour this
+morning Mrs. Croyle, one of Sir Chichester's guests, died under strange
+circumstances."</p>
+
+<p>Miranda uttered a little scream.</p>
+
+<p>"Died!" she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, listen to this," said Sir Chichester. "Mrs. Croyle was discovered
+lying upon her side with her face bent above a glass of chloroform. The
+glass was supported between her pillows and Mrs. Croyle's fingers were
+still grasping it when she was discovered."</p>
+
+<p>A gasp of indignation and horror ran round that breakfast table when Sir
+Chichester had finished.</p>
+
+<p>"It's so atrociously circumstantial," said Mr. Albany Todd.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." Sir Chichester seized upon the point. "That's the really damnable
+point about it. That's real malice. This report will linger and live
+long after the denial and apology are published."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Splay raised her head.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't imagine who can have sent in such a cowardly lie. Enemies of
+us? Or enemies of Stella?"</p>
+
+<p>"We can think that out afterwards, Lady Splay," said Harold Jupp. He was
+of a practical matter-of-fact mind and every one turned to listen to his
+suggestion. "The first thing to do is to get the report contradicted in
+the evening papers."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>There was something to be done. All grasped at the doing of it in sheer
+relief&mdash;except one. For as the men rose, saying; one "I'll look after
+it"; and another "No, you'd better leave it to me," Luttrell's voice
+broke in upon them all, with a sort of dreadful fatality in the quiet
+sound of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Mrs. Croyle now?" he asked, and he was as white as the
+tablecloth in front of him.</p>
+
+<p>There was no further movement towards the door. Slowly the men resumed
+their seats. A silence followed in which person after person looked at
+Stella's empty place as though an intensity of gaze would materialise
+her there. Miranda was the first bravely to break through it.<a name="Page_268" id="Page_268"></a></p>
+
+<p>"She hasn't come down yet," she said, and Millie Splay seized upon the
+words.</p>
+
+<p>"No, she never comes down for breakfast&mdash;never has all this week."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's true," returned Dennis Brown with an attempt at
+cheerfulness.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides&mdash;what makes&mdash;the idea&mdash;impossible," said Sir Chichester, "is
+the publication this morning. There wouldn't have been time.... It's
+clearly an atrocious piece of malice." He was speaking with an obvious
+effort to convince himself that the monstrous thing was false. But he
+collapsed suddenly and once more discomfort and silence reigned in the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>"Stella's not well," Millie Splay took up the tale. "That's why she is
+seldom seen before twelve. Those headaches of hers&mdash;&mdash;" and suddenly she
+in her turn broke off. She leaned forward and pressed the electric bell
+upon the tablecloth beside her. That small trivial action brought its
+relief, lightened the vague cloud of misgiving which since Luttrell had
+spoken, had settled upon all.</p>
+
+<p>"You rang, my lady," said Harper in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Harper. We were making some plans for a picnic to-day and we
+should like to know if Mrs. Croyle will join us. Can you find out from
+her maid whether she is awake?"</p>
+
+<p>It was superbly done. There was not a quaver in Lady Splay's voice, not
+a sign of agitation in her manner.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll inquire, my lady," replied Harper, and he left the room upon his
+errand.</p>
+
+<p>"One thing is certain," Mr. Albany Todd broke in. "I was watching Harper
+over your shoulder, Lady Splay. He hasn't seen the paragraph. There's
+nothing known of it in the servants' hall."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester nodded, and Millie Splay observed:</p>
+
+<p>"Harper's so imperturbable that he always inspires me with confidence. I
+feel that nothing out of the way could really happen whilst he was in
+the house." And her attitude of tension did greatly relax as she
+thought, illogically enough, of that stolid butler. A suggestion made by
+Martin Hillyard set them to work whilst they waited.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us see if the report is in any of the other papers," and <a name="Page_269" id="Page_269"></a>all
+immediately were busy with that examination&mdash;except one again. And that
+one again, Harry Luttrell. He sat in his place motionless, his eyes
+transfixed upon some vision of horror&mdash;as if he <i>knew</i>, Martin said to
+himself, yes, as if all these questions were futile, as if he <i>knew</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But no other newspaper had printed the paragraph. They had hardly
+assured themselves of this fact, when Harper once more stood in the
+doorway.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Croyle gave orders last night to her maid that she was not to be
+disturbed until she rang, my lady," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"And she has not rung?" Millie asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No, my lady."</p>
+
+<p>Miranda suddenly laughed in an odd fashion and swayed in her chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Miranda!" Millie Splay brought her back to her self-control with a
+sharp cry of rebuke. Then she resumed to Harper.</p>
+
+<p>"I will take the responsibility of waking Mrs. Croyle. Will you please,
+ask her maid to rouse Mrs. Croyle, and inquire whether she will join us
+this morning. We shall start at twelve."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, my lady."</p>
+
+<p>There was no longer any pretence of ease amongst the people seated round
+the table. A queer panic passed from one to the other. They were awed by
+the imminence of dreadful uncomprehended things. They waited in silence,
+like people under a spell, and from somewhere in the house above their
+heads, there sounded a loud rapping upon a door. They held their breath,
+straining to hear the grate of a key in a lock, and the opening of that
+door. They heard only the knocking repeated and repeated again. It was
+followed by a sound of hurrying feet.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny Prask ran down the great main staircase, and burst into the
+breakfast room, her face mottled with terror, her hand spread above her
+heart to still its wild beating.</p>
+
+<p>"My lady! My lady! The door's locked. I can get no answer. I am afraid."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester rose abruptly from his chair. But Jenny Prask had more to
+say.<a name="Page_270" id="Page_270"></a></p>
+
+<p>"The key had been removed. My lady, I looked through the keyhole. The
+lights are still burning in the room."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>Martin Hillyard had started to his feet. He remembered another time when
+the lights had been burning in Stella Croyle's room in the full blaze of
+a summer morning. She was sitting at the writing-table then. She had
+been sitting there all through the night making meaningless signs and
+figures upon the paper and the blotting-pad in front of her. The full
+significance of that flight of the unhappy Stella to the little hotel
+below the Hog's Back was now revealed to him. But between that morning
+and this, there was an enormous difference. She had opened her door then
+in answer to the knocking.</p>
+
+<p>"We must get through that door, Lady Splay," he said. Sir Chichester was
+already up and about in a busy agitation.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, to be sure. It's just an ordinary lock. We shall easily find a key
+to fit it. I'll take Harper with me, and perhaps, Millie, you will
+come."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'll come," said Millie quietly. After her first shock of horror
+and surprise when she had first chanced upon the paragraph in the
+<i>Harpoon</i>, she had been completely, wonderfully, mistress of herself.</p>
+
+<p>"The rest of you will please stay downstairs," said Sir Chichester, as
+he removed the key from the door of the room. Jenny Prask was not thus
+to be disposed of.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my lady, I must go up too!" she cried, twisting her hands together.
+"Mrs. Croyle was always very kind to me, poor lady. I must come!"</p>
+
+<p>"She won't keep her head," Sir Chichester objected, who was fast losing
+his. But Milly Splay laid her hand upon the girl's arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you shall come with us, Jenny," she said gently, and the four of
+them moved out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>The others followed them as far as the hall, and stood grouped at the
+foot of the staircase.</p>
+
+<p>"Miranda, would you like to go out into the air?" Dennis Brown asked
+with solicitude of his wife.<a name="Page_271" id="Page_271"></a></p>
+
+<p>"No, dear, I am all right. I&mdash;oh, poor woman!" and with a sob she
+dropped her face in her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" Luttrell called sharply for silence, and a moment afterwards, a
+loud shrill scream rent the air like lightning.</p>
+
+<p>Miranda cowered from it.</p>
+
+<p>"Jenny Prask!" said Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"Then&mdash;then&mdash;the news is true," faltered Miranda, and she would have
+fallen but for the arm of her husband about her waist.</p>
+
+<p>They waited until Sir Chichester came down the stairs to them. He was
+shaken and trembling. He, the spectator of dramas, was now a character
+in one most tragically enacted under his own roof.</p>
+
+<p>"The report is true to the letter," he said in a low voice. "Dennis,
+will you go for McKerrel, the doctor. You know his house in Midhurst.
+Will you take your car, and bring him back. There is nothing more that
+we can do until he comes." He stood for a little while by the table in
+the hall, staring down at it, and taking particular note of its grain.</p>
+
+<p>"A curious thing," he said. "The key of her room is missing altogether."</p>
+
+<p>To no one did it come at this moment that the disappearance of the key
+was to prove a point of vast importance. No one made any comment, and
+Sir Chichester fell to silence again. "She looked like a child
+sleeping," he said at length, "a child without a care."</p>
+
+<p>Then he sat down and took the newspaper from his pocket. Mr. Albany Todd
+suddenly advanced to Harry Luttrell. He had been no less observant than
+Martin Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>"You alone, Colonel Luttrell," he said, "were not surprised."</p>
+
+<p>"I was not," answered Harry frankly. "I was shocked, but not surprised.
+For I knew Mrs. Croyle at a time when she was so tormented that she
+could not sleep at all. During that time she learnt to take drugs, and
+especially that drug in precisely that way that the newspaper
+described."</p>
+
+<p>The men drifted out of the hall on to the lawn, leaving Sir Chichester
+brooding above the outspread sheets of the <i>Harpoon</i>. Here was the
+insoluble sinister question to which some<a name="Page_272" id="Page_272"></a>how he had to find an answer.
+Stella Croyle died late last night, in the country, at Rackham Park; and
+yet in this very morning's issue of the newspaper, her death with every
+circumstance and detail was truthfully recorded, hours before it was
+even known by anybody in the house itself.</p>
+
+<p>"How can that be?" Sir Chichester exclaimed in despair. "How can it
+be?"<a name="Page_273" id="Page_273"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Jenny Puts Up Her Fight</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Stella, the undisciplined! She had flung out of the rank and file, as
+long ago Sir Charles Hardiman had put it, and to this end she had come,
+waywardness exacting its inexorable price. Harry Luttrell, however, was
+not able to lull his conscience with any such easy reflections. He
+walked with Martin Hillyard apart in the garden.</p>
+
+<p>"I am to blame," he cried. "I took on a responsibility for Stella when I
+went out of my way to do one kind, foolish thing.... Yet, she would have
+killed herself if I hadn't&mdash;as she has done five years afterwards!... I
+couldn't leave her when I had brought her home ... she was in such
+misery!... and it couldn't have gone on.... Old Hardiman was right about
+that.... It would have ended in a quarrel when unforgivable words would
+have been used.... Yet, perhaps, if that had happened she wouldn't have
+killed herself.... Oh, I don't know!"</p>
+
+<p>Martin Hillyard had never seen Harry Luttrell so moved or sunk in such
+remorse. He did not argue, lest he should but add fuel to this high
+flame of self-reproach. Life had become so much easier as a problem with
+him, so much inner probing and speculation and worry about small
+vanities had been smoothed away since he had been engaged day after day
+in a definite service which was building up by a law deduced here, an
+inspired formula there, a tradition for its servants. The service, the
+tradition, would dissolve and blow to nothing, when peace came again.
+Meanwhile there was the worth of traditional service made clear to him,
+in an indifference to the little enmities which before would have hurt
+and rankled, in a freedom from doubt when decision was needed, above all
+in a sort of underlying calm which strengthened as his life became more
+turbulently active.<a name="Page_274" id="Page_274"></a></p>
+
+<p>"It's a clear principle of life which make the difference," he said,
+hesitating, because to say even so much made him feel a prig. "Stella
+just drifted from unhappiness to unhappiness&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But Harry Luttrell had no attention to give to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I simply couldn't have gone on," he cried. "It wasn't a question of my
+ruin or not.... It was simply beyond me to go on.... There were other
+things more powerful.... You know! I once told you on the river above
+Kennington Island.... Oh, my God, I am in such a tangle of argument&mdash;and
+there she is up there&mdash;only thirty, and beautiful&mdash;such a queer, wayward
+kid&mdash;'like a child sleeping.'"</p>
+
+<p>He quoted Sir Chichester's phrase, and hurried away from his friend.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be back in a little while," he muttered. His bad hour was upon
+him, and he must wrestle with it alone.</p>
+
+<p>Martin Hillyard returned to the hall, and found Sir Chichester with the
+doctor, a short, rugged Scotsman. Dr. McKerrel was saying:</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing whatever for me to do, Sir Chichester," he said. "The
+poor creature must have died somewhere about one o'clock of the
+morning." He saw Sir Chichester with a start fall once more to reading
+the paragraph in the <i>Harpoon</i>, and continued with a warmth of
+admiration, "Eh, but those newspaper fellows are quick! I saw the
+<i>Harpoon</i> this morning, and it was lucky I did. For I'd ha' been on my
+rounds otherwise when that young fellow called for me."</p>
+
+<p>"It was good of you to come so quickly," said Sir Chichester.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall charge for it," replied Dr. McKerrel. "I'll just step round to
+the Peace Officer at once, and I'll be obliged if you'll not have that
+glass with the chloroform touched again. I have put it aside."</p>
+
+<p>Martin Hillyard was disturbed.</p>
+
+<p>"There will have to be an inquest then?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Aye, but there wull."</p>
+
+<p>"In a case of this kind," Sir Chichester suggested, "it would be better
+if it could be avoided."</p>
+
+<p>"But it can't," answered Dr. McKerrel bluntly. "And for <a name="Page_275" id="Page_275"></a>my part, I tell
+you frankly, Sir Chichester, I have no great pity for poor neurotic
+bodies like the young lady upstairs. If she had had a little of my work
+to do, she would have been too tired in the evening to think about her
+worries." He looked at the disconsolate Baronet with a sudden twinkle in
+his eye. "Eh, man, but you'll get all the publicity you want over this
+case."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester had no rejoinder to the quip; and his unwonted meekness
+caused McKerrel to relent. He stopped at the door, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll give you a hint. The coroner can cut the inquest down to the
+barest necessary limits, if he has got all the facts clear beforehand.
+If he has got to explore in the dark, he'll ask questions here and
+questions there, and you never know, nor does he, what he's going to
+drag out to light in the end. But let him have it all clear and straight
+first! There's only one character I know of, more free from regulations
+and limitations and red-tape than a coroner, and that's the
+police-sergeant who runs the coroner. Goodday to you."</p>
+
+<p>A telegram was brought to Martin Hillyard whilst McKerrel was yet
+speaking; and Hillyard read it with relief. Mario Escobar had been taken
+that morning as he was leaving the hotel for the morning train to
+London. He was now on his way to an internment camp. So that
+complication was smoothed out at all events. He agreed with Sir
+Chichester Splay that it would be prudent to carry out McKerrel's
+suggestion at once.</p>
+
+<p>"I will make the document out," said Sir Chichester importantly. Give
+him a little work which set him in the limelight as the leader of the
+Chorus, and nothing could keep down his spirits. He took a sheet of
+foolscap, a blotting pad, a heavy inkstand, and a quill pen&mdash;Sir
+Chichester never used anything but a quill pen&mdash;to the big table in the
+middle of the hall, and wrote in a fair, round hand:</p>
+
+<p>"The case of Mrs. Croyle."</p>
+
+<p>and looked at his work and thought it good.</p>
+
+<p>"It looks quite like a <i>cause c&eacute;l&egrave;bre</i>, doesn't it?" he said buoyantly.
+But he caught Martin Hillyard's eye, and recovered his more becoming
+despondency. Harry Luttrell came in as <a name="Page_276" id="Page_276"></a>the baronet settled once more to
+his task. He laid a shining key upon the table and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I found this upon the lawn. It looked as if it might be the key of Mrs.
+Croyle's room."</p>
+
+<p>It was undoubtedly the key of a door. "We'll find out," said the
+baronet. Harper was sent for and commissioned to inquire. He returned in
+a few minutes.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, it is the key of Mrs. Croyle's room." He laid it upon the
+table and went out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it is then," said Harry Luttrell. "But I am a little
+puzzled."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh?"</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't lying beneath Mrs. Croyle's window as one might have
+expected. But at the east side of the house, below the corridor, and
+almost in front of the glass door of the library."</p>
+
+<p>Both of his hearers were disturbed. Sir Chichester took up the key, and
+twisted it this way and that, till it flashed like a point of fire in
+the sunlight; as though under such giddy work it would yield up its
+secret for the sake of peace. He flung it on the table again, where it
+rattled and lay still.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't make head or tail of it," Sir Chichester cried. Martin Hillyard
+opened his mouth to speak and thought better of it. He could not falter
+in his belief that Stella had destroyed herself. The picture of her that
+morning in Surrey, with the lamps burning in her room and the bed
+untouched, was too vivid in his memory. What she had tried to do two
+years ago, she had found the courage to do to-day.</p>
+
+<p>That was sure. But it was not all. There was some one in the shadows who
+meant harm, more harm than was already accomplished. There was
+malevolence at work. The discovery of the key in that position far from
+Stella's window assured him of it. The aspect of the key itself as it
+lay upon the table made the assurance still more sure. But whom was this
+malevolence to hurt? And how? At what moment would the hand behind the
+curtain strike? And whose hand would it be? These were questions which
+locked his lips tight. It was for him to watch and discover, for he
+alone overlooked the battle-field, and if he failed, God help his
+friends at Rackham<a name="Page_277" id="Page_277"></a> Park. Mario Escobar? Mario Escobar could at all
+events do no harm now.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester explained to Harry Luttrell Dr. McKerrel's suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a clear, succinct statement of the facts. The witnesses, and what
+each one knows and is ready to depose. I shall put the statement before
+the coroner, who is a very good fellow, and we shall escape with as
+little scandal as possible. Now, let me see&mdash;&mdash;" Sir Chichester put on
+his glasses. "The most important witness, of course, will be Stella's
+maid."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester rang the bell, and in answer to his summons Jenny came
+down the stairs. Her eyes were red with weeping and she was very pale.
+But she bore herself steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"You wanted me, sir?" she asked. Her eyes travelled from one to the
+other of the three men in the hall. They rested for a little moment
+longer upon Harry Luttrell than upon the rest; and it seemed to Hillyard
+that as they rested there they glittered strangely, and that the ghost
+of a smile flickered about her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Sir Chichester, pompously. "You understand that there will
+have to be an inquiry into the cause of Mrs. Croyle's death; and one
+wants for the sake of everybody, your dead mistress more than any one,
+that there should be as little talk as possible."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny's voice cut in like ice.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Croyle had no reason that I know of to fear the fullest inquiry."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite so! Quite so!" returned Sir Chichester, shifting his ground. "But
+it will save time if we get the facts concisely together."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny stepped forward, and stood at the end of the table opposite to the
+baronet.</p>
+
+<p>"I am quite willing, sir," she said respectfully, "to answer any
+question now or at any time"; and throughout the little interrogatory
+which followed she never once changed from her attitude of respect.</p>
+
+<p>"Your name first."</p>
+
+<p>"Jenny Prask," and Sir Chichester wrote it down.</p>
+
+<p>"You have been Mrs. Croyle's maid for some time."<a name="Page_278" id="Page_278"></a></p>
+
+<p>"For three and a half years, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" said Sir Chichester, with the air of one who by an artful
+question has elicited a most important piece of evidence.</p>
+
+<p>"Now!" But now he fumbled. He had come to the real examination, and was
+at a loss how to begin. "Yes, now then, Jenny!" and again he came to a
+halt.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Jenny waited, her eyes once glittered strangely under their
+half-dropped lids; and Martin Hillyard followed the direction of their
+gaze to the door-key lying upon the table beside Sir Chichester's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Jenny," said Sir Chichester, who had at last formulated a question.
+"You informed us that Mrs. Croyle instructed you last night not to call
+her until she rang. That, no doubt, was an unusual order for her to
+give."</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester leaned back in his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it wasn't?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester looked a little blank. He cast about for another line of
+examination.</p>
+
+<p>"You are aware, of course, Jenny, that your mistress was in the habit of
+taking drugs&mdash;chloroform especially."</p>
+
+<p>"Never, sir," answered Jenny.</p>
+
+<p>"You weren't aware of it?" exclaimed Sir Chichester.</p>
+
+<p>"She never took them."</p>
+
+<p>Harry Luttrell made a little movement. He stared in perplexity at Jenny
+Prask, who did not once remove her calm and respectful eyes from Sir
+Chichester Splay. She waited in absolute composure for the next
+question. But the question took a long time to formulate. Sir Chichester
+had framed no interrogatory in a sequence; whereas Jenny's answers were
+pat, as though, sitting by the bed whereon her dead mistress lay, she
+had thought out the questions which might be asked of her and got her
+answers ready. Sir Chichester began to get flurried. At every conjecture
+which he expressed, Jenny Prask slammed a door in his face.</p>
+
+<p>"But you told me&mdash;&mdash;" he cried, turning to Harry Luttrell and so broke
+off. "Are you speaking the truth, Jenny?"<a name="Page_279" id="Page_279"></a></p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Jenny's composure broke up. The blood rushed into her face. She
+shouted violently:</p>
+
+<p>"I swear it! If it was my last dying word, I do! Chloroform indeed!" She
+became sarcastic. "What an idea! Just fancy!"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester threw down his pen. He was aghast before the conclusion
+to which his examination was leading him.</p>
+
+<p>"But, if Stella didn't put that glass of chloroform between her
+pillows&mdash;herself&mdash;of her own accord&mdash;why then, whilst she was
+asleep&mdash;&mdash;" He would not utter the inevitable induction. But it was
+clear enough, hideous enough to all of them. Why then, whilst she was
+asleep, some one entered the room, placed the chloroform where its
+deadly fumes would do their work, locked her door upon her and tossed
+the key out on to the lawn. A charge of murder&mdash;nothing less.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you see what you are suggesting, Jenny," Sir Chichester
+spluttered helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am suggesting nothing, sir," the maid answered stolidly. "I am
+answering questions."</p>
+
+<p>She was lying, of course! Hillyard had not a doubt of it. Jenny Prask
+was the malevolent force of which he was in search. So much had, at all
+events, sprung clear from Sir Chichester's blunderings. And some hint,
+too, of the plan which malevolence had formed&mdash;not more than a hint!
+That Jenny Prask intended to sustain a charge of murder Martin did not
+believe. She was of too strong a brain for that folly. But she had some
+clear purpose to harm somebody; and Martin's heart sank as he
+conjectured who that some one might, nay must, be. Meanwhile, he
+thought, let Sir Chichester pursue his questioning. He got glimpses
+through that clouded medium into Jenny Prask's mind.</p>
+
+<p>"You must realise, Jenny, the unfortunate position into which your
+answers are leading you," said Sir Chichester with a trace of bluster.</p>
+
+<p>Hillyard could have laughed. As if she didn't realise exactly the drift
+and meaning of every word which she uttered. Jenny was not at all
+perturbed by Sir Chichester's manner. Her face took on a puzzled look.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand, sir."<a name="Page_280" id="Page_280"></a></p>
+
+<p>"No? Let me make it clear! If your mistress never took drugs, if she did
+not place the glass of chloroform in the particular position which would
+ensure her death, then, since you, her maid, were alone in this part of
+the house with her and were the last person to see her alive&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir," Jenny Prask interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester stared. He was more and more out of his depth, and these
+were waters in which expert swimming was required.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand. Do you say that somebody saw Mrs. Croyle after she
+had dismissed you for the night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you please explain?"</p>
+
+<p>The explanation was as simple as possible. Jenny had first fetched a
+book for her mistress from the library, before the house-party left for
+the ball. She then had supper and went to Mrs. Croyle's room. It was
+then about half-past nine, so far as she could conjecture. Her mistress,
+however, was not ready for bed, and dismissed Jenny, saying that she
+would look after herself. Jenny thereupon retired to her own bedroom and
+wrote a letter. After writing it, she remembered that she had not put
+out the distilled water which Mrs. Croyle was in the habit of using for
+her toilet. She accordingly returned to Mrs. Croyle's bedroom, and to
+her surprise found it empty. She waited for a quarter of an hour, and
+then becoming uneasy, went downstairs into the hall. She heard her
+mistress and some one else talking in the library. Their voices were
+raised a little as though they were quarrelling.</p>
+
+<p>"Quarrelling!" Sir Chichester Splay cried out the word in dismay. His
+hand flapped feebly on the table. "I am afraid to go on.... What do you
+think, Hillyard? I am afraid to go on...."</p>
+
+<p>"We must go on," said Luttrell quietly. He was very white. Did he guess
+what was coming, Hillyard wondered? At all events he did not falter. He
+took the business of putting questions altogether out of his host's
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Was the somebody a man or a woman?"</p>
+
+<p>"A woman, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you recognise her voice?"<a name="Page_281" id="Page_281"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Who was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Whitworth."</p>
+
+<p>Harry Luttrell nodded his head as if he had, during these last minutes,
+come to expect that answer and no other. But Sir Chichester rose up in
+wrath and, leaning forward over the table, shook his finger
+threateningly at the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you know you are not speaking the truth. Miss Whitworth was at
+Harrel last night with the rest of us."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, but she came back to Rackham Park almost at once," said
+Jenny; and Harry Luttrell's face showed a sign of anxiety. After all, he
+hadn't seen Joan himself in the ball-room until well after ten o'clock.
+"I should have known that it was Miss Whitworth even if I had not heard
+her voice," and Jenny described how, on fetching Mrs. Croyle's book, she
+had seen Joan unlatch the glass door of the library.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester was shaken, but he pushed his blotting-paper here and his
+pen there, and pished and tushed like a refractory child.</p>
+
+<p>"And how did she get back? I suppose she ran all the way in her satin
+shoes and back again, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, she came back in Mrs. Brown's motor-car. I saw it from my
+bedroom window waiting in the drive."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Now that we can put to the test, Jenny," cried Sir Chichester
+triumphantly. "And we will&mdash;&mdash;" He caught Hillyard's eye as he moved
+towards the door in order to summon Miranda from the garden. Hillyard
+warned him with an almost imperceptible shake of the head. "Yes, we
+will, in our own time," he concluded lamely. His anger burst out again.
+"Joan, indeed! We won't have her mixed up in this sordid business, it's
+bad enough as it is. But Joan, no! To suggest that Joan came straight
+back from the Willoughbys' dance in order to quarrel with a woman whom
+she was seeing every day here, and, having quarrelled with her,
+afterwards&mdash;&mdash; No, I won't speak the word. It's preposterous!"</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't suggest, sir, that Miss Whitworth came back in order to
+quarrel with my mistress," Jenny Prask returned, as soon as Sir
+Chichester's spate of words ran down. "I only give you the facts I know.
+I am quite sure that Miss<a name="Page_282" id="Page_282"></a> Whitworth can quite easily explain why she
+came back to Rackham Park last night. There can't be any difficulty
+about that!"</p>
+
+<p>Jenny Prask had kept every intonation of her voice under her control.
+There was no hint of irony or triumph. She was a respectful lady's maid,
+frankly answering questions about her dead mistress. But she did not so
+successfully keep sentinel over her looks. She could not but glance from
+time to time at Harry Luttrell savouring his trouble and anxiety; and
+when she expressed her conviction that Joan could so easily clear up
+these mysteries, such a flame of hatred burnt suddenly in her eyes that
+it lit Martin Hillyard straight to the heart of her purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"So that's it," he thought, and was terrified as he grasped its reach.
+An accusation of murder! Oh, nothing so crude. But just enough
+suggestion of the possibility of murder to make it absolutely necessary
+that Joan Whitworth should go into the witness box at the coroner's
+inquest and acknowledge before the world that she had hurried secretly
+back from Harrel to meet Mario Escobar in an empty house. Mario Escobar
+too! Of all people, Mario Escobar! Jenny Prask had builded better than
+she knew. That telegram which Martin had welcomed with so much relief
+but an hour ago taunted him now. The scandal would have been bad enough
+if Mario Escobar were nothing more than the shady hunter of women he was
+supposed to be. It would be ten times louder now that Mario Escobar had
+been interned as a traitor within twelve hours of the secret meeting!</p>
+
+<p>Some escape must be discovered from the peril. Else the mud of it would
+cling to Joan all her life. She would be spoilt. Harry Luttrell, too! If
+he married her, if he did not. But Martin could not think of a way out.
+The whole plan was an artful, devilish piece of hard-headed cunning.
+Martin fell to wondering where was Jenny Prask's weak joint. She
+certainly looked, with her quiet strength, as if she had not one at all.</p>
+
+<p>To make matters worse, Miranda Brown chose this moment to re-enter the
+hall. Sir Chichester, warned already by Martin, threw the warning to the
+winds.<a name="Page_283" id="Page_283"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Miranda, you are the very person to help us," he cried. "Now listen to
+me, my dear, and don't get flurried. Think carefully, for your answer
+may have illimitable consequences! After your arrival at Harrel last
+night, did Joan return here immediately in your car?"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester had never been so impressive. Miranda was frightened and
+changed colour. But she had given her promise and she kept it pluckily.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny Prask permitted herself to smile her disbelief. Sir Chichester was
+triumphant.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there's an end of your pretty story, my girl," he said. "You
+wanted to do a little mischief, did you? Well, you haven't! And here, by
+a stroke of luck, is Joan herself to settle the matter."</p>
+
+<p>He sat down and once more he drew his sheet of foolscap in front of him.
+He could write his clear succinct statement now, write it in "nervous
+prose." He was not quite sure what nervous prose actually was, but he
+knew it to be the correct medium to use on these occasions.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Joan ran down the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid I have been very lazy this morning," she cried. She saw
+Harry Luttrell, she coloured to the eyes, she smiled doubtfully and said
+in a little whimsical voice, "We didn't after all, practise in the
+passage."</p>
+
+<p>Then, and only then, did she realise that something was amiss. Millie
+Splay in her desire to spare her darling the sudden shock of learning
+what calamity had befallen the house that night had bidden Joan's maid
+keep silence. She herself would break the news. But Millie Splay was
+busy with telegrams to Robert Croyle and Stella's own friends, and all
+the sad little duties which wait on death; and Joan ran down into the
+midst of the debate without a warning.</p>
+
+<p>Martin Hillyard would have given it to her, but Sir Chichester was hot
+upon his report.</p>
+
+<p>"Joan, my dear," he said confidently. "There's a little point&mdash;not in
+dispute really&mdash;but&mdash;well there's a little point. It has been said that
+you came straight back here last night from Harrel?"<a name="Page_284" id="Page_284"></a></p>
+
+<p>Joan's face turned slowly white. She stood with her great eyes fixed
+upon Sir Chichester, still as an image, and she did not answer a word.
+Harry Luttrell drew in a quick breath like a man in pain. Sir Chichester
+was selecting a new pen and noticed nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"It's ridiculous, of course, my dear, but I must put to you the formal
+question. Did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered Joan, and the pen fell from Sir Chichester's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;but&mdash;how did you come back?"</p>
+
+<p>"I borrowed Miranda's car."</p>
+
+<p>Miranda's legs gave under her and she sank down with a moan in a chair.</p>
+
+<p>"But Miranda denies that she lent it," said Sir Chichester in
+exasperation.</p>
+
+<p>"I asked her to deny it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan's eyes for one swift instant swept round to Harry Luttrell. She
+swayed. Then she answered:</p>
+
+<p>"I can't tell you."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester rose to his feet and tore his sheet of foolscap across.</p>
+
+<p>"God bless my soul!" he said to himself rather than to any of that
+company. "God bless my soul!" He moved away from the table. "I think
+I'll go and see Millie. Yes! I'll consult with Millie," and he ascended
+the stairs heavily, a very downcast and bewildered man. It seemed as
+though old age had suddenly found him out, and bowed his shoulders and
+taken the spring from his limbs. Something of this he felt himself, for
+he was heard to mutter as he passed along the landing to his wife's
+sitting-room:</p>
+
+<p>"I am not the man I was. I feel difficulties more"; and so he passed
+from sight.</p>
+
+<p>Harry Luttrell turned then to Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Whitworth," he began and got no further. For the blood rushed up
+into the girl's face and she exclaimed in a trembling voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel Luttrell, I trust that you are not going to ask me any
+questions."<a name="Page_285" id="Page_285"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Why?" he asked, taken aback by the little touch of violence in her
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Because, at twelve o'clock last night, I refused you the right to ask
+them."</p>
+
+<p>The words were not very generous. They were meant to hurt and they did.
+They were meant to put a sharp, quick end to any questioning; and in
+that, too, they succeeded. Harry Luttrell bowed his head in assent and
+went out into the garden. For a moment afterwards Martin Hillyard, Joan
+and Jenny Prask stood in silence; and in that silence once more Martin's
+eyes fell upon the key of Stella's room. The earth had moved since the
+interrogatory had begun and the sunlight now played upon the key and
+transmuted it into a bright jewel. Martin Hillyard stepped forward and
+lifted it up. A faint, a very faint light, as from the far end of a long
+tunnel began to glimmer in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"I must think it out," he whispered to himself; and at once the key
+filled all his thoughts. He turned to Joan:</p>
+
+<p>"Will you watch, please?" He opened the drawer in the table and laid the
+key inside it. Then he closed the drawer and locked it and took the key
+of the drawer out of the lock.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Joan, what I have done? That key is locked in this drawer, and
+I hold the key of the drawer. It may be important."</p>
+
+<p>Joan nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"I see what you have done. And now, will you please leave me with Jenny
+Prask?"</p>
+
+<p>The smile was very easy to read now in Jenny's face. She could ask
+nothing better than to be left alone with Joan.</p>
+
+<p>Martin hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"I think, Joan, that you ought to see Lady Splay before you talk to any
+one," he counselled gently.</p>
+
+<p>"Is everybody going to give me orders in this house?" Joan retorted with
+a quiet, dangerous calm.</p>
+
+<p>Martin Hillyard turned and ran swiftly up the stairs. There was but one
+thing to do. Lady Splay must be fetched down. But hurry as he might, he
+was not in time. For a few seconds Joan and Jenny Prask were alone in
+the hall, and all Jenny's composure left her on the instant. She stepped
+quickly over <a name="Page_286" id="Page_286"></a>to Joan, and in a voice vibrating with hatred and passion,
+she hissed:</p>
+
+<p>"But you'll have to say why you came back. You'll have to say who you
+came back to see. You'll have to say it publicly too&mdash;right there in
+court. It'll be in all the papers. Won't you like it, Miss Whitworth?
+Just fancy!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan was staggered by the attack. The sheer hatred of Jenny bewildered
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"In court?" she faltered. "What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"That Mrs. Croyle died of poison last night in her room," answered
+Jenny.</p>
+
+<p>Joan stared at her. "Last night, after we had talked&mdash;she killed
+herself&mdash;oh!" The truth reached her brain and laid a chill hand upon her
+heart. She rocked backwards and forwards as she stood, and with a
+gasping moan fell headlong to the ground. She had fainted. For a little
+while Jenny surveyed her handiwork with triumph. She bent down with a
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's your turn, you pretty doll. You've got to go through it! You
+won't look so young and pretty when they have done with you in the
+witness-box. Bah!"</p>
+
+<p>Jenny Prask was a strenuous hater. She drew back her foot to kick the
+unconscious girl as she lay at her feet upon the floor. But that insult
+Millie Splay was in time to prevent.</p>
+
+<p>"Jenny," she cried sharply from the balustrade of the landing.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny was once more the quiet, respectful maid.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my lady. You want me? I am afraid that Miss Whitworth has
+fainted."<a name="Page_287" id="Page_287"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">A Revolution in Sir Chichester</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Upon that house which had yesterday rung with joyous life now fell gloom
+and sorrow and grave disquiet. Millie Splay drew Miranda, Dennis Brown
+and Harold Jupp aside.</p>
+
+<p>"You three had better go," she said. "You have such a little time for
+holidays now; and I can always telegraph for you if you should be
+wanted."</p>
+
+<p>Miranda bubbled into little sympathetic explosions.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Millie, I'll stay, of course. These boys can go. But Joan will want
+some one."</p>
+
+<p>Millie, however, would not hear of it.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a brick, Miranda. But I have ordered the car for you all
+immediately after luncheon. Joan's in bed, and wants to see no one. She
+seems heartbroken. She will say nothing. I can't understand her."</p>
+
+<p>There was only one at Rackham Park who did, and to him Millie Splay
+turned instinctively.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like you to stay, if you will put up with us. I think
+Chichester feels at a loss, and he likes you very much."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I'll stay," replied Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Albany Todd drifted away to the more congenial atmosphere of a
+dowager duchess's dower-house in the Highlands, where it is to be hoped
+that his conversational qualities were more brilliantly displayed than
+in the irreverent gaiety of Rackham. Millie Splay meant to keep Harry
+Luttrell too. She hoped against hope. This was the man for her Joan, and
+whether he was wasting his leave miserably in that melancholy house
+troubled her not one jot.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be so welcome to me if you would put off your departure," she
+said. "I am sure there is some dreadful misunderstanding."</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell consented willingly to stay, and they went into the <a name="Page_288" id="Page_288"></a>library,
+where Sir Chichester was brooding over the catastrophe with his head in
+his hands and the copy of the <i>Harpoon</i> on the floor beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I can't make head or tail of it," he said, and Harper the butler
+came softly into the room, closing the door from the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a reporter from the <i>West Sussex Advertiser</i>, sir, asking to
+see you," he said, and Sir Chichester raised his head, like an old
+hunter which hears a pack of hounds giving tongue in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the hall, sir."</p>
+
+<p>The baronet's head sank again between his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him that I can't see him," he said in a dull voice.</p>
+
+<p>The butler was the only man in the room who could hear that
+pronouncement with an unmoved face, and he owed his imperturbability
+merely to professional pride. Indeed, it was almost unthinkable that a
+couple of hours could produce so vast a revolution in a man. Here was a
+reporter who had come, without being asked, to interview Sir Chichester
+Splay, and the baronet would not see him! The incongruity struck Sir
+Chichester himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it will seem rather impolite, eh, Luttrell? Rather hard
+treatment on a man who has come so far? What do you think, Hillyard? I
+suppose I ought to see him for a moment&mdash;yes." Sir Chichester raised his
+voice in a sharp cry which contrasted vividly with the deliberative
+sentences preceding it. "Harper! Harper!" and Harper reappeared. "I have
+been thinking about it, Harper. The unfortunate man may lose his whole
+morning if I don't see him. We all agree that to send him away would be
+unkind."</p>
+
+<p>"He has gone, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Gone?" exclaimed Sir Chichester testily. "God bless my soul! Did he
+seem disappointed, Harper?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not so much disappointed, sir, as, if I may utilise a vulgarism, struck
+of all a heap, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"That will do, Harper," said Millie Splay, and Harper again retired.</p>
+
+<p>"Struck all of a heap!" said Sir Chichester sadly. "Well he <a name="Page_289" id="Page_289"></a>might be!"
+He looked up and caught Harry's eye. "They say, Luttrell, that breaking
+a habit is only distressing during the first few days. With each refusal
+of the mind to yield, the temptation diminishes in strength. I believe
+that to be so, Luttrell."</p>
+
+<p>"It is very likely, sir," Harry replied.</p>
+
+<p>Harper seemed to be perpetually in and out of the library that morning.
+For he appeared with a little oblong parcel in his hand. Sir Chichester
+did not notice the parcel. He sprang up, and with a distinct note of
+eager pleasure in his voice, he cried:</p>
+
+<p>"He has come back! Then I really think&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir," Harper interrupted. "These are cigarettes."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," Hillyard stepped forward and took the parcel from the table.
+"I had run out, so I sent to Midhurst for a box."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, cigarettes!" Sir Chichester's voice sagged again. He contemplated
+the little parcel swinging by a loop of string from Martin's finger. His
+face became a little stern. "That's a bad habit, Hillyard," he observed,
+shaking his head. "It will grow on you&mdash;nicotine poisoning may supervene
+at any moment. You had better begin to break yourself of it at once. I
+think so."</p>
+
+<p>"Chichester!" cried Millie Splay. "What in the world are you doing?"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester was gently but firmly removing the parcel from Martin's
+hands, whilst Martin himself looked on, paralysed by the aggression.</p>
+
+<p>"A little strength of character, Hillyard.... You saw me a minute
+ago.... The first few days, I believe, are trying."</p>
+
+<p>Martin sought to retrieve his cigarettes, but Sir Chichester laid them
+aside upon a high mantelpiece, as if Hillyard were a child and could not
+reach them.</p>
+
+<p>"No, don't disappoint me, Hillyard! I am sure that you, too, can rise
+above a temptation. Why should I be the only one?"</p>
+
+<p>But Hillyard did not answer. Sir Chichester's desire that he should have
+a companion in sacrifice set a train of thought working in his mind. In
+the hurry and horror of that morning <a name="Page_290" id="Page_290"></a>something had been
+forgotten&mdash;something of importance, something which perhaps, together
+with the key locked away in the hall table, might set free Joan's feet
+from the net in which they were entangled. He looked at his watch.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you lend me your car, Harry, for a few hours?" he asked suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll go," said Martin. "I will be back this afternoon or evening,
+Lady Splay." He went to the door, but was delayed by a box of Corona
+cigars upon a small table. "I'll take one of your cigars, Sir
+Chichester," he said drily.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything in the house, of course, my boy," began the baronet
+hospitably, and pulled himself up. "A very bad habit, Hillyard. You
+disappoint me."</p>
+
+<p>A trick of secrecy grows quickly upon men doing the work to which Martin
+Hillyard had been assigned during the last two years. Nothing is easier
+than to reach a frame of mind which drives you about with your finger to
+your lips, whispering "Hush! hush!" over the veriest trifles. Hillyard
+had not reached that point, but, like many other persons of his service,
+he was on the way to it. He gave no information now to any one of his
+purpose or destination, not even to Millie Splay, who came out with him
+alone into the hall, yearning for some crumb of hope. All that he said
+to her was:</p>
+
+<p>"It is possible that I may be later than I think; but I shall certainly
+be back to-night." And he drove off in Luttrell's powerful small car.</p>
+
+<p>It was, in fact, ten o'clock when Hillyard returned to Rackham Park.
+There was that in his manner which encouraged the inmates to hope some
+way out had been discovered. Questions were poured upon him, and some
+information given. The date of the inquest had been fixed for the next
+Monday, and meanwhile no statement of any kind had been put before the
+coroner. Jenny had not yielded by an inch. She would certainly tell her
+story with all the convincing force behind it of her respectful quiet
+manner and her love for her mistress.</p>
+
+<p>"I have something to tell you," said Martin. "But I have had no dinner,
+and am starving. I will tell you whilst I eat."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I fetch Joan down?" Millie Splay asked eagerly.<a name="Page_291" id="Page_291"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Better to wait," said Martin. He imagined in what a fever of anxiety
+Joan would be. It would be time enough to lift her to hope when it was
+certain that the hope would not crumble away to dust.</p>
+
+<p>Joan was at that moment lying on her bed in the darkness of her room,
+her face towards the moonlit garden, and such a terror of the ordeal to
+be faced the next Monday in her thoughts as turned her cold and sent her
+heart fluttering into her throat. Mario Escobar had been taken away that
+morning. The news had reached Rackham, as it had reached every other
+house in the country-side. Joan knew of it, and she felt soiled and
+humiliated beyond endurance as she thought upon her association with the
+spy.</p>
+
+<p>The picture of the room crowded with witnesses, and people whom she
+knew, and strangers, whilst she gave the evidence which would turn their
+liking for her into contempt and suspicion would fade away from before
+her eyes, and the summer afternoon on Duncton Hill glow in its place.
+She had bidden Hillyard look at the Weald of Sussex, that he might carry
+the smell of its soil, the aspect of its blooms and dark woodlands and
+brown cottages away with him as a treasure to which he could secretly
+turn like a miser to his gold; and she herself, with them ever before
+her eyes, had forgotten them altogether. To sink back into the rank and
+file&mdash;how fine she had thought it, and how little she had heeded it! Now
+she had got to pay for her heedlessness, and she buried her face in her
+pillows and lay shivering.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, in the dining-room downstairs, Millie Splay, Sir Chichester
+and Harry Luttrell gathered about Martin at the table whilst he ate cold
+beef and drank a pint of champagne.</p>
+
+<p>"I went up to London to see some one on the editorial staff of the
+<i>Harpoon</i>," Martin explained. "There were two questions I wanted answers
+for, if I could get them. You see, according to McKerrel&mdash;and you, Sir
+Chichester, say that he is a capable man&mdash;Stella Croyle died at one in
+the morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Sir Chichester agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>About</i> one," Harry Luttrell corrected, with the exactness of the
+soldierly mind.</p>
+
+<p>"'About' will do," Martin rejoined. "For newspapers go to <a name="Page_292" id="Page_292"></a>press early
+nowadays. The <i>Harpoon</i> would have been made up, and most of the
+editorial staff would have gone home an hour&mdash;yes, actually an
+hour&mdash;before Mrs. Croyle died here at Rackham in Sussex. Yet the news is
+in that very issue. How did that happen? How did the news reach the
+office of the <i>Harpoon</i> an hour before the event occurred?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that is what has been bothering me," added Sir Chichester.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that was one question," Martin resumed. "Here's the other. How,
+when the news had reached the <i>Harpoon</i> office, did it get printed in
+the paper?"</p>
+
+<p>Millie Splay found no difficulty in providing an explanation of that.</p>
+
+<p>"It's sensational," she said disdainfully.</p>
+
+<p>Martin shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think that's enough. The <i>Harpoon</i>, like lots of other
+newspapers, has its social column, and in that column, no doubt, a
+paragraph like this one about Stella would have a certain sensational
+value. But supposing it wasn't true! A libel action follows, follows
+inevitably. A great deal would be said about the unscrupulous
+recklessness involved; the judge would come down like a cartload of
+bricks and the paper would get badly stung. No editor of any reliable
+paper would run such a risk. No sub-editor, left behind with power to
+alter and insert, would have taken the responsibility. Before he printed
+that item of news he would want corroboration of its truth. That's
+certain. How did he get it? It was true news, and it was corroborated.
+But, again, it was corroborated before the event happened. How?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't an idea," cried Sir Chichester. "I thought I knew something
+about getting things into the papers, but I see that I am a baby at it."</p>
+
+<p>"It's much the more difficult question of the two," Hillyard agreed.
+"But we will go back to the first one. How did the news reach the
+<i>Harpoon</i> office yesterday night? Perhaps you can guess?" and he looked
+towards Harry Luttrell.</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell, however, was at a loss.</p>
+
+<p>"It's beyond me," he replied, and Martin Hillyard understood how that
+one morning at the little hotel under the Hog's<a name="Page_293" id="Page_293"></a> Back had given to him
+and him alone the key by which the door upon these dark things might be
+unlocked.</p>
+
+<p>"The news arrived in the form of a letter marked urgent, which was
+handed in by the chauffeur of a private motor-car just after midnight.
+Of the time there is no doubt. I saw the editor myself. The issue would
+already have gone to press, but late news was expected that night from
+France, and the paper was waiting for it. Instead this letter came."</p>
+
+<p>A look of bewilderment crept into the faces of the group about the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>"But who in the world could have written it?" cried Sir Chichester in
+exasperation.</p>
+
+<p>"It was written over your name."</p>
+
+<p>"Mine?"</p>
+
+<p>The bewilderment in Millie Splay's face deepened into anxiety. She
+looked at her husband with a sudden sinking of her heart. Had his foible
+developed into a madness? Such things had been. A little gasp broke from
+her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"But not in your handwriting," Hillyard hastened to add.</p>
+
+<p>"Whose then?" asked Harry Luttrell suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Stella's," answered Hillyard.</p>
+
+<p>A shiver ran from one to the other of that small company, and discomfort
+kept them silent. A vague dread stole in upon their minds. It was as
+though some uncanny presence were in the room. They had eaten with
+Stella Croyle in this room, played with her out there in the sunlit
+garden, and only one of them had suspected the overwhelming despair
+which had driven her so hard. They began to blame themselves. "Poor
+woman! Poor woman!" Millie Splay whispered in a moan.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester broke the silence.</p>
+
+<p>"But we left Stella here when we went to Harrel," he began, and Hillyard
+interrupted him.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no doubt that Stella sent the message," he said. "Your car,
+Mrs. Brown's and Luttrell's, were all used to take us to Harrel. One car
+remained in your garage&mdash;Stella's."</p>
+
+<p>"But there wouldn't be time for that car to reach London." Sir
+Chichester fought against Hillyard's statement. He did not want to
+believe it. He did not want to think of it. It brought him within too
+near a view of that horrid brink where <a name="Page_294" id="Page_294"></a>overtried nature grows dizzy and
+whirls down into blackness.</p>
+
+<p>"Just time," Hillyard answered relentlessly, "if you will follow me.
+Joan certainly returned here last night&mdash;that I know, as you know. But
+she was back again in the ball-room at Harrel within a few minutes of
+ten o'clock. She must have left Mrs. Croyle a quarter before ten&mdash;that,
+at the latest."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Millie Splay agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I have myself crossed Putney Bridge after leaving here, within
+ten minutes under the two hours. And that in the daytime. Stella had
+time enough for her purpose. It was night and little traffic on the
+road. She writes her letter, sends Jenny with it to the garage, and the
+car reaches the <i>Harpoon</i> office by twelve."</p>
+
+<p>"But its return?" asked Sir Chichester.</p>
+
+<p>"Simpler still. Your gates were left open last night, and we returned
+from Harrel at four in the morning. Stella's chauffeur hands in his
+letter, comes back by the way he went and is home here at Rackham an
+hour and a half before we thought of saying good-bye to Mrs. Willoughby.
+That is the way it happened. That is the way it must have happened,"
+Hillyard concluded energetically. "For it's the only way it could have
+happened."</p>
+
+<p>Luttrell, though he had been a listener and nothing else throughout
+Martin's statement, had cherished a hope that somehow it might be
+discovered that Stella had died by an accident. That she should die by
+her own hand, in this house, under the same roof as Joan, and because of
+one year which had ended at Stockholm&mdash;oh, to him a generation
+back!&mdash;was an idea of irrepressible horror. He could not shake off some
+sense of guiltiness. He had argued with it all that day, discovering the
+most excellent contentions, but at the end, not one of them had
+succeeded in weakening in the least degree his inward conviction that he
+had his share in Stella's death. Unless her death was an accident,
+unless, using her drug, she fell asleep and so drifted unintentionally
+out of life! He still caught at that hope.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure that the handwriting was Stella's?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite. I saw the letter."</p>
+
+<p>"Did the editor give it to you?"<a name="Page_295" id="Page_295"></a></p>
+
+<p>"No, he had to keep it for his own protection."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a pity," said Harry. A pity&mdash;or a relief, since, without that
+evidence before his eyes, he could still insist upon his pretence.</p>
+
+<p>"Not such a great pity," answered Martin, and taking a letter from his
+pocket he threw it down upon the table, with the ghost of a smile upon
+his face. "What do you think I have been doing during the last two
+years?" he asked drily.</p>
+
+<p>Harry pounced upon the letter and his first glance dispelled his
+illusion&mdash;nay, proved to him that he had never had faith in it. For he
+saw, without surprise, the broad strokes and the straight up-and-down
+letters familiar to him of old. Stella had always written rather like a
+man, a man without character. He had made a joke of it to her in the
+time before the little jokes aimed by the one at the other had begun to
+rasp.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she wrote the letter and signed it with Sir Chichester's name."</p>
+
+<p>Millie Splay reached out for the letter.</p>
+
+<p>"Stella took a big risk," she said. "I don't understand it. She must
+have foreseen that Chichester's hand was likely to be familiar in the
+office."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Millie," said Sir Chichester suddenly, and he spurred his memory.
+"Of course! Of course! Stella helped me with the telephone one day this
+week in the library there. I told her that I was new to the <i>Harpoon</i>."
+He suddenly beat upon the table with his fist. "But why should she write
+the letter at all? Why should she want her death here, under these
+strange conditions, announced to the world? A little cruel I call
+it&mdash;yes, Millie, a little cruel."</p>
+
+<p>"Stella wasn't cruel," said Lady Splay.</p>
+
+<p>"She wasn't," Hillyard agreed. "I know why she wrote that. She wrote it
+to strengthen her hand and will at the last moment. The message was
+sent, the announcement of her death would be published in the morning,
+was already in print. Just that knowledge would serve as the final
+compulsion to do what she wished to do. She wrote lest her courage and
+nerve should at the last moment fail her, as to my knowledge they had
+failed her before."<a name="Page_296" id="Page_296"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Before!" cried Millie. "She had tried before! Oh, poor woman!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Hillyard, and he told them all of the vague but very real
+fear which had once driven him into Surrey in chase of her; of her
+bedroom with the bed unslept in and the lights still burning in the
+blaze of a summer morning; of herself sitting all night at her
+writing-table, making dashes and figures upon the notepaper and unable
+to steel herself to the last dreadful act.</p>
+
+<p>Martin Hillyard gave no reason for her misery upon that occasion, nor
+did any one think to inquire. He just told the story from his heart, and
+therefore with a great simplicity of words. There was not one of those
+who heard him, but was moved.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet there were perhaps a couple of hours in her life more grim and
+horrible than any in that long night," he went on, "the hours between
+ten o'clock and midnight yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but we don't know how they were spent," began Sir Chichester.</p>
+
+<p>"We know something," returned Martin gravely. "I told you that that
+letter was corroborated before the paragraph it contained was inserted
+in the paper."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Lady Splay.</p>
+
+<p>"Whilst they were waiting for the news from France, which did not come,
+they rang you up from the <i>Harpoon</i> office. Yes: they rang up Rackham
+Park."</p>
+
+<p>Harry Luttrell snatched up the letter once more from the table. Yes,
+there across the left-hand corner was printed Sir Chichester's telephone
+number and the district exchange.</p>
+
+<p>"They were answered by a woman. Of that there's no doubt. And the woman
+assured them that Stella Croyle was dead. This was at a quarter-past
+twelve."</p>
+
+<p>There was a movement of horror about the table, and then, with dry lips,
+Millie Splay whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"Stella!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. It must have been," answered Hillyard. "Oh, she had thought out
+her plan to its last detail. She knew the letter might not be enough.
+So, whilst we were all dancing at Harrel, she sat alone from ten to
+midnight in that library, waiting <a name="Page_297" id="Page_297"></a>for the telephone to ring, hoping
+perhaps&mdash;for all we know&mdash;at the bottom of her heart that it would not
+ring. But it did, and she answered."</p>
+
+<p>The picture rose vividly before them all. Harrel, with its lighted
+ball-room and joyous dancers on the one side; the silent library on the
+other, with Stella herself in all her finery, sitting with her haggard
+eyes fixed upon the telephone, whilst the slow minutes passed.</p>
+
+<p>"That's terrible," said Millie Splay in a low voice; and such a wave of
+pity swept over the four people that for a long while no further word
+was said. Joan upstairs in her room was forgotten. Any thought of
+resentment in that Stella had used Sir Chichester's name was overlooked
+by the revelation of the long travail of her soul.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember that she once said to me, 'Women do get the worst of it when
+they kick over the traces,'" Hillyard resumed. "And undoubtedly they do.
+On the other hand you have McKerrel's hard-headed verdict, 'If these
+poor neurotic bodies had any work to do they wouldn't have so much time
+to worry about their troubles.' Who shall choose between them? And what
+does it matter now? Stella's gone. She will strain her poor little
+unhappy heart no more against the bars."<a name="Page_298" id="Page_298"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Jenny and Millie Splay</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>After a time their thoughts reverted to the living.</p>
+
+<p>"There's Joan," said Millie Splay. "Jenny Prask hates her. She means to
+drag her into some scandal."</p>
+
+<p>"If she can," said Martin. He went out into the hall and returned with
+the key of Stella Croyle's room. He held it up before them all.</p>
+
+<p>"This key was found on the lawn outside the library window this morning
+by Luttrell. Jenny has never referred to it since she ran downstairs
+this morning crying out that the key was not in the lock. It was lying
+on the hall table all through the time when Sir Chichester was
+questioning her, and she said never a word about it. She was much too
+clever. But she saw it. I was watching her when she did see it. There
+was no concealing the swift look of satisfaction which flashed across
+her face. I haven't a doubt that she herself dropped the key where it
+was found."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor I," Luttrell agreed with a despairing vehemence, "but we can't
+prove it. Jenny Prask is going to know nothing of that key. 'No, no, no,
+no!' she is going to say, 'Ask Miss Whitworth! Miss Whitworth came back
+from Harrel. Miss Whitworth was the last person to see Mrs. Croyle
+alive. Ask her!' It is Jenny Prask or Miss Whitworth. We are up against
+that alternative all the time. And Jenny holds all the cards. For she
+knows, damn her, what happened here last night."</p>
+
+<p>"She did hold all the cards this morning," Hillyard corrected. "She
+doesn't now. Look at this key! There was a heavy dew last night. It was
+wet underfoot in the garden at Harrel."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Millie.</p>
+
+<p>"How is it then that there's no rust upon the key?" and as <a name="Page_299" id="Page_299"></a>he asked the
+question he twirled the key so that the light flashed upon stem and
+wards until they shone like silver. "No, this key was placed where you
+found it, Luttrell, not last night, but this morning after the sun had
+dried the grass."</p>
+
+<p>"But we came home by daylight," Sir Chichester interposed. "They might
+argue that Joan might have slipped downstairs before she went to bed,
+with the key in her hand."</p>
+
+<p>"But she wouldn't have chosen that spot in front of the library window.
+She might have flung it from her window, she might conceivably have
+slipped round the house and laid it under Mrs. Croyle's window. But to
+place it in front of the library to which room she returned from
+Harrel&mdash;no."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Sir Chichester doubtfully. "I see. Joan can make good that
+point. Yes, she can explain that." And Millie Splay broke in with
+impatience:</p>
+
+<p>"Explain it! Of course. But what we want is to avoid that she should
+have to explain anything, that she should be called as a witness at
+all!"</p>
+
+<p>There lay the point of trouble. To it, they came ceaselessly back,
+revolving in the circle of their vain argument. Joan had something to
+conceal, and Jenny Prask was determined that she should disclose it, and
+Jenny Prask held the means by which to force her.</p>
+
+<p>"But that's just what I am driving at," continued Martin. "We can't
+afford to be gentle here. There's no lie Jenny Prask wouldn't tell to
+force Joan into the witness box. We have got to deal relentlessly with
+Jenny Prask. A woman's voice spoke from this house over the telephone to
+London at a quarter-past twelve last night, and said that Stella was
+dead. Whose voice? Not Joan's. Joan was having supper with Luttrell at
+twelve o'clock. I saw her, others, too, saw her of course. Whose voice
+then? Stella's, as we say&mdash;as we know. But if not Stella's, as Jenny
+Prask says&mdash;why then there is only one other woman's voice which could
+have given the news."</p>
+
+<p>"Jenny's," cried Millie with a sudden upspring of hope.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Jenny Prask's."</p>
+
+<p>Millie Splay rose from her chair swiftly and rang the bell; and when
+Harper answered it, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Will you ask Jenny to come here?"<a name="Page_300" id="Page_300"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Now, my lady?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now."</p>
+
+<p>Harper went out of the room and Millie turned again to her friends.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you leave this to me?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester was inclined to demur. A few deft and pointed questions,
+very clear, such as might naturally occur to Hillyard or Luttrell, or
+Sir Chichester himself might come in usefully to put the polish, as it
+were, on Millie's spade work. Harry Luttrell smiled grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"We didn't exactly cover ourselves with glory this morning," he said. "I
+think that we had better leave it to Lady Splay."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester reluctantly consented, and they all waited anxiously for
+Jenny's appearance. That she would fight to the last no one doubted.
+Would she fight even to her own danger?</p>
+
+<p>Jenny came into the room, quietly respectful, and without a trace of
+apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>"You sent for me, my lady."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Jenny."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny closed the door and came forward to the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you still persist in your story of this morning?" Lady Splay asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my lady."</p>
+
+<p>"You did not see your mistress at all after Miss Whitworth had talked
+with her in the library?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, my lady."</p>
+
+<p>"Jenny, I advise you to be quite sure before you speak."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not to be frightened, my lady," said Jenny Prask, with a spot of
+bright colour showing suddenly in her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not trying to frighten you," Millie Splay returned. "But some
+unexpected news has reached us which, if you persist, will place you in
+an awkward position."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny Prask smiled. She turned again to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that all, my lady?"</p>
+
+<p>"You had better hear what the news is."</p>
+
+<p>"As you please, my lady."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny stopped and resumed her position.<a name="Page_301" id="Page_301"></a></p>
+
+<p>"The announcement of Mrs. Croyle's death appeared in the <i>Harpoon</i> this
+morning. The news was left at the <i>Harpoon</i> office by a chauffeur with a
+private car at midnight&mdash;Mrs. Croyle's car."</p>
+
+<p>"It never left the garage last night," said Jenny fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>"You know that for certain?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am engaged to the chauffeur," she replied with a smile; and Millie
+Splay looked sharply up.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she murmured slowly, after a pause. "Thank you, Jenny. Yes, thank
+you."</p>
+
+<p>The quiet satisfaction of Millie Splay's voice puzzled Jenny and
+troubled her security. She watched Lady Splay warily. From that moment
+her assurance faltered, and with the loss of her ease, she lost
+something, too, of her respectful manner. A note of impertinence became
+audible.</p>
+
+<p>"Very happy, I'm sure," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"The motor-car delivered the message at midnight," Lady Splay resumed,
+"and&mdash;this is what I ask your attention to, Jenny&mdash;the editor, in order
+to obtain corroboration of the message before he inserted it in his
+paper, rang up Rackham Park."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Splay paused for Jenny's comment, but none was uttered then. Jenny
+was listening with a concentration of all her thoughts. Here was a new
+fact of which she was ignorant, creeping into the affair. Whither did it
+lead? Did it strike her weapon from her hand? Upset her fine plan of
+avenging her dear mistress's most unhappy life? She would not believe
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"He rang up Rackham Park&mdash;mark the time, Jenny&mdash;at a few minutes after
+twelve," said Lady Splay impressively, and Jenny's uneasiness was
+markedly increased.</p>
+
+<p>"Fancy that!" she returned flippantly. "But I don't see, my lady, what
+that has to do with me."</p>
+
+<p>"You will see, Jenny," Lady Splay continued with gentleness. "He got an
+answer."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny turned that announcement over in her mind.</p>
+
+<p>"An answer, did he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Jenny, and an answer in a woman's voice."</p>
+
+<p>A startled cry broke from the lips of Jenny Prask. Her <a name="Page_302" id="Page_302"></a>cheeks blanched
+and horror stared suddenly from her eyes. She understood whose voice it
+must have been which answered the question from London. Before her, too,
+the pitiful vision of the lonely woman waiting for the shrill summons of
+the telephone bell to close the door of life upon her, rose clear; and
+such a flood of grief and compassion welled up in her as choked her
+utterance.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she whispered, moaning.</p>
+
+<p>"Whose voice was it, Jenny?"</p>
+
+<p>At the question Jenny rallied. All the more dearly because of that
+vision, should Joan Whitworth pay, the shining armour of her young
+beauty be pierced, her pride be humbled, her indifference turned to
+shame.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't think, my lady&mdash;unless it was Miss Whitworth's."</p>
+
+<p>"I asked you to mark the time, Jenny. A few minutes after midnight. Miss
+Whitworth was at that moment in the supper-room at Harrel. She was seen
+there. The woman's voice which answered was either Mrs. Croyle's or
+yours."</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could have been quieter or gentler than Millie Splay's
+utterance. But it was like a searing iron to the shoulders of Jenny
+Prask.</p>
+
+<p>"Mine!" The word was launched in a cry of incredulous anger. "It wasn't
+mine. Oh, as if I would do such a thing! The idea! Well, I never did!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe it was yours, Jenny," said Millie Splay.</p>
+
+<p>"Granted, I'm sure," returned Jenny Prask, tossing her head.</p>
+
+<p>"But how many people will agree with me?" Millie Splay went on.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care, my lady."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you? You will, Jenny," said Millie in a hard and biting tone
+which contrasted violently with the smoothness of her earlier questions.
+"You are trying, very maliciously, to do a great injury to a young girl
+who had never a thought of hurting your mistress, and you have only
+succeeded in placing yourself in real danger."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny tried to laugh contemptuously.</p>
+
+<p>"Me in danger! Goodness me, what next, I wonder?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just listen how your story works out, Jenny," and Millie Splay set it
+out succinctly step by step.<a name="Page_303" id="Page_303"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Croyle never took chloroform as a drug. Mrs. Croyle had no
+troubles. Mrs. Croyle was quite gay this week. Yet she was found dead
+with a glass of chloroform arranged between her pillows, so that the
+fumes must kill her&mdash;and Jenny Prask was her maid. A motor-car took the
+news of Mrs. Croyle's death to London before it had occurred and took
+the news from Rackham Park. There was only one motor-car in the
+garage&mdash;Mrs. Croyle's&mdash;and Mrs. Croyle's chauffeur was engaged to Jenny
+Prask, Mrs. Croyle's maid. London then telephones to Rackham Park for
+corroboration of the news, and a woman's voice confirms it&mdash;an hour
+before it was true. There are only two women to choose from, Mrs. Croyle
+and Jenny Prask, her maid. But since Mrs. Croyle never took drugs, and
+had no troubles or thoughts of suicide and was quite gay, it follows
+that Jenny Prask&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At this point Jenny interrupted in a voice in which fear was now very
+distinctly audible. "Why, you can't mean&mdash;Oh, my lady, you are telling
+me that&mdash;oh!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it begins to look black, Jenny, but I am not at the end," Millie
+Splay continued implacably. Jenny was not the only woman in that house
+who could fight if her darling was attacked. "You proceed to direct
+suspicion at a young girl with the statement that you never saw your
+mistress after half past nine that night or helped her to undress; and
+to complete your treachery, you take the key of Mrs. Croyle's door which
+you found inside her room this morning, and threw it where it may avert
+inquiry from you and point it against another."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny Prask flinched. The conviction with which Lady Splay announced as
+a fact the opinion of the small conclave about the table quite deceived
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"So you know about the key?" she said sullenly. And about the table ran
+a little quiver of relief. With that question, Jenny Prask had delivered
+herself into their hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny stood with a mutinous face and silent lips. Lady Splay had
+marshalled in their order the items of the case which would be made
+against her, if she persisted in her lie. How would she receive them?
+Persist, reckless of her <a name="Page_304" id="Page_304"></a>own overthrow, so long as she overthrew Joan
+Whitworth too? Or surrender angrily? The four people watched for her
+answer with anxiety; and it was given in a way which they least
+expected. For Jenny covered her face with her hands, her shoulders began
+to heave and great tears burst out between her fingers and trickled down
+the backs of her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"It's unbearable," she sobbed. "I would have given my life for
+her&mdash;that's the truth. Oh, I know that most maids serve their mistresses
+for what they can get out of them. But she was so kind to me&mdash;wherever
+she went she was thoughtful of my comfort. Oh, if I had guessed what she
+meant to do! And I might have!"</p>
+
+<p>The truth came out now. Stella Croyle had given the letter to Jenny, and
+Jenny herself had taken it to the garage and sent the chauffeur off upon
+his journey. She had no idea of what the letter contained. Stella was in
+the habit of inhaling chloroform; she carried a bottle of it in her
+dressing-case&mdash;a bottle which Jenny had taken secretly from the room and
+smashed into atoms after Doctor McKerrel's departure. She had already
+conceived her plan to involve Joan in so much suspicion that she must
+needs openly confess that she had returned from Harrel to meet Mario
+Escobar in the empty house.</p>
+
+<p>"Mario Escobar!" Millie Splay exclaimed. "It was he." She turned pale.
+Sir Charles Hardiman had spoken frankly to her of Escobar. A creature of
+the shadows&mdash;it was rumored that he lived on the blackmailing of women.
+Joan was not out of the wood then! Martin Hillyard was quick to appease
+her fears.</p>
+
+<p>"He will not trouble you," and when Jenny had gone from the room he
+added, "Mario Escobar was arrested this morning. He will be interned
+till the end of the war and deported afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Splay rose, her face bright with relief.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," she said warmly to Hillyard. "I am going up to Joan." At
+the door she stopped to add, "Now that it's over, I don't mind telling
+you that I admire Jenny Prask. Out-and-out loyalty like hers is not so
+common that we can think lightly of it."<a name="Page_305" id="Page_305"></a></p>
+
+<p>Martin Hillyard turned to Sir Chichester.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, if you will allow me, I will open my box of cigarettes."</p>
+
+<p>Harry Luttrell went back to his depot the next morning, without seeing
+Joan again. Millicent Splay wrote to him during the next week. The
+inquest had been confined within its proper limits. Jenny Prask had
+spoken the truth in the witness box, and from beginning to end there had
+been no mention of Joan or Mario Escobar. A verdict of temporary
+insanity had been returned, and Stella now lay in the village
+churchyard. Harry Luttrell drew a breath of relief and turned to his
+work. For six weeks his days and nights were full; and then came
+twenty-four hours' leave and a swift journey into Sussex. He arrived at
+Rackham Park in the dusk of the evening. By a good chance he found Joan
+with Millie Splay and Sir Chichester alone.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Chichester welcomed him with cordiality.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, I am delighted to see you. You will stay the night, of
+course."</p>
+
+<p>"No," Harry answered. "I must get back to London this evening."</p>
+
+<p>He took a cup of tea, and Sir Chichester, obtuse to the warning glances
+of his wife, plunged into an account of the events which had followed
+his departure.</p>
+
+<p>"I drew out a statement. Nothing could have been more concise, the
+coroner said. What's the matter, Millie? Why don't you leave me alone?
+Oh&mdash;ah&mdash;yes," and he hummed a little and spluttered a little, and then
+with an air of the subtlest craft he remarked, "There are those plans
+for the new pig-sties, Millie, which I am anxious to show you."</p>
+
+<p>He was man&oelig;uvred at last from the room. Harry Luttrell and Joan
+Whitworth were left standing opposite to one another in the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Joan," Harry Luttrell said, "in ten days I go back to France."</p>
+
+<p>With a queer little stumble and her hands fluttering out she went
+towards him blinded by a rush of tears.<a name="Page_306" id="Page_306"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">"But Still a Ruby Kindles in the Vine"</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Between the North and South Downs in the east of Sussex lies a wide
+tract of pleasant homely country which, during certain months of those
+years, was subject to a strange phenomenon. Listen on a still day when
+the clouds were low, or at night when the birds were all asleep, and you
+heard a faint, soft thud, so very faint that it was rather a convulsion
+of the air than an actual sound. Fancy might paint it as the tap of an
+enormous muffled drum beaten at a giant's funeral leagues and leagues
+away. It was not the roll of thunder. There was no crash, however
+distant, along the sky. It was just the one soft impact with a
+suggestion of earth-wide portentous force; and an interval followed; and
+the blurred sound again. The dwellers in those parts, who had sons and
+husbands at the war, made up no fancies to explain it. They listened
+with a sinking of the heart; for what they heard was the roar of the
+British guns at Ypres.</p>
+
+<p>Into this country Martin Hillyard drove a small motor-car on a day of
+October two years afterwards. Until this week he had not set foot in his
+country of the soft grey skies since he had left Rackham Park. He had
+hurried down to Rackham as soon as he had reported to his Chief, but not
+with the high anticipation of old days. In what spirit would he find his
+friends? How would Joan meet him? For sorrow had marked her cross upon
+the door of that house as upon so many others in the land.</p>
+
+<p>Martin had arrived before luncheon.</p>
+
+<p>"Joan is hunting to-day," said Millie, "on the other side of the county.
+She will catch a train back."</p>
+
+<p>"I can fetch her," Hillyard returned. "She is well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. She was overworked and ordered a rest. She has been with us a
+fortnight and is better. She was very grateful <a name="Page_307" id="Page_307"></a>for your letters. She
+sent you a telegram because she could not bear to write."</p>
+
+<p>Martin had understood that. He had had little news of her during the two
+years&mdash;a few lines about Harry in the crowded obituaries of the
+newspapers after the attack in 1917 on the Messines Ridge, where he met
+his death, and six months afterwards the announcement that a son was
+born.</p>
+
+<p>"Joan's distress was terrible," said Millie. "At first she refused to
+believe that Harry was killed. He was reported as 'missing' for weeks;
+and during those weeks Joan, with a confident face&mdash;whatever failings of
+the heart beset her during the night vigils none ever knew&mdash;daily sought
+for news of him at the Red Cross office at Devonshire House. There had
+been the usual rumours. One officer in one prison camp had heard of
+Harry Luttrell in another. A sergeant had seen him wounded, not
+mortally. A bullet had struck him in the foot. Joan lived upon these
+rumours. Finally proof came&mdash;proof irrefutable.</p>
+
+<p>"Joan collapsed then," said Millie Splay. "We brought her down here and
+put her to bed. She cried&mdash;oh, day and night!&mdash;she who never cried! We
+were afraid for her&mdash;afraid for the child that was coming."</p>
+
+<p>Millie Splay smiled wistfully. "She had just two weeks with Harry. They
+were married before he left for France in 'sixteen, and then had another
+week together in the January of 'seventeen at his house in the Clayford
+country. That was all." Millie Splay was silent for a few minutes. Then
+she resumed cheerfully:</p>
+
+<p>"But she is better now. She will talk of him, indeed, likes at times to
+talk of him; she is comforted by it, and the boy"&mdash;Millie's face became
+radiant&mdash;"the boy is splendid. You shall see him."</p>
+
+<p>Martin was shown the boy. He seemed to him much like any other boy of
+his age, but such remarkable things in the way of avoirdupois poundage
+and teething, serenity of temper and quickness of apprehension were
+explained to him that he felt that he must be in the presence of a
+prodigy.</p>
+
+<p>"Chichester will want to see you. He is in the library. He is Chairman
+of our Food Committee. You may have seen <a name="Page_308" id="Page_308"></a>it in the papers," said Millie
+with a smile. "He is back in the papers again, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Good. Then he won't object to me smoking a cigarette," said Martin.</p>
+
+<p>He motored over in the afternoon to the house on the other side of
+Sussex where he was to find Joan. He drove her away with him, and as
+they came to the top of a little crest in the flat country, Martin
+stopped the car and looked about him.</p>
+
+<p>"I never cease to be surprised by the beauty of this country when I come
+home to it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but I wish <i>that</i> would stop."</p>
+
+<p><i>That</i> was the dull and muffled boom of the great guns across the sea.
+They sat and listened to it in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"There it comes again!" said Joan in a quiet voice. "Oh, I do wish it
+would stop! What has happened to me, has happened to enough of us."</p>
+
+<p>As Millie had said, she was glad to talk of Harry Luttrell to his
+friends; and she talked simply and naturally, with a little note of
+wistfulness heard in all the words.</p>
+
+<p>"We were going to have a small house in London and spend our time
+between it and the old Manor at Clayford.... Harry had seen the
+house.... He was always writing that I must watch for it to come into
+the market.... It had a brass front door. There we should be. We could
+go out when we wished, and when we wished we could be snug behind our
+own brass door." Joan laughed simply and lovingly as she spoke. Hillyard
+had never seen her more beautiful than she was at this moment. If grief
+had taken from her just the high brilliancy of her beauty, it had added
+to it a most appealing tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>"After all," she said again, "Harry fulfilled himself. I love to think
+of that. The ambition of his life&mdash;young as he was he saw it realised
+and helped&mdash;more than all others, except perhaps one old Colonel&mdash;to
+realise it. And he left me a son ... to carry on.... There will be no
+stigma on the Clayfords when my boy gets his commission. Won't I tell
+him why? Won't I just tell him!"</p>
+
+<p>And the soft October evening closed in upon them as they drove.</p>
+
+
+<h2>THE END</h2>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Summons, by A.E.W. Mason
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Summons, by A.E.W. Mason
+
+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: The Summons
+
+Author: A.E.W. Mason
+
+Release Date: July 28, 2005 [EBook #16381]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SUMMONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+SUMMONS
+
+BY
+A.E.W. MASON
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE FOUR FEATHERS," "THE TURNSTILE," ETC.
+
+
+NEW YORK
+
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1920.
+BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+            TO THOSE
+     WHO SERVED WITH ME ABROAD
+      THROUGH THE FOUR YEARS
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+
+     I THE OLYMPIC GAMES                                  11
+
+    II AN ANTHEM INTERVENES                               18
+
+   III MARIO ESCOBAR                                      28
+
+    IV THE SECRET OF HARRY LUTTRELL                       35
+
+     V HILLYARD'S MESSENGER                               47
+
+    VI THE HONORARY MEMBER                                55
+
+   VII IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN                              65
+
+  VIII HILLYARD HEARS NEWS OF AN OLD FRIEND               70
+
+    IX ENTER THE HEROINE IN ANYTHING BUT WHITE SATIN      80
+
+     X THE SUMMONS                                        91
+
+    XI STELLA RUNS TO EARTH                              100
+
+   XII IN BARCELONA                                      111
+
+  XIII OLD ACQUAINTANCE                                  121
+
+   XIV "TOUCHING THE MATTER OF THOSE SHIPS"              135
+
+    XV IN A SLEEPING-CAR                                 144
+
+   XVI TRICKS OF THE TRADE                               155
+
+  XVII ON A CAPE OF SPAIN                                163
+
+ XVIII THE USES OF SCIENCE                               173
+
+   XIX UNDER GREY SKIES AGAIN                            183
+
+    XX LADY SPLAY'S PREOCCUPATIONS                       193
+
+   XXI THE MAGNOLIA FLOWERS                              208
+
+  XXII JENNY PRASK                                       219
+
+ XXIII PLANS FOR THE EVENING                             227
+
+  XXIV JENNY PRASK IS INTERESTED                         235
+
+   XXV IN A LIBRARY                                      238
+
+  XXVI A FATAL KINDNESS                                  248
+
+ XXVII THE RANK AND FILE                                 257
+
+XXVIII THE LONG SLEEP                                    263
+
+  XXIX JENNY PUTS UP HER FIGHT                           273
+
+   XXX A REVOLUTION IN SIR CHICHESTER                    287
+
+  XXXI JENNY AND MILLIE SPLAY                            298
+
+ XXXII "BUT STILL A RUBY KINDLES IN THE VINE"            306
+
+
+
+
+THE SUMMONS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE OLYMPIC GAMES
+
+
+"Luttrell! Luttrell!"
+
+Sir Charles Hardiman stood in the corridor of his steam yacht and bawled
+the name through a closed door. But no answer was returned from the
+other side of the door. He turned the handle and went in. The night was
+falling, but the cabin windows looked towards the north and the room was
+full of light and of a low and pleasant music. For the tide tinkled and
+chattered against the ship's planks and, in the gardens of the town
+across the harbour, bands were playing. The town was Stockholm in the
+year nineteen hundred and twelve, and on this afternoon, the Olympic
+games, that unfortunate effort to promote goodwill amongst the nations,
+which did little but increase rancours and disclose hatreds, had ended,
+never, it is to be hoped, to be resumed.
+
+"Luttrell," cried Hardiman again, but this time with perplexity in his
+voice. For Luttrell was there in the cabin in front of him, but sunk in
+so deep a contemplation of memories and prospects that the cabin might
+just as well have been empty. Sir Charles Hardiman touched him on the
+shoulder.
+
+"Wake up, old man!"
+
+"That's what I am doing--waking up," said Luttrell, turning without any
+start. He was seated in front of the writing-desk, a young man, as the
+world went before the war, a few months short of twenty-eight.
+
+"The launch is waiting and everybody's on deck," continued Hardiman.
+"We shall lose our table at Hasselbacken if we don't get off."
+
+Then he caught sight of a telegram lying upon the writing-table.
+
+"Oh!" and the impatience died out of his voice. "Is anything the
+matter?"
+
+Luttrell pushed the telegram towards his host.
+
+"Read it! I have got to make up my mind--and now--before we start."
+
+Hardiman read the telegram. It was addressed to Captain Harry Luttrell,
+Yacht _The Dragonfly_, Stockholm, and it was sent from Cairo by the
+Adjutant-General of the Egyptian Army.
+
+     "_I can make room for you, but you must apply immediately to
+     be transferred._"
+
+Hardiman sat down in a chair by the side of the table against the wall,
+with his eyes on Luttrell's face. He was a big, softish, overfed man of
+forty-five, and the moment he began to relax from the upright position,
+his body went with a run; he collapsed rather than sat. The little veins
+were beginning to show like tiny scarlet threads across his nose and on
+the fullness of his cheeks; his face was the colour of wine; and the
+pupils of his pale eyes were ringed with so pronounced an _arcus
+senilis_ that they commanded the attention like a disfigurement. But the
+eyes were shrewd and kindly enough as they dwelt upon the troubled face
+of his guest.
+
+"You have not answered this?" he asked.
+
+"No. But I must send an answer to-night."
+
+"You are in doubt?"
+
+"Yes. I was quite sure when I cabled to Cairo on the second day of the
+games. I was quite sure, whilst I waited for the reply. Now that the
+reply has come--I don't know."
+
+"Let me hear," said the older man. "The launch must wait, the table at
+the Hasselbacken restaurant must be assigned, if need be, to other
+customers." Hardiman had not swamped all his kindliness in good living.
+Luttrell was face to face with one of the few grave decisions which
+each man has in the course of his life to make; and Hardiman understood
+his need better than he understood it himself. His need was to formulate
+aloud the case for and against, to another person, not so much that he
+might receive advice as, that he might see for himself with truer eyes.
+
+"The one side is clear enough," said Luttrell with a trace of
+bitterness. "There was a Major I once heard of at Dover. He trained his
+company in night-marches by daylight. The men held a rope to guide them
+and were ordered to shut their eyes. The Major, you see, hated stirring
+out at night. He liked his bridge and his bottle of port. Well, give me
+another year and that's the kind of soldier I shall become--the worst
+kind--the slovenly soldier. I mean slovenly in mind, in intention. Even
+now I come, already bored, to the barrack square and watch the time to
+see if I can't catch an earlier train from Gravesend to London."
+
+"And when you do?" asked Hardiman.
+
+Luttrell nodded.
+
+"When I do," he agreed, "I get no thrill out of my escape, I assure you.
+I hate myself a little more--that's all."
+
+"Yes," said Hardiman. He was too wise a man to ask questions. He just
+sat and waited, inviting Luttrell to spread out his troubles by his very
+quietude.
+
+"Then there are these games," Luttrell cried in a swift exasperation,
+"--these damned games! From the first day when the Finns marched out
+with their national flag and the Russians threatened to withdraw if they
+did it again----" he broke off suddenly. "Of course you know soldiers
+have believed that trouble's coming. I used to doubt, but by God I am
+sure of it now. Just a froth of fine words at the opening and
+afterwards--honest rivalry and let the best man win? Not a bit of it!
+Team-running--a vile business--the nations parked together in different
+sections of the Stadium like enemies--and ill-will running here and
+there like an infection! Oh, there's trouble coming, and if I don't go I
+shan't be fit for it. There, that's the truth."
+
+"The whole truth and nothing but the truth?" Hardiman asked with a
+smile. He leaned across the table and drew towards him a case of
+telegraph forms. But whilst he was drawing them towards him, Luttrell
+spoke again.
+
+"Nothing but the truth--_yes_," he said. He was speaking shyly,
+uncomfortably, and he stopped abruptly.
+
+"The whole truth--no." Hardiman added slowly, and gently. He wanted the
+complete story from preface to conclusion, but he was not to get it. He
+received no answer of any kind for a considerable number of moments and
+Luttrell only broke the silence in the end, to declare definitely,
+
+"That, at all events, is all I have to say."
+
+Sir Charles nodded and drew the case of forms close to him. There was
+something more then. There always is something more, which isn't told,
+he reflected, and the worst of it is, the something more which isn't
+told is always the real reason. Men go to the confessional with a
+reservation; the secret chamber where they keep their sacred vessels,
+their real truths and inspirations, as also their most scarlet
+sins--that shall be opened to no one after early youth is past unless it
+be--rarely--to one woman. There was another reason at work in Harry
+Luttrell, but Sir Charles Hardiman was never to know it. With a shrug of
+his shoulders he took a pencil from his pocket, filled up one of the
+forms and handed it to Luttrell.
+
+"That's what I should reply."
+
+He had written:
+
+     "_I am travelling to London to-morrow to apply for
+     transfer._--LUTTRELL."
+
+Luttrell read the telegram with surprise. It was not the answer which he
+had expected from the victim of the flesh-pots in front of him.
+
+"You advise that?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Yes. My dear Luttrell, as you know, you are a guest very welcome to me.
+But you don't belong. We--Maud Carstairs, Tony Marsh and the rest of
+us--even Mario Escobar--we are the Come-to-nothings. We are the people
+of the stage door, we grow fat in restaurants. From three to seven, you
+may find us in the card-rooms of our clubs--we are jolly fine
+fellows--and no good. You don't belong, and should get out while you
+can."
+
+Luttrell moved uncomfortably in his chair.
+
+"That's all very well. But there's another side to the question," he
+said, and from the deck above a woman's voice called clearly down the
+stairway.
+
+"Aren't you two coming?"
+
+Both men looked towards the door.
+
+"That side," said Hardiman.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Hardiman nodded his head.
+
+"Stella Croyle doesn't belong either," he said. "But she kicked over the
+traces. She flung out of the rank and file. Oh, I know Croyle was a
+selfish, dull beast and her footprints in her flight from him were
+littered with excuses. I am not considering the injustice of the world.
+I am looking at the cruel facts, right in the face of them, as you have
+got to do, my young friend. Here Stella Croyle is--with us--and she
+can't get away. You can."
+
+Luttrell was not satisfied. His grey eyes and thin, clean features were
+troubled like those of a man in physical pain.
+
+"You don't know the strange, queer tie between Stella Croyle and me," he
+said. "And I can't tell you it."
+
+Hardiman grew anxious. Luttrell had the look of a man overtrained, and
+it was worry which had overtrained him. His face was a trifle too
+delicate, perhaps, to go with those remorseless sharp decisions which
+must be made by the men who win careers.
+
+"I know that you can't go through the world without hurting people,"
+cried Hardiman. "Neither you nor any one else, except the limpets. And
+you won't escape hurting Stella Croyle, by abandoning your chances. Your
+love-affair will end--all of that kind do. And yours will end in a
+bitter, irretrievable quarrel after you have ruined yourself, and
+because you have ruined yourself. You are already on the rack--make no
+doubt about it. Oh, I have seen you twitch and jump with irritation--how
+many times on this yacht!--for trumpery, little, unimportant things she
+has said and done, which you would never have noticed six months ago;
+or only noticed to smile at with a pleased indulgence."
+
+Luttrell's face coloured. "Why, that's true enough," he said. He was
+remembering the afternoon a week ago, when the yacht steamed between the
+green islands with their bathing stations and chalets, over a tranquil,
+sunlit sea of the deepest blue. Rounding a wooded corner towards sunset
+she came suddenly upon the bridges and the palace and the gardens of
+Stockholm. The women of the party were in the saloon. A rush was made
+towards it. They were summoned to this first wonderful view of the city
+of beauty. Would they come? No! Stella Croyle was in the middle of a
+game of Russian patience. She could play that game any day, every day,
+all day. This exquisite vision was vouchsafed to her but the once, and
+she had neglected it with the others. She had not troubled, even to move
+so far as the saloon door. For she had not finished her game.
+
+Luttrell recalled his feeling of scorn; the scorn had grown into
+indignation; in the end he had made a grievance of her indifference to
+this first view of the city of Stockholm; a foolish, exasperating
+grievance, which would rankle, which would not be buried, which sprang
+to fresh life at each fresh sight of her. Yes, of a certainty, sooner or
+later Stella Croyle and he would quarrel, so bitterly that all the
+king's horses and all the king's men could never bring them again
+together; and over some utterly unimportant matter like the first view
+of Stockholm.
+
+"Youth has many privileges over age," continued Hardiman, "but none
+greater than the vision, the half-interpreted recurring vision of wider
+spaces and greater things, towards which you sail on the wind of a great
+emotion. Sooner or later, a man loses that vision and then only knows
+his loss. Stay here, and you'll lose it before your time."
+
+Luttrell looked curiously at his companion, wondering what manner of man
+he had been in his twenties. Hardiman answered the look with a laugh.
+"Oh, I, too, had my ambitions once."
+
+Luttrell folded the cablegram which Hardiman had written out and placed
+it in the breast pocket of his dinner-jacket.
+
+"I will talk to Stella to-night at dinner. Then, if I decide to send it,
+I can send it from the hotel over there at the landing-steps before we
+return to the yacht."
+
+Sir Charles Hardiman rose cumbrously with a shrug of his shoulders. He
+had done his best, but since Luttrell would talk the question over with
+Stella Croyle, shoulder to shoulder with her amongst the lights and
+music, the perfume of her hair in his nostrils and the pleading of her
+eyes within his sight--he, Charles Hardiman, might as well have held his
+tongue.
+
+So very likely it would have been. But when great matters are ripe for
+decisions one way or the other, the little accident as often as not
+decides. There was a hurrying of light feet in the corridor outside, a
+swift, peremptory knocking upon the door. The same woman's voice called
+in rather a shrill note through the panels! "Harry! Why don't you come?
+We are waiting for you."
+
+And in the sound of the voice there was not merely impatience, but a
+note of ownership--very clear and definite; and hearing it Luttrell
+hardened. He stood up straight. He had the aspect of a man in revolt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+AN ANTHEM INTERVENES
+
+
+Upon the entrance of Hardiman's party a wrinkle was smoothed away from
+the forehead of a _maitre d'hotel_.
+
+"So! You have come!" he cried. "I began to despair."
+
+"You have kept my table?" Sir Charles insisted.
+
+"Yes, but with what an effort of diplomacy!"; and the _maitre d'hotel_
+led his guests to the very edge of the great balcony. Here the table was
+set endwise to the balustrade, commanding the crowded visitors, yet
+taking the coolness of the night. Hardiman was contented with his choice
+of its position. But when he saw his guests reading the cards which
+assigned them their places, he was not so contented with the order of
+their seating.
+
+"If I had known an hour before!" he said to himself, and the astounding
+idea crept into his mind that perhaps it was, after all, a waste to
+spend so much time on the disposition of a dinner-table and the ordering
+of food.
+
+However, the harm was done now. There was Luttrell already seated at the
+end against the balustrade. He had the noise of a Babel of tongues and
+the glitter of a thousand lights upon his left hand; upon his right, the
+stars burning bright in a cool gloom of deepest purple, and far below
+the riding-lamps of the yachts tossing on the water like yellow flowers
+in a garden; whilst next to him, midway between the fragrant darkness
+and the hard glitter, revealing, as she always did, a kinship with each
+of them, sat Stella Croyle.
+
+"I should have separated them," Hardiman reflected uneasily as he raised
+and drank his cocktail. "But how the deuce could I without making
+everybody stare? This party wasn't got up to separate people. All the
+same----"
+
+The hushed wonder of a summer night. The gaiety of a bright thronged
+restaurant! In either setting Stella Croyle was a formidable
+antagonist. But combine the settings and she took to herself, at once by
+nature, the seduction of both!
+
+"Poor devil, he won't have a dog's chance!" the baronet concluded; and
+he watched approvingly what appeared to him to be Luttrell's endeavour
+to avoid joining battle on this unfavourable field. He could only trust
+feebly in that and in the strength of the "something else," the secret
+reason he was never to know.
+
+It was about half-way through dinner when Stella Croyle, who had
+directed many a furtive, anxious glance to the averted face of her
+companion, attacked directly.
+
+"What is the matter with you to-night?" she asked, interrupting him in
+the midst of a rattle of futilities. "Why should you recite to me from
+the guide-book about the University of Upsala?"
+
+"It appears to be most interesting, and quaint," replied Luttrell
+hastily.
+
+"Then we might hire a motor-car and run out there to luncheon.
+To-morrow! Just you and I."
+
+"No." Harry Luttrell exclaimed suddenly and Stella Croyle drew back. Her
+face clouded. She had won the first round, but victory brought her no
+ease. She knew now from the explosion of his "No" and the swift alarm
+upon his face that something threatened her.
+
+"You must tell me what has happened," she cried. "You must! Oh, you turn
+away from me!"
+
+From the dark steep garden at their feet rose a clamour of cheers--to
+Luttrell an intervention of Providence.
+
+"Listen," he said.
+
+Here and there a man or a woman rose at the dinner tables and looked
+down. Upwards along a glimmering riband of path, a group of students
+bore one of their number shoulder-high. Luttrell leaned over the
+balustrade. The group below halted; speeches were made; cheers broke out
+anew.
+
+"It is the Swedish javelin-thrower. He won the championship of the world
+this afternoon."
+
+"Did he?" asked Stella Croyle in a soft voice at his side. "Does he
+throw javelins as well as you? You wound me every time."
+
+Luttrell raised his head. It was not fear of defeat which had kept his
+looks averted from Stella's dark and starry eyes. No thought of lists
+set and a contest to be fought out had even entered his head. But he did
+fear to see those eyes glisten with tears--for she so seldom shed them!
+And even more than the evidence of her pain he feared the dreadful
+submission with which women in the end receive the stroke of fortune. He
+had to meet her gaze now, however.
+
+"I put off telling you," he began lamely.
+
+"So that this evening of mine with you might not be spoilt," she
+returned. "But, my dear, my evening was already spoilt before the launch
+left the yacht gangway. I am not so blind."
+
+Stella Croyle was at this date twenty-six years old; and it was
+difficult to picture her any older. Partly because of her vivid
+colouring and because she was abrim with life; partly because in her
+straightness of limb and the clear treble of her voice, she was boyish.
+"What a pretty boy she would make!" was the first thought until you
+noticed the slim delicacy of her hands and feet, the burnish of gold on
+the dark wealth of her hair, the fine chiselling of brow and nose and
+chin. Then it was seen that she was all woman. She was tall and yet
+never looked tall. It seemed that you could pick her up with a finger,
+but try and she warned you of the weakness of your arm. She was a
+baffling person. She ran and walked with the joyous insolence of
+eighteen, yet at any moment some veil might be rolled up in her eyes and
+face to show you for one tragic instant a Lady of Sorrows.
+
+She leaned towards Luttrell, and as Hardiman had foreseen the perfume of
+her hair stormed his senses.
+
+"Tell me!" she breathed, and Luttrell, with his arguments and reasons
+cut and dried and conned over pat for delivery, began nevertheless to
+babble. There were the Olympic Games. She herself must have seen how
+they were fatal to their own purpose. Troubles were coming--battles
+behind the troubles. All soldiers knew! They knew this too--the phrase
+of a young Lieutenant-Colonel lecturing at the Staff College.
+
+"Battles are not won either by sheer force or pure right, but by the one
+or the other of those two Powers which has Discipline as its Chief of
+Staff."
+
+He was implying neither very tactfully nor clearly that he was on the
+way to dwindling into an undisciplined soldier. But it did not matter in
+the least. For Stella Croyle was not listening. All this was totally
+unimportant. Men always went about and about when they had difficult
+things to say to women. Her eyes never left his face and she would know
+surely enough when those words were rising to his lips which it was
+necessary that she should mark and understand. Meanwhile her
+perplexities and fears grew.
+
+"Of course it can't be _that_," she assured herself again and again, but
+with a dreadful catch at her heart. "Oh no, it can't be _that_."
+
+"That," was the separation which some day or another--after a long and
+wondrous period--both were agreed, must come. But, consoling herself
+with the thought that she would be prepared, she had always set the day
+on so distant an horizon that it had no terrors for her. Now it suddenly
+dismayed her, a terror close at hand. Here on this crowded balcony
+joyous with lights and gay voices and invaded by all the subtle
+invitations of a summer night above the water! Oh no, it was not
+possible!
+
+Luttrell put his hand to his breast pocket and Stella watched and
+listened now with all her soul. More than once during dinner she had
+seen him touch that pocket in an abstraction. He drew from it two
+papers, one the cablegram which he had received from Cairo, the other
+Hardiman's reply. He handed her the first of the two.
+
+"This reached me this morning."
+
+Stella Croyle studied the paper with her heart in her mouth. But the
+letters would not be still.
+
+"Oh, what does it mean?" she cried.
+
+"It offers me service abroad."
+
+Stella's face flushed and turned white. She bent her head over the
+cablegram.
+
+"At Cairo," she said, with a little gasp of relief. After all Cairo was
+not so far. A week, and one was at Cairo.
+
+"Further south, in the Sudan--Heaven knows where!"
+
+"Too far then?" she suggested. "Too far."
+
+"For you? Yes! Too far," Luttrell replied.
+
+Stella lifted a tragic face towards him; and though he winced he met her
+eyes.
+
+"But you are not going! You can't go!"
+
+Luttrell handed to her the second paper.
+
+"You never wrote this," she said very quickly.
+
+"Yet it is what I would have written."
+
+Stella Croyle shot one swift glance at Sir Charles Hardiman. She had
+recognised his handwriting. Hardiman was in Luttrell's cabin while the
+rest of the party waited on the deck and the launch throbbed at the
+gangway. If a woman's glance had power, he would have been stricken that
+instant. But she wasted no more than a glance upon the worldly-wiseman
+at the head of their table. She turned again to the first telegram.
+
+"This is an answer, this cablegram from Cairo?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"To a cable of yours?"
+
+"Sent three days ago."
+
+The answers she received were clear, unhesitating. It was a voice from a
+rock speaking! So utterly mistaken was she; and so completely Luttrell
+bent every nerve to the service of shortening the hour of misery. The
+appalling moment was then actually upon her. She had foreseen it--so she
+thought. But it caught her nevertheless unprepared as death catches a
+sinner on his bed.
+
+She stared at the telegrams--not reading them. His arguments and
+prefaces--the Olympic Games, Discipline and the rest of it--what she had
+caught of them, she blew away as so much froth. She dived to the
+personal reason.
+
+"You are tired of me."
+
+"No," Luttrell answered hotly. "That's not true--not even a half-truth.
+If I were tired of you, it would all be so easy, so brutally easy."
+
+"But you are!" Her voice rose shrill in its violence. "You know you are
+but you are too much of a coward to say so--oh, like all men!" and as
+Luttrell turned to her a face startled by her outcry and uttered a
+remonstrant "Hush!", she continued bitterly, "What do I care if they all
+hear? I am impossible! You know that, don't you? I am quite impossible!
+I have gone my own way. I am one of the people you hate--one of the
+Undisciplined."
+
+Stella Croyle hardly knew in her passion what she was saying, and
+Luttrell could only wait in silence for the storm to pass. It passed
+with a quickness which caught him at loss; so quickly she swept from
+mood to mood.
+
+He heard her voice at his ear, remorseful and most appealing. "Oh, Wub,
+what have I done that you should treat me so?"
+
+Sir Charles Hardiman, watchful of the duel, guessed from the movement of
+her lips what she was saying.
+
+"These nicknames are the very devil," he exclaimed, apparently about
+nothing, to his startled neighbour. "The first thing a woman does when
+she's fond of a man is to give him some ridiculous name, which doesn't
+belong to him. She worries her wits trying this one and that one, as a
+tailor tries on you a suit of clothes, and when she has got your fit,
+she uses it--publicly. So others use it too and so it no longer contents
+her. Then she invents a variation, a nickname within a nickname, and
+that she keeps to herself, for her own private use. That's the nickname
+I am referring to, my dear, when I say it's the very devil."
+
+The lady to whom he spoke smiled vaguely and surmised that he might be
+very right. For herself, she said, she had invented no nicknames; which
+was to assert that she had never been in love. For the practice seems
+invariable, and probably Dido in times long since gone by had one for
+AEneas, and Virgil knew all about it. But since she was a woman, it would
+be a name at once so absurd and so intimate that it would never have
+gone with the dignified rhythm of the hexameter. "Wobbles" had been the
+first name which Stella Croyle had invented for Harry Luttrell, though
+by what devious process she had lighted upon it, psychology could not
+have discovered. "Wub" was the nickname within the nickname, the
+cherished sign that the two of them lived apart in a little close-hedged
+garden of their own. Luttrell's eyes were upon her as she spoke it. And
+she spoke it with a curious little wistful pursing of soft lips so that
+it came to him winged with the memory of all her kisses.
+
+"Oh, Wub, must you leave me?" she pleaded in a breaking whisper. "What
+will be left to me if you do?"
+
+Luttrell dropped his forehead in his hands. All the character which he
+had in those untried days bade him harden himself against the appeal.
+But his resolution was melting like metal in a furnace. He tried to
+realise the truth which Hardiman had uttered three or four hours before.
+There would be sooner or later a quarrel, a humiliating, hateful quarrel
+over some miserable trifle which neither Stella nor he would ever
+afterwards forgive. But her voice was breaking with a sob in a whisper
+at his ear and how could he look forward so far?
+
+"Stella!"
+
+He turned impulsively towards her.
+
+"The game's up," reflected Sir Charles Hardiman at the end of the table.
+"Calypso wins--no, by God!"
+
+For before Luttrell could speak another word, the music crashed and all
+that assemblage was on its feet. The orchestra was playing the Swedish
+National Anthem; and upon that, one after the other, followed the hymns
+of the peoples who had taken part in the Games. In turn the
+representatives of each people stood and resumed their seat, the music
+underlining their individuality and parking them in sections, even as
+rivalry had parked them in the Stadium. The majestic anthem of Russia,
+the paean of the Marseillaise, the livelier march of Italy, the song of
+Germany, the Star-Spangled Banner; and long before the band struck into
+the solemn rhythm of "God save the King," Stella Croyle at all events
+knew that Calypso had lost. For she saw a flame illumine Luttrell's face
+and transfigure him. He had slipped out of her reach. The doubts and
+perplexities which had so troubled him during the last months were now
+resolved. As he listened to the Hymns, he saw as in a vision the nations
+advancing abreast over a vast plain like battalions in line with their
+intervals for manoeuvring spaced out between them. In front of each
+nation rolled a grey vapour, which gradually took shape before
+Luttrell's eyes; and there was made visible to him a shadowy legion of
+men marching in the van, the men who had left ease and women and all the
+grace of life behind them and had gone out to die in the harness of
+service--one in this, one in that corner of the untravelled world, and
+now all reunited in a strong fellowship. The vision remained with him
+after the last strains of music had died away, and faded slowly. He
+waked to the lights and clamour of the restaurant and turned to Stella
+Croyle.
+
+"Stella," he began, and----
+
+"I know," she interrupted in a small voice. She was sitting with her
+head downcast and her hands clenched upon her lap so tightly that the
+skin was white about the points where the tips of her fingers pressed.
+"Perhaps I shan't suffer so very much."
+
+She was careful not to lift her head, and when a few moments later their
+host gave the signal to move, she rose quickly and turned her back on
+Luttrell.
+
+The party motored back through the Dyurgarden, past the glimmering tents
+where the Boy-Scouts were encamped to the great hotel by the
+landing-stage. There a wait of a few minutes took place whilst Hardiman
+settled for the cars, and during that wait Luttrell disappeared. He
+rejoined his friends at the harbour steps and when the launch put off
+towards the _Dragonfly_, he found himself side by side with Stella
+Croyle. In the darkness she relaxed her guard. Luttrell saw the great
+tears glisten on her dark eyelashes and fall down her cheeks.
+
+"I am sorry, Stella," he whispered, dropping his hand on hers, and she
+clutched it and let it go.
+
+"Perhaps I shan't suffer so very much," she repeated and the next moment
+the gangway light shone down upon their faces. Stella dropped her head
+and furtively dried her cheeks.
+
+"I want to go up last," she said, "and just behind you, so that no one
+shall see what a little fool I am making of myself."
+
+But by some subtle understanding already it was felt amongst that group
+of people, quick to perceive troubles of the emotions, that something
+was amiss between the pair. They were left alone upon the deck. Stella
+by chance looking southwards to the starlit gloom, Luttrell to the
+north, where still the daylight played in blue and palest green and the
+delicate changing fires of the opal.
+
+"What will you do, Stella?" Luttrell asked gently.
+
+"I think I will go and live in the country," she replied.
+
+"It will be lonely, child."
+
+"There will be ghosts, my dear, to keep me company," she answered with a
+wan smile. "People like me always have to be a good deal alone, anyway.
+I shall be, of course, lonelier, now that I have no one to play with,"
+and the smile vanished from her lips. She flung up her face towards the
+skies, letting her grief have its way upon that empty deck.
+
+"So we shall never be together--just you and I--alone again," she said,
+forcing herself to realise that unintelligible thing. Her thoughts ran
+back over the year--the year of their alliance--and she saw all of its
+events flickering vividly before her, as they say drowning people do.
+"Oh, Wub, what a cruel mistake you made when you went out of your way to
+be kind," she cried, with the tears streaming down her face; and
+Luttrell winced.
+
+"Yes, that's true," he admitted remorsefully. "I never dreamed what
+would come of it."
+
+"You should have left me alone."
+
+Amongst the flickering pictures of the year the first was the clearest.
+A great railway station in the West of England, a train drawn up at the
+departure platform, herself with a veil drawn close over her face, half
+running, half walking in a pitiful anguish towards the train; and then a
+man at her elbow. Harry Luttrell.
+
+"I have reserved a compartment. I suspected that things were not going
+to turn out well. I thought the long journey to London alone would be
+terrible. If things had turned out right, you would not have seen me."
+
+She had let him place her in a carriage, look after her wants as if she
+had been a child, hold her in his arms, tend her with the magnificent
+sympathy of his silence. That had been the real beginning. Stella had
+known him as the merest of friends before. She had met him here and
+there at a supper party, at a dancing club, at some Bohemian country
+house; and then suddenly he had guessed what others had not, and
+foolishly had gone out of his way to be kind.
+
+"She would have died if I hadn't travelled with her," Luttrell argued
+silently. "She would have thrown herself out of the carriage, or when
+she reached home she would have----" and his argument stopped, and he
+glanced at her uneasily.
+
+Undisciplined, was the epithet she had used of herself. You never knew
+what crazy thing she might do. There was daintiness but no order in her
+life; the only law she knew was given to her by a fastidious taste.
+
+"Of course, Wub, I have always known that you never cared for me as I do
+for you. So it was bound to end some time." She caught his hand to her
+heart for a second, and then, dropping it, ran from his side.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+MARIO ESCOBAR
+
+
+Late in the autumn of the following year a new play, written by Martin
+Hillyard and named "The Dark Tower," was produced at the Rubicon Theatre
+in Panton Street, London. It was Hillyard's second play. His first,
+produced in April of the same year, had just managed to limp into July;
+and that small world which concerns itself with the individualities of
+playwrights was speculating with its usual divergencies upon Hillyard's
+future development.
+
+"The Dark Tower" was a play of modern days, built upon the ancient
+passions. The first act was played to a hushed house, and while the
+applause which greeted the fall of the curtain was still rattling about
+the walls of the theatre, Sir Charles Hardiman hoisted himself heavily
+out of his stall and made his way to a box on the first tier, which he
+entered without knocking.
+
+There was but one person in the box, a young man hidden behind a side
+curtain. Hardiman let himself collapse into a chair by the side of the
+young man.
+
+"Seems all right," he said. "You have a story to tell. It's clear in
+every word, too, that you know where you are going. That makes people
+comfortable and inclined to go along with you."
+
+Hillyard turned with a smile.
+
+"We haven't come to the water jump yet," he said.
+
+Hardiman remained in the box during the second act. He watched the stage
+for a while, took note of the laughter which welcomed this or that line,
+and of the silence which suddenly enclosed this or that scene from the
+rest of the play; and finally, with a certain surprise, and a certain
+amusement he fixed his attention upon the play's author. The act ended
+in laughter and Hillyard leaned back, and himself laughed, without pose
+or affectation, as heartily as any one in the theatre.
+
+"You beat me altogether, my young friend," said Hardiman. "You ought to
+be walking up and down the pavement outside in the classical state of
+agitation. But you appear to be enjoying the play, as if you never had
+seen it before."
+
+"And I haven't," Hillyard returned. "This isn't quite the play which
+we have been learning and rehearsing during the last month. Here's
+the audience at work, adding a point there, discovering an
+interpretation--yes, actually an interpretation--there, bringing into
+importance one scene, slipping over the next which we thought more
+important--altering it, in fact. Of course," and he returned to his
+earlier metaphor, "I know the big fences over which we may come a
+cropper. I can see them ahead before we come up to them and know the
+danger. We are over two of them, by the way. But on the whole I am more
+interested than nervous. It's the first time I have ever been to a first
+night, you see."
+
+"Well, upon my word," cried Hardiman, "you are the coolest hand at it I
+ever saw." But he could have taken back his words the next moment.
+
+In spite of Hillyard's aloof and disinterested air, the night had
+brought its excitement and in a strength of which he himself was
+unaware. It lifted now the veils behind which a man will hide his secret
+thoughts! He turned swiftly to Hardiman with a boyish light upon his
+face.
+
+"Oh, I am not in doubt of what to-night means to me! Not for a moment.
+If it's failure, it means that I begin again to-morrow on something
+else; and again after that, and again after that, until success does
+come. Playwriting is my profession, and failures are a necessary part of
+it--just as much a part as the successes. But even if the great success
+were to come now, it wouldn't mean quite so much to me perhaps as it
+might to other people." He paused, and a smile broke upon his face. "I
+live expecting a messenger. There! That's my secret delivered over to
+you under the excitement of a first night."
+
+And as he spoke the colour mounted into his face. He turned away in
+confusion. His play was nearer at his heart than he had thought; the
+enthusiasm which seemed to be greeting it had stirred him unwisely.
+
+"Tell me," he said hurriedly, "who all these people in the stalls are."
+
+He peeped down between the edge of the curtain and the side wall of the
+box whilst Hardiman stood up behind him.
+
+"Yes, I will be your man from Cook's," said Hardiman genially.
+
+His heart warmed to the young man both on account of his outburst and of
+the shame which had followed upon the heels of it. Few beliefs had
+survived in Hardiman after forty years of wandering up and down the
+flowery places of the earth; but one--he had lectured Harry Luttrell
+upon it on a night at Stockholm--continually gained strength in him.
+Youth must beget visions and man must preserve them if great work were
+to be done; and so easily the visions lost their splendour and their
+inspiration. Of all the ways of tarnishing the vision, perhaps talk was
+the most murderous. Hillyard possessed them. Hillyard was ashamed that
+he had spoken of them. Therefore he had some chance of retaining them.
+
+"Yes, I will show you the celebrities." He pointed out the leading
+critics and the blue stockings of the day. His eyes roamed over the
+stalls. "Do you see the man with the broad face and the short whiskers
+in the fourth row? The man who looks just a little too like a country
+gentleman to be one? That is Sir Chichester Splay. He made a fortune in
+a murky town of Lancashire, and, thirsting for colour, came up to London
+determined to back a musical comedy. That is the way the craving for
+colour takes them in the North. His wish was gratified. He backed 'The
+Patchouli Girl,' and in that shining garden he got stung. He is now what
+they call an amateur. No first night is complete without him. He is the
+half-guinea Mecaenas of our days."
+
+Hillyard looked down at Sir Chichester Splay and smiled at his
+companion's description.
+
+"You will meet him to-night at supper, and if your play is a
+success--not otherwise--you will stay with him in Sussex."
+
+"No!" cried Hillyard; but Sir Charles was relentless in his insistence.
+
+"You will. His wife will see to that. Who the pretty girl beside him is
+I do not know. But the more or less young man on the other side of her,
+talking to her with an air of intimacy a little excessive in a public
+place, is Mario Escobar. He is a Spaniard, and has the skin-deep
+politeness of his race. He is engaged in some sort of business,
+frequents some sort of society into which he is invited by the women,
+and he is not very popular amongst men. He belongs, however, to some
+sort of club. That is all I know about him. One would think he had
+guessed we were speaking of him," Hardiman added.
+
+For at that moment Mario Escobar raised his dark, sleek head, and his
+big, soft eyes--the eyes of a beautiful woman--looked upwards to the
+box. It seemed to Hillyard for a moment that they actually exchanged a
+glance, though he himself was out of sight behind the curtain, so direct
+was Escobar's gaze. It was, however, merely the emptiness of the box
+which had drawn the Spaniard's attention. He was neatly groomed, of a
+slight figure, tall, and with his eyes, his thin olive face, his small
+black moustache and clean-cut jaw he made without doubt an effective and
+arresting figure.
+
+"Now turn your head," said Hardiman, "the other way, and notice the big,
+fair man in the back row of the stalls. He is a rival manager, and he is
+explaining in a voice loud enough to be heard by the first rows of the
+pit, the precise age of your leading lady. Now look down! There is a
+young girl flitting about the stalls. She is an actress, not very
+successful. But to-night she is as busy as a bee. She is crabbing your
+play. Yesterday her opinion on the subject was of no value, and it will
+be again of no value to-morrow. But as one of the limited audience on a
+first night, she can do just a tiny bit of harm. But don't hold it
+against her, Hillyard! She has no feeling against you. This is her
+little moment of importance."
+
+Sir Charles rattled on through the interval--all good nature with just a
+slice of lemon--and it had happened that he had pointed out one who was
+to be the instrument of great trouble for Hillyard and a few others,
+with whom this story is concerned.
+
+Hillyard interrupted Hardiman.
+
+"Who is the girl at the end of the sixth row, who seems to have stepped
+down from a china group on a mantelpiece?"
+
+"That one?" said Hardiman, and all the raillery faded from his face.
+"That is Mrs. Croyle. You will meet her to-night at my supper party." He
+hesitated as to what further he should say. "You might do worse than be
+a friend to her. She is not, I am afraid, very happy."
+
+Hillyard was surprised at the sudden gentleness of his companion's
+voice, and looked quickly towards him. Hardiman answered the look as he
+got heavily up from his chair.
+
+"I sometimes fear that I have some responsibility for her unhappiness.
+But there are things one cannot help."
+
+The light in the auditorium went down while Hardiman was leaving the
+box, and the curtain rose on the third act of "The Dark Tower." Of that
+play, however, you may read in the files of the various newspapers, if
+you will. This story is concerned with Martin Hillyard, not his work. It
+is sufficient to echo the words of Sir Chichester Splay when Hillyard
+was introduced to him an hour and a half later in the private
+supper-room at the Semiramis Hotel.
+
+"A good play, Mr. Hillyard. Not a great play, of course, but quite a
+good play," said Sir Chichester with just the necessary patronage to
+tickle Hillyard to an appreciation of Hardiman's phrases--a ten and
+six-penny Mecaenas.
+
+"I am grateful that it has earned your good opinion," he replied.
+
+"Oh, not at all!" cried Sir Chichester, and catching a lady who passed
+by the arm. "Stella, Mr. Hillyard should know you. This is Mrs. Croyle.
+I hope you will meet him some day at Rackham Park."
+
+Sir Chichester trotted away to greet the manager of the _Daily Harpoon_,
+who was at that moment shaking hands with Hardiman.
+
+"I congratulate you," said Stella Croyle, as she gave him her hand.
+
+"Thank you. So you know Sir Chichester well?"
+
+"His wife has been a friend of mine for a long time." Her eyes twinkled.
+"I wonder you have not been seen at his house."
+
+"Oh, I am only just hatched out," said Hillyard. They both laughed. "I
+hardly know a soul here except my leading lady and our host."
+
+They were summoned to the supper table. Hillyard found himself with the
+leading lady on one side of him and Stella Croyle opposite, and Mario
+Escobar a couple of seats away. Supper was half through when Escobar
+leaned suddenly forward.
+
+"Mr. Hillyard, I have seen you before, somewhere and not in England."
+
+"That is possible."
+
+"In Spain?"
+
+"Yes," answered Hillyard.
+
+A certain curiosity in Escobar's voice, a certain reticence in
+Hillyard's, arrested the attention of those about.
+
+"Let me see!" continued Escobar. "It was in the Opera House at Barcelona
+on the first performance of Manon Lescaut."
+
+"No," replied Hillyard.
+
+"Then--I know--it was under the palm-trees in front of the sea at
+Alicante one night."
+
+Hillyard nodded.
+
+"That may well have been. I was up and down the south coast of Spain for
+three years. Eighteen months of it were spent at Alicante."
+
+He turned to his neighbour, but Escobar persisted.
+
+"It was for your health?"
+
+Hillyard did not answer directly.
+
+"My lungs have always been my trouble," he said.
+
+Hardiman bent towards Stella Croyle.
+
+"I think our new friend has had a curious life, Stella. He should
+interest you."
+
+Stella Croyle replied with a shrewd look towards the Spaniard.
+
+"At present he is interesting Escobar. One would say Escobar was
+suspicious lest Mr. Hillyard should know too much of him."
+
+Sir Charles laughed.
+
+"The Mario Escobars are always suspicious. Let us see!" he said in a low
+voice, and leaning across the table, he shot a question sharply at the
+Spaniard.
+
+"And what were you doing under the palm trees, in front of the sea at
+Alicante, Senor Escobar?"
+
+Mario Escobar sat back. The challenge had startled him. He reflected,
+and as the recollection came he turned slowly very white.
+
+"I?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," said Hardiman, leaning forward. But it was not at Hardiman that
+Escobar was looking. His eyes were fixed warily on Hillyard. He answered
+the question warily too, fragment by fragment, ready to stop, ready to
+take the words back, if a sign of recollection kindled in Hillyard's
+face.
+
+"It is what we should call here the esplanade--the sea and harbour on
+one side, the houses on the other. The band plays under the palms in
+front of the Casino on summer nights. I----" and he took the last words
+at a rush--"I was sitting in a lounge chair in front of the club, when I
+saw Mr. Hillyard pass. An Englishman is noticeable in Alicante. There
+are so few of them."
+
+"Yes," Hillyard agreed. No recollection was stirred in him by Escobar's
+description. Escobar turned away, but he could not quite conceal the
+relief he felt.
+
+"Yes, my friend," said Hardiman to himself, "you have taken your
+water-jump too. And you're uncommonly glad that you haven't come a
+cropper."
+
+After that noticeable moment of tension, the talk swept on into
+sprightlier channels.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE SECRET OF HARRY LUTTRELL
+
+
+"Shall I take you home?"
+
+"Oh, will you?" cried Stella Croyle, with a little burst of pleasure.
+After all, Hillyard was the great man of the evening, and that he should
+consider her out of all that company was pleasant. "I will get my
+cloak."
+
+Throughout the supper-party Hillyard had been at a loss to discover in
+Stella Croyle the woman whom Hardiman had led him to expect. Her spirits
+were high, but unforced. She chattered away with more gaiety than wit,
+like the rest of Hardiman's guests, but the gaiety was apt to the
+occasion. She had the gift of a clear and musical laugh, and her small
+delicate face would wrinkle and pout into grimaces which gave to her a
+rather attractive air of _gaminerie_--Hillyard could find no word but
+the French one to express her on that evening. He drove her to a small
+house in the Bayswater Road, overlooking Kensington Gardens.
+
+"Will you come in for a moment?" she asked.
+
+Hillyard followed her up a paved pathway, through a tiny garden enclosed
+in a high wall, to her door. She led him into a room bright with flowers
+and pictures. Curtains of purple brocade were drawn across the window, a
+fire burned on the hearth, and thick soft cushions on broad couches gave
+the room a look of comfort.
+
+"You live here alone?" Hillyard asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+She turned suddenly towards him as he gazed about the room.
+
+"I married a long while ago." She stood in front of him like a slim
+child. It seemed impossible. "Yes, before I knew anything--to get away
+from home. Our marriage did not go smoothly. After three years I ran
+away--oh, not with any one I cared for; he happened to be there, that
+was all. After a month he deserted me in Italy. I have fortunately some
+money of my own and a few friends who did not turn me down--Lady Splay,
+for instance. There!"
+
+She moved to a table and poured out for Hillyard a whisky-and-soda.
+
+"My question was thoughtless," he said. "I did not mean that you should
+answer it as you did."
+
+"I preferred you to know."
+
+"I am honoured," Hillyard replied.
+
+Stella Croyle sat down upon a low stool in front of the fire. Hillyard
+sank into one of the deep-cushioned chairs. The day of tension was over,
+and there was no doubt about the success of "The Dark Tower." Stella
+Croyle sat very quietly, with the firelight playing upon her face and
+her delicate dress. Her vivacity had dropped from her like the pretty
+cloak she had thrown aside. Both became her well, but they were for use
+out-of-doors, and Hillyard was grateful that she had discarded them.
+
+"You are tired, no doubt," he said, reluctantly. "I ought to go."
+
+"No," she answered. "It is pleasant before the fire here."
+
+"Thank you. I should like to stay for a little while. I did not know
+until I came into this room with how much anxiety I had been looking
+forward to this night."
+
+He leaned forward with his hands clenched, and saw pass in the bright
+coals glimpses of the long tale of days when endeavour was fruitless and
+hopes were disappointed. "Success! Lord, how I wanted it!" he whispered.
+
+Stella Croyle looked at him with a smile.
+
+"It was sure to come to you, since you wanted it enough," she said.
+
+"Yes, but in time?" exclaimed Hillyard.
+
+"In time for what?"
+
+Hillyard broke into a laugh.
+
+"I don't know," he answered. He was silent for a little while, and the
+comfort of the room, the quiet of the night, the pleasant sympathy of
+Stella Croyle, all wrought upon him. "I don't know," he repeated slowly.
+"I am waiting. But out of my queer life something more has got to
+come--something more and something different. I have always been sure of
+it, but I used to be afraid that the opportunity would come while I was
+still chained to the handles of the barrow."
+
+Hillyard's life, though within a short time its vicissitudes had been
+many and most divergent, had probably not been as strange as he imagined
+it to be. He looked back upon it with too intense an interest to be its
+impartial judge. Certainly its distinctive feature had escaped him
+altogether. At the age of twenty-nine he was a man absolutely without
+tradition.
+
+His father, a partner in a small firm of shipping agents which had not
+the tradition of a solid, old-fashioned business, had moved in Martin's
+boyhood from a little semi-detached villa with its flight of front steps
+in one suburb, to a house in a garden of trees in another. The boy had
+been sent to a brand new day-school of excessive size, which gathered
+its pupils into its class-rooms at nine o'clock in the morning and
+dispersed them to their homes at four. No boy was proud that he went to
+school at St. Eldred's, or was deterred from any meanness by the thought
+that it was a breach of the school's traditions. The school meant so
+many lessons in so many class-rooms, and no more.
+
+Hillyard was the only child. Between himself and his parents there was
+little sympathy and understanding. He saw them at meals, and fled from
+the table to his own room, where he read voraciously.
+
+"You never heard of such a jumble of books," he said to Stella Croyle.
+"Matthew Arnold, Helps, Paradise Lost, Ten Thousand a Year, The Revolt
+of Islam, Tennyson. I knew the whole of In Memoriam by heart--absolutely
+every line of it, and pages of Browning. The little brown books! I would
+walk miles to pick one of them up. My people would find the books lying
+about the house, and couldn't make head or tail of why I wanted to read
+them. There were two red-letter days: one when I first bought the two
+volumes of Herrick, the second when I tumbled upon De Quincey. That's
+the author to bowl a boy over. The Stage-Coach, the Autobiography, the
+Confessions--I could never get tired of them. I remember buying an ounce
+of laudanum at a chemist's on London Bridge and taking it home, with
+the intention of following in the steps of my hero and qualifying to
+drink it out of a decanter."
+
+Stella Croyle had swung round from the fireplace, and was listening now
+with parted lips.
+
+"And did you?" she exclaimed, in a kind of eager suspense.
+
+Hillyard shook his head.
+
+"The taste was too unpleasant. I drank about half an ounce and threw the
+rest away. I was saved from that folly."
+
+Stella Croyle turned again to the fire.
+
+"Yes," she said rather listlessly.
+
+Yet Hillyard might almost have become a consumer of drugs, such queer
+and wayward fancies took him in charge. It became a fine thing to him to
+stay up all night just for the sake of staying up, and many a night he
+passed at his open window, even in winter time, doing nothing, not even
+dreaming, simply waiting for the day to break. It seemed to him soft and
+wrong that a man should take his clothes off and lie comfortably between
+sheets. And then came another twist. When all the house was quiet, he
+would slip out of a ground-floor window and roam for hours about the
+lonely roads, a solitary boy revelling even then in the extraordinary
+conduct of his life. There was in the neighbourhood a footpath through a
+thick grove of trees which ran up a long, high hill, and, midway in the
+ascent, crossed a railway cutting by a rustic bridge.
+
+"That was my favourite walk, though I always entered by the swing-gate
+in fear, and trembled at every movement of the branches, and continually
+expected an attack. I would hang over that railway bridge, especially on
+moonlit nights, and compose poems and thoughts--you know--great, short
+thoughts." Hillyard laughed. "I was going to be a poet, you
+understand--a clear, full voice such as had seldom been heard; my poems
+were all about the moon sailing in the Empyrean and Death. Death was my
+strong suit. I sent some of my poems to the local Press, signed 'Lethe,'
+but I could never hear that they were published."
+
+Stella Croyle laughed, and Hillyard went on. "From the top of the hill I
+would strike off to the west, and see the morning break over London. In
+summer that was wonderful! The Houses of Parliament. St Paul's like a
+silver bubble rising out of the mist, then, as the mist cleared over the
+river, a London clean and all silver in the morning light! I was going
+to conquer all that, you know--I--
+
+     "'Silent upon a peak of Peckham Rye.'"
+
+"I wonder you didn't kill yourself," cried Stella.
+
+"I very nearly did," answered Hillyard.
+
+"Didn't your parents interfere?"
+
+"No. They never knew of my wanderings. They did know, of course, that I
+used not to go to bed. But they left me alone. I was a bitter
+disappointment in every way. They wanted a reasonable son, who would go
+into the agency business, and they had instead--me. I should think that
+I was pretty odious, too, and we were all of passionate tempers.
+Besides, with all this reading, I didn't do particularly well at school.
+How could I when day after day I would march off from the house, leaving
+a smooth bed behind me in my room? We were thorny people. Quarrels were
+frequent. My mother had a phrase which set my teeth on edge--'Don't you
+talk, Martin, until you are earning your living'--the sort of remark
+that stings and stays in a boy's memory as something unfair. There was a
+great row in the end, one night at ten o'clock, when I was sixteen, and
+I left the house and tramped into London."
+
+"What in the world did you do?" cried Stella.
+
+"I shipped as a boy on a fruit-tramp for Valencia in Spain. And I
+believe that saved my life. For my lungs were beginning to be
+troublesome."
+
+The fruit-tramp had not been out more than two days when the fo'c'sle
+hands selected the lad, since he had some education, to be their
+spokesman on a deputation to the captain. Martin Hillyard went aft with
+the men and put their case for better food and less violence. He was not
+therefore popular with the old man, and at Valencia he thought it
+prudent to desert.
+
+Stella Croyle had turned towards him again. There was a vividness in his
+manner, an enjoyment, too, which laid hold upon her. It was curious to
+her to realise that this man talking to her here in the Bayswater Road,
+had been so lately a ragged youth scouting for his living on the quays
+of Southern Spain.
+
+"You were at that place--Alicante!" she cried.
+
+"Part of the time."
+
+"And there Mario Escobar saw you. I wonder why he was frightened lest
+you too should have seen him," she added slowly.
+
+"Was he?"
+
+"Yes. He was sitting on the same side of the table as you, so you
+wouldn't have noticed. But he was opposite to me; and he was afraid."
+
+Hillyard was puzzled.
+
+"I can't think of a reason. I was a shipping clerk of no importance. I
+can't remember that I ever came across his name in all the eighteen
+months I spent in Alicante."
+
+When Martin Hillyard was nineteen, Death intervened in the family feud.
+His parents died within a few weeks of each other.
+
+"I was left with a thousand pounds."
+
+"What did you do with them?"
+
+"I went to Oxford."
+
+"You? After those years of independence?"
+
+"It had been my one passionate dream for years."
+
+"The Scholar Gipsy," "Thyrsis," the Preface to the "Essays in
+Criticism," one or two glimpses of the actual city, its grey spires and
+towers, caught from the windows of a train, had long ago set the craving
+in his heart. Oxford had grown dim in unattainable mists, no longer a
+desire so much as a poignant regret, yet now he actually walked its
+sacred streets.
+
+"And you enjoyed it?" asked Stella.
+
+"I had the most wondrous time," Hillyard replied fervently. "There was
+one bad evening, when I realised that I couldn't write poetry. After
+that I cut my hair and joined the Wine Club. I stroked the Torpid and
+rowed three in my College Eight. I had friends for the first time. One
+above all"
+
+He stopped over-abruptly. Stella Croyle had the impression of a careless
+sentinel suddenly waked, suddenly standing to attention at the door of a
+treasure-house of memories. She was challenged. Very well. It was her
+humour to take the challenge up just to prove to herself that she could
+slip past a man's guard if the spirit moved her. She turned on Hillyard
+a pair of most friendly sympathetic eyes.
+
+"Tell me of your friend."
+
+"Oh, there's not much to tell. He rowed in the same boat with me. He had
+just what I had not--traditions. From his small old brown manor-house in
+a western county to his very choice of a career, he was wrapped about in
+tradition. He went into the army. He had to go."
+
+"What is his name?"
+
+Stella Croyle interrupted him. She was not looking at him any more. She
+was staring into the fire, and her body was very still. But there was
+excitement in her voice.
+
+"Harry Luttrell," replied Hillyard, and Stella Croyle did not move. "I
+don't know what has become of him. You see, I had ninety pounds left out
+of the thousand when I left Oxford. So I just dived."
+
+"But you have come up again now. You will resume your friends at the
+point where you dived."
+
+"Not yet. I am going away in a week's time."
+
+"For long?"
+
+"Eight months."
+
+"And far?"
+
+"Very."
+
+"I am sorry," said Stella.
+
+It had been the intention of Hillyard to use his first months of real
+freedom in a great wandering amongst wide spaces. The journey had been
+long since planned, even details of camp outfit and equipment and the
+calibre of rifles considered.
+
+"I have been at my preparations for years," he said. "I lived in a
+cubbyhole in Westminster, writing and writing and writing, but when I
+thought of this journey to be, certain to be, the walls would dissolve,
+and I would walk in magical places under the sun."
+
+     "Now the New Year reviving old desires,
+      The thoughtful soul to solitude retires"
+
+Stella Croyle quoted the verses gaily, and Hillyard, lost in the
+anticipation of his journey, never noticed that the gaiety rang false.
+
+"And where are you going?" she asked.
+
+"To the Sudan."
+
+It seemed that Stella expected just that answer and no other. She gazed
+into the fire without moving, seeking to piece together a picture in the
+coals of that unknown country which held all for which she yearned.
+
+"I shall travel slowly up the White Nile to Renk," Hillyard continued,
+blissfully. He was delighted at the interest which Mrs. Croyle was
+taking in his itinerary. She was clearly a superior person. "From Renk,
+I shall cross to the Blue Nile at Rosaires, and travel eastward again to
+the River Dinder----"
+
+"You are most fortunate," Stella interrupted wistfully.
+
+"Yes, am I not?" cried Hillyard. It looked as if nothing would break
+through his obtuseness.
+
+"I should love to be going in your place."
+
+"You?"
+
+Hillyard smiled. She was for a mantelshelf in a boudoir, not for a camp.
+
+"Yes--I," and her voice suddenly broke.
+
+Hillyard sprang up from his chair, but Stella held up her hand to check
+him, and turned her face still further away. Hillyard resumed his seat
+uncomfortably.
+
+"You may meet your friend Harry Luttrell in the Sudan," she explained.
+"He is stationed somewhere in that country--where exactly I would give a
+great deal to know."
+
+They sat without speaking for a little while, Stella once more turning
+to the fire. Hillyard watching her wistful face and the droop of her
+shoulders understood at last the truth of Hardiman's description. The
+mask was lain aside. Here indeed was a Lady of Sorrows.
+
+Stella Croyle was silent until she was quite sure that she had once more
+the mastery of her voice. It was important to her that her next words
+should not be forgotten. But even so she did not dare to speak above a
+whisper.
+
+"I want you to do me a favour. If you should meet Harry, I should like
+him to have news of me. I should like him also--oh, not so often--but
+just every now and then to write me a little line."
+
+There were tears glistening on her dark eyelashes. Hillyard fell into a
+sort of panic as he reflected upon his own vaunting talk. Compared with
+this woman's poignant distress, all the vicissitudes of his life seemed
+now quite trivial and small. Here were tears falling and Hillyard was
+unused to tears. Nor had he ever heard so poignant a longing in any
+human voice as that on which Stella's prayer to him was breathed. He was
+ashamed. He was also a little envious of Harry Luttrell. He was also a
+little angry with Harry Luttrell.
+
+"You won't forget?"
+
+Stella clasped her hands together imploringly.
+
+"No," Hillyard replied. "Be very sure of that, Mrs. Croyle! If I meet
+Luttrell he shall have your message."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+Stella Croyle dried the tears from her cheeks and stood up.
+
+"I have been foolish. You won't find me like that again," she cried, and
+she helped Hillyard on with his coat. She went to the door to see him
+out, but stopped as she grasped the handle.
+
+All Hillyard's talk about himself had passed in at one ear and out at
+the other. But every word which he had spoken about Harry Luttrell was
+written on her heart. And one phrase had kindled a tiny spark of hope.
+She had put it aside by itself, wanting more knowledge about it, and
+meaning to have that knowledge before Hillyard departed. She put her
+question now, with the door still closed and her back to it.
+
+"You said that Harry _had_ to join the army. What did you mean by that?"
+
+Hillyard hesitated.
+
+"Did he not tell you himself?"
+
+"No."
+
+Hillyard stood between loyalty to his friend and the recollection of
+Stella Croyle's tears. If Luttrell had not told her--why then----
+
+"Then I don't well see how I can," he said uncomfortably.
+
+"But I want to know," said Stella, bending her brows at him in
+astonishment that he should refuse her so small a thing. Then her manner
+changed. "Oh, I do want to know," she cried, and Hillyard's obstinacy
+broke down.
+
+Men have the strangest fancies which compel them to do out of all
+reason, even the things which they hate to do, and to put aside what
+they hold most dear. Fancies unintelligible to practical people like
+women--thus Stella Croyle's thoughts ran--but to be taken note of very
+carefully. High-flown motives from a world of white angels, where no
+doubt they are very suitable. But men will use them as working motives
+here below, with the result that they wreck women's hearts and cause
+themselves a great deal of useless misery.
+
+Stella's hopes and her self-esteem had for long played with the thought
+that it might possibly be one of those impracticable notions which had
+whipped Harry Luttrell up to the rupture of their alliance; that after
+all, it was not that he was tired of a chain. Yes, she wanted to know.
+
+"Luttrell only told me once, only spoke about it once," said Hillyard
+shifting from one foot to the other. "The week after the eights. We
+rowed down to Kennington Island in a racing pair, had supper there----"
+
+"Yes, yes," Stella Croyle interrupted. Oh, how dense men could be to be
+sure! What in the world did it matter, how or when the secret was told?
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Hillyard. "But really it does matter a little.
+You see, it was on our way back, when it was quite dark, so dark that
+really you could see little but the line of sky above the trees, and the
+flash of the water at the end of the stroke. I doubt if Luttrell would
+have ever told me at all, if it hadn't been for just that one fact, that
+we were alone together in the darkness and out on the river."
+
+"Yes, I was wrong," said Stella penitently. "I was impatient. I am
+sorry."
+
+More and more, just because of this detail, she was ready to believe
+that Harry Luttrell had left her for some reason quite outside
+themselves, for some other reason than weariness and the swift end of
+passion.
+
+"Luttrell's father, his grandfather and many others of his name had
+served in the Clayford Regiment. It was his home regiment and the
+tradition of the family binding from father to son, was that there
+should always be Luttrells amongst its officers."
+
+"And for that reason Harry----" Stella interrupted impetuously.
+
+"No, there is more compulsion than that in Harry's case," Hillyard took
+her up. "Much more! The Clayfords _ran_ in the South African War, and
+ran badly. They returned to England a disgraced regiment. Now do you see
+the compulsion?"
+
+Stella Croyle turned the problem over in her mind.
+
+"Yes, I think I do," she said, but still was rather doubtful. Then she
+looked at the problem through Harry Luttrell's eyes.
+
+"Yes, I understand. The regiment must recover its good name in the next
+war. It was an obligation of honour on Harry to take his commission in
+it, to bear his part in the recovery."
+
+"Yes. I told you, didn't I? Harry Luttrell was cradled in tradition."
+
+Hillyard saw Mrs. Croyle's face brighten. Now she had the key to Harry
+Luttrell. He had joined the Clayfords. And what was his fear at
+Stockholm? The slovenly soldier! Yes, he had given her the real reason
+after all during that dinner on the balcony at Hasselbacken. He feared
+to become the slovenly soldier if he idled longer in England. It was not
+because he was tired of her, that the separation had come. Thus she
+reasoned, and she reasoned just in one little respect wrong. She had the
+real secret without a doubt, that "something else," which Sir Charles
+Hardiman divined but could not interpret. But she did not understand
+that Harry Luttrell saw in her, one of the factors, nay the chief of the
+factors which were converting him into that thing of contempt, the
+slovenly soldier.
+
+"Thank you," she said to Hillyard with a smile. She stood aside now from
+the door. "It was kind of you to bring me home and talk with me for a
+little while."
+
+But it seems that her recovery of spirits did not last out the night.
+Doubts assailed her--Harry Luttrell was beneath other skies with other
+preoccupations and no message from him had ever come to her. Even if
+his love was unchanged at Stockholm, it might not be so now. Hillyard
+rang her up on the telephone the next morning and warm in his sympathy
+asked her to lunch with him. But it was a pitiful little voice which
+replied to him. Stella Croyle answered from her bed. She was not well.
+She would stay in bed for a day and then go to a little cottage which
+she owned in the country. She would see Hillyard again next year when he
+returned from the East.
+
+"Yes, that's her way," said Sir Charles Hardiman. He met Hillyard the
+day before he sailed for Port Said and questioned him about Stella
+Croyle discreetly. "She runs to earth when she's unhappy. We shall not
+see her for a couple of months. No one will."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HILLYARD'S MESSENGER
+
+
+Hillyard turned his back upon the pools of the Khor Galagu at the end of
+April and wandered slowly down the River Dinder. From time to time his
+shikari would lead his camels and camp-servants out on to an open
+clearing on the high river bank and announce a name still marked upon
+the maps. Once there had been a village here, before the Kalifa sent his
+soldiers and herded the tribes into the towns for his better security.
+Now there was no sign anywhere of habitation. The red boles of the
+mimosa trees, purple-brown cracked earth, yellow stubble of burnt grass,
+the skimming of myriads of birds above the tree-tops and shy wild
+animals gliding noiselessly in the dark of the forest--there was nothing
+more now. It seemed that no human foot had ever trodden that region.
+
+Hillyard's holiday was coming to an end, for in a month the rainy season
+would begin and this great park become a marsh. He went fluctuating
+between an excited eagerness for a renewal of rivalry and the
+interchange of ideas and the companionship of women; and a reluctance to
+leave a country which had so restored him to physical well-being. Never
+had he been so strong. He had recaptured, after his five years of London
+confinement, the swift spring of the muscles, the immediate response of
+the body to the demand made upon it, and the glorious cessation of
+fatigue when after arduous hours of heat and exertion he stretched
+himself upon his camp-chair in the shadow of his tent. On the whole he
+travelled northwards reluctantly; until he came to a little open space
+ten days away from the first village he would touch.
+
+He camped there just before noon, and at three o'clock on the following
+morning, in the company of his shikari, his skinner and his donkey-boy
+he was riding along a narrow path high above the river. It was very
+dark, so that even with the vast blaze of stars overhead, Hillyard could
+hardly see the flutter of his shikari's white robe a few paces ahead of
+him. They passed a clump of bushes and immediately afterwards heard a
+great shuffling and lapping of water below them. The shikari stopped
+abruptly and seized the bridle of Hillyard's donkey. The night was so
+still that the noise at the water's edge below seemed to fill the world.
+Hillyard slipped off the back of his donkey and took his rifle from his
+boy.
+
+"_Gamus!_" whispered the shikari.
+
+Hillyard almost swore aloud. There was a creek, three hours' march away,
+where the reed buck came down to drink in the morning. For that creek
+Hillyard was now making with a little Mannlicher sporting rifle--and he
+had tumbled suddenly upon buffalo! He was on the very edge of the
+buffalo country, he would see no more between here and the houses of
+Senga.
+
+It was his last chance and he had nothing but a popgun! He was still
+reproaching himself when a small but startling change took place. The
+snuffling and lapping suddenly ceased; and with the cessation of all
+sound, the night became sinister.
+
+The shikari whispered again.
+
+"Now they in their turn know that we are here." He enveloped the
+donkey's head in a shawl that he was carrying. "Do not move," he
+continued. "They are listening."
+
+Shikari, skinner, donkey-boy, donkey and Hillyard stood together,
+motionless, silent. Hillyard had come out to hunt. Down below the herd
+in its dumb parliament was debating whether he should be the hunted.
+There was little chance for any one of them if the debate went against
+them. Hillyard might bring down one--perhaps two, if by some miraculous
+chance he shot a bullet through both forelegs. But it would make no
+difference to the herd. Hillyard pictured them below by the water's
+edge, their heads lifted, their tails stiffened, waiting in the
+darkness. Once the lone, earth-shaking roar of a lion spread from far
+away, booming over the dark country. But the herd below never stirred.
+It no more feared the lion than it feared the four men on the river bank
+above. An hour passed before at last the river water plashed under the
+trampling hoofs.
+
+Hillyard threw his rifle forward, but the shikari touched him on the
+arm.
+
+"They are going," he whispered, and again the four men waited, until the
+shikari raised his hand.
+
+"It will be good for us to move! They are very near." He looked towards
+the east, but there was no sign yet of the dawn.
+
+"We will go very cautiously into the forest. We shall not know where
+they are, but they will know everything we are doing."
+
+In single file they moved from the bank amongst the mimosas, the donkey
+with his head covered, still led by the boy. Under the cavern of the
+branches it was black as pitch--so black that Hillyard did not see the
+hand which the shikari quietly laid upon his shoulder.
+
+"Listen."
+
+On his left a branch snapped, ahead of them a bush that had been bent
+aside swished back on its release.
+
+"They are moving with us. They are all round us," the shikari whispered.
+"They know everything we do. Let us wait here. When the morning breaks
+they will charge or they will go."
+
+So once again the little party came to a halt. Hillyard stood listening
+and wondering if the morning would ever come; and even in that time of
+tension the habit of his mind reasserted its sway. This long, silent
+waiting for the dawn in the depths of an African forest with death at
+his very elbow--here was another sharp event of life in vivid contrast
+with all the others which had gone before. The years in London, the
+letter-box opposite the Abbey where he had posted his manuscripts at
+three in the morning and bought a cup of coffee at the stall by the
+kerb--times so very close to him--the terms at Oxford, the strange
+hungry days on the quays of Spain, the moonlit wanderings on the
+footpath over the rustic ridge and up the hill, when he composed poems
+to the moon and pithy short, great thoughts--here was something fresh to
+add to them if he didn't go down at daybreak under the hoofs of the
+herd! Here was yet a further token, that out of the vicissitudes of his
+life something more, something new, something altogether different and
+unimagined was to come, as the crown and ultimate reason of all that had
+gone before. Once more the shikari's hand touched him and pointed
+eastwards. The tree-trunks were emerging from the darkness. Beyond them
+the black cup of the sky was thinning to translucency. Very quickly the
+grey light widened beyond this vast palisade of trees. Even in here
+below the high branches, it began to steal vaporous and dim. About them
+on every side now the buffalo were moving. The shikari's grip tightened
+on Hillyard's arm. The moment of danger had come. It would be the smash
+of his breast-bone against the forehead of the beast, hoofs and knees
+kneading his broken body and the thrust and lunge of the short curled
+horns until long after he was dead, or--the new test and preparation to
+add to those which had gone before!
+
+Suddenly the shikari cried aloud.
+
+"They are off"; and while he spoke came a loud snapping of boughs, the
+sound of heavy bodies crashing against trees and for a moment against
+the grey light in that cathedral of a forest the huge carcases of the
+buffalo in mad flight were dimly visible. Then silence came again for a
+few moments, till the boughs above them shrilled with birds and the
+morning in a splendour of gold and scarlet, like a roar of trumpets
+stormed the stars.
+
+Hillyard drew a breath.
+
+"Let us go on," he said.
+
+They advanced perhaps fifty yards before the second miracle of that
+morning smote upon his eyes. A solitary Arab, driving a tiny, overladen
+donkey, was advancing towards him, his white robes flickering in and out
+among the tree-boles.
+
+Hillyard looked at his shikari. But the shikari neither spoke nor
+altered the regularity of his face. Hillyard put no question in
+consequence. The Arab was ten days' journey from the nearest village
+and, even so, his back was turned towards it. He was moving from
+solitude into solitude still more silent and remote. It was impossible.
+Hillyard's eyes were playing him false.
+
+He shut them for an instant and opened them again, thinking that the
+vision would have gone. But there was the Arab still nearer to them and
+moving with a swift agility. A ray of sunlight struck through the
+branches of a tree and burned suddenly like a dancing flame on something
+the man carried--a carbine with a brass hammer. And the next moment a
+sound proved beyond all doubt to Hillyard that his eyes did not deceive
+him. For he heard the slapping of the Arab's loose slippers upon the
+hard-caked earth.
+
+Oh yes, the man was real enough. For the shikari suddenly swerved from
+the head of the file towards the stranger and stopped. The two men
+talked together and meanwhile Hillyard and the rest of his party halted.
+Hillyard lit his pipe.
+
+"Who is it, Hamet?" he cried, and the shikari turned with his companion
+and came back.
+
+"It is the postman," he said as though the delivery of letters along the
+Dinder River were the most commonplace of events.
+
+"The postman!" cried Hillyard. "What in the world do you mean?"
+
+"Yes," Hamet explained. "He carries letters between Abyssinia and Senga
+on the Blue Nile. He is now on his way back to Abyssinia."
+
+"But how long does it take him?" Hillyard asked in amazement.
+
+"He goes and returns once a year. The journey takes him four months each
+way unless he meets with a party shooting. Then it takes longer for he
+goes with the party to get meat."
+
+Hillyard stared at the Arab in amazement. He was a lean slip of a man,
+almost as black as a negro, with his hair running back above the
+temples, and legs like walking-sticks. He stood wreathed in smiles and
+nodding confirmation of Hamet's words. But to Hillyard, with the
+emotions of the dark hour just past still shivering about him, he seemed
+something out of nature. Hillyard leaned from his donkey and took the
+carbine from the postman's hand. It was an ancient thing of Spanish
+manufacture, heavy as a pig of lead.
+
+"But this can't be of any use," he cried. "Is the man never attacked?"
+
+Hamet talked with the Arab in a dialect Hillyard did not understand at
+all; and interpreted the conversation.
+
+"No. He has only once fired his rifle. One night--oh, a long way farther
+to the south--he waked up to see an elephant fighting his little donkey
+in the moonlight and he fired his rifle and the elephant ran away. You
+must know that all these little Korans he carries on his arms and round
+his neck have been specially blessed by a most holy man."
+
+The postman's shoulders, elbows, wrists and neck were circled about by
+chaplets on which little wooden Korans were strung. He fingered them and
+counted them, smiling like a woman displaying her jewels to her less
+fortunate friends.
+
+"So he is safe," continued Hamet. "Yes, he will even have his picture
+taken. Yes, he can afford to suffer that. He will stand in front of the
+great eye and the machine shall go click, and it will not do him any
+harm at all. He has a letter for you." Hamet dropped from his enthusiasm
+over the wonderful immunity of the postman from the dangers of
+photography into a most matter-of-fact voice.
+
+"A letter for me? That's impossible," cried Hillyard.
+
+But the Arab was thrusting his hand here and there in the load on the
+donkey's back and finally drew out a goatskin bag. Hillyard, like other
+Englishmen, had been brought up in a creed which included the
+inefficiency of all Postmasters-general. A blight fell upon such
+persons, withering their qualities and shrivelling them into the meanest
+caricatures of bureaucrats. It could not be that the postal service was
+now to reveal resource and become the servant of romance. Yet the Arab
+drew forth a sealed envelope and handed it to Hillyard. And it bore the
+inscription of his name.
+
+Oh, but it bore much more than that! It was written in a hand which
+Hillyard had not seen for seven years, and the mere sight of it swept
+him back in a glory of recollections to Oxford, its towers and tall
+roofs, which mean so much more to the man who has gone down than to the
+youth who is up. The forest, with its patterns of golden sunlight and
+its colonnades of trees crowding away into darkness, was less visible
+than those towers to Hillyard, as he stood with the envelope in his
+hand. Once more he swung down the High and across the Broad from a
+lecture with a ragged gown across his arm. Merton and the House, New
+College and Magdalen Tower--he saw the enchanted city across Christ
+Church meadows from the river, he looked down upon it from Headington,
+and again from those high fields where, at twilight, the scholar-gipsy
+used to roam. For the letter was in the hand of Harry Luttrell.
+
+He tore it open and read:
+
+     "_Some one in London is asking for you. Who it is I don't
+     know. But the message came through in a secret cipher and it
+     might be important. I think you should pack your affs. and
+     hurry along to Senga, where I shall expect you._"
+
+Martin Hillyard folded the letter and put it away in his pocket.
+
+"He will find food in our camp," he said to Hamet, with a nod towards
+the postman. "We may as well go on."
+
+Even if he returned to camp at once, it would be too late to start that
+day. The sun would be high long before the baggage could be packed upon
+the camels. The little party went on to the creek and built a tiny house
+of reeds and boughs, in which Hillyard sat down to wait for the deer to
+gather. He had one of the green volumes of "The Vicomte de Bragelonne"
+in his pocket, but this morning the splendid Four for once did not
+enchain him. Who was it in London who wanted him--wanted him so much
+that cipher telegrams must find him out on the banks of the Dinder
+River? Was this letter the summons to the something more and something
+different? Was the postman to Abyssinia the expected messenger? The
+miracle of that morning predisposed him to think so.
+
+He sat thus for an hour, and then stepping daintily, with timid eyes
+alert, a tall reed-buck and his doe came through the glade towards the
+water. But they did not drink; they waited, cropping the grass.
+Gradually, through a long hour, others gathered, tawny and yellow, and
+dappled-brown, and stood and fed until--perhaps a signal was given,
+perhaps a known moment had come--all like soldiers at a command, moved
+down to the water's edge.
+
+Six nights later Hillyard camped at Lueisa, near to that big tree under
+which it is not wise to spread your bed. He took his bath at ten o'clock
+at night under the moon, and the water from the river was hot. He
+stretched himself out in his bed and waked again that night after the
+moon had set, to fix indelibly in his memory the blazing dome of stars
+above his head, and the Southern Cross burning in a corner of the sky.
+The long, wonderful holiday was ended. To-morrow night he would sleep in
+a house. Would he ever come this way again?
+
+In the dark of the morning he struck westwards from the Dinder, across a
+most tedious neck of land, for Senga and the Blue Nile.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE HONORARY MEMBER
+
+
+At six o'clock in the evening Colin Rayne, a young civilian in the Sudan
+Service, heard, as he sat on the balcony of the mess at Senga, the
+rhythmical thud of camels swinging in to their rest in the freshness of
+the night air.
+
+"There's our man," he exclaimed, and running downstairs, he reached the
+door just as Hillyard's twelve camels and his donkeys trooped into the
+light. Hillyard was riding bareheaded, with his helmet looped to his
+saddle, a young man, worn thin by sun and exercise, with fair burnt
+hair, and a brown clean shaven face. Colin Rayne went up to him as he
+dismounted.
+
+"Captain Luttrell asked me to look after you. He has got some work on
+hand for the moment. We'll see after your affs."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"You might show me, by the way, where your cartridges are."
+
+Hillyard selected the camel on which they were packed and Rayne called a
+Sudanese sergeant to take them into the mess.
+
+"Now we will go upstairs. I expect that you can do with a
+whisky-and-soda," he said.
+
+Hillyard was presented to a Doctor Mayle, who was conducting a special
+research into the cause of an obscure fever; and to the other officers
+of this headquarters of a Province. They were all young, Hillyard
+himself was older than any of them.
+
+"Oh, we have got some married ones, too," said Rayne, "but they live in
+houses of their own like gentlefolk."
+
+"There are some Englishwomen here then?" said Hillyard, and for an
+appreciable moment there was silence. Then a shortish, square man, with
+a heavy moustache explained, if explanation it could be called.
+
+"No. They were sent off to Senaar this morning--to be out of the way.
+Wiser."
+
+Hillyard asked no questions but drank his whisky-and-soda.
+
+"I haven't seen Luttrell since we were at Oxford together," he said.
+
+"And it's by an accident that you see him now," said Rayne. "The
+Governor of Senga was thrown from his horse and killed on the spot down
+by the bridge there six weeks ago. The road gave way suddenly under his
+horse's hoofs. Some one was wanted here immediately."
+
+"Yes, there's no doubt of that," said Mr. Blacker, the short square man,
+with emphasis.
+
+"Captain Luttrell had done very well in Kordofan," Rayne resumed. "He
+was fetched up here in a hurry as Acting-Governor. But no doubt the
+appointment will be confirmed."
+
+Mr. Blacker added another croak.
+
+"Oh, it'll be confirmed all right, if----" and he left his sentence in
+the air; but his gesture finished it.
+
+"If there is any Luttrell left to confirm," Martin Hillyard interpreted,
+though he kept his interpretation to himself.
+
+There certainly was in that room with the big balcony a grim expectation
+of trouble. It was apparent, not so much in words as in an attention to
+distant noises, and a kind of strained silence. The sound of a second
+caravan was heard. It was coming from the north. Rayne ran to the rail
+of the balcony and looked anxiously out. The street here was very broad
+and the huts upon the opposite side already dark except at one point,
+where an unshaded kerosene lamp cast through on open door a panel of
+glaring light upon the darkness. Rayne saw the caravan emerge spectrally
+into the light and disappear again.
+
+"They are our beasts," he said in a voice of relief, and a minute later
+he called down to the soldier in charge. He spoke in the Dinka language
+and the soldier replied in the same tongue. Hillyard understood enough
+of it now to learn that the women had arrived safely at Senaar without
+any incident or annoyance.
+
+"That's good," said Colin Rayne. He turned to Hillyard. "Luttrell's a
+long time. Shall we go and find him?"
+
+Both Blacker and Dr. Mayle looked up with surprise, but Hillyard had
+risen quickly, and they raised no objection. Rayne walked down the
+stairs first and led the way towards the rear of the building across an
+open stretch of ground. The moon had not yet risen, and it was pitch
+dark so that Hillyard had not an idea whither he was being led. Colin
+Rayne stopped at a small, low door in a high big wall and knocked. A
+heavy key grated in a lock and the door was opened by a soldier.
+Hillyard found himself standing inside a big compound, in the midst of
+which stood some bulky, whitish erection, from which a light gleamed.
+
+Colin Rayne led the way towards the light. It was shining through the
+doorway of a chamber of new wood planks with a flat roof and some
+strange, dimly-seen superstructure. Hillyard looked through the doorway
+and saw a curious scene. Two Sudanese soldiers were present, one of whom
+carried the lantern. The other, a gigantic creature with a skin like
+polished mahogany, was stripped to the waist and held poised in his
+hands a huge wooden mallet with a long handle. He stood measuring his
+distance from the stem of a young tree which was wedged tightly between
+a small square of stone on the ground and the flat roof above. Standing
+apart, and watching everything with quiet eyes was Harry Luttrell.
+
+Even at this first glance in the wavering light of the lantern Hillyard
+realised that a change had come in the aspect of his friend. It was not
+a look of age, but authority clothed him as with a garment. Rayne and
+Hillyard passed into the chamber. Luttrell turned his head and welcomed
+Hillyard with a smile. But he did not move and immediately afterwards he
+raised his face to the roof.
+
+"Are you ready up there?"
+
+An English voice replied through the planks.
+
+"Yes, sir," and immediately afterwards a dull and heavy weight like a
+full sack was dumped upon the platform above their heads.
+
+"Good!"
+
+Luttrell turned towards the giant.
+
+"Are you ready? And you know the signal?"
+
+The Sudanese soldier grinned in delighted anticipation, with a flash of
+big white teeth, and took a firmer grip of his mallet and swung it over
+his shoulder.
+
+"Good. Now pay attention," said Luttrell, "so that all may be well and
+seemly done."
+
+The Sudanese fixed his eyes upon Luttrell's foot and Luttrell began to
+talk, rapidly and rather to himself than to his audience. Hillyard could
+make neither head nor tail of the strange scene. It was evident that
+Luttrell was rehearsing a speech, but why? And what had the Sudanese
+with the mallet to do with it?
+
+A sudden and rapid sequence of events brought the truth home to him with
+a shock. At a point of his speech Luttrell stamped twice, and the
+Sudanese soldier swung his mallet with all his force. The head of it
+struck the great support full and square. The beam jumped from its
+position, hopped once on its end, and fell with a crash. And from above
+there mingled with the crash a most horrid clang, for, with the removal
+of the beam, two trap-doors swung downwards. Hillyard looked up; he saw
+the stars, and something falling. Instinctively he stepped back and shut
+his eyes. When he looked again, within the chamber, midway between the
+floor and roof, two sacks dangling at the end of two ropes spun and
+jerked--as though they lived.
+
+Rayne had stepped back and stood quivering from head to foot by
+Hillyard's side; Hillyard himself felt sick. He knew very well now what
+he was witnessing--the rehearsal of an execution. The Sudanese soldiers
+were grinning from ear to ear with delight and pride. The one person
+quite unmoved was Harry Luttrell, whose ingenuity had invented the
+device.
+
+"Let it be done just so," he said to the soldiers. "I shall not forgive
+a mistake."
+
+They saluted, and he dismissed them and turned at last to Martin
+Hillyard.
+
+"It's good to see you again," he said, as he shook hands; and then he
+looked sharply into Hillyard's face and laughed. "Shook you up a bit,
+that performance, eh? Well, they bungled things in Khartum a little
+while ago. I can't afford awkwardness here."
+
+Senga was in the centre of that old Khalifa's tribe which not so many
+years ago ruled in Omdurman. It was always restless, always on the
+look-out for a Messiah.
+
+"Messiahs are most unsettling," said Luttrell, "especially when they
+don't come. The tribe began sharpening its spear-heads a few weeks ago.
+Then two of them got excited and killed. That's the consequence," and he
+jerked his head towards the compound, from which the two friends were
+walking away.
+
+Hillyard was to hear more of the matter an hour later, as they all sat
+at dinner in the mess-room. There were thousands of the tribe, all in a
+ferment, and just half a battalion of Sudanese soldiers under Luttrell's
+command to keep them in order.
+
+"Blacker thinks we ought to have temporised, and that we shall get
+scuppered," said Luttrell. He was the one light-hearted man at that
+table, though he was staking his career, his life, and the life of the
+colony on the correctness of his judgment. Sir Charles Hardiman would
+never have recognised in the man who now sat at the head of the mess
+table the young man who had been so torn by this and that discrimination
+in the cabin of his yacht at Stockholm. There was something of the
+joyous savage about him now--a type which England was to discover
+shortly in some strength amongst the young men who were to officer its
+armies.
+
+"I don't agree. I have invited the chiefs to see justice done. I am
+going to pitch them a speech myself from the scaffold--cautionary tales
+for children, don't you know--and then, if old Fee-Fo-Fum with the
+mallet don't get too excited and miss his stroke, everything will go
+like clockwork."
+
+Hillyard wondered how in the world he was going to deliver Stella
+Croyle's message--a flimsy thing of delicate sentimentality--to this man
+concerned with life and death, and discharging his responsibilities
+according to the just rules of his race, without fear and without too
+much self-questioning. Indeed, the Luttrell, Acting-Governor of Senga,
+was a more familiar figure to Hillyard than he would have been to
+Stella Croyle. For he had shaken off, under the pressure of immediate
+work and immediate decisions, the thin and subtle emotions which were
+having their way with him two years before. He had recaptured the high
+spirit of Oxford days, and was lit along his path by that clear flame.
+
+But there were tact and discretion too, as Hillyard was to learn. For
+Mr. Blacker still croaked at the other end of the table.
+
+"It's right and just and all that of course. But you are taking too high
+a risk, Luttrell."
+
+The very silence at the table made it clear to Hillyard that Luttrell
+stood alone in his judgment. But Luttrell only smiled and said:
+
+"Well, old man, since I disagree, the only course is to refer the whole
+problem to our honorary member."
+
+And at once every countenance lightened, and merriment began to flick
+and dance from one to other of that company like the beads on the
+surface of champagne. Only Hillyard was mystified.
+
+"Your honorary member!" he inquired.
+
+Luttrell nodded solemnly, and raised his glass.
+
+"Gentlemen, the Honorary Member of the Senga Mess--Sir Chichester
+Splay."
+
+The toast was drunk with enthusiasm by all but Hillyard, who sat staring
+about him and wondering what in the world the Mecaenas of the First
+Nights had in common with these youthful administrators far-flung to the
+Equator.
+
+"You don't drink, Martin," cried Luttrell. A Socialist at a Public
+Dinner who refused to honour the Royal Toast could only have scandalised
+the chairman by a few degrees more than Hillyard's indifference did now.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Hillyard with humility. "I repair my error
+now. It was due to amazement."
+
+"Amazement!" Colin Rayne repeated, as Hillyard drained his glass.
+
+"Yes. For I know the man."
+
+There was the silence that follows some stupendous happening; eyes were
+riveted upon Hillyard in admiration; and then the silence burst.
+
+"He knows him!"
+
+"It's incredible!"
+
+"Actually knows him!"
+
+And suddenly above the din Blacker's voice rose warningly.
+
+"Don't let's lose our heads! That's the great thing! Let us keep as calm
+as we can and think out our questions very carefully lest the
+Heaven-sent Bearer of Great Tidings should depart without revealing all
+he knows."
+
+Chairs were hitched a little closer about Hillyard. The care which had
+brooded in that room was quite dispelled.
+
+"Have some more port, sir," said the youngest of that gathering, eagerly
+pushing across the bottle. Hillyard filled his glass. Port was his, and
+prestige too. He might write a successful play. That was all very well.
+He might go shooting for eight months along by the two Niles and the
+Dinder. That was all very well too. He was welcome at the Senga Mess.
+But he knew Sir Chichester Splay! He acquired in an instant the
+importance of a prodigy.
+
+"But, since he is an honorary member of your mess, you must know him
+too," cried Hillyard. "He must have come this way."
+
+"My dear Martin!" Luttrell expostulated, as one upbraiding a child. "Sir
+Chichester Splay out of London! The thing's inconceivable!"
+
+"Inconceivable! Why, he lives in the country."
+
+A moment of consternation stilled all voices. Then the Doctor spoke in a
+whisper.
+
+"Is it possible that we are all wrong?"
+
+"He lives at Rackham Park, in Sussex."
+
+Mr. Blacker fell back in relief.
+
+"I know the house. He is a new resident. It is near to Chichester. He
+went there on the Homoeopathic principle."
+
+The conjecture was actually true. Sir Chichester Splay, spurred by his
+ambition to be a country gentleman with a foot in town, had chosen the
+neighbourhood on account of his name, so that it might come to be
+believed that he had a territorial connection.
+
+"Describe him to us," they all cried, and, when Hillyard had finished:
+
+"Well, he might be like that," Luttrell conceded. "It was not our idea."
+
+"No," said Colin Rayne. "You will remember I always differed from all of
+you, but it seems that I am wrong too. I pictured him as a tall,
+melancholy man, with a conical bald head and with a habit of plucking at
+a black straggling beard--something like the portraits of Tennyson."
+
+"To me," said Luttrell, "he was always fat and fussy, with white spats."
+
+"But why are you interested in him at all?" cried Hillyard.
+
+"We will explain the affair to you on the balcony," answered Luttrell,
+as he rose.
+
+They moved into the dark and coolness of this spacious place, and,
+stretching themselves in comfort on the long cane chairs, they explained
+to Hillyard this great mystery. Rayne began the tale.
+
+"You see, we don't get a mail here so very often. Consequently we pay
+attention when it comes. We read the _Searchlight_, for instance, with
+care."
+
+Mr. Blacker snatched the narrative away at this point.
+
+"And Sir Chichester Splay occurs in most issues and in many columns. At
+first we merely noticed him. Some one would say, 'Oh, here's old Splay
+again,' as if--it seems incredible now--the matter was of no importance.
+It needed Luttrell to discover the real significance of Sir Chichester,
+the man's unique and astounding quality."
+
+Harry Luttrell interrupted now.
+
+"Yes, it was I," he said with pride. "Sir Chichester one day was seen at
+a Flower Show in Chelsea. On another he attended the first performance
+of a play. On a third day he honoured the Private View of an Exhibition
+of Pictures. On a fourth he sat amongst the Distinguished Strangers in
+the Gallery of the House of Commons. But that was all! This is what I
+alone perceived. Always that was all!"
+
+Luttrell leaned back and relit his cigar.
+
+"When other people come to be mentioned in the newspapers day after day,
+sooner or later some information about them slips out, some
+characteristic thing. If you don't get to know their appearance, you
+learn at all events their professions, their opinions. But of Sir
+Chichester Splay--never anything at all. Yet he is there always, nothing
+can happen without his presence, a man without a shadow, a being without
+a history. To me, a simple soldier, he is admirable beyond words. For he
+has achieved the inconceivable. He combines absolute privacy of life
+with a world-wide notoriety. He may be a stamp-collector. Do I know
+that? No. All I know is that if there were an Exhibition of Stamp
+Collections, he would be the first to pass the door." Luttrell rose from
+his chair.
+
+"Therefore," he added in conclusion, "Sir Chichester is of great value
+to us at Senga. We elected him to the mess with every formality, and
+some day, when we have leisure, we shall send a deputation up the Nile
+to shoot a Mrs. Grey's Antelope to decorate Rackham Park." He turned to
+Hillyard. "We have a few yards to walk, and it is time."
+
+The two friends walked down the stairs and turned along the road,
+Hillyard still debating what was, after all, the value of Sir Chichester
+Splay to the Senga mess. It had seemed to him that Luttrell had not
+wished for further questions on the balcony, but, now that the two were
+alone, he asked:
+
+"I don't see it," he said; and Luttrell stopped abruptly and turned to
+him.
+
+"Don't you, Martin?" he asked gently. All the merriment had gone from
+his face and voice. "If you were with us for a week you would. It's just
+the value of a little familiar joke always on tap. Here are a handful of
+us. We eat together, morning, noon, and night; we work together; we play
+polo together--we can never get away from each other. And in consequence
+we get on each other's nerves, especially in the months of hot weather.
+Ill-temper comes to the top. We quarrel. Irreparable things might be
+said. That's where Sir Chichester Splay comes in. When the quarrel's
+getting bitter, we refer it to his arbitration. And, since he has no
+opinions, we laugh and are saved." Luttrell resumed his walk to the
+Governor's house.
+
+"Yes, I see now," said Hillyard.
+
+"You had an instance to-night," Luttrell added, as they went in at the
+door. "It's a serious matter--the order of a Province and a great many
+lives, and the cost of troops from Khartum, and the careers of all of us
+are at stake. I think that I am right, and it is for me to say. They
+disagree. Yes, Sir Chichester Splay saved us to-night, and"--a smile
+suddenly broke upon his serious face--"I really should like to meet
+him."
+
+"I will arrange it when we are both in London," Hillyard returned.
+
+He did not forget that promise. But he was often afterwards to recall
+this moment when he made it--the silent hall, the door open upon the
+hot, still night, the moon just beginning to gild the dark sky, and the
+two men standing together, neither with a suspicion of the life-long
+consequences which were to spring from the casual suggestion and the
+careless assent.
+
+"You are over there," said Luttrell, pointing to the other side of the
+hall. He turned towards his own quarters, but a question from Hillyard
+arrested him.
+
+"What about that message for me?"
+
+"I know nothing about it," Luttrell answered, "beyond what I wrote. The
+telegram came from Khartum. No doubt they can tell you more at
+Government House. Good night!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN
+
+
+Just outside Senga to the north, in open country, stands a great walled
+zareba, and the space enclosed is the nearest approach to the Garden of
+Eden which this wicked world can produce. The Zoological Gardens of
+Cairo and Khartum replenish their cages from Senga. But there are no
+cages at Senga, and only the honey-badger lives in a tub with a chain
+round his neck, like a bull-dog. The buffalo and the elephant, the
+wart-hog and the reed-buck, roam and feed and sleep together. Nor do
+they trouble, after three days' residence in that pleasant sanctuary,
+about man--except that specimen of man who brings them food.
+
+All day long you may see, towering above the wall close to the little
+wooden door, the long necks and slim heads of giraffes looking towards
+the city and wondering what in the world is the matter with the men
+to-day, and why they don't come along with the buns and sugar. Once
+within the zareba, once you have pushed your way between the giraffes
+and got their noses out of your jacket-pockets, you have really only to
+be wary of the ostrich. He, mincing delicately around you with his
+little wicked red eye blinking like a camera shutter, may try with an
+ill-assumed air of indifference to slip up unnoticed close behind you.
+If he succeeds he will land you one. And one is enough.
+
+Into this zareba Harry Luttrell led Martin Hillyard on the next morning.
+Luttrell had an hour free, and the zareba was the one spectacle in
+Senga. He kicked the honey-badger's tub in his little reed-house and
+brought out that angry animal to the length of his strong chain and to
+within an inch of his own calves.
+
+"Charming little beast, isn't he? See the buffalo in the middle? The
+little elephant came in a week ago from just south of the Khor Galagu.
+You had something private to say to me? Now's your time. Mind the
+ostrich, that's all. He looks a little ruffled."
+
+They were quite alone in the zareba. The giraffes had fallen in behind
+and were following them, and level with them, on Hillyard's side, the
+ostrich stepped like a delicate lady in a muddy street. Hillyard found
+it a little difficult to concentrate his thoughts on Stella Croyle's
+message. But he would have delivered it awkwardly in any case. He had
+seen enough of Harry Luttrell last night to understand that an ocean now
+rolled between those two.
+
+"On the first night of my play, 'The Dark Tower,'" he began, and
+suddenly faced around as the ostrich fell back.
+
+"Yes!" said Luttrell, and he eyed the ostrich indifferently. "That
+animal's a brute, isn't he?"
+
+He took a threatening step towards it, and the ostrich sidled away as if
+it really didn't matter to him where he took his morning walk.
+
+"Yes?" Luttrell repeated.
+
+"I went to a supper-party given by Sir Charles Hardiman."
+
+"Oh?"
+
+Luttrell's voice was careless enough. But his eyes went watchfully to
+Hillyard's face, and he seemed to shut suddenly all expression out of
+his own.
+
+"Hardiman introduced me to a friend of yours."
+
+Luttrell nodded.
+
+"Mrs. Croyle?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She was well?"
+
+"In health, yes!"
+
+"I am very glad." Unexpectedly some feeling of relief had made itself
+audible in Luttrell's voice. "It would have troubled me if you had
+brought me any other news of her. Yes, that would have troubled me very
+much. I should not have been able to forget it," he said slowly.
+
+"But she is unhappy."
+
+Luttrell walked on in silence. His forehead contracted, a look of
+trouble came into his face. Yet he had an eye all the while for the
+movements of the animals in the zareba. At last he halted, struck out
+at the ostrich with his stick, and turned to Hillyard with a gesture of
+helplessness.
+
+"But what can one do--except the single thing one can't do?"
+
+"She gave me a message, if I should chance to meet you," answered
+Hillyard.
+
+Luttrell's face hardened perceptibly.
+
+"Let me hear it, Martin."
+
+"She said that she would like you to have news of her, and that from
+time to time she would like to have a little line from you."
+
+"That was all?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Harry Luttrell nodded, but he made no reply. He walked back with
+Hillyard to the door of the zareba, and the ostrich bore them company,
+now on this side, now on that. The elephant was rolling in the grass
+like a dog, the giraffes crowded about the little door like beggars
+outside a restaurant. The two friends walked back towards the town in an
+air shimmering with heat. The Blue Nile glittered amongst its sand-banks
+like so many ribands of molten steel. They were close upon the house
+before Luttrell answered Stella Croyle's message.
+
+"All _that_," he cried, with a sharp gesture as of a man sweeping
+something behind him, "all that happened in another age when I was
+another man."
+
+The gesture was violent, but the words were pitiful. He was not a man
+exasperated by a woman's unseasonable importunity, but angry with the
+grim, hard, cruel facts of life.
+
+"It's no good, Martin," he added, with a smile. "Not all the king's
+horses nor all the king's men----"
+
+Hillyard was sure now that no little line would ever go from Senga to
+the house in the Bayswater Road. The traditions of his house and of his
+regiment had Harry Luttrell in their keeping. Messages? Martin Hillyard
+might expect them, might indeed respond to and obey them, and with
+advantage, just because they came out of the blue. But the men of
+tradition, no! The messenger had knocked upon the doors of their
+fathers' houses before ever they were born.
+
+At the door of the Governor's house Harry Luttrell stopped.
+
+"I expect you'll want to do some marketing, and I shall be busy, and
+to-night we shall have the others with us. So I'll say now," and his
+face brightened with a smile, as though here at all events were a matter
+where the bitter laws of change could work no cruelties, "it has been
+really good to see you again."
+
+Certain excellent memories were busy with them both--Nuneham and Sanford
+Lasher and the Cherwell under its overhanging branches. Then Luttrell
+looked out across to the Blue Nile and those old wondrous days faded
+from his vision.
+
+"I should like you to get away bukra, bukra, Martin," he said.
+"Half-past one at the latest, to-morrow morning. Can you manage it?"
+
+"Why, of course," answered Hillyard in surprise.
+
+"You see, I postponed that execution, whilst you were here. I think
+it'll go off all right, but since it's no concern of yours, I would just
+as soon you were out of the way. I have fixed it for eight. If you start
+at half-past one you will be a good many miles away by then."
+
+He turned and went into the house and to his own work. Martin Hillyard
+walked down the road along the river bank to the town. Harry Luttrell
+had said his last word concerning Stella Croyle. Of that he was sure and
+was glad, though Stella's tear-stained face would rise up between his
+eyes and the water of the Nile. Sooner or later Harry Luttrell would
+come home, bearing his sheaves, and then he would marry amongst his own
+people; and a new generation of Luttrells would hold their commissions
+in the Clayfords. He had said his last word concerning Stella Croyle.
+
+But Hillyard was wrong. For in the dark of the morning, when he had
+bestridden his donkey and given the order for his caravan to march, he
+was hailed by Luttrell's voice. He stopped, and Luttrell came down in
+his pyjamas from the door of the house to him.
+
+"Good luck," he said, and he patted the donkey's neck. "Good luck, old
+man. We'll meet in England some time."
+
+"Yes," said Hillyard.
+
+It was not to speak these words that Harry Luttrell had risen, after
+wishing him good-bye the night before. So he waited.
+
+Luttrell was still, his hand on the little donkey's neck.
+
+"You'll remember me to our honorary member, won't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Don't forget."
+
+"I won't."
+
+Nor was it for this reminder, either. So Hillyard still waited, and at
+last the words came, jerkily.
+
+"One thing you said yesterday.... I was very glad to hear it. That
+Stella was well--quite well. You meant that, didn't you? It's the
+truth?"
+
+"Yes, it's the truth."
+
+"Thank you ... I was a little afraid ... thank you!"
+
+He took his hand from the donkey's neck, and Hillyard rode forward on
+the long and dreary stage to the one camping ground between Senga and
+Senaar.
+
+For a little while he wondered at this insistence of Harry Luttrell upon
+the physical health of Stella Croyle, and why he had been afraid. But
+when the dawn came his thoughts reverted to his own affairs. The message
+delivered to him in the forest of the River Dinder! It might mean
+nothing. It was the part of prudence to make light of his hopes and
+conjectures. But the hopes would not be stilled, now that he was alone.
+This was the Summons, the great Summons for which, without his
+knowledge, the experiences of his life, detail by detail, had builded
+him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+HILLYARD HEARS NEWS OF AN OLD FRIEND
+
+
+At Khartum, however, disappointment awaited him. He was received without
+excitement by a young aide-de-camp at the Palace.
+
+"I heard that you had come in last night. A good trip? Dine with me
+to-night and you shall show me your heads. The Governor-General's in
+England."
+
+"There's a telegram."
+
+"Oh yes. It came up to us from Cairo. Some one wanted to know where you
+were. They'll know about it at Cairo. We just pushed it along, you
+know," said the aide-de-camp. He dined with Hillyard, admired his heads,
+arranged for his sleeping compartment, and assured him that the
+execution had gone off "very nicely" at Senga.
+
+"Luttrell made a palaver, and his patent drop worked as well as anything
+in Pentonville, and every one went home cheered up and comfortable.
+Luttrell's a good man."
+
+Thus Hillyard took the train to Wadi Haifa in a chastened mood.
+Obviously the message was of very little, if indeed of any, importance.
+A man can hardly swing up to extravagant hopes without dropping to
+sarcastic self-reproaches on his flightiness and vanity. He was not
+aware that the young aide-de-camp pushed aside some pressing work to
+make sure that he did go on the train; or that when the last carriage
+disappeared towards the great bridge, the aide-de-camp cried, "Well,
+that's that," like a man who has discharged one task at all events of
+the many left to his supervision.
+
+One consequence of Hillyard's new humility was that he now loitered on
+his journey. He stayed a few days at Assouan and yet another few in
+Luxor, in spite of the heat, and reached Cairo in the beginning of June
+when the streets were thick with dust-storms and the Government had
+moved to Alexandria. Hillyard was in two minds whether to go straight
+home, but in the end he wandered down to the summer seat of government.
+
+If Khartum had been chilly to the enthusiast, Alexandria was chillier.
+It was civil and polite to Hillyard and made him a member of the Club.
+But it was concerned with the government of Egypt, and gently allowed
+Hillyard to perceive it. Khartum had at all events stated "There is a
+cablegram." At Alexandria the statement became a question: "Is there a
+cablegram?" In the end a weary and indifferent gentleman unearthed it.
+He did not show it to Hillyard, but held it in his hand and looked over
+the top of it and across a roll-top desk at the inquirer.
+
+"Yes, yes. This seems to be what you are asking about. It is for us, you
+know"--this with a patient smile as Hillyard's impatient hand reached
+out for it. "Do you know a man called Bendish--Paul Bendish?"
+
+"Bendish?" cried Hillyard. "He was my tutor at Oxford."
+
+"Ah! Then it does clearly refer to you. Bendish has a friend who needs
+your help in London."
+
+Hillyard stared.
+
+"Do you mean to say that I was sent for from the borders of Abyssinia
+because Bendish has a friend in London who wants my help?"
+
+The indifferent gentleman stroked his chin.
+
+"It certainly looks like it, doesn't it? But I do hope that you didn't
+cut your expedition short on that account." He looked remorsefully into
+Hillyard's face. "In any case, the rainy season was coming on, wasn't
+it?"
+
+"Yes, my expedition was really ended when the message reached me,"
+Hillyard was forced to admit.
+
+"That's good," said the indifferent gentleman, brightening. "You will
+see Bendish, of course, in England. By what ship do you sail? It's not
+very pleasant here, is it?"
+
+"I shall sail on the _Himalaya_ in a week's time."
+
+"Right!" said the official, and he nodded farewell and dipped his nose
+once more into his papers.
+
+Hillyard walked to the door, conscious that he looked the fool he felt
+himself to be. But at the door he turned in a sort of exasperation.
+
+"Can't you tell me at all why Bendish's friend wants my help?" he asked.
+
+It was at this moment that the indifferent gentleman had the inspiration
+of his life.
+
+"I haven't an idea, Mr. Hillyard," he replied. "Perhaps he has got into
+difficulties in the writing of a revue."
+
+The answer certainly drove Hillyard from the room without another word.
+He stood outside the door purple with heat and indignation. Hillyard
+neither overrated nor decried his work. But to be dragged away from the
+buffalo and the reed-buck of the Dinder River in order to be told that
+he was a writer of revues. No! That was carrying a bad joke too far.
+
+Hillyard stalked haughtily along the corridor towards the outer door,
+but not so fast but that a youth passed him with a sheet of paper in his
+hand. The youth went into the room where Government cablegrams were
+coded. The sheet of paper which he held in his hand was inscribed with a
+message that Martin Hillyard would leave Alexandria in a week's time on
+the s.s. _Himalaya_. And the message strangely enough was not addressed
+to Paul Bendish at all. It was headed, "For Commodore Graham.
+Admiralty." The great Summons had in fact come, although Hillyard knew
+it not.
+
+He travelled in consequence leisurely by sea. He started from Alexandria
+after half the month of June had gone, and he was thus in the Bay of
+Biscay on that historic morning of June the twenty-eighth, when the
+Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia Duchess of Hohenberg, were
+murdered in the streets of Saravejo. London, when he reached it, was a
+choir of a million voices not yet tuned to the ringing note of one. It
+was incredible that the storm, foreseen so often over the port wine,
+should really be bursting at last. Mediation will find a way. Not this
+time; the moment has been chosen. And what will England do? Ride safe in
+the calm centre of the hurricane? No ship ever did, and England won't.
+
+A few degenerate ones threw up their hands and cried that all was
+over--_they knew_.
+
+Of these a gaunt-visaged man, stubborn and stupid and two generations
+back a German, held forth in the hall of Hillyard's club.
+
+"German organisation, German thoroughness and German brains--we are no
+match for them. The country's thick with spies--wonderful men. Where
+shall _we_ find their equals?"
+
+A sailor slipped across the hall and dropped into a chair by Hillyard's
+side.
+
+"You take no part in these discussions? The crackling of thorns--what?"
+
+"I have been a long time away."
+
+"Thought so," continued the sailor. "A man was inquiring for you
+yesterday--a man of the name of Graham."
+
+Hillyard shook his head.
+
+"I don't know him."
+
+"No, but he is a friend of a friend of yours."
+
+Hillyard sat up in his chair. He had been four days in London, and the
+engrossing menace of those days had quite thrust from his recollections
+the telegram which had, as he thought, befooled him.
+
+"The friend of mine is possibly Paul Bendish," he said stiffly.
+
+"Think that was the name. Graham's the man I am speaking of," and the
+sailor paused. "Commodore Graham," he added.
+
+Hillyard's indignation ebbed away. What if he had not been fooled? The
+quenched hopes kindled again in him. There was all this talk of
+war--alarums and excursions as the stage-directions had it. Service!
+Suddenly he realised that ever since he had left Senga, a vague envy of
+Harry Luttrell had been springing up in his heart. The ordered life of
+service--authority on the one hand, the due execution of details on the
+other! Was it to that glorious end in this crisis that all his life's
+experience had slowly been gathering? He looked keenly at his companion.
+Was it just by chance that he had crossed the hall in the midst of all
+this thistle-down discussion and dropped in the chair by his side?
+
+"But what could I do?"
+
+He spoke aloud, but he was putting the question to himself. The sailor,
+however, answered it.
+
+"Ask Graham."
+
+He wrote an address upon a sheet of notepaper and handed it to Hillyard.
+Then he looked at the clock which marked ten minutes past three.
+
+"You will find him there now."
+
+The sailor went after his cap and left the club. Hillyard read the
+address. It was a number in a little street of the Adelphi, and as he
+read it, suspicion again seized upon Hillyard. After all, why should a
+Commodore want to see him in a little street of the Adelphi. Perhaps,
+after all, the indifferent official of Alexandria was right and the
+Commodore had ambitions in the line of revues!
+
+"I had better go and have it out with him," he decided, and, taking his
+hat and stick, he walked eastwards to Charing Cross. He turned into a
+short street. At the bottom a stone arch showed where once the Thames
+had lapped. Now, beyond its grey-white curve, were glimpses of green
+lawns and the cries of children at their play. Hillyard stopped at a
+house by the side of the arch. A row of brass plates confronted him, but
+the name of Commodore Graham was engraved on none of them. Hillyard rang
+the housekeeper's bell and inquired.
+
+"On the top floor on the left," he was told.
+
+He climbed many little flights of stairs, and at the top of each his
+heart sank a little lower. When the stairs ended he confronted a mean,
+brown-varnished door; and he almost turned and fled. After all, the
+monstrous thing looked possible. He stood upon the threshold of a set of
+chambers. Was he really to be asked to collaborate in a revue? He rang
+the bell, and a young woman opened the door and barred the way.
+
+"Whom do you wish to see?" she asked.
+
+"Commodore Graham."
+
+"Commodore Graham?" she repeated with an air of perplexity, as though
+this was the first time she had ever heard the name.
+
+Across her shoulder Hillyard looked into a broad room, where three other
+girls sat at desks, and against one wall stood a great bureau with many
+tiny drawers like pigeon-holes. Several of these drawers stood open and
+disclosed cards standing on their edges and packed against each other.
+Hillyard's hopes revived. Not for nothing had he sat from seven to ten
+in the office of a shipping agent at Alicante. Here was a card-index,
+and of an amazing volume. But his interlocutor still barred the way.
+
+"Have you an appointment with Commodore Graham?" she asked, still with
+that suggestion that he had lunched too well and had lost his way.
+
+"No. But he sent for me across half the world."
+
+The girl raised a pair of steady grey eyes to his.
+
+"Will you write your name here?"
+
+She allowed him to pass and showed him some slips of paper on a table in
+the middle of the room. Hillyard obeyed, and waited, and in a few
+moments she returned, and opened a door, crossed a tiny ante-room and
+knocked again. Hillyard entered a room which surprised him, so greatly
+did its size and the wide outlook from its windows contrast with the
+dinginess of its approach. A thin man with the face of a French abbe sat
+indolently twiddling his thumbs by the side of a big bureau.
+
+"You wanted to see me?"
+
+"Mr. Hillyard?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Commodore Graham nodded to the girl, and Hillyard heard the door close
+behind him.
+
+"Won't you sit down? There are cigarettes beside you. A match? Here is
+one. I hope that I didn't bring you home before your time."
+
+"The season had ended," replied Hillyard, who was in no mood to commit
+himself. "In what way can I help you?"
+
+"Bendish tells me that you know something of Spain."
+
+"Spain?" cried Hillyard in surprise. "Spain means Madrid, Bilbao, and a
+host of places, and a host of people, politicians, merchants, farmers.
+What should I know of them?"
+
+"You were in Spain for some years."
+
+"Three," replied Hillyard, "and for most of the three years picking up a
+living along the quays. Oh, it's not so difficult in Spain, especially
+in summer time. Looking after a felucca while the crew drank in a cafe,
+holding on to a dinghy from a yacht and helping the ladies to step out,
+a little fishing here, smuggling a box of cigars past the customs
+officer there--oh, it wasn't so difficult. You can sleep out in comfort.
+I used to enjoy it. There was a coil of rope on the quay at Tarragona;
+it made a fine bed. Lord, I can feel it now, all round me as I curled up
+in it, and the stars overhead, seen out of a barrel, so to speak!"
+
+Hillyard's face changed. He had the spark of the true wanderer within
+him. Even recollections of days long gone could blow it into clear, red
+flame. All the long glowing days on the hot stones of the water-side,
+the glitter of the Mediterranean purple-blue under the sun, the coming
+of night and the sudden twinkling of lights in the cave-dwellings above
+Almeria and across the bay from Aguilas, the plunge into the warm sea at
+midnight, the glorious evenings at water-side cafes when he had half a
+dozen coppers in his pocket; the good nature of the people! All these
+recollections swept back on him in a rush. The actual hardships, the
+hunger, the biting winds of January under a steel-cold sky, these things
+were all forgotten. He remembered the freedom.
+
+"There weren't any hours to the day," he cried, and spoke the creed of
+all the wanderers in the world. "I saw the finest bull-fights in the
+world, and made money out of them by selling dulces and membrilla and
+almond rock from Alicante. Oh, the life wasn't so bad. But it came to an
+end. A shipping agent at Alicante used me as a messenger, and finally,
+since I knew English and no one else in his office did, turned me into a
+shipping clerk."
+
+Hillyard had quite forgotten Commodore Graham, who sat patiently
+twiddling his thumbs throughout the autobiography, and now came with
+something of a start to a recognition of where he sat. He sprang up and
+reached for his hat.
+
+"So, you see, you might as well ask a Chinaman at Stepney what he knows
+of England as ask me what I know of Spain. I am just wasting your time.
+But I have to thank you," and he bowed with a winning pleasantness, "for
+reviving in me some very happy recollections which were growing dim."
+
+The Commodore, however, did not stir.
+
+"But it is possible," he said quietly, "that you do know the very places
+which interest me--the people too."
+
+Hillyard looked at the Commodore. He put down his hat and resumed his
+seat.
+
+"For instance?"
+
+"The Columbretes."
+
+Hillyard laughed.
+
+"Islands sixty miles from Valencia."
+
+"With a lighthouse," interrupted Graham.
+
+"And a little tumble-down inn with a vine for an awning."
+
+"Oh! I didn't know there was an inn," said Graham. "Already you have
+told me something."
+
+"I fished round the Columbretes all one summer," said Hillyard, with a
+laugh.
+
+Graham nodded two or three times quickly.
+
+"And the Balearics?"
+
+"I worked on one of Island Line ships between Barcelona and Palma
+through a winter."
+
+"There's a big wireless," said Commodore Graham.
+
+"At Soller. On the other side of Mallorca from Palma. You cross a
+wonderful pass by the old monastery where Georges Sand and Chopin stayed
+and quarrelled."
+
+The literary reminiscence left Commodore Graham unmoved.
+
+"Did you ever go to Iviza?"
+
+"For a month with a tourist who dug for ancient pottery."
+
+Graham swung round to his bureau and drummed with the tips of his
+fingers upon the leather pad. He made no sign which could indicate
+whether he was satisfied or no. He lit a cigarette and handed the box to
+Hillyard.
+
+"Did you ever come across a man called Jose Medina?"
+
+Eleven years had passed since the strange days in Spain, and those
+eleven years not without their sharp contrasts and full hours.
+Hillyard's act of memory was the making of a picture. One by one he
+called up the chain of coast cities wherein he had wandered. Malaga,
+with its brown cathedral; Almeria and its ancient castle and bright
+blue-painted houses glowing against the brown and barren hills; Aguilas,
+with its islets; Cartagena, Gandia, Alicante of the palms; Valencia--and
+under the trees and on the quays, the boatmen and the captains and the
+resplendent officials whom he had known! They took shape before him and
+assumed their names. He dived amongst them for one Jose Medina.
+
+"Yes," he replied at last, "there was a Jose Medina. He was a young
+peasant of Mallorca. He always said jo for yo."
+
+Graham's eyes brightened and his lips twitched to a smile. He glanced
+aside to his bureau, whereon lay a letter written by Paul Bendish at
+Oxford.
+
+"He probably has a larger acquaintance with the queer birds of the
+Mediterranean ports than any one else in England. But he does not seem
+to be aware of it. But if you persist in sitting quiet his knowledge
+will trickle out."
+
+Commodore Graham persisted, and facts concerning Jose Medina began to
+trickle out. Jose's father had left him, the result of a Spanish
+peasant's thrift, a couple of thousand pesetas. With this Jose Medina
+had gone to Gibraltar, where he bought a felucca, with a native of
+Gibraltar as its nominal owner; so that Jose Medina might fly the flag
+of Britain and sleep more surely for its protection. At Gibraltar, with
+what was left of his two thousand pesetas and the credit which his
+manner gained him, he secured a cargo of tobacco.
+
+"Gibraltar's a free port, you see," said Hillyard. "Jose ran the cargo
+along the coast to Benicassim, a little watering-place with a good beach
+about thirty kilometres east of Valencia. He ran the felucca ashore one
+dark night." Suddenly he stopped and smiled to himself. "I expect Jose
+Medina's in prison now."
+
+"On the contrary," said Graham, "he's a millionaire."
+
+Hillyard stared. Then he laughed.
+
+"Well, those were the two alternatives for Jose Medina. But I am judging
+by one night's experience. I never saw him again."
+
+Commodore Graham touched with his heel a bell by the leg of his bureau.
+The bell did not ring, but displaced a tiny shutter in front of the desk
+of his secretary in the ante-room; and Hillyard had hardly ended when
+the girl was in the room and announced:
+
+"Admiral Carstairs."
+
+Commodore Graham looked annoyed.
+
+"What a nuisance! I am afraid that I must see him, Mr. Hillyard."
+
+"Of course," said Hillyard. "Admirals are admirals."
+
+"And they know it!" said Commodore Graham with a sigh.
+
+Hillyard rose and took his hat.
+
+"Well, I am very grateful to you, Mr. Hillyard," said Graham. "I can't
+say anything more to you now. Things, as you know, are altogether very
+doubtful. We may slip over into smooth water. On the other hand," and he
+twiddled his thumbs serenely, "we may be at war in a month. If that were
+to be the case, I might want to talk with you again. Will you leave your
+address with Miss Chayne?"
+
+Hillyard was led out by another door, no doubt so that he might not meet
+the impatient admiral. He might have gone away disheartened from that
+interview with its vague promises. But there are other and often surer
+indications than words. When Miss Chayne took down his address, her
+manner had quite changed towards him. She had now a frank and pleasant
+comradeship. The official had gone. Her smile said as plainly as print
+could do: "You are with us now."
+
+Meanwhile Commodore Graham read through once more the letter of Paul
+Bendish. He turned from that to a cabled report from Khartum of the
+opinion which various governors of districts had formed concerning the
+ways and the discretion of Martin Hillyard. Then once more he rang his
+bell.
+
+"There was a list of suitable private yachts to be made out," he said.
+
+"It is ready," replied Miss Chayne, and she brought it to him.
+
+Over that list Commodore Graham spent a great deal of time. In the end
+his finger rested on the name of the steam-yacht _Dragonfly_, owned by
+Sir Charles Hardiman, Baronet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ENTER THE HEROINE IN ANYTHING BUT WHITE SATIN
+
+
+Goodwood in the year nineteen hundred and fourteen! There were some,
+throwers of stones, searchers after a new thing on which to build a
+reputation, who have been preaching these many years past that the
+temper of England had changed, its solidity all dissolved into froth,
+and that a new race of neurotics was born on Mafeking night. Just
+ninety-nine years before this Goodwood meeting, when Napoleon and the
+veterans of the Imperial Guard were knocking at the gates of Brussels, a
+famous ball was given. Goodwood of the year nineteen-fourteen, _mutatis
+mutandis_, did but repeat that scene, the same phlegmatic enjoyment of
+the festival, the same light-heartedness and sure confidence under the
+great shadow, and the same ending.
+
+The whispered word went round so that there should be no panic or alarm,
+and of a sudden every officer was gone. Goodwood of nineteen fourteen
+and a July so perfect with sunlight and summer that it seemed some bird
+at last must break the silence of the famed beech-grove! All the world
+went to it. The motor-cars and the coaches streamed up over Duncton Hill
+and wound down the Midhurst Road to pleasant Charlton, with its cottages
+and gardens of flowers. Martin Hillyard went too.
+
+As he walked away from Captain Graham's eyrie he met Sir Chichester
+Splay in Pall Mall.
+
+"Where have you been these eight months?" inquired Sir Chichester. "'The
+Dark Tower' is still running, I see. A good play, Mr. Hillyard."
+
+"But not a great play, of course," said Martin, his lips twitching to a
+smile.
+
+"I have been looking for you everywhere," remarked Sir Chichester. "You
+must stay with us for Goodwood. My wife will never forgive me if I don't
+secure you."
+
+Hillyard gladly consented. It would be his first visit to the high
+racecourse on the downs--and--and he might find Stella Croyle among the
+company. It would be a little easier for him and for her too, if they
+met this second time in a house of many visitors. He had no comfortable
+news to give to her, and he had shrunk from seeking her out in the
+Bayswater Road. Wrap the truth in words however careful, he could not
+but wound her. Yet sooner or later she must hear of his return, and
+avoidance of her would but tell the story more cruelly than his lips.
+
+"Yes, I will gladly come," he said, "if I may come down on the first
+day."
+
+He was delayed in London until midday, and so motored after luncheon
+through Guildford and Chiddingfold and Petworth to Rackham Park. The
+park ran down to the Midhurst Road, and when Hillyard was shown into the
+drawing-room he walked across to the window and looked out over a valley
+of fields and hedges and low, dark ridges to the downs lying blue in the
+sunlight and the black forests on their slopes.
+
+From an embrasure a girl rose with a book in her hand.
+
+"Let me introduce myself, Mr. Hillyard. I am Joan Whitworth, and make my
+home here with my aunt. They are all at Goodwood, of course, but they
+should be back at any moment."
+
+She rang the bell and ordered tea. Somewhere Hillyard realised he had
+seen the girl before. She was about eighteen years old, he guessed, very
+pretty, with a wealth of fair hair deepening into brown, dark blue eyes
+shaded with long dark lashes and a colour of health abloom in her
+cheeks.
+
+"You have been in Egypt, uncle tells me."
+
+"In the Sudan," Hillyard corrected. "I have been shooting for eight
+months."
+
+"Shooting!"
+
+Joan Whitworth's eyes were turned on him in frank disappointment. "The
+author of 'The Dark Tower'--shooting!"
+
+There was more than disappointment in her voice. There was a hint of
+disdain.
+
+Hillyard did not pursue the argument.
+
+"I knew that I had seen you before. I remember where now. You were with
+Sir Chichester at the first performance of 'The Dark Tower.' I peeped
+out behind the curtain of my box and saw you."
+
+Joan's face relaxed.
+
+"Oh, yes, I was there."
+
+"But----" Hillyard began, and caught himself up. He had been on the
+point of saying that she had a very different aspect in the stalls of
+the Rubicon Theatre. But he looked her up and down and held his peace.
+Yet what he did substitute left him in no better case.
+
+"So you have not gone to the races," he said, and once more her lip
+curled in disdain. She drew herself up to her full height--she was not
+naturally small, but a good honest piece of English maidenhood.
+
+"Do I look as if I were likely to go to the races?" she asked superbly.
+
+She was dressed in a sort of shapeless flowing gown, saffron in colour,
+and of a material which, to Hillyard's inexperienced eye, seemed canvas.
+It spread about her on the ground, and it was high at the throat. A
+broad starched white collar, like an Eton boy's, surmounted it, and a
+little black tie was fastened in a bow, and scarves floated untidily
+around her.
+
+"No, upon my word you do not," cried Hillyard, nettled at last by her
+haughtiness, and with such a fervour of agreement, that suddenly all her
+youth rose into Joan Whitworth's face and got the better of her pose.
+She laughed aloud, frankly, deliciously. And her laugh was still
+rippling about the room when motor-horns hooted upon the drive.
+
+At once the laughter vanished.
+
+"We shall be amongst horses in a minute," she observed with a sigh. "I
+can smell the stables already," and she retired to her book in the
+embrasure of the window.
+
+A joyous and noisy company burst into the room. Sir Chichester, with
+larger mother-of-pearl buttons on his fawn-coloured overcoat than ever
+decorated even a welshing bookmaker on Brighton Downs, led Hillyard up
+to Lady Splay.
+
+"My wife. Millie, Mr. Hillyard."
+
+Hints of Lady Splay's passion for the last new person had prepared
+Hillyard for a lady at once gushing and talkative. He was surprised to
+find himself shaking hands with a pleasant, unassuming woman of distinct
+good looks. Hillyard was presented to Dennis and Miranda Brown, a young
+couple two years married, and to Mr. Harold Jupp, a man of Hillyard's
+age. Harold Jupp was a queer-looking person with a long, thin, brown
+face, and a straight, wide mouth too close to a small pointed chin.
+Harold Jupp carried about with him a very aura of horses. Horses were
+his only analogy; he thought in terms of horses; and perhaps, as a
+consequence, although he could give no reasons for his judgments upon
+people, those judgments as a rule were conspicuously sound. Jupp shook
+hands with Hillyard, and turned to the student at the window.
+
+"Well, Joan, how have you lived without us? Aren't you bored with your
+large, beautiful self?"
+
+Joan looked at him with an annihilating glance, and crossed the room to
+Millie Splay.
+
+"Bored! How could I be? When I have so many priceless wasted hours to
+make up for!"
+
+"Yes, yes, my dear," said Millie Splay soothingly. "Come and have some
+tea."
+
+"That's it, Joan," cried Jupp, unrepressed by the girl's contempt. "Come
+and have tea with the barbarians."
+
+Joan addressed herself to Dennis Brown, as one condescending from
+Olympus.
+
+"I hope you had a good day."
+
+"Awful," Dennis Brown admitted. "We ought to have had five nice wins on
+form. But they weren't trying, Joan. The way Camomile was pulled. I
+expected to see his neck shut up like a concertina."
+
+"Never mind, boys," said Sir Chichester. "You'll get it back before
+Friday."
+
+Harold Jupp shook his head doubtfully.
+
+"Never sure about flat-racing. Jumping's the only thing for the poor and
+honest backer."
+
+Joan Wentworth looked about her regretfully.
+
+"I understand now why you have all come back so early."
+
+Miranda Brown ran impulsively to her. She was as pretty as a picture,
+and spoke as a rule in a series of charming explosions. At this moment
+she was deeply wronged.
+
+"Yes, Joan," she cried. "They would go! And I know that I have backed
+the winner for the last race."
+
+Dennis Brown contemplated his wife with amazement.
+
+"Miranda, you are crazy," he cried. "He can't win."
+
+Harold Jupp agreed regretfully.
+
+"He's a Plater. That's the truth. A harmless, unnecessary Plater. I sit
+at the feet of Miranda Brown, Joan, but as regards horses, she doesn't
+know salt from sugar."
+
+Miranda looked calmly at her watch.
+
+"He has already won."
+
+Tea was brought in and consumed. At the end of it Dennis Brown observed
+to Harold Jupp:
+
+"We ought to arrange what we are going to do to-morrow."
+
+Both men rose, and each drew from one pocket a programme of the next
+day's events, and from the other a little paper-covered volume called
+"Form at a Glance." Armed with their paraphernalia, they retired to a
+table in a window.
+
+"Come and live the higher life with us, Joan," cried Harold Jupp. "What
+are you reading?"
+
+"Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society," Joan returned icily.
+But pride burned through the ice, and was audible.
+
+"He sounds just like a Plater," replied Harold Jupp.
+
+Meanwhile Dennis Brown was immersed in his programme.
+
+"The first race is too easy," he announced.
+
+"Yes," said Jupp. "It's sticking out a foot. Peppercorn."
+
+Dennis Brown stared at his friend.
+
+"Don't be silly! Simon Jackson will romp home."
+
+Harold Jupp consulted his little brown book.
+
+"Peppercorn ran second to Petronella at Newbury, giving her nine pounds.
+Petronella met Simon Jackson at even weights at Newcastle, and Simon
+Jackson was left in the country. Peppercorn must win."
+
+"Let us hear the names of the others," interrupted Miranda, running up
+to the table.
+
+Harold Jupp read out the names.
+
+"Smoky Boy, Paper Crown, House on Fire, Jemima Puddleduck----" and
+Miranda clapped her hands.
+
+"Jemima Puddleduck's going to win."
+
+Both the young men stared at her, then both plunged their noses into
+their books.
+
+"Jemima Puddleduck," Dennis Brown read, "out of Side Springs, by the
+Quack."
+
+"Oh, what a pedigree!" cried Miranda. "She must win."
+
+Jupp wrinkled his forehead.
+
+"But she's done nothing. Why must she win?" asked Dennis.
+
+Miranda shrugged her shoulders at the ineffable stupidity of the young
+man with whom she was linked.
+
+"Listen to her name! Jemima Puddleduck! She can't lose!"
+
+Both the young men dropped their books and gazed at one another
+hopelessly. Here was the whole scientific business of spotting winners,
+through research into pedigrees, weights, records, the favourite
+distances and race courses of this or that runner, so completely
+disregarded that racing might really be a matter of chance.
+
+"I'll tell you, Miranda," said Harold Jupp. "Jemima Puddleduck's a
+Plater."
+
+The awful condemnation had no sooner been pronounced than the butler,
+with his attendant footman, appeared to remove the tea.
+
+"We have just heard over the telephone, sir," he said to Sir Chichester,
+"the winner of the last race."
+
+"Oh!" cried Miranda breathlessly. "Which was it?"
+
+"Chewing Gum."
+
+Miranda swept round to her husband, radiant. "There, what did I tell
+you? Chewing Gum. What were the odds, Harper?" She turned again to the
+butler. "Oh, you do know, don't you?"
+
+"Yes, madam, twelve to one. They say he rolled home."
+
+Miranda Brown jumped in the air.
+
+"Oh, I have won a hundred and twenty pounds."
+
+Harold Jupp was sympathetic and consolatory.
+
+"Of course it's a mistake, Miranda. I am awfully sorry! Chewing Gum ran
+nowhere to Earthly Paradise in the Newberry Stakes this year, and
+Earthly Paradise, all out to win, was beaten a month ago by seven
+lengths at Warwick, by Rollicking Lady. And Rollicking Lady was in this
+race too. So you see it's impossible. Chewing Gum's a Plater."
+
+Miranda wrung her hands.
+
+"But, Harold, he _did_ win; didn't he, Harper?"
+
+"There's no doubt about it, madam," replied the butler with dignity. "I
+'av verified the hinformation from other sources."
+
+He left the two experts blinking. Dennis was the first to recover from
+the blow.
+
+"What on earth made you back him, Miranda?"
+
+Miranda sailed to the side of Joan Whitworth.
+
+"You are both of you so very unpleasant that I am seriously inclined not
+to tell you. But I always back horses with the names of things to eat."
+
+The two scientists were dumb. They stared open-mouthed. Somewhere, it
+seemed, a religion tottered upon its foundations. Sacrilege itself could
+hardly have gone further than Miranda Brown had gone.
+
+"But--but," Harold Jupp stammered feebly, "you don't _eat_ chewing gum."
+
+Miranda flattened him out with a question.
+
+"What becomes of it, then?" and there was no answer. But Miranda was not
+content with her triumph. She must needs carry the war unwisely into the
+enemy's camp.
+
+"After all, what in the world can have possessed you, Dennis, to back a
+silly old mare like Barmaid?"
+
+Dennis Brown saw his opportunity.
+
+"I always back horses with the names of things to kiss," he declared.
+
+Jupp laughed aloud; Sir Chichester chuckled; Miranda looked as haughty
+as good-humour and a dainty personality enabled her to do.
+
+"Vulgar, don't you think?" she asked of Joan. "But racing men _are_
+vulgar. Oh, Joan! have you thought out your book to-day? Can you now
+begin to write it? Will you write it in the window, with the South Downs
+in front of your eyes? Oh, it'll be wonderful!"
+
+"What ho!" cried Mr. Jupp. "Miranda has joined the highbrows."
+
+Dennis Brown was too seriously occupied to waste his time upon Miranda's
+enthusiasms.
+
+"It's a pity we can't get the evening papers," he said gloomily. "I
+should dearly like to see the London forecasts for to-morrow."
+
+"I brought some evening papers down with me," said Hillyard, and "Did
+you?" cried Sir Chichester, and his eyes flashed with interest. But
+Harold Jupp was already out of the room. He came back from the hall with
+a bundle of newspapers in his hands, pink and white and yellow and
+green. He carried them all relentlessly past Sir Chichester to the table
+in the window. Sir Chichester to a newspaper, was a needle to a magnet;
+and while Dennis Brown read out the selections for the morrow's races of
+"The Man of Iron" in the _Evening Patriot_, and "Hitchy Koo" in _The
+Lamppost_, Sir Chichester edged nearer and nearer.
+
+Lady Splay invited Hillyard to play croquet with her in the garden; and
+half-way through the game Hillyard approached the question which
+troubled him.
+
+"I was wondering whether I should meet Mrs. Croyle here."
+
+Millicent Splay drove her ball before she answered, and missed her hoop.
+
+"What a bore!" she cried. "Now I shall have to come back again. I didn't
+know that you had met Stella."
+
+"I met her only once. I liked her."
+
+Millie Splay nodded.
+
+"I am glad. There's always a room here for Stella. I told her so
+immediately after I met her, and she took me at my word, as I meant her
+to do. But she avoids Goodwood week and festivals generally, and she is
+wise. For though I would take her anywhere myself, you know what long
+memories people have for other people's sins. There might be
+humiliations."
+
+"I understand that," said Hillyard, and he added, "I gathered from Mrs.
+Croyle that you had remained a very staunch friend."
+
+Millie Splay shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"I am a middle-aged woman with a middle-aged woman's comprehension.
+There are heaps of things I loathe more and more each day, meanness, for
+instance, and an evil tongue. But, for the other sins, more and more I
+see the case for compassion. Stella was hungry of heart, and she let the
+hunger take her. She had her blind, wild hour or two; she was a fool;
+she was--well, everything the moralists choose to call her. But she has
+been paying for her hour ever since, and will go on paying. Now, if I
+can only hit your yellow ball from here, I shall have rather a good game
+on."
+
+Lady Splay succeeded and, carrying the four croquet balls with her, went
+round the rest of the hoops and pegged out.
+
+"I must go in and change," she said, and suddenly, in a voice of
+melancholy, she cried, "Oh, I do wish----" and stopped.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Oh, it doesn't matter," she answered. But her eyes were upon the
+window, where Joan Whitworth stood in full view in all her disfiguring
+panoply. Lady Splay wrung her hands helplessly. "Oh, dear, dear, if she
+weren't so thorough!" she moaned.
+
+When they returned into the drawing-room, Sir Chichester was still
+standing near to Harold Jupp and Dennis Brown, shifting from one foot to
+another, and making little inarticulate sounds in his throat.
+
+"Haven't you two finished yet?" asked Millicent Splay.
+
+"Just," said Dennis Brown, rubbing his hands together with a laugh, "and
+we ought to have four nice wins to-morrow."
+
+"Good!" said Sir Chichester. "Then might I have a newspaper?"
+
+"But of course," said Dennis Brown, and he handed one over the table to
+him. "You haven't been waiting for it all this time, Sir Chichester?"
+
+"Oh no, no, no," exclaimed Sir Chichester, quickly. He glanced with a
+swift and experienced eye down the columns, and tossed the paper aside.
+
+"Might I have another?"
+
+"But of course, sir."
+
+The second paper was disposed of as rapidly as the first, and the others
+followed in their turn.
+
+"Nothing in them," said Sir Chichester with a resigned air. "Nothing in
+them at all."
+
+Millie Splay laughed.
+
+"All that my husband means is that his name is not to be found in any
+one of them."
+
+"The occurrence seems so rare that he has no great reason to complain,"
+said Hillyard; and, in order to assuage any disappointment which might
+still be rankling in the baronet's bosom, Hillyard related at the
+dinner-table, with the necessary discretions, his election to the mess
+at Senga.
+
+Sir Chichester was elated. "So far away my name is known! Really, that
+is very pleasant hearing!"
+
+There was no offence to him in the reason of his honorary membership of
+the Senga mess, which, however carefully Hillyard sought to hide it,
+could not but peep out. Sir Chichester neither harboured illusions
+himself as to his importance nor sought to foster them in others. There
+was none of the "How do these things get into the papers?" about _him_.
+
+"I am not a public character. So I have to take trouble to keep myself
+in print. And I do--a deuce of a lot of trouble."
+
+"Now, why?" asked Harold Jupp, who possessed an inquiring mind and was
+never satisfied by anything but the most definite statements.
+
+"Because I like it," replied Sir Chichester. "I am used to it, and I
+like it. Unless I see my name in real print every morning, I have all
+day the uncomfortable sensation that I am not properly dressed."
+
+Millie Splay and the others round the table, with the exception of one
+person, laughed. To that one person, Sir Chichester here turned
+good-humouredly:
+
+"All right, you can turn your nose up, Joan. It seems extraordinary to
+you that I should like to see my name in print. I can tell you something
+more extraordinary than that. The public likes it too. Just because I am
+not a public character, every reference to me must be of an exclusively
+personal kind. And that's just the sort of reference which the public
+eats. It is much more thrilled by the simple announcement that a Sir
+Chichester Splay, of whom it has never heard, has bought a new pair of
+purple socks with white stripes than it would be by a full account of a
+Cabinet crisis."
+
+Once more the company laughed at Sir Chichester's apology for his
+foible.
+
+Lady Splay turned to Hillyard.
+
+"And who is the ingenious man who discovered this way of keeping the
+peace at Senga?"
+
+Hillyard suddenly hesitated.
+
+"A great friend of mine," he answered with his eyes on Millie Splay's
+face. "He was with me at Oxford. A Captain Luttrell."
+
+But it was clear almost at once that the name had no associations in
+Lady Splay's mind. She preferred to entertain her friends in the country
+than to live in town. She knew little of what gossip might run the
+streets of London; and since Luttrell was, as yet, like Sir Chichester,
+in that he was not a public character, there had been no wide-run gossip
+about Stella Croyle or himself which Millicent Splay was likely to meet.
+
+Hillyard thought at first, that with a woman's self-control she turned a
+blank face to him of a set purpose. But one little movement of hers
+reassured him. Her eyes turned towards Joan Whitworth, as though asking
+whether this Harry Luttrell was a match for her, and she said:
+
+"You must bring your friend down to see us, when he comes back to
+England. We are almost acquainted as it is."
+
+No! Millicent Splay did not connect Harry Luttrell with Stella Croyle.
+It would have been better if Hillyard, that very night, had enlightened
+her. But he was neither a gossip nor a meddler. It was not possible that
+he should.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE SUMMONS
+
+
+It is curious to recollect how smoothly the surface water ran during
+that last week of peace. Debates there were, of course, and much
+argument across the table. It was recognised that great changes, social,
+economic, military, would come and great adaptations have to be made.
+But, meanwhile, to use the phrase which was soon to be familiar in half
+a million mouths, people carried on. The Brown couple, for instance.
+Each morning they set out gaily, certain of three or four nice wins;
+each evening they returned after a day which was "simply awful." Harold
+Jupp was at hand with his unfailing remedy.
+
+"We'll go jumping in the winter and get it all back easily. Flat
+racing's no good for the poor. The Lords don't come jumping."
+
+Joan Whitworth carried on too, in her sackcloth and sashes. She was
+moved by the enthusiastic explosions of Miranda Brown to reveal some
+details of the great novel which was then in the process of incubation.
+
+"_She_ insists on being married in a violet dress," said Joan, "with the
+organ playing the 'Funeral March of a Marionette.'"
+
+"Oh, isn't that thrilling!" cried Miranda.
+
+"But why does she insist upon these unusual arrangements?" asked Harold
+Jupp.
+
+Joan brushed his question aside.
+
+"It was symbolical of her."
+
+"Yes. Linda would have done that," said Miranda. "I suppose her marriage
+turns out very unhappily?"
+
+"It had to," said Joan, quite despondent over this unalterable
+necessity.
+
+"Now, why?" asked Jupp in a perplexity.
+
+"Her husband never understood her."
+
+"What ho!" cried Dennis Brown, looking up from his scientific researches
+into "Form at a Glance."
+
+"I expect that he talked racing all day," said Miranda.
+
+Dennis Brown treated the rejoinder with contempt. His eyes were fixed
+sympathetically on the young writer-to-be.
+
+"I hate crabbing any serious effort to elevate us, Joan, but, honestly,
+doesn't it all sound a little conventional?"
+
+He could have used no epithet more deplorable. Joan shot at him one
+annihilating glance. Miranda bubbled with indignation.
+
+"Don't notice them, Joan dear! They don't know the meaning of words.
+They are ribald, uneducated people. You call your heroine Linda?
+Linda--what?"
+
+Mr. Jupp supplied a name.
+
+"Linda Spavinsky," said he. "She comes of the ancient Scottish family of
+that name."
+
+"Pig! O pig!" cried Joan, routed at last from her superior serenity; and
+a second afterwards her eyes danced and with a flash of sound white
+teeth she broke into honest laughter. She did her best to suppress her
+sense of fun, but it would get the better of her from time to time.
+
+This onslaught upon Joan Whitworth took place on the Wednesday evening.
+Sir Chichester came into the room as it ended, with a telegram in his
+hand.
+
+"Mario Escobar wires, Millie, that he is held up in London by press of
+work and will only be able to run down here on Friday for the night."
+
+Hillyard looked up.
+
+"Mario Escobar?"
+
+"Do you know him?" asked Millie Splay.
+
+"Slightly," answered Hillyard. "Press of work! What does he do?"
+
+"Runs about with the girls," said Dennis Brown.
+
+Sir Chichester Splay would not have the explanation.
+
+"Nonsense, my dear Dennis, nonsense, nonsense! He has a great many
+social engagements of the most desirable kind. He is, I believe,
+interested in some shipping firms."
+
+"I like him," said Millie Splay.
+
+"And so do I," added Joan, "very much indeed." The statement was
+defiantly thrown at Harold Jupp.
+
+"I think he is charming," said Miranda.
+
+Harold Jupp looked from one to the other.
+
+"That seems to settle it, doesn't it? But----"
+
+"But what?" asked Sir Chichester.
+
+"Need we listen to the ridiculous exhibitions of male jealousy?" Miranda
+asked plaintively.
+
+"But," Harold Jupp repeated firmly, "I do like a man to have another
+address besides his club. Now, I will lay a nice five to one that no one
+in this room knows where Mario Escobar goes when he goes home."
+
+A moment's silence followed upon Harold Jupp's challenge. To the men,
+the point had its importance. The women did not appreciate the
+importance, but they recognised that their own menfolk did, and they did
+not interrupt.
+
+"It's true," said Sir Chichester, "I always hear from him with his club
+as his address. But it simply means that he lives at an hotel and is not
+sure that he will remain on."
+
+Thus the little things of every day occupied the foreground of Rackham
+Park. Millicent Splay had her worries of which Joan Whitworth was the
+cause. She loved Joan; she was annoyed with Joan; she admired Joan; she
+was amused at Joan; and she herself could never have told you which of
+these four emotions had the upper hand. So inextricably were they
+intermingled.
+
+She poured them out to Martin Hillyard, as they drove through the Park
+at Midhurst on the Thursday morning.
+
+"What do you think of Joan?" she asked. "She is beautiful, isn't she,
+with that mass of golden hair and her eyes?"
+
+"Yes, she is," answered Hillyard.
+
+"And what a fright she is making of herself! She isn't _dressed_ at all,
+is she? She is just--protected by her clothes."
+
+Hillyard laughed and Millicent Splay sighed. "And I did hope she would
+have got over it all by Goodwood. But no! Really I could slap her. But I
+might have known! Joan never does things by halves."
+
+"She seems thorough," said Hillyard, although he remembered, with some
+doubts as to the truth of his comment, moments now and again when more
+primitive impulses had bubbled up in Joan Whitworth.
+
+"Thorough! Yes, that's the word. Oh, Mr. Hillyard, there was a time when
+she really dressed--_dressed_, you understand. My word, she was thorough
+then, too. I remember coming out of the Albert Hall on a Melba
+afternoon, when we could get nothing but a hansom cab, and a policeman
+actually had to lift her up into it like a big baby because her skirt
+was so tight. And look at her now!"
+
+Millicent Splay thumped the side of the car in her vexation.
+
+"But you mustn't think she's a fool." Lady Splay turned menacingly on
+the silent Hillyard.
+
+"But I don't," he protested.
+
+"That's the last thing to say about her."
+
+"I never said it," declared Martin Hillyard.
+
+"I should have lost my faith in you, if you had," rejoined Millicent
+Splay, even now hardly mollified.
+
+But she could not avoid the subject. Here was a new-comer to Rackham
+Park. She could not bear that he should carry away a wrong impression of
+her darling.
+
+"I'll tell you the truth about Joan. She has lived her sheltered life
+with us, and no real things have yet come near her. No real troubles, no
+deep joys. Her parents even died when she was too young to know them.
+But she is eighteen and alive to her finger-tips. Therefore
+she's--expectant."
+
+"Yes," Hillyard agreed.
+
+"She is searching for the meaning, for the secrets of life, sure that
+there is a meaning, sure that there are secrets, if only she could get
+hold of them. But she hasn't got hold of them. She runs here. She runs
+there. She explores, she experiments. That's why she's dressed like a
+tramp and thinking out a book where the heroine gets married to the
+Funeral March of a Marionette. Oh, my dear person, it just means, as it
+always means with us poor creatures, that the right man hasn't come
+along."
+
+Millie Splay leaned back in her seat.
+
+"When he does!" she cried. "When he does! Did you see the magnolia this
+morning? It burst into flower during the night. Joan! I thought once
+that it might be Harold Jupp. But it isn't."
+
+Lady Splay spoke with discouragement. She had the matchmaking fever in
+her blood. Martin Hillyard remembered her glance when he had casually
+spoken of Harry Luttrell. Then she startled him with words which he was
+never to forget, and in which he chose to find a real profundity.
+
+"The right man has not come along. So Joan mistakes anything odd for
+something great, and thinks that to be unusual is to be strong. It's a
+mood of young people who have not yet waked up."
+
+They drove to the private stand and walked through into the paddock.
+Millie Splay looked round at the gay and brilliant throng. She sighed.
+
+"There she is, moping in the drawing-room over Prince
+Hohenstiel--whatever his name is. She _won't_ come to Goodwood. No, she
+just won't."
+
+Yet Joan Whitworth did come to Goodwood that year, though not upon this
+day.
+
+No one in that household had read the newspapers so carefully each day
+as Martin Hillyard. As the prospect darkened each morning, he was in a
+distress lest a letter should not have been forwarded from his flat in
+London, or should have been lost in the post. Each evening when the
+party returned from the races his first question asked whether there was
+no telegram awaiting him. So regular and urgent were his inquiries that
+the house-party could not be ignorant of his preoccupation. And on the
+afternoon of the Thursday a telegram in its orange envelope was lying
+upon the hall-table.
+
+"It's for you, Mr. Hillyard," said Lady Splay.
+
+Hillyard held it in his hands. So the summons had come, the summons
+hoped for, despaired of, made so often into a whip wherewith he lashed
+his arrogance, the summons to serve.
+
+"I shall have to go up to town this evening," he said.
+
+Anxious faces gathered about him.
+
+"Oh, don't do that!" said Harold Jupp. "We have just got to like you."
+
+"Yes, wait until to-morrow, my dear boy," Sir Chichester suggested.
+Even Joan Whitworth descended to earth and requested that he should
+stay.
+
+"It's awfully kind of you," stammered Martin. "But I am afraid that this
+is very important."
+
+Lady Splay was practical.
+
+"Hadn't you better see first?" she asked.
+
+Hillyard, with his thoughts playing swiftly in the future like a rapier,
+was still standing stock-still with the unopened telegram in his hand.
+
+"Of course," he said. "But I know already what it is."
+
+The anxious little circle closed nearer as he tore open the envelope. He
+read:
+
+     "_I have refused the Duke. Money is cash--I mean trash.
+     Little one I am yours._--LINDA SPAVINSKY."
+
+The telegram had been sent that afternoon from Chichester.
+
+Hillyard gazed around at the serious faces which hemmed him in. It
+became a contest as to whose face should hold firm longest. Joan herself
+was the first to flee, and she was found rocking to and fro in silent
+laughter in a corner of the library. Then Hillyard himself burst into a
+roar.
+
+"I bought that fairly," he admitted, and he went up several points in
+the estimation of them all.
+
+The last day of the races came--all sunshine and hot summer; lights and
+shadows chasing across the downs, the black slopes of Charlton forest on
+the one side, parks and green fields and old brown houses, sloping to
+the silver Solent, upon the other; and in the centre of the plain, by
+Bosham water, the spire of Chichester Cathedral piercing the golden air.
+Paddock and lawn and the stands were filled until about two in the
+afternoon. Then the gaps began to show to those who were concerned to
+watch. Especially about the oval railings in the paddock, within which,
+dainty as cats and with sleek shining skins, the racehorses stepped, the
+crowd grew thin. And in a few moments, the word had run round like fire,
+"The officers had gone."
+
+Hillyard stood reflecting upon the stupendous fact. Never had he so
+bitterly regretted that physical disqualification which banned him from
+their company. Never had he so envied Luttrell. He was in the uttermost
+depression when a small, brown-gloved hand touched his arm. He turned
+and saw Joan Whitworth at his side, her lovely face alive with
+excitement, her eyes most friendly. It was hardly at all the Joan he
+knew. Joan had courage, but to face Goodwood in the clothes she affected
+at Rackham Park was beyond it. From her grey silk stockings and suede
+shoes to the little smart blue hat which sat so prettily on her hair,
+she was, as Millicent Splay would have admitted, really dressed.
+
+"There is a real telegram for you," she said. She held it out to him
+enclosed in an envelope which had been already opened.
+
+"_Please come to see me--Graham_," he read, and the actual receipt of
+the message stirred within him such a whirl of emotion that, for a
+moment or two, Joan Whitworth spoke and he was not aware of it.
+Suddenly, however, he understood that she was speaking words of
+importance.
+
+"I hope I did right to open it," she said. "Colonel Brockley rode over
+this morning to tell us that his son had been recalled to his battalion
+by a telegram. I knew you were expecting one. When this one came, I
+thought that it might be important and that you ought to have it at
+once. On the other hand it might be another telegram," and her face
+dimpled into smiles, "from Linda Spavinsky. I didn't know what to do
+about it. But Mario Escobar was quite certain that I ought to open it."
+
+"Mario Escobar?" cried Hillyard.
+
+"Yes. He had just arrived. He was quite certain that we ought to open
+it, so we did."
+
+"We?" A note of regret in his voice made her ask anxiously:
+
+"Was I wrong?"
+
+Hillyard hastened to reassure her.
+
+"Not a bit. Of course you were quite right, and I am very grateful."
+
+Joan's face cleared again.
+
+"You see, I thought that if it was important I could bring it over and
+drive you back again."
+
+"Will you?" Hillyard asked eagerly. "But now you are here you ought to
+stay."
+
+Joan would not hear of the proposal, and Hillyard himself was in a fever
+to be off. They found Sir Chichester and his wife in the paddock, and
+Hillyard wished his hosts good-bye. Mario Escobar, who had driven over
+with Joan Whitworth, was talking to them. Escobar turned to Martin
+Hillyard.
+
+"We met at Sir Charles Hardiman's supper party. You have not forgotten?
+You are off? A new play, I hope, to go into rehearsal."
+
+He smiled and bowed, and waved his hands. Hillyard went away with Joan
+Whitworth and mounted beside her into a little two-seated car which she
+had been accustomed to drive in her unregenerate days. She had not
+forgotten her skill, and she sent the little car spinning up and down
+the road into the hills. It was an afternoon of blue and gold, with the
+larks singing out of sight in the sky. The road wound up and down, dark
+hedges on one side, fields yellow with young wheat upon the other, and
+the scent of the briar-rose in the air. Joan said very little, and
+Hillyard was content to watch her as she drove, the curls blowing about
+her ears and her hands steady and sure upon the wheel as she swung the
+car round the corners and folds of the hills. Once she asked of him:
+
+"Are you glad to go?"
+
+He made no pretence of misunderstanding her.
+
+"Very," he answered. "If the great trial is coming, I want to fall back
+into the rank and file. Pushing and splashing is for peace times."
+
+"Oh, I understand that!" she cried.
+
+These were the young days. The jealousies of Departments, the intrigues
+to pull this man down and put that man up, not because of his capacity
+or failure, but because he fitted or did not fit the inner politics of
+the Office, the capture of honours by the stay-at-homes--all the little
+miseries and horrors that from time immemorial have disfigured the
+management of wars--they lay in the future. With millions of people, as
+with this couple speeding among the uplands, the one thought was--the
+great test is at hand.
+
+"You go up to London to-night, and it may be a long while before we see
+you," said Joan. She brought the car to a halt on the edge of Duncton
+Hill. "Look for luck and for memory at the Weald of Sussex," she cried
+with a little catch in her throat.
+
+Fields and great trees, and here and there the white smoke of a passing
+train and beyond the Blackdown and the misty slopes of Leith
+Hill--Hillyard was never to forget it, neither that scene nor the eager
+face and shining eyes of Joan Whitworth against the blue and gold of the
+summer afternoon.
+
+"You will remember that you have friends here, who will be glad to hear
+news of you," she said, and she threw in the clutch and started the car
+down the hill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+STELLA RUNS TO EARTH
+
+
+"You have been back in England long?" asked Stella Croyle.
+
+"A little while," said Hillyard evasively.
+
+It was the first week of September. But since his return from Rackham
+Park to London his days had been passed in the examination of files of
+documents; and what little time he had enjoyed free from that labour had
+been given to quiet preparations for his departure.
+
+"You might have come to see me," Stella Croyle suggested. "You knew that
+I wished to see you."
+
+"Yes, but I have been very busy," he answered. "I am going away."
+
+Stella Croyle looked at him curiously.
+
+"You too! You have joined up?"
+
+Hillyard shook his head.
+
+"No good," he answered. "I told you my lungs were my weak point. I am
+turned down--and I am going abroad. It's not very pleasant to find
+oneself staying on in London, going to a little dinner party here and
+there where all the men are oldish, when all of one's friends have
+gone."
+
+Stella Croyle's face and voice softened.
+
+"Yes. I can understand that," she said.
+
+Hillyard watched her narrowly, but there was no doubt that she was
+sincere. She had received him with an air of grievance, and a hard
+accent in her voice. But she was entering now into a comprehension of
+the regrets which must be troubling him.
+
+"I am sorry," she continued. "I never cared very much for women. I have
+very few friends amongst them. And so I am losing--every one." She held
+out her hand to him in sympathy. "But if I were a man and had been
+turned down by the doctors, I don't think that I could stay. I should
+go like you and hide."
+
+She smiled and poured out two cups of tea.
+
+"That is a habit of yours, even though you are not a man," Hillyard
+replied.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"You run away and hide."
+
+Stella looked at her visitor in surprise.
+
+"Who told you that?"
+
+"Sir Charles Hardiman."
+
+Stella Croyle was silent for a few moments.
+
+"Yes, that's true," and she laughed suddenly. "When things go wrong, I
+become rather impossible. I have often made up my mind to live entirely
+in the country, but I never carry the plan out."
+
+She let Hillyard drink his tea and light a cigarette before she
+approached the question which was torturing her.
+
+"You had a good time in the Sudan!" she began. "Lots of heads?"
+
+"Yes. I had a perfect time."
+
+"And your friend? Captain Luttrell. Did you meet him?"
+
+Hillyard had pondered on the answer which he would give to her when she
+asked that question. If he answered, "Yes,"--why, then he must go on, he
+must tell her something of what passed between Luttrell and himself, how
+he delivered his message and what answer he received. Let him wrap that
+answer up in words, however delicate and vague, she would see straight
+to the answer. Her heart would lead her there. To plead forgetfulness
+would be merely to acknowledge that he slighted her; and she would not
+believe him. So he lied.
+
+"No. I never met Luttrell. He was away down in Khordofan when I was on
+the White Nile."
+
+Stella Croyle had turned a little away from Hillyard when she put the
+question; and she sat now with her face averted for a long while.
+Nothing broke the silence but the ticking of the clock.
+
+"I am sorry," said Hillyard.
+
+No doubt her disappointment was bitter. She had counted very much, no
+doubt, on this chance of the two men meeting; on her message reaching
+her lover, and a "little word" now and again from him coming to her
+hands. Some morning she would wake up and find an envelope in the
+familiar writing waiting upon the tray beside her tea--that, no doubt,
+had been the hope which she had lived on this many a day. Hillyard was
+not fool enough to hold that he understood either the conclusions at
+which women arrived, or the emotions by which they jumped to them. But
+he attributed these hopes and thoughts with some confidence to Stella
+Croyle--until she turned and showed him her face. The sympathy and
+gentleness had gone from it. She was white with passion and her eyes
+blazed.
+
+"Why do you lie to me?" she cried. "I met Harry this morning."
+
+Hillyard was more startled by the news of Luttrell's presence in London
+than confused by the detection of his lie.
+
+"Harry Luttrell!" he exclaimed. "You are sure? He is in England?"
+
+"Yes. I met him in Piccadilly outside Jerningham's"--she mentioned the
+great outfitters and provision merchants--"he told me that he had run
+across you in the Sudan. What made you say that you hadn't?"
+
+Hillyard was taken at a loss.
+
+"Well?" she insisted.
+
+Hillyard could see no escape except by the way of absolute frankness.
+
+"Because I gave him your message, Mrs. Croyle," he replied slowly, "and
+I judged that he was not going to answer it."
+
+Stella Croyle was inclined to think that the world was banded against
+her, to deceive her and to do her harm. They had all been engaged,
+Hardiman and the rest of them, in keeping Harry Luttrell away from her:
+in defending him, whether he wished it or not, from the wiles of the
+enchantress. Stella Croyle was quick enough in the up-take where her
+wounded heart was not concerned, but she was never very clear in any
+judgment which affected Harry Luttrell. Passion and disappointment and
+hope drew veils between the truth and her, and she dived below the plain
+reason to this or that far-fetched notion for the springs of his
+conduct. Almost she had persuaded herself that Harry Luttrell, by the
+powerful influence of friends, was being kept against his will from her
+side. Her anger against Hillyard had sprung, not from the mere fact that
+he had lied to her, but from her fancy that he had joined the imaginary
+band of her enemies. She understood now that in this she had been wrong.
+
+"I see," she said gently. "It was to spare me pain?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Suddenly Stella Croyle laughed--and with triumph. She showed to Hillyard
+a face from which all the anger had gone.
+
+"You need not have been so anxious to spare me. Harry is coming here
+this afternoon."
+
+She saw the incredulity flicker in Hillyard's eyes, but she did not
+mind.
+
+"Yes," she asserted. "He goes down this evening to a camp in the New
+Forest where his battalion is waiting to go to France. He starts at six
+from Waterloo. He promised to run in here first."
+
+Hillyard looked at the clock. It was already half-past four. He had not
+the faintest hope that Luttrell would come. Stella had no doubt pressed
+him to come. She had probably been a little importunate. Luttrell's
+promise was an excuse, just an excuse to be rid of her--nothing more.
+
+"Luttrell has probably a great deal to do on this last afternoon," he
+suggested.
+
+"Of course, he won't be able to stay long," Stella Croyle agreed.
+"Still, five minutes are worth a good deal, aren't they, if you have
+waited for them two years?"
+
+She was impenetrable in her confidence. It clothed her about like
+armour. Not for a moment would she doubt--she dared not! Harry was
+coming back to the house that afternoon. Would he break something--some
+little china ornament upon the mantel-shelf? He generally knocked over
+something. What would it be to-day, the mandarin with the nodding head,
+or the funny little pot-bellied dwarf which she had picked up at
+Christie's the day before? Stella smiled delightedly as she selected
+this and that of her little treasures for destruction. Oh, to-day Harry
+Luttrell could sweep every glass or porcelain trinket she possessed
+into the grate--when once he had passed through the doorway--when once
+again he stood within her room. She sat with folded hands, hope like a
+rose in her heart, sure of him, so sure of him that she did not even
+watch the hands of her clock.
+
+But the hands moved on.
+
+"I will stay, if I may," said Hillyard uncomfortably. "I will go, of
+course, when----" and he could not bring himself to complete the
+sentence.
+
+Stella, however, added the words, though in a quieter voice and with
+less triumph than she had used before.
+
+"When he comes. Yes, do stay. I shall be glad."
+
+Slowly the day drew in. The sunlight died away from the trees in the
+park. In the tiny garden great shadows fell. The dusk gathered and
+Hillyard and Stella Croyle sat without a word in the darkening room. But
+Stella had lost her pride of carriage. On the mantelpiece the clock
+struck the hour--six little tinkling silvery strokes. At that moment a
+guard was blowing his whistle on a platform of Waterloo and a train
+beginning slowly to move.
+
+"He will have missed his train," said Stella in an unhappy whisper. "He
+will be here later."
+
+"My dear," replied Hillyard, and leaning forward he took and gently
+shook her hand. "Soldiers don't miss their trains."
+
+Stella did not answer. She sat on until the lamps were lit in the
+streets outside and in this room the dusk had changed to black night.
+
+"No, he will not come," she said at last, in a low wail of anguish. She
+rose and turned to Hillyard. Her face glimmered against the darkness
+deathly white and her eyes shone with sorrow.
+
+"It was kind and wise of you to wish to spare me," she said. "Oh, I can
+picture to myself how coldly he heard you. He never meant to come here
+this afternoon."
+
+Stella Croyle was wrong, just as Hillyard had been. Harry Luttrell had
+meant to pay his farewell visit to Stella Croyle, knowing well that he
+was unlikely ever to come back, and understanding that he owed her it.
+But an incident drove the whole matter from his thoughts, and the
+incident was just one instance to show how wide a gulf now separated
+these two.
+
+He had called at a nursing home close to Portland Place where a Colonel
+Oakley lay dying of a malignant disease. Oakley had been the chief
+spirit of reviving the moral and the confidence of the disgraced
+Clayfords. He had laboured unflinchingly to restore its discipline, to
+weld it into one mind, with dishonour to redeem, and a single arm to
+redeem it. He had lived for nothing else--until the internal trouble
+laid him aside. Luttrell called at half-past three to tell him that all
+was well with his old battalion, and was met by a nurse who shook her
+head.
+
+"The last two days he has been lying, except for a minute here and
+there, in a coma. You may see him if you like, but it is a question of
+hours."
+
+Luttrell went into the bedroom where the sick man lay, so thin of face
+and hand, so bloodless. But it seemed that the Fates wished to deal the
+Colonel one last ironic stroke, before they let him die. For, while
+Luttrell yet stood in the room, Colonel Oakley's eyes opened. This last
+moment of consciousness was his, the very last; and while it still
+endured, suddenly, down Portland Place, with its drums beating, its
+soldiers singing, marched a battalion. The song and the music swelled,
+the tramp of young, active, vigorous soldiers echoed and reached down
+the quiet street. Colonel Oakley turned his face to his pillow and burst
+into tears; the bitterness of death was given him to drink in
+overflowing measure. It seemed as though a jibe was flung at him.
+
+The tramp of the battalion had not yet died away when Oakley sank again
+into unconsciousness.
+
+"It was pretty rough that he should just wake up to hear that and to
+know that he would never have part in it, eh?" said Luttrell, speaking
+in a low voice more to himself than to the nurse. "What he did for us!
+Pretty hard treatment, eh?"
+
+Luttrell left the home with one thought filling his mind--the regiment.
+It had got to justify all Oakley's devotion; it had got somehow to make
+amends to him, even if he never was to know of it, for this last unfair
+stroke of destiny. Luttrell walked across London, dwelling upon the
+qualities of individual men in the company which was his command--how
+this man was quick, and that man stupid, and that other inclined to
+swank, and a fourth had a gift for reading maps, and a fifth would make
+a real marksman; and so he woke up to find himself before the bookstall
+in the station at Waterloo. Then he remembered the visit he had
+promised, but there was no longer any time. He took the train to the New
+Forest, and three days later went to France.
+
+But of Luttrell's visit to Colonel Oakley, Stella Croyle never knew.
+And, again, very likely it would not have mattered if she had. They were
+parted too widely for insight and clear vision.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hillyard carried away with him a picture of Stella's haunted and
+despairing face. It was over against him as he dined at his club,
+gleaming palely from out of darkness, the lips quivering, the eyes sad
+with all the sorrows of women. He could blame neither the one nor the
+other--neither Stella Croyle nor Harry Luttrell. One heart called to the
+other across too wide a gulf, and this heart on the hither side was
+listening to quite other voices and was deaf to her cry for help. But
+Hillyard was on the road along which Millicent Splay had already
+travelled. More and more he felt the case for compassion. He carried the
+picture of Stella's face home with him. It troubled his sleep; by
+constant gazing upon it he became afraid....
+
+He waked with a start to hear a question whispered at his ear. "Where is
+she? How has she passed this night?" The morning light was glimmering
+between the curtains. The room was empty. Yet surely those words had
+been spoken, actually spoken by a human voice.... He took his telephone
+instrument in his hand and lifted the receiver. In a little while--but a
+while too long for his impatience--his call was acknowledged at the
+exchange. He gave Stella Croyle's number and waited. Whilst he waited he
+looked at his watch. The time was a quarter past seven.
+
+An unfamiliar and sleepy voice answered him from her house.
+
+"Will you put me on to Mrs. Croyle?" he requested, and the reply came
+back:
+
+"Mrs. Croyle went away with her maid last night."
+
+"Last night?" cried Hillyard incredulously. "But I did not leave the
+house myself until well after six, and she had then no plans for
+leaving."
+
+Further details, however, were given to him. Mrs. Croyle had called up a
+garage whence cars can be hired. She had packed hurriedly. She had left
+at nine by motor.
+
+"Where for?" asked Hillyard.
+
+The name of an hotel in the pine country of Surrey was given.
+
+"Thank you," said Hillyard, and he rang off.
+
+She had run to earth in her usual way, when trouble and grief broke
+through her woman's armour and struck her down--that was all! Hillyard
+lighted a cigarette and rang for his tea. Yes, that was all! She was
+acting true to her type, as the jargon has it. But against his will, her
+face took shape before him, as he had seen it in the darkness of her
+room and ever since--ever since!
+
+He rang again, and more insistently. He possessed a small, swift
+motor-car. Before the clocks of London had struck eight he was
+travelling westwards along the King's Road. Hillyard was afraid. He did
+not formulate his fears. He was not sure of what he feared. But he was
+afraid--terribly afraid; and for the first time anger rose up in his
+heart against his friend. Luttrell! Harry Luttrell! At this very moment
+he was changing direction in columns of fours upon the drill ground,
+happy in the smooth execution of the manoeuvre by his men and
+untroubled by any thought of the distress of Stella Croyle. Well, little
+things must give way to great--women to the exigencies of drill!
+
+Meanwhile, Hillyard grew more afraid, and yet more afraid. He swept down
+the hill to Cobham, passed between the Hut and the lake, and was through
+Ripley before the shutters in the shops were down. The dew was heavy in
+the air; all the fresh, clean smell of the earth was in that September
+morning. And as yet the morning itself was only half awake. At last the
+Hog's Back rose, and at a little inn, known for its comfort--and its
+_chef_--Hillyard's car was stopped.
+
+"Mrs. Croyle?" Hillyard asked at the office.
+
+"Her maid is here," said the girl clerk, and pointed.
+
+Hillyard turned to a girl, pretty and, by a few years, younger than
+Stella Croyle.
+
+"I have orders not to wake Mrs. Croyle until she rings," said the maid.
+Jenny Prask, she was called, and she spoke with just a touch of pleasant
+Sussex drawl. "Mrs. Croyle has not been sleeping well, and she looked
+for a good night's rest in country air."
+
+The maid was so healthful in her appearance, so reasonable in her
+argument, that Hillyard's terrors, fostered by solitude, began to lose
+their vivid colours.
+
+"I understand that," he stammered. "Yet, Jenny----"
+
+Jenny Prask smiled.
+
+"You are Mr. Hillyard, I think?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I have heard my mistress speak of you." Hillyard knew enough of maids
+to understand that "mistress" was an unusual word with them. Here, it
+seemed, was a paragon of maids, who was quite content to be publicly
+Stella Croyle's maid, whose gentility suffered no offence by the
+recognition of a mistress.
+
+"If you wish, I will wake her."
+
+Jenny Prask went up the stairs, Hillyard at her heels. She knocked upon
+the door. No answer was returned. She opened it and entered.
+
+Stella Croyle was up and dressed. She was sitting at a table by the
+window with some sheets of notepaper and some envelopes in front of her,
+and her back was towards Hillyard and the open door. But she was dressed
+as she had been dressed the evening before when he had left her; the
+curtains in the room were drawn, and the electric lights on the
+writing-table and the walls were still burning. The bed had not been
+slept in.
+
+Stella Croyle rose and turned towards her visitors. She tottered a
+little as she stood up, and her eyes were dazed.
+
+"Why have you come here?" she asked faintly, and she fell rather than
+sat again in her chair.
+
+Hillyard sprang forward and tore the curtains aside so that the
+sunlight poured into the room, and Stella opened and shut her eyes with
+a contraction of pain.
+
+"I had so many letters to write," she explained, "I thought that I would
+sit up and get through with them."
+
+Hillyard looked at the table. There were great black dashes on the
+notepaper and lines, and here and there a scribbled picture of a face,
+and perhaps now and again half a word. She had sat at that table all
+night and had not even begun a letter. Hillyard's heart was torn with
+pity as he looked from her white, tired face to the sheets of notepaper.
+What misery and unhappiness did those broad, black dashes and idle lines
+express?
+
+"You must have some breakfast," he said. "I'll order it and have it
+ready for you downstairs by the time you are ready. Then I'll take you
+back to London."
+
+The blood suddenly mounted into her face.
+
+"You will?" she cried wildly. "In a reserved compartment, so that I may
+do nothing rash and foolish? Are you going to be kind too?"
+
+She broke into a peal of shrill and bitter laughter. Then her head went
+down upon her hands, and she gave herself up to such a passion of
+sobbing and tears as was quite beyond all Hillyard's experience. Yet he
+would rather hear those sobs and see her bowed shoulders shaking under
+the violence of them than listen again to the dreadful laughter which
+had gone before. He had not the knowledge which could enable him to
+understand her sudden outburst, nor did he acquire that knowledge until
+long afterwards. But he understood that quite unwittingly he had touched
+some painful chord in that wayward nature.
+
+"I am going to take you back in my motor-car," he said. "I'll be
+downstairs with the breakfast ready."
+
+She had probably eaten nothing, he reckoned, since teatime the day
+before. Food was the steadying thing she needed now. He went to the door
+which Jenny Prask held open for him.
+
+"Don't leave her!" he breathed in a whisper.
+
+Jenny Prask smiled.
+
+"Not me, sir," she said fervently.
+
+Hillyard remembered with comfort some words which she had spoken in
+appreciation of the loving devotion of her maid.
+
+"In three-quarters of an hour," said Jenny; and later on that morning,
+with a great fear removed from his heart, Hillyard drove Stella Croyle
+back to London.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+IN BARCELONA
+
+
+It was nine o'clock on a night of late August.
+
+The restaurant of the Maison Doree in the Plaza Cataluna at Barcelona
+looks across the brilliantly-lighted square from the south side. On the
+pavement in front of it and of its neighbour, the Cafe Continental, the
+vendors of lottery tickets were bawling the lucky numbers they had for
+sale. Even in this wide space the air was close and stale. Within, a few
+people left over in the town had strayed in to dine at tables placed
+against the walls under flamboyant decorations in the style of
+Fragonard. At a table Hillyard was sitting alone over his coffee. Across
+the room one of the panels represented a gleaming marble terrace
+overlooking a country-side bathed in orange light; and on the terrace
+stood a sedan chair with drawn curtains, and behind the chair stood a
+saddled white horse. Hillyard had dined more than once during the last
+few months at the Maison Doree; and the problem of that picture had
+always baffled him. A lovers' tryst! But where were the lovers? In some
+inner room shaded from the outrage of that orange light which never was
+on sea or land? Or in the sedan chair? Or were their faces to be
+discovered, as in the puzzle pictures, in the dappling of the horse's
+flanks, or the convolutions of the pillars which supported the terrace
+roof, or the gilded ornamentations of the chair itself? Hillyard was
+speculating for the twentieth time on these important matters with a
+vague hope that one day the door of the sedan chair would open, when
+another door opened--the door of the restaurant. A sharp-visaged man
+with a bald forehead, a clerk, one would say, or a commercial traveller,
+looked round the room and went forward to Hillyard's table. He went
+quite openly.
+
+The two men shook hands, and the new-comer seated himself in front of
+Hillyard.
+
+"You will take coffee and a cigar?" Hillyard asked in Spanish, and gave
+the order to the waiter.
+
+The two men talked of the heat, the cinematograph theatres at the side
+of the Plaza, the sea-bathing at Caldetas, and then the sharp-faced man
+leaned forward.
+
+"Ramon says there is no truth in the story, senor."
+
+Hillyard struck a match and held it to his companion's cigar.
+
+"And you trust Ramon, Senor Baeza?"
+
+Lopez Baeza leaned back with a gesture of unqualified assent.
+
+"As often and often you can trust the peasant of my country," he said.
+
+Hillyard agreed with a nod. He gazed about the room.
+
+"There is no one interesting here to-night," he said idly.
+
+"No," answered Lopez Baeza. "The theatres are closed, the gay people
+have gone to St. Sebastian, the families to the seaside. Ouf, but it is
+hot."
+
+"Yes."
+
+Hillyard dropped his voice to a whisper and returned to the subject of
+his thoughts.
+
+"You see, my friend, it is of so much importance that we should make no
+mistake here."
+
+"_Claro!_" returned Lopez Baeza. "But listen to me, senor. You know that
+our banks are behind the times and our post offices not greatly trusted.
+We have therefore a class of messengers."
+
+Hillyard nodded.
+
+"I know of them."
+
+"Good. They are not educated. Most of them can neither read nor write.
+They are simply peasants. Yet they are trusted to carry the most
+important letters and great sums of money in gold and silver from place
+to place. And never do they betray their trust. It is unknown. Why,
+senor, I know myself of cases where rich men have entrusted their
+daughters to the care of the messengers, sure that in this way their
+daughters will arrive safely at their destination."
+
+"Yes," said Hillyard. "I know of these men."
+
+"Ramon Castillo is as honest as the best of them."
+
+"Yes, but he is not one of them," said Hillyard. "He is a stevedore with
+thirty years of the quayside and at the port of Barcelona, where there
+are German ships with their officers and crews on board."
+
+Hillyard was troubled. He drew from his pocket creased letters and read
+them for the twentieth time with a frowning countenance.
+
+"There is so much at stake. Two hundred feluccas--two hundred
+motor-driven feluccas! And eighteen thousand men, on shore and sea? See
+what it means! On our side, the complete surveillance of the Western
+Mediterranean! On the other side--against us--two hundred travelling
+supply bases for submarines, two hundred signal stations. I want to be
+sure! I want neither to give the enemy the advantage by putting him upon
+his guard, nor to miss the great opportunity myself."
+
+Lopez Baeza nodded.
+
+"Why not talk with Ramon Castillo yourself?" he asked.
+
+"That is what I want to do."
+
+"I will arrange for it. When?"
+
+"To-night," said Hillyard.
+
+Lopez Baeza lifted his hands in deprecation.
+
+"Yes. I can take you to his house--now. But, senor, Ramon is a poor man.
+He lives in a little narrow street."
+
+Hillyard looked quietly at Lopez Baeza. He had found men on the
+Mediterranean littoral whom he could trust with his life and everything
+that was his. But a good working principle was to have not overmuch
+faith in any one. A noisome little street in the lower quarters of
+Barcelona--who could tell what might happen after one had plunged into
+it?
+
+"I will come with you," he said.
+
+"Good," said Lopez. "I will go on ahead." And once more Hillyard's quiet
+eyes rested upon Baeza's face. "It is not wise that we should walk out
+together. There is no one here, it is true, but in the chairs outside
+the cafes--who shall say?"
+
+"Yes. You go on ahead," Hillyard agreed. "That is wise."
+
+Lopez rose.
+
+"Give me five minutes, senor. Then down the Rambla. The second turning
+to the right, beyond the Opera House. You will see me at the corner.
+When you see me, follow!"
+
+Hillyard rose and shook hands cordially with Lopez Baeza with the air of
+a man who might never see his friend again for years. Baeza commended
+him to God and went out of the restaurant on to the lighted footway.
+
+Hillyard read through the two creased letters again, though he knew them
+by heart. They had reached him from William Lloyd, an English merchant
+at Barcelona, at two different dates. The first, written six weeks ago,
+related how Pontiana Tabor, a servant of the firm, had come into Lloyd's
+private office and informed him that on the night of the 27th June a
+German submarine had entered a deep cove at the lonely north-east point
+of the island of Mallorca, and had there been provisioned by Jose
+Medina's men, with Jose Medina's supplies, and that Jose Medina had
+driven out of Palma de Mallorca in his motor-car, and travelling by
+little-known tracks, had been present when the operation was in process.
+The name of a shoemaker in a street of Palma was given as corroboration.
+
+The second letter, which had brought Hillyard post-haste off the sea
+into Barcelona, was only three days old. Once more Pontiana Tabor had
+been the bearer of bad news. Jose Medina had been seen entering the
+German Consulate in Barcelona, between eleven and twelve o'clock of the
+morning of August 22nd.
+
+Hillyard was greatly troubled by these two letters.
+
+"We can put Jose Medina out of business, of course," he reflected. For
+Jose Medina's tobacco factories were built at a free port in French
+territory. "But I want the man for my friend."
+
+He put the letters back in his pocket and paid his bill. As he went out
+of the Maison Doree, he felt in the right-hand pocket of his jacket to
+make sure that a little deadly life preserver lay ready to his hand.
+
+He did not distrust Lopez Baeza. All the work which Baeza had done for
+him had, indeed, been faithfully and discreetly done. But--but there was
+always a certain amount of money for the man who would work the double
+cross--not so very much, but still, a certain amount. And Hillyard was
+always upon his guard against the intrusion of a contempt for the
+German effort. That contempt was easy enough for a man who, having read
+year after year of the wonders of the loud-vaunted German system of
+espionage, had come fresh from his reading into contact with the actual
+agents. Their habit of lining their pockets at the expense of their
+Government, their unfulfilled pretensions, their vanity and
+extravagance, and, above all, their unimaginative stupidity in their
+estimation of men--these things were apt in the early years of the war
+to bewilder the man who had been so often told to fall down before the
+great idol of German efficiency.
+
+"The German agent works on the assumption that the mind of every
+foreigner reasons on German lines, but with inferior intelligence. But
+behind the agent is the cunning of Berlin, with its long-deliberated
+plans and its concocted ingenuity of method. And though on the whole
+they are countered, as with amazement they admit, by the amateurs from
+England, still every now and then--not very often--they do bring
+something off."
+
+Thus Hillyard reasoned as he turned the corner of the Plaza Cataluna
+into the wide Rambla. It might be that the narratives of Pontiana Tabor
+and the denials of Ramon Castillo were all just part of one little
+subsidiary plan in the German scheme which was to reach its achievement
+by putting an inconvenient Englishman out of the way for good in one of
+the dark, narrow side streets of Barcelona.
+
+After the hot day the Rambla, with its broad tree-shaded alley in the
+middle, its carriage-ways on each side of the alley, and its shops and
+footwalks beyond the carriage-ways, was crowded with loiterers. The
+Spaniard, to our ideas, is simple in his pleasure. To visit a
+cinematograph, to take a cooling temperance drink at the Municipal
+Kiosque at the top of the Rambla, and to pace up and down the broad walk
+with unending chatter--until daybreak--here were the joys of Barcelona
+folk in the days of summer. Further down at the lower end of the Rambla
+you would come upon the dancing halls and supper-cafes, with separate
+rooms for the national gambling game, "Siete y Media," but they had
+their own clientele amongst the bloods and the merchant captains from
+the harbour. The populace of Barcelona walked the Rambla under the
+great globes of electric light.
+
+Hillyard could only move slowly through the press. Every one dawdled.
+Hillyard dawdled too. He passed the Opera House, and a little further
+down saw across the carriage-way, Lopez Baeza in front of a lighted
+tobacco shop at the corner of a narrow street. Hillyard crossed the
+carriage-way and Baeza turned into the street, a narrow thoroughfare
+between tall houses and dark as a cavern. Hillyard followed him. The
+lights of the Rambla were left behind, the houses became more slatternly
+and disreputable, the smells of the quarter were of rancid food and bad
+drains. Before a great door Baeza stopped and clapped his hands.
+
+A jingle of keys answered him, and rising from the step of another house
+the watchman of the street crossed the road. He put a key into the door,
+opened it, and received the usual twopence. Baeza and Hillyard passed
+in.
+
+"Ramon is on the top floor. We have to climb," said Baeza.
+
+He lit a match, and the two men mounted a staircase with a carved
+balustrade, made for a king. Two stories up, the great staircase ended,
+and another of small, steep and narrow steps succeeded it. When Baeza's
+match went out there was no light anywhere; from a room somewhere above
+came a sound of quarrelling voices--a woman's voice high and shrill, a
+man's voice hoarse and drunken, and, as an accompaniment, the wailing of
+a child wakened from its sleep.
+
+At the very top of the house Baeza rapped on a door. The door was
+opened, and a heavy, elderly man, wearing glasses on his nose, stood in
+the entrance with the light of an unshaded lamp behind him.
+
+"Ramon, it is the chief," said Baeza.
+
+Ramon Castello crossed the room and closed an inner door. Then he
+invited Hillyard to enter. The room was bare but for a few pieces of
+necessary furniture, but all was scrupulously clean. Ramon Castillo set
+forward a couple of chairs and asked his visitors to be seated. He was
+in his shirt-sleeves, and he wore the rope-soled sandals of the Spanish
+peasant, but he was entirely at his ease. He made the customary little
+speech of welcome with so simple a dignity and so manifest a sincerity
+that Hillyard could hardly doubt him afterwards.
+
+"It is my honour to welcome you not merely as my chief, but as an
+Englishman. I am poor, and I take my pay, but Senor Baeza will assure
+you that for twenty-five years I have been the friend of England. And
+there are thousands and thousands of poor Spaniards like myself, who
+love England, because its law-courts are just, because there is a real
+freedom there, because political power is not the opportunity of
+oppression."
+
+The little speech was spoken with great rapidity and with deep feeling;
+and, having delivered it, Ramon seated himself on the side of the table
+opposite to Hillyard and Baeza and waited.
+
+"It is about Pontiana Tabor," said Hillyard. "He is making a mistake?"
+
+"No, senor; he is lying," and he used the phrase which has no exact
+equivalent in the English. "He is a _sin verguenza_."
+
+"Tell me, my friend," said Hillyard.
+
+"Pontiana Tabor swears that Jose Medina was seen to enter the German
+Consulate before noon on August the 22nd. But on August the 21st Medina
+was in Palma, Mallorca; he was seen there by a captain of the Islana
+Company, and a friend of mine spoke to him on the quay. If, therefore,
+he was in the German Consulate here on the 22nd, he must have crossed
+that night by the steamer to Barcelona. But he did not. His name was not
+on the list of passengers, and although he might have avoided that, he
+was not seen on board or to come on board. I have spoken with officers
+and crew. Jose Medina did not cross on the 21st. Moreover, Senor Baeza
+has seen a letter which shows that he was certainly in Palma on the
+23rd."
+
+"That is true," said Baeza. "Medina was in Palma on the 21st, and in
+Palma on the 23rd, and he did not cross to Barcelona on the night of the
+21st, nor back again to Palma on the night of the 22nd. Therefore he was
+not seen to visit the German Consulate on the morning of the 22nd, and,
+as Ramon says, Pontiana is lying."
+
+"Why should Pontiana lie?" asked Hillyard.
+
+Ramon took his pince-nez from the bridge of his nose, and, holding them
+between his finger and thumb, tapped with them upon his knee.
+
+"Because, senor, there are other contrabandists besides Jose Medina; one
+little group at Tarragona and another near Garucha--and they would all
+be very glad to see Jose Medina get into trouble with the British and
+the French. His feluccas fly the British flag and his factories are on
+French soil. There would be an end of Jose Medina."
+
+The letters were put in front of Hillyard. He read them over carefully,
+and at the end he said:
+
+"If Pontiana Tabor lied in this case of the Consulate--and that seems
+clear--it is very likely that he lied also in the other. Yes."
+
+As a matter of fact, Hillyard had reasons of his own to doubt the truth
+of the story which ascribed to Medina the actual provisioning of a
+submarine--reasons which had nothing whatever to do with Jose Medina
+himself.
+
+The destruction of shipping by German submarines in this western section
+of the Mediterranean had an intermittent regularity. There would be ten
+successive days--hardly ever more than ten days--during which ships were
+sunk. Thereafter for three weeks, steamships and sailing ships would
+follow the course upon which they were ordered, without hurt or loss.
+After three weeks, the murderous business would begin again. There was
+but one explanation in Hillyard's opinion.
+
+"The submarines come out of Pola. When they reach the line between the
+Balearics and the Spanish coast, they have oil for ten days' cruising,
+and then return to their base," he argued.
+
+Now, if a submarine had been provisioned by Jose Medina in a creek of
+Mallorca, the ten days' cruise would be extended to three weeks. This
+had never happened. Moreover, the date fixed by Pontiana Tabor happened
+to fall precisely in the middle of one of those periods of three weeks
+during which the terror did not haunt those seas. Pontiana Tabor had not
+known enough. He had fixed his date at a venture.
+
+"Yes," said Hillyard, rising from his chair. "I agree with you, Senor
+Ramon. Tabor is a liar. What troubled me was that I had no clue as to
+why he should lie. You have given me it, and with all my heart I thank
+you."
+
+He shook the stevedore's hand and stood for a moment talking and joking
+with him upon other subjects. Hillyard knew the value of a smile and a
+jest and a friendly manner. Your very enemy in Spain will do you a good
+turn if you meet him thus. Then he turned to Baeza.
+
+"I shall be back, perhaps, in a week, but perhaps not. I will let you
+know in the usual way."
+
+The two men went down the stairs and into the street. It was empty now
+and black, but at the far end, as at the end of a tunnel, the Rambla
+blazed and roared and the crowds swung past like a procession.
+
+"It is best that we should separate here," said Lopez Baeza, "if you
+have no further instructions."
+
+"Touching the matter of those ships," Hillyard suggested.
+
+"Senor Fairbairn has it in hand."
+
+"Good. Then, my friend, I have no further instructions," said Hillyard.
+"I agree with you about Ramon. I will go first."
+
+He shook hands with Baeza, crossed the road and disappeared into the
+mouthway of an alley which ran up the hill parallel to the Rambla. The
+alley led into another side street, and turning to the right, Hillyard
+slipped out into the throng beneath the trees. He sauntered, as idle and
+as curious as any in that broad walk. He took a drink at a cafe, neither
+hiding himself unnaturally nor ostentatiously occupying a chair at the
+edge of the awning. He sat there for half an hour. But when he rose
+again he made sure that no one was loitering to watch his movements. He
+sauntered up to the very end of the Rambla past the ice-cream kiosque.
+The great Plaza spread in front of him, and at the corner across the
+road stood a double line of motor-cars, some for hire, others waiting
+for parties in the restaurants opposite. He walked across the roadway
+and disappeared in between the motor-cars as if he intended to cross the
+Plaza by the footway to the Paseo de la Reforma. A second later a
+motor-car shot out from the line and took the road to Tarragona.
+
+Hillyard was inside the car. The tall houses of the city gave place to
+villas draped in bougainvillea behind gardens of trees. Then the villas
+ceased and the car sped across the flats of Llobegrat and climbed to the
+finest coast-road in the world. It was a night for lovers. A full moon,
+bright as silver, sailed in the sky; the broad, white road rose and
+dipped and wound past here and there a blue cottage, here and there a
+peasant mounted on his donkey and making his journey by night to escape
+the burning day. Far below the sea spread out most gently murmuring, and
+across a great wide path of glittering jewels, now a sailing-ship glided
+like a bird, now the black funnels of a steamer showed. So light was the
+wind that Hillyard could hear the kick of its screw, like the beating of
+some gigantic clock. He took his hat from his head and threw wide open
+his thin coat. After the heavy days of anxiety he felt a nimbleness of
+heart and spirit which set him in tune with the glory of that night.
+Suspicions, vague and elusive, had for so long clustered about Jose
+Medina, and then had come the two categorical statements, dates and
+hours, chapter and verse! He was still not sure, he declared to himself
+in warning. But he was sure enough to risk the great move--the move
+which he alone could make! He should no doubt have been dreaming of Joan
+Whitworth and fitting her into the frame of that August night. But he
+had not thought of her by one o'clock in the morning; and by one o'clock
+in the morning his motor-car had come to a stop on the deserted quay of
+Tarragona harbour under the stern of an English yacht.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+OLD ACQUAINTANCE
+
+
+At six o'clock on the second morning after Hillyard's visit to
+Barcelona, the steam-yacht _Dragonfly_ swept round the point of La
+Dragonera and changed her course to the south-east. She steamed with a
+following breeze over a sea of darkest sapphire which broke in sparkling
+cascades of white and gold against the rocky creeks and promontories on
+the ship's port side. Peasants working on the green terraces above the
+rocks stopped their work and stared as the blue ensign with the Union
+Jack in the corner broke out from the flagstaff at the stern.
+
+"But it's impossible," cried one. "Only yesterday a French mail-steamer
+was chased in the passage between Mallorca and Minorca. It's
+impossible."
+
+Another shaded his eyes with his hand and looked upon the neat yacht
+with its white deck and shining brass in contemptuous pity.
+
+"Loco Ingles," said he.
+
+The tradition of the mad Englishman has passed away from France, but it
+has only leaped the Pyrenees. Some crazy multi-millionaire was just
+running his head into the German noose. They gave up their work and
+settled down contentedly to watch the yacht, multi-millionaire, captain
+and crew and all go up into the sky. But the _Dragonfly_ passed from
+their sight with the foam curling from her bows and broadening out into
+a pale fan behind her; and over the headlands for a long time they saw
+the streamer of her smoke as she drove in to Palma Bay.
+
+Hillyard, standing by the captain's side upon the bridge, watched the
+great cathedral rise from out of the water at the end of the bay, towers
+and flying buttresses and the mass of brown stone, before even a house
+was visible. The _Dragonfly_ passed a German cargo steamer which had
+sought refuge here at the outbreak of war. She was a large ship, full of
+oil, and she had been moved from the quay-side to an anchorage in the
+bay by the captain of the port, lest by design or inadvertence she
+should take fire and set the town aflame. There she lay, a source of
+endless misgiving to every allied ship which sailed these waters, kept
+clean and trim as a yacht, her full crew on board, her dangerous cargo
+below, in the very fairway of the submarine; and there the scruples of
+the Allies allowed her to remain while month followed month. Historians
+in later years will come across in this or that Government office in
+Paris, in London and in Rome, warnings, appeals, and accounts of the
+presence of this ship; and those anxious for a picturesque contrast may
+set against the violation of Belgium and all the "scrap of paper"
+philosophy, the fact that for years in the very centre of the German
+submarine effort in the Western Mediterranean, the German steamer
+_Fangturm_, with her priceless cargo of oil, was allowed by the
+scrupulous honour of the Allies to swing unmolested at her anchor in
+Palma Bay. Hillyard could never pass that great black ship in those
+neutral waters without a hope that his steering-gear would just at this
+moment play him false and swing his bows at full speed on to her side.
+The _Dragonfly_ ran past her to the arm of the great mole and was moored
+with her stern to the quay. A small crowd of gesticulating idlers
+gathered about the ropes, and all were but repeating the phrases of the
+peasants upon the hill-side, as Hillyard walked ashore down the gangway.
+
+"But it's impossible that you should have come."
+
+"Just outside there is one. The fisherman saw her yesterday."
+
+"She rose and spoke to one of the fishing-boats."
+
+"But it is impossible that you should have come here."
+
+"Yet I am here," answered Hillyard, the very mad multi-millionaire.
+"What will you, my friends? Shall I tell you a secret? Yes, but tell no
+one else! The Germans would be most enraged if they found out that we
+knew it. There aren't any submarines."
+
+A little jest spoken in a voice of good-humour, with a friendly smile,
+goes a long way anywhere, but further in Spain than anywhere else in
+the world. The small crowd laughed with Hillyard, and made way for him.
+
+A man offered to him with a flourish and a bow a card advertising a
+garage at which motor-cars could be hired for expeditions in the island.
+Hillyard accepted it and put it into his pocket. He paid a visit to his
+consul, and thereafter sat in a cafe for an hour. Then he strolled
+through the narrow streets, admired this and that massive archway, with
+its glimpse of a great stone staircase within, and mounted the hill.
+Almost at the top, he turned sharply into a doorway and ran up the
+stairs to the second floor. He knocked upon the door, and a maid-servant
+answered.
+
+"Senor Jose Medina lives here?"
+
+"Yes, senor."
+
+"He is at home?"
+
+"No, senor. He is in the country at his _finca_."
+
+Hillyard thanked the girl, and went whistling down the stairs. Standing
+in the archway, he looked up and down the street with something of the
+air of a man engaged upon a secret end. One or two people were moving in
+the street; one or two were idling on the pavement. Hillyard smiled and
+walked down the hill again. He took the advertisement card from his
+pocket and, noting the address, walked into the garage.
+
+"It will please me to see something of the island," he said. "I am not
+in Mallorca for long. I should like a car after lunch." He gave the name
+of a cafe between the cathedral and the quay. "At half-past two? Thank
+you. And by which road shall I go for all that is most of Mallorca?"
+
+This was Spain. A small group of men had already invaded the garage and
+gathered about Hillyard and the proprietor. They proceeded at once to
+take a hand in the conversation and offer their advice. They suggested
+the expedition to Miramar, to Alcudia, to Manacor, discussing the time
+each journey would take, the money to be saved by the shorter course,
+the dust, and even the gradients of the road. They had no interest in
+the business in the garage, and they were not at all concerned in the
+success of Hillyard's excursion. That a stranger should carry away with
+him pleasant recollections of the beauties of Mallorca, was a matter of
+supreme indifference to them all. But they were engaged in the favourite
+pursuit of the Spaniards of the towns. They were getting through a
+certain small portion of the day, without doing any work, and without
+spending any money. The majority favoured the road past Valdemosa, over
+the Pass of Soller to Miramar and its rocky coast on the north-east side
+of the island, as indeed Hillyard knew the majority must. For there is
+no road like it for beauty in the Balearics, and few in all Spain.
+
+"I will go that way, then," said Hillyard, and he strolled off to his
+luncheon.
+
+He drove afterwards over the plain, between groves of olive and almond
+trees with gnarled stems and branches white with dust, mounted by the
+twisting road, terraces upon his left and pine-clothed mountainside upon
+his right, past Valdemosa to the Pass. The great sweep of rock-bound
+coast and glittering sea burst upon his view, and the boom of water
+surging into innumerable caves was like thunder to his ears. At a little
+gate upon the road the car was stopped at a word from Hillyard.
+
+"I am going in here," he said. "I may be a little while."
+
+The chauffeur looked at Hillyard with surprise. Hillyard had never been
+to the house before, but he could not mistake it from the description
+which he had been given. He passed through an orchard to the door of an
+outrageous villa, built in the style of a Swiss chalet and glaring with
+yellow paint. A man in his shirt-sleeves came to the door.
+
+"Senor Jose Medina?" Hillyard inquired.
+
+He held out his card and was ushered into the room of ceremony which
+went very well with the exterior of the yellow chalet. A waxed floor,
+heavy white lace curtains at the windows, a table of walnut-wood, chairs
+without comfort, but with gold legs, all was new and never to be used
+and hideous. Hillyard looked around him with a nod of comprehension.
+This is what its proprietor would wish for. With a hundred old houses to
+select from for a model--no! This is the way his fancies would run. The
+one beauty of the place, its position, was Nature's. Hillyard went to
+the window, which was on the side of the house opposite to the door. He
+looked down a steep terraced garden of orange trees and bright flowers
+to the foam sparkling on the rocks a thousand feet below.
+
+"You wished to see me, senor," and Hillyard turned with curiosity.
+
+Twelve years had passed since he had seen Jose Medina, but he had
+changed less than Hillyard expected. Martin remembered him as small and
+slight, with a sharp mobile face and a remarkable activity which was the
+very badge of the man; and these characteristics he retained. He was
+still like quick-silver. But he was fast losing his hair, and he wore
+pince-nez. The dress of the peasant and the cautious manner of the
+peasant, both were gone. In his grey lounge suit he had the look of a
+quick-witted clerk.
+
+"You wished to see me, senor," he repeated, and he laid the card upon
+the table.
+
+"For a moment. I shall hope not to detain you long."
+
+"My time and my house are yours."
+
+Jose Medina had clearly become a _caballero_ since those early days of
+adventure. Hillyard noted the point for his own guidance, thanking his
+stars meanwhile that the gift of the house was a meaningless politeness.
+
+"I arrived at Palma this morning, in a yacht," said Hillyard.
+
+Jose Medina was prepared for the information. He bowed. There had been
+neither smile nor, indeed, any expression whatever upon his face since
+he had entered the room.
+
+"I have heard of the yacht," he said. "It is a fine ship."
+
+"Yes."
+
+Jose Medina looked at Hillyard.
+
+"It flies the English flag."
+
+Hillyard bowed.
+
+"As do your feluccas, senor, I believe."
+
+A mere twitch of the lips showed that Medina appreciated the point.
+
+"But I," continued Hillyard, "am an Englishman, while you, senor----"
+
+Jose Medina was not, if he could help it, to be forced to cry "a hit"
+again.
+
+"Whereas I, senor, am a neutral," he answered. The twitch of the lips
+became a smile. He invited Hillyard to a chair, he drew up another
+himself, and the two men sat down over against one another in the middle
+of that bare and formal room.
+
+That one word neutral, so delicately emphasised, warned Hillyard that
+Jose Medina was quite alive to the reason of his visit. He could, of
+course, have blurted it out at once. He could have said in so many
+words, "Your tobacco factories are on French soil, and your two hundred
+feluccas are nominally owned in Gibraltar. Between French and English we
+shall close you down unless you help." But he knew very well that he
+would have got no more than fair words if he had. It is not thus that
+delicate questions are approached in Spain. Even the blackmailer does
+not dream of bluntly demanding money, or exposing his knowledge that he
+will get it. He pleads decently the poverty of his family and the long
+illness of his mother-in-law; and with the same decency the blackmailed
+yields to compassion and opens his purse. There is a gentlemanly
+reticence to be observed in these matters and Hillyard was well aware of
+the rules. He struck quite a different note.
+
+"I shall speak frankly to you, Senor Medina, as one _caballero_ to
+another"; and Jose Medina bowed and smiled.
+
+"I put my cards upon the table. I ask you whether in your heart you are
+for the Germans or for us."
+
+Jose Medina hitched his chair a little closer and holding up one hand
+with fingers spread ticked off his points, as he spoke them, with the
+other.
+
+"Let us see! First, you come to me, senor, saying you are English, and
+speaking Spanish with the accent of Valencia. Good! I might reply,
+senor, how do I know? I might ask you how I am to be sure that when that
+British flag is hauled down from your yacht outside the bay over there,
+it is not a German one which should take its place. Good! But I do not
+make these replies. I accept your word as a _caballero_ that you are
+English and not an enemy of England laying a trap for me. Good!" He took
+off his eye-glasses and polished them.
+
+"Now listen to me!" he continued. "I am a Spaniard. We of Spain have
+little grievances against England and France. But these are matters for
+the Government, not for a private person. And the Government bids us be
+neutral. Good! Now I speak as a private person. For me England means
+opportunity for poor men to become great and rich. You may say I have
+become rich without the opportunities of England. I answer I am one in
+many thousands. England means Liberty, and within the strict limits of
+my neutrality I will do what a man may for that great country."
+
+Hillyard listened and nodded. The speech was flowing and spoken with
+great fervour. It might mean much. It might mean nothing at all. It
+might be the outcome of conviction. But it might again be nothing more
+than the lip-service of a man who knew very well that England and France
+could squeeze him dry if they chose.
+
+"I wish," said Hillyard cordially, "that the captains of the ports of
+Spain spoke also with your voice."
+
+Jose Medina neither assumed an ignorance of the German leanings of the
+port officials nor expressed any assent. But, as if he had realised the
+thought which must be passing in Hillyard's mind, he said:
+
+"You know very well, senor, that I should be mad if I gave help to the
+Germans. I am in your hands. You and France have but to speak the word,
+and every felucca of mine is off the seas. But what then! There are
+eighteen thousand men at once without food or work thrown adrift upon
+the coast of Spain. Will not Germany find use for those eighteen
+thousand men?"
+
+Hillyard agreed. The point was shrewd. It was an open, unanswerable
+reply to the unuttered threat which perhaps Hillyard might be prompted
+to use.
+
+"I have spoken," continued Jose Medina. "Now it is for you, senor. Tell
+me what within the limits of my neutrality I can do to prove to you the
+sincerity of my respect for England?"
+
+Hillyard took a sheet of paper and a pencil from his pocket. He drew a
+rough map.
+
+"Here are the Balearic Islands; here, farther to the west, the
+Columbretes; here the African coast; here the mainland of Spain. Now
+watch, I beg you, senor, whilst I sketch in the routes of your feluccas.
+At Oran in Africa your factories stand. From them, then, we start. We
+draw a broad thick line from Oran to the north-east coast of Mallorca,
+that coast upon which we look down from these windows, a coast
+honeycombed with caves and indented with creeks like an edge of fine
+lace--a very storehouse of a coast. Am I not right, Senor Don Jose?" He
+laughed, in a friendly good-humoured way, but the face of Jose Medina
+did not lose one shade of its impassiveness. He did not deny that the
+caves of this coast were the storehouse of his tobacco; nor did he
+agree.
+
+"Let us see!" he said.
+
+"So I draw a thick line, since all your feluccas make for this island
+and this part of the island first of all. From here they diverge--you
+will correct me, I hope, if I am wrong."
+
+"I do not say that I shall correct you if you are wrong," said Jose
+Medina.
+
+Hillyard was now drawing other and finer lines which radiated like the
+sticks of an outspread fan from the north-east coast of Mallorca to the
+Spanish mainland; and he went on drawing them, unperturbed by Jose's
+refusal to assist in his map-making. Some of the lines--a few--ended at
+the Islands of the Columbretes, sixty miles off Valencia.
+
+"Your secret storehouse, I believe, senor," he remarked pleasantly.
+
+"A cruiser of our Government examined these islands most carefully a
+fortnight ago upon representations from the Allies, and found nothing of
+any kind to excite interest," replied Jose Medina.
+
+"The cruiser was looking for submarine bases, I understand, not
+tobacco," Martin Hillyard observed. "And since it was not the cruiser's
+commission to look for tobacco, why should it discover it?"
+
+Jose Medina shrugged his shoulders. Jose Medina's purse was very long
+and reached very high. It would be quite impolitic for that cruiser to
+discover Jose Medina's tobacco stores, as Medina himself and Martin
+Hillyard, and the captain of the cruiser, all very well knew.
+
+Martin Hillyard continued to draw fine straight lines westwards from the
+northern coast of Mallorca to the mainland of Spain, some touching the
+shore to the north of Barcelona, some striking it as far south as
+Almeria and Garrucha. When he had finished his map-making he handed the
+result to Jose Medina.
+
+"See, senor! Your feluccas cut across all the trade-routes through the
+Mediterranean. Ships going east or going west must pass between the
+Balearics and Africa, or between the Balearics and Spain. We are here in
+the middle, and, whichever course those ships take, they must cross the
+lines on which your feluccas continually come and go."
+
+Jose Medina looked at the map. He did not commit himself in any way. He
+contented himself with a question: "And what then?"
+
+"So too with the German submarines. They also must cross and cross again
+in their cruises, those lines along which your feluccas continually come
+and go."
+
+Jose Medina threw up his hands.
+
+"The submarines! Senor, if you listen to the babblers on the quays, you
+would think that the seas are stiff with them! Schools of them like
+whales everywhere! Only yesterday Palma rang with the account of one. It
+pursued a French steamer between Minorca and Mallorca. It spoke to a
+fishing boat! What did it not do? Senor, there was no submarine
+yesterday in the channel between Minorca and Mallorca. If there had been
+I must have known."
+
+And he sat back as though the subject were disposed of.
+
+"But submarines do visit these waters, Senor Medina, and they do sink
+ships," replied Hillyard.
+
+Jose Medina shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands.
+
+"_Claro!_ And it is said that I supply them with their oil." He turned
+swiftly to Hillyard. "Perhaps you have heard that story, senor?"
+
+Hillyard nodded.
+
+"Yes. I did not believe it. It is because I did not believe it that I am
+here, asking your help."
+
+"I thank you. It is the truth. I will tell you something now. Not one of
+my captains has ever seen one of those submarines, neither on this side
+nor on that," and Medina touched the lines which Hillyard had drawn on
+both sides of the Balearics on his chart. "Now, what can I do?"
+
+"One simple thing, and well within your scruples as a neutral," replied
+Hillyard. "These submarines doubly break the laws of nations. They
+violate your territorial waters, and they sink merchant ships without
+regard for the crews."
+
+"Yes," said Jose Medina.
+
+"You have agents along the coast. I have friends too in every town,
+Englishmen who love both England and Spain, Spaniards who love both
+Spain and England. We will put, if you permit, your agents in touch with
+my friends."
+
+"Yes," said Jose Medina innocently. "How shall we do that? We must have
+lists prepared."
+
+Hillyard smiled gently.
+
+"That is not necessary, senor. We know your agents already. If you will
+secretly inform them that those who speak in my name," and he took his
+card from the table, and gave it into Medina's hands, "are men to be
+trusted, it will be enough."
+
+Jose Medina agreed.
+
+"I will give them instructions."
+
+"And yet another instruction if you will be so kind, to all your
+captains."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"That they shall report at the earliest possible moment to your nearest
+agent ashore, the position of any submarine they have seen."
+
+Jose Medina assented once more.
+
+"But it will take a little time, senor, for me to pass that instruction
+round. It shall go from captain to captain, but it will not be prudent
+to give it out more widely. A week or two--no more--and every captain in
+my fleet shall be informed. That is all?"
+
+Hillyard was already rising from his chair. He stood straight up.
+
+"All except that they will be forbidden too," he added with a smile,
+"to supply either food or drink or oil to any enemy vessel."
+
+Jose Medina raised his hands in protest.
+
+"That order was given months ago. But it shall be repeated, and you can
+trust me, it shall be obeyed."
+
+The two men went to the door of the villa, and stood outside in the
+garden. It seemed the interview was over, and the agreement made. But
+indeed the interview as Hillyard had planned it had hardly begun. He had
+a series of promises which might be kept or broken, and the keeping or
+breaking of them could not be checked. Jose Medina was very likely to be
+holding the common belief along that coast that Germany would surely win
+the war. He was in the perfect position to keep in with both sides were
+he so minded. It was not to content himself with general promises that
+Hillyard had brought the _Dragonfly_ to Palma.
+
+He turned suddenly towards Jose Medina with a broad laugh, and clapped
+him heartily upon the back.
+
+"So you do not remember me, Senor Jose?"
+
+Medina was puzzled. He took a step nearer to Hillyard. Then he shook his
+head, and apologised with a smile.
+
+"I am to blame, senor. As a rule, my memory is not at fault. But on this
+occasion--yes."
+
+Through the apology ran a wariness, some fear of a trick, some hint of
+an incredulity.
+
+"Yet we have met."
+
+"Senor, it must be so."
+
+"Do you remember, Senor Jose, your first venture?" asked Hillyard.
+
+"Surely."
+
+"A single sailing-felucca beached at one o'clock in the morning on the
+flat sand close to Benicassim."
+
+Jose Medina did not answer. But the doubt which his politeness could not
+quite keep out of his face was changing into perplexity. This history of
+his first cargo so far was true.
+
+"That was more than thirteen years ago," Hillyard continued. "Thirteen
+years last April."
+
+Jose Medina nodded. Date, place, hour, all were correct. His eyes were
+fixed curiously upon his visitor, but there was no recognition in them.
+
+"There were two carts waiting, to carry the tobacco up to the hills."
+
+"Two?" Jose Medina interrupted sharply. "Let me think! That first cargo!
+It is so long ago."
+
+Medina reflected carefully. Here was a detail of real importance which
+would put this Senor Hillyard to the test--if only he could himself
+remember. It was his first venture, yes! But there had been so many like
+to it since. Still--the very first. He ought to remember that! And as he
+concentrated his thoughts the veil of the years was rent, and he saw, he
+saw quite clearly the white moonlit beach, the felucca with its mast
+bent like a sapling in a high wind, and the great yard of the sail
+athwart the beam of the boat, the black shadow of it upon the sand, and
+the carts--yes, the carts!
+
+"There were two carts," he agreed, and a change was just faintly audible
+in his voice--a change for which up till now Hillyard had listened with
+both his ears in vain. A ring of cordiality, a suggestion that the
+barriers of reserve were breaking down.
+
+"Yes, senor, there were two carts."
+
+Medina was listening intently now. Would his visitor go on with the
+history of that night!
+
+And Hillyard did go on.
+
+"The tobacco barrels were packed very quickly into the carts, and the
+carts were driven up the beach and across the Royal road, and into a
+track which led back to the hills."
+
+Jose Medina suddenly laughed. He could hear the groaning and creaking of
+those thin-wheeled springless carts which had carried all his fortunes
+on that night thirteen years ago, the noise of them vibrating for miles
+in the air of that still spring night! What terror they had caused him!
+How his heart had leaped when--and lo! Hillyard was carrying on the
+tale.
+
+"Two of the Guardia Civil stepped from behind a tree, arrested your
+carts, and told the drivers to turn back to the main road and the
+village."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You ran in front of the leading cart, and stood there blocking the way.
+The Guardia told you to move or he would fire. You stood your ground."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why the Guardia did not fire," continued Hillyard, "who shall say? But
+he did not."
+
+"No, he did not," Jose Medina repeated with a smile. "Why? It was
+Fate--Fortune--what you will."
+
+"You sent every one aside, and remained alone with the guards--for a
+long time. Oh, for a long time! Then you called out, and your men came
+back, and found you alone with your horses and your carts. How you had
+persuaded the guards to leave you alone----"
+
+"Quien sabe?" said Medina, with a smile.
+
+"But you had persuaded them, even on that first venture. So," and now
+Hillyard smiled. "So we took your carts up in to the mountains."
+
+"We?" exclaimed Jose. He took a step forward, and gazed keenly into
+Martin Hillyard's face. Hillyard nodded.
+
+"I was one of your companions on that first night venture of yours
+thirteen years ago."
+
+"_Claro!_ You were certainly there," returned Jose Medina, and he was no
+longer speaking either with doubt or with the exaggerated politeness of
+a Spaniard towards a stranger. He was not even speaking as _caballero_
+to _caballero_ the relationship to which, in the beginning, Hillyard had
+most wisely invited him. He was speaking as associate to associate, as
+friendly man to friendly man. "On that night you were certainly with me!
+No, let me think! There were five men, yes, five and a boy from
+Valencia--Martin."
+
+He pronounced the word in the Spanish way as Marteen.
+
+"Who led the horse in the first cart," said Hillyard, and he pointed to
+his visiting card which Jose Medina still held in his hand. Jose Medina
+read it again.
+
+"Marteen Hillyard." He came close to Hillyard, and looked in his eyes,
+and at the shape of his features, and at the colour of his hair. "Yes,
+it is the little Marteen," he cried, "and now the little Marteen swings
+into Palma in his great steam yacht. Dios, what a change!"
+
+"And Jose Medina owns two hundred motor-feluccas and employs eighteen
+thousand men," answered Hillyard.
+
+Jose Medina held out his hand suddenly with a great burst of cordial,
+intimate laughter.
+
+"Yes, we were companions in those days. You helped me to drive my carts
+up into the mountains. Good!" He patted Hillyard on the shoulder. "That
+makes a difference, eh? Come, we will go in again. Now I shall help
+you."
+
+That reserve, that intense reserve of the Spaniard who so seldom admits
+another into real intimacy, and makes him acquainted with his private
+life, was down now. Hillyard had won. Jose Medina's house and his
+chattels were in earnest at Martin Hillyard's disposal. The two men went
+back through the house into a veranda above the steep fall of garden and
+cliff, where there were chairs in which a man could sit at his ease.
+
+Jose Medina fetched out a box of cigars.
+
+"You can trust these. They are good."
+
+"Who should know if you do not?" answered Hillyard as he took one; and
+again Jose Medina patted him on the shoulder, but this time with a
+gurgle of delight.
+
+"_El pequeno_ Martin," he said, and he clapped his hands. From some
+recess of the house his wife appeared with a bottle of champagne and two
+glasses on a tray.
+
+"Now we will talk," said Jose Medina, "or rather I will talk and you
+shall listen."
+
+Hillyard nodded his head, as he raised the glass to his lips.
+
+"I have learnt in the last years that it is better to listen than to
+talk," said he. "_Salut!_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+"TOUCHING THE MATTER OF THOSE SHIPS"
+
+
+It has been said that Hillyard joined a service with its traditions to
+create. Indeed, it had everything to create, its rules, its methods, its
+whole philosophy. And it had to do this quickly during the war, and just
+for the war; since after the war it would cease to be. Certain
+conclusions had now been forced by experience quite definitely on
+Hillyard's mind. Firstly, that the service must be executive. Its
+servants must take their responsibility and act if they were going to
+cope with the intrigues and manoeuvres of the Germans. There was no
+time for discussions with London, and London was overworked in any case.
+The Post Office, except on rare occasions, could not be used; telegrams,
+however ingenious the cipher, were dangerous; and even when London
+received them, it had not the knowledge of the sender on the spot,
+wherewith to fill them out. London, let it be admitted, or rather that
+one particular small section of London with which Hillyard dealt, was at
+one with Hillyard. Having chosen its men it trusted them, until such
+time as indiscretion or incapacity proved the trust misplaced; in which
+case the offender was brought politely home upon some excuse, cordially
+thanked, and with a friendly shake of the hand, shown the door.
+
+Hillyard's second conclusion was that of one hundred trails, ten at the
+most would lead to any result: but you must follow each one of the
+hundred up until you reach proof that you are in a blind alley.
+
+The third was the sound and simple doctrine that you can confidently
+look to Chance to bring you results, probably your very best results, if
+you are prepared and equipped to make all your profit out of chance the
+moment she leans your way. Chance is an elusive goddess, to be seized
+and held prisoner with a swift, firm hand. Then she'll serve you. But if
+the hand's not ready and the eye unexpectant, you'll see but the trail
+of her robe as she vanishes to offer her assistance to another more
+wakeful than yourself.
+
+In pursuit of this conviction, Hillyard steamed out of Palma Bay on the
+morning of the day after his interview with Jose Medina, and crossing to
+the mainland cruised all the next night southwards. At six o'clock in
+the morning he was off a certain great high cape. The sea was smooth as
+glass. The day a riot of sunlight and summer, and the great headland
+with its high lighthouse thrust its huge brown knees into the water.
+
+The _Dragonfly_ slowed down and dawdled. Three men stood in the stern
+behind the white side-awning. Hillyard was on the bridge with his
+captain.
+
+"I don't really expect much," he said, seeking already to discount a
+possible disappointment. "It's only a possibility, I don't count on it."
+
+"Six o'clock off the cape," said the captain. "We are on time."
+
+"Yes."
+
+Both men searched the smooth sea for some long, sluggish, inexplicable
+wave which should break, or for a V-shaped ripple such as a fixed stake
+will make in a swiftly running stream.
+
+"Not a sign," said the captain, disconsolately.
+
+"No. Yet it is certainly true that the keeper of that lighthouse paid an
+amount equal to three years' salary into a bank three weeks ago. It is
+true that oil could be brought into that point, and stored there, and no
+one but the keeper be the wiser. And it is true that the _Acquitania_ is
+at this moment in this part of the Mediterranean steaming east for
+Salonika with six thousand men on board. Let's trail our coat a bit!"
+said Hillyard, and the captain with a laugh gave an order to the signal
+boy by his side.
+
+The boy ran aft and in a few seconds the red ensign fluttered up the
+flagstaff, and drooped in the still air. But even that provocation
+produced no result. For an hour and a half the _Dragonfly_ steamed
+backwards and forwards in front of the cape.
+
+"No good!" Hillyard at last admitted. "We'll get on to the
+_Acquitania_, and advise her. Meanwhile, captain, we had better make for
+Gibraltar and coal there."
+
+Hillyard went to the wireless-room, and the yacht was put about for the
+great scarped eastern face of the Rock.
+
+"One of the blind alleys," said Hillyard, as he ate his breakfast in the
+deck-saloon. "Next time perhaps we'll have better luck. Something'll
+turn up for sure."
+
+Something was always turning up in those days, and the yacht had not
+indeed got its coal on board in Gibraltar harbour when a message came
+which sent Hillyard in a rush by train through Madrid to Barcelona. He
+reached Barcelona at half past nine in the morning, took his breakfast
+by the window of the smaller dining-room in the hotel at the corner of
+the Plaza Cataluna, and by eleven was seated in a flat in one of the
+neighbouring streets. The flat was occupied by Lopez Baeza who turned
+from the window to greet him.
+
+"I was not followed," said Hillyard as he put down his hat and stick.
+Habit had bred in him a vigilance, or rather an instinct which quickly
+made him aware of any who shadowed him.
+
+"No, that is true," said Baeza, who had been watching Hillyard's
+approach from the window.
+
+"But I should like to know who our young friend is on the kerb opposite,
+and why he is standing sentinel."
+
+Lopez Baeza laughed.
+
+"He is the sign and token of the commercial activity of Spain."
+
+From behind the curtains, stretched across the window, both now looked
+down into the street. A youth in a grey suit and a pair of
+orange-coloured buttoned boots loitered backwards and forwards over
+about six yards of footwalk; now he smoked a cigarette, now he leaned
+against a tree and idly surveyed the passers by. He apparently had
+nothing whatever to do. But he did not move outside the narrow limits of
+his promenade. Consequently he had something to do.
+
+"Yes," continued Baeza with a chuckle, "he is a proof of our initiative.
+I thought as you do three days ago. For it is just three days since he
+took his stand there. But he is not watching this flat. He is not
+concerned with us at all. He is an undertaker's tout. In the house
+opposite to us a woman is lying very ill. Our young friend is waiting
+for her to die, so that he may rush into the house, offer his
+condolences and present the undertaker's card."
+
+Hillyard left the youth to his gruesome sentry-go and turned back into
+the room. A man of fifty, with a tawny moustache, a long and rather
+narrow face and eyeglasses, was sitting at an office table with some
+papers in front of him.
+
+"How do you do, Fairbairn?" Hillyard asked.
+
+Fairbairn was a schoolmaster from the North of England, with a knowledge
+of the Spanish tongue, who had thrown up schoolmastering, prospects,
+everything, in October of 1914.
+
+"Touching the matter of those ships," said Hillyard, sitting down
+opposite to Fairbairn.
+
+Fairbairn grinned.
+
+"It worked very well," said he, "so far."
+
+Hillyard turned towards Lopez and invited him to a seat. "Let me hear
+everything," he said.
+
+Spanish ships were running to England with the products of Cataluna and
+returning full of coal, and shipowners made their fortunes and wages ran
+high. But not all of them were content. Here and there the captains and
+the mates took with them in their cabin to England lists of questions
+thoughtfully compiled by German officers; and from what they saw in
+English harbours and on English seas and from what secret news was
+brought to them, they filled up answers to the questions and brought
+them back to the Germans in Spain. So much Hillyard already knew.
+
+"A pilot, Juan de Maestre, went on board the ships, collected the
+answers, made a report and took it up to the German headquarters here.
+That Ramon Castillo found out," said Fairbairn. "Steps were taken with
+the crew. The ships would be placed on the black list. There would be no
+coal for them. They must be laid up and the crews dismissed. The crew of
+the _Saragossa_ grasped the position, and the next time Juan de Maestre
+stepped on board he was invited to the forecastle, thumped, dropped
+overboard into the salubrious waters of the dock and left to swim
+ashore. Juan de Maestre has had enough. He won't go near the Germans any
+more. He is in a condition of extreme terror and neutrality. Oh, he's
+wonderfully neutral just now."
+
+"We might catch him perhaps on the rebound!" Hillyard suggested.
+
+"Lopez thinks so," said Fairbairn, with a nod towards Baeza.
+
+"I can find him this evening," Baeza remarked.
+
+The three men conferred for a little while, and as a consequence of that
+conference Lopez Baeza walked through the narrow streets of the old town
+to a cafe near the railway station. In a corner a small, wizened, square
+man was sitting over his beer, brooding unhappily. Baeza took a seat by
+his side and talked with Juan de Maestre. He went out after a few
+minutes and hired a motor-car from the stand in front of the station. In
+the car he drove to the park and went once round it. At a junction of
+two paths on the second round the car was stopped. A short, small man
+stepped out from the shadow of a great tree and swiftly stepped in.
+
+"Drive towards Tibidabo," Baeza directed the driver, and inside the
+dark, closed car Baeza and Juan de Maestre debated, the one persuading,
+the other refusing. It was long before any agreement was reached, but
+when Baeza, with the perspiration standing in beads upon his face,
+returned to his flat in the quiet, respectable street, he found Martin
+Hillyard and Fairbairn waiting for him anxiously.
+
+"_Hecho!_" he cried. "It is done! Juan de Maestre will continue to go on
+board the ships and collect the information and write it out for the
+Germans. But we shall receive an exact copy."
+
+"How?" asked Hillyard.
+
+"Ramon will meet a messenger from Juan. At eight in the morning of every
+second day Ramon is to be waiting at a spot which from time to time we
+will change. The first place will be the cinema opposite to the old Bull
+Ring."
+
+"Good," said Hillyard. "In a fortnight I will return."
+
+He departed once more for Gibraltar, cruised up the coast, left his
+yacht once more in the harbour of Tarragona and travelled by motor-car
+into Barcelona.
+
+Fairbairn and Lopez Baeza received him. It was night, and hot with a
+staleness of the air which was stifling. The windows all stood open in
+the quiet, dark street, but the blinds and curtains were closely drawn
+before the lamps were lit.
+
+"Now!" said Hillyard. "There are reports."
+
+Fairbairn nodded grimly as he went to the safe and unlocked it.
+
+"Pretty dangerous stuff," he answered.
+
+"Reliable?" asked Hillyard.
+
+Fairbairn returned with some sheets of blue-lined paper written over
+with purple ink, and some rough diagrams.
+
+"I am sure," he replied. "Not because I trust Juan de Maestre, but
+because he couldn't have invented the information. He hasn't the
+knowledge."
+
+Lopez Baeza agreed.
+
+"Juan de Maestre is keeping faith with us," he said shortly, and, to the
+judgment of Lopez Baeza, Hillyard had learnt to incline a ready ear.
+
+"This is the real thing, Hillyard," said Fairbairn, pulling at his
+moustache. "Look!"
+
+He handed to Martin a chart. The points of the compass were marked in a
+corner. Certain courses and routes were given, and fixed lights
+indicated by which the vessel might be guided. There was a number of
+patches as if to warn the navigator of shallows, and again a number of
+small black cubes and squares which seemed to declare the position of
+rocks. There was no rough work in this chart. It was elaborately and
+skilfully drawn, the work of an artist.
+
+"This is a copy made by me. Juan de Maestre left the original document
+with us for an hour," said Fairbairn, and he allowed Hillyard to
+speculate for a few seconds upon the whereabouts of that dangerous and
+reef-strewn sea. "It's not a chart of any bay or water at all. It's a
+plan of Cardiff by night for the guidance of German airships. Those
+patches are not shallows, but the loom in the sky of the furnaces. The
+black spots are the munition factories. Here are the docks," he pointed
+with the tip of his pencil. "The _Jesus-Maria_ brought that back a week
+ago. Let it get from here to Germany, as it will do, eh? and a Zeppelin
+coming across England on a favourable night could make things hum in
+Cardiff."
+
+Hillyard laid the sketch down and took another which Fairbairn held out
+to him.
+
+"Do you see this?" Fairbairn continued. "This gives the exact line of
+the nets between the English and the Irish coasts, and the exact points
+of latitude and longitude where they are broken for the passage of
+ships, and the exact number and armament of the trawlers which guard
+those points."
+
+Hillyard gazed closely at the chart. It gave the positions clearly
+enough, but it was a roughly-made affair, smudged with dingy fingers and
+uneven in its drawing. He laid it upon the table by the side of the map
+of Cardiff and compared one with the other.
+
+"This," he said, touching the roughly-drawn map of a section of the
+Channel, "this is the work of the ship's captain?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But what of this?" and Hillyard lifted again the elaborate chart of
+Cardiff by night. "Some other hand drew this."
+
+Fairbairn agreed.
+
+"Yes. Here is the report which goes with the charts. The chart of
+Cardiff was handed to the captain in an inn on shore. It came from an
+unknown person, who is mentioned as B.45."
+
+Hillyard seized upon the report and read it through, and then the others
+upon the top of that. Cloth, saddlery, equipment of various kinds were
+needed in England, and a great sea-borne trade had sprung up between the
+two countries, so that ships constantly went to and fro. In more than
+one of these reports the hieroglyph B.45 appeared. But never a hint
+which could lead to his detection--never anything personal, not a clue
+to his age, his business, his appearance, even his abode--nothing but
+this baffling symbol B.45.
+
+"You have cabled all this home, of course," Hillyard observed to
+Fairbairn.
+
+"Yes. They know nothing of the B.45. They are very anxious for any
+details."
+
+"He seems to be a sort of letter-box," said Hillyard, "a centre-point
+for the gathering in of information."
+
+Fairbairn shook his head.
+
+"He is more active than that," he returned, and he pointed to a passage
+here and there, which bore him out. It was the first time that Martin
+Hillyard had come across this symbol, and he was utterly at a loss to
+conjecture the kind of man the symbol hid. He might be quite obscure,
+the tenant of some suburban shop, or, again, quite prominent in the
+public eye, the owner of a fine house, and generous in charities; he
+might be of any nationality. But there he was, somewhere under the
+oak-trees of England, doing his secret, mean work for the ruin of the
+country. Hillyard dreamed that night of B.45. He saw him in his dreams,
+an elusive figure without a face, moving swiftly wherever people were
+gathered together, travelling in crowded trains, sitting at the
+dinner-tables of the great, lurking at the corners of poor tenements.
+Hillyard hunted him, saw him deftly pocket a letter which a passing
+stranger as deftly handed him, or exchange some whispered words with
+another who walked for a few paces without recognition by his side, but
+though he hurried round corners to get in front of him and snatch a
+glance at his face, he could never come up with him. He waked with the
+sunlight pouring in between the lattices of his shutters from the Plaza
+Cataluna, tired and unrefreshed. B.45! B.45! He was like some figure
+from a child's story-book! Some figure made up of tins and sticks and
+endowed with malevolent life. B.45. London asked news of him, and he
+stalked through London. Where should Hillyard find his true image and
+counterpart?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is not the purpose of this narrative to describe how one Christobal
+Quesada, first mate of the steamship _Mondragon_, utterly overreached
+himself by sending in a report of a British hospital ship, sure to leave
+the harbour of Alexandria with gun-carriages upon her deck; how the
+report was proved to be a lie; how it was used as the excuse for the
+barbarous sinking of the great ships laden with wounded, and ablaze from
+stern to stern with green lights, the red cross glowing amidships like a
+wondrous jewel; how Christobal Quesada was removed from his ship in a
+French port, and after being duly arraigned for his life, met his death
+against a prison wall. Fairbairn wrote to Martin Hillyard:
+
+     "_The execution of Quesada has put an end to the whole
+     wicked question. So long as the offender was only put in
+     prison with the certainty of release at the end of the war,
+     whilst his family lived comfortably on German money, the
+     game went merrily on. But the return of the "Mondragon,"
+     minus her executed mate, has altered the whole position.
+     Juan de Maestre has nothing whatever to do nowadays._"
+
+Hillyard smiled with contentment. He could understand a German going to
+any lengths for Germany. He was prepared to do the same himself for his
+country. But when a neutral under the cloak of his neutrality meddles in
+this stupendous conflict for cash, for his thirty miserable pieces of
+silver, he could feel no inclination of mercy.
+
+"Let the neutrals keep out!" he murmured. "This is not their affair. Let
+them hold their tongues and go about their own business!"
+
+He received Fairbairn's letter in the beginning of the year 1916. He was
+still no nearer at that date to the discovery of B.45; nor were they any
+better informed in London. Hillyard could only wait upon Chance to slip
+a clue into his hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+IN A SLEEPING-CAR
+
+
+The night express from Paris to Narbonne and the Spanish frontier was
+due to leave the Quai d'Orsay station at ten. But three-quarters of an
+hour before that time the platform was already crowded, and many of the
+seats occupied. Hillyard walked down the steps a little before half-past
+nine with the latest of the evening papers in his hand.
+
+"You have engaged your seat, monsieur," the porter asked, who was
+carrying Hillyard's kit-bag.
+
+"Yes," said Martin absently. He was thinking that on the boulevards the
+newsboys might now be crying a later edition of the papers than that
+which he held, an edition with still more details. He saw them
+surrounded in the darkened street by quiet, anxious groups.
+
+"Will you give me your ticket, monsieur?" the porter continued, and as
+Hillyard looked at him vacantly, "the ticket for your seat."
+
+Hillyard roused himself.
+
+"I beg your pardon. I have a compartment in the sleeping-car, numbers
+eleven and twelve."
+
+Amongst many old principles of which Martin Hillyard had first learned
+the wisdom during these last years, none had sunk deeper than this--that
+the head of an organisation cannot do the work of any of its members and
+hope that the machine will run smoothly. His was the task of supervision
+and ultimate direction. He held himself at the beck and call of those
+who worked under him. He responded to their summons. And it was in
+response to a very urgent summons from Fairbairn that he had hurried the
+completion of certain arrangements with the French authorities in Paris
+and was now returning to the south! But he was going very reluctantly.
+
+It was July, 1916. The first battle of the Somme, launched some days
+past, was at its very climacteric. The casualties had been and were
+terrible. Even at this moment of night the fury of the attack was not
+relaxed. All through the day reports, exasperating in their brevity, had
+been streaming into Paris, and rumour, as of old, circled swift-winged
+above the city, making good or ill the deficiencies of the telegrams.
+One fact, however, had leaped to light, unassailably true. The
+Clayfords, stationed on the north of the line at Thiepval, had redeemed
+their name and added a new lustre to their erstwhile shining record. The
+devotion of the officers, the discipline of the men, had borne their
+fruits. At a most critical moment the Clayfords had been forced to
+change front against a flank attack, under a galling fire and in the
+very press of battle, and the long extended line had swung to its new
+position with the steadiness of veterans, and, having reached it, had
+stood fast. Hillyard rejoiced with a sincerity as deep as if he himself
+held his commission in that regiment. But the losses had been terrible;
+and Martin Hillyard was troubled to the roots of his heart by doubts
+whether Harry Luttrell were at this moment knowing the deep contentment
+that the fixed aim of his boyhood and youth had been fulfilled; or
+whether he was lying out on the dark ground beneath the stars unaware of
+it and indifferent. Hillyard nursed a hope that some blunder had been
+made, and that he would find his compartment occupied.
+
+The controller, in his brown uniform with the brass buttons and his
+peaked cap, stood at the steps of the car with the attendant.
+
+"Eleven and twelve," said Hillyard, handing to him his ticket.
+
+The attendant, a middle-aged, stout man with a black moustache and a
+greasy face, shot one keen glance from under the peak of his cap at the
+occupant of numbers 11 and 12, and then led the way along the corridor.
+
+The compartment was empty. Hillyard looked around it with a grudging
+eye.
+
+"I am near the middle of the coach here, I think," he said.
+
+"Yes, monsieur, quite in the middle."
+
+"That is well," answered Hillyard. "I am an invalid, and cannot sleep
+when there is much motion."
+
+He spoke irritably, with that tone of grievance peculiar to the man who
+thinks his health is much worse than it is.
+
+"Can I get coffee in the morning?" he asked.
+
+"At half-past six, monsieur. But you must get out of the train for it."
+
+Hillyard uttered an exclamation of disgust, and shrugged his shoulders.
+"What a country!" the gesture said as plainly as speech.
+
+"But it is the war, monsieur!" the attendant expostulated with
+indignation.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know! The war!" Hillyard retorted with ill-humour. "Do I
+want a bath? I cannot have it. It is the war. If a waiter is rude to me,
+it is the war. If my steak is over-cooked it is the war. The war! It is
+the excuse for everything."
+
+He told the porter to place his bag upon the upper berth, and, still
+grumbling, gave him some money. He turned sharply on the attendant, who
+was smiling in the doorway.
+
+"Ah, it seems to you funny that an invalid should be irritable, eh?" he
+cried. "I suppose it must be--damnably funny."
+
+"Monsieur, there are very many men who would like to-night to be
+invalids with a sleeping compartment to themselves," returned the
+attendant severely.
+
+"Well, I don't want to talk about it any more," said Hillyard roughly,
+and he shouldered his way out again on to the platform.
+
+The attendant followed him. The smile upon his face was sleeker than
+ever. He was very amused and contented with his passenger in the
+compartment numbers 11 and 12. He took the cap off his head and wiped
+the perspiration from his forehead.
+
+"Ouf! It is hot to-night." He looked after Hillyard with a chuckle, and
+remarked to the controller, "This is a customer who does not like his
+little comforts to be disarranged!"
+
+The controller nodded contemptuously.
+
+"They must travel--the English! The tourism--that is sacred, even if all
+Europe burns."
+
+Hillyard strolled towards the stairs, and as he drew near to them his
+eyes brightened. A man about six years older than himself, tall,
+broad-shouldered, slim of waist, with a short, fair moustache, was
+descending towards him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The war has killed many foolish legends, but none more foolish than the
+legend of the typical Frenchman, conceived as a short, rotund, explosive
+person, with a square, brown beard of curly baby-hair and a shiny silk
+hat with a flat brim. There have been too many young athletes of clean
+build on view whose nationality, language and the uniforms of
+powder-blue and khaki could alone decide. The more curious might,
+perhaps, if the youth were in mufti, cast a downward glance at the
+boots; but even boots were ceasing to be the sure tell-tale they once
+used to be. This man descending the stairs with a limp was the
+Commandant Marnier, of the 193rd Regiment, wounded in 1915, and now
+attached to the General Staff. He was in plain clothes; he was looking
+for Martin Hillyard, and no stranger but would have set him and the man
+for whom he was looking in the same category of races.
+
+The Commandant Marnier saw Martin Hillyard clearly enough long before he
+reached the foot of the stairs. But nevertheless he greeted him with an
+appearance of surprise.
+
+"But what luck!" he said aloud. "You leave by this train?"
+
+"Yes. It may be that I shall find health."
+
+"Yes, yes. So your friends will pray," returned the Commandant, falling
+into Hillyard's pace.
+
+"The telegram we sent for you----" Marnier began.
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"There is an answer already. Your friend is unhurt. I have brought you a
+copy. I thought that perhaps I might catch you before your train
+started."
+
+He gave the slip of typewritten message into Hillyard's hand.
+
+"That was most kind of you," said Hillyard. "You have removed a great
+anxiety. It would have been many days before I should have received this
+good news if you had not gone out of your way to hurry with it here."
+
+Hillyard was moved, partly by the message, partly by the consideration
+of Marnier, who now waved his thanks aside.
+
+"Bah! We may not say 'comrade' as often as the Boche, but perhaps we are
+it all the more. I will not come further with you towards your carriage,
+for I have still a few things to do."
+
+He shook Hillyard by the hand and departed. Hillyard turned from him
+towards his sleeping-car, but though his chief anxiety was dispelled,
+his reluctance to go was not. And he looked at the long, brightly-lit
+train which was to carry him from this busy and high-hearted city with a
+desire that it would start before its time, and leave him a derelict
+upon the platform. He could not bend his thoughts to the work which was
+at his hand. The sapphire waters of the South had quite lost their
+sparkle and enchantment. Here, here, was the place of life! The
+exhilaration of his task, its importance, the glow of thankfulness when
+some real advantage was won, a plot foiled, a scheme carried to
+success--these matters were all banished from his mind. Even the
+war-risk of it was forgotten. He thought with envy of the men in
+trenches. Yet the purpose of his yacht was long since known to the
+Germans; the danger of the torpedo was ever present on her voyages, and
+the certainty that if she were sunk, and he captured, any means would be
+taken to force him to speak before he was shot, was altogether beyond
+dispute. Even at this moment he carried hidden in a match-box a little
+phial, which never left him, to put the sure impediment between himself
+and a forced confession of his aims and knowledge. But he was not aware
+of it. How many times had he seen the red light at Europa Point on
+Gibraltar's edge change to white, sometimes against the scarlet bars of
+dawn, sometimes in the winter against a wall of black! But on the
+platform of the Quai d'Orsay station, in a bustle of soldiers going on
+short leave to their homes, and rattling with pannikins and
+iron-helmets, he could remember none of these consolations.
+
+He reached his carriage.
+
+"Messieurs les voyageurs, en route!" cried the controller.
+
+"What a crowd!" Hillyard grumbled. "Really, it almost disposes one to
+say that one will never travel again until this war is over."
+
+He walked along the corridor to his compartment and sat down as the
+train started with a jerk. The door stood open, and in a few minutes the
+attendant came to it.
+
+"Who is in the next compartment on the other side of the lavatory?"
+Hillyard asked.
+
+"A manufacturer of Perpignan and his wife."
+
+"Does he snore?" Hillyard asked. "If he snores I shall not sleep. It
+should be an offence against your bye-laws for a traveller to snore."
+
+He crossed one leg across his knee and unlaced his shoe.
+
+The attendant came into the room.
+
+"It is possible, monsieur, that I might hurry and fetch you your coffee
+in the morning," he said.
+
+"It is worth five francs to you if you do," replied Hillyard.
+
+"Then monsieur will not move from his compartment until luncheon. I will
+see to it. Monsieur will bolt his door, and in the morning I will knock
+when I bring the coffee."
+
+"Good," returned Hillyard ungraciously.
+
+The attendant retired, and Hillyard closed the door. But the ventilating
+lattice in the lower part of the door was open, and Hillyard could see
+the legs of the attendant. He was waiting outside--waiting for what?
+Hillyard smiled to himself and took down his bag from the upper berth.
+He had hardly opened it when the attendant knocked and entered.
+
+"You will not forget, monsieur, to bolt your door. In these days it is
+not wise to leave it on the latch."
+
+"I won't forget," Hillyard replied surlily, and once more the attendant
+retired; and again he stood outside the door. He did not move until the
+bolt was shot. The attendant seemed very pleased that this fool of a
+tourist who thought of nothing but his infirmities should safely bolt
+the door of the compartments numbers 11 and 12; and very pleased, too,
+to bring to this churlish, discontented traveller his coffee in the
+morning, so that he need not leave compartments numbers 11 and 12
+unguarded. Hillyard chuckled as the attendant moved away.
+
+"I am to be your watch-dog, am I? Your sentinel? Very well! Come, let me
+deserve your confidence, my friend."
+
+The train thundered out of the tunnel and through the suburbs of Paris.
+Hillyard drew a letter from Fairbairn out of his pocket and read it
+through.
+
+"Compartments numbers 11 and 12 on the night train from the Quai d'Orsay
+station to Cerbere. Good!" murmured Hillyard. "Here I am in compartments
+numbers 11 and 12. Now we wait until the married couple from Perpignan
+and the attendant are comfortably asleep."
+
+He undressed and went to bed, but he did not sleep. He lay in the berth
+in the darkness, listening intently as the train rushed out of Paris
+across the plains of France. Once or twice, as the hours passed, he
+heard a stealthy footstep in the corridor outside, and once the faintest
+possible little click told that the latch of his door had been lifted to
+make sure that the bolt was still shot home in its socket. Hillyard
+smiled.
+
+"You are safe, my friend," he breathed the words towards the anxious one
+in the corridor. "No one can get in. The door is locked. The door of the
+dressing-room too. Sleep in your corner in peace."
+
+The train sped over a moonlit country, spacious, unhurt by war. It moved
+with a steady, rhythmical throb, like an accompaniment to a tune or a
+phrase, ever repeated and repeated Hillyard found himself fitting words
+to the pulsation of the wheels. "Berlin ... Berne ... Paris ... Cerbere
+... Barcelona ... Madrid ... Aranjuez and the world"; and back again,
+reversing the order: "Madrid ... Barcelona ... Cerbere ... Paris ...
+Berne ... Berlin."
+
+But the throb of the train set the interrogation at the end of the
+string of names. So that the sequence of them was like a question
+demanding confirmation....
+
+Towards three in the morning, when there was no movement in the corridor
+and the lights were blue and dim, Hillyard silently folded back his
+bedclothes and rose. In the darkness he groped gently for the door of
+the lavatory between his compartment and the compartment of the
+manufacturer of Perpignan. He found the handle, and pressed it down
+slowly; without a creak or a whine of the hinges the door swung open
+towards him. Through the clatter he could hear that the manufacturer of
+Perpignan was snoring. But Hillyard did not put his trust in snores. He
+crept with bare feet across the washing-room, and, easing over the
+handle of the further door, locked the manufacturer out. Again there had
+been no sound. He shut the door of his own compartment lest the swing of
+the train should set it banging and arouse the sleepers. Towards the
+corridor there was a window of painted glass, and through this window a
+pale, dim light filtered in. Hillyard noticed, for the first time, that
+a small diamond-shaped piece of the coloured glass was missing, at about
+the level of a man's head. It was advisable that Martin Hillyard should
+be quick--or he might find the tables turned. With his ears more than
+ever alert, he set up the steps for the upper berth, in the lavatory,
+and whilst he worked his eyes watched that little aperture at the level
+of a man's head, which once a diamond-shaped piece of coloured glass had
+closed....
+
+The door of the manufacturer was unlocked, the steps folded in their
+place, and Hillyard back again in his bed before two minutes had passed.
+And once more the throb of the train beat into a chain of towns which
+went backwards and forwards like a shuttle in his brain. But there was
+no note of interrogation now.
+
+"Berlin ... Berne ... Paris ... Cerbere ... Barcelona ... Madrid ...
+Aranjuez and the world"; and with a thump the train set a firm full stop
+to the sequence. Across the broad plain, meadowland and plough,
+flower-garden and fruit the train thundered down to the Pyrenees. Paris
+was far away now, and the sense of desolation at quitting it quite gone
+from Hillyard's breast.
+
+"Berlin ... Berne ... Paris ... Cerbere ... Barcelona ... Madrid."
+
+Here was one of the post-roads by which Germany reached the outer world.
+Others there were beyond doubt. Sweden and Rotterdam, Mexico and South
+America--but here was one, and to-morrow, nay, to-day, the communication
+would be cut, and Germany so much the poorer.
+
+The train steamed into Cerbere at one o'clock of the afternoon.
+
+"Every one must descend here, monsieur, for the examination of luggage
+and passports," said the attendant.
+
+"But I am leaving France!" cried Hillyard. "I go on into Spain. Why
+should France, then, examine my luggage?"
+
+"It is the war, monsieur."
+
+Hillyard lifted up his hands in indignation too deep for words. He
+gathered together his bag and his coat and stick, handed them to a
+porter and descended. He passed into the waiting-room, and was directed
+by a soldier with a fixed bayonet to take his place in the queue of
+passengers. But he said quietly to the soldier:
+
+"I would like to see M. de Cassaud, the Commissaire of Police."
+
+Hillyard was led apart; his card was taken from him; he was ushered
+instantly into an office where an elderly French officer sat in mufti
+before a table. He shook Hillyard cordially by the hand.
+
+"You pass through? I myself hope to visit Barcelona again very soon.
+Jean, wait outside with monsieur's baggage," this to the porter who had
+pushed in behind Hillyard. M. de Cassaud rose and closed the door. He
+had looked at Hillyard's face and acted quickly.
+
+"It is something more than compliments you want from me, monsieur. Well,
+what can I do?"
+
+"The second sleeping-car, compartments numbers 11 and 12," said Hillyard
+urgently. "In the water-tank of the lavatory there is a little metal
+case with letters from Berlin for Barcelona and Madrid. But wait,
+monsieur!"
+
+M. de Cassaud was already at the door.
+
+"It is the attendant of the sleeping-car who hides them there. If he can
+be called into an office quietly on some matter of routine and held
+there whilst your search is made, then those in Madrid and Barcelona to
+whom these letters are addressed may never know they have been sent at
+all!"
+
+M. de Cassaud nodded and went out. Hillyard waited nervously in the
+little whitewashed room. It was impossible that the attendant should
+have taken fright and bolted. Even if he bolted, it would be impossible
+that he should escape across the frontier. It was impossible that he
+should recover the metal case from the water-tank, while the carriage
+stood openly at the platform of Cerbere station. He would be certain to
+wait until it was shunted into the cleaning shed. But so many
+certainties had been disproved, so many possibilities had come to pass
+during the last two years, that Hillyard was sceptical to his
+finger-tips. M. de Cassaud was a long time away. Yes, certainly M. de
+Cassaud was a very long----and the door opened, and M. de Cassaud
+appeared.
+
+"He is giving an account of his blankets and his towels. There are two
+soldiers at the door. He is safe. Come!" said the Commissaire.
+
+They crossed the platform to the carriage, whilst Hillyard described the
+attendant's anxiety that he should bolt his door. "No doubt he gave the
+same advice to the manufacturer of Perpignan," Hillyard added.
+
+It was M. de Cassaud who arranged and mounted the steps in the tiny
+washing-room.
+
+"Look, monsieur," said Hillyard, and he pointed to the little aperture
+in the coloured glass of the window. "One can see from the corridor what
+is going on in this room. That is useful. If a traveller complains--bah,
+it is the war!" and Hillyard laughed.
+
+M. de Cassaud looked at the window.
+
+"Yes, that is ingenious," he said.
+
+He drained off the water, folded back his sleeve, and plunged his arm
+into the tank. Then he uttered a little cry. He drew up into the light
+an oblong metal can, like a sandwich-case, with the edges soldered
+together to make it water-tight. He slipped it into his pocket and
+turned again to the window. He looked at it again curiously.
+
+"Yes, that is ingenious," he said softly, like a man speaking to
+himself. Then he led the way back to his office, looking in at the
+guard-room on the platform to give an order on the way.
+
+The soldered edges of the case were quickly split asunder and a small
+package of letters written on very thin paper revealed.
+
+"You will let me take these on with me," pleaded Martin. "You shall have
+them again. But some of them may want a special treatment of which we
+have the secret."
+
+M. de Cassaud was doubtful about the propriety of such a procedure.
+
+"After all I found them," Martin urged.
+
+"It would be unusual," said M. de Cassaud. "The regulations, you
+know----"
+
+Martin Hillyard smiled.
+
+"The regulations, for you and me, my friend, are those we make
+ourselves."
+
+M. de Cassaud would admit nothing so outrageous to his trained and
+rather formal mind. But he made a list of these letters and of their
+addresses as though he was undecided. He had not finished when a
+sergeant entered and saluted. The attendant of the sleeping-car had been
+taken to the depot. He had been searched and a pistol had been found
+upon him. The sergeant laid a very small automatic Colt upon the table
+and retired. M. de Cassaud took up the little weapon and examined it.
+
+"Do you know these toys, Monsieur Hillyard?" he asked.
+
+"Yes. They are chiefly used against the mosquitoes."
+
+"Oh, they will kill at twenty-five paces," continued the Commissaire;
+and he looked quickly at Hillyard. "I will tell you something. You ran
+some risk last night when you explored that water-tank. Yes, indeed! It
+would have been so easy. The attendant had but to thrust the muzzle of
+this through the opening of the window, shoot you dead, raise an alarm
+that he had caught you hiding something, and there was he a hero and you
+a traitor. Yes, that is why I said to you the little opening in the
+window was ingenious! Ah, if he had caught you! Yes, if he had caught
+you!"
+
+Martin was quick to take advantage.
+
+"Then let me have those letters! I will keep my French colleagues
+informed of everything."
+
+"Very well," said M. de Cassaud, and he suddenly swept the letters
+across to Hillyard, who gathered them up hastily and buttoned them away
+in his pocket before de Cassaud could change his mind.
+
+"It is all very incorrect," said the Commissaire reproachfully.
+
+"Yes, but it is the war," replied Hillyard. "I have the authority of the
+attendant of the sleeping-car for saying so."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+TRICKS OF THE TRADE
+
+
+"Now!" said Hillyard.
+
+Fairbairn fetched a couple of white porcelain developing dishes to the
+table. Hillyard unlocked a drawer in his bureau. They were in the
+deck-saloon of the _Dragonfly_, steaming southwards from Valencia.
+Outside the open windows the brown hill-sides, the uplands of olive
+trees and the sun-flecked waves slipped by in a magical clear light; and
+the hiss of the beaded water against the ship's planks filled the cabin
+with a rustle as of silk. Hillyard drew a deep breath of excitement as
+he took out from the drawer the letters he had carried off from M. de
+Cassaud. He had travelled straight through Barcelona to Valencia with
+the letters in his pocket, picking up Fairbairn at the Estacion de
+Francia on the way, and now, in the sunlight and in the secrecy of the
+open sea, they were to appraise the value of their catch.
+
+They sat at the table and examined them, opening the envelopes with the
+skill and the care which experience had taught them. For, even though
+this post-road was henceforth closed it might possibly be worth while to
+send forward these letters. One or two were apparently family letters
+for German soldiers, interned at Pampluna; one or two were business
+communications from firms in Berlin to their agents in Spain; and these
+seemed genuine enough.
+
+"They may be of value to the War Trade Board," said Fairbairn; and he
+put them aside for dispatch to London. As he turned back Hillyard cried
+suddenly:
+
+"Here we are!"
+
+He had come to the last letter of the little heap. He was holding the
+envelope in front of him and he read out the address:
+
+     _"Mr. Jack Williams,_
+           _"Alfredo Menandez, 6,_
+                  _"Madrid."_
+
+Fairbairn started up, and tugging at his moustache, stared at the
+envelope over Hillyard's shoulder.
+
+"By Jove!" he said. "We may have got something."
+
+"Let us see!" returned Hillyard, and he opened the envelope.
+
+As he spread out the letter both men laughed. The date of the month had
+been corrected by the writer--thus:
+
+              8
+     "_July_ 27th, 1916."
+
+[Transcriber's note: The original text has a slash through the 7.]
+
+There was no doubt any longer in either of these two men's minds that
+hidden away under the commonplaces of a letter of affection was a
+message of grave importance.
+
+"They are full of clever tricks in Berlin," said Hillyard cheerfully. He
+could afford to contemplate that cleverness with complacency, for it was
+now to serve his ends.
+
+There was a German official of high importance living in the Calle
+Alfredo Menandez, although not at number 6 in that street. The street
+was a short one with very few numbers in it; and it had occurred to the
+German official to point out to the postman in that street that if
+letters came to English names in that street of which the owners could
+not be discovered, they were probably for the governess of his children,
+who had a number of English relations moving about Spain, and was
+accustomed to receive their letters for them, and in any case, five
+pesetas would be paid for each of them. Shortly after, letters had begun
+to arrive addressed to English nonexistent people in the quiet little
+Calle Alfredo Menandez, sometimes from Allied countries, sometimes from
+Holland, or from Port-Bou over against Cerbere in Spain; and every one
+of these found its natural way to the house of the German official. The
+choice of English names had a certain small ingenuity in that, when
+passing through the censorship of Allied countries, they were a little
+more likely to be taken at their face value than letters addressed to
+foreigners.
+
+So far so good. But the German high official was a very busy person; and
+letters might find their way into his hands which were really intended
+for English persons and not for him at all. Accordingly, to make all
+clear, to warn him that here indeed was a letter deserving his kind
+attention, that little trifling alteration in the date was adopted; as
+though a man writing on the 28th had mislaid the calendar or newspaper
+and assigned the 27th to the day of writing, and afterwards had
+discovered his mistake. It was no wonder accordingly that hope ran high
+in both Fairbairn and Hillyard as they read through this letter;
+although, upon the face of it, it was nothing but a sentimental effusion
+from a sister to a brother.
+
+"We have got to clear all this nonsense away first," said Hillyard.
+
+Fairbairn took the letter, and placing it on one of the developing
+dishes, poured over it a liquid from a bottle.
+
+"That won't take very long," he said.
+
+Meanwhile Hillyard busied himself with the second of the two white
+porcelain dishes. He brought out a cruet stand from a cupboard at the
+side of the stove and filled the dish half full of vinegar. He added
+water until the liquid rose within half an inch of the rim, and rocked
+the dish that the dilution might be complete. Next he took a new
+copying-pencil from the pen-tray on his bureau and stripping the wood
+away with his knife, dropped the blue lead into the vinegar and water.
+This lead he carefully dissolved with the help of a glass pestle.
+
+"There! It's ready," he said.
+
+"I, too," added Fairbairn.
+
+He lifted out of the developing dish a wet sheet of writing paper which
+was absolutely blank. Not one drop of the black ink which had recorded
+those sentimental effusions remained. It was just a sheet of notepaper
+which had accidentally fallen into a basin of water.
+
+"That's all right," said Hillyard; and Fairbairn gently slid the sheet
+into the dish in front of Hillyard. And for a while nothing happened.
+
+"It's a clever trick, isn't it?" Hillyard used the words again, but now
+with a note of nervousness. "No unlikely paraphernalia needed. Just a
+copying pencil and some vinegar, which you can get anywhere. Yes, it's a
+clever trick!"
+
+"If it works," Fairbairn added bluntly.
+
+Both men watched the dish anxiously. The paper remained blank. The
+solution did not seem to work. It was the first time they had ever made
+use of it. The coast slid by unnoticed.
+
+"Lopez was certain," said Fairbairn, "quite certain that this was the
+developing formula."
+
+Hillyard nodded gloomily, but he did not remove his eyes from that
+irresponsive sheet.
+
+"There may be some other ingredient, something kept quite
+secret--something known only to one man or two."
+
+He sat down, hooking his chair with his foot nearer to the table.
+
+"We must wait."
+
+"That's all there is to be done," said Fairbairn, and they waited; and
+they waited. They had no idea, even if the formula should work, whether
+the writing would flash up suddenly like an over-exposed photographic
+plate, or emerge shyly and reluctantly letter by letter, word by word.
+Then, without a word spoken, Fairbairn's finger pointed. A brown stain
+showed on the whiteness of the paper--just a stroke. It was followed by
+a curve and another stroke. Hillyard swiftly turned the oblong
+developing dish so that the side of it, and not the end, was towards him
+now.
+
+"The writing is across the sheet," he said, and then with a cry, "Look!"
+
+A word was coming out clear, writing itself unmistakably in the middle
+of the line, at the bottom of the sheet--a signature. Zimmermann!
+
+"From the General Staff!" said Hillyard, in a whisper of excitement. "My
+word!" He looked at Fairbairn with an eager smile of gratitude. "It's
+your doing that we have got this--yours and Lopez Baeza's!"
+
+Miraculously the brown strokes and curves and dots and flourishes
+trooped out of nothing, and fell in like sections and platoons and
+companies with their due space between them, some quick and trim, some
+rather slovenly in their aspect, some loitering; but in the end the
+battalion of words stood to attention, dressed for inspection. The brown
+had turned black before Hillyard lifted the letter from the solution and
+spread it upon a sheet of blotting paper.
+
+"Now let us see!" and they read the letter through.
+
+One thousand pounds in English money were offered for reliable
+information as to the number of howitzers and tanks upon the British
+front.
+
+A second sum of a thousand pounds for reliable information as to the
+manufacture of howitzers and tanks in England.
+
+"So far, it's not very exciting," Hillyard remarked with disappointment,
+as he turned the leaf. But the letter progressed in interest.
+
+A third sum of a thousand pounds was offered for a list of the postal
+sections on the British front, with the name, initials and rank of a
+really good and reliable British soldier in each section who was
+prepared to receive and answer correspondence.
+
+Fairbairn chuckled and observed:
+
+"I think Herr Zimmermann might be provided with a number of such good
+and reliable soldiers selected by our General Staff," and he added with
+a truculent snort, "We could do with that sum of a thousand pounds here.
+You must put in a claim for it, Hillyard. Otherwise they'll snaffle it
+in London."
+
+Fairbairn, once a mild north-country schoolmaster, of correct
+phraseology and respectable demeanour, had, under the pressure of his
+service, developed like that white sheet of notepaper. He had suffered
+
+               "A sea-change
+     Into something rich and strange"
+
+and from a schoolmaster had become a buccaneer with a truculent manner
+and a mind of violence. London, under which name he classed all
+Government officials, offices, departments, and administrations,
+particularly roused his ire. London was ignorant, London was stupid,
+London was always doing him and the other buccaneers down, was always
+snaffling something which he ought to have. Fairbairn, uttering one
+snort of satisfaction, would have shot it with his Browning.
+
+"Get it off your chest, old man," said Hillyard soothingly, "and we'll
+go on with this letter. It looks to me as if----" He was glancing
+onwards and checked himself with an exclamation. His face became grave
+and set.
+
+"Listen to this," and he read aloud, translating as he went along.
+
+     "_Since the tubes have been successful in France, the device
+     should be extended to England. B45 is obviously suitable for
+     the work. A submarine will sink letters for the Embassy in
+     Madrid and a parcel of the tubes between the twenty-seventh
+     and the thirtieth of July, within Spanish territorial waters
+     off the Cabo de Cabron. A green light will be shown in three
+     short flashes from the sea and it should be answered from
+     the shore by a red and a white and two reds._"
+
+Hillyard leaned back in his chair.
+
+"B45," he cried in exasperation. "We get no nearer to him."
+
+"Wait a bit!" Fairbairn interposed. "We are a deal nearer to him through
+Zimmermann's very letter here. What are these tubes which have been so
+successful in France? Once we get hold of them and understand them and
+know what end they are to serve, we may get an idea of the kind of man
+obviously suitable for handling them."
+
+"Like B45," said Hillyard.
+
+"Yes! The search will be narrowed to one kind of man. Oh, we shall be
+much nearer, if only we get the tubes--if only the Germans in Madrid
+don't guess this letter's gone astray to us."
+
+Hillyard had reflected already upon that contingency.
+
+"But why should they? The sleeping-car man is held _incomunicado_. There
+is no reason why they should know anything about this letter at all, if
+we lay our plans carefully."
+
+He folded up the letter and locked it away in the drawer. He looked for
+a while out of the window of the saloon. The yacht had rounded the Cabo
+San Antonio. It was still the forenoon.
+
+"This is where Jose Medina has got to come in," he declared. "You must
+go to Madrid, Fairbairn, and keep an eye on Mr. Jack Williams.
+Meanwhile, here Jose Medina has got to come in."
+
+Fairbairn reluctantly agreed. He would much rather have stayed upon the
+coast and shared in the adventure, but it was obviously necessary that a
+keen watch should be kept in Madrid.
+
+"Very well," he said, "unless, of course, you would like to go to Madrid
+yourself."
+
+Hillyard laughed.
+
+"I think not, old man."
+
+He mounted the ladder to the bridge and gave the instructions to the
+Captain, and early that evening the _Dragonfly_ was piloted into the
+harbour of Alicante. Hillyard and Fairbairn went ashore. They had some
+hours to get through before they could take the journey they intended.
+They sauntered accordingly along the esplanade beneath the palm trees
+until they came to the Casino. Both were temporary members of that club,
+and they sat down upon the cane chairs on the broad side-walk. A
+military band was playing on the esplanade a little to their right, and
+in front of them a throng of visitors and townspeople strolled and sat
+in the evening air. Hillyard smiled as he watched the kaleidoscopic
+grouping and re-grouping of men and children and women. The revolutions
+of his life, a subject which in the press of other and urgent matters
+had fallen of late into the background of his thoughts, struck him again
+as wondrous and admirable. He began to laugh with enjoyment. He looked
+at Fairbairn. How dull in comparison the regular sequences of his
+career!
+
+"I wandered about here barefoot and penniless," he said, "not so very
+long ago. On this very pavement!" He struck it with his foot, commending
+to Fairbairn the amazing fact. "I have cleaned boots," and he called to
+a boy who was lying in wait with a boot-black's apparatus on his back
+for any dusty foot. "Chico, come and clean my shoes." He jested with the
+boy with the kindliness of a Spaniard, and gave him a shining peseta.
+Hillyard was revelling in the romance of his life under the spur of the
+excitement which the affair of the letter had fired in him. "Yes, I
+wandered here, passing up and down in front of this very Casino."
+
+And Fairbairn saw his face change and his eyes widen as though he
+recognised some one in the throng beneath the trees.
+
+"What is it?" Fairbairn asked, and for a little while Hillyard did not
+answer. His eyes were not following any movements under the trees. They
+saw no one present in Alicante that day. Slowly he turned to Fairbairn,
+and answered in voice of suspense:
+
+"Nothing! I was just remembering--and wondering!"
+
+He remained sunk in abstraction for a long time. "It can't be!" at grips
+with "If it could be!" and a rising inspiration that "It was!" A man had
+once tried him out with questions about Alicante, a man who was afraid
+lest he should have seen too much. But Hillyard had learnt to hold his
+tongue when he had only inspirations to go upon, and he disclosed
+nothing of this to Fairbairn.
+
+Later on, when darkness had fallen, the two men drove in a motor-car
+southwards round the bay and through a shallow valley to the fishing
+village of Torrevieja. When you came upon its broad beach of shingle and
+sand, with its black-tarred boats hauled up, and its market booths, you
+might dream that you had been transported to Broadstairs--except for one
+fact. The houses are built in a single story, since the village is
+afflicted with earthquakes. Two houses rise higher than the rest, the
+hotel and the Casino. In the Casino Hillyard found Jose Medina's agent
+for those parts sitting over his great mug of beer; and they talked
+together quietly for a long while.
+
+Thus Martin Hillyard fared in those days. He played with life and death,
+enjoying vividly the one and ever on the brink of the other, but the
+deep, innermost realities of either had as yet touched him not at all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+ON A CAPE OF SPAIN
+
+
+The great cape thrusts its knees far out into the Mediterranean, and
+close down by the sea on the very point a lighthouse stands out from the
+green mass like a white pencil. South-westwards the land runs sharply
+back in heights of tangled undergrowths and trees, overhangs a wide bay
+and drops at the end of the bay to the mouth of a spacious, empty
+harbour. Eastwards the cape slopes inland at a gentler angle with an
+undercliff, a narrow plateau, and behind the plateau mountain walls. Two
+tiny fishing villages cluster a mile or two apart at the water's edge,
+and high up on the cape's flanks here and there a small rude settlement
+clings to the hillside. There are no roads to the cape. From the east
+you may ride a horse towards it, and lose your way. From the west you
+must approach by boat. So remote and unvisited is this region that the
+women in these high villages, their homes cut out of the actual brown
+rock, still cover their faces with the Moorish veil.
+
+There are no roads, but Jose Medina was never deterred by the lack of
+roads. His business, indeed, was a shy one, and led him to prefer wild
+country. A high police official in one great town said of him:
+
+"For endurance and activity there is no one like Jose Medina between the
+sea and the Pyrenees. You think him safe in Mallorca and look! He lands
+one morning from the steamer, jumps into a motor-car, and in five
+minutes--whish!--he is gone like the smoke of my cigarette. He will
+drive his car through our mountains by tracks, of which the guardia
+civil does not even know the existence."
+
+By devious tracks, then, now through narrow gullies in brown and barren
+mountains, now striking some village path amidst peach trees and
+marguerites, Jose Medina drove Martin Hillyard down to the edge of the
+sea. Here amongst cactus bushes in flower, with turf for a carpet, a
+camp had been prepared near to one of the two tiny villages. Jose Medina
+was king in this region. The party arrived in the afternoon of the
+twenty-sixth day of the month, all of the colour of saffron from the
+dust-clouds the car had raised, and Hillyard so stiff and bruised with
+the intolerable jolting over ruts baked to iron, that he could hardly
+climb down on to the ground. He slept that night amidst such a music of
+birds as he had never believed possible one country could produce.
+Through the night of the twenty-sixth he and Jose Medina watched; their
+lanterns ready to their hands. Lights there were in plenty on the sea,
+but they were the lights of acetylene lamps used by the fishermen of
+those parts to attract the fish; and the morning broke with the
+lighthouse flashing wanly over a smooth sea, pale as fine jade.
+
+"There are three more nights," said Hillyard. He was a little dispirited
+after the fatigue of the day before and the long, empty vigil on the top
+of the day.
+
+The next watch brought no better fortune. There was no moon; the night
+was of a darkness so clear that the stars threw pale and tremulous paths
+over the surface of the water, and from far away the still air vibrated
+from time to time with the throbbing of propellers as the ships without
+lights passed along the coast.
+
+Hillyard rose from the blanket on which he and Jose Medina had been
+lying during the night. It had been spread on a patch of turf in a break
+of the hill some hundreds of feet above the sea. He was cold. The
+blanket was drenched and the dew hung like a frost on bush and grass.
+
+"It looks as if they had found out," he said.
+
+"This is only the second night," said Jose Medina.
+
+"It all means so much to me," replied Hillyard, shivering in the
+briskness of the morning.
+
+"Courage, the little Marteen!" cried Jose Medina. "After breakfast and a
+few hours' sleep, we shall take a rosier view."
+
+Hillyard, however, could not compose himself to those few hours. The
+dread lest the Germans should have discovered the interception of their
+letters weighed too heavily upon him. Even in the daylight he needs
+must look out over that placid sunlit sea and imagine here and there
+upon its surface the low tower and grey turtle-back of a submarine.
+Success here might be so great a thing, so great a saving of lives, so
+dire a blow to the enemy. Somehow that day slowly dragged its burning
+hours to sunset, the coolness of the evening came, and the swift
+darkness upon its heels, and once more, high up on the hillside, the
+vigil was renewed. And at half-past one in the morning, far away at sea,
+a green light, bright as an emerald, flashed thrice and was gone.
+
+"Did I not say to you, 'Have courage'?" said Jose Medina.
+
+"Quick! the Lanterns!" replied Hillyard. "The red first! Good! Now the
+white. So! And the red again. Now we must wait!" and he sank down again
+upon the blanket. All the impatience and languor were gone from him. The
+moment had come. He was at once steel to meet it.
+
+"Yes," said Jose Medina, "we shall see nothing more now for a long
+while."
+
+They heard no sound in that still night; they saw no gleam of lights. It
+seemed to Hillyard that aeons passed before Jose touched him on the elbow
+and pointed downwards.
+
+"Look!" he whispered excitedly.
+
+Right at their very feet the long, grim vessel lay, so near that
+Hillyard had the illusion he could pitch a stone on to the conning
+tower. He now held his breath, lest his breathing should be heard. Then
+the water splashed, and a moment afterwards the submarine turned and
+moved to sea. They gave it five minutes, and then climbed down to a tiny
+creek. A rowing-boat lay in readiness there, with one man at the tiller
+and two at the oars.
+
+"You saw it, Manuel?" said Medina as he and Hillyard stepped in.
+
+"Yes, Senor Jose. It was very close. Oh, they know these waters!"
+
+The oars churned the phosphorescent water into green fire, and the foam
+from the stem of the boat sparkled as though jewels were scattered into
+it by the oarsmen as they rowed. They stopped alongside a little white
+buoy which floated on the water. The buoy was attached to a rope; that
+again to a chain. A mat was folded over the side of the boat and the
+chain drawn cautiously in and coiled without noise. Hillyard saw the two
+men who were hauling it in bend suddenly at their work and heave with a
+greater effort.
+
+"It is coming," said one of them, and the man at the tiller went forward
+to help them. Hillyard leaned over the side of the heavy boat and stared
+down into the water. But the night was too dark for him to see anything
+but the swirl of green fire made by the movement of the chain and the
+fire-drops falling from the links. At last something heavy knocked
+against the boat's flanks.
+
+"Once more," whispered the man from the tiller. "Now!"
+
+And the load was perched upon the gunwale and lowered into the boat. It
+consisted of three square and bulky metal cases, bound together by the
+chain.
+
+"We have it, my friend Marteen," whispered Jose Medina, with a laugh of
+sheer excitement. He was indeed hardly less stirred than Hillyard
+himself. "Not for nothing did the little Marteen lead the horse across
+the beach of Benicassim. Now we will row back quickly. We must be far
+away from here by the time the world is stirring."
+
+The boatmen bent to their oars with a will, and the boat leaped upon the
+water. They had rowed for fifty yards when suddenly far away a cannon
+boomed. The crew stopped, and every one in the boat strained his eyes
+seawards. Some one whispered, and Hillyard held up his hand for silence.
+Thus they sat immobile as figures of wax for the space of ten minutes.
+Then Hillyard relaxed from his attention.
+
+"They must have got her plump with the first shot," he said; and,
+indeed, there was no other explanation for that boom of a solitary
+cannon across the midnight sea.
+
+Jose Medina laughed.
+
+"So the little Marteen had made his arrangements?"
+
+"What else am I here for?" retorted the little Marteen, and though he
+too laughed, a thrill of triumph ran through the laugh. "It just needed
+that shot to round all off. I was so afraid that we should not hear it,
+that it might never be fired. Now it will never be known, if your men
+keep silent, whether they sunk their cargo or were sunk with it on
+board."
+
+The crew once more drove the blades of their oars through the water, and
+did not slacken till the shore was reached. They clambered up the rocks
+to their camp bearing their treasure, and up from the camp again to the
+spot where Jose's motor-car was hidden. Jose talked to the boatmen while
+the cans were stowed away in the bottom of the car, and then turned to
+Hillyard.
+
+"There will be no sign of our camp at daybreak. The tent will be
+gone--everything. If our luck holds--and why should it not?--no one need
+ever know that the Senor Marteen and his friend Jose Medina picnicked
+for three days upon that cape."
+
+"But the lighthouse-keepers! What of them?" objected Hillyard. In him,
+too, hope and excitement were leaping high. But this objection he
+offered up on the altars of the gods who chastise men for the insolence
+of triumph.
+
+"What of them?" Jose Medina repeated gaily. "They, too, are my friends
+this many a year." He seated himself at the wheel of the car. "Come, for
+we cannot drive fast amongst these hills in the dark."
+
+Hillyard will never forget to the day of his death that wild passage
+through the mountains. Now it was some sudden twist to avoid a
+precipice, now a jerk and a halt whilst Jose stared into the darkness
+ahead of him; here the car jolted suddenly over great stones, then it
+sank to the axle in soft dust; at another place the bushes whipped their
+faces; and again they must descend and build a little bridge of boughs
+and undergrowth over a rivulet. But so high an elation possessed him
+that he was unconscious both of the peril and the bruises. He could have
+sung aloud. They stopped an hour after daybreak and breakfasted by the
+side of the car in a high country of wild flowers. The sun was hidden
+from them by a barrier of hills.
+
+"We shall strike an old mine-road in half an hour," said Jose Medina,
+"and make good going."
+
+They came into a district of grey, weathered rock, and, making a wide
+circuit all that day, crept towards nightfall down to the road between
+Aguilas and Cartagena; and once more the sea lay before them.
+
+"We are a little early," said Medina. "We will wait here until it is
+dark. The carabineros are not at all well disposed to me, and there are
+a number of them patrolling the road."
+
+They were above the road and hidden from it by a hedge of thick bushes.
+Between the leaves Hillyard could see a large felucca moving westwards
+some miles from the shore and a long way off on the road below two tiny
+specks. The specks grew larger and became two men on horses. They became
+larger still, and in the failing light Hillyard was just able to
+distinguish that they wore the grey uniform of the Guardia Civil.
+
+"Let us pray," said Medina with a note of anxiety in his voice, "that
+they do not become curious about our fishing-boat out there!"
+
+As he spoke the two horsemen halted, and did look out to sea. They
+conversed each with the other.
+
+"If I were near enough to hear them!" said Jose Medina, and he suddenly
+turned in alarm upon Hillyard. "What are you doing?" he said.
+
+Hillyard had taken a large.38 Colt automatic pistol from his pocket. His
+face was drawn and white and very set.
+
+"I am doing nothing--for the moment," he answered. "But those two men
+must ride on before it is dark and too late for me to see them."
+
+"But they are of the Guardia Civil," Jose Medina expostulated in awed
+tones.
+
+To the Spaniard, the mere name of the Guardia Civil, so great is its
+prestige, and so competent its personnel, inspires respect.
+
+"I don't care," answered Hillyard savagely. "In this war why should two
+men on a road count at all? Let them go on, and nothing will happen."
+
+Jose Medina, who had been assuming the part of protector and adviser to
+his young English friend, had now the surprise of his life. He found
+himself suddenly relegated to the second place and by nothing but sheer
+force of character. Hillyard rested the point of his elbow on the earth
+and supported the barrel of his Colt upon his left forearm. He aimed
+carefully along the sights.
+
+"Let them go on!" he said between his teeth. "I will give them until the
+last moment--until the darkness begins to hide them. But not a moment
+longer. I am not here, my friend, for my health. I am here because there
+is a war."
+
+"The little Marteen" was singularly unapparent at this moment. Here was
+just the ordinary appalling Englishman who had not the imagination to
+understand what a desperately heinous crime it would be to kill two of
+the Guardia Civil, who was simply going to do it the moment it became
+necessary, and would not lose one minute of his sleep until his dying
+day because he had done it. Jose Medina was completely at a loss as he
+looked into the grim indifferent face of his companion. The two horsemen
+were covered. The Colt would kill at more than five hundred yards, and
+it had no more to do than carry sixty. And still those two fools sat on
+their horses, and babbled to one another, and looked out to sea.
+
+"What am I to do with this loco Ingles?" Jose Medina speculated,
+wringing his hands in an agony of apprehension. He had no share in those
+memories which at this moment invaded Martin Hillyard, and touched every
+fibre of his soul. Martin Hillyard, though his eye never left the sights
+of his Colt nor his mind wavered from his purpose, was with a
+subordinate consciousness stealing in the dark night up the footpath
+between the big, leafy trees over the rustic railway bridge to the
+summit of the hill. He was tramping once more through lanes, between
+fields, and stood again upon a hillock of Peckham Rye, and saw the
+morning break in beauty and in wonder over London. The vision gained
+from the foolish and romantic days of his boyhood, steadied his finger
+upon the trigger after all these years.
+
+Then to Jose's infinite relief the two horsemen rode on. The long,
+black, shining barrel of the Colt followed them as they dwindled on the
+road. They turned a corner, and as Hillyard replaced his pistol in his
+pocket, Jose Medina rolled over on his back, and clapped his hands to
+his face.
+
+"You might have missed," he gasped. "One of them at all events."
+
+Hillyard turned to him with a grin. The savage was not yet exorcised.
+
+"Why?" he asked. "Why should I have missed one of them? It was my
+business not to."
+
+Jose Medina flung up his hands.
+
+"I will not argue with you. We are not made of the same earth."
+
+Hillyard's face changed to gentleness.
+
+"Pretty nearly, my friend," he said, and he laid a hand on Jose Medina's
+shoulder. "For we are good friends--such good friends that I do not
+scruple to drag you into the same perils as myself."
+
+Hillyard had not wasted his time during those three years when he loafed
+and worked about the quays of Southern Spain. He touched the right chord
+now with an unerring skill. Hillyard might be the mad Englishman, the
+loco Ingles! But to be reckoned by one of them as one of them--here was
+an insidious flattery which no one of Jose Medina's upbringing could
+possibly resist.
+
+At nightfall they drove down across the road on to the beach. A
+rowing-boat was waiting, and Medina's manager from Alicante beside the
+boat on the sand. The cases were quickly transferred from the car to the
+boat.
+
+"We will take charge of the car," said Jose to his manager, and he
+stepped into the boat, and sat down beside Hillyard. "This is my
+adventure. I see it through to the end," he explained.
+
+A mile away the felucca picked them up. Hillyard rolled himself up in a
+rug in the bows of the boat. He looked up to the stars tramping the sky
+above his head.
+
+     "And gentlemen in England now a-bed."
+
+Drowsily he muttered the immemorial line, and turning on his side slept
+as only the tired men who know they have done their work can sleep. He
+was roused in broad daylight. The felucca was lying motionless upon the
+water; no land was anywhere in sight; but above the felucca towered the
+tall side of the steam yacht _Dragonfly_.
+
+Fairbairn was waiting at the head of the ladder. The cases were carried
+into the saloon and opened. The top cases were full of documents and
+letters, some private, most of them political.
+
+"These are for the pundits," said Hillyard. He put them back again, and
+turned to the last case. In them were a number of small glass tubes,
+neatly packed in cardboard boxes with compartments lined with cotton
+wool.
+
+"This is our affair, Fairbairn," he said. He took one out, and a look of
+perplexity crept over his face. The tube was empty. He tried another and
+another, and then another; every one of the tubes was empty.
+
+"Now what in the world do you make of that?" he asked.
+
+The tubes had yet to be filled and there was no hint of what they were
+to be filled with.
+
+"What I am wondering about is why they troubled to send the tubes at
+all?" said Fairbairn slowly. "There's some reason, of course, something
+perhaps in the make of the glass."
+
+He held one of the tubes up to the light. There was nothing to
+distinguish it from any one of the tubes in which small tabloids are
+sold by chemists.
+
+Hillyard got out of his bureau the letter in which these tubes were
+mentioned.
+
+"'They have been successful in France,'" he said, quoting from the
+letter. "The scientists may be able to make something of them in Paris.
+This letter and the tubes together may give a clue. I think that I had
+better take one of the boxes to Paris."
+
+"Yes," said Fairbairn gloomily. "But----" and he shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"But it's one of the ninety per cent, which go wrong, eh?" Hillyard
+finished the sentence with bitterness. Disappointment was heavy upon
+both men. Hillyard, too, was tired by the tension of these last
+sleepless days. He had not understood how much he had counted upon
+success.
+
+"Yes, it's damnably disheartening," he cried. "I thought these tubes
+might lead us pretty straight to B45."
+
+"B45!"
+
+The exclamation came from Jose Medina, who was leaning against the
+doorpost of the saloon, half in the room, half out on the sunlit deck.
+He had placed himself tactfully aloof. The examination of the cases was
+none of his business. Now, however, his face lit up.
+
+"B45." He shut the door and took a seat at the table. "I can tell you
+about B45."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE USES OF SCIENCE
+
+
+It was Hillyard's creed that chance will serve a man very capably, if he
+is equipped to take advantage of its help; and here was an instance. The
+preparation had begun on the morning when Hillyard took the _Dragonfly_
+into the harbour of Palma. Chance had offered her assistance some months
+later in an hotel at Madrid; as Medina was now to explain.
+
+"The day after you left Mallorca," said Jose Medina, "it was known all
+over Palma that you had come to visit me."
+
+"Of course," answered Martin.
+
+"I was in consequence approached almost immediately, by the other side."
+
+"I expected that. It was only natural."
+
+"There is a young lady in Madrid," continued Jose Medina.
+
+"Carolina Muller?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Rosa Hahn, then."
+
+"Yes," said Jose Medina.
+
+Jose rose and unlocking a drawer in his bureau took out from it a sheaf
+of photographs. He selected one and handed it with a smile to Hillyard.
+It was the portrait of a good-looking girl, tall, dark, and intelligent,
+but heavy about the feet, dressed in Moorish robes, and extended on a
+divan in Oriental indolence against a scene cloth which outdid the
+luxuries of Llalla Rookh.
+
+"That's the lady, I think."
+
+Medina gazed at the picture with delight. He touched his lips with his
+fingers, and threw a kiss to it. His sharp, sallow face suddenly
+flowered into smiles.
+
+"Yes. What a woman! She has real intelligence," he exclaimed fervently.
+
+Jose Medina was in the habit of losing his heart and keeping his head a
+good many times in an ordinary year.
+
+"It's an extraordinary thing," Martin Hillyard remarked, "that however
+intelligent they are, not one of these young ladies can resist the
+temptation to have her portrait taken in Moorish dress at the
+photographer's in the Alhambra."
+
+Jose Medina saw nothing at all grotesque or ridiculous in this
+particular foible.
+
+"They make such charming pictures," he cried.
+
+"And it is very useful for us, too," remarked Hillyard. "The
+photographer is a friend of mine."
+
+Jose was still gazing at the photograph.
+
+"Such a brain, my friend! She never told a story the second time
+differently, however emotional the moment. She never gave away a
+secret."
+
+"She probably didn't know any," said Hillyard.
+
+But Jose would not hear of such a reason.
+
+"Oh, yes! She has great influence. She knows people in Berlin--great
+people. She is their friend, and I cannot wonder. What an intelligence!"
+
+Martin Hillyard laughed.
+
+"She seems to have fairly put it over you at any rate," he said. He was
+not alarmed at Jose Medina's fervour. For he knew that remarkable man's
+capacity for holding his tongue even in the wildest moments of his
+temporary passions. But he took the photograph away from Medina and
+locked it up again. The rapturous reminiscences of Rosa Hahn's
+intelligence checked the flow of that story which was to lead him to
+B45.
+
+"So you know about her?" Jose said with an envious eye upon the locked
+drawer.
+
+"A little," said Martin Hillyard.
+
+Rosa Hahn was a clerk in the office of the Hamburg-Amerika Line before
+the war, and in the Spanish Department. She was sent to Spain in the
+last days of July, 1914, upon Government work, and at a considerable
+salary, which she enjoyed. She seemed indeed to have done little else,
+and Berlin, after a year, began to complain. Berlin had a lower opinion
+of both her social position and her brains than Jose Medina had formed.
+Berlin needed results, and failing to obtain them, proceeded to hint
+more and more definitely that Rosa had better return to her clerk's
+stool in Hamburg. Rosa, however, had been intelligent enough to make
+friends with one or two powerful Germans in Spain; and they pleaded for
+her with this much success. She was given another three months within
+which period she must really do something to justify her salary. So much
+Martin Hillyard already knew; he learnt now that Jose Medina had
+provided the great opportunity. To snatch him with his two hundred motor
+feluccas and his eighteen thousand men from the English--here was
+something really worth doing.
+
+"What beats me," said Hillyard, "is why they didn't try to get at you
+before."
+
+"They didn't," said Medina.
+
+Rosa, it seemed, used the argument which is generally sound; that the
+old and simple tricks are the tricks which win. She discovered the hotel
+at which Jose Medina stayed in Madrid, and having discovered it she went
+to stay there herself. She took pains to become friendly with the
+manager and his staff, and by professing curiosity and interest in the
+famous personage, she made sure not only that she would have
+fore-warning of his arrival, but that Jose Medina himself would hear of
+a charming young lady to whom he appealed as a hero of romance. She knew
+Jose to be of a coming-on disposition--and the rest seemed easy. Only,
+she had not guarded against the workings of Chance.
+
+The hotel was the Hotel de Napoli, not one of the modern palaces of
+cement and steel girders, built close to the Prado, but an old house
+near the Puerto del Sol, a place of lath and plaster walls and thin
+doors; so that you must not raise your voice unless you wish your
+affairs to become public property. To this house Jose Medina came as he
+had many times come before, and Chance willed that he should occupy the
+next room to that occupied by Rosa Hahn. It was the merest accident. It
+was the merest accident, too, that Jose Medina whilst he was unpacking
+his bag heard his name pronounced in the next room. Jose Medina, with
+all his qualities, was of the peasant class with much of the peasant
+mind. He was inquisitive, and he was suspicious. Let it be said in his
+defence that he had enemies enough ready to pull him down, not only, as
+we have seen, amongst his rivals on the coast, but here, amongst the
+Government officials of Madrid. It cost him a pretty penny annually to
+keep his balance on the tight-rope, as it was. He stepped noiselessly
+over to the door and listened. The voices were speaking in Spanish, one
+a woman's voice with a guttural accent.
+
+"Rosa Hahn," said Hillyard as the story was told to him in the cabin of
+the yacht.
+
+"The other a man's voice. But again it was a foreign voice, not a
+Spaniard's. But I could not distinguish the accent."
+
+"Greek, do you think?" asked Hillyard. "There is a Levantine Greek high
+up in the councils of the Germans."
+
+Jose Medina, however, did not know.
+
+"Here were two foreigners talking about me, and fortunately in Spanish.
+I was to arrive immediately; Rosa was to make my acquaintance. What my
+relations were with this man, Hillyard--yes, you came into the
+conversation, my friend, too--I was quickly to be persuaded to tell.
+Oh--you have a saying--everything in your melon patch was lovely."
+
+"Not for nothing has the American tourist come to Spain," Hillyard
+murmured.
+
+"Then their voices dropped a little, and your B45 was mentioned--once or
+twice. And a name in connection with B45 once or twice. I did not
+understand what it was all about."
+
+"But you remember the name!" Fairbairn exclaimed eagerly.
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Well, what was it?"
+
+It was again Fairbairn who spoke. Hillyard had not moved, nor did he
+even look up.
+
+"It was Mario Escobar," said Jose Medina; and as he spoke he knew that
+the utterance of the name awakened no surprise in Martin Hillyard.
+Hillyard filled his pipe from the tobacco tin, and lighted it before he
+spoke.
+
+"Do you know anything of this Mario Escobar?" he asked, "you who know
+every one?"
+
+Jose Medina shrugged his shoulders, and threw up his hands.
+
+"There was some years ago a Mario Escobar at Alicante," and Jose Medina
+saw Hillyard's eyes open and fix themselves upon him with an unblinking
+steadiness. Just so Jose Medina imagined might some savage animal in a
+jungle survey the man who had stumbled upon his lair.
+
+"That Mario Escobar, a penniless, shameless person, was in business with
+a German, the German Vice-Consul. He went from Alicante to London."
+
+"Thank you," said Hillyard. He rose from his chair and went to the
+window. But he saw nothing of the deck outside, or the sea beyond. He
+saw a man at a supper party in London a year before the war began,
+betraying himself by foolish insistent questions uttered in fear lest
+his close intimacy with Germans in Alicante should be known.
+
+"I have no doubt that Mario Escobar came definitely to England, long
+before the war, to spy," said Hillyard gravely. He returned to the
+table, and took up again one of the empty glass tubes.
+
+"I wonder what he was to do with these."
+
+Jose Medina had opened the door of the saloon once more. A beam of
+sunlight shot through the doorway, and enveloped Hillyard's arm and
+hand. The tiny slim phial glittered like silver; and to all of them in
+the cabin it became a sinister engine of destruction.
+
+"That, as you say, is your affair. I must go," said Jose, and he shook
+hands with Hillyard and Fairbairn, and went out on to the deck. "_Hasta
+luego!_"
+
+"_Hasta ahora!_" returned Hillyard; and Jose Medina walked down the
+steps of the ladder to his felucca. The blue sea widened between the two
+vessels; and in a week, Hillyard descended from a train on to the
+platform of the Quai D'Orsay station in Paris. He had the tubes in his
+luggage, and one box of them he took that morning to Commandant Marnier
+at his office on the left bank of the river with the letter which gave
+warning of their arrival.
+
+"You see what the letter says," Hillyard explained. "These tubes have
+been very successful in France."
+
+Marnier nodded his head:
+
+"If you will leave them with me, I will show them to our chemists, and
+perhaps, in a few days, I will have news for you."
+
+For a week Hillyard took his ease in Paris and was glad of the rest in
+the midst of those strenuous days. He received one morning at his hotel,
+a batch of letters, many of which had been written months before. But
+two were of recent date. Henry Luttrell wrote to him:
+
+     "_My battalion did splendidly and our debt to old Oakley is
+     great. There is only a handful of us left and we are
+     withdrawn, of course, from the lines. By some miracle I
+     escaped without a hurt. Everybody has been very generous,
+     making it up to us for our bad times. The Corps Commander
+     came and threw bouquets in person, and we hear that D.H.
+     himself is going out of his way to come and inspect us. I go
+     home on leave in a fortnight and hope to come back in
+     command of the battalion. Perhaps we may meet in London. Let
+     me hear if that is possible._"
+
+The second letter had been sent from Rackham Park, and in it Millie
+Splay wrote:
+
+     "_We have not heard from you for years. Will you be in
+     England this August? We are trying to gather again our old
+     Goodwood party. Both Dennis Brown and Harold Jupp will be
+     home on leave. There will be no Goodwood of course, but
+     there is a meeting at Gatwick which is easily reached from
+     here. Do come if you can and bring your friend with you, if
+     he is in London and has nothing better to do. We have all
+     been reading about him in the papers, and Chichester is very
+     proud of belonging to the same mess, and says what a
+     wonderful thing it must be to be able to get into the papers
+     like that, without trying to._"
+
+Hillyard could see the smile upon Lady Splay's face as she wrote that
+sentence. Hillyard laughed as he read it but it was less in amusement as
+from pleasure at the particular information which this sentence
+contained. Harry Luttrell had clearly won a special distinction in the
+hard fighting at Thiepval. There was not a word in Harry's letter to
+suggest it. There would not be. All his pride and joy would be engrossed
+by the great fact that his battalion had increased its good name.
+
+There was a closing sentence in Millie Splay's letter which brought
+another smile to his lips.
+
+     "_Linda Spavinsky is, alas, going as strong as ever. She was
+     married last week, in violet, as you will remember, to the
+     Funeral March of a Marionette and already she is in the
+     throes of domestic unhappiness. Her husband, fleshy, of
+     course, red in the face, and accustomed to sleep after
+     dinner, simply_ WON'T _understand her._"
+
+Here again Hillyard was able to see the smile on Millicent Splay's face,
+but it was a smile rather rueful and it ended, no doubt, in a sigh of
+annoyance. Hillyard himself was caught away to quite another scene. He
+was once more in the small motor-car on the top of Duncton Hill, and
+looked out over the Weald of Sussex to the Blackdown and Hindhead, and
+the slopes of Leith Hill, imagined rather than seen, in the summer haze.
+He saw Joan Whitworth's rapt face, and heard her eager cry.
+
+"Look out over the Weald of Sussex, so that you can carry it away with
+you in your breast. Isn't it worth everything--banishment,
+suffering--everything? Not the people so much, but the earth itself and
+the jolly homes upon it!"
+
+A passage followed which disturbed him:
+
+     "_There are other things too. My magnolia is still in bud. I
+     dread a blight before the flower opens._"
+
+It was a cry of distress--nothing less than that--uttered in some moment
+of intense depression. Else it would never have been allowed to escape
+at all.
+
+Hillyard folded up the letter. He would be going home in any case. There
+were those tubes. There was B45. He had enjoyed no leave since he had
+left England. Yes, he would go down to Rackham Park, and take Harry
+Luttrell with him if he could.
+
+Two days later the Commandant Marnier came to see him at the Ritz Hotel.
+They dined together in a corner of the restaurant.
+
+"We have solved the problem of those tubes," said Marnier. "They are
+nothing more nor less than time-fuses."
+
+"Time-fuses!" Hillyard repeated. "I don't understand."
+
+"Listen!"
+
+Marnier looked around. There was no one near enough to overhear him, if
+he did not raise his voice; and he was careful to speak in a whisper.
+
+"Two things." He ticked them off upon his fingers. "First, hydrofluoric
+acid when brought into contact with certain forms of explosive will
+create a fire. Second, hydrofluoric acid will bite its way through
+glass. The thicker the glass, the longer the time required to set the
+acid free. Do you follow?"
+
+"Yes," said Hillyard.
+
+"Good! Make a glass tube of such thickness that it will take
+hydrofluoric acid four hours and a half to eat its way through. Then
+fill it with acid and seal it up. You have a time-fuse which will act
+precisely in four hours and a half."
+
+"If it comes into contact with the necessary explosive," Hillyard added.
+
+"Exactly. Now attend to this! Our workmen in our munition factories work
+three hours and a half. Then they go to their luncheon."
+
+"Munition factories!" said Hillyard with a start.
+
+"Yes, my friend. Munition factories. We are short of labour as you know.
+Our men are in the firing line. We must get labour from some other
+source. And there is only one source."
+
+"The neutrals," Hillyard exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, the neutrals, and especially the neutrals who are near to us, who
+can come without difficulty and without much expense. We have a good
+many Spanish workmen in our munition factories and three of these
+factories have recently been burnt down. We have the proof now, thanks
+to you, that those little glass tubes so carefully manufactured in
+Berlin to last four hours and a half and no more, set the fires going."
+
+"Proof, you say?" Hillyard asked earnestly. "It is not probability or
+moral certainty? It is actual bed-rock proof?"
+
+"Yes. For once our chemists had grasped how these tubes could be used,
+we knew what to look for when the workmen were searched on entering the
+factory. Two days ago we caught a man. He had one of these little tubes
+in his mouth and in the lining of his waistcoat, just a little high
+explosive, so little was necessary that it must escape notice unless you
+knew what to search for. Yes, we caught him and he, the good fellow, the
+good honest neutral"--it would be difficult to describe the bitterness
+and scorn which rang through Marnier's words, "has been kind enough to
+tell me how he earned his German pay as well as his French wages."
+
+Hillyard leaned forward.
+
+"Yes, tell me that!"
+
+"On his way to the factory in the morning, he makes a call."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The one on whom he calls fills the tube or has it just filled and gives
+it to the workman. The time fuse is set for four hours and a half. The
+workman has so arranged it that he will reach the factory half an hour
+after the tube is filled. He passes the searcher. At his place he takes
+off his waistcoat and hangs it up and in the pocket, just separated from
+the explosive by the lining of the waistcoat, he places, secretly, the
+tube. The tube has now four hours of life and the workman three and a
+half hours of work. When the whistle goes to knock off for luncheon, the
+workman leaves his waist coat still hanging up on the peg and goes out
+in the stream. But half an hour afterwards, half-way through the hour of
+luncheon, the acid reaches the explosive. There is a tiny explosion in
+that empty hall, not enough to make a great noise, but quite enough to
+start a big fire; and when the workmen return, the building is ablaze.
+No lives are lost, but the factory is burnt down."
+
+Hillyard sat for a little while in thought.
+
+"Perhaps you can tell me," he said at length. "I hear nothing from
+England or very little; and naturally. Are we obtaining Spanish workmen,
+too, for our munition factories?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+It was clear now why B45 was especially suitable for this work. B45 was
+Mario Escobar, a Spaniard himself.
+
+"And filling the tubes! That is simple?"
+
+"A child could do it," answered Marnier.
+
+"Thank you," said Martin Hillyard.
+
+The next evening he left Paris and travelling all night to Boulogne,
+reached London in the early afternoon of the following day. Twenty
+months had passed since he had set foot there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+UNDER GREY SKIES AGAIN
+
+
+Hillyard landed in England athirst for grey skies. Could he have chosen
+the season of the year which should greet him, he would have named
+October. For the ceaseless bright blue of sea and heaven had set him
+dreaming through many a month past, of still grey mornings sweet with
+the smell of earth and thick hedgerows and the cluck of pheasants. But
+there were at all events the fields wondrously green after the brown
+hill-sides and rusty grass, the little rich fields in the frames of
+their hedges, and the brown-roofed houses and the woods splashing their
+emerald branches in the sunlight. Hillyard travelled up through Kent
+rejoicing. He reached London in the afternoon, and leaving his luggage
+in his flat walked down to the house in the quiet street behind the
+Strand whence Commodore Graham overlooked the Thames.
+
+But even in this backwater the changes of the war were evident. The
+brass plates had all gone from the door post and girls ran up and down
+the staircases in stockings which some Allied fairies had woven on
+Midsummer morning out of cobwebs of dew. They were, however, as unaware
+as of old of any Commodore Graham. Was he quite certain that he wanted
+to see Commodore Graham. And why? And, after all, was there a Commodore
+Graham? Gracious damsels looked blandly at one another, with every
+apparent desire to assist this sunburnt stranger. It seemed to Hillyard
+that they would get for him immediately any one else in the world whom
+he chose to name. It was just bitterly disappointing and contrarious
+that the one person he wished to see was a Commodore Graham. Oh,
+couldn't he be reasonable and ask for somebody else?
+
+"Very well," said Hillyard with a smile. "There was a pretty girl with
+grey eyes, and I'll see her."
+
+"The description is vague," said the young lady demurely.
+
+"She is Miss Cheyne."
+
+"Oh!" said one.
+
+"Oh!" said another; and
+
+"Will you follow me, please?" said a third, who at once became
+business-like and brisk, and led him up the stairs. The door was still
+unvarnished. Miss Cheyne opened it, wearing the composed expression of
+attention with which she had greeted Hillyard when he had sought
+admission first. But her face broke up into friendliness and smiles,
+when she recognised him, and she drew him into the room.
+
+"The Commodore's away for a week," she said. "He had come to the end: no
+sleep, nerves all jangled. He is up in Scotland shooting grouse."
+
+Hillyard nodded. His news could wait a week very well, since it had
+waited already two years.
+
+"And you?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, I had a fortnight," replied Miss Cheyne, her eyes dancing at the
+recollection. It was her pleasure to sail a boat in Bosham Creek and out
+towards the Island. "Not a day of rain during the whole time."
+
+"I think that I might have a month then, don't you?" said Hillyard, and
+Miss Cheyne opined that there would be no objection.
+
+"But you will come back in a week," she stipulated, "won't you? The
+Commodore will be here on Thursday, and there are things accumulating
+which he must see to. So will you come on Friday?"
+
+"Friday morning," Hillyard suggested.
+
+Thursday was the day on which he should have travelled down to Rackham
+Park, but if he could finish his business on Friday morning, he would
+only lose one day.
+
+"Friday morning then," said Miss Cheyne, and made a note of it.
+
+Hillyard had thus a week in which to resume his friendships, arrange to
+write, at some distant time, a play, revisit his club and his tailor,
+and revel, as at a pageant, in the fresh beauty, the summer clothes, the
+white skin and clean-limbed boyishness of English girls. He went
+through, in a word, the first experiences of most men returned from a
+long sojourn in other climes; and they were ordinary enough. But the
+week was made notable for him by one small incident.
+
+It was on the Monday and about five o'clock in the afternoon. He was
+walking from the Charing Cross Road towards Leicester Square, when, from
+a doorway ahead of him, a couple emerged. They did not turn his way but
+preceded him, so that he only saw their backs. But he had no doubt who
+one of the couple was. The fair hair, the tall, slim, long-limbed
+figure, the perverse sloppiness of dress which could not quite obscure
+her grace of youth, betrayed the disdainful prodigy of Rackham Park. The
+creator of Linda Spavinsky swam ahead of him. Had he doubted her
+identity, a glance at the door from which she had emerged would have
+dispelled the doubt. It was the entrance to a picture gallery, where,
+cubes and curves having served their turn and gone, the rotundists were
+having an innings. Everybody and everything was in rounds, palaces and
+gardens and ships and Westminster Bridge, and men and women were all in
+circles. The circle was the principle of life and art. Joan Whitworth
+would be drawn to the exhibition as a filing to a magnet. Undoubtedly
+Joan Whitworth was ahead of Hillyard and he began to hurry after her.
+But he checked himself after a few paces. Or rather the aspect of her
+companion checked him. His appearance was vaguely familiar, but that was
+all. It was not certainly Sir Chichester Splay, for the all-sufficient
+reason that the Private View had long gone by; since the very last week
+of the exhibition was announced in the window. Moreover, the man in
+front of him was younger than Sir Chichester.
+
+The couple, however, crossed the road to the Square Garden, and Hillyard
+saw the man in profile. He stopped so suddenly that a man walking behind
+him banged heavily against his back. The man walked on and turned round
+after he had passed to stare at Hillyard. For Hillyard stood stock
+still, he was unaware that any one had run into him, in all his body his
+lips alone moved.
+
+"Mario," he whispered. "Mario Escobar!"
+
+The man who had been so far the foremost in his thoughts during the last
+weeks that he never thought that he could have failed to recognise him.
+Mario Escobar! And with Joan Whitworth. Millicent Splay's letter flashed
+back into his memory. The distress which he had seemed to hear loud
+behind the written words--was this its meaning and explanation? Joan
+Whitworth and Mario Escobar! Certainly Joan knew him! He was sitting
+next to her on the night when "The Dark Tower" was produced, sitting
+next to her, and talking to her. Sir Charles Hardiman had used some
+phrase to describe that conversation. Hillyard was strangely anxious to
+recapture the phrase. Escobar was talking to her with an air of intimacy
+a little excessive in a public place. Yes, that was the sentence.
+
+Hillyard walked on quickly to his club.
+
+"Is Sir Charles Hardiman here?" he asked of the hall porter.
+
+"He is in the card-room, sir."
+
+Martin Hillyard went up the stairs with a sense of relief. His position
+was becoming a little complicated. Mario Escobar was B45, and a friend
+of Joan Whitworth, and a friend of the Splays. There was one point upon
+which Martin Hillyard greatly needed information.
+
+Hardiman, a little heavier and broader and more obese than when Hillyard
+had last seen him, was sitting by a bridge table overlooking the
+players. He never played himself, nor did he ever bet upon the game, but
+he took a curious pleasure in looking on, and would sit in the card-room
+by the hour engrossed in the fall of the cards. The sight of Hillyard,
+however, plucked him out of his occupation.
+
+"So you're back!" he cried, heaving himself heavily out of his chair and
+shaking hands with Martin.
+
+"For a month."
+
+"I hear you have done very well," Sir Charles continued. "Have a
+whisky-and-soda."
+
+"Thanks."
+
+Hardiman touched the bell and led the way over to a sofa.
+
+"Lucky man! The doctor's read the Riot Act to me! I met Luttrell in the
+Mall this morning, on his way back from Buckingham Palace. He had just
+been given his D.S.O."
+
+Hardiman began to sit down, but the couch was low, and though he began
+the movement lazily, it went suddenly with a run, so that the springs
+of the couch jumped and twanged and his feet flew from beneath him.
+
+"Yes, he has done splendidly," said Martin. "His battalion too. That's
+what he cares about."
+
+Sir Charles needed a moment or two after he had set down to recover his
+equipoise. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.
+
+"Luttrell told me you were both off to Rackham Park this week for
+Gatwick."
+
+"That's right! But I shan't get down until Friday afternoon," said
+Hillyard.
+
+The waiter put the glass of whisky-and-soda at his side, and he took a
+drink from it.
+
+"Perhaps you are going too," he suggested.
+
+Hardiman shook his head.
+
+Hillyard was silent for a minute. Then he asked another question.
+
+"Do you know who is going to be there beside Luttrell and myself?"
+
+Sir Charles smiled.
+
+"I don't know, but I fancy that you won't find him amongst the guests."
+
+Hillyard was a little startled by the answer, but he did not betray the
+least sign of surprise. He pursued his questions.
+
+"You know whom I have in my mind?"
+
+"I drew a bow at a venture," answered Sir Charles.
+
+"Shall I name him?" asked Hillyard.
+
+"I will," returned Sir Charles. "Mario Escobar."
+
+Hillyard nodded. He took another pull at his whisky-and-soda. Then he
+lit a cigarette and leaned forward, with his elbows upon his knees; and
+all the while Sir Charles Hardiman, his body in a majestic repose,
+contemplated him placidly. Hardiman had this great advantage in any
+little matter of debate; he never wished to move. Place him in a chair,
+and he remained, singularly immobile.
+
+"Since you were so quick to guess at once the reason of my question,"
+continued Hillyard, "I can draw an inference. Mario Escobar has been at
+Rackham Park a good deal?"
+
+Sir Charles Hardiman's smile broadened.
+
+"Even now you don't express your inference," he retorted. "You mean that
+Mario Escobar has been at Rackham Park too much." He paused whilst he
+drew out his cigarette-case and selected a cigarette from it. "And I
+agree," he added. "Mario Escobar is too picturesque a person for these
+primitive days."
+
+Hillyard was not sure what Sir Charles Hardiman precisely meant. But on
+the other hand he was anxious to ask no direct questions concerning
+Escobar. He sought to enter in by another gate.
+
+"Primitive?" he said.
+
+"Yes. We have become rather primitive, especially the women. They have
+lost a deal of self-consciousness. They exact less. They give more--oh,
+superbly more! It's the effect of war, of course. They have jumped down
+off their little pinnacles. Let me put it coarsely. They are saved from
+rape by the fighting man, and they know it. Consequently all men benefit
+and not least," Sir Charles lit his cigarette, "that beast of
+abomination, the professional manipulator of women, the man who lives by
+them and on them, who cajoles them first and blackmails them afterwards,
+who has the little attentions, the appealing voice, in fact all the
+tricks of his trade ready at his fingers' ends. However, Millie Splay's
+awake to the danger now."
+
+"Danger!" Hillyard sharply exclaimed.
+
+"Quite right. It's too strong a word. I take it back," Hardiman agreed
+at once. But he was not in the habit of using words wildly. He had said
+exactly what he meant to say, and having aroused the attention which he
+meant to arouse, he calmly withdrew the word. "I rubbed it into
+Chichester's thick head that Escobar was overmuch at Rackham Park, and
+in the end--it percolated."
+
+Much the same account of Escobar, with this instance of Rackham Park
+omitted, was given to Hillyard by Commodore Graham on the Friday
+morning.
+
+"He is the kind of man whom men loathe and women like. He runs about
+London, gets a foot in here and there. You know what London is, even now
+in the midst of this war, with its inability to be surprised, and its
+indifference to strange things. You might walk down Regent Street
+dressed up as a Cherokee Indian, feathers and tomahawk and all, and how
+many Cockneys would take the trouble to turn round and look at you
+twice? It was pretty easy for Escobar to slip about unnoticed."
+
+Commodore Graham bent his head over the case of tubes which Hillyard had
+brought with him.
+
+"We'll have a look-out kept for these things. There have been none of
+them in England up till now."
+
+Martin Hillyard returned to the personality of Mario Escobar.
+
+"Did you suspect him before?" he asked.
+
+Commodore Graham pushed the cigarettes towards Hillyard.
+
+"Scotland Yard has kept an eye on him. That sort of adventurer is always
+dangerous."
+
+He rang the bell, and on Miss Cheyne's appearance called for what
+information the office had concerning Mario Escobar. Miss Cheyne
+returned with a book in which Escobar's dossier was included.
+
+"Here he is," said Graham, and Hillyard, moving across to the bureau,
+followed Graham's forefinger across the written page. He was agent for
+the Compania de Navigacion del Sur d'Espana--a German firm on the black
+list, headquarters at Alicante. Escobar severed his connection with the
+company on the outbreak of war.
+
+Graham raised his head to comment on the action.
+
+"That, of course, was camouflage. But it checked suspicion for a time.
+Suspicion was first aroused," and he resumed reading again, "by his
+change of lodging. He lived in a small back bedroom in a boarding-house
+in Clarence Street, off Westbourne Grove, and concealed his address,
+having his letters addressed to his club, until February, 1915, upon
+which date he moved into a furnished flat in Maddox Street. Nothing
+further, however, happened to strengthen that suspicion until, in the
+autumn of that year, a letter signed Mario was intercepted by the
+censor. It was sent to a Diego Perez, the Director of a fruit company at
+Murcia, for Emma Grutsner."
+
+"You sent me a telegram about her," exclaimed Hillyard, "in November."
+
+Commodore Graham's forefinger travelled along the written lines and
+stopped at the number and distinguishing sign of the telegram, sent and
+received.
+
+"Yes," continued Graham. "Here's your answer. 'Emma Grutzner is the
+governess in a Spanish family at Torrevieja, and she goes occasionally,
+once a month or so, to the house of Diego Perez in Murcia.'"
+
+"Yes, yes! I routed that out," said Hillyard. "But I hadn't an idea that
+Mario Escobar was concerned in it."
+
+"That wasn't mentioned?" asked the Commodore.
+
+"No. I already knew, you see, of B45. If just a word had been added that
+it was Mario who was writing to Emma Grutzner we might have identified
+him months ago."
+
+"Yes," answered Graham soothingly and with a proper compunction. He was
+not unused to other fiery suggestions from his subordinates that if only
+the reasons for his telegrams and the information on which his questions
+were based, were sent out with the questions themselves, better results
+in quicker time could be obtained. Telegrams, however, were going out
+and coming in all day; a whole array of cipherers and decipherers lived
+in different rookeries in London. Commodore Graham's activities embraced
+the high and the narrow seas, great Capitals and little tucked-away
+towns and desolate stretches of coast where the trade-winds blew. No
+doubt full explanations would have led in many cases to more
+satisfactory conclusions. But fuller explanations were out of all
+possibility. Even with questions fined down to the last succinct
+syllable the cables groaned. None of the objections were raised,
+however, by Commodore Graham. It was his business to keep men like
+Hillyard who were serving him well to their own considerable cost, in a
+good humour. Remorse was the line, not argument.
+
+"What a pity! I _am_ sorry," protested the Commodore. "It's my fault!
+There's nothing else to be said. I am to blame about it."
+
+Martin Hillyard began to feel some compunction that he had ever
+suggested a fault in the composition of the telegram. But then, it was
+his business not to betray any such tenderness.
+
+"If we could have in the future a little more information from London,
+it would save us a good deal of time," he said stonily. "Sometimes a
+surname is hurled at us, and will we find him, please, and cable home
+all details?"
+
+"Yes, that is very wrong," the Commodore agreed. "We will have that
+changed." Then a bright idea appeared to occur to him. His face lighted
+up. "After all, in this instance the mistake hasn't done any real harm.
+For we have got our friend Mario Escobar now, and without these tubes
+and this letter from Berlin about the use of them and Jose Medina's
+account of the conversation in the next room we shouldn't have got him.
+The German governess wasn't enough. He's, after all, a neutral. Besides,
+there was nothing definite in his letter. But now----"
+
+"Now you can deal with him?" asked Hillyard eagerly.
+
+"To be sure," replied the Commodore. "We have no proof here to put him
+on his trial. But we have reasonable ground for believing him to be in
+communication with our enemies for the purpose of damaging us, and
+that's quite enough to lock him up until the end of the war."
+
+He reached out his hand for the telephone and asked for a number.
+
+"I am ringing up Scotland Yard," he said to Hillyard over the top of the
+instrument; and immediately Hillyard heard a tiny voice speaking as if
+summoned from another planet.
+
+"Hallo!" cried Graham. "Is that you, A.C.? You remember Mario Escobar?
+Good. I have Hillyard here from the Mediterranean with a clear case.
+I'll come over and see you."
+
+Mr. "A.C.", whose real name was Adrian Carruthers, thereupon took up the
+conversation at the other end of the line. The lines deepened upon the
+Commodore's forehead as he listened. Then he turned to Hillyard, and
+swore softly and whole-heartedly.
+
+"Mario Escobar has vanished."
+
+"But I saw him myself," Hillyard exclaimed. "I saw him in London."
+
+"When?"
+
+"On Monday afternoon."
+
+Graham lifted the mouthpiece to his lips again.
+
+"Wait a bit, A.C. Hillyard saw the man in London on Monday afternoon."
+
+Again A.C. spoke at the other end from an office in Scotland Yard.
+Graham put down the instrument with a bang and hung up the receiver.
+
+"He vanished yesterday. Could he have seen you?"
+
+Hillyard shook his head.
+
+"I think not."
+
+"Oh, we'll get him, of course. He can't escape from the country. And we
+will get him pretty soon," Graham declared. He looked out of the window
+on to the river. "I wonder what in the world alarmed him, since it
+wasn't you?" he speculated slowly.
+
+But both Scotland Yard and Commodore Graham were out of their reckoning
+for once. Mario Escobar was not alarmed at all. He had packed his bag,
+taken the tube to his terminus, bought his ticket and gone off in a
+train. Only no one had noticed him go; and that was all there was to
+it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+LADY SPLAY'S PREOCCUPATIONS
+
+
+"It's a good race to leave alone, Miranda," said Dennis Brown. "But if
+you want to back something, I should put a trifle on Kinky Jane."
+
+"Thank you, Dennis," Miranda answered absently. She was standing upon
+the lawn at Gatwick with her face towards the line of bookmakers upon
+the far side of the railings. These men were shouting at the full frenzy
+of their voices, in spite of the heat and the dust. The ring was
+crowded, and even the enclosure more than usually full.
+
+"But you won't get any price," Harold Jupp continued, and he waved an
+indignant arm towards the bookmakers. "I never saw such a crowd of
+pinchers in my life."
+
+"Thank you, Harold," Miranda replied politely. She was aware that he was
+advising her, but the nature of the advice did not reach her mind. She
+was staring steadily in front of her.
+
+Dennis Brown and Harold Jupp looked at one another in alarm. They knew
+well that sibylline look on the face of Miranda Brown. She was awaiting
+the moment of inspiration. She was all wrapped up in expectation of it.
+At times she glanced at her race-card, whilst a thoughtful frown
+puckered her pretty forehead, as though the name of the winning filly
+might leap out in letters of gold.
+
+Dennis shook his head dolefully. For the one thing sure and certain was
+that the fatal moment of inspiration would come to Miranda in time to
+allow her to reach the railings before the start. Suddenly a name
+uttered by an apoplectic gentleman in a voice breaking with fine passion
+reached her ears, with the odds attached to it of nine to one.
+
+Miranda's face cleared of all its troubles.
+
+"Oh, why didn't I think of that before?" she said in an extremity of
+self-reproach. She walked straight to the apoplectic gentleman, followed
+by the unhappy pair of scientific punters.
+
+"Callow Girl is nine to one, isn't it?"
+
+The apoplectic gentleman smiled winningly.
+
+"To you, missie."
+
+Miranda laughed.
+
+"I'll have ten pounds on it," she said, and did not hear the gasp of her
+husband behind her. She made a note of the bet in her little
+pocket-book.
+
+"That's ninety pounds, anyway," she said, turning to her companions.
+"They will just buy that simple little Callot frock with the
+embroidery."
+
+Yes, racing was as easy as that to Miranda Brown. She wanted a simple
+little Callot frock which would cost ninety pounds, and Callow Girl was
+obviously marked out to win it for her.
+
+"Then I shall be a Callot girl," she said gaily, and as neither of her
+companions enjoyed her witticism she stamped her small foot in vexation.
+
+"Oh, how dull you both are!" she cried.
+
+"Well, you see," Dennis rejoined, "we've had rather a bad day."
+
+"So have I," returned Miranda indignantly. "Yet I keep up my spirits."
+
+A look of blank amazement overspread the face of Dennis Brown. He gazed
+around as one who should say, "Did you ever see anything so amazing
+outside the Ark?"
+
+Miranda corrected her remark with a laugh.
+
+"Well, I mean I haven't won as much as I should have if I had backed
+winners." For she had really mastered the science of the race-course.
+She knew how to go racing. Her husband paid her losses and she kept her
+winnings.
+
+Harold Jupp took her seriously by the arm.
+
+"You ought to go into a home, Miranda," he advised. "You really ought.
+That little head was never meant for all this weighty thought."
+
+Miranda walked across to the little stone terrace which looks down the
+course.
+
+"Don't be foolish, Harold, but go and collect Colonel Luttrell if you
+can find him, whilst I see my filly win," she said. "Dennis has already
+gone to find the car and we propose to start immediately this race is
+over."
+
+Miranda ascended the grass slope and saw the fillies canter down towards
+the starting post. From the chatter about her she gathered that the odds
+on Callow Girl had shortened. It was understood that a sum of money had
+been laid on her at the last moment. She was favourite before the flag
+was dropped and won by half a length. Miranda ran joyously down the
+slope.
+
+"What did I tell you, Harold? Aren't I wonderful? And have you found
+Colonel Luttrell? You know Millie told us to look out for him?" she
+cried all in a breath.
+
+Luttrell had written to Lady Splay to say that he would try to motor to
+Gatwick in time for the last races; and that he would look out for Jupp
+and Dennis Brown, whom he had already met earlier in the week at a
+dinner party given by Martin Hillyard.
+
+"There's no sign of him," Harold Jupp answered.
+
+There were two more races, but the party from Rackham Park did not wait
+for them. They drove over the flat country through Crawley and Horsham
+and came to the wooded roads between high banks where the foliage met
+overhead, and to the old stone bridges over quiet streams. Harold Jupp
+was home from Egypt, Dennis Brown from Salonika, and as the great downs,
+with their velvet forests, seen now over a thick hedge, now in an
+opening of branches like the frame of a locket, the marvel of the
+English countryside in summer paid them in full for their peril and
+endurance.
+
+"I have a fortnight, Miranda," said Dennis, dropping a hand upon his
+wife's. "Think of it!"
+
+"My dear, I have been thinking of nothing else for months," she said
+softly. Terrors there had been, nights and days of them, terrors there
+would be, but she had a fortnight now, perfect in its season, and in the
+meeting of old friends upon familiar ground--a miniature complete in
+beauty, like the glimpses of the downs seen through the openings amongst
+the boughs.
+
+"Yes, a whole fortnight," she cried and laughed, and just for a second
+turned her head away, since just for a second the tears glistened in her
+eyes.
+
+The car turned and twisted through the puzzle of the Petworth streets
+and mounted on to the Midhurst road. The three indefatigable race-goers
+found Lady Splay sitting with Martin Hillyard in the hall of Rackham
+Park.
+
+"You had a good day, I hope," she said.
+
+"It was wonderful," exclaimed Dennis Brown. "We didn't make any money
+except Miranda. But that didn't matter."
+
+"All our horses were down the course," Harold Jupp explained. "They
+weren't running in their form at all"; and he added cheerfully: "But the
+war may be over before the winter, and then we'll go chasing and get it
+all back."
+
+Millicent Splay rang for tea, just as Joan Whitworth came into the hall.
+
+"You didn't see Colonel Luttrell then?" asked Lady Splay.
+
+"No."
+
+"He'll come down later then." She had an eye for Joan Whitworth as she
+spoke, but Joan was so utterly indifferent as to whether Colonel
+Luttrell would arrive or not that she could not stifle a sigh. She had
+gathered Luttrell into the party with some effort and now it seemed her
+effort was to be fruitless. Joan persisted in her mood of austere
+contempt for the foibles of the world. She was dressed in a gown of an
+indeterminate shade between drab and sage-green, which did its best to
+annul her. She had even come to sandals. There they were now sticking
+out beneath the abominable gown.
+
+"She can't ruin her complexion," thought Millicent Splay. "That's one
+thing. But if she could, she would. Oh, I would love to smack her!"
+
+Joan, quite unaware of Millie Splay's tingling fingers and indignant
+eyes, sat reading "Ferishtah's Fancies." Other girls might set their
+caps at the soldiers. Joan had got to be different. She had even dallied
+with the pacifists. Martin Hillyard had carried away so close a
+recollection of her on that afternoon when she had driven him through
+the golden sunset over Duncton Hill and of the brave words she had then
+spoken that he had to force himself to realise that this was indeed
+she.
+
+Millicent Splay had three preoccupations that afternoon but none pressed
+upon her with so heavy a load of anxiety as her preoccupation concerning
+Joan Whitworth.
+
+Martin crossed the room to Joan and sat upon the couch beside her.
+
+"Didn't I see you in London, Miss Whitworth, on Monday afternoon?" he
+asked.
+
+Joan met his gaze steadily.
+
+"Did you? It was possible. I was in London on Monday. Where did you
+think you saw me?"
+
+"Coming out of a picture gallery in Green Street."
+
+Joan did not flinch, nor drop her eyes from his.
+
+"Yes, you saw me," she replied. Then with a challenge in her voice she
+added distinctly, so that the words reached, as they were meant to
+reach, every one in that room. "I was with Mario Escobar."
+
+The room suddenly grew still. Two years ago, Martin Hillyard reflected,
+Harold Jupp or Dennis would have chaffed her roundly about her conquest,
+and she would have retorted with good humour. Now, no one spoke, but a
+little sigh, a little movement of uneasiness came from Millie Splay.
+Joan did not take her eyes from Hillyard's face. But the blood mounted
+slowly over her throat and cheeks.
+
+"Well?" she asked, and the note of challenge was a trifle more audible
+in her quiet voice. And since he was challenged, Hillyard answered:
+
+"He is a German spy."
+
+The words smote upon all in the room like a blow. Joan herself grew
+pale. Then she replied:
+
+"People say that nowadays of every foreigner."
+
+The moment of embarrassment was prolonged to a full minute--during which
+no one spoke. Then to the relief of every one, Sir Chichester Splay
+entered the hall. He had been sitting all day upon the Bench. He had to
+attend the Flower Show in Chichester during the next week. Really the
+life of a country notable was a dog's life.
+
+"You are going to make a speech at Chichester, Sir Christopher?" Jupp
+inquired.
+
+"Oh no, my boy," replied Sir Chichester. "Make a speech indeed! And in
+this weather! Nothing would induce me. Me for the back benches, as our
+cousins across the Atlantic would say."
+
+He spoke pompously, yet with a certain gratification as though Harold
+Jupp had asked him to dignify the occasion with a speech.
+
+"Have the evening papers not arrived yet?" he asked, looking with
+suspicious eyes on Dennis Brown.
+
+"No, I am not sitting on them this time," said Dennis.
+
+"And Colonel Luttrell?"
+
+After the evening papers, Sir Chichester thought politely of his guests.
+Millie Splay replied with hesitation. While the others of the company
+were shaking off their embarrassment, she was sinking deeper into hers.
+
+"Colonel Luttrell has not come yet. Nor--nor--the other guest who
+completes our party."
+
+Her voice trailed off lamentably into a plea for kind treatment and
+gentleness. Here was Millie Splay's second preoccupation. As it was Sir
+Chichester's passion to see his name printed in the papers, so it was
+Millie's to gather in the personages of the moment under her roof. She
+had promised that this party should be just a small one of old friends
+with Luttrell as the only new-comer. But personages were difficult to
+come by at this date, since they were either deep in work or out of the
+country altogether. They had to be brought down by a snap shot, and very
+often the bird brought down turned out to be a remarkably inferior
+specimen of his class. Millie Splay had been tempted and had fallen; and
+she was not altogether easy about the quality of her bird, now on its
+descent to her feet.
+
+"I didn't know any one else was coming," said Sir Chichester, who really
+didn't care how much Lady Splay gratified her passion, so long as he got
+full satisfaction for his.
+
+"No, nor any one else," said Dennis Brown severely. "He is a stranger."
+
+"To you," replied Millie Splay, showing fight.
+
+Harold Jupp advanced and planted himself firmly before her.
+
+"Do you know him yourself, Lady Splay?" he asked.
+
+"But of course I do," the poor lady exclaimed. "How absurd of you,
+Harold, to ask such a question! I met him at a party when Joan and I
+were in London at the beginning of this week." She caught again at her
+fleeting courage. "So I invited him, and he's coming this afternoon. I
+shall send the motor to meet him in an hour from now. So there's an end
+of the matter."
+
+Harold Jupp shook his head sagely.
+
+"We must see that the plate is all locked up safely to-night."
+
+"There! I knew it would be like this," cried Millie Splay, wringing her
+hands. She remembered, from a war correspondent's article, that to
+attack is the only successful defence. She turned on Jupp.
+
+"I won't be bullied by you, Harold! He's a most charming person, with
+really nice manners," she emphasised her praise of the absent guest,
+"and if only you will study him whilst he is here--all of you, you will
+be greatly improved at the end of your visit."
+
+Harold Jupp was quite unimpressed by Millie Splay's outburst. He
+remained severely in front of her, judge, prosecutor and jury all in
+one, and all relentlessly against her.
+
+"And what is his name?"
+
+Lady Splay looked down and looked up.
+
+"Mr. Albany Todd," she said.
+
+"I don't like it," said Harold Jupp.
+
+"No," added Dennis Brown sadly from a corner. "We can't like it, Lady
+Splay."
+
+Lady Splay turned with her most insinuating smile towards Brown.
+
+"Oh, Dennis, do be nice and remember this isn't your house," she cried.
+"You can be so unpleasant if you find any one here you don't like. Mr.
+Albany Todd's quite a famous person."
+
+Harold Jupp, of the inquiring mind, still stood looking down on Lady
+Splay without any softening of his face.
+
+"What for?" he asked.
+
+Lady Splay groaned in despair.
+
+"Oh, I was sure you were going to ask that. You are so unpleasant." She
+put her hand to her forehead. "But I know quite well. Yes, I do." Her
+face suddenly cleared. "He is a conversationalist--that's it--a great
+conversationalist. He is the sort of man," she spoke as one repeating a
+lesson, "who would have been welcome at the breakfast table of Mr.
+Rogers."
+
+"Rogers?" Harold Jupp asked sternly. "I don't know him."
+
+"And probably never will, Harold, I am sorry to say," said Lady Splay
+triumphantly. "Mr. Rogers was in heaven many years ago." She suddenly
+changed her note and began to implore. "Oh, do be pleasant, you and
+Dennis!"
+
+Harold Jupp's mouth began to twitch, but he composed it again, with an
+effort, to the stern lines befitting the occasion.
+
+"I'll tell you what I think, Lady Splay," said he, pronouncing judgment.
+"Your new guest's a Plater."
+
+The dreadful expected word was spoken. Lady Splay broke into appeals,
+denials, threats. "Oh, he isn't, he isn't!" She turned to her husband.
+"Chichester, exert your authority! He's not a Plater really. He's not
+right down the course. And even if he were, they've got to be polite to
+him."
+
+Sir Chichester, however, was the last man who could be lured into the
+expression of a definite opinion.
+
+"My dear, I never interfere in the arrangements of the house. You have
+your realm. I have mine. I am sure those papers are being kept in the
+servants' hall," and he left the room hurriedly.
+
+"Oh, how mean men are!" cried Millie; and they all began to laugh.
+
+Lady Splay saw a glimpse of hope in their laughter and became much more
+cheerful.
+
+"As you are not racing, dear," she said to Joan, "he will be quite a
+pleasant companion for you."
+
+Sir Chichester returned with the evening papers. Dennis and Miranda and
+Harold Jupp rose to go upstairs and change into flannels; and suddenly,
+a good hour before his time, Harper, the butler, announced:
+
+"Mr. Albany Todd."
+
+Mr. Albany Todd was a stout, consequential personage, and ovoid in
+appearance. Thin legs broadened out to very wide hips, and from the hips
+he curved in again to a bald and shiny head, which in its turn curved
+inwards to a high, narrow crown. Lady Splay casting a look of appeal
+towards her refractory young guests hurried forward to meet him.
+
+"This is my husband." She presented him to the others. "I was going to
+send the motor-car to meet the seven o'clock train."
+
+"Oh, thank you, Lady Splay," Mr. Albany Todd returned in a booming
+voice. "I have been staying not more than twenty miles from here, with a
+dear old friend, a rare and inestimable being, Lord Bilberry, and he was
+kind enough to send me in."
+
+"What, old man Bilberry," cried Harold Jupp. "Isn't he balmy?"
+
+"Balmy, sir?" Mr. Todd asked in surprise. "He takes the air every
+morning, if that is what you mean." He turned again to Lady Splay. "He
+keeps the most admirable table. You must know him, Lady Splay. I will
+see to it."
+
+"Thank you," said Millie Splay humbly.
+
+"Ah, muffins!" said Mr. Albany Todd with glistening eyes. He ate one and
+took another. "These are really as good as the muffins I ate at a
+wonderful week-end party a fortnight ago."
+
+The chatter of the others ceased. The great conversationalist, it
+seemed, was off. Miranda, Dennis, Harold Jupp, Sir Chichester, even Joan
+looked up with expectation.
+
+"Yes," said Lady Splay, encouraging him. She looked around at her
+guests. "Now you shall see," she seemed to say.
+
+"How we laughed! What sprightly talk! The fine flavour of that party is
+quite incommunicable. Just dear old friends, you see, intimate,
+congenial friends."
+
+Mr. Albany Todd stopped. It appeared that he needed a question to be put
+to him. Lady Splay dutifully put it.
+
+"And where did this party take place, Mr. Albany Todd?"
+
+Mr. Albany Todd smiled and dusted the crumbs from his knees.
+
+"At the Earl of Wimborough's little place in the north. Do you know the
+Earl of Wimborough? No? You must, dear lady! I will see to it."
+
+"Thank you," said Millie Splay.
+
+Harold Jupp looked eagerly at the personage, and said, "I hope
+Wimborough won't go jumping this winter."
+
+"Jumping!" cried Mr. Albany Todd turning indignantly. "I should think
+not indeed! Jumping! Why, he is seventy-three!"
+
+He was utterly scandalised that any one should attribute the possibility
+of such wayward behaviour to the venerable Earl. In his agitation he ate
+another muffin. After all, if the nobleman did go jumping in the winter
+why should this young and horsey man presume to criticise him.
+
+"Harold Jupp was drawing a distinction between flat racing and
+steeple-chasing, Mr. Albany Todd," Sir Chichester suavely explained.
+
+"Oh, I see." Mr. Albany Todd was appeased. He turned a condescending
+face upon Joan Whitworth.
+
+"And what are you reading, Miss Whitworth?"
+
+"What ho!" interposed Harold Jupp.
+
+Joan shot at him a withering glance.
+
+"It wouldn't interest you." She smiled on Mr. Albany Todd. "It's
+Browning."
+
+"Well, that's just where you are wrong," returned Jupp. "Browning's the
+only poet I can stick. There's a ripping thing of his I learnt at
+school."
+
+     "'I sprang to the saddle and Joris and he,
+       I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three.'"
+
+"Oh," exclaimed Miranda eagerly, "a horse race!"
+
+"Nothing of the sort, Miranda. I am thoroughly ashamed of you," said
+Harold in reproof. "It's 'How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to
+Aix.'"
+
+Here Joan intervened disdainfully.
+
+"But that's not Browning!"
+
+Lady Splay looked perplexed.
+
+"Are you sure, Joan?"
+
+Joan tossed her head.
+
+"Of course, it's Browning all right," she explained, "but it's not
+Browning if you understand me."
+
+The explanation left that company mystified. Harold Jupp shook his head
+mournfully at Joan, and tapped his forehead.
+
+"Excessive study, Joan, has turned that little head. The moment I saw
+you in sandals I said to myself, 'Joan couldn't take the hill.'"
+
+Joan wrinkled her nose, and made a grimace at him. What rejoinder she
+would have made no one was to know. For Mr. Albany Todd finding himself
+unduly neglected burst into the conversation with a complete
+irrelevance.
+
+"I am so happy. I shot a stag last autumn."
+
+Both Dennis Brown and Harold Jupp turned to the great conversationalist
+with real interest.
+
+"How many stone?" asked Dennis.
+
+"I used a rifle," replied Mr. Albany Todd coldly. He did not like to be
+made fun of; and suddenly a ripple of clear laughter broke deliciously
+from Joan.
+
+Lady Splay looked agitatedly around for succour. Oh, what a mistake she
+had made in bringing Mr. Albany Todd into the midst of these ribald
+young people. And after all--she had to admit it ruefully, he was a bit
+of a Plater. Dennis Brown, however, hurried to the rescue. He came
+across the room to Joan, and sat down at her side.
+
+"I haven't had a word with you, Joan."
+
+"No," she answered.
+
+"And how's the little book going on? Do tell me! I won't laugh, upon my
+word."
+
+Joan herself tried not to. "Oh, pig, pig!" she exclaimed, but she got no
+further in her anathema for Miranda drew up a stool, and sat in
+admiration before her.
+
+"Yes, do tell us," she pleaded. "It's all so wonderful."
+
+Miranda, however, was never to hear. Mr. Albany Todd leaned forward with
+an upraised forefinger, and a smile of keen discernment.
+
+"You are writing a book, Miss Whitworth," he said, as if he had
+discovered the truth by his own intuition, and expected her to deny the
+impeachment. "Ah, but you are! And I see that you _can_ write one."
+
+"Now, how?" asked Harold Jupp.
+
+Mr. Albany Todd waved the question aside. "The moment I entered the
+hall, and saw Miss Whitworth, I said to myself, 'There's a book there!'
+Yes, I said that. I knew it! I know women."
+
+Mr. Albany Todd closed his eyelids, and peeped out through the narrowest
+possible slits in the cunningest fashion. "Some experience you know. I
+am the last man to boast of it. A certain almost feminine
+sensibility--and there you have my secret. I read the character of women
+in their eyebrows. A woman's eyebrows. Oh, how loud they speak! I looked
+at Miss Whitworth's eyebrows, and I exclaimed, 'There is a book
+there--and I will read it!'"
+
+Joan flamed into life. She clasped her hands together.
+
+"Oh, will you?" The question was half wonder, half prayer.
+
+No man could have shown a more charming condescension than did Mr.
+Albany Todd at this moment.
+
+"Indeed, I will. I read one book a year--never more. A few sentences in
+bed in the morning, and a few sentences in bed at night. Yours shall be
+my book for 1923." He took a little notebook and a pencil from his
+pocket. "Now what title will it have?"
+
+"'A Woman's Heart, and Who Broke It,'" replied Joan, blushing from her
+temples to her throat.
+
+Miranda repeated the title in an ecstasy of admiration, and asked the
+world at large: "Isn't it all wonderful?"
+
+"'And Who Broke It,'" quoted Mr. Albany Todd as he wrote the title down.
+He put his pocket-book away.
+
+"The volume I am reading now----"
+
+"Yes?" said Joan eagerly. With what master was she to find herself in
+company? She was not to know.
+
+"----was given to me exquisitely bound by a very dear friend of mine,
+now alas! in precarious health!--the Marquis of Bridlington," said Mr.
+Albany Todd--an audible groan from Harold Jupp; an imploring glance from
+Millie Splay, and to her immense relief the butler ushered in Harry
+Luttrell. He was welcomed by Millie Splay, presented to Sir Chichester,
+and surrounded by his friends. He was a trifle leaner than of old, and
+there were lines now where before there had been none. His eyes, too,
+had the queer, worn and sunken look which was becoming familiar in the
+eyes of the young men on leave. Joan Whitworth watched him as he
+entered, carelessly--for perhaps a second. Then her book dropped from
+her hand upon the carpet--that book which she had so jealously read a
+few minutes back. Now it lay where it had fallen. She leaned forward, as
+though above all she wished to hear the sound of his voice. And when she
+heard it, she drew in a little breath. He was speaking and laughing with
+Sir Chichester, and the theme was nothing more important than Sir
+Chichester's Honorary Membership of the Senga Mess.
+
+"Lucky fellow!" cried Sir Chichester. "No trouble for you to get into
+the papers, eh! Publicity waits on you like a valet."
+
+"But that's just the kind of valet I can't afford in my profession,"
+said Harry.
+
+The conversation was all trivial and customary. But Joan Whitworth
+leaned forward with a light upon her face that had never yet burnt
+there. Colonel Luttrell was presented to Mr. Albany Todd, who was most
+kind and condescending. Joan looked suddenly down at her bilious frock,
+and the horror of her sandals was something she could hardly bear. They
+would turn to her next. Yes, they would turn to her! She looked
+desperately towards the great staircase with its broad, shallow steps
+which ran up round two sides of the hall. Millie Splay was actually
+beginning to turn to her, when Dennis Brown came unconsciously to her
+rescue.
+
+"We looked out for you at Gatwick," he said.
+
+"I only just reached the race course in time for the last race," said
+Harry Luttrell. "Luckily for me."
+
+"Why luckily?" asked Harold Jupp in surprise.
+
+"Because I backed the winner," replied Luttrell.
+
+The indefatigable race-goers gathered about him a little closer; and
+Joan Whitworth rose noiselessly from her chair.
+
+"Which horse won?" asked Harold Jupp.
+
+"Loman!" Harold Jupp stared at Dennis Brown. Incredulity held them as in
+bonds.
+
+"But he couldn't win!" they both cried in a breath.
+
+"He did, you know, and at a long price."
+
+"What on earth made you back him?" asked Dennis Brown.
+
+"Well," Luttrell answered, "he was the only white horse in the race."
+
+Miranda uttered a cry of pleasure. She recognised a brother. "That's an
+awfully good reason," she cried. But science fell with a crash. Dennis
+Brown took his "Form at a Glance" from his pocket, and sadly began to
+tear the pages across. Harold Jupp looked on at that act of sacrilege.
+
+"It doesn't matter," he said, and offered his invariable consolation.
+"Flat racing's no use. We'll go jumping in the winter."
+
+But Harold Jupp was never again to go jumping in the winter. Long before
+steeple chasing began that year, he was lying out on the flat land
+beyond the Somme, with a bullet through his heart.
+
+Dennis Brown returned "Form at a Glance" to his pocket; and Millie Splay
+drew Harry Luttrell away from the group.
+
+"I want to introduce you to Joan Whitworth," she said, and she turned to
+the chair in which Joan had been sitting a few moments ago.
+
+It was empty.
+
+"Why, where in the world has Joan gone to?" she exclaimed.
+
+"She has fled," explained Jupp. "Joan saw his 'Form at a Glance,'
+without any book. She saw that he was incapable of the higher Life, and
+she has gone."
+
+"Nonsense, Harold," cried Millicent Splay in vexation. She turned
+towards the stairs, and she gave a little gasp. A woman was standing on
+the second step from the floor. But it was not Joan, it was Stella
+Croyle.
+
+"I thought you had such a bad headache," said Lady Splay, after a
+perceptible pause.
+
+"It's better now, thank you," said Stella, and coming down the remaining
+steps, she advanced towards Harry.
+
+"How do you do, Colonel Luttrell?" she asked.
+
+For a moment he was taken aback. Then with the blood mounting in his
+face, he took a step forwards and shook hands with her easily.
+
+"So you know one another!" said Lady Splay.
+
+"We have known each other for a long while," returned Stella Croyle.
+
+So that was why Stella Croyle had proposed herself for the week! Lady
+Splay had been a little surprised; so persistently had Stella avoided
+anything in the shape of a party. But this time Stella had definitely
+wished to come, and Millie Splay in her loyalty had not hesitated to
+welcome her. But she had been a little curious. Stella's visit, indeed,
+was the third, though the least, of her preoccupations. The Ball on the
+Thursday of next week at the Willoughby's! Well, Stella was never
+lacking in tact. That would arrange itself. But as Millie Splay looked
+at her, recognised her beauty, her eager advance to Harry Luttrell, and
+Harry Luttrell's embarrassment, she said to herself, for quite other
+reasons:
+
+"If I had guessed why she wanted to come, nothing would have persuaded
+me to have her."
+
+Millie Splay had more reason to repeat the words before the week was
+out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE MAGNOLIA FLOWERS
+
+
+"I hadn't an idea that we should find her here," said Hillyard. "Lady
+Splay told me so very clearly that Mrs. Croyle always timed her visits
+to avoid a party."
+
+Hillyard was a little troubled lest he should be thought by his friend
+to have concurred in a plot to bring about this meeting.
+
+"I suppose that Hardiman told her you were coming to Rackham Park. I
+haven't seen her until this moment, since I returned."
+
+"That's all right, Martin," Luttrell answered.
+
+The two men were alone in the hall. The tennis players had changed, and
+were out upon the court. Millie Splay had dragged Stella Croyle away
+with her to play croquet. Luttrell moved to a writing-table.
+
+"You are going to join the tennis players," he said. Hillyard was
+already dressed for the game, and carried a racket in his hand. "I must
+write a letter, then I will come out and watch you."
+
+"Right," said Martin, and he left his friend to his letter.
+
+The hall was very still. A bee came buzzing in at the open window, made
+a tour of the flower-vases, and flew out again into the sunshine. From
+the lawn the cries of the tennis players, the calls of thrush and
+blackbird and dishwasher, were wafted in on waves of perfume from the
+roses. It was very pleasant and restful to Harry Luttrell after the
+sweat and labour of France. He sighed as he folded his letter and
+addressed it to a friend in the War Office.
+
+A letter-box stood upon a table close to the staircase. He was carrying
+his letter over to it, when a girl came running lightly down the stairs
+and halted suddenly a step or two from the bottom. She stood very still
+where Stella Croyle had stood a few minutes ago, and like Stella, she
+looked over the balustrade at Harry Luttrell. Harry Luttrell had reached
+the letter-box when he caught sight of her, but he quite forgot to drop
+his letter through the slit. He stood transfixed with wonder and
+perplexity; wonder at her beauty; perplexity as to who she was.
+
+Martin Hillyard had spoken to him of Joan Whitworth. By the delicious
+oval of her face, the deep blue of her eyes, the wealth of rippling
+bright hair, the soft bloom of colour on her cheeks, and her slim,
+boyish figure--the girl should rightly be she. But it couldn't be! No,
+it couldn't! This girl's lips were parted in a whimsical friendly smile;
+her eyes danced; she was buoyant with joy singing at her heart.
+Besides--besides----! Luttrell looked at her clothes. She wore a little
+white frock of chiffon and lace, as simple as could be, but even to a
+man's eyes it was that simplicity which is the last word of a good
+dressmaker. A huge rose of blue and silver at her waist was its only
+touch of colour. With it she wore a white, broad-brimmed hat of straw
+with a great blue bow and a few narrow streamers of blue ribbon floating
+jauntily, white stockings and shoes, cross-gartered round her slender
+ankles with shining ribbons. Was it she? Was it not? Was Martin Hillyard
+crazy or the whole world upside down?
+
+"You must be Colonel Luttrell," his gracious vision exclaimed, with
+every appearance of surprise.
+
+"I am," replied Luttrell. He was playing with his letter, half slipping
+it in, and then drawing it back from the box, and quite unaware of what
+he was doing.
+
+"We had better introduce ourselves, I think. I am Joan Whitworth."
+
+She held out her hand to him over the balustrade. He had but to reach up
+and take it. It was a cool hand, and a cordial one.
+
+"Martin Hillyard has talked to me about you," he said.
+
+"I like him," she replied. "He's a dear."
+
+"He told me enough to make me frightened at the prospect of meeting
+you."
+
+Joan leaned over the banister.
+
+"But now that we have met, you aren't really frightened, are you?" she
+asked in so wistful a voice, and with a look so deeply pleading in her
+big blue eyes that no young man could have withstood her.
+
+Harry Luttrell laughed.
+
+"I am not. I am not a bit frightened. In fact I am almost bold enough to
+ask you a question."
+
+"Yes, Colonel Luttrell?"
+
+The invitation was clear enough. But the Colonel was suddenly aware of
+his audacity and faltered.
+
+"Oh, do ask me, Colonel Luttrell!" she pleaded. The old-fashioned would
+have condemned Joan Whitworth as a minx at this moment, but would have
+softened the condemnation with a smile forced from them by her winning
+grace.
+
+"Well, I will," replied Luttrell, and with great solemnity he asked,
+"How is Linda Spavinsky?"
+
+Joan ran down the remaining steps, and dropped into a chair. A peal of
+laughter, silvery and clear, and joyous rang out from her mouth.
+
+"Oh, she's not at all well to-day. I believe she's going. Her health was
+never very stable."
+
+Then her mood changed altogether. The laughter died away, the very look
+of it faded from her face. She stood up and faced Harry Luttrell. In the
+depths of her eyes there appeared a sudden gravity, a certain
+wistfulness, almost a regret.
+
+She spoke simply:
+
+     "Iram indeed is gone with all his rose,
+      And Jamshyd's seven-ringed cup--where, no one knows!
+      But still a ruby kindles in the vine,
+      And many a garden by the water blows."
+
+She had the air of one saying good-bye to many pleasant follies which
+for long had borne her company--and saying good-bye with a sort of doubt
+whether that which was in store for her would bring a greater happiness.
+
+Harry Luttrell had no answer, and no very distinct comprehension of her
+mood. But he was stirred by it. For a little while they looked at one
+another without any words. The air about them in that still hall
+vibrated with the emotions of violins. Joan Whitworth was the first to
+break the dangerous silence.
+
+"I am afraid that up till now, what I have liked, I have liked
+tremendously, but I have not always liked it for very long. You will
+remember that in pity, won't you?" she said lightly.
+
+Harry Luttrell was quick to catch her tone.
+
+"I shall remember it with considerable apprehension if I am fortunate
+enough ever to get into your good books." His little speech ended with a
+gasp. The letter which he was holding carelessly in his fingers had
+almost slipped from them into the locked letter box.
+
+Joan crossed to where he stood.
+
+"That's all right," she said. "You can post your letter there. The box
+is cleared regularly."
+
+"No doubt," Harry Luttrell returned. "But I am no longer sure that I am
+going to post it."
+
+The letter to his friend at the War Office contained an earnest prayer
+that a peremptory telegram should be sent to him at Rackham Park, at an
+early hour on the next morning, commanding his return to London.
+
+He looked up at Joan.
+
+"You despise racing, don't you?"
+
+"I am going to Gatwick to-morrow."
+
+"You are!" he cried eagerly.
+
+"Of course."
+
+He stood poising the letter in the palm of his open hand. The thought of
+Stella Croyle bade him post it. The presence of Joan Whitworth, and he
+was so conscious of her, paralysed his arm. Some vague sense of the
+tumult within him passed out from him to her. An intuition seized upon
+her that that letter was in some way vital to her, in some way a menace
+to her. Any moment he might post it! Once posted he might let it go. She
+drew a little sharp breath. He was standing there, so still, so quiet
+and slow in his decision. It became necessary to her that words should
+be spoken. She spoke the first which rose to her lips.
+
+"You are going to stay for the Willoughbys' ball, aren't you?"
+
+Harry Luttrell smiled.
+
+"But you despise dancing."
+
+"I? I adore it!"
+
+She smiled as she spoke, but she spoke with a queer shyness which took
+him off his feet. He slowly tore the letter across and again across and
+then into little pieces and carried them to the waste-paper basket.
+
+The action brought home to her with a shock that there was a letter
+which she, in her turn, must write, must write and post in that glass
+letter-box, oh, without any hesitation or error, this very evening. She
+thought upon it with repugnance, but it had to be written and done with.
+It was the consequence of her own folly, her own vanity. Harry Luttrell
+returned to her but he did not remark the trouble in her face.
+
+"When I left England," he said slowly, "people were dancing the tango.
+That is--one couple which knew the dance, was dancing it in the
+ball-room, and all the others were practising in the passage. That's
+done with, I suppose?"
+
+"Quite," said Joan.
+
+Harry Luttrell heaved a sigh.
+
+"I should have liked to have practised with you in the passage," he said
+ruefully.
+
+"Still, there are other dances," Joan Whitworth suggested. "The
+one-step?"
+
+"That's going for a walk," said Harry Luttrell.
+
+"In an unusual attitude," Joan added demurely. "Do you know the
+fox-trot?"
+
+"A little."
+
+"The twinkle step?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"I might teach you that," Joan suggested.
+
+"Oh, do! Teach it me now! Then we'll dance it in the passage."
+
+"But every one will be dancing it in the ball-room," Joan objected.
+
+"That's why," said Harry Luttrell, and they both laughed.
+
+Joan looked towards the gramophone in the corner of the room. She was
+tempted, but she must have that letter written first. She would dance
+with Harry Luttrell with an uneasy mind unless that letter were written
+and posted first.
+
+"Will you put a record ready on the gramophone, whilst I write a note,"
+she suggested. "Then I'll teach you. It's quite a short note."
+
+Joan sat in her turn at the writing table. She wrote the first lines
+easily and quickly enough. But she came to explanations, and of
+explanations she had none to offer. She sat and framed a sentence and it
+would not do. Meanwhile the gramophone was open and ready, the record
+fitted on to the disc of green baize and her cavalier in impatient
+attendance. She must be quick. But the quicker she wanted to be, the
+more slowly her thoughts moved amongst awkward sentences which she must
+write. She dashed off in the end the standard phrase for such
+emergencies. "I will write to you to-morrow," addressed and stamped her
+letter and dropped it into the letter box. The letter fell in the glass
+box with the address uppermost. But Joan did not trouble about that, did
+not even notice it; a weight was off her mind.
+
+"I am ready," she said, and a few seconds later the music of "The Long
+Trail" was wafted to the astonished ears of the tennis players in the
+garden. They paused in their game and then Dennis Brown crept to the
+window of the hall and looked cautiously in. He stood transfixed; then
+turned and beckoned furiously. The lawn-tennis players forsook their
+rackets, Lady Splay and Stella Croyle their croquet mallets. Dennis
+Brown led them by a back way up to the head of the broad stairs. Here a
+gallery ran along one side of the hall. Voices rose up to them from the
+floor above the music of the gramophone.
+
+Joan's: "That's the twinkle."
+
+Luttrell's: "It's pretty difficult."
+
+"Try it again," said Joan. "Oh, that's ever so much better."
+
+"I shall never dare to dance it with any one else," said Luttrell.
+
+"I really don't mind very much about that," Joan responded dryly.
+
+Millie Splay could hardly believe her ears. Cautiously she and her party
+advanced on tiptoe to the balustrade and looked down. Yes, there the
+pair of them were, now laughing, now in desperate earnest, practising
+the fox-trot to the music of the gramophone.
+
+"Do I hold you right?" asked Harry.
+
+"Well--I shan't break, you know," Joan answered demurely, and then with
+a little sigh, "That's better."
+
+Under her breath Stella Croyle murmured passionately, "Oh, you minx!"
+
+As the record ran out a storm of applause burst from the gallery.
+
+"Oh, Joan, Joan," cried Harold Jupp, shaking his head reproachfully.
+"There's the poet kicked right across the room."
+
+"Where?" asked Harry Luttrell, looking round for the book.
+
+"Oh, it doesn't matter," said Joan impatiently. "It's only an old volume
+of Browning."
+
+Cries of "Shame" broke indignantly from the race-goers, and Joan
+received them with imperturbable indifference. Harry Luttrell, however,
+went on his knees and discovering the book beneath a distant sofa,
+carefully dusted it.
+
+"Did you ever read 'How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix'?"
+he asked.
+
+The audience in the gallery waited in dead silence for Joan Whitworth's
+answer. It came unhesitatingly clear and in a voice of high enthusiasm.
+
+"Isn't it the most wonderful poem he ever wrote?"
+
+The gallery broke into screams, catcalls, hisses and protests against
+Joan's shameless recantation.
+
+"It's Browning, of course, but it's not Browning at all, if you
+understand me," Dennis Brown exclaimed with every show of indignation;
+and the whole party trooped away again to their tennis and their
+croquet.
+
+Harry Luttrell placed the book upon a table and turned to Joan.
+
+"Now what would you like to do?" he asked.
+
+Joan shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"We might cut into the next tennis set," she said doubtfully.
+
+"You could hardly play in those shoes," said Harry Luttrell.
+
+Joan contemplated a heel of formidable height. Oh, where were the
+sandals of the higher Life?
+
+"No, I suppose not. Of course, there's a--but it wouldn't probably
+interest you."
+
+"Wouldn't it?" cried Harry Luttrell.
+
+"Well, it's a maze. Millie Splay is rather proud of it. The hedges are
+centuries old." She turned innocent eyes on Harry Luttrell. "I don't
+know whether you are interested in old hedges."
+
+It is to be feared that "minx" was the only right word for Joan
+Whitworth on this afternoon. Harry Luttrell expressed an intense
+enthusiasm for great box hedges.
+
+"But they aren't box, they are yew," said Joan, stopping at once.
+
+Harry Luttrell's enthusiasm for yew hedges, however, was even greater
+and more engrossing than his enthusiasm for box ones. A pagoda perched
+upon a bank overlooked the maze and a narrow steep path led down into it
+between the hedges. Joan left it to her soldier to find the way. There
+was a stone pedestal with a small lead figure perched upon the top of it
+in the small clear space in the middle. But Harry Luttrell took a deal
+of time in reaching it. If, however, their progress was slow, with many
+false turnings and sudden stops against solid walls of hedge, it was not
+so with their acquaintanceship; each turn in the path brought them on by
+a new stage. They wandered in the dawn of the world.
+
+"Suppose that I had never come to Rackham Park!" said Harry Luttrell,
+suddenly turning at the end of a blind alley. "I almost didn't come. I
+might have altogether missed knowing you."
+
+The terrible thought smote them both. What risks people ran to be sure.
+They might never have met. They might have never known what it was to
+meet. They might have lived benighted, not knowing what lovely spirit
+had passed them by. They looked at one another with despairing eyes.
+Then a happy thought occurred to Joan.
+
+"But, after all, you did come," she exclaimed.
+
+Harry Luttrell drew a breath. He was relieved of a great oppression.
+
+"Why, yes," he answered in wonderment. "So I did!"
+
+They retraced their steps. As the sun drew towards its late setting, by
+an innocent suggestion from Joan here, a little question there, Harry
+Luttrell was manoeuvred towards the centre of the maze. Suddenly he
+stopped with a finger on the lips. A voice reached to them from the
+innermost recess--a voice which intoned, a voice which was oracular.
+
+"What's that?" he asked in a whisper.
+
+Joan shook her head.
+
+"I haven't an idea."
+
+As yet they could hear no words. Words were flung from wall to wall of
+the centre space and kept imprisoned there. It seemed that the presiding
+genius of the maze was uttering his invocation as the sun went down.
+Joan and Harry Luttrell crept stealthily nearer, Harry now openly guided
+by a light touch upon his arm as the paths twisted. Words--amazing
+words--became distinctly audible; and a familiar voice. They came to the
+last screen of hedge and peered through at a spot where the twigs were
+thin. In the very middle of the clear space stood Sir Chichester Splay,
+one hand leaning upon the pedestal, the other hidden in his bosom, in
+the very attitude of the orator; and to the silent spaces of the maze
+thus he made his address:
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen! When I entered the tent this afternoon and took
+my seat upon the platform, nothing was further from my thoughts than
+that I should hear myself proposing a vote of thanks to our
+indefatigable chairman!"
+
+Sir Chichester was getting ready for the Chichester Flower Show, at
+which, certainly, he was not going to make a speech. Oh dear, no! He
+knew better than that.
+
+"In this marvellous collection of flowers, ladies and gentlemen, we can
+read, if so we will, a singular instance of co-ordination and
+organisation--the Empire's great needs to-day----"
+
+Harry Luttrell and Joan stifled their laughter and stole away out of
+hearing.
+
+"We won't breathe a word of it," said Joan.
+
+"No," said Harry.
+
+They had a little secret now between them--that wonderful link--a little
+secret; and to be sure they made the most of it. They could look across
+the dinner-table at one another with a smile in which no one else could
+have a share. If Sir Chichester spoke, it would be just to kindle that
+swift glance in lovers' eyes from which the heart takes fire.
+Love-making went at a gallop in nineteen hundred and sixteen; it jumped
+the barriers; it danced to a lively and violent tune. Maidens, as Sir
+Charles Hardiman had pronounced, had become more primeval. Insecurity
+had dropped them down upon the bed-rock elemental truths. Men were for
+women, women for men, especially for those men who went out with a
+cheery song in their mouths to save them from the hideous destiny of
+women in ravaged lands. The soldier was here to-day on leave, and God
+alone knew where he would be to-morrow, and whether alive, or perhaps a
+crippled thing like a child!
+
+Joan Whitworth and Harry Luttrell had been touched by the swift magic of
+those days; he, when he had first seen her in the shining armour of her
+youth upon the steps of the stairs; she, when Harry had first entered
+the hall and spoken his few commonplace words of greeting. This was the
+hour for them, the hour at the well with the desert behind them and the
+desert in front, the hour within the measure of which was to be forced
+the essence of many days. When they returned to the hall they found most
+of the small party gathered there before going up to dress for dinner;
+and there was that in the faces of the pair which betrayed them.
+Hillyard looked quickly round the hall, as a qualm of pity for Stella
+Croyle seized him. But he could not see her. "Thank Heaven she has
+already gone up to dress," he said to himself. A marriage between Joan
+Whitworth and the Harry Luttrell of to-day, the man freed now from the
+great obsession of his life and trained now to the traditional paths,
+was a fitting thing, a thing to be welcomed. Hillyard readily
+acknowledged it. But he had more insight into the troubled soul of
+Stella Croyle than any one else in that company.
+
+"No one's bothering about her," he reflected. "She came here to set up
+her last fight to win back Harry. She is now putting on her armour for
+it. And she hasn't a chance--no, not one!"
+
+For Harry's sake he was glad. But he was a creator of plays; and his
+training led him to seek to understand, and to understand with the
+sympathy of his emotions, the points of view of others who might stand
+in a contrast or a relation. He walked up the stairs with a heart full
+of pity when Millicent Splay caught him up.
+
+"What did I tell you?" she said, brimful with delight. "Just look at
+Joan! Is there a girl anywhere who can match her?"
+
+Martin looked down over the balustrade at Joan in the hall below.
+
+"No," he said slowly. "Not one whom I have ever seen."
+
+The little note of melancholy in his voice moved Millie Splay. She was
+all kindness in that moment of her triumph. She turned to Martin
+Hillyard in commiseration. "Oh, don't tell me that you are in love with
+her too! I should be so sorry."
+
+"No, I am not," Martin Hillyard hastened to reassure her, "not one bit."
+
+The commiseration died on the instant in Millicent Splay.
+
+"Well, really I don't see why you shouldn't be," she said coldly. "You
+will go a long way before you find any one to equal her."
+
+Her whole attitude demanded of him an explanation of how he dared not to
+be in love with her darling.
+
+"A very long way," Martin Hillyard agreed humbly. "All the way
+probably."
+
+Lady Splay was mollified, and went on to her room. Down in the hall,
+Harry Luttrell turned to Joan.
+
+"This is going to be a wonderful week for me."
+
+"I am very glad," answered Joan, and they went up the stairs side by
+side.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+JENNY PRASK
+
+
+"I have put out the blue dress with the silver underskirt, madam," said
+Jenny Prask, knowing well that nothing in Stella Croyle's wardrobe set
+off so well her dark and fragile beauty.
+
+"Very well, Jenny."
+
+Stella Croyle answered listlessly. She was discouraged by her experience
+of that afternoon. She had come to Rackham Park, certain of one factor
+upon her side, but very certain of that. She would find no competitor,
+and lo! the invincible competitor, youth, had put on armour against her!
+Stella looked in the mirror. She was thirty, and in the circle within
+which she moved, thirty meant climbing reluctantly on to the shelf.
+
+"Don't you think, Jenny, the blue frock makes me look old?"
+
+Jenny Prask laughed scornfully.
+
+"Old, madam! You! Just fancy!"
+
+Stella Croyle, living much alone, had made a companion of her maid.
+There was nothing of Mrs. Croyle's history which Jenny Prask did not
+know, and very few of her hopes and sorrows were hidden from her.
+
+"My gracious me, madam! There will be nobody to hold a candle to you
+here!" she said, with a sniff, as she helped Stella to undress.
+
+Stella looked in the glass. Certainly there was not a line upon the
+smoothness of her cheeks; her dark hair had lost none of its gloss. She
+took her features one by one, and found no trace of change. Nor, indeed,
+scrutinised in that way did Stella show any change. It was when you saw
+her across a room that you recognised that girlhood had gone, and that
+there was a woman in the full ripeness of her beauty.
+
+"Yes," she said, and her listlessness began to disappear. She turned
+away from the mirror. "Come, Jenny!" she cried, with a hopeful smile.
+She was saying to herself, "I have still a chance."
+
+Jenny rattled on while she assisted her mistress. Stella's face changed
+with her mood, more than most faces. Disappointment and fatigue aged her
+beyond due measure. Jenny Prask was determined that she could go down to
+dinner to-night looking her youngest and best.
+
+"I went for a walk this evening with Mr. Marvin. He's Colonel Luttrell's
+soldier-servant, and quite enthusiastic, he was, madam."
+
+"Was he, Jenny?"
+
+"Quite! The men in his company loved him--a captain he was then. He
+always looked after their dinner. A bit strict, too, but they don't mind
+that."
+
+Jenny was busy with Stella Croyle's hair; and the result satisfied her.
+
+"There won't be anybody else to-night, madam," she said.
+
+"Won't there, Jenny?" said Mrs. Croyle, incredulously. "There'll be Miss
+Whitworth."
+
+Jenny Prask sniffed disdainfully.
+
+"Miss Whitworth! A fair sight I call her, madam, if I may say so. I
+never did see such clothes! And how she keeps a maid for more than a
+week beats me altogether. What I say, madam, is those who button in
+front when they should hook behind are a fair washout."
+
+Stella laughed.
+
+"I'm afraid that you'll find, Jenny, that Miss Whitworth will hook
+behind to-night."
+
+Jenny went on unaffected by the rejoinder. She had her little item of
+news to contribute to the contentment of her mistress.
+
+"Besides, Miss Whitworth is in love with the foreign gentleman. Oh,
+madam, if you turn as sharp as that, I can't but pull your hair."
+
+"Which foreigner?"
+
+"That Mario Escobar." Jenny looked over Stella's head and into the
+reflection of her eyes upon the mirror. "I don't hold with foreigners
+myself, madam. A little ridiculous they always seem to me, with their
+chatter and what not."
+
+"And you believe Miss Whitworth's in love with him."
+
+"Outrageous, Mr. Harper says. Quite the talk of the servants' hall, it
+is. Why, even this afternoon she wrote him a letter. Mr. Harper showed
+it me after he took it out of the letter-box to post it. 'That's her
+'and,' says he--and there it was, Mario Escobar, Esquire, the Golden Sun
+Hotel, Midhurst----"
+
+"Midhurst?" cried Stella with a start. She looked eagerly at the
+reflection of Jenny Prask. "Mr. Escobar is staying in an hotel at
+Midhurst?"
+
+"Yes, madam."
+
+"And Miss Whitworth wrote to him there this afternoon?"
+
+"It's gospel truth, madam. May it be my last dying word, if it isn't!"
+said Jenny Prask.
+
+The blood mounted into Stella Croyle's face. Since that was true--and
+she did not doubt Jenny Prask for a moment--Jenny would have given
+anything she had to save her mistress trouble, and Stella knew it. Since
+it was true, then, that Mario Escobar was staying hidden away in a
+country hotel five miles off, and that Joan was writing to him, why,
+after all, she had no rival.
+
+Her spirits rose with a bound. She had a week, a whole week, in the
+company of Harry Luttrell; and what might she not do in a week if she
+used her wits and used her beauty! Stella Croyle ran down the stairs
+like a girl.
+
+Jenny Prask shut the door, and, opening a wardrobe, took from a high
+shelf Mrs. Croyle's dressing-bag. She opened it, and from one of the
+fittings she lifted out a bottle. The bottle was quite full of a white,
+colourless liquid. Jenny Prask nodded to herself and carefully put the
+bottle back. There was very little she did not know about the
+proceedings of her mistress. Then she went out of the room into the
+gallery, and peeped down to watch the other guests assemble. She saw
+Miranda Brown, Stella, Sir Chichester Splay, Dennis and Harry Luttrell
+come from their different rooms and gather in the hall below. From a
+passage behind her, a girl, butterfly-bright, flashed out and danced
+joyously down the stairs. A new-comer, thought Jenny, with a pang of
+alarm for her mistress! But she heard the new-comer speak, and heard her
+spoken to. It was Joan Whitworth.
+
+"Oh!" Jenny Prask gasped.
+
+Undoubtedly Joan "hooked behind" to-night. What had come over her? Jenny
+asked. Her quick mind realised that Mario Escobar was not answerable for
+the change since Mario Escobar was miles away at Midhurst. Besides,
+according to Mr. Harper, this flirtation with Escobar had been going on
+a year and more.
+
+Jenny Prask looked from Joan to Harry Luttrell. She saw them drawn to
+one another across the hall and move into the dining-room side by side.
+She turned back with a little moan of disappointment into Stella
+Croyle's bedroom; and whilst she tidied it, more than once she stopped
+to wring her hands.
+
+Stella Croyle, however, kept her good spirits through the evening. For
+after dinner Harry Luttrell, of his own will, came straight to her in
+the drawing-room.
+
+"Oh, Wub," she said in a whisper as she drew her skirt aside to make
+room for him upon the couch. "Oh, Wub, what years it is since I have
+seen you."
+
+When the old nickname fell upon Harry's ears, he looked quickly about
+him to see where Joan Whitworth sat. But she was at the other end of the
+room.
+
+"Yes, it is a long time."
+
+"Stockholm!" said Stella, dwelling upon the name. She lowered her voice.
+"Wub, I suffered terribly after you went away. Oh, it wasn't a good
+time. No, it wasn't!"
+
+"Stella, I am very sorry," he said gently. He knew himself this day the
+glories and the pangs of love. He was sunk ocean-deep one moment in the
+sense of his unworthiness, the next he knocked his head against the
+stars on the soaring billow of his pride. He could not but feel for
+Stella, who had passed through the same furnace. He could not but grieve
+that the wondrous book of which he was racing through the first pages
+had been closed for her by him. Might she not open it again, some time,
+with another at her side?
+
+"Wub, tell me what you have been doing all these years," she said.
+
+He began the tale of them in the short, reluctant, colloquial phrases
+which the English use to strip their achievements of any romantic
+semblance until Millicent Splay sailed across the room and claimed him
+for a table of bridge.
+
+"He will be safer there," she said to herself.
+
+"Yes, but she had to take him away," Stella's thoughts responded. She
+was dangerous then in Millie Splay's judgment. The sweet flattery set
+Stella smiling. She went up to her room rejoicing that she had chosen
+that week to visit Rackham Park. She was playing a losing game, but she
+did not know it.
+
+Thus the very spirit of summer seemed to inform the gathering. Saturday
+brought up no clouds to darken the clear sky. Harold Jupp and Dennis
+Brown actually scored four nice wins at Gatwick on horses which, to
+celebrate the week, miraculously ran to form. Miranda under these
+conditions would have inevitably lost, but by another stroke of fortune
+no horse running had any special blemish, name, colour or trick
+calculated to inspire her. Sir Chichester was happy too, for he saw a
+lady reporter write down his name in her notebook. So was Mr. Albany
+Todd. For he met the Earl of Eltringham, with whom he had a passing
+acquaintance; and his lordship, being complimented upon his gardens, of
+which _Country Life_ had published an account, was moved to say in the
+friendliest manner: "You must propose yourself for a week-end, Mr. Todd,
+and see them."
+
+As for Joan and Harry Luttrell, it mattered little where they were, so
+that they were together. They walked in their own magical garden.
+
+It fell to Martin Hillyard to look after Stella Croyle, and the task was
+not difficult. She kept her eyes blindfold to what she did not wish to
+see. She had a chance, she said to herself, recollecting her talk with
+Harry last night, and the news of Joan which Jenny Prask had given to
+her. She had a chance, if she walked delicately.
+
+"Old associations--give them opportunity, and they renew their
+strength," she thought. "Harry is afraid of them--that's all."
+
+On the Monday evening Jenny Prask brought a fresh piece of gossip which
+strengthened her hopes.
+
+"Miss Whitworth had a letter from him this morning," said Jenny. "She
+wouldn't open it at the breakfast-table, Mr. Harper says. Quite upset
+she was, he says. She took it upstairs to her room just as it was."
+
+"It might have been from some one else," answered Stella.
+
+"Oh, no, madam," replied Jenny. "It had the Midhurst postmark, and Mr.
+Harper knows his handwriting besides. Mr. Harper's very observant."
+
+"He seems to be," said Stella.
+
+"Miss Whitworth answered the letter at once, and took it out to the
+village and posted it with her own hands," Jenny continued.
+
+"Are you sure?" cried Mrs. Croyle.
+
+"I saw her go with my own eyes, I did. She went in her own little
+runabout, and was back in a jiffy, with a sort of 'There-I've-done-it!'
+look about her. Oh, there's something going on there, madam--take my
+word for it! She's a deep one, Miss Whitworth is, and no mistake. Will
+you wear the smoke-grey to-night, madam? I am keeping the pink for the
+ball on Thursday."
+
+Stella allowed a moment or two to pass before she answered.
+
+"I shan't go to the Willoughbys' ball, Jenny."
+
+Jenny Prask stared in dismay.
+
+"You won't, madam!"
+
+"No, Jenny. But I want you to be careful not to mention it to any one. I
+shall dress as if I was going, but at the last moment I shall plead a
+headache and stay behind."
+
+"Very well, madam," said Jenny. But it seemed to her that Stella was
+throwing down her arms. Stella, however, had understood, upon hearing of
+the invitation for Lady Splay's party, that she could do nothing else.
+The Willoughbys were strict folk. Mrs. Croyle could hardly hope to go
+without some rumour of her history coming afterwards to the ears of that
+family; and the family would hold her presence as a reproach against
+Millie Splay. Stella had herself proposed her plan to Millie, and she
+noted the relief with which it was received.
+
+"You will be careful not to mention it to a soul, Jenny," Stella
+insisted.
+
+"My goodness me, madam, I never talk," replied Jenny. "I keep my ears
+open and let the others do that."
+
+"I know, Jenny," said Stella, with a smile. "I can't imagine what I
+should do without you."
+
+"And you never will, madam, unless it's your own wish and doin'," said
+Jenny heartily. "I have talked it over with Brown"--Brown was Mrs.
+Croyle's chauffeur--"and he's quite willin' that I should go on with you
+after we are married."
+
+"Then, that's all right," said Stella.
+
+Many a one looking backwards upon some terrible and unexpected tragedy
+will have noticed with what care the great dramaturgist so wove his play
+that every little unheeded event in the days before helped directly to
+create the final catastrophe. It happened on this evening that Stella
+went downstairs earlier than the other guests, and in going into the
+library in search of an evening paper, found Sir Chichester standing by
+the telephone instrument.
+
+"Am I in your way?" she asked.
+
+"Not a bit, Stella," he answered. "In fact, you might help me by looking
+up the number I want." He raised the instrument, and playing with the
+receiver as he stood erect, remarked, "Although I am happy to think that
+I shall not be called upon to deliver any observations on the occasion
+of the Chichester flower show next Thursday, I may as well ask one of
+the newspapers if their local correspondent would give the ceremony some
+little attention."
+
+Stella Croyle took up the telephone book.
+
+"Which newspaper is it to be, Sir Chichester?"
+
+"The _Harpoon_, I think. Yes, I am sure. The _Harpoon_."
+
+Stella Croyle looked up the number and read out:
+
+"Gerrard, one, six, two, double three."
+
+Sir Chichester accordingly called upon the trunk line and gave the
+number.
+
+"You will ring me up? Thank you," he said, and replacing the receiver,
+stood in anxious expectancy.
+
+"I thought that your favourite paper was the _Daily Flashlight_?" Stella
+observed.
+
+"That's quite true, Stella. It was," Sir Chichester explained naively.
+"But I have noticed lately a regrettable tendency to indifference on the
+part of the _Flashlight_. The management is usually too occupied to
+converse with me when I ring it up. On the other hand, I am new to the
+_Harpoon_. Hallo! Hallo! This is Sir Christopher Splay speaking," and he
+delivered his message. "Thank you very much," said Sir Chichester as he
+hung up the receiver. "Really most courteous people. Yes, most
+courteous. What is their number, Stella? I must remember it."
+
+Stella read it out again.
+
+"Gerrard, one, six, two, double three," and thus she, too, committed the
+number to memory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+PLANS FOR THE EVENING
+
+
+The library at Rackham Park was a small, oblong room, with a big window
+upon the garden. It opened into the hall on the one side and into the
+dining-room on the other, and in one corner the telephone was installed.
+At half-past eight on the night of the dance at Harrel, this room was
+empty and in darkness. But a second afterwards the door from the hall
+was opened, and Joan stood in the doorway, the light shimmering upon her
+satin cloak and the silver embroidery of her frock. She cast an anxious
+look behind her and up the staircase. It seemed as if some movement at
+the angle made by the stairs and the gallery caught her eye, for she
+stepped back for a clearer view, and listened with a peculiar
+intentness. She saw nothing, however, and heard nothing. She entered the
+library swiftly and closed the door behind her, so that the room fell
+once more upon darkness save for a thread of gold at the bottom of the
+other door behind which the men of the party were still sitting over
+their wine. She crossed the room towards the window, stepping cautiously
+to avoid the furniture. She was quite invisible. But for a tiny rustle
+of the lace flounces on her dress one would have sworn the room was
+empty. But when she was half-way across a sudden burst of laughter from
+the dining-room brought her to a stop with her hand upon her heart and a
+little sob not altogether stifled in her throat. It meant so much to her
+that the desperate adventure of this night should be carried through! If
+all went well, as it must--oh, as it surely must!--by midnight she would
+be free of her terrors and distress.
+
+The laughter in the dining room died down. Joan stole forward again. She
+drew away the heavy curtains from the long window, and the moonlight,
+clear and bright like silver, poured into the room and clothed her in
+its soft radiance. She drew back the bolts at the top and bottom of the
+glass door and turned the key in the lock. She touched the glass and the
+door swung open upon the garden, easily, noiselessly. She drew it close
+again and leaving it so, raised her hands to the curtains at the side.
+As she began carefully to draw them together, so that the rings should
+not rattle on the pole, the door from the hall was softly and quickly
+opened, and the switch of the electric lights by the side of the door
+pressed down. The room leapt into light.
+
+Joan swung round, her face grown white, her eyes burning with fire. She
+saw only Jenny Prask.
+
+"I hope I don't intrude, miss," said Jenny respectfully. "I came to find
+a book."
+
+The blood flowed back into Joan's cheeks.
+
+"Certainly, Jenny, take what you like," said Joan, and she draped the
+curtains across the window.
+
+"Thank you, miss."
+
+Jenny chose a book from the case upon the table and without a glance at
+Joan or at the window, went out of the room again. Joan watched her go.
+After all, what had Jenny seen? A girl whose home was there, drawing the
+curtains close. That was all. Joan shook her anxiety off. Jenny had left
+the door of the library open and some one came running down the stairs
+whistling as she ran. Miranda Brown dashed into the room struggling with
+a pair of gloves.
+
+"Oh, how I hate gloves in this weather!" she cried. "Well, here I am,
+Joan. You wanted to speak to me before the others had finished powdering
+their noses. What is it?"
+
+"I want you to help me."
+
+"Of course I will," Miranda answered cheerily. "How?"
+
+Joan closed the door and returned to Miranda, who, having drawn the
+gloves over her arm, was now struggling with the buttons.
+
+"I want you, when we reach Harrel----"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"To lend me your motor-car for an hour."
+
+Miranda turned in amazement towards her friend. But one glance at her
+face showed that the prayer was made in desperate earnest. Miranda Brown
+caught her friend by the arm.
+
+"Joan!"
+
+"Yes," Joan Whitworth answered, nodding her head miserably. "That's the
+help I want and I want it dreadfully. Just for an hour--no more."
+
+"Joan, my dear--what's the matter?" asked Miranda gazing into Joan
+Whitworth's troubled face.
+
+"I don't want you to ask me," the girl answered. "I want you to help me
+straight off without any questions. Otherwise----" and Joan's voice
+shook and broke, "otherwise--oh, I don't know what will happen to me!"
+
+Miranda put her arm round Joan Whitworth's waist. "Joan! You are in real
+trouble!"
+
+"For the first time!" said Joan.
+
+"Can't I----?"
+
+"No," Joan interrupted. "There's only the one way, Miranda."
+
+She sat down upon a couch at Miranda's side and feverishly caught her
+hand. "Do help me! You can't tell what it means to me!... And I should
+hate telling you! Oh, I have been such a fool!"
+
+Joan's face was quivering, and so deep a compunction was audible in her
+voice, so earnest a prayer was to be read in her troubled eyes, that
+Miranda's doubt and anxiety were doubled.
+
+"I don't know what I shall do, if you don't help me," Joan said
+miserably as she let go of Miranda. Her hands fluttered helplessly in
+the air. "No, I don't know!"
+
+Miranda was thoroughly disturbed. The contrast between the Joan she had
+known until this week, good-humoured, a little aloof, contented with
+herself and her ambitions, placid, self-contained, and this lovely girl,
+troubled to the heart's core, with her beseeching eyes and trembling
+lips touched her poignantly, meltingly.
+
+"Oh, Joan, I don't like it!" she whispered. "What mad thing have you
+done?"
+
+"Nothing that can't be put right! Nothing! Nothing!" Joan caught eagerly
+at the argument. "Oh, I was a fool! But if you'll only help me
+to-night, I am sure everything will be arranged."
+
+The words were bold enough, but the girl's voice trailed off into a low,
+unsteady whisper, as terror at the rash plan which she had made and must
+now carry through caught at her heart. "Oh, Miranda, do be kind!"
+
+"When do you want the car?" asked Miranda.
+
+"Immediately after we get to Harrel."
+
+"Joan!"
+
+Miranda herself was growing frightened. She stood torn with indecision.
+Joan's distress pleaded on the one side, dread of some tragic mystery
+upon the other. For the first time in her life Joan was in some
+desperate crisis of destiny. Her feet and hands twitched as though she
+were bound fast in the coils of a net she could not break. What wisdom
+of experience could she bring to help her to escape? On what wild and
+hopeless venture might she not be set?
+
+"Yes, yes," Joan urged eagerly. "I have thought it all out. I want you
+to tell your chauffeur privately to return along the avenue after he has
+set you down. There's a road on the right a few yards down. If he will
+turn into that and wait behind the big clump of rhododendrons I will
+join him immediately."
+
+"But it will be noticed that you have gone. People will ask for you,"
+Miranda objected.
+
+"No, I shall be back again within the hour. There will be a crowd of
+people. And lots won't imagine that I should ever come to the dance at
+all." Even at that moment a little smile played about the lips. "And if
+the ball had been a week ago, I shouldn't have gone, should I? I should
+still be wearing sandals," she explained, as she looked down at the
+buckles of her trim satin slippers, "and haughtily wishing you all good
+night in the hall here. No, it will be easy enough. I shall just shake
+hands with Mrs. Willoughby, pass on with the rest of our party into the
+ball-room and then slip out by the corridor at the side of the park."
+
+"It's dangerous, Joan!" said Miranda.
+
+"Oh, I know, but----" Joan rose suddenly with her eyes upon the door.
+"The others are coming. Miranda, will you help me? I would have driven
+over to Harrel in my own little car. But it's open and I should have got
+blown about until everybody would have begun asking why in the world I
+used it. Oh, Miranda, quick!"
+
+Her ears had heard the voices already in the hall. Miranda heard them
+too. In a moment the door would be thrown open. She must make up her
+mind now.
+
+"Very well. The first turning to the right down the avenue and behind
+the rhododendrons. I'll tell the chauffeur."
+
+"And no one else! Not even Dennis!"
+
+"Joan!"
+
+"No, not even Dennis! Promise me!"
+
+Millie Splay was heard to be inquiring for them both.
+
+"Very well. I promise!"
+
+"Oh, thank you! Thank you."
+
+The door from the hall was opened upon that cry of gratitude and Millie
+Splay looked in.
+
+"Oh, there you are." A movement of chairs became audible in the
+dining-room. "And those men are still sitting over their miserable
+cigars."
+
+"They are coming," said Joan, and the next moment the dining-room door
+was thrown open and Sir Chichester with his guests trooped out from it.
+
+"Now then, you girls, we ought to be off," he cried as if he had been
+waiting with his coat on for half an hour. "This is none of your London
+dances. We are in the country. You won't any of you get any partners if
+you don't hurry."
+
+"Well, I like that!" returned Millie Splay. "Here we all are, absolutely
+waiting for you!"
+
+Mr. Albany Todd approached Joan.
+
+"You will keep a dance for me?"
+
+"Of course. The third before supper," answered Joan.
+
+Already Sir Chichester was putting on his coat in the hall.
+
+"Come on! Come on!" he cried impatiently, and then in quite another
+tone, "Oh!"
+
+The evening papers had arrived late that evening. They now lay neatly
+folded on the hall table. Sir Chichester pounced upon them. The
+throbbing motor-cars at the door, the gay figures of his guests were
+all forgotten. He plumped down upon a couch.
+
+"There!" cried Millie Splay in despair. "Now we can all sit down for
+half an hour."
+
+"Nonsense, my dear, nonsense! I just want to see whether there is any
+report of my little speech at the Flower Show yesterday." He turned over
+the leaves. "Not a word apparently, here! And yet it was an occasion of
+some importance. I can't understand these fellows."
+
+He tossed the paper aside and took up another. "Just a second, dear!"
+
+Millie Splay looked around at her guests with much the same expression
+of helpless wonderment which was so often to be seen on the face of
+Dennis Brown, when Miranda went racing.
+
+"It's the limit!" she declared.
+
+There were two, however, of the party, who were not at all distressed by
+Sir Chichester's procrastination. When the others streamed into the
+hall, Joan lingered behind, sedulously buttoning her gloves which were
+buttoned before; and Harry Luttrell returned to assist her. The door was
+three-quarters closed. From the hall no one could see them.
+
+"You are going to dance with me in the passage," he said.
+
+Joan smiled at him and nodded. Now that Miranda had given way, Joan's
+spirits had revived. The colour was bright in her cheeks, her eyes were
+tender.
+
+"Yes, but not at once."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I'll finish my duty dances first," said Joan in a low voice. She did
+not take her eyes from his face. She let him read, she meant him to
+read, in her eyes what lay so close at her heart. Harry Luttrell read
+without an error, the print was so large, the type so clear. He took a
+step nearer to her.
+
+"Joan!" he whispered; and at this, his first use of her Christian name,
+her face flowered like a rose.
+
+"Thank you!" she said softly. "Oh, thank you!"
+
+Harry Luttrell looked over his shoulder. They had the room to
+themselves, so long as they did not raise their voices.
+
+"Joan," he began with a little falter in his voice. Could he have
+pleaded better in a thousand fine speeches, he who had seen his men
+wither about him on the Somme, than by that little timorous quaver in
+his voice? "Joan, I have something to ask of you to-night. I meant to
+ask it during a dance, when you couldn't run away. But I am going to ask
+it now."
+
+Joan drew back sharply.
+
+"No! Please wait!" and as she saw his face cloud, she hurried on. "Oh,
+don't be hurt! You misunderstand. How you misunderstand! Take me in to
+supper to-night, will you? And then you shall talk to me, and I'll
+listen." Her voice rose like clear sweet music in a lilt of joy. "I'll
+listen with all my heart, my hands openly in yours if you will, so that
+all may see and know my pride!"
+
+"Joan!" he whispered.
+
+"But not now! Not till then!"
+
+Harry Luttrell did not consider what scruple in the girl's conscience
+held him off. The delay did not trouble him at all. She stood before
+him, radiant in her beauty, her happiness like an aura about her.
+
+"Joan," he whispered again, and--how it happened who shall say?--in a
+second she was within his arms, her heart throbbing against his; her
+hands stole about his shoulders; their lips were pressed together.
+
+"Harry! Oh, Harry!" she murmured. Then very gently she pushed him from
+her. She shook her head with a wistful little smile.
+
+"I didn't mean you to do that," she said in self-reproach, "until after
+supper."
+
+In the hall Sir Chichester threw down the last of the newspapers in a
+rage. "Not a word! Not one single miserable little word! I don't ask
+much, goodness knows, but----" and his voice went up in an angry
+incredulity. "Not one word! And I thought the _Harpoon_ was such a good
+paper too!"
+
+Sir Chichester sprang to his feet. He glanced at his guests. He turned
+upon his wife.
+
+"God bless my soul, Millie, what _are_ we waiting for? I'll tell you
+girls what it is. Unless we get off at once, we had better not go at
+all. Where's Joan? Where's Luttrell?"
+
+"Here we are!" cried Luttrell from the library, and in a lower tone to
+Joan, he observed, "What a bore people are to be sure, aren't they?"
+
+The guilty couple emerged into the hall. Sir Chichester surveyed them
+with severity.
+
+"I don't know whether you have heard about it, Luttrell, but there's a
+ball to-night at Harrel, and we all rather thought of going to it," he
+remarked with crushing sarcasm.
+
+"I am quite ready, sir," replied Harry humbly. Sir Chichester was
+mollified.
+
+"Very well then. We'll go."
+
+"But Mrs. Croyle isn't down yet," said Miranda.
+
+"Stella isn't going, dear," answered Millie Splay; and a cry of dismay
+burst from Joan.
+
+"Not going!"
+
+The consternation in the girl's voice was so pronounced that every eye
+in that hall turned to her in astonishment. There was consternation,
+too, most legible in her widely-opened eyes. Her cheeks had lost their
+colour. She stood for a fleeting moment before them all, an image of
+terror. Then she caught at an excuse.
+
+"Stella's ill then--since she's not going."
+
+"It's not as bad as all that, dear," Lady Splay hastened to reassure
+her. "She complained of a racking headache at dinner. She has gone to
+bed."
+
+The blood flowed back into Joan's cheeks.
+
+"Oh, I see!" she observed slowly. "That is why her maid came to the
+library for a book!"
+
+But she was very silent throughout the quarter of an hour, which it took
+them to drive to Harrel. There was somebody left behind at Rackham Park
+that night. Joan had overlooked one possibility in contriving her plan,
+and that possibility, now developed into fact, threatened to ruin all.
+One guest remained behind in the house, and that one Joan's rival.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+JENNY PRASK IS INTERESTED
+
+
+Rackham was a red Georgian mansion with great windows in flat rows, and
+lofty rooms made beautiful by the delicate tracery of the ceilings. It
+has neither wings nor embellishments but stood squarely in its gardens,
+looking southwards to the Downs. The dining-room was upon the east side,
+between that room and the hall was the library, of which the window
+faced the north. Mrs. Croyle's bedroom, however, was in the south-west
+corner and from its windows one could see the smoke of the train as it
+climbed from Midhurst to the Cocking tunnel, and the gap where the road
+runs through to Singleton.
+
+"You won't be going to bed yet, madam, I suppose," said Jenny.
+
+She had not troubled to bring upstairs into the room the book which she
+had picked out at random from the stand that was lying on the hall
+table.
+
+"No, Jenny. I will ring for you when I want you," said Stella.
+
+Stella was dispirited. Her week was nearly at an end. To-morrow would be
+the last day and she had gained nothing, it seemed, by all her care.
+Harry was kind--oh, ever so much kinder than in the old days when they
+had been together--more considerate, more thoughtful. But the skies of
+passion are stormily red, and so effulgent that one walks in gold.
+Consideration, thoughtfulness--what were these pale things worth against
+one spurt of fire? Besides, there was the ball to-night. He would dance
+with _her_, would seek the dim open spaces of the lawns, the dark
+shadows of the great elms, with her--with Joan.
+
+"I'll ring for you, Jenny," she repeated, as her maid stood doubtfully
+by the door. "I am quite right."
+
+"Very well, madam."
+
+Stella Croyle's eyes were drawn when she was left alone to that cupboard
+in which her dressing-bag was stowed away. But she arrested them and
+covered them with her hands.
+
+"This is my last chance," she said to herself aloud in the anguish of
+her spirit. If it failed, there was nothing in front of her but a
+loneliness which each year must augment. Youth and high spirits or the
+assumption of high spirits--these she must have if she were to keep her
+place in her poor little circle--and both were slipping from her fast.
+"This is my last chance." She stood in front of her mirror in her
+dancing frock, her dark hair exquisitely dressed, her face hauntingly
+wistful. After all, she was beautiful. Why shouldn't she win? Jenny
+thought that she could.
+
+At that moment Jenny was slipping noiselessly along a corridor to the
+northern side of the house. The lights were all off; a pencil of
+moonlight here and there from an interstice in the curtains alone
+touched her as she passed. At one window she stopped, and softly lifted
+the blind. She looked out and was satisfied.
+
+"Thought so!" she murmured, with a little vindictive smile. Just beneath
+her was that long window of the library which Joan had been at such
+pains to arrange.
+
+Jenny stationed herself by the window. The night was very still. She
+could hear the voices of the servants in the dining-room round the angle
+of the house, and see the light from its windows lying in frames upon
+the grass. Then the light went out, and silence fell.
+
+From time to time the hum of a motor-car swelled and diminished to its
+last faint vibrations on the distant road; and as each car passed Jenny
+stiffened at her post. She looked at her watch, turning the dial to the
+moonlight. It was ten minutes past nine now. The cars had left Rackham
+Park well before nine. She would not have long to wait now! As she
+slipped her watch again into her waistband she drew back with an
+instinctive movement, although the window at which she stood had been
+this last half-hour in shadow. For under a great copper beech on the
+grass in front of her a man was standing. The sight of him was a shock
+to her.
+
+She wondered how he had come, how long he had been there--and why? Some
+explanation flashed upon her.
+
+"My goodness me!" she whispered. "You could knock me down with a
+hairpin. So you could!"
+
+Whilst she watched that solitary figure beneath the tree, another motor
+whizzed along the road. The noise of its engine grew louder--surely
+louder than any which, standing at this window, she had heard before.
+Had it turned into the park? off the main road. Was it coming to the
+house? Before Jenny could answer these questions in her mind, the noise
+ceased altogether. Jenny held her breath; and round the angle of the
+house a girl came running swiftly, her skirt sparkling like silver in
+the moonlight, and a white cloak drawn about her shoulders. She drew
+open the window of the library and passed in. A few seconds passed.
+Jenny imagined her stealthily opening the door into the hall, and
+listening to make sure that the servants were in their own quarters and
+this part of the house deserted. Then the girl reappeared at the window
+and made a sign. From beneath the tree the man ran across the grass. His
+face was turned towards Jenny, and the moonlight revealed it. The man
+was Mario Escobar.
+
+Jenny drew a little sharp breath. She heard the window ever so gently
+latched. Suddenly the light blazed out from the room and then, strip by
+strip, vanished, as if the curtains had been cautiously drawn. The
+garden, the house resumed its aspect of quiet; all was as it had been
+when Jenny Prask first lifted the window of the corridor. Jenny Prask
+crept cautiously away.
+
+"Fancy that!" she said to herself, with a little chuckle of triumph.
+
+In the room below Mario Escobar and Joan Whitworth were talking.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+IN A LIBRARY
+
+
+"You insisted that I should see you. You have something to say to me,"
+said Joan. She was breathing more quickly than usual and the blood
+fluttered in her cheeks, but she faced Mario Escobar with level eyes,
+and spoke without a tremor in her voice. So far everything had happened
+just as she had planned. There were these few difficult minutes now to
+be grappled with, and afterwards the ordeal would be ended, that foolish
+chapter in her life altogether closed. "Will you please be quick?" she
+pleaded.
+
+But Mario Escobar was in no hurry to answer. He had never imagined that
+Joan Whitworth could look so beautiful. He had never dreamed that she
+would take so much trouble. Mario Escobar understood women's clothes,
+and his eyes ran with a sensation of pleasure over her delicate frock
+with its shining bands, its embroidery of silver and flounces of fine
+lace, down to her slim brocaded shoes. He had not, indeed, thought very
+much of her in the days when Linda Spavinsky was queen. She had been a
+sort of challenge to him, because of her aloofness, her indifference.
+Women were his profession, and here was a queer outlandish one whom it
+would be amusing to parade as his. So he had set to work; he had a sense
+of art, he could talk with ingenuity on artistic matters, and he had
+flattered Joan by doing so; but always with a certain definite laughter
+and contempt for her. Now her beauty rather swept him off his feet. He
+looked at her in amazement. Why this change? And--the second question
+for ever in his mind--how could he profit by it?
+
+"I don't understand," he said slowly, feeling his way. "We were good
+friends--very good friends." Joan neither denied nor agreed. "We had
+certain things in common, a love of art, of the finer things of life. I
+made enemies, of course, in consequence. Your racing friends----" He
+paused. "Milly Splay, who would have matched you with some dull,
+tiresome squire accustomed to sleep over his port after dinner, the sort
+of man you are drawing so brilliantly in your wonderful book." A
+movement of impatience on Joan's part perplexed him. Authors! You can
+generally lay your praise on with a trowel. What in the world was the
+matter with Joan? He hurried on. "I understood that I was making
+enemies. I understood, too, why I was no longer invited to Rackham Park.
+I was a foreigner. I would as soon visit a picture gallery as shoot a
+pheasant. I would as soon appreciate your old gates and houses in the
+country as gallop after a poor little fox on the downs. Oh, yes, I
+wasn't popular. That I understand. But you!" and his voice softened to a
+gentle reproach. "You were different! And you had the courage of your
+difference! Since I was not invited to Rackham Park, I was to come down
+to the inn at Midhurst. I was to drive over--publicly, most
+publicly--and ask for you. We would show them that there were finer
+things in the world than horse-racing and lawn tennis. Oh, yes. We
+arranged it all at that wonderful exhibition of the New School in Green
+Street."
+
+Joan writhed a little at her recollection of the pictures of the
+rotundists and of the fatuous aphorisms to which she had given
+utterance.
+
+"I come to Midhurst accordingly, and what happens? You scribble me out a
+curt little letter. I am not to come to Rackham Park. I am not to try to
+see you. And you are writing to-morrow. But to-morrow comes, and you
+don't write--no, not one line!"
+
+"It was so difficult," Joan answered. She spoke diffidently. Some of her
+courage had gone from her; she was confronted with so direct, so
+unanswerable an accusation. "I thought that you would understand that I
+did not wish to see you again. I thought that you would accept my wish."
+
+Mario Escobar laughed unpleasantly.
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"Because most men have that chivalry," said Joan.
+
+Mario Escobar only smiled this time. He smiled with narrowed eves and a
+gleam of white teeth behind his black moustache. He was amused, like a
+man who receives ridiculous answers from a child.
+
+"It is easy to see that you have read the poets--Joan," he replied
+deliberately.
+
+Joan's face flamed. Never had she been addressed with so much insolence.
+Chaff she was accustomed to, but it was always chaff mitigated by a
+tenderness of real affection. Insolence and disdain were quite new to
+her, and they hurt intolerably. Joan, however, was learning her lessons
+fairly quickly. She had to get this meeting over as swiftly and quietly
+as she could, and high words would not help.
+
+"It's true," she admitted meekly. "I know very little."
+
+Joan looked very lovely as she stood nervously drumming with her gloved
+fingers on a little table which stood between them, all her assurance
+gone.
+
+Mario Escobar lived always on the whirling edge of passion. The least
+extra leap of the water caught him and drew him in. He gazed at Joan,
+and the computing look which cast up her charms made her suddenly hot
+from head to foot. The good-looking, pretentious fool whom it had been
+amusing to exhibit amidst the black frowns of her circle had suddenly
+become exquisitely desirable for herself as a prize, with her beauty,
+her dainty care to tend it, and her delicious clothes. She would now be
+a real credit! Escobar took a step towards her.
+
+"After all," he said, "we were such good friends. We had little private
+interests which we did not share with other people. Surely it was
+natural that I should wish to see you again."
+
+Mario was speaking smoothly enough now. His voice, his eyes actually
+caressed her. She was at pains to repress a shiver of physical
+repulsion. But she remembered his letter very clearly. It had expressed
+no mere wish to see her. It had claimed a right with a vague threat of
+making trouble if the right were not conceded. She had recognised the
+right, not out of the fear of the threat so much--although that weighed
+with her, as out of a longing to have done with him for good and all.
+Instinct had told her that this was the last type of man to find favour
+in Harry Luttrell's eyes, that she herself would be lowered from her
+high pedestal in his heart, if he knew of the false friendship.
+
+"Well, I agreed to see you," she replied. "But I have to go back to the
+ball. Will you please to be quick?"
+
+"The time and the place were of your own choice."
+
+"My choice!" Joan answered. "I had no choice. A girl amongst visitors in
+a country house--when is she free? When is she alone? She can keep to
+her room--yes! But that's all her liberty. Let her go out, there will be
+some one at her side."
+
+"If she is like you--no doubt," said Escobar, and again he smiled at her
+covetously. Joan shook the compliment off her with a hitch of her
+shoulders.
+
+"We could have met in a hundred places," Mario continued.
+
+"I could have come to call on you as we arranged."
+
+"No!" cried Joan with more vigour than wisdom in her voice. She had a
+picture of him, of the embarrassment of the Splays and her friends, of
+the disapproval of Harry Luttrell.
+
+Escobar was quick when he dealt with women, quick and sensitive. The
+passionate denial did not escape him. He began to divine the true cause
+of this swift upheaval and revolution in her.
+
+"You could have sent me a card for the Willoughbys' dance. It would have
+been easy enough for us to meet there."
+
+Again she replied, "No!" A note of obstinacy was audible.
+
+"Why?"
+
+Joan did not answer at all.
+
+"I'll tell you," Escobar flashed out at her angrily. "You wouldn't be
+seen with me any more! Suddenly, you would not be seen with me--no, not
+for the world! That's the truth, isn't it? That's why you come secretly
+back and bid me meet you in an empty house."
+
+"Hush!" pleaded Joan.
+
+Mario Escobar's voice had risen as his own words flogged him to a keener
+indignation.
+
+"Why should I care if all the world hears me?" he replied roughly. "Why
+should I consider you, who turn me down the moment it suits you,
+without a reason? It's fairly galling to me, I assure you."
+
+Joan nodded her head. Mario Escobar had some right upon his side, she
+was ready to acknowledge.
+
+"I beg your pardon," she said simply. "Won't you please be content with
+that and leave things as they are?"
+
+"When you are a little older you will know that you can never leave
+things as they are," answered Mario. "I was looking forward to a week of
+happiness. I have had a week of torment. For lesser insults than yours,
+men kill in my country."
+
+There were other differences, too, between her country and his. Joan did
+not cry out, or burst into tears or flinch in any way. She was alone in
+this room; there was no one, as far as she knew, within the reach of her
+voice. She had chosen this meeting-place, not altogether because the
+house would be empty, but because in this first serious difficulty of
+her life she would be amongst familiar things and draw from them
+confidence and strength, and a sense of security. With Mario Escobar in
+front of her, his face ablaze with passion, the security vanished
+altogether. Yet all the more she was raised to the top of her courage.
+
+"Then I shall tell you the truth," she answered gently. "You speak to me
+of our friendship. It was never anything serious to me. It was a
+taunt--a foolish taunt to other people."
+
+Mario Escobar flinched, as if she had struck him in the face.
+
+"Yes, I hurt you," she went on in the same gentle voice, which was not
+the least element in Escobar's humiliation. "I am very sorry. I tried
+not to hurt you. I am very ignorant, as you have told me, but I wouldn't
+believe it till a week ago. I made it my pride to be different from
+anybody else. I believed that I was different. I was a fool. I wouldn't
+listen. Even during the war. I have shut myself up away from it, trying
+not to share in the effort, not to feel the pride and the sorrow,
+pretending that it was just a horrible, sordid business altogether
+beneath lofty minds! That's one of the reasons why I chose you for my
+friend! I was flinging my glove in the face of the little world I knew.
+I had _got_ to be different. It's all very shameful to tell, and I am
+sorry. Oh, how I am sorry!"
+
+Her sorrow was most evident. She had sunk down upon a couch, her fair
+head drooping and the tears now running down her cheeks in the
+bitterness of her shame. But Mario Escobar was untouched by any pity. If
+any thought occurred to him outside his burning humiliation, it was
+prompted by the economy of the Spaniard.
+
+"She'll spoil that frock if she goes on crying," he said to himself,
+"and it was very expensive."
+
+"I have nothing but remorse to offer in atonement," she went on. "But
+that remorse is very sincere----"
+
+Mario Escobar swept her plea aside with a furious gesture.
+
+"So that's it!" he cried. "You were just making a fool of me!" That she,
+this pretty pink and white girl, should have been making a show of him,
+parading him before her friends, exhibiting him, using him as a
+challenge--just as in fact he had been using her, and with more success!
+Only to think of it hurt him like a knife. "Your remorse!" he cried
+scornfully. "There's some one else, of course!"
+
+Joan sat up straight and stiff. Escobar might have laid a lash across
+her delicate shoulders.
+
+"Yes," she said defiantly.
+
+"Some one who was not here a week ago?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+To Escobar's humiliation was now added a sudden fire of jealousy. For
+the first time to-night, as woman, as flesh and blood, she was adorable,
+and she owed this transformation, not to him, no, not in the tiniest
+fraction of a degree to him, but to some one else, some dull boor
+without niceties or deftness, who had stormed into her life within the
+week. Who was it? He had got to know. But Joan was hardly thinking of
+Escobar. Her eyes were turned from him.
+
+"He has set me free from many vanities and follies. If I am grieved and
+ashamed now, I owe it thankfully to him. If my remorse is bitter, it is
+because through him I have a gleam of light which helps me to
+understand."
+
+"And you have told him what you have told me?"
+
+"No, but I shall to-night when all this is over, when I go back to
+Harrel."
+
+Mario Escobar moved closer to her.
+
+"Are you so sure that you are going back to Harrel to-night?" he asked
+in a low voice.
+
+"Yes," she replied, and only after she had spoken did the menace of his
+voice force itself into her mind as something which she must take into
+account. She looked up at him startled, and as she looked her wonderment
+turned into stark fear. The cry that in his country men killed had left
+her unmoved. But she was afraid now, desperately afraid, all the more
+afraid because she thought of the man searching for her through the
+reception-rooms at Harrel.
+
+"We are alone here in an empty quarter of the house. So you arranged
+it," he continued. "Good! Women do not amuse themselves at my expense
+without being paid for it."
+
+Joan started up in a panic, but Escobar seized her shoulders and forced
+her down again.
+
+"Sit still," he cried savagely. Then his face changed. For the first
+time for many minutes his lips parted in a smile of pleasure.
+
+"You are very lovely, Joan. I love to see you like
+that--afraid--trembling. It is the beginning of recompense."
+
+Joan had tumbled into a deeper pit than any she had dreamed of. In
+desperation she cast about for means to climb out of it. The secrecy of
+this meeting--that must go. But, even so, was there escape? The bell?
+Before she could be half-way across the room, he would be holding her in
+his arms. A cry? Before it was half uttered, he would have stifled her
+mouth. No, she must sit very still and provoke no movement by him.
+
+Mario Escobar was a creature of unhealthy refinements. He wanted to
+know, first, who was the man who had touched this indifferent maiden
+into warm life. The knowledge would be an extra spice to his pleasure.
+
+"Who are staying in the house?" he asked. It would be amusing to make
+his selection, and discover if he were right.
+
+"Dennis Brown, Harold Jupp"--Joan began, puzzled by his question, yet
+welcoming it as so much delay.
+
+"I don't want to hear about them," Mario Escobar replied. "Tell me of
+the new-comers!"
+
+"Martin Hillyard----" Joan began again, and was aware that Mario Escobar
+made a quick startled movement and gasped. Martin Hillyard's name was a
+pail of cold water for Escobar.
+
+"Does Hillyard know that I am at Midhurst?" he asked sharply.
+
+"No," Joan answered.
+
+There was something which Hillyard had told her about Mario Escobar,
+something which she had rejected and dismissed altogether from her
+thoughts. Then she remembered. Escobar was an enemy working in England
+against England. She had given the statement no weight whatever. It was
+the sort of thing people said of unconventional people they disliked in
+order to send them to Coventry. But Escobar's start and Escobar's
+question put a different value upon it. Joan caught at it. Of what use
+could it be to her? Of some use, surely, if only she had the wit to
+divine it. But she was in such a disorder of fear and doubt that every
+idea went whirling about and about in her mind. She raised her hand to
+her forehead, keeping her eyes upon Escobar. She felt as helpless as a
+child. Almost she regretted the love which had so violently mastered
+her. It had made clear to her her ignorance and so stripped her of all
+assurance and left her defenceless.
+
+But even in the tumult of her thoughts, she began to recognise a change.
+The air was less charged with terror. There was less of passion and
+anger in Mario Escobar, and more of speculation. He watched her in a
+gloomy silence, and each moment she took fresh heart. With a swift
+movement he seated himself on the couch beside her.
+
+Joan sprang up with a little cry, and her heart thumping in her breast.
+
+"Hush!" said Escobar. Yes, it was now he who pleaded for secrecy and a
+quiet voice.
+
+There was a stronger passion in Mario than the love of women, and that
+was the love of money. Women were to him mainly the means to money. They
+were easier to get, too, if you were not over particular. Money was a
+rare, shy thing, except to an amazing few who accumulated it by some
+obscure, magnetic attraction; and opportunities of acquisition were not
+to be missed.
+
+"Hush!" he said. "You treated me badly, Joan. It was right that I should
+teach you a lesson--frighten you a little, eh?"
+
+He smiled at her with eyes half closed and eyelids cunningly blinking.
+Now that her fears were weakening Joan found his impertinence almost
+insufferable. But she held her tongue and waited.
+
+"But you owe me a return, don't you?"
+
+Joan did not move.
+
+"A little return--which will cost you nothing at all. You know that I
+represent a line of ships. You can help me. We have rivals, with active
+agents. You shall find out for me exactly what Martin Hillyard is doing
+in the Mediterranean, and why he visits in a yacht the ports of Spain.
+You will find this out for me, so that I may know whether he is acting
+for my rivals. Yes."
+
+"He is not," answered Joan.
+
+"You will find this out for me, so that I may know," Escobar repeated
+smoothly. "Exactly what he is doing in the Mediterranean, what special
+plans, and why he visits in a yacht the ports of Spain. You promise me
+that knowledge, and you can go straight back to your dancing."
+
+"I have no knowledge," said Joan quietly.
+
+"But you can obtain it," Escobar insisted. "He is a friend of yours.
+Exactly what he is doing--is it not so?"
+
+So Martin's accusation was true. Joan nodded her head, and Escobar, with
+a smile of relief, took the gesture as a consent to his proposal.
+
+"Good!" he said, rising from the couch. "Then all is forgiven! You will
+make some notes----"
+
+"I will do nothing of the kind," said Joan quietly, but she was white to
+the edge of her lips, and she trembled from head to foot. But there was
+no room any more for fear in her. She was in a heat of anger which she
+had never known. "Oh, that you should dare!" and her words choked her.
+
+Mario Escobar stared at her.
+
+"You refuse?"
+
+"With all my soul."
+
+Escobar took a step towards her, but she did not move.
+
+"You are alone with me, when you should be dancing at the ball. You made
+the appointment, chose the hour, the place ... even if you scream, there
+will be a scandal, a disgrace."
+
+"I don't care."
+
+"And the man you are in love with, eh? That makes a difference," he
+said, as he saw the girl falter. "Do we think of him?"
+
+"No," said Joan. "We incur the disgrace."
+
+She saw his eyes open wide with terror. He drew a step away from her.
+"Oh!" he exclaimed, in a long-drawn whisper; and he looked at Joan with
+incredulity and hatred. "You----" he used some Spanish word which Joan
+did not catch. It would have told her little if she had caught it. It
+was "Cabron," a harmless, inoffensive word which has become in Spain the
+ultimate low word of abuse. "You have laid a trap for me."
+
+Joan answered him in a bewilderment. "I have laid no trap for you," and
+there was so much scorn and contempt in her voice that Escobar could
+hardly disbelieve her.
+
+But he was shaken. He was in a panic. He was in a haste to go.
+Money--yes. But you must live in order to enjoy it.
+
+"I will give you a day to think over my proposal," he said, stammering
+the words in his haste. And then, "Don't write to me! I will find a
+means," and, almost before she was aware of his movements, he had
+snatched up his cap, and the room was empty. The curtain was torn aside;
+the glass door stood open; beyond it the garden lay white in the light
+of the moon.
+
+"A trap?" Joan repeated his accusation in a perplexity. She turned and
+she saw the door, the door behind her, which Escobar had faced, the door
+into the hall, slowly open. There had been no turning of the handle, it
+was unlatched before. Yet Joan had seen to it that it was shut before
+ever she beckoned Mario Escobar into the room. Some one, then, had been
+listening. Mario Escobar had seen the handle move, the door drawn ajar.
+Joan saw it open now to its full width, and in the entrance Stella
+Croyle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+A FATAL KINDNESS
+
+
+Joan picked up her cloak and arranged it upon her shoulders. She did not
+give one thought to Stella, or even hear the words which Stella began
+nervously to speak. Her secret appointment would come to light now in
+any case. It would very likely cost her--oh, all the gold and glamour of
+the world. It would be bandied about in gossip over the tea-tables, in
+the street, at the Clubs, in the Press. Sir Chichester ought to be
+happy, at all events. The thought struck her with a wry humour, and
+brought a smile to her lips. He would accomplish his dream. Without
+effort, without a letter or a telephone call, or a rebuff, he would have
+such publicity as he could hardly have hoped for. "Who is that?" Joan
+made up a little scene. "That? Oh, don't you know? That's Sir Chichester
+Splay. You must have heard of Sir Chichester! Why, it was in his house
+that the Whitworth girl, rather pretty but an awful fool, carried on
+with the spy-man."
+
+Joan was a little overstrung. All the while she was powdering her nose
+in front of a mirror and removing as best she could the traces of tears,
+and all the while Mrs. Croyle was stammering words and words and words
+behind her. Joan regretted that Stella was not going to the Willoughbys'
+ball. If she had been, she would probably be carrying some rouge in her
+little hand-bag, and Joan might have borrowed some.
+
+"Well, since you haven't got any with you, I must go," said Joan,
+bursting suddenly into Stella's monologue. But she had caught a name
+spoken just before Stella stopped in her perplexity at Joan's outbreak.
+
+"Harry Luttrell!" Joan repeated. What in the world had Stella Croyle got
+to say to her about Harry Luttrell? But Stella resumed her faltering
+discourse and the sense of her words penetrated at last to Joan's brain
+and amazed her.
+
+Joan was to leave Harry Luttrell alone.
+
+"You are quite young," said Stella, "only twenty. What does he matter to
+you? You have everything in front of you. With your looks and your
+twenty years you can choose where you will. You have lovers already----"
+
+"I?" Joan interrupted.
+
+"Mario Escobar."
+
+Joan repeated the name with such a violence of scorn that for a moment
+Stella Croyle was silenced.
+
+"Mario Escobar!"
+
+"He was here with you a moment ago."
+
+Joan answered quietly and quite distinctly:
+
+"I wish he were dead!"
+
+Stella Croyle fell back upon her first declaration.
+
+"You must leave my Wub alone."
+
+Joan laughed aloud, harshly and without any merriment. She checked
+herself with an effort lest she should go on laughing, and her laughter
+turn uncontrollably into hysteria and tears. Here was Mrs. Croyle, a
+grown woman, standing in front of her like a mutinous obstinate child,
+looking like one too, talking like one and bidding Joan leave her Wub
+alone. Whence did she get that ridiculous name? It was all degrading and
+grotesque.
+
+"Your Wub! Your Wub!" she cried in a heat. "Yes, I am only twenty, and
+probably I am quite wrong and stupid. But it seems to me horrible that
+we two women should be wrangling over a man neither of us had met a week
+ago. I'll have no more of it."
+
+She flung towards the window, but Stella Croyle cried out, "A week ago!"
+and the cry brought her to a stop. Joan turned and looked doubtfully at
+Mrs. Croyle. After all, that ridiculous label had not been pasted on to
+Harry Luttrell as a result of a week's acquaintance. Harry Luttrell had
+certainly talked to Stella through the greater part of an evening, his
+first evening in the house, but they had hardly been together at all
+since then. Joan came back slowly into the room.
+
+"So you knew Colonel Luttrell before this week?"
+
+"We were great friends a few years ago."
+
+It was disturbing to Joan that Harry Luttrell had never spoken to her of
+this friendship. Was it possible that Stella had a claim upon him of
+which she herself knew nothing? She sat down at a table in front of Mrs.
+Croyle.
+
+"Tell me," she said.
+
+Once, long ago, upon the deck of the _Dragonfly_ at Stockholm, Stella
+had cried out to Harry Luttrell, "Oh, what a cruel mistake you made when
+you went out of your way to be kind!" Joan was now to hear how that cry
+had come to be uttered by a woman in the nethermost distress. She knew,
+of course, that Stella was married at the age of seventeen and had been
+divorced, but little more than that.
+
+"There was a little girl," said Stella, "my baby. I lost her."
+
+She spoke very simply. She had come to the end of efforts and schemes,
+and was very tired. Joan's anger died away altogether in her heart.
+
+"Oh, I am very sorry," she replied. "I didn't know that you had a little
+girl."
+
+"Yes. Look, here is her portrait." Stella Croyle drew out from her bosom
+a locket which hung night and day against her heart, and showed it to
+Joan across the table. "But I don't know whether she is little any more.
+She is thirteen now."
+
+Joan gazed at the painted miniature of a lovely child with the eyes and
+the hair of Stella Croyle.
+
+"And you lost her altogether?" she asked with a rising pity.
+
+"Not at first," answered Stella. "I was allowed by the Court to have her
+with me for one month in every year. And I lived the other eleven months
+for the one, the wonderful one."
+
+Stella's face softened indescribably. The memory of her child did for
+her what all her passion for Harry Luttrell could not do. It restored
+her youth. Her eyes grew tender, her mouth quivered, the look of
+conflict vanished altogether.
+
+"We had good times together, my baby and I. I took her to the sea. It
+sounds foolish, but we were more like a couple of children together than
+mother and daughter"; and Joan, looking at the delicate, porcelain-like
+figure in front of her, smiled in response.
+
+"Yes, I can understand that."
+
+"She was with me every minute," Stella Croyle resumed. "I watched her
+so, I gave her so much of me that when I had seen her off at the station
+with her nurse at the end of the month, I was left behind, as weak and
+limp as an invalid. I lived for her, Joan, believe that at all events in
+my favour! There was no one else."
+
+"I do believe it."
+
+"Then one year in the winter she did not come to me."
+
+"They kept her back!" cried Joan. "But you had the right to her."
+
+"Yes. And I went down to Exeter to her father's house, to fetch her
+away."
+
+It was curious that Stella Croyle, who was speaking of her own
+distressful life, told her story with a quiet simplicity of tone, as if
+she had bent her neck in submission to the hammer strokes of her
+destiny; whereas Joan, who was but listening to griefs of another, was
+stirred to a compassion which kindled her face and made her voice shake.
+
+"Oh, they hadn't sent her away! She was waiting for you," she cried
+eagerly.
+
+"She was waiting for me. Yes! But it was no longer my baby who was
+waiting. They had worked on her, Robert, my husband--and his sisters.
+They had told her--oh, more than they need! That I was bad."
+
+"Oh!" breathed Joan.
+
+"Yes, they were a little cruel. They had changed baby altogether. She
+was just eight at that time." Stella stopped for a moment or two. Her
+voice did not falter but her eyes suddenly swam with tears. "She used to
+adore me--she really and truly did. Now her little face and her eyes
+were like flint. And what do you think she said to me? Just this!
+'Mummy, I don't want to go with you. If you take me with you, you'll
+spoil my holidays!'"
+
+Joan shot back in her chair.
+
+"But they had taught her to say that?"
+
+Stella Croyle shook her head.
+
+"They had taught her to dislike me. My little girl has character. She
+wouldn't have repeated the words, because she had been taught them. No,
+she meant them."
+
+"But a day or two with you and she would have forgotten them. Oh, she
+_did_ forget them!"
+
+In her great longing to comfort the woman, whose deep anguish she
+divined beneath the quiet desolation of her voice, Joan overleapt her
+own knowledge. She was still young enough to will that past events had
+not occurred, and that things true were false.
+
+"I didn't take her," replied Stella Croyle. "I wouldn't take her. I knew
+baby--besides she had struck me too hard."
+
+"You came away alone!" whispered Joan.
+
+"In the cab which I had kept waiting at the door to take us both away."
+
+"That's terrible!" said Joan. The child with her lovely face set like
+flint in the room, the mother creeping out of the house and stumbling
+alone into the fly at the door--the picture was vivid before her eyes.
+Joan wrung her hands with a little helpless gesture, and a moan upon her
+lips. Almost it seemed that these sad things were actually happening to
+_her_; so poignantly she felt them.
+
+"Oh, and you had all that long journey back to London, the journey you
+had dreamt of for eleven months with your baby at your side--you had now
+to take it alone."
+
+Stella Croyle shook her head.
+
+"No! There was just one and only one of my friends--and not at all a
+great friend--who had the imagination to understand, as you understand
+too, Joan, just what that journey would have meant to me, if anything
+had gone wrong, and the kindness to put himself out to make its
+endurance a little easier."
+
+Joan drew back quickly.
+
+"Harry Luttrell," she whispered.
+
+"Yes. He had once been stationed at Exeter. He knew Robert Croyle and
+the sisters. He guessed what might happen to me. Perhaps he knew that it
+was going to happen."
+
+So, when Stella, having pulled down her veil that none might see her
+face, was stumbling along the platform in search of an empty carriage,
+a hand was very gently laid upon her and Harry Luttrell was at her side.
+He had come all the way from London to befriend her, should she need it.
+If he had seen her with her little girl, he would have kept out of sight
+and himself have returned to London by a later train.
+
+"That was fine," cried Joan.
+
+"Fine, yes!" answered Stella. "You realise that, Joan, and you have
+never been in real trouble, or known what men are when kindness
+interferes with their comfort. I am not blaming people, but women do get
+the worst of it, if they are fools enough--wicked enough if you like, to
+do as I did. I knew men--lots of them. I was bound to. I was fair game,
+you see."
+
+Joan's forehead wrinkled. The doors of knowledge had been opening very
+rapidly for her during the last few minutes. But she was still often at
+a loss.
+
+"Fair game. Why? I don't understand."
+
+"I had been divorced. Therefore I wasn't dangerous. Complications
+couldn't follow from a little affair with me." Stella explained
+bitterly. "I had men on my doorstep always. But not one of these men who
+protested and made love to me, would have put themselves out to do what
+Harry Luttrell did. It was fine--yes. But for three years I have been
+wondering whether Harry Luttrell would not really have been kinder if he
+had thought of his own comfort too, and had never travelled to Exeter to
+befriend me."
+
+"Why?" asked Joan.
+
+"I should have thrown myself out of the carriage and saved myself--oh,
+so much sorrow afterwards," Stella Croyle answered in so simple and
+natural a voice that Joan could not disbelieve her.
+
+Joan clasped her hands before her eyes and then gazed again at Stella
+sitting in front of her, with pity and wonder. It was so hard for her to
+understand that this pretty woman, who made it her business to be gay,
+whom she had met from time to time in this house and had chatted with
+and forgotten, had passed through so dreadful an ordeal of suffering and
+humiliation. She was to look closer still into the mysteries which were
+being revealed to her.
+
+Harry Luttrell had held Stella in his arms just as if she had been a
+child herself whilst the train rushed through the bleak winter country.
+Stella had behaved like a child, now sobbing in a passion of grief, now
+mutinous in a passion of rage, now silent and despairing under the
+weights that nothing, neither sympathy, nor grief, nor revolt, can lift.
+
+"He took me home. He stayed with me. Oh, it wasn't love," cried Stella.
+"He was afraid."
+
+"Afraid!" asked Joan. She wished to know every least detail of the story
+now.
+
+"Afraid lest I should take--something ... as I wished to do ... as
+during the trouble of the divorce I learned to do."
+
+She related little ridiculous incidents which Joan listened to with a
+breaking heart. Stella could not sleep at all after her return. She
+lived in a little house with a big garden on the northern edge of
+London, and all night she lay awake, listening to the patter of rain on
+melancholy trees, and thinking and thinking. Harry Luttrell kept her
+from the drugs in her dressing-case. She had no anodyne for her
+sorrows--but one.
+
+"You will laugh," said Stella with a little wry smile of her own, "when
+I tell you what it was. It was a gramophone. I got Harry to set it
+going, whilst I lay in bed--to set it playing rag-time. While it was
+playing, I stopped thinking. For I had to keep time in my brain with the
+beat of the tune. And so, at last, since I couldn't think, or remember,
+I fell asleep. The gramophone saved me"; and again Joan was smitten by
+the incongruity of Stella with her life. She had eaten of all that
+nature allots to women--love, marriage, the birth of children, the loss
+of them--and there she was, to this day half-child, and quite
+incompatible with what she had suffered and endured.
+
+"After a fortnight I got quieter of course," said Stella. "And suddenly
+a change sadder than anything I have told you took place in me. I
+suppose that I had gone through too much on baby's account for me. I
+lost something more than my baby, I lost my want to have her with me."
+
+She remained silent for a little while reviewing the story which she had
+told.
+
+"There, that's all," she said, rising suddenly. "It's no claim at all,
+of course. I know that very well. Harry left me at Stockholm four years
+ago;" and suddenly Joan's face flushed scarlet. She had been absorbed in
+Stella's sorrows, she had admired that kind action of Harry Luttrell's
+which had brought so much trouble in its train. It needed that reminder
+that Harry had only left Stella Croyle at Stockholm to bring home the
+whole part which Harry had taken in the affair. Now she understood; a
+flame of sudden jealousy confused her; and with it came a young girl's
+distaste as though some ugly reptile had raised its head amongst
+flowers.
+
+"I never saw Harry again until this week, except for a minute outside a
+shop one morning in Piccadilly. But he hasn't married during those four
+years, so I always kept a hope that we should be somewhere together
+again for a few days, and that afterwards he would come back to me."
+
+"That's why you chose this week to come to Rackham Park?"
+
+"Yes," answered Stella Croyle; and she laughed harshly. "But I hadn't
+considered you."
+
+Joan looked helplessly at her companion. Stella had not one small chance
+of the fulfilment of her hope--no, not one--even if she herself stood a
+million miles away. Of that Joan was sure. But how was she to say so to
+one who was blind and deaf to all but her hope, who would not listen,
+who would not see? Mario Escobar had left his gloves behind him on a
+couch. Joan saw them, and remembered to whom they belonged, and her
+thoughts took another complexion. Harry Luttrell! What share had she now
+in his life? She rose abruptly and pushed back her chair.
+
+"Oh, I'll stand aside," she said, "never fear! We are to talk things
+over to-night. I shall say 'No.'"
+
+She had turned again to the window, but a startled question from Stella
+Croyle stayed her feet.
+
+"Harry has asked you to marry him?"
+
+"He was going to," Joan faltered. The sense of her own loss returned
+upon her, she felt utterly alone, all the more alone because of the
+wondrous week which had come to so desolate an end to-night. "Here in
+this little room, not two hours ago. But I asked him to wait until
+supper time to-night. Here--it was here we stood!"
+
+Joan looked down. Yes, she had been standing in this very spot, the
+table here upon her left, that chair upon her right, that trifolium in
+the pattern of the carpet under her feet, when Harry Luttrell had taken
+her in his arms. What foolish thing was Stella Croyle saying now?
+
+"I take back all that I have said to you. If Harry has spoken to you
+already I have lost--that's all. I didn't know," she said. Her cheeks
+were white, her eyes suddenly grown large with a horror in them which
+Joan could not understand.
+
+"Yes, it's all over. I have lost," she kept repeating in a dreadful
+whisper, moistening her dry lips with her tongue between her sentences.
+
+"Oh, don't think that I am standing aside out of pity," Joan answered
+her. "To-morrow I shall be impossible as a wife for Harry Luttrell." The
+words fell upon ears which did not hear. It would not have mattered if
+Stella had heard. Since Harry Luttrell was that night asking Joan to
+marry him, the hopes upon which she had so long been building, which
+Jenny Prask had done so much to nurse and encourage, withered and
+crumbled in an instant.
+
+"I must go back and dance," said Joan with a shiver.
+
+She left Stella Croyle standing in the room like one possessed with
+visions of terrible things. Her tragic face and moving lips were to
+haunt Joan for many a month afterwards. She went out by the window and
+ran down the drive to the spot where she had left Miranda's car half-way
+between the lodge and the house. The gates had been set open that night
+against the return of the party from Harrel. Joan drove back again under
+the great over-arching trees of the road. It was just ten o'clock when
+she slipped into the ball-room and was claimed by a neighbour for a
+dance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE RANK AND FILE
+
+
+Martin Hillyard crammed a year's enjoyment into the early hours of that
+night. He danced a great deal and had supper a good many times; and even
+the girl who had passed the season of 1914 in London and said languidly,
+"Tell me more," before he had opened his mouth, failed to ruffle his
+enjoyment.
+
+"If I did, you would scream for your mother," he replied, "and I should
+be turned out of the house and Sir Chichester would lose his position in
+the county. No, I'll tell you less. That means we'll go and have some
+supper."
+
+He led a subdued maiden into the supper-room and from that moment his
+enjoyment began to wane. For, at a little table near to hand, sat Joan
+Whitworth and Harry Luttrell, and it was clear to him from the distress
+upon their faces that their smooth courtship had encountered its
+obstacles. A spot of anger, indeed, seemed to burn in Joan's cheeks.
+They hardly spoke at all.
+
+Half an hour later, he came face to face with Joan in a corridor.
+
+"I have been looking for you for a long while," she cried in a quick,
+agitated voice. "Are you free for this dance?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Martin Hillyard lied without compunction.
+
+"Then will you take me into the garden?"
+
+He found a couple of chairs in a corner of the terrace out of the
+hearing of the rest.
+
+"We shall be quiet here," he said. He hoped that she would disclose the
+difficulty which had risen between herself and Harry, and seek his
+counsel as Harry's friend. It might be one of the little trifling
+discords which love magnifies until they blot out the skies and drape
+the earth in temporary mourning. But Joan began at once nervously upon
+a different topic.
+
+"You made a charge against Mario Escobar the other day. I did not
+believe it. But you spoke the truth. I know that now."
+
+She stopped and gazed woefully in front of her. Then she hurried on.
+
+"I can prove it. He demands news of your movements in the Mediterranean.
+If it is necessary I must come forward publicly and prove it. It will be
+horrible, but of course I will."
+
+Martin looked at her quickly. She kept her eyes averted from him. Her
+fingers plucked nervously at her dress. There was an aspect of shame in
+her attitude.
+
+"It will not be necessary, Joan," he answered. "I have quite enough
+evidence already to put him away until the end of the war."
+
+Joan turned to him with quivering lips.
+
+"You are sure. It means so much to me to escape--what I have no right to
+escape, I can hardly believe it."
+
+"I am quite sure," replied Martin Hillyard.
+
+Joan breathed a long, fluttering sigh of relief. She sat up as though a
+weight had been loosed from her shoulders. The trouble lifted from her
+face.
+
+"You need not call upon me at all?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I don't want to shirk--any more," she insisted. "I should not
+hesitate."
+
+"I know that, Joan," he said with a smile. She looked out over the
+gardens to the great line of hills, dim and pleasant as fairyland in the
+silver haze of the moonlight. Her eyes travelled eastwards along the
+ridge and stopped at the clump of Bishop's Ring which marks the crest of
+Duncton Hill, and the dark fold below where the trees flow down to
+Graffham.
+
+"You ask me no questions," she said in a low, warm voice. "I am very
+grateful."
+
+"I ask you one. Where is Mario Escobar to-night?"
+
+"At Midhurst," and she gave him the name of the hotel.
+
+Martin Hillyard laughed. Whilst the police were inquiring here and
+searching there and watching the ports for him, he was lying almost
+within reach of his hand, snugly and peacefully at Midhurst.
+
+"But I expect that he will go from Midhurst now," Joan added,
+remembering his snarl of fear when the door had opened behind her, and
+the haste with which he had fled.
+
+Hillyard looked at his watch. It was one o'clock in the morning.
+
+"You are in a hurry?" she asked.
+
+"I ought to send a message." He turned to Joan. "You know this house, of
+course. Is there a telephone in a quiet room, where I shall not be
+interrupted or be drowned out, voice and ears by the music?"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Willoughby's sitting-room upstairs. Shall I ask her if you
+may use it?"
+
+"If you please."
+
+Joan left Martin standing in one of the corridors and rejoined him after
+a few minutes. "Come," she said, and led the way upstairs to the room.
+Martin called up the trunk line and gave a number.
+
+"I shall have to wait a few minutes," he said.
+
+"You want me to go," answered Joan, and she moved towards the door
+reluctantly.
+
+"No. But you will be missing your dances."
+
+Joan shook her head. She did not turn back to him, but stood facing the
+door as she replied; so that he could not see her face.
+
+"I had kept all the dances after supper free. If I am not in the way I
+would rather wait with you."
+
+"Of course."
+
+He was careful to use the most commonplace tone with the thought that it
+would steady her. The trouble which this telephone message would finally
+dispel was clearly not all which distressed her. She needed
+companionship; her voice broke, as though her heart were breaking too.
+He saw her raise a wisp of handkerchief to her eyes; and then the
+telephone bell rang at his side. He was calling at a venture upon the
+number which Commodore Graham had rung up in the office above the old
+waterway of the Thames.
+
+"Is that Scotland Yard?" he asked, and he gave the address at which
+Mario Escobar was to be found. "But he may be gone to-morrow," he added,
+and hearing a short "That's all right," he rang off.
+
+"Now, if you will get your cloak, we might go back into the garden."
+
+They found their corner of the terrace unoccupied and sat for a while in
+silence. Hillyard recognised that neither questions nor any conversation
+at all were required from him, but simply the sympathy of his
+companionship. He smoked a cigarette while Joan sat by his side.
+
+She stretched out her hand towards the Bishop's Ring, small as a button
+upon the great shoulder of the Down.
+
+"Do you remember the afternoon when I drove you back from Goodwood?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You said to me, 'If the great trial is coming, I want to fall back into
+the rank and file.' And I cried out, 'Oh, I understand that!'"
+
+"I remember."
+
+"What a fool I was!" said Joan. "I didn't understand at all. I thought
+that it sounded fine, and that was why I applauded. I am only beginning
+to understand now. Even after I had agreed with you, my one ambition was
+to be different."
+
+Her voice died remorsefully away. From the window further down the
+terrace the yellow light poured from the windows and fought with the
+moonlight. The music of a waltz floated out upon the yearning of many
+violins. There was a ripple of distant voices.
+
+"All this week," Joan began again, "I have found myself standing
+unexpectedly in a strong light before a mirror and utterly scared by the
+revelation of what I was ... by the memory of the foolish things which I
+had done. From one of the worst of them, you have saved me to-night. You
+are very kind to me, Martin."
+
+It was the first time he had ever heard her use his Christian name.
+
+"I should like to be kinder, if you'll let me," he said. "I am not
+blind. I was in the supper-room when you and Harry were there. It was
+for him that you had kept all the last dances free. And you are here,
+breaking your heart. Why?"
+
+Joan shook her head. A little sob broke from her against her will. But
+this matter was between her and Harry Luttrell. She sought no counsel
+from any other.
+
+"Then I am very grieved for both of you," said Hillyard. Joan made a
+movement as if she were about to rise. "Will you wait just a moment?"
+Martin asked.
+
+He guessed that some hint of Stella Croyle's story had reached the
+girl's ears. He understood that she would be hurt, and affronted; that
+she would feel herself suddenly steeped in vulgarities; and that she
+would visit her resentment sharply upon her lover, and upon herself at
+the same time. And all this was true. But Martin was not sure of it. He
+meant to tread warily, lest if he stumbled, the harm should be the more
+complete.
+
+"I have known Harry Luttrell a long while," he said. "No woman ever
+reached his heart until he came home from France this summer. No woman I
+believe, could have reached it--not even you, Joan, I believe, if you
+had met him a year ago. He was possessed by one great shame and one
+great longing--shame that the regiment with which he and his father were
+bound up, had once disgraced itself--longing for the day to come when it
+would recover its prestige. Those two emotions burnt in him like white
+flames. I believe no other could have lived beside them."
+
+Joan would not speak, but she concentrated all her senses to listen. A
+phrase which Stella Croyle had used--Harry had feared to become "the
+slovenly soldier"--began to take on its meaning.
+
+"On the Somme the shame was wiped out. Led by such men as Harry--well,
+you know what happened. Harry Luttrell came home freed at last from an
+overwhelming obsession. He looked about him with different eyes, and
+there you were! It seems to me a thing perfectly ordained, as so few
+things are. I brought him down here just for a pleasant week in the
+country--without another thought beyond that. All this week I have been
+coming to think of myself as an unconscious agent, who just at the right
+time is made to do the right thing. Here was the first possible moment
+for Harry Luttrell--and there you were in the path--just as if you
+without knowing it, had been set there to wait until he came over the
+fields to you."
+
+He turned to her and took her hand in his. He had his sympathies for
+Stella Croyle, but her hopes held no positive promise of happiness for
+either her or Harry Luttrell--a mere flash and splutter of passion at
+the best, with all sorts of sordid disadvantages to follow, quarrels,
+the scorn of his equals, the loss of position, the check to advancement
+in his profession. Here, on the other hand, was the fitting match.
+
+"It would be a great pity," he said gently, "if anything were now to
+interfere."
+
+He stood up and after a moment Joan rose to her feet. There was a tender
+smile upon her lips and her eyes were shining. She laid a hand upon his
+arm.
+
+"I shall have to get you a wife, Martin," she said, midway between
+laughter and tears. "It wouldn't be fair on us if you were to escape."
+
+This was her way of thanking him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE LONG SLEEP
+
+
+The amazing incident which cut so sharply into these tangled lives
+occurred the next morning at Rackham Park. Some of the house party
+straggled down to a late breakfast, others did not descend at all. Harry
+Luttrell joined Millie Splay upon the stairs and stopped her before she
+entered the breakfast-room.
+
+"I should like to slip away this morning, Lady Splay," he said. "My
+servant is packing now."
+
+Millie Splay looked at him in dismay.
+
+"Oh, I am so sorry," she said. "I was hoping that this morning you and
+Joan would have something to say to me."
+
+"I did too," replied Harry with a wry smile. "But Joan turned me down
+with a bang last night."
+
+Lady Splay plumped herself down on a chair in the hall.
+
+"Oh, she is the most exasperating girl!" she cried. "Are you sure that
+you didn't misunderstand her?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+Lady Splay sat for a little while with her cheek propped upon her hand
+and her brows drawn together in a perplexity.
+
+"It's very strange," she said at length. "For Joan meant you to ask her
+to marry you. She has been deliberately showing you that you weren't
+indifferent to her. Joan would never have done that if she hadn't meant
+you to ask her; or if she hadn't meant to accept you." She rose with a
+gesture of despair.
+
+"I give it up. But oh, how I'd love to smack her!" and with that
+unrealisable desire burning furiously in her breast, Lady Splay marched
+into the breakfast-room. Dennis Brown and Jupp were already in their
+white flannels at the table. Miranda ran down into the room a moment
+afterwards.
+
+"Joan's the lazy one," she said, looking round the table. She had got
+to bed at half-past four and looked as fresh as if she had slept the
+clock round. "What are you going to eat, Colonel Luttrell?"
+
+Luttrell was standing by her at the side table, and as they inspected
+the dishes they were joined by Mr. Albany Todd.
+
+"You were going it last night," Jupp called to him, with a note of
+respect in his voice. "For a top-weight you're the hottest thing I have
+seen in years. Stay another week in our academic company, and we shall
+discover so many excellent qualities in you that we shall be calling you
+Toddles."
+
+"And then in the winter, I suppose, we'll go jumping together," said Mr.
+Albany Todd.
+
+Like many another round and heavy man, Mr. Albany Todd was an
+exceptionally smooth dancer. His first dance on the night before he had
+owed to the consideration of his hostess. Sheer merit had filled the
+rest of his programme; and he sat down to breakfast now in a high good
+humour. Sir Chichester stumped into the room when the serious part of
+the meal was over, and all the newspapers already taken. He sat down in
+front of his kidney and bacon and grunted.
+
+"Any news in _The Times_, Mr. Albany Todd?"
+
+"No! No!" replied Mr. Albany Todd in an abstracted voice, with his head
+buried between the pages. "Would you like it, Sir Chichester?"
+
+He showed no intention of handing it over; and Sir Chichester replied
+with as much indifference as he could assume,
+
+"Oh, there's no hurry."
+
+"No, we have all the morning, haven't we?" said Mr. Albany Todd
+pleasantly.
+
+Sir Chichester ate some breakfast and drank some tea. "No news in your
+paper is there, Dennis, my boy?" he asked carelessly.
+
+"Oh, isn't there just?" cried Dennis Brown. "Oppifex and Hampstead
+Darling are both running in the two-thirty at Windsor."
+
+Sir Chichester grunted again.
+
+"Racing! It's wonderful, Mr. Albany Todd, that you haven't got the
+disease during the week. There's a racing microbe at Rackham."
+
+"But I am not so sure that I have escaped," returned Mr. Albany Todd. "I
+am tempted to go jumping in the winter."
+
+"You must keep your old Lords out if you do," Harold Jupp urged
+earnestly. "Bring in your Dukes and your Marquises, and we poor men are
+all up the spout."
+
+Thus they rattled on about the breakfast table; cigarettes were lighted,
+Miranda pushed back her chair; in a minute the room would be deserted.
+But Millie Splay uttered a little cry of horror, so sharp and startling
+that it froze each person into a sudden immobility. She dropped the
+newspaper upon her knees. Her hands flew to her face and covered it.
+
+"What's the matter, Millie?" cried Sir Chichester, starting up in alarm.
+He hurried round the table. Some stab of physical pain had caused
+Millie's cry--he shared that conviction with every one else in the room.
+But Millie lifted her head quickly.
+
+"Oh, it's intolerable!" she exclaimed. "Chichester, look at this!" She
+thrust the paper feverishly into his hands. Sir Chichester smoothed its
+crumpled leaves as he stood beside her.
+
+"Ah, the _Harpoon_," he said, his fear quite allayed. He knew his wife
+to have a somewhat thinner skin than himself. "You are exaggerating no
+doubt, my dear. The _Harpoon_ is a good paper and quite friendly."
+
+But Millie Splay broke in upon his protestations in a voice as shrill as
+a scream.
+
+"Oh, stop, Chichester, and look! There, in the third column! Just under
+your eyes!"
+
+And Sir Chichester Splay read. As he read his face changed.
+
+"Yes, that won't do," he said, very quietly. He carried the newspaper
+back with him to his chair and sat down again. He had the air of a man
+struck clean out of his wits. "That won't do," he repeated, and again,
+with a rush of angry blood into his face, "No, that won't do." It seemed
+that Sir Chichester's harmless little foible had suddenly received more
+than its due punishment.
+
+The newspaper slipped from his fingers on to the floor, whilst he sat
+staring at the white tablecloth in front of him. But no sooner did
+Harold Jupp at his side make a movement to pick the paper up than Sir
+Chichester swooped down upon it in a flash.
+
+"No!" he said. "No!" and he began to fold it up very carefully. "It's as
+Millie says, a rather intolerable invention which has crept into the
+social news. I must consider what steps we should take."
+
+There was another at that table who was as disturbed as Sir Chichester
+and Lady Splay. Martin Hillyard knew nothing of the paragraph which had
+caused this consternation in his hosts; and he had asked no questions
+last night. But he remembered every word that Joan had said. She had
+seen Mario Escobar somewhere since leaving Rackham Park--that was
+certain; and Mario Escobar had demanded information. "Demanded" was the
+word which Joan had used. Mario Escobar was of the blackmailing type.
+Martin's heart was in his mouth.
+
+"An invention about us here?" he asked.
+
+"About one of us," answered Sir Chichester; and Martin dared ask no
+more.
+
+Harry Luttrell, however, had none of Martin's knowledge to restrain him.
+
+"In that case, sir, wouldn't it be wiser to read it now, aloud?" he
+suggested. "It can't be suppressed now. Sooner or later every one will
+hear of it."
+
+Every one agreed except Hillyard. To him Harry Luttrell seemed wilfully
+to be rushing towards catastrophe.
+
+"Yes ... yes," said Sir Chichester slowly. He unfolded his newspaper
+again and read; and of all those who listened no one was more amazed
+than Hillyard himself. Mario Escobar had no hand in this abominable
+work. For this is what Sir Chichester read:
+
+"'A mysterious and tragic event has occurred at Rackham Park, where Sir
+Chichester Splay, the well-known Baronet----'" He broke off to observe,
+"Really, it's put quite civilly, Millie. It's a dreadful mistake, but so
+far as the wording of the Editor is concerned it's put really more
+considerately than I noticed at first."
+
+"Oh, please go on," cried Millie.
+
+"Very well, my dear," and he resumed--"where Sir Chichester Splay, the
+well-known Baronet is entertaining a small party. At an early hour this
+morning Mrs. Croyle, one of Sir Chichester's guests, died under strange
+circumstances."
+
+Miranda uttered a little scream.
+
+"Died!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, listen to this," said Sir Chichester. "Mrs. Croyle was discovered
+lying upon her side with her face bent above a glass of chloroform. The
+glass was supported between her pillows and Mrs. Croyle's fingers were
+still grasping it when she was discovered."
+
+A gasp of indignation and horror ran round that breakfast table when Sir
+Chichester had finished.
+
+"It's so atrociously circumstantial," said Mr. Albany Todd.
+
+"Yes." Sir Chichester seized upon the point. "That's the really damnable
+point about it. That's real malice. This report will linger and live
+long after the denial and apology are published."
+
+Lady Splay raised her head.
+
+"I can't imagine who can have sent in such a cowardly lie. Enemies of
+us? Or enemies of Stella?"
+
+"We can think that out afterwards, Lady Splay," said Harold Jupp. He was
+of a practical matter-of-fact mind and every one turned to listen to his
+suggestion. "The first thing to do is to get the report contradicted in
+the evening papers."
+
+"Of course."
+
+There was something to be done. All grasped at the doing of it in sheer
+relief--except one. For as the men rose, saying; one "I'll look after
+it"; and another "No, you'd better leave it to me," Luttrell's voice
+broke in upon them all, with a sort of dreadful fatality in the quiet
+sound of it.
+
+"Where is Mrs. Croyle now?" he asked, and he was as white as the
+tablecloth in front of him.
+
+There was no further movement towards the door. Slowly the men resumed
+their seats. A silence followed in which person after person looked at
+Stella's empty place as though an intensity of gaze would materialise
+her there. Miranda was the first bravely to break through it.
+
+"She hasn't come down yet," she said, and Millie Splay seized upon the
+words.
+
+"No, she never comes down for breakfast--never has all this week."
+
+"Yes, that's true," returned Dennis Brown with an attempt at
+cheerfulness.
+
+"Besides--what makes--the idea--impossible," said Sir Chichester, "is
+the publication this morning. There wouldn't have been time.... It's
+clearly an atrocious piece of malice." He was speaking with an obvious
+effort to convince himself that the monstrous thing was false. But he
+collapsed suddenly and once more discomfort and silence reigned in the
+room.
+
+"Stella's not well," Millie Splay took up the tale. "That's why she is
+seldom seen before twelve. Those headaches of hers----" and suddenly she
+in her turn broke off. She leaned forward and pressed the electric bell
+upon the tablecloth beside her. That small trivial action brought its
+relief, lightened the vague cloud of misgiving which since Luttrell had
+spoken, had settled upon all.
+
+"You rang, my lady," said Harper in the doorway.
+
+"Yes, Harper. We were making some plans for a picnic to-day and we
+should like to know if Mrs. Croyle will join us. Can you find out from
+her maid whether she is awake?"
+
+It was superbly done. There was not a quaver in Lady Splay's voice, not
+a sign of agitation in her manner.
+
+"I'll inquire, my lady," replied Harper, and he left the room upon his
+errand.
+
+"One thing is certain," Mr. Albany Todd broke in. "I was watching Harper
+over your shoulder, Lady Splay. He hasn't seen the paragraph. There's
+nothing known of it in the servants' hall."
+
+Sir Chichester nodded, and Millie Splay observed:
+
+"Harper's so imperturbable that he always inspires me with confidence. I
+feel that nothing out of the way could really happen whilst he was in
+the house." And her attitude of tension did greatly relax as she
+thought, illogically enough, of that stolid butler. A suggestion made by
+Martin Hillyard set them to work whilst they waited.
+
+"Let us see if the report is in any of the other papers," and all
+immediately were busy with that examination--except one again. And that
+one again, Harry Luttrell. He sat in his place motionless, his eyes
+transfixed upon some vision of horror--as if he _knew_, Martin said to
+himself, yes, as if all these questions were futile, as if he _knew_.
+
+But no other newspaper had printed the paragraph. They had hardly
+assured themselves of this fact, when Harper once more stood in the
+doorway.
+
+"Mrs. Croyle gave orders last night to her maid that she was not to be
+disturbed until she rang, my lady," he said.
+
+"And she has not rung?" Millie asked.
+
+"No, my lady."
+
+Miranda suddenly laughed in an odd fashion and swayed in her chair.
+
+"Miranda!" Millie Splay brought her back to her self-control with a
+sharp cry of rebuke. Then she resumed to Harper.
+
+"I will take the responsibility of waking Mrs. Croyle. Will you please,
+ask her maid to rouse Mrs. Croyle, and inquire whether she will join us
+this morning. We shall start at twelve."
+
+"Very well, my lady."
+
+There was no longer any pretence of ease amongst the people seated round
+the table. A queer panic passed from one to the other. They were awed by
+the imminence of dreadful uncomprehended things. They waited in silence,
+like people under a spell, and from somewhere in the house above their
+heads, there sounded a loud rapping upon a door. They held their breath,
+straining to hear the grate of a key in a lock, and the opening of that
+door. They heard only the knocking repeated and repeated again. It was
+followed by a sound of hurrying feet.
+
+Jenny Prask ran down the great main staircase, and burst into the
+breakfast room, her face mottled with terror, her hand spread above her
+heart to still its wild beating.
+
+"My lady! My lady! The door's locked. I can get no answer. I am afraid."
+
+Sir Chichester rose abruptly from his chair. But Jenny Prask had more to
+say.
+
+"The key had been removed. My lady, I looked through the keyhole. The
+lights are still burning in the room."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+Martin Hillyard had started to his feet. He remembered another time when
+the lights had been burning in Stella Croyle's room in the full blaze of
+a summer morning. She was sitting at the writing-table then. She had
+been sitting there all through the night making meaningless signs and
+figures upon the paper and the blotting-pad in front of her. The full
+significance of that flight of the unhappy Stella to the little hotel
+below the Hog's Back was now revealed to him. But between that morning
+and this, there was an enormous difference. She had opened her door then
+in answer to the knocking.
+
+"We must get through that door, Lady Splay," he said. Sir Chichester was
+already up and about in a busy agitation.
+
+"Yes, to be sure. It's just an ordinary lock. We shall easily find a key
+to fit it. I'll take Harper with me, and perhaps, Millie, you will
+come."
+
+"Yes, I'll come," said Millie quietly. After her first shock of horror
+and surprise when she had first chanced upon the paragraph in the
+_Harpoon_, she had been completely, wonderfully, mistress of herself.
+
+"The rest of you will please stay downstairs," said Sir Chichester, as
+he removed the key from the door of the room. Jenny Prask was not thus
+to be disposed of.
+
+"Oh, my lady, I must go up too!" she cried, twisting her hands together.
+"Mrs. Croyle was always very kind to me, poor lady. I must come!"
+
+"She won't keep her head," Sir Chichester objected, who was fast losing
+his. But Milly Splay laid her hand upon the girl's arm.
+
+"Yes, you shall come with us, Jenny," she said gently, and the four of
+them moved out of the room.
+
+The others followed them as far as the hall, and stood grouped at the
+foot of the staircase.
+
+"Miranda, would you like to go out into the air?" Dennis Brown asked
+with solicitude of his wife.
+
+"No, dear, I am all right. I--oh, poor woman!" and with a sob she
+dropped her face in her hands.
+
+"Hush!" Luttrell called sharply for silence, and a moment afterwards, a
+loud shrill scream rent the air like lightning.
+
+Miranda cowered from it.
+
+"Jenny Prask!" said Hillyard.
+
+"Then--then--the news is true," faltered Miranda, and she would have
+fallen but for the arm of her husband about her waist.
+
+They waited until Sir Chichester came down the stairs to them. He was
+shaken and trembling. He, the spectator of dramas, was now a character
+in one most tragically enacted under his own roof.
+
+"The report is true to the letter," he said in a low voice. "Dennis,
+will you go for McKerrel, the doctor. You know his house in Midhurst.
+Will you take your car, and bring him back. There is nothing more that
+we can do until he comes." He stood for a little while by the table in
+the hall, staring down at it, and taking particular note of its grain.
+
+"A curious thing," he said. "The key of her room is missing altogether."
+
+To no one did it come at this moment that the disappearance of the key
+was to prove a point of vast importance. No one made any comment, and
+Sir Chichester fell to silence again. "She looked like a child
+sleeping," he said at length, "a child without a care."
+
+Then he sat down and took the newspaper from his pocket. Mr. Albany Todd
+suddenly advanced to Harry Luttrell. He had been no less observant than
+Martin Hillyard.
+
+"You alone, Colonel Luttrell," he said, "were not surprised."
+
+"I was not," answered Harry frankly. "I was shocked, but not surprised.
+For I knew Mrs. Croyle at a time when she was so tormented that she
+could not sleep at all. During that time she learnt to take drugs, and
+especially that drug in precisely that way that the newspaper
+described."
+
+The men drifted out of the hall on to the lawn, leaving Sir Chichester
+brooding above the outspread sheets of the _Harpoon_. Here was the
+insoluble sinister question to which somehow he had to find an answer.
+Stella Croyle died late last night, in the country, at Rackham Park; and
+yet in this very morning's issue of the newspaper, her death with every
+circumstance and detail was truthfully recorded, hours before it was
+even known by anybody in the house itself.
+
+"How can that be?" Sir Chichester exclaimed in despair. "How can it
+be?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+JENNY PUTS UP HER FIGHT
+
+
+Stella, the undisciplined! She had flung out of the rank and file, as
+long ago Sir Charles Hardiman had put it, and to this end she had come,
+waywardness exacting its inexorable price. Harry Luttrell, however, was
+not able to lull his conscience with any such easy reflections. He
+walked with Martin Hillyard apart in the garden.
+
+"I am to blame," he cried. "I took on a responsibility for Stella when I
+went out of my way to do one kind, foolish thing.... Yet, she would have
+killed herself if I hadn't--as she has done five years afterwards!... I
+couldn't leave her when I had brought her home ... she was in such
+misery!... and it couldn't have gone on.... Old Hardiman was right about
+that.... It would have ended in a quarrel when unforgivable words would
+have been used.... Yet, perhaps, if that had happened she wouldn't have
+killed herself.... Oh, I don't know!"
+
+Martin Hillyard had never seen Harry Luttrell so moved or sunk in such
+remorse. He did not argue, lest he should but add fuel to this high
+flame of self-reproach. Life had become so much easier as a problem with
+him, so much inner probing and speculation and worry about small
+vanities had been smoothed away since he had been engaged day after day
+in a definite service which was building up by a law deduced here, an
+inspired formula there, a tradition for its servants. The service, the
+tradition, would dissolve and blow to nothing, when peace came again.
+Meanwhile there was the worth of traditional service made clear to him,
+in an indifference to the little enmities which before would have hurt
+and rankled, in a freedom from doubt when decision was needed, above all
+in a sort of underlying calm which strengthened as his life became more
+turbulently active.
+
+"It's a clear principle of life which make the difference," he said,
+hesitating, because to say even so much made him feel a prig. "Stella
+just drifted from unhappiness to unhappiness----"
+
+But Harry Luttrell had no attention to give to him.
+
+"I simply couldn't have gone on," he cried. "It wasn't a question of my
+ruin or not.... It was simply beyond me to go on.... There were other
+things more powerful.... You know! I once told you on the river above
+Kennington Island.... Oh, my God, I am in such a tangle of argument--and
+there she is up there--only thirty, and beautiful--such a queer, wayward
+kid--'like a child sleeping.'"
+
+He quoted Sir Chichester's phrase, and hurried away from his friend.
+
+"I shall be back in a little while," he muttered. His bad hour was upon
+him, and he must wrestle with it alone.
+
+Martin Hillyard returned to the hall, and found Sir Chichester with the
+doctor, a short, rugged Scotsman. Dr. McKerrel was saying:
+
+"There's nothing whatever for me to do, Sir Chichester," he said. "The
+poor creature must have died somewhere about one o'clock of the
+morning." He saw Sir Chichester with a start fall once more to reading
+the paragraph in the _Harpoon_, and continued with a warmth of
+admiration, "Eh, but those newspaper fellows are quick! I saw the
+_Harpoon_ this morning, and it was lucky I did. For I'd ha' been on my
+rounds otherwise when that young fellow called for me."
+
+"It was good of you to come so quickly," said Sir Chichester.
+
+"I shall charge for it," replied Dr. McKerrel. "I'll just step round to
+the Peace Officer at once, and I'll be obliged if you'll not have that
+glass with the chloroform touched again. I have put it aside."
+
+Martin Hillyard was disturbed.
+
+"There will have to be an inquest then?" he asked.
+
+"Aye, but there wull."
+
+"In a case of this kind," Sir Chichester suggested, "it would be better
+if it could be avoided."
+
+"But it can't," answered Dr. McKerrel bluntly. "And for my part, I tell
+you frankly, Sir Chichester, I have no great pity for poor neurotic
+bodies like the young lady upstairs. If she had had a little of my work
+to do, she would have been too tired in the evening to think about her
+worries." He looked at the disconsolate Baronet with a sudden twinkle in
+his eye. "Eh, man, but you'll get all the publicity you want over this
+case."
+
+Sir Chichester had no rejoinder to the quip; and his unwonted meekness
+caused McKerrel to relent. He stopped at the door, and said:
+
+"I'll give you a hint. The coroner can cut the inquest down to the
+barest necessary limits, if he has got all the facts clear beforehand.
+If he has got to explore in the dark, he'll ask questions here and
+questions there, and you never know, nor does he, what he's going to
+drag out to light in the end. But let him have it all clear and straight
+first! There's only one character I know of, more free from regulations
+and limitations and red-tape than a coroner, and that's the
+police-sergeant who runs the coroner. Goodday to you."
+
+A telegram was brought to Martin Hillyard whilst McKerrel was yet
+speaking; and Hillyard read it with relief. Mario Escobar had been taken
+that morning as he was leaving the hotel for the morning train to
+London. He was now on his way to an internment camp. So that
+complication was smoothed out at all events. He agreed with Sir
+Chichester Splay that it would be prudent to carry out McKerrel's
+suggestion at once.
+
+"I will make the document out," said Sir Chichester importantly. Give
+him a little work which set him in the limelight as the leader of the
+Chorus, and nothing could keep down his spirits. He took a sheet of
+foolscap, a blotting pad, a heavy inkstand, and a quill pen--Sir
+Chichester never used anything but a quill pen--to the big table in the
+middle of the hall, and wrote in a fair, round hand:
+
+"The case of Mrs. Croyle."
+
+and looked at his work and thought it good.
+
+"It looks quite like a _cause celebre_, doesn't it?" he said buoyantly.
+But he caught Martin Hillyard's eye, and recovered his more becoming
+despondency. Harry Luttrell came in as the baronet settled once more to
+his task. He laid a shining key upon the table and said:
+
+"I found this upon the lawn. It looked as if it might be the key of Mrs.
+Croyle's room."
+
+It was undoubtedly the key of a door. "We'll find out," said the
+baronet. Harper was sent for and commissioned to inquire. He returned in
+a few minutes.
+
+"Yes, sir, it is the key of Mrs. Croyle's room." He laid it upon the
+table and went out of the room.
+
+"I suppose it is then," said Harry Luttrell. "But I am a little
+puzzled."
+
+"Oh?"
+
+"It wasn't lying beneath Mrs. Croyle's window as one might have
+expected. But at the east side of the house, below the corridor, and
+almost in front of the glass door of the library."
+
+Both of his hearers were disturbed. Sir Chichester took up the key, and
+twisted it this way and that, till it flashed like a point of fire in
+the sunlight; as though under such giddy work it would yield up its
+secret for the sake of peace. He flung it on the table again, where it
+rattled and lay still.
+
+"I can't make head or tail of it," Sir Chichester cried. Martin Hillyard
+opened his mouth to speak and thought better of it. He could not falter
+in his belief that Stella had destroyed herself. The picture of her that
+morning in Surrey, with the lamps burning in her room and the bed
+untouched, was too vivid in his memory. What she had tried to do two
+years ago, she had found the courage to do to-day.
+
+That was sure. But it was not all. There was some one in the shadows who
+meant harm, more harm than was already accomplished. There was
+malevolence at work. The discovery of the key in that position far from
+Stella's window assured him of it. The aspect of the key itself as it
+lay upon the table made the assurance still more sure. But whom was this
+malevolence to hurt? And how? At what moment would the hand behind the
+curtain strike? And whose hand would it be? These were questions which
+locked his lips tight. It was for him to watch and discover, for he
+alone overlooked the battle-field, and if he failed, God help his
+friends at Rackham Park. Mario Escobar? Mario Escobar could at all
+events do no harm now.
+
+Sir Chichester explained to Harry Luttrell Dr. McKerrel's suggestion.
+
+"Just a clear, succinct statement of the facts. The witnesses, and what
+each one knows and is ready to depose. I shall put the statement before
+the coroner, who is a very good fellow, and we shall escape with as
+little scandal as possible. Now, let me see----" Sir Chichester put on
+his glasses. "The most important witness, of course, will be Stella's
+maid."
+
+Sir Chichester rang the bell, and in answer to his summons Jenny came
+down the stairs. Her eyes were red with weeping and she was very pale.
+But she bore herself steadily.
+
+"You wanted me, sir?" she asked. Her eyes travelled from one to the
+other of the three men in the hall. They rested for a little moment
+longer upon Harry Luttrell than upon the rest; and it seemed to Hillyard
+that as they rested there they glittered strangely, and that the ghost
+of a smile flickered about her mouth.
+
+"Yes," said Sir Chichester, pompously. "You understand that there will
+have to be an inquiry into the cause of Mrs. Croyle's death; and one
+wants for the sake of everybody, your dead mistress more than any one,
+that there should be as little talk as possible."
+
+Jenny's voice cut in like ice.
+
+"Mrs. Croyle had no reason that I know of to fear the fullest inquiry."
+
+"Quite so! Quite so!" returned Sir Chichester, shifting his ground. "But
+it will save time if we get the facts concisely together."
+
+Jenny stepped forward, and stood at the end of the table opposite to the
+baronet.
+
+"I am quite willing, sir," she said respectfully, "to answer any
+question now or at any time"; and throughout the little interrogatory
+which followed she never once changed from her attitude of respect.
+
+"Your name first."
+
+"Jenny Prask," and Sir Chichester wrote it down.
+
+"You have been Mrs. Croyle's maid for some time."
+
+"For three and a half years, sir."
+
+"Good!" said Sir Chichester, with the air of one who by an artful
+question has elicited a most important piece of evidence.
+
+"Now!" But now he fumbled. He had come to the real examination, and was
+at a loss how to begin. "Yes, now then, Jenny!" and again he came to a
+halt.
+
+Whilst Jenny waited, her eyes once glittered strangely under their
+half-dropped lids; and Martin Hillyard followed the direction of their
+gaze to the door-key lying upon the table beside Sir Chichester's hand.
+
+"Jenny," said Sir Chichester, who had at last formulated a question.
+"You informed us that Mrs. Croyle instructed you last night not to call
+her until she rang. That, no doubt, was an unusual order for her to
+give."
+
+"No, sir."
+
+Sir Chichester leaned back in his chair.
+
+"Oh, it wasn't?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+Sir Chichester looked a little blank. He cast about for another line of
+examination.
+
+"You are aware, of course, Jenny, that your mistress was in the habit of
+taking drugs--chloroform especially."
+
+"Never, sir," answered Jenny.
+
+"You weren't aware of it?" exclaimed Sir Chichester.
+
+"She never took them."
+
+Harry Luttrell made a little movement. He stared in perplexity at Jenny
+Prask, who did not once remove her calm and respectful eyes from Sir
+Chichester Splay. She waited in absolute composure for the next
+question. But the question took a long time to formulate. Sir Chichester
+had framed no interrogatory in a sequence; whereas Jenny's answers were
+pat, as though, sitting by the bed whereon her dead mistress lay, she
+had thought out the questions which might be asked of her and got her
+answers ready. Sir Chichester began to get flurried. At every conjecture
+which he expressed, Jenny Prask slammed a door in his face.
+
+"But you told me----" he cried, turning to Harry Luttrell and so broke
+off. "Are you speaking the truth, Jenny?"
+
+Suddenly Jenny's composure broke up. The blood rushed into her face. She
+shouted violently:
+
+"I swear it! If it was my last dying word, I do! Chloroform indeed!" She
+became sarcastic. "What an idea! Just fancy!"
+
+Sir Chichester threw down his pen. He was aghast before the conclusion
+to which his examination was leading him.
+
+"But, if Stella didn't put that glass of chloroform between her
+pillows--herself--of her own accord--why then, whilst she was
+asleep----" He would not utter the inevitable induction. But it was
+clear enough, hideous enough to all of them. Why then, whilst she was
+asleep, some one entered the room, placed the chloroform where its
+deadly fumes would do their work, locked her door upon her and tossed
+the key out on to the lawn. A charge of murder--nothing less.
+
+"Don't you see what you are suggesting, Jenny," Sir Chichester
+spluttered helplessly.
+
+"I am suggesting nothing, sir," the maid answered stolidly. "I am
+answering questions."
+
+She was lying, of course! Hillyard had not a doubt of it. Jenny Prask
+was the malevolent force of which he was in search. So much had, at all
+events, sprung clear from Sir Chichester's blunderings. And some hint,
+too, of the plan which malevolence had formed--not more than a hint!
+That Jenny Prask intended to sustain a charge of murder Martin did not
+believe. She was of too strong a brain for that folly. But she had some
+clear purpose to harm somebody; and Martin's heart sank as he
+conjectured who that some one might, nay must, be. Meanwhile, he
+thought, let Sir Chichester pursue his questioning. He got glimpses
+through that clouded medium into Jenny Prask's mind.
+
+"You must realise, Jenny, the unfortunate position into which your
+answers are leading you," said Sir Chichester with a trace of bluster.
+
+Hillyard could have laughed. As if she didn't realise exactly the drift
+and meaning of every word which she uttered. Jenny was not at all
+perturbed by Sir Chichester's manner. Her face took on a puzzled look.
+
+"I don't understand, sir."
+
+"No? Let me make it clear! If your mistress never took drugs, if she did
+not place the glass of chloroform in the particular position which would
+ensure her death, then, since you, her maid, were alone in this part of
+the house with her and were the last person to see her alive----"
+
+"No, sir," Jenny Prask interrupted.
+
+Sir Chichester stared. He was more and more out of his depth, and these
+were waters in which expert swimming was required.
+
+"I don't understand. Do you say that somebody saw Mrs. Croyle after she
+had dismissed you for the night?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Will you please explain?"
+
+The explanation was as simple as possible. Jenny had first fetched a
+book for her mistress from the library, before the house-party left for
+the ball. She then had supper and went to Mrs. Croyle's room. It was
+then about half-past nine, so far as she could conjecture. Her mistress,
+however, was not ready for bed, and dismissed Jenny, saying that she
+would look after herself. Jenny thereupon retired to her own bedroom and
+wrote a letter. After writing it, she remembered that she had not put
+out the distilled water which Mrs. Croyle was in the habit of using for
+her toilet. She accordingly returned to Mrs. Croyle's bedroom, and to
+her surprise found it empty. She waited for a quarter of an hour, and
+then becoming uneasy, went downstairs into the hall. She heard her
+mistress and some one else talking in the library. Their voices were
+raised a little as though they were quarrelling.
+
+"Quarrelling!" Sir Chichester Splay cried out the word in dismay. His
+hand flapped feebly on the table. "I am afraid to go on.... What do you
+think, Hillyard? I am afraid to go on...."
+
+"We must go on," said Luttrell quietly. He was very white. Did he guess
+what was coming, Hillyard wondered? At all events he did not falter. He
+took the business of putting questions altogether out of his host's
+hands.
+
+"Was the somebody a man or a woman?"
+
+"A woman, sir."
+
+"Did you recognise her voice?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Who was it?"
+
+"Miss Whitworth."
+
+Harry Luttrell nodded his head as if he had, during these last minutes,
+come to expect that answer and no other. But Sir Chichester rose up in
+wrath and, leaning forward over the table, shook his finger
+threateningly at the girl.
+
+"Now you know you are not speaking the truth. Miss Whitworth was at
+Harrel last night with the rest of us."
+
+"Yes, sir, but she came back to Rackham Park almost at once," said
+Jenny; and Harry Luttrell's face showed a sign of anxiety. After all, he
+hadn't seen Joan himself in the ball-room until well after ten o'clock.
+"I should have known that it was Miss Whitworth even if I had not heard
+her voice," and Jenny described how, on fetching Mrs. Croyle's book, she
+had seen Joan unlatch the glass door of the library.
+
+Sir Chichester was shaken, but he pushed his blotting-paper here and his
+pen there, and pished and tushed like a refractory child.
+
+"And how did she get back? I suppose she ran all the way in her satin
+shoes and back again, eh?"
+
+"No, sir, she came back in Mrs. Brown's motor-car. I saw it from my
+bedroom window waiting in the drive."
+
+"Ah! Now that we can put to the test, Jenny," cried Sir Chichester
+triumphantly. "And we will----" He caught Hillyard's eye as he moved
+towards the door in order to summon Miranda from the garden. Hillyard
+warned him with an almost imperceptible shake of the head. "Yes, we
+will, in our own time," he concluded lamely. His anger burst out again.
+"Joan, indeed! We won't have her mixed up in this sordid business, it's
+bad enough as it is. But Joan, no! To suggest that Joan came straight
+back from the Willoughbys' dance in order to quarrel with a woman whom
+she was seeing every day here, and, having quarrelled with her,
+afterwards----No, I won't speak the word. It's preposterous!"
+
+"But I don't suggest, sir, that Miss Whitworth came back in order to
+quarrel with my mistress," Jenny Prask returned, as soon as Sir
+Chichester's spate of words ran down. "I only give you the facts I know.
+I am quite sure that Miss Whitworth can quite easily explain why she
+came back to Rackham Park last night. There can't be any difficulty
+about that!"
+
+Jenny Prask had kept every intonation of her voice under her control.
+There was no hint of irony or triumph. She was a respectful lady's maid,
+frankly answering questions about her dead mistress. But she did not so
+successfully keep sentinel over her looks. She could not but glance from
+time to time at Harry Luttrell savouring his trouble and anxiety; and
+when she expressed her conviction that Joan could so easily clear up
+these mysteries, such a flame of hatred burnt suddenly in her eyes that
+it lit Martin Hillyard straight to the heart of her purpose.
+
+"So that's it," he thought, and was terrified as he grasped its reach.
+An accusation of murder! Oh, nothing so crude. But just enough
+suggestion of the possibility of murder to make it absolutely necessary
+that Joan Whitworth should go into the witness box at the coroner's
+inquest and acknowledge before the world that she had hurried secretly
+back from Harrel to meet Mario Escobar in an empty house. Mario Escobar
+too! Of all people, Mario Escobar! Jenny Prask had builded better than
+she knew. That telegram which Martin had welcomed with so much relief
+but an hour ago taunted him now. The scandal would have been bad enough
+if Mario Escobar were nothing more than the shady hunter of women he was
+supposed to be. It would be ten times louder now that Mario Escobar had
+been interned as a traitor within twelve hours of the secret meeting!
+
+Some escape must be discovered from the peril. Else the mud of it would
+cling to Joan all her life. She would be spoilt. Harry Luttrell, too! If
+he married her, if he did not. But Martin could not think of a way out.
+The whole plan was an artful, devilish piece of hard-headed cunning.
+Martin fell to wondering where was Jenny Prask's weak joint. She
+certainly looked, with her quiet strength, as if she had not one at all.
+
+To make matters worse, Miranda Brown chose this moment to re-enter the
+hall. Sir Chichester, warned already by Martin, threw the warning to the
+winds.
+
+"Miranda, you are the very person to help us," he cried. "Now listen to
+me, my dear, and don't get flurried. Think carefully, for your answer
+may have illimitable consequences! After your arrival at Harrel last
+night, did Joan return here immediately in your car?"
+
+Sir Chichester had never been so impressive. Miranda was frightened and
+changed colour. But she had given her promise and she kept it pluckily.
+
+"No," she answered.
+
+Jenny Prask permitted herself to smile her disbelief. Sir Chichester was
+triumphant.
+
+"Well, there's an end of your pretty story, my girl," he said. "You
+wanted to do a little mischief, did you? Well, you haven't! And here, by
+a stroke of luck, is Joan herself to settle the matter."
+
+He sat down and once more he drew his sheet of foolscap in front of him.
+He could write his clear succinct statement now, write it in "nervous
+prose." He was not quite sure what nervous prose actually was, but he
+knew it to be the correct medium to use on these occasions.
+
+Meanwhile Joan ran down the stairs.
+
+"I am afraid I have been very lazy this morning," she cried. She saw
+Harry Luttrell, she coloured to the eyes, she smiled doubtfully and said
+in a little whimsical voice, "We didn't after all, practise in the
+passage."
+
+Then, and only then, did she realise that something was amiss. Millie
+Splay in her desire to spare her darling the sudden shock of learning
+what calamity had befallen the house that night had bidden Joan's maid
+keep silence. She herself would break the news. But Millie Splay was
+busy with telegrams to Robert Croyle and Stella's own friends, and all
+the sad little duties which wait on death; and Joan ran down into the
+midst of the debate without a warning.
+
+Martin Hillyard would have given it to her, but Sir Chichester was hot
+upon his report.
+
+"Joan, my dear," he said confidently. "There's a little point--not in
+dispute really--but--well there's a little point. It has been said that
+you came straight back here last night from Harrel?"
+
+Joan's face turned slowly white. She stood with her great eyes fixed
+upon Sir Chichester, still as an image, and she did not answer a word.
+Harry Luttrell drew in a quick breath like a man in pain. Sir Chichester
+was selecting a new pen and noticed nothing.
+
+"It's ridiculous, of course, my dear, but I must put to you the formal
+question. Did you?"
+
+"Yes," answered Joan, and the pen fell from Sir Chichester's hand.
+
+"But--but--how did you come back?"
+
+"I borrowed Miranda's car."
+
+Miranda's legs gave under her and she sank down with a moan in a chair.
+
+"But Miranda denies that she lent it," said Sir Chichester in
+exasperation.
+
+"I asked her to deny it."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Joan's eyes for one swift instant swept round to Harry Luttrell. She
+swayed. Then she answered:
+
+"I can't tell you."
+
+Sir Chichester rose to his feet and tore his sheet of foolscap across.
+
+"God bless my soul!" he said to himself rather than to any of that
+company. "God bless my soul!" He moved away from the table. "I think
+I'll go and see Millie. Yes! I'll consult with Millie," and he ascended
+the stairs heavily, a very downcast and bewildered man. It seemed as
+though old age had suddenly found him out, and bowed his shoulders and
+taken the spring from his limbs. Something of this he felt himself, for
+he was heard to mutter as he passed along the landing to his wife's
+sitting-room:
+
+"I am not the man I was. I feel difficulties more"; and so he passed
+from sight.
+
+Harry Luttrell turned then to Joan.
+
+"Miss Whitworth," he began and got no further. For the blood rushed up
+into the girl's face and she exclaimed in a trembling voice:
+
+"Colonel Luttrell, I trust that you are not going to ask me any
+questions."
+
+"Why?" he asked, taken aback by the little touch of violence in her
+manner.
+
+"Because, at twelve o'clock last night, I refused you the right to ask
+them."
+
+The words were not very generous. They were meant to hurt and they did.
+They were meant to put a sharp, quick end to any questioning; and in
+that, too, they succeeded. Harry Luttrell bowed his head in assent and
+went out into the garden. For a moment afterwards Martin Hillyard, Joan
+and Jenny Prask stood in silence; and in that silence once more Martin's
+eyes fell upon the key of Stella's room. The earth had moved since the
+interrogatory had begun and the sunlight now played upon the key and
+transmuted it into a bright jewel. Martin Hillyard stepped forward and
+lifted it up. A faint, a very faint light, as from the far end of a long
+tunnel began to glimmer in his mind.
+
+"I must think it out," he whispered to himself; and at once the key
+filled all his thoughts. He turned to Joan:
+
+"Will you watch, please?" He opened the drawer in the table and laid the
+key inside it. Then he closed the drawer and locked it and took the key
+of the drawer out of the lock.
+
+"You see, Joan, what I have done? That key is locked in this drawer, and
+I hold the key of the drawer. It may be important."
+
+Joan nodded.
+
+"I see what you have done. And now, will you please leave me with Jenny
+Prask?"
+
+The smile was very easy to read now in Jenny's face. She could ask
+nothing better than to be left alone with Joan.
+
+Martin hesitated.
+
+"I think, Joan, that you ought to see Lady Splay before you talk to any
+one," he counselled gently.
+
+"Is everybody going to give me orders in this house?" Joan retorted with
+a quiet, dangerous calm.
+
+Martin Hillyard turned and ran swiftly up the stairs. There was but one
+thing to do. Lady Splay must be fetched down. But hurry as he might, he
+was not in time. For a few seconds Joan and Jenny Prask were alone in
+the hall, and all Jenny's composure left her on the instant. She stepped
+quickly over to Joan, and in a voice vibrating with hatred and passion,
+she hissed:
+
+"But you'll have to say why you came back. You'll have to say who you
+came back to see. You'll have to say it publicly too--right there in
+court. It'll be in all the papers. Won't you like it, Miss Whitworth?
+Just fancy!"
+
+Joan was staggered by the attack. The sheer hatred of Jenny bewildered
+her.
+
+"In court?" she faltered. "What do you mean?"
+
+"That Mrs. Croyle died of poison last night in her room," answered
+Jenny.
+
+Joan stared at her. "Last night, after we had talked--she killed
+herself--oh!" The truth reached her brain and laid a chill hand upon her
+heart. She rocked backwards and forwards as she stood, and with a
+gasping moan fell headlong to the ground. She had fainted. For a little
+while Jenny surveyed her handiwork with triumph. She bent down with a
+laugh.
+
+"Yes, it's your turn, you pretty doll. You've got to go through it! You
+won't look so young and pretty when they have done with you in the
+witness-box. Bah!"
+
+Jenny Prask was a strenuous hater. She drew back her foot to kick the
+unconscious girl as she lay at her feet upon the floor. But that insult
+Millie Splay was in time to prevent.
+
+"Jenny," she cried sharply from the balustrade of the landing.
+
+Jenny was once more the quiet, respectful maid.
+
+"Yes, my lady. You want me? I am afraid that Miss Whitworth has
+fainted."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+A REVOLUTION IN SIR CHICHESTER
+
+
+Upon that house which had yesterday rung with joyous life now fell gloom
+and sorrow and grave disquiet. Millie Splay drew Miranda, Dennis Brown
+and Harold Jupp aside.
+
+"You three had better go," she said. "You have such a little time for
+holidays now; and I can always telegraph for you if you should be
+wanted."
+
+Miranda bubbled into little sympathetic explosions.
+
+"Oh, Millie, I'll stay, of course. These boys can go. But Joan will want
+some one."
+
+Millie, however, would not hear of it.
+
+"You're a brick, Miranda. But I have ordered the car for you all
+immediately after luncheon. Joan's in bed, and wants to see no one. She
+seems heartbroken. She will say nothing. I can't understand her."
+
+There was only one at Rackham Park who did, and to him Millie Splay
+turned instinctively.
+
+"I should like you to stay, if you will put up with us. I think
+Chichester feels at a loss, and he likes you very much."
+
+"Of course I'll stay," replied Hillyard.
+
+Mr. Albany Todd drifted away to the more congenial atmosphere of a
+dowager duchess's dower-house in the Highlands, where it is to be hoped
+that his conversational qualities were more brilliantly displayed than
+in the irreverent gaiety of Rackham. Millie Splay meant to keep Harry
+Luttrell too. She hoped against hope. This was the man for her Joan, and
+whether he was wasting his leave miserably in that melancholy house
+troubled her not one jot.
+
+"It would be so welcome to me if you would put off your departure," she
+said. "I am sure there is some dreadful misunderstanding."
+
+Luttrell consented willingly to stay, and they went into the library,
+where Sir Chichester was brooding over the catastrophe with his head in
+his hands and the copy of the _Harpoon_ on the floor beside him.
+
+"No, I can't make head or tail of it," he said, and Harper the butler
+came softly into the room, closing the door from the hall.
+
+"There's a reporter from the _West Sussex Advertiser_, sir, asking to
+see you," he said, and Sir Chichester raised his head, like an old
+hunter which hears a pack of hounds giving tongue in the distance.
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"In the hall, sir."
+
+The baronet's head sank again between his shoulders.
+
+"Tell him that I can't see him," he said in a dull voice.
+
+The butler was the only man in the room who could hear that
+pronouncement with an unmoved face, and he owed his imperturbability
+merely to professional pride. Indeed, it was almost unthinkable that a
+couple of hours could produce so vast a revolution in a man. Here was a
+reporter who had come, without being asked, to interview Sir Chichester
+Splay, and the baronet would not see him! The incongruity struck Sir
+Chichester himself.
+
+"Perhaps it will seem rather impolite, eh, Luttrell? Rather hard
+treatment on a man who has come so far? What do you think, Hillyard? I
+suppose I ought to see him for a moment--yes." Sir Chichester raised his
+voice in a sharp cry which contrasted vividly with the deliberative
+sentences preceding it. "Harper! Harper!" and Harper reappeared. "I have
+been thinking about it, Harper. The unfortunate man may lose his whole
+morning if I don't see him. We all agree that to send him away would be
+unkind."
+
+"He has gone, sir."
+
+"Gone?" exclaimed Sir Chichester testily. "God bless my soul! Did he
+seem disappointed, Harper?"
+
+"Not so much disappointed, sir, as, if I may utilise a vulgarism, struck
+of all a heap, sir."
+
+"That will do, Harper," said Millie Splay, and Harper again retired.
+
+"Struck all of a heap!" said Sir Chichester sadly. "Well he might be!"
+He looked up and caught Harry's eye. "They say, Luttrell, that breaking
+a habit is only distressing during the first few days. With each refusal
+of the mind to yield, the temptation diminishes in strength. I believe
+that to be so, Luttrell."
+
+"It is very likely, sir," Harry replied.
+
+Harper seemed to be perpetually in and out of the library that morning.
+For he appeared with a little oblong parcel in his hand. Sir Chichester
+did not notice the parcel. He sprang up, and with a distinct note of
+eager pleasure in his voice, he cried:
+
+"He has come back! Then I really think----"
+
+"No, sir," Harper interrupted. "These are cigarettes."
+
+"Oh, yes," Hillyard stepped forward and took the parcel from the table.
+"I had run out, so I sent to Midhurst for a box."
+
+"Oh, cigarettes!" Sir Chichester's voice sagged again. He contemplated
+the little parcel swinging by a loop of string from Martin's finger. His
+face became a little stern. "That's a bad habit, Hillyard," he observed,
+shaking his head. "It will grow on you--nicotine poisoning may supervene
+at any moment. You had better begin to break yourself of it at once. I
+think so."
+
+"Chichester!" cried Millie Splay. "What in the world are you doing?"
+
+Sir Chichester was gently but firmly removing the parcel from Martin's
+hands, whilst Martin himself looked on, paralysed by the aggression.
+
+"A little strength of character, Hillyard.... You saw me a minute
+ago.... The first few days, I believe, are trying."
+
+Martin sought to retrieve his cigarettes, but Sir Chichester laid them
+aside upon a high mantelpiece, as if Hillyard were a child and could not
+reach them.
+
+"No, don't disappoint me, Hillyard! I am sure that you, too, can rise
+above a temptation. Why should I be the only one?"
+
+But Hillyard did not answer. Sir Chichester's desire that he should have
+a companion in sacrifice set a train of thought working in his mind. In
+the hurry and horror of that morning something had been
+forgotten--something of importance, something which perhaps, together
+with the key locked away in the hall table, might set free Joan's feet
+from the net in which they were entangled. He looked at his watch.
+
+"Will you lend me your car, Harry, for a few hours?" he asked suddenly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then I'll go," said Martin. "I will be back this afternoon or evening,
+Lady Splay." He went to the door, but was delayed by a box of Corona
+cigars upon a small table. "I'll take one of your cigars, Sir
+Chichester," he said drily.
+
+"Anything in the house, of course, my boy," began the baronet
+hospitably, and pulled himself up. "A very bad habit, Hillyard. You
+disappoint me."
+
+A trick of secrecy grows quickly upon men doing the work to which Martin
+Hillyard had been assigned during the last two years. Nothing is easier
+than to reach a frame of mind which drives you about with your finger to
+your lips, whispering "Hush! hush!" over the veriest trifles. Hillyard
+had not reached that point, but, like many other persons of his service,
+he was on the way to it. He gave no information now to any one of his
+purpose or destination, not even to Millie Splay, who came out with him
+alone into the hall, yearning for some crumb of hope. All that he said
+to her was:
+
+"It is possible that I may be later than I think; but I shall certainly
+be back to-night." And he drove off in Luttrell's powerful small car.
+
+It was, in fact, ten o'clock when Hillyard returned to Rackham Park.
+There was that in his manner which encouraged the inmates to hope some
+way out had been discovered. Questions were poured upon him, and some
+information given. The date of the inquest had been fixed for the next
+Monday, and meanwhile no statement of any kind had been put before the
+coroner. Jenny had not yielded by an inch. She would certainly tell her
+story with all the convincing force behind it of her respectful quiet
+manner and her love for her mistress.
+
+"I have something to tell you," said Martin. "But I have had no dinner,
+and am starving. I will tell you whilst I eat."
+
+"Shall I fetch Joan down?" Millie Splay asked eagerly.
+
+"Better to wait," said Martin. He imagined in what a fever of anxiety
+Joan would be. It would be time enough to lift her to hope when it was
+certain that the hope would not crumble away to dust.
+
+Joan was at that moment lying on her bed in the darkness of her room,
+her face towards the moonlit garden, and such a terror of the ordeal to
+be faced the next Monday in her thoughts as turned her cold and sent her
+heart fluttering into her throat. Mario Escobar had been taken away that
+morning. The news had reached Rackham, as it had reached every other
+house in the country-side. Joan knew of it, and she felt soiled and
+humiliated beyond endurance as she thought upon her association with the
+spy.
+
+The picture of the room crowded with witnesses, and people whom she
+knew, and strangers, whilst she gave the evidence which would turn their
+liking for her into contempt and suspicion would fade away from before
+her eyes, and the summer afternoon on Duncton Hill glow in its place.
+She had bidden Hillyard look at the Weald of Sussex, that he might carry
+the smell of its soil, the aspect of its blooms and dark woodlands and
+brown cottages away with him as a treasure to which he could secretly
+turn like a miser to his gold; and she herself, with them ever before
+her eyes, had forgotten them altogether. To sink back into the rank and
+file--how fine she had thought it, and how little she had heeded it! Now
+she had got to pay for her heedlessness, and she buried her face in her
+pillows and lay shivering.
+
+Meanwhile, in the dining-room downstairs, Millie Splay, Sir Chichester
+and Harry Luttrell gathered about Martin at the table whilst he ate cold
+beef and drank a pint of champagne.
+
+"I went up to London to see some one on the editorial staff of the
+_Harpoon_," Martin explained. "There were two questions I wanted answers
+for, if I could get them. You see, according to McKerrel--and you, Sir
+Chichester, say that he is a capable man--Stella Croyle died at one in
+the morning."
+
+"Yes," Sir Chichester agreed.
+
+"_About_ one," Harry Luttrell corrected, with the exactness of the
+soldierly mind.
+
+"'About' will do," Martin rejoined. "For newspapers go to press early
+nowadays. The _Harpoon_ would have been made up, and most of the
+editorial staff would have gone home an hour--yes, actually an
+hour--before Mrs. Croyle died here at Rackham in Sussex. Yet the news is
+in that very issue. How did that happen? How did the news reach the
+office of the _Harpoon_ an hour before the event occurred?"
+
+"Yes, that is what has been bothering me," added Sir Chichester.
+
+"Well, that was one question," Martin resumed. "Here's the other. How,
+when the news had reached the _Harpoon_ office, did it get printed in
+the paper?"
+
+Millie Splay found no difficulty in providing an explanation of that.
+
+"It's sensational," she said disdainfully.
+
+Martin shook his head.
+
+"I don't think that's enough. The _Harpoon_, like lots of other
+newspapers, has its social column, and in that column, no doubt, a
+paragraph like this one about Stella would have a certain sensational
+value. But supposing it wasn't true! A libel action follows, follows
+inevitably. A great deal would be said about the unscrupulous
+recklessness involved; the judge would come down like a cartload of
+bricks and the paper would get badly stung. No editor of any reliable
+paper would run such a risk. No sub-editor, left behind with power to
+alter and insert, would have taken the responsibility. Before he printed
+that item of news he would want corroboration of its truth. That's
+certain. How did he get it? It was true news, and it was corroborated.
+But, again, it was corroborated before the event happened. How?"
+
+"I haven't an idea," cried Sir Chichester. "I thought I knew something
+about getting things into the papers, but I see that I am a baby at it."
+
+"It's much the more difficult question of the two," Hillyard agreed.
+"But we will go back to the first one. How did the news reach the
+_Harpoon_ office yesterday night? Perhaps you can guess?" and he looked
+towards Harry Luttrell.
+
+Luttrell, however, was at a loss.
+
+"It's beyond me," he replied, and Martin Hillyard understood how that
+one morning at the little hotel under the Hog's Back had given to him
+and him alone the key by which the door upon these dark things might be
+unlocked.
+
+"The news arrived in the form of a letter marked urgent, which was
+handed in by the chauffeur of a private motor-car just after midnight.
+Of the time there is no doubt. I saw the editor myself. The issue would
+already have gone to press, but late news was expected that night from
+France, and the paper was waiting for it. Instead this letter came."
+
+A look of bewilderment crept into the faces of the group about the
+table.
+
+"But who in the world could have written it?" cried Sir Chichester in
+exasperation.
+
+"It was written over your name."
+
+"Mine?"
+
+The bewilderment in Millie Splay's face deepened into anxiety. She
+looked at her husband with a sudden sinking of her heart. Had his foible
+developed into a madness? Such things had been. A little gasp broke from
+her lips.
+
+"But not in your handwriting," Hillyard hastened to add.
+
+"Whose then?" asked Harry Luttrell suddenly.
+
+"Stella's," answered Hillyard.
+
+A shiver ran from one to the other of that small company, and discomfort
+kept them silent. A vague dread stole in upon their minds. It was as
+though some uncanny presence were in the room. They had eaten with
+Stella Croyle in this room, played with her out there in the sunlit
+garden, and only one of them had suspected the overwhelming despair
+which had driven her so hard. They began to blame themselves. "Poor
+woman! Poor woman!" Millie Splay whispered in a moan.
+
+Sir Chichester broke the silence.
+
+"But we left Stella here when we went to Harrel," he began, and Hillyard
+interrupted him.
+
+"There's no doubt that Stella sent the message," he said. "Your car,
+Mrs. Brown's and Luttrell's, were all used to take us to Harrel. One car
+remained in your garage--Stella's."
+
+"But there wouldn't be time for that car to reach London." Sir
+Chichester fought against Hillyard's statement. He did not want to
+believe it. He did not want to think of it. It brought him within too
+near a view of that horrid brink where overtried nature grows dizzy and
+whirls down into blackness.
+
+"Just time," Hillyard answered relentlessly, "if you will follow me.
+Joan certainly returned here last night--that I know, as you know. But
+she was back again in the ball-room at Harrel within a few minutes of
+ten o'clock. She must have left Mrs. Croyle a quarter before ten--that,
+at the latest."
+
+"Yes," Millie Splay agreed.
+
+"Well, I have myself crossed Putney Bridge after leaving here, within
+ten minutes under the two hours. And that in the daytime. Stella had
+time enough for her purpose. It was night and little traffic on the
+road. She writes her letter, sends Jenny with it to the garage, and the
+car reaches the _Harpoon_ office by twelve."
+
+"But its return?" asked Sir Chichester.
+
+"Simpler still. Your gates were left open last night, and we returned
+from Harrel at four in the morning. Stella's chauffeur hands in his
+letter, comes back by the way he went and is home here at Rackham an
+hour and a half before we thought of saying good-bye to Mrs. Willoughby.
+That is the way it happened. That is the way it must have happened,"
+Hillyard concluded energetically. "For it's the only way it could have
+happened."
+
+Luttrell, though he had been a listener and nothing else throughout
+Martin's statement, had cherished a hope that somehow it might be
+discovered that Stella had died by an accident. That she should die by
+her own hand, in this house, under the same roof as Joan, and because of
+one year which had ended at Stockholm--oh, to him a generation
+back!--was an idea of irrepressible horror. He could not shake off some
+sense of guiltiness. He had argued with it all that day, discovering the
+most excellent contentions, but at the end, not one of them had
+succeeded in weakening in the least degree his inward conviction that he
+had his share in Stella's death. Unless her death was an accident,
+unless, using her drug, she fell asleep and so drifted unintentionally
+out of life! He still caught at that hope.
+
+"Are you sure that the handwriting was Stella's?" he asked.
+
+"Quite. I saw the letter."
+
+"Did the editor give it to you?"
+
+"No, he had to keep it for his own protection."
+
+"That's a pity," said Harry. A pity--or a relief, since, without that
+evidence before his eyes, he could still insist upon his pretence.
+
+"Not such a great pity," answered Martin, and taking a letter from his
+pocket he threw it down upon the table, with the ghost of a smile upon
+his face. "What do you think I have been doing during the last two
+years?" he asked drily.
+
+Harry pounced upon the letter and his first glance dispelled his
+illusion--nay, proved to him that he had never had faith in it. For he
+saw, without surprise, the broad strokes and the straight up-and-down
+letters familiar to him of old. Stella had always written rather like a
+man, a man without character. He had made a joke of it to her in the
+time before the little jokes aimed by the one at the other had begun to
+rasp.
+
+"Yes, she wrote the letter and signed it with Sir Chichester's name."
+
+Millie Splay reached out for the letter.
+
+"Stella took a big risk," she said. "I don't understand it. She must
+have foreseen that Chichester's hand was likely to be familiar in the
+office."
+
+"No, Millie," said Sir Chichester suddenly, and he spurred his memory.
+"Of course! Of course! Stella helped me with the telephone one day this
+week in the library there. I told her that I was new to the _Harpoon_."
+He suddenly beat upon the table with his fist. "But why should she write
+the letter at all? Why should she want her death here, under these
+strange conditions, announced to the world? A little cruel I call
+it--yes, Millie, a little cruel."
+
+"Stella wasn't cruel," said Lady Splay.
+
+"She wasn't," Hillyard agreed. "I know why she wrote that. She wrote it
+to strengthen her hand and will at the last moment. The message was
+sent, the announcement of her death would be published in the morning,
+was already in print. Just that knowledge would serve as the final
+compulsion to do what she wished to do. She wrote lest her courage and
+nerve should at the last moment fail her, as to my knowledge they had
+failed her before."
+
+"Before!" cried Millie. "She had tried before! Oh, poor woman!"
+
+"Yes," said Hillyard, and he told them all of the vague but very real
+fear which had once driven him into Surrey in chase of her; of her
+bedroom with the bed unslept in and the lights still burning in the
+blaze of a summer morning; of herself sitting all night at her
+writing-table, making dashes and figures upon the notepaper and unable
+to steel herself to the last dreadful act.
+
+Martin Hillyard gave no reason for her misery upon that occasion, nor
+did any one think to inquire. He just told the story from his heart, and
+therefore with a great simplicity of words. There was not one of those
+who heard him, but was moved.
+
+"Yet there were perhaps a couple of hours in her life more grim and
+horrible than any in that long night," he went on, "the hours between
+ten o'clock and midnight yesterday."
+
+"Ah, but we don't know how they were spent," began Sir Chichester.
+
+"We know something," returned Martin gravely. "I told you that that
+letter was corroborated before the paragraph it contained was inserted
+in the paper."
+
+"Yes," said Lady Splay.
+
+"Whilst they were waiting for the news from France, which did not come,
+they rang you up from the _Harpoon_ office. Yes: they rang up Rackham
+Park."
+
+Harry Luttrell snatched up the letter once more from the table. Yes,
+there across the left-hand corner was printed Sir Chichester's telephone
+number and the district exchange.
+
+"They were answered by a woman. Of that there's no doubt. And the woman
+assured them that Stella Croyle was dead. This was at a quarter-past
+twelve."
+
+There was a movement of horror about the table, and then, with dry lips,
+Millie Splay whispered:
+
+"Stella!"
+
+"Yes. It must have been," answered Hillyard. "Oh, she had thought out
+her plan to its last detail. She knew the letter might not be enough.
+So, whilst we were all dancing at Harrel, she sat alone from ten to
+midnight in that library, waiting for the telephone to ring, hoping
+perhaps--for all we know--at the bottom of her heart that it would not
+ring. But it did, and she answered."
+
+The picture rose vividly before them all. Harrel, with its lighted
+ball-room and joyous dancers on the one side; the silent library on the
+other, with Stella herself in all her finery, sitting with her haggard
+eyes fixed upon the telephone, whilst the slow minutes passed.
+
+"That's terrible," said Millie Splay in a low voice; and such a wave of
+pity swept over the four people that for a long while no further word
+was said. Joan upstairs in her room was forgotten. Any thought of
+resentment in that Stella had used Sir Chichester's name was overlooked
+by the revelation of the long travail of her soul.
+
+"I remember that she once said to me, 'Women do get the worst of it when
+they kick over the traces,'" Hillyard resumed. "And undoubtedly they do.
+On the other hand you have McKerrel's hard-headed verdict, 'If these
+poor neurotic bodies had any work to do they wouldn't have so much time
+to worry about their troubles.' Who shall choose between them? And what
+does it matter now? Stella's gone. She will strain her poor little
+unhappy heart no more against the bars."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+JENNY AND MILLIE SPLAY
+
+
+After a time their thoughts reverted to the living.
+
+"There's Joan," said Millie Splay. "Jenny Prask hates her. She means to
+drag her into some scandal."
+
+"If she can," said Martin. He went out into the hall and returned with
+the key of Stella Croyle's room. He held it up before them all.
+
+"This key was found on the lawn outside the library window this morning
+by Luttrell. Jenny has never referred to it since she ran downstairs
+this morning crying out that the key was not in the lock. It was lying
+on the hall table all through the time when Sir Chichester was
+questioning her, and she said never a word about it. She was much too
+clever. But she saw it. I was watching her when she did see it. There
+was no concealing the swift look of satisfaction which flashed across
+her face. I haven't a doubt that she herself dropped the key where it
+was found."
+
+"Nor I," Luttrell agreed with a despairing vehemence, "but we can't
+prove it. Jenny Prask is going to know nothing of that key. 'No, no, no,
+no!' she is going to say, 'Ask Miss Whitworth! Miss Whitworth came back
+from Harrel. Miss Whitworth was the last person to see Mrs. Croyle
+alive. Ask her!' It is Jenny Prask or Miss Whitworth. We are up against
+that alternative all the time. And Jenny holds all the cards. For she
+knows, damn her, what happened here last night."
+
+"She did hold all the cards this morning," Hillyard corrected. "She
+doesn't now. Look at this key! There was a heavy dew last night. It was
+wet underfoot in the garden at Harrel."
+
+"Yes," said Millie.
+
+"How is it then that there's no rust upon the key?" and as he asked the
+question he twirled the key so that the light flashed upon stem and
+wards until they shone like silver. "No, this key was placed where you
+found it, Luttrell, not last night, but this morning after the sun had
+dried the grass."
+
+"But we came home by daylight," Sir Chichester interposed. "They might
+argue that Joan might have slipped downstairs before she went to bed,
+with the key in her hand."
+
+"But she wouldn't have chosen that spot in front of the library window.
+She might have flung it from her window, she might conceivably have
+slipped round the house and laid it under Mrs. Croyle's window. But to
+place it in front of the library to which room she returned from
+Harrel--no."
+
+"Yes," said Sir Chichester doubtfully. "I see. Joan can make good that
+point. Yes, she can explain that." And Millie Splay broke in with
+impatience:
+
+"Explain it! Of course. But what we want is to avoid that she should
+have to explain anything, that she should be called as a witness at
+all!"
+
+There lay the point of trouble. To it, they came ceaselessly back,
+revolving in the circle of their vain argument. Joan had something to
+conceal, and Jenny Prask was determined that she should disclose it, and
+Jenny Prask held the means by which to force her.
+
+"But that's just what I am driving at," continued Martin. "We can't
+afford to be gentle here. There's no lie Jenny Prask wouldn't tell to
+force Joan into the witness box. We have got to deal relentlessly with
+Jenny Prask. A woman's voice spoke from this house over the telephone to
+London at a quarter-past twelve last night, and said that Stella was
+dead. Whose voice? Not Joan's. Joan was having supper with Luttrell at
+twelve o'clock. I saw her, others, too, saw her of course. Whose voice
+then? Stella's, as we say--as we know. But if not Stella's, as Jenny
+Prask says--why then there is only one other woman's voice which could
+have given the news."
+
+"Jenny's," cried Millie with a sudden upspring of hope.
+
+"Yes, Jenny Prask's."
+
+Millie Splay rose from her chair swiftly and rang the bell; and when
+Harper answered it, she said:
+
+"Will you ask Jenny to come here?"
+
+"Now, my lady?"
+
+"Now."
+
+Harper went out of the room and Millie turned again to her friends.
+
+"Will you leave this to me?" she asked.
+
+Sir Chichester was inclined to demur. A few deft and pointed questions,
+very clear, such as might naturally occur to Hillyard or Luttrell, or
+Sir Chichester himself might come in usefully to put the polish, as it
+were, on Millie's spade work. Harry Luttrell smiled grimly.
+
+"We didn't exactly cover ourselves with glory this morning," he said. "I
+think that we had better leave it to Lady Splay."
+
+Sir Chichester reluctantly consented, and they all waited anxiously for
+Jenny's appearance. That she would fight to the last no one doubted.
+Would she fight even to her own danger?
+
+Jenny came into the room, quietly respectful, and without a trace of
+apprehension.
+
+"You sent for me, my lady."
+
+"Yes, Jenny."
+
+Jenny closed the door and came forward to the table.
+
+"Do you still persist in your story of this morning?" Lady Splay asked.
+
+"Yes, my lady."
+
+"You did not see your mistress at all after Miss Whitworth had talked
+with her in the library?"
+
+"No, my lady."
+
+"Jenny, I advise you to be quite sure before you speak."
+
+"I am not to be frightened, my lady," said Jenny Prask, with a spot of
+bright colour showing suddenly in her cheeks.
+
+"I am not trying to frighten you," Millie Splay returned. "But some
+unexpected news has reached us which, if you persist, will place you in
+an awkward position."
+
+Jenny Prask smiled. She turned again to the door.
+
+"Is that all, my lady?"
+
+"You had better hear what the news is."
+
+"As you please, my lady."
+
+Jenny stopped and resumed her position.
+
+"The announcement of Mrs. Croyle's death appeared in the _Harpoon_ this
+morning. The news was left at the _Harpoon_ office by a chauffeur with a
+private car at midnight--Mrs. Croyle's car."
+
+"It never left the garage last night," said Jenny fiercely.
+
+"You know that for certain?"
+
+"I am engaged to the chauffeur," she replied with a smile; and Millie
+Splay looked sharply up.
+
+"Oh," she murmured slowly, after a pause. "Thank you, Jenny. Yes, thank
+you."
+
+The quiet satisfaction of Millie Splay's voice puzzled Jenny and
+troubled her security. She watched Lady Splay warily. From that moment
+her assurance faltered, and with the loss of her ease, she lost
+something, too, of her respectful manner. A note of impertinence became
+audible.
+
+"Very happy, I'm sure," she said.
+
+"The motor-car delivered the message at midnight," Lady Splay resumed,
+"and--this is what I ask your attention to, Jenny--the editor, in order
+to obtain corroboration of the message before he inserted it in his
+paper, rang up Rackham Park."
+
+Lady Splay paused for Jenny's comment, but none was uttered then. Jenny
+was listening with a concentration of all her thoughts. Here was a new
+fact of which she was ignorant, creeping into the affair. Whither did it
+lead? Did it strike her weapon from her hand? Upset her fine plan of
+avenging her dear mistress's most unhappy life? She would not believe
+it.
+
+"He rang up Rackham Park--mark the time, Jenny--at a few minutes after
+twelve," said Lady Splay impressively, and Jenny's uneasiness was
+markedly increased.
+
+"Fancy that!" she returned flippantly. "But I don't see, my lady, what
+that has to do with me."
+
+"You will see, Jenny," Lady Splay continued with gentleness. "He got an
+answer."
+
+Jenny turned that announcement over in her mind.
+
+"An answer, did he?"
+
+"Yes, Jenny, and an answer in a woman's voice."
+
+A startled cry broke from the lips of Jenny Prask. Her cheeks blanched
+and horror stared suddenly from her eyes. She understood whose voice it
+must have been which answered the question from London. Before her, too,
+the pitiful vision of the lonely woman waiting for the shrill summons of
+the telephone bell to close the door of life upon her, rose clear; and
+such a flood of grief and compassion welled up in her as choked her
+utterance.
+
+"Oh!" she whispered, moaning.
+
+"Whose voice was it, Jenny?"
+
+At the question Jenny rallied. All the more dearly because of that
+vision, should Joan Whitworth pay, the shining armour of her young
+beauty be pierced, her pride be humbled, her indifference turned to
+shame.
+
+"I can't think, my lady--unless it was Miss Whitworth's."
+
+"I asked you to mark the time, Jenny. A few minutes after midnight. Miss
+Whitworth was at that moment in the supper-room at Harrel. She was seen
+there. The woman's voice which answered was either Mrs. Croyle's or
+yours."
+
+Nothing could have been quieter or gentler than Millie Splay's
+utterance. But it was like a searing iron to the shoulders of Jenny
+Prask.
+
+"Mine!" The word was launched in a cry of incredulous anger. "It wasn't
+mine. Oh, as if I would do such a thing! The idea! Well, I never did!"
+
+"I don't believe it was yours, Jenny," said Millie Splay.
+
+"Granted, I'm sure," returned Jenny Prask, tossing her head.
+
+"But how many people will agree with me?" Millie Splay went on.
+
+"I don't care, my lady."
+
+"Don't you? You will, Jenny," said Millie in a hard and biting tone
+which contrasted violently with the smoothness of her earlier questions.
+"You are trying, very maliciously, to do a great injury to a young girl
+who had never a thought of hurting your mistress, and you have only
+succeeded in placing yourself in real danger."
+
+Jenny tried to laugh contemptuously.
+
+"Me in danger! Goodness me, what next, I wonder?"
+
+"Just listen how your story works out, Jenny," and Millie Splay set it
+out succinctly step by step.
+
+"Mrs. Croyle never took chloroform as a drug. Mrs. Croyle had no
+troubles. Mrs. Croyle was quite gay this week. Yet she was found dead
+with a glass of chloroform arranged between her pillows, so that the
+fumes must kill her--and Jenny Prask was her maid. A motor-car took the
+news of Mrs. Croyle's death to London before it had occurred and took
+the news from Rackham Park. There was only one motor-car in the
+garage--Mrs. Croyle's--and Mrs. Croyle's chauffeur was engaged to Jenny
+Prask, Mrs. Croyle's maid. London then telephones to Rackham Park for
+corroboration of the news, and a woman's voice confirms it--an hour
+before it was true. There are only two women to choose from, Mrs. Croyle
+and Jenny Prask, her maid. But since Mrs. Croyle never took drugs, and
+had no troubles or thoughts of suicide and was quite gay, it follows
+that Jenny Prask----"
+
+At this point Jenny interrupted in a voice in which fear was now very
+distinctly audible. "Why, you can't mean--Oh, my lady, you are telling
+me that--oh!"
+
+"Yes, it begins to look black, Jenny, but I am not at the end," Millie
+Splay continued implacably. Jenny was not the only woman in that house
+who could fight if her darling was attacked. "You proceed to direct
+suspicion at a young girl with the statement that you never saw your
+mistress after half past nine that night or helped her to undress; and
+to complete your treachery, you take the key of Mrs. Croyle's door which
+you found inside her room this morning, and threw it where it may avert
+inquiry from you and point it against another."
+
+Jenny Prask flinched. The conviction with which Lady Splay announced as
+a fact the opinion of the small conclave about the table quite deceived
+her.
+
+"So you know about the key?" she said sullenly. And about the table ran
+a little quiver of relief. With that question, Jenny Prask had delivered
+herself into their hands.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Jenny stood with a mutinous face and silent lips. Lady Splay had
+marshalled in their order the items of the case which would be made
+against her, if she persisted in her lie. How would she receive them?
+Persist, reckless of her own overthrow, so long as she overthrew Joan
+Whitworth too? Or surrender angrily? The four people watched for her
+answer with anxiety; and it was given in a way which they least
+expected. For Jenny covered her face with her hands, her shoulders began
+to heave and great tears burst out between her fingers and trickled down
+the backs of her hands.
+
+"It's unbearable," she sobbed. "I would have given my life for
+her--that's the truth. Oh, I know that most maids serve their mistresses
+for what they can get out of them. But she was so kind to me--wherever
+she went she was thoughtful of my comfort. Oh, if I had guessed what she
+meant to do! And I might have!"
+
+The truth came out now. Stella Croyle had given the letter to Jenny, and
+Jenny herself had taken it to the garage and sent the chauffeur off upon
+his journey. She had no idea of what the letter contained. Stella was in
+the habit of inhaling chloroform; she carried a bottle of it in her
+dressing-case--a bottle which Jenny had taken secretly from the room and
+smashed into atoms after Doctor McKerrel's departure. She had already
+conceived her plan to involve Joan in so much suspicion that she must
+needs openly confess that she had returned from Harrel to meet Mario
+Escobar in the empty house.
+
+"Mario Escobar!" Millie Splay exclaimed. "It was he." She turned pale.
+Sir Charles Hardiman had spoken frankly to her of Escobar. A creature of
+the shadows--it was rumored that he lived on the blackmailing of women.
+Joan was not out of the wood then! Martin Hillyard was quick to appease
+her fears.
+
+"He will not trouble you," and when Jenny had gone from the room he
+added, "Mario Escobar was arrested this morning. He will be interned
+till the end of the war and deported afterwards."
+
+Lady Splay rose, her face bright with relief.
+
+"Thank you," she said warmly to Hillyard. "I am going up to Joan." At
+the door she stopped to add, "Now that it's over, I don't mind telling
+you that I admire Jenny Prask. Out-and-out loyalty like hers is not so
+common that we can think lightly of it."
+
+Martin Hillyard turned to Sir Chichester.
+
+"And now, if you will allow me, I will open my box of cigarettes."
+
+Harry Luttrell went back to his depot the next morning, without seeing
+Joan again. Millicent Splay wrote to him during the next week. The
+inquest had been confined within its proper limits. Jenny Prask had
+spoken the truth in the witness box, and from beginning to end there had
+been no mention of Joan or Mario Escobar. A verdict of temporary
+insanity had been returned, and Stella now lay in the village
+churchyard. Harry Luttrell drew a breath of relief and turned to his
+work. For six weeks his days and nights were full; and then came
+twenty-four hours' leave and a swift journey into Sussex. He arrived at
+Rackham Park in the dusk of the evening. By a good chance he found Joan
+with Millie Splay and Sir Chichester alone.
+
+Sir Chichester welcomed him with cordiality.
+
+"My dear fellow, I am delighted to see you. You will stay the night, of
+course."
+
+"No," Harry answered. "I must get back to London this evening."
+
+He took a cup of tea, and Sir Chichester, obtuse to the warning glances
+of his wife, plunged into an account of the events which had followed
+his departure.
+
+"I drew out a statement. Nothing could have been more concise, the
+coroner said. What's the matter, Millie? Why don't you leave me alone?
+Oh--ah--yes," and he hummed a little and spluttered a little, and then
+with an air of the subtlest craft he remarked, "There are those plans
+for the new pig-sties, Millie, which I am anxious to show you."
+
+He was manoeuvred at last from the room. Harry Luttrell and Joan
+Whitworth were left standing opposite to one another in the room.
+
+"Joan," Harry Luttrell said, "in ten days I go back to France."
+
+With a queer little stumble and her hands fluttering out she went
+towards him blinded by a rush of tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+"BUT STILL A RUBY KINDLES IN THE VINE"
+
+
+Between the North and South Downs in the east of Sussex lies a wide
+tract of pleasant homely country which, during certain months of those
+years, was subject to a strange phenomenon. Listen on a still day when
+the clouds were low, or at night when the birds were all asleep, and you
+heard a faint, soft thud, so very faint that it was rather a convulsion
+of the air than an actual sound. Fancy might paint it as the tap of an
+enormous muffled drum beaten at a giant's funeral leagues and leagues
+away. It was not the roll of thunder. There was no crash, however
+distant, along the sky. It was just the one soft impact with a
+suggestion of earth-wide portentous force; and an interval followed; and
+the blurred sound again. The dwellers in those parts, who had sons and
+husbands at the war, made up no fancies to explain it. They listened
+with a sinking of the heart; for what they heard was the roar of the
+British guns at Ypres.
+
+Into this country Martin Hillyard drove a small motor-car on a day of
+October two years afterwards. Until this week he had not set foot in his
+country of the soft grey skies since he had left Rackham Park. He had
+hurried down to Rackham as soon as he had reported to his Chief, but not
+with the high anticipation of old days. In what spirit would he find his
+friends? How would Joan meet him? For sorrow had marked her cross upon
+the door of that house as upon so many others in the land.
+
+Martin had arrived before luncheon.
+
+"Joan is hunting to-day," said Millie, "on the other side of the county.
+She will catch a train back."
+
+"I can fetch her," Hillyard returned. "She is well?"
+
+"Yes. She was overworked and ordered a rest. She has been with us a
+fortnight and is better. She was very grateful for your letters. She
+sent you a telegram because she could not bear to write."
+
+Martin had understood that. He had had little news of her during the two
+years--a few lines about Harry in the crowded obituaries of the
+newspapers after the attack in 1917 on the Messines Ridge, where he met
+his death, and six months afterwards the announcement that a son was
+born.
+
+"Joan's distress was terrible," said Millie. "At first she refused to
+believe that Harry was killed. He was reported as 'missing' for weeks;
+and during those weeks Joan, with a confident face--whatever failings of
+the heart beset her during the night vigils none ever knew--daily sought
+for news of him at the Red Cross office at Devonshire House. There had
+been the usual rumours. One officer in one prison camp had heard of
+Harry Luttrell in another. A sergeant had seen him wounded, not
+mortally. A bullet had struck him in the foot. Joan lived upon these
+rumours. Finally proof came--proof irrefutable.
+
+"Joan collapsed then," said Millie Splay. "We brought her down here and
+put her to bed. She cried--oh, day and night!--she who never cried! We
+were afraid for her--afraid for the child that was coming."
+
+Millie Splay smiled wistfully. "She had just two weeks with Harry. They
+were married before he left for France in 'sixteen, and then had another
+week together in the January of 'seventeen at his house in the Clayford
+country. That was all." Millie Splay was silent for a few minutes. Then
+she resumed cheerfully:
+
+"But she is better now. She will talk of him, indeed, likes at times to
+talk of him; she is comforted by it, and the boy"--Millie's face became
+radiant--"the boy is splendid. You shall see him."
+
+Martin was shown the boy. He seemed to him much like any other boy of
+his age, but such remarkable things in the way of avoirdupois poundage
+and teething, serenity of temper and quickness of apprehension were
+explained to him that he felt that he must be in the presence of a
+prodigy.
+
+"Chichester will want to see you. He is in the library. He is Chairman
+of our Food Committee. You may have seen it in the papers," said Millie
+with a smile. "He is back in the papers again, you know."
+
+"Good. Then he won't object to me smoking a cigarette," said Martin.
+
+He motored over in the afternoon to the house on the other side of
+Sussex where he was to find Joan. He drove her away with him, and as
+they came to the top of a little crest in the flat country, Martin
+stopped the car and looked about him.
+
+"I never cease to be surprised by the beauty of this country when I come
+home to it."
+
+"Yes, but I wish _that_ would stop."
+
+_That_ was the dull and muffled boom of the great guns across the sea.
+They sat and listened to it in silence.
+
+"There it comes again!" said Joan in a quiet voice. "Oh, I do wish it
+would stop! What has happened to me, has happened to enough of us."
+
+As Millie had said, she was glad to talk of Harry Luttrell to his
+friends; and she talked simply and naturally, with a little note of
+wistfulness heard in all the words.
+
+"We were going to have a small house in London and spend our time
+between it and the old Manor at Clayford.... Harry had seen the
+house.... He was always writing that I must watch for it to come into
+the market.... It had a brass front door. There we should be. We could
+go out when we wished, and when we wished we could be snug behind our
+own brass door." Joan laughed simply and lovingly as she spoke. Hillyard
+had never seen her more beautiful than she was at this moment. If grief
+had taken from her just the high brilliancy of her beauty, it had added
+to it a most appealing tenderness.
+
+"After all," she said again, "Harry fulfilled himself. I love to think
+of that. The ambition of his life--young as he was he saw it realised
+and helped--more than all others, except perhaps one old Colonel--to
+realise it. And he left me a son ... to carry on.... There will be no
+stigma on the Clayfords when my boy gets his commission. Won't I tell
+him why? Won't I just tell him!"
+
+And the soft October evening closed in upon them as they drove.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Summons, by A.E.W. Mason
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