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+*Project Gutenberg Etext The Agony Column, by Earl Derr Biggers*
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+The Agony Column
+
+by Earl Derr Biggers
+
+July, 1999  [Etext #1814]
+[Date last updated: March 6, 2005]
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+This Etext prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer.
+
+
+
+
+
+The Agony Column
+
+by Earl Derr Biggers
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+London that historic summer was almost unbearably hot.  It seems,
+looking back, as though the big baking city in those days was meant
+to serve as an anteroom of torture--an inadequate bit of
+preparation for the hell that was soon to break in the guise of the
+Great War.  About the soda-water bar in the drug store near the
+Hotel Cecil many American tourists found solace in the sirups and
+creams of home.  Through the open windows of the Piccadilly tea
+shops you might catch glimpses of the English consuming quarts of
+hot tea in order to become cool.   It is a paradox they swear by.
+
+About nine o'clock on the morning of Friday, July twenty-fourth,
+in that memorable year nineteen hundred and fourteen, Geoffrey West
+left his apartments in Adelphi Terrace and set out for breakfast at
+the Carlton.  He had found the breakfast room of that dignified hotel
+the coolest in London, and through some miracle, for the season had
+passed, strawberries might still be had there.  As he took his way
+through the crowded Strand, surrounded on all sides by honest
+British faces wet with honest British perspiration he thought
+longingly of his rooms in Washington Square, New York.  For West,
+despite the English sound of that Geoffrey, was as American as
+Kansas, his native state, and only pressing business was at that
+moment holding him in England, far from the country that glowed
+unusually rosy because of its remoteness.
+
+At the Carlton news stand West bought two morning papers--the
+Times for study and the Mail for entertainment and then passed on
+into the restaurant.  His waiter--a tall soldierly Prussian,
+more blond than West himself--saw him coming and, with a nod and
+a mechanical German smile, set out for the plate of strawberries
+which he knew would be the first thing desired by the American.
+West seated himself at his usual table and, spreading out the Daily
+Mail, sought his favorite column.  The first item in that column
+brought a delighted smile to his face:
+
+"The one who calls me Dearest is not genuine or they would write
+to me."
+
+Any one at all familiar with English journalism will recognize at
+once what department it was that appealed most to West.  During
+his three weeks in London he had been following, with the keenest
+joy, the daily grist of Personal Notices in the Mail.  This string
+of intimate messages, popularly known as the Agony Column, has long
+been an honored institution in the English press.  In the days of
+Sherlock Holmes it was in the Times that it flourished, and many a
+criminal was tracked to earth after he had inserted some alluring
+mysterious message in it.  Later the Telegraph gave it room; but,
+with the advent of halfpenny journalism, the simple souls moved
+en masse to the Mail.
+
+Tragedy and comedy mingle in the Agony Column.  Erring ones are
+urged to return for forgiveness; unwelcome suitors are warned that
+"Father has warrant prepared; fly, Dearest One!"  Loves that would
+shame by their ardor Abelard and Heloise are frankly published--at
+ten cents a word--for all the town to smile at.  The gentleman in
+the brown derby states with fervor that the blonde governess who
+got off the tram at Shepherd's Bush has quite won his heart.  Will
+she permit his addresses?   Answer; this department.  For three
+weeks West had found this sort of thing delicious reading.  Best of
+all, he could detect in these messages nothing that was not open
+and innocent.  At their worst they were merely an effort to
+side-step old Lady Convention; this inclination was so rare in
+the British, he felt it should be encouraged.  Besides, he was
+inordinately fond of mystery and romance, and these engaging twins
+hovered always about that column.
+
+
+So, while waiting for his strawberries, he smiled over the
+ungrammatical outburst of the young lady who had come to doubt the
+genuineness of him who called her Dearest.  He passed on to the
+second item of the morning.  Spoke one whose heart had been
+completely conquered:
+
+MY LADY sleeps.  She of raven tresses. Corner seat from Victoria,
+Wednesday night.  Carried program.  Gentleman answering inquiry
+desires acquaintance.  Reply here. --LE ROI.
+
+West made a mental note to watch for the reply of raven tresses.
+The next message proved to be one of Aye's lyrics--now almost a
+daily feature of the column:
+
+DEAREST: Tender loving wishes to my dear one.  Only to be with you
+now and always.  None "fairer in my eyes."  Your name is music to
+me.  I love you more than life itself, my own beautiful darling,
+my proud sweetheart, my joy, my all!  Jealous of everybody.  Kiss
+your dear hands for me.  Love you only.  Thine ever. --AYE.
+
+Which, reflected West, was generous of Aye--at ten cents a word
+--and in striking contrast to the penurious lover who wrote,
+farther along in the column:
+
+--loveu dearly; wantocu; longing; missu--
+
+But those extremely personal notices ran not alone to love.
+Mystery, too, was present, especially in the aquatic utterance:
+
+DEFIANT MERMAID: Not mine.  Alligators bitingu now.  'Tis well;
+delighted. --FIRST FISH.
+
+And the rather sanguinary suggestion:
+
+DE Box: First round; tooth gone.  Finale.  You will FORGET ME NOT.
+
+At this point West's strawberries arrived and even the Agony
+Column could not hold his interest.  When the last red berry was
+eaten he turned back to read:
+
+WATERLOO: Wed.  11:53 train.  Lady who left in taxi and waved,
+care to know gent, gray coat? --SINCERE.
+
+Also the more dignified request put forward in:
+
+GREAT CENTRAL: Gentleman who saw lady in bonnet 9 Monday morning
+in Great Central Hotel lift would greatly value opportunity of
+obtaining introduction.
+
+This exhausted the joys of the Agony Column for the day, and West,
+like the solid citizen he really was, took up the Times to discover
+what might be the morning's news.  A great deal of space was given
+to the appointment of a new principal for Dulwich College.  The
+affairs of the heart, in which that charming creature, Gabrielle
+Ray, was at the moment involved, likewise claimed attention.  And
+in a quite unimportant corner, in a most unimportant manner, it was
+related that Austria had sent an ultimatum to Serbia.  West had
+read part way through this stupid little piece of news, when
+suddenly the Thunderer and all its works became an uninteresting
+blur.
+
+A girl stood just inside the door of the Carlton breakfast room.
+
+Yes; he should have pondered that despatch from Vienna.  But such
+a girl!  It adds nothing at all to say that her hair was a dull
+sort of gold; her eyes violet.  Many girls have been similarly
+blessed.  It was her manner; the sweet way she looked with those
+violet eyes through a battalion of head waiters and resplendent
+managers; her air of being at home here in the Carlton or anywhere
+else that fate might drop her down.  Unquestionably she came from
+oversea--from the States.
+
+She stepped forward into the restaurant.  And now slipped also into
+view, as part of the background for her, a middle-aged man, who
+wore the conventional black of the statesman.  He, too, bore the
+American label unmistakably.  Nearer and nearer to West she drew,
+and he saw that in her hand she carried a copy of the Daily Mail.
+
+West's waiter was a master of the art of suggesting that no table
+in the room was worth sitting at save that at which he held ready
+a chair.  Thus he lured the girl and her companion to repose not
+five feet from where West sat.  This accomplished, he whipped out
+his order book, and stood with pencil poised, like a reporter in
+an American play.
+
+"The strawberries are delicious," he said in honeyed tones.
+
+The man looked at the girl, a question in his eyes.
+
+"Not for me, dad," she said.  "I hate them!  Grapefruit, please."
+
+As the waiter hurried past, West hailed him.  He spoke in loud
+defiant tones.
+
+"Another plate of the strawberries!" he commanded.  "They are
+better than ever to-day."
+
+For a second, as though he were part of the scenery, those violet
+eyes met his with a casual impersonal glance.  Then their owner
+slowly spread out her own copy of the Mail.
+
+"What's the news?" asked the statesman, drinking deep from his
+glass of water.
+
+"Don't ask me," the girl answered, without looking up.  "I've found
+something more entertaining than news.  Do you know--the English
+papers run humorous columns!  Only they aren't called that.  They're
+called Personal Notices.  And such notices!"  She leaned across
+the table.  "Listen to this: 'Dearest: Tender loving wishes to my
+dear one.  Only to be with you now and always.  None "fairer in my
+eyes."--'"
+
+The man locked uncomfortably about him.  "Hush!" he pleaded.  "It
+doesn't sound very nice to me."
+
+"Nice!" cried the girl.  "Oh, but it is--quite nice.  And so
+deliciously open and aboveboard.  'Your name is music to me.  I
+love you more--'"
+
+"What do we see to-day?" put in her father hastily.
+
+"We're going down to the City and have a look at the Temple.
+Thackeray lived there once--and Oliver Goldsmith--"
+
+"All right--the Temple it is."
+
+"Then the Tower of London.  It's full of the most romantic
+associations.  Especially the Bloody Tower, where those poor little
+princes were murdered.  Aren't you thrilled?"
+
+"I am if you say so."
+
+"You're a dear!  I promise not to tell the people back in Texas
+that you showed any interest in kings and such--if you will show
+just a little.  Otherwise I'll spread the awful news that you
+took off your hat when King George went by."
+
+The statesman smiled.  West felt that he, who had no business to,
+was smiling with him.
+
+The waiter returned, bringing grapefruit, and the strawberries West
+had ordered.  Without another look toward West, the girl put down
+her paper and began her breakfasting.  As often as he dared, however,
+West looked at her.  With patriotic pride he told himself:  "Six
+months in Europe, and the most beautiful thing I've seen comes from
+back home!"
+
+When he rose reluctantly twenty minutes later his two compatriots
+were still at table, discussing their plans for the day.  As is
+usual in such cases, the girl arranged, the man agreed.
+
+With one last glance in her direction, West went out on the parched
+pavement of Haymarket.
+
+Slowly he walked back to his rooms.  Work was waiting there for
+him; but instead of getting down to it, he sat on the balcony of
+his study, gazing out on the courtyard that had been his chief
+reason for selecting those apartments.  Here, in the heart of the
+city, was a bit of the countryside transported--the green, trim,
+neatly tailored countryside that is the most satisfying thing in
+England.  There were walls on which the ivy climbed high, narrow
+paths that ran between blooming beds of flowers, and opposite
+his windows a seldom-opened, most romantic gate.  As he sat
+looking down he seemed to see there below him the girl of the
+Carlton.  Now she sat on the rustic bench; now she bent above the
+envious flowers; now she stood at the gate that opened out to a
+hot sudden bit of the city.
+
+And as he watched her there in the garden she would never enter, as
+he reflected unhappily that probably he would see her no more--the
+idea came to him.
+
+At first he put it from him as absurd, impossible.  She was, to
+apply a fine word much abused, a lady; he supposedly a gentleman.
+Their sort did not do such things.  If he yielded to this temptation
+she would be shocked, angry, and from him would slip that one chance
+in a thousand he had--the chance of meeting her somewhere, some day.
+
+And yet--and yet--She, too, had found the Agony Column entertaining
+and--quite nice.  There was a twinkle in her eyes that bespoke a
+fondness for romance.  She was human, fun-loving--and, above all,
+the joy of youth was in her heart.
+
+Nonsense!  West went inside and walked the floor.  The idea was
+preposterous.  Still--he smiled--it was filled with amusing
+possibilities.  Too bad he must put it forever away and settle down
+to this stupid work!
+
+Forever away?  Well--
+
+On the next morning, which was Saturday, West did not breakfast at
+the Carlton.  The girl, however, did.  As she and her father sat
+down the old man said: "I see you've got your Daily Mail."
+
+"Of course!" she answered.  "I couldn't do without it.  Grapefruit
+--yes."
+
+She began to read.  Presently her cheeks flushed and she put the
+paper down.
+
+"What is it?" asked the Texas statesman.
+
+"To-day," she answered sternly, "you do the British Museum.  You've
+put it off long enough."
+
+The old man sighed.  Fortunately he did not ask to see the Mail.
+If he had, a quarter way down the column of personal notices he
+would have been enraged--or perhaps only puzzled--to read:
+
+CARLTON RESTAURANT: Nine A.M. Friday morning.  Will the young woman
+who preferred grapefruit to strawberries permit the young man who
+had two plates of the latter to say he will not rest until he
+discovers some mutual friend, that they may meet and laugh over
+this column together?
+
+ Lucky for the young man who liked strawberries that his nerve had
+failed him and he was not present at the Carlton that morning!  He
+would have been quite overcome to see the stern uncompromising look
+on the beautiful face of a lady at her grapefruit.  So overcome, in
+fact, that he would probably have left the room at once, and thus
+not seen the mischievous smile that came in time to the lady's face
+--not seen that she soon picked up the paper again and read, with
+that smile, to the end of the column.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+The next day was Sunday; hence it brought no Mail.  Slowly it
+dragged along.  At a ridiculously early hour Monday morning
+Geoffrey West was on the street, seeking his favorite newspaper.
+He found it, found the Agony Column--and nothing else.  Tuesday
+morning again he rose early, still hopeful.  Then and there hope
+died.  The lady at the Carlton deigned no reply.
+
+Well, he had lost, he told himself.  He had staked all on this
+one bold throw; no use.  Probably if she thought of him at all it
+was to label him a cheap joker, a mountebank of the halfpenny
+press.  Richly he deserved her scorn.
+
+On Wednesday he slept late.  He was in no haste to look into the
+Daily Mail; his disappointments of the previous days had been too
+keen.  At last, while he was shaving, he summoned Walters, the
+caretaker of the building, and sent him out to procure a certain
+morning paper.
+
+Walters came back bearing rich treasure, for in the Agony Column
+of that day West, his face white with lather, read joyously:
+
+STRAWBERRY MAN: Only the grapefruit lady's kind heart and her great
+fondness for mystery and romance move her to answer.  The
+strawberry-mad one may write one letter a day for seven days--to
+prove that he is an interesting person, worth knowing.  Then--we
+shall see.  Address: M. A. L., care Sadie Haight, Carlton Hotel.
+
+All day West walked on air, but with the evening came the problem
+of those letters, on which depended, he felt, his entire future
+happiness.  Returning from dinner, he sat down at his desk near
+the windows that looked out on his wonderful courtyard.  The weather
+was still torrid, but with the night had come a breeze to fan the
+hot cheek of London.  It gently stirred his curtains; rustled the
+papers on his desk.
+
+He considered.  Should he at once make known the eminently
+respectable person he was, the hopelessly respectable people he
+knew?  Hardly!  For then, on the instant, like a bubble bursting,
+would go for good all mystery and romance, and the lady of the
+grapefruit would lose all interest and listen to him no more.  He
+spoke solemnly to his rustling curtains.
+
+"No," he said.  "We must have mystery and romance.  But where--where
+shall we find them?"
+
+On the floor above he heard the solid tramp of military boots
+belonging to his neighbor, Captain Stephen Fraser-Freer, of the
+Twelfth Cavalry, Indian Army, home on furlough from that colony
+beyond the seas.  It was from that room overhead that romance and
+mystery were to come in mighty store; but Geoffrey West little
+suspected it at the moment.  Hardly knowing what to say, but gaining
+inspiration as he went along, he wrote the first of seven letters
+to the lady at the Carlton.  And the epistle he dropped in the post
+box at midnight follows here:
+
+DEAR LADY OF THE GRAPEFRUIT: You are very kind.  Also, you are wise.
+Wise, because into my clumsy little Personal you read nothing that
+was not there.  You knew it immediately for what it was--the timid
+tentative clutch of a shy man at the skirts of Romance in passing.
+Believe me, old Conservatism was with me when I wrote that message.
+He was fighting hard.  He followed me, struggling, shrieking,
+protesting, to the post box itself.  But I whipped him.  Glory
+be!  I did for him.
+
+We are young but once, I told him. After that, what use to signal
+to Romance?  The lady at least, I said, will understand.  He sneered
+at that.  He shook his silly gray head.  I will admit he had me
+worried.  But now you have justified my faith in you.  Thank you a
+million times for that!
+
+Three weeks I have been in this huge, ungainly, indifferent city,
+longing for the States.  Three weeks the Agony Column has been my
+sole diversion.  And then--through the doorway of the Carlton
+restaurant--you came--
+
+It is of myself that I must write, I know.  I will not, then, tell
+you what is in my mind--the picture of you I carry.  It would mean
+little to you.  Many Texan gallants, no doubt, have told you the
+same while the moon was bright above you and the breeze was softly
+whispering through the branches of--the branches of the--of the--
+
+Confound it, I don't know!  I have never been in Texas.  It is a
+vice in me I hope soon to correct.  All day I intended to look up
+Texas in the encyclopedia.  But all day I have dwelt in the clouds.
+And there are no reference books in the clouds.
+
+Now I am down to earth in my quiet study.  Pens, ink and paper are
+before me.  I must prove myself a person worth knowing.
+
+From his rooms, they say, you can tell much about a man.  But, alas!
+these peaceful rooms in Adelphi Terrace--I shall not tell the
+number--were sublet furnished.  So if you could see me now you
+would be judging me by the possessions left behind by one Anthony
+Bartholomew.  There is much dust on them.  Judge neither Anthony
+nor me by that.  Judge rather Walters, the caretaker, who lives
+in the basement with his gray-haired wife.  Walters was a gardener
+once, and his whole life is wrapped up in the courtyard on which
+my balcony looks down.  There he spends his time, while up above
+the dust gathers in the corners--
+
+Does this picture distress you, my lady?  You should see the
+courtyard!  You would not blame Walters then.  It is a sample of
+Paradise left at our door--that courtyard.  As English as a hedge,
+as neat, as beautiful.  London is a roar somewhere beyond; between
+our court and the great city is a magic gate, forever closed.  It
+was the court that led me to take these rooms.
+
+And, since you are one who loves mystery, I am going to relate to
+you the odd chain of circumstances that brought me here.
+
+For the first link in that chain we must go back to Interlaken.
+Have you been there yet?  A quiet little town, lying beautiful
+between two shimmering lakes, with the great Jungfrau itself for
+scenery.  From the dining-room of one lucky hotel you may look up
+at dinner and watch the old-rose afterglow light the snow-capped
+mountain.  You would not say then of strawberries: "I hate them."
+Or of anything else in all the world.
+
+A month ago I was in Interlaken.  One evening after dinner I strolled
+along the main street, where all the hotels and shops are drawn up at
+attention before the lovely mountain.  In front of one of the shops
+I saw a collection of walking sticks and, since I needed one for
+climbing, I paused to look them over.  I had been at this only a
+moment when a young Englishman stepped up and also began examining
+the sticks.
+
+I had made a selection from the lot and was turning away to
+find the shopkeeper, when the Englishman spoke.  He was lean,
+distinguished-looking, though quite young, and had that well-tubbed
+appearance which I am convinced is the great factor that has enabled
+the English to assert their authority over colonies like Egypt and
+India, where men are not so thoroughly bathed.
+
+"Er--if you'll pardon me, old chap," he said.  "Not that stick--if
+you don't mind my saying so.  It's not tough enough for mountain
+work.  I would suggest--"
+
+To say that I was astonished is putting it mildly.  If you know the
+English at all, you know it is not their habit to address strangers,
+even under the most pressing circumstances.  Yet here was one of
+that haughty race actually interfering in my selection of a stick.
+I ended by buying the one he preferred, and he strolled along with
+me in the direction of my hotel, chatting meantime in a fashion
+far from British.
+
+We stopped at the Kursaal, where we listened to the music, had a
+drink and threw away a few francs on the little horses.  He came
+with me to the veranda of my hotel.  I was surprised, when he took
+his leave, to find that he regarded me in the light of an old friend.
+He said he would call on me the next morning.
+
+I made up my mind that Archibald Enwright--for that, he told me,
+was his name--was an adventurer down on his luck, who chose to
+forget his British exclusiveness under the stern necessity of getting
+money somehow, somewhere.  The next day, I decided, I should be the
+victim of a touch.
+
+But my prediction failed; Enwright seemed to have plenty of money.
+On that first evening I had mentioned to him that I expected shortly
+to be in London, and he often referred to the fact.  As the time
+approached for me to leave Interlaken he began to throw out the
+suggestion that he should like to have me meet some of his people
+in England.  This, also, was unheard of--against all precedent.
+
+Nevertheless, when I said good-by to him he pressed into my hand a
+letter of introduction to his cousin, Captain Stephen Fraser-Freer,
+of the Twelfth Cavalry, Indian Army, who, he said, would be glad
+to make me at home in London, where he was on furlough at the time
+--or would be when I reached there.
+
+"Stephen's a good sort," said Enwright.  "He'll be jolly pleased to
+show you the ropes.  Give him my best, old boy!"
+
+Of course I took the letter.  But I puzzled greatly over the affair.
+What could be the meaning of this sudden warm attachment that Archie
+had formed for me?  Why should he want to pass me along to his
+cousin at a time when that gentleman, back home after two years in
+India, would be, no doubt, extremely busy?  I made up my mind I
+would not present the letter, despite the fact that Archie had
+with great persistence wrung from me a promise to do so.  I had met
+many English gentlemen, and I felt they were not the sort--despite
+the example of Archie--to take a wandering American to their bosoms
+when he came with a mere letter.  By easy stages I came on to London.
+Here I met a friend, just sailing for home, who told me of some sad
+experiences he had had with letters of introduction--of the cold,
+fishy, "My-dear-fellow-why-trouble-me-with-it?" stares that had
+greeted their presentation.  Good-hearted men all, he said, but
+averse to strangers; an ever-present trait in the English--always
+excepting Archie.
+
+So I put the letter to Captain Fraser-Freer out of my mind.  I had
+business acquaintances here and a few English friends, and I found
+these, as always, courteous and charming.  But it is to my advantage
+to meet as many people as may be, and after drifting about for a
+week I set out one afternoon to call on my captain.  I told myself
+that here was an Englishman who had perhaps thawed a bit in the
+great oven of India.  If not, no harm would be done.
+
+It was then that I came for the first time to this house on Adelphi
+Terrace, for it was the address Archie had given me.  Walters let
+me in, and I learned from him that Captain Fraser-Freer had not yet
+arrived from India.  His rooms were ready--he had kept them during
+his absence, as seems to be the custom over here--and he was
+expected soon.  Perhaps--said Walters--his wife remembered the
+date.  He left me in the lower hall while he went to ask her.
+
+Waiting, I strolled to the rear of the hall.  And then, through an
+open window that let in the summer, I saw for the first time that
+courtyard which is my great love in London--the old ivy-covered
+walls of brick; the neat paths between the blooming beds; the
+rustic seat; the magic gate.  It was incredible that just outside
+lay the world's biggest city, with all its poverty and wealth, its
+sorrows and joys, its roar and rattle.  Here was a garden for
+Jane Austen to people with fine ladies and courtly gentlemen--here
+was a garden to dream in, to adore and to cherish.
+
+When Walters came back to tell me that his wife was uncertain as to
+the exact date when the captain would return, I began to rave about
+that courtyard.  At once he was my friend.  I had been looking for
+quiet lodgings away from the hotel, and I was delighted to find that
+on the second floor, directly under the captain's rooms, there was
+a suite to be sublet.
+
+Walters gave me the address of the agents; and, after submitting to
+an examination that could not have been more severe if I had asked
+for the hand of the senior partner's daughter, they let me come
+here to live.  The garden was mine!
+
+And the captain?  Three days after I arrived I heard above me, for
+the first time, the tread of his military boots.  Now again my
+courage began to fail.  I should have preferred to leave Archie's
+letter lying in my desk and know my neighbor only by his tread above
+me.  I felt that perhaps I had been presumptuous in coming to live
+in the same house with him.  But I had represented myself to Walters
+as an acquaintance of the captain's and the caretaker had lost no
+time in telling me that "my friend" was safely home.
+
+So one night, a week ago, I got up my nerve and went to the
+captain's rooms.  I knocked.  He called to me to enter and I stood
+in his study, facing him.  He was a tall handsome man, fair-haired,
+mustached--the very figure that you, my lady, in your
+boarding-school days, would have wished him to be.  His manner, I
+am bound to admit, was not cordial.
+
+"Captain," I began, "I am very sorry to intrude--" It wasn't the
+thing to say, of course, but I was fussed.  "However, I happen to
+be a neighbor of yours, and I have here a letter of introduction
+from your cousin, Archibald Enwright.  I met him in Interlaken and
+we became very good friends."
+
+"Indeed!" said the captain.
+
+He held out his hand for the letter, as though it were evidence at
+a court-martial.  I passed it over, wishing I hadn't come.  He read
+it through.  It was a long letter, considering its nature.  While I
+waited, standing by his desk--he hadn't asked me to sit down--I
+looked about the room.  It was much like my own study, only I think
+a little dustier.  Being on the third floor it was farther from the
+garden, consequently Walters reached there seldom.
+
+The captain turned back and began to read the letter again.  This
+was decidedly embarrassing.  Glancing down, I happened to see on
+his desk an odd knife, which I fancy he had brought from India.
+The blade was of steel, dangerously sharp, the hilt of gold, carved
+to represent some heathen figure.
+
+Then the captain looked up from Archie's letter and his cold gaze
+fell full upon me.
+
+"My dear fellow," he said, "to the best of my knowledge, I have no
+cousin named Archibald Enwright."
+
+A pleasant situation, you must admit!  It's bad enough when you come
+to them with a letter from their mother, but here was I in this
+Englishman's rooms, boldly flaunting in his face a warm note of
+commendation from a cousin who did not exist!
+
+"I owe you an apology," I said.  I tried to be as haughty as he,
+and fell short by about two miles.  "I brought the letter in
+good faith."
+
+"No doubt of that," he answered.
+
+"Evidently it was given me by some adventurer for purposes of his
+own," I went on; "though I am at a loss to guess what they could
+have been."
+
+"I'm frightfully sorry--really," said he.  But he said it with the
+London inflection, which plainly implies: "I'm nothing of the sort."
+
+A painful pause.  I felt that he ought to give me back the letter;
+but he made no move to do so.  And, of course, I didn't ask for it.
+
+"Ah--er--good night," said I and hurried toward the door.
+
+"Good night," he answered, and I left him standing there with
+Archie's accursed letter in his hand.
+
+That is the story of how I came to this house in Adelphi Terrace.
+There is mystery in it, you must admit, my lady.  Once or twice
+since that uncomfortable call I have passed the captain on the
+stairs; but the halls are very dark, and for that I am grateful.
+I hear him often above me; in fact, I hear him as I write this.
+
+Who was Archie?  What was the idea?  I wonder.
+
+Ah, well, I have my garden, and for that I am indebted to Archie
+the garrulous.  It is nearly midnight now.  The roar of London has
+died away to a fretful murmur, and somehow across this baking
+town a breeze has found its way.  It whispers over the green grass,
+in the ivy that climbs my wall, in the soft murky folds of my
+curtains.  Whispers--what?
+
+Whispers, perhaps, the dreams that go with this, the first of my
+letters to you.  They are dreams that even I dare not whisper yet.
+
+And so--good night.
+
+                                              THE STRAWBERRY MAN.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+With a smile that betrayed unusual interest, the daughter of the
+Texas statesman read that letter on Thursday morning in her room
+at the Carlton.  There was no question about it--the first epistle
+from the strawberry-mad one had caught and held her attention.  All
+day, as she dragged her father through picture galleries, she found
+herself looking forward to another morning, wondering, eager.
+
+But on the following morning Sadie Haight, the maid through whom
+this odd correspondence was passing, had no letter to deliver.  The
+news rather disappointed the daughter of Texas.  At noon she insisted
+on returning to the hotel for luncheon, though, as her father pointed
+out, they were far from the Carlton at the time.  Her journey was
+rewarded.  Letter number two was waiting; and as she read she gasped.
+
+DEAR LADY AT THE CARLTON: I am writing this at three in the morning,
+with London silent as the grave, beyond our garden.  That I am so
+late in getting to it is not because I did not think of you all day
+yesterday; not because I did not sit down at my desk at seven last
+evening to address you.  Believe me, only the most startling, the
+most appalling accident could have held me up.
+
+That most startling, most appalling accident has happened.
+
+I am tempted to give you the news at once in one striking and
+terrible sentence.  And I could write that sentence.  A tragedy,
+wrapped in mystery as impenetrable as a London fog, has befallen
+our quiet little house in Adelphi Terrace.  In their basement
+room the Walters family, sleepless, overwhelmed, sit silent; on
+the dark stairs outside my door I hear at intervals the tramp of
+men on unhappy missions--But no; I must go back to the very start
+of it all:
+
+Last night I had an early dinner at Simpson's, in the Strand--so
+early that I was practically alone in the restaurant.  The letter
+I was about to write to you was uppermost in my mind and, having
+quickly dined, I hurried back to my rooms.  I remember clearly that,
+as I stood in the street before our house fumbling for my keys,
+Big Ben on the Parliament Buildings struck the hour of seven.
+The chime of the great bell rang out in our peaceful thoroughfare
+like a loud and friendly greeting.
+
+Gaining my study, I sat down at once to write.  Over my head I
+could hear Captain Fraser-Freer moving about--attiring himself,
+probably, for dinner.  I was thinking, with an amused smile, how
+horrified he would be if he knew that the crude American below him
+had dined at the impossible hour of six, when suddenly I heard, in
+that room above me, some stranger talking in a harsh determined
+tone.  Then came the captain's answering voice, calmer, more
+dignified.  This conversation went along for some time, growing
+each moment more excited.  Though I could not distinguish a word of
+it, I had the uncomfortable feeling that there was a controversy on;
+and I remember feeling annoyed that any one should thus interfere
+with my composition of your letter, which I regarded as most
+important, you may be sure.
+
+At the end of five minutes of argument there came the heavy
+thump-thump of men struggling above me.  It recalled my college
+days, when we used to hear the fellows in the room above us throwing
+each other about in an excess of youth and high spirits.  But this
+seemed more grim, more determined, and I did not like it.--However,
+I reflected that it was none of my business.  I tried to think about
+my letter.
+
+The struggle ended with a particularly heavy thud that shook our
+ancient house to its foundations.  I sat listening, somehow very
+much depressed.  There was no sound.  It was not entirely dark
+outside--the long twilight--and the frugal Walters had not lighted
+the hall lamps.  Somebody was coming down the stairs very quietly
+--but their creaking betrayed him.  I waited for him to pass
+through the shaft of light that poured from the door open at my back.
+At that moment Fate intervened in the shape of a breeze through my
+windows, the door banged shut, and a heavy man rushed by me in the
+darkness and ran down the stairs.  I knew he was heavy, because the
+passageway was narrow and he had to push me aside to get by.  I
+heard him swear beneath his breath.
+
+Quickly I went to a hall window at the far end that looked out on
+the street.  But the front door did not open; no one came out.  I
+was puzzled for a second then I reentered my room and hurried to my
+balcony.  I could make out the dim figure of a man running through
+the garden at the rear--that garden of which I have so often spoken.
+He did not try to open the gate; he climbed it, and so disappeared
+from sight into the alley.
+
+For a moment I considered.  These were odd actions, surely; but was
+it my place to interfere?  I remembered the cold stare in the eyes
+of Captain Fraser-Freer when I presented that letter.  I saw him
+standing motionless in his murky study, as amiable as a statue.
+Would he welcome an intrusion from me now?
+
+Finally I made up my mind to forget these things and went down to
+find Walters.  He and his wife were eating their dinner in the
+basement.  I told him what had happened.  He said he had let no
+visitor in to see the captain, and was inclined to view my
+misgivings with a cold British eye.  However, I persuaded him to
+go with me to the captain's rooms.
+
+The captain's door was open.  Remembering that in England the way
+of the intruder is hard, I ordered Walters to go first.  He stepped
+into the room, where the gas flickered feebly in an aged chandelier.
+
+"My God, sir!" said Walters, a servant even now.
+
+And at last I write that sentence: Captain Fraser-Freer of the
+Indian Army lay dead on the floor, a smile that was almost a sneer
+on his handsome English face!
+
+The horror of it is strong with me now as I sit in the silent
+morning in this room of mine which is so like the one in which the
+captain died.  He had been stabbed just over the heart, and my
+first thought was of that odd Indian knife which I had seen lying
+on his study table.  I turned quickly to seek it, but it was gone.
+And as I looked at the table it came to me that here in this dusty
+room there must be finger prints--many finger prints.
+
+The room was quite in order, despite those sounds of struggle.  One
+or two odd matters met my eye.  On the table stood a box from a
+florist in Bond Street.  The lid had been removed and I saw that
+the box contained a number of white asters.  Beside the box lay a
+scarf-pin--an emerald scarab.  And not far from the captain's body
+lay what is known--owing to the German city where it is made--as
+a Homburg hat.
+
+I recalled that it is most important at such times that nothing be
+disturbed, and I turned to old Walters.  His face was like this
+paper on which I write; his knees trembled beneath him.
+
+"Walters," said I, "we must leave things just as they are until the
+police arrive.  Come with me while I notify Scotland Yard."
+
+"Very good, sir," said Walters.
+
+We went down then to the telephone in the lower hall, and I called
+up the Yard.  I was told that an inspector would come at once and
+I went back to my room to wait for him.
+
+You can well imagine the feelings that were mine as I waited.
+Before this mystery should be solved, I foresaw that I might be
+involved to a degree that was unpleasant if not dangerous.  Walters
+would remember that I first came here as one acquainted with the
+captain.  He had noted, I felt sure, the lack of intimacy between
+the captain and myself, once the former arrived from India.  He
+would no doubt testify that I had been most anxious to obtain
+lodgings in the same house with Fraser-Freer.  Then there was the
+matter of my letter from Archie.  I must keep that secret, I felt
+sure.  Lastly, there was not a living soul to back me up in my story
+of the quarrel that preceded the captain's death, of the man who
+escaped by way of the garden.
+
+Alas, thought I, even the most stupid policeman can not fail to look
+upon me with the eye of suspicion!
+
+In about twenty minutes three men arrived from Scotland Yard.  By
+that time I had worked myself up into a state of absurd nervousness.
+I heard Walters let them in; heard them climb the stairs and walk
+about in the room overhead.  In a short time Walters knocked at my
+door and told me that Chief Inspector Bray desired to speak to me.
+As I preceded the servant up the stairs I felt toward him as an
+accused murderer must feel toward the witness who has it in his
+power to swear his life away.
+
+He was a big active man--Bray; blond as are so many Englishmen.
+His every move spoke efficiency.  Trying to act as unconcerned as
+an innocent man should--but failing miserably, I fear--I related
+to him my story of the voices, the struggle, and the heavy man who
+had got by me in the hall and later climbed our gate.  He listened
+without comment.  At the end he said:
+
+"You were acquainted with the captain?"
+
+"Slightly," I told him.  Archie's letter kept popping into my mind,
+frightening me.  "I had just met him--that is all; through a friend
+of his--Archibald Enwright was the name."
+
+"Is Enwright in London to vouch for you?"
+
+"I'm afraid not.  I last heard of him in Interlaken."
+
+"Yes?  How did you happen to take rooms in this house?"
+
+"The first time I called to see the captain he had not yet arrived
+from India.  I was looking for lodgings and I took a great fancy to
+the garden here."
+
+It sounded silly, put like that.  I wasn't surprised that the
+inspector eyed me with scorn.  But I rather wished he hadn't.
+
+Bray began to walk about the room, ignoring me.
+
+"White asters; scarab pin; Homburg hat," he detailed, pausing before
+the table where those strange exhibits lay.
+
+A constable came forward carrying newspapers in his hand.
+
+"What is it?" Bray asked.
+
+"The Daily Mail, sir," said the constable.  "The issues of July
+twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth and thirtieth."
+
+Bray took the papers in his hand, glanced at them and tossed them
+contemptuously into a waste-basket.  He turned to Walters.
+
+"Sorry, sir," said Walters; "but I was so taken aback!  Nothing like
+this has ever happened to me before.  I'll go at once--"
+
+"No," replied Bray sharply.  "Never mind.  I'll attend to it--"
+
+There was a knock at the door.  Bray called "Come!" and a slender
+boy, frail but with a military bearing, entered.
+
+"Hello, Walters!" he said, smiling.  "What's up?  I-"
+
+He stopped suddenly as his eyes fell upon the divan where
+Fraser-Freer lay.  In an instant he was at the dead man's side.
+
+"Stephen!" he cried in anguish.
+
+"Who are you?" demanded the inspector--rather rudely, I thought.
+
+"It's the captain's brother, sir," put in Walters.  "Lieutenant
+Norman Fraser-Freer, of the Royal Fusiliers."
+
+There fell a silence.
+
+"A great calamity, sir--" began Walters to the boy.
+
+I have rarely seen any one so overcome as young Fraser-Freer.
+Watching him, it seemed to me that the affection existing between
+him and the man on the divan must have been a beautiful thing.  He
+turned away from his brother at last, and Walters sought to give
+him some idea of what had happened.
+
+"You will pardon me, gentlemen," said the lieutenant.  "This has
+been a terrible shock!  I didn't dream, of course--I just dropped
+in for a word with--with him.  And now--"
+
+We said nothing.  We let him apologize, as a true Englishman must,
+for his public display of emotion.
+
+"I'm sorry," Bray remarked in a moment, his eyes still shifting
+about the room--"especially as England may soon have great need
+of men like the captain.  Now, gentlemen, I want to say this: I am
+the Chief of the Special Branch at the Yard.  This is no ordinary
+murder.  For reasons I can not disclose--and, I may add, for the
+best interests of the empire--news of the captain's tragic death
+must be kept for the present out of the newspapers.  I mean, of
+course, the manner of his going.  A mere death notice, you
+understand--the inference being that it was a natural taking off."
+
+"I understand," said the lieutenant, as one who knows more than he
+tells.
+
+"Thank you," said Bray.  "I shall leave you to attend to the matter,
+as far as your family is concerned.  You will take charge of the
+body.  As for the rest of you, I forbid you to mention this matter
+outside."
+
+And now Bray stood looking, with a puzzled air, at me.
+
+"You are an American?" he said, and I judged he did not care for
+Americans.
+
+"I am," I told him.
+
+"Know any one at your consulate?" he demanded.
+
+Thank heaven, I did!  There is an under-secretary there named
+Watson--I went to college with him.  I mentioned him to Bray.
+
+"Very good," said the inspector.  "You are free to go.  But you
+must understand that you are an important witness in this case, and
+if you attempt to leave London you will be locked up."
+
+So I came back to my rooms, horribly entangled in a mystery that is
+little to my liking.  I have been sitting here in my study for some
+time, going over it again and again.  There have been many footsteps
+on the stairs, many voices in the hall.
+
+Waiting here for the dawn, I have come to be very sorry for the
+cold handsome captain.  After all, he was a man; his very tread on
+the floor above, which it shall never hear again, told me that.
+
+What does it all mean?  Who was the man in the hall, the man who
+had argued so loudly, who had struck so surely with that queer
+Indian knife?  Where is the knife now?
+
+And, above all, what do the white asters signify?  And the scarab
+scarf-pin?  And that absurd Homburg hat?
+
+Lady of the Carlton, you wanted mystery.  When I wrote that first
+letter to you, little did I dream that I should soon have it to
+give you in overwhelming measure.
+
+And--believe me when I say it--through all this your face has
+been constantly before me--your face as I saw it that bright
+morning in the hotel breakfast room.  You have forgiven me, I know,
+for the manner in which I addressed you.  I had seen your eyes and
+the temptation was great--very great.
+
+It is dawn in the garden now and London is beginning to stir.  So
+this time it is--good morning, my lady.
+
+                                              THE STRAWBERRY MAN.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+It is hardly necessary to intimate that this letter came as
+something of a shock to the young woman who received it.   For the
+rest of that day the many sights of London held little interest for
+her--so little, indeed, that her perspiring father began to see
+visions of his beloved Texas; and once hopefully suggested an early
+return home.  The coolness with which this idea was received plainly
+showed him that he was on the wrong track; so he sighed and sought
+solace at the bar.
+
+That night the two from Texas attended His Majesty's Theater, where
+Bernard Shaw's latest play was being performed; and the witty
+Irishman would have been annoyed to see the scant attention one
+lovely young American in the audience gave his lines.  The American
+in question retired at midnight, with eager thoughts turned toward
+the morning.
+
+And she was not disappointed.  When her maid, a stolid Englishwoman,
+appeared at her bedside early Saturday she carried a letter, which
+she handed over, with the turned-up nose of one who aids but does
+not approve.  Quickly the girl tore it open.
+
+DEAR Texas LADY: I am writing this late in the afternoon.  The sun
+is casting long black shadows on the garden lawn, and the whole
+world is so bright and matter-of-fact I have to argue with myself
+to be convinced that the events of that tragic night through which
+I passed really happened.
+
+The newspapers this morning helped to make it all seem a dream; not
+a line--not a word, that I can find.  When I think of America, and
+how by this time the reporters would be swarming through our house
+if this thing had happened over there, I am the more astonished.
+But then, I know these English papers.  The great Joe Chamberlain
+died the other night at ten, and it was noon the next day when the
+first paper to carry the story appeared--screaming loudly that it
+had scored a beat.  It had.  Other lands, other methods.
+
+It was probably not difficult for Bray to keep journalists such as
+these in the dark.  So their great ungainly sheets come out in total
+ignorance of a remarkable story in Adelphi Terrace.  Famished for
+real news, they begin to hint at a huge war cloud on the horizon.
+Because tottering Austria has declared war on tiny Serbia, because
+the Kaiser is to-day hurrying, with his best dramatic effect, home
+to Berlin, they see all Europe shortly bathed in blood.  A nightmare
+born of torrid days and tossing nights!
+
+But it is of the affair in Adelphi Terrace that you no doubt want
+to hear.  One sequel of the tragedy, which adds immeasurably to the
+mystery of it all, has occurred, and I alone am responsible for its
+discovery.  But to go back:
+
+I returned from mailing your letter at dawn this morning, very
+tired from the tension of the night.  I went to bed, but could not
+sleep.  More and more it was preying on my mind that I was in a most
+unhappy position.  I had not liked the looks cast at me by Inspector
+Bray, or his voice when he asked how I came to live in this house.
+I told myself I should not be safe until the real murderer of the
+poor captain was found; and so I began to puzzle over the few clues
+in the case--especially over the asters, the scarab pin and the
+Homburg hat.
+
+It was then I remembered the four copies of the Daily Mail that
+Bray had casually thrown into the waste-basket as of no interest.
+I had glanced over his shoulder as he examined these papers, and
+had seen that each of them was folded so that our favorite department
+--the Agony Column--was uppermost.  It happened I had in my desk
+copies of the Mail for the past week.  You will understand why.
+
+I rose, found those papers, and began to read.  It was then that
+I made the astounding discovery to which I have alluded.
+
+For a time after making it I was dumb with amazement, so that no
+course of action came readily to mind.  In the end I decided that
+the thing for me to do was to wait for Bray's return in the morning
+and then point out to him the error he had made in ignoring the Mail.
+
+Bray came in about eight o'clock and a few minutes later I heard
+another man ascend the stairs.  I was shaving at the time, but I
+quickly completed the operation and, slipping on a bathrobe, hurried
+up to the captain's rooms.  The younger brother had seen to the
+removal of the unfortunate man's body in the night, and, aside from
+Bray and the stranger who had arrived almost simultaneously with
+him, there was no one but a sleepy-eyed constable there.
+
+Bray's greeting was decidedly grouchy.  The stranger, however--a
+tall bronzed man--made himself known to me in the most cordial
+manner.  He told me he was Colonel Hughes, a close friend of the
+dead man; and that, unutterably shocked and grieved, he had come to
+inquire whether there was anything he might do.  "Inspector," said
+I, "last night in this room you held in your hand four copies of
+the Daily Mail.  You tossed them into that basket as of no account.
+May I suggest that you rescue those copies, as I have a rather
+startling matter to make clear to you?"  Too grand an official to
+stoop to a waste-basket, he nodded to the constable.  The latter
+brought the papers; and, selecting one from the lot, I spread it
+out on the table.  "The issue of July twenty-seventh," I said.
+
+I pointed to an item half-way down the column of Personal Notices.
+You yourself, my lady, may read it there if you happen to have saved
+a copy.  It ran as follows:
+
+"RANGOON: The asters are in full bloom in the garden at Canterbury.
+They are very beautiful--especially the white ones."
+
+Bray grunted, and opened his little eyes.  I took up the issue of
+the following day--the twenty-eighth:
+
+"RANGOON: We have been forced to sell father's stick-pin--the
+emerald scarab he brought home from Cairo."
+
+I had Bray's interest now.  He leaned heavily toward me, puffing.
+Greatly excited, I held before his eyes the issue of the
+twenty-ninth:
+
+"RANGOON: Homburg hat gone forever--caught by a breeze--into the
+river."
+
+"And finally," said I to the inspector, "the last message of all,
+in the issue of the thirtieth of July--on sale in the streets
+some twelve hours before Fraser-Freer was murdered.  See!"
+
+"RANGOON: To-night at ten.  Regent Street. --Y.O.G."
+
+Bray was silent.
+
+"I take it you are aware, Inspector," I said, "that for the past
+two years Captain Fraser-Freer was stationed at Rangoon."
+
+Still he said nothing; just looked at me with those foxy little
+eyes that I was coming to detest.  At last he spoke sharply:
+
+"Just how," he demanded, "did you happen to discover those messages?
+You were not in this room last night after I left?"  He turned
+angrily to the constable.  "I gave orders--"
+
+"No," I put in; "I was not in this room.  I happened to have on
+file in my rooms copies of the Mail, and by the merest chance--"
+
+I saw that I had blundered.  Undoubtedly my discovery of those
+messages was too pat.  Once again suspicion looked my way.
+
+"Thank you very much," said Bray.  "I'll keep this in mind."
+
+"Have you communicated with my friend at the consulate?" I asked.
+
+"Yes.  That's all.  Good morning."
+
+So I went.
+
+I had been back in my room some twenty minutes when there came a
+knock on the door, and Colonel Hughes entered.  He was a genial man,
+in the early forties I should say, tanned by some sun not English,
+and gray at the temples.
+
+"My dear sir," he said without preamble, "this is a most appalling
+business!"
+
+"Decidedly," I answered.  "Will you sit down?"
+
+"Thank you." He sat and gazed frankly into my eyes.  "Policemen,"
+he added meaningly, "are a most suspicious tribe--often without
+reason.  I am sorry you happen to be involved in this affair, for
+I may say that I fancy you to be exactly what you seem.  May I add
+that, if you should ever need a friend, I am at your service?"
+
+I was touched; I thanked him as best I could.  His tone was so
+sympathetic and before I realized it I was telling him the whole
+story--of Archie and his letter; of my falling in love with a
+garden; of the startling discovery that the captain had never heard
+of his cousin; and of my subsequent unpleasant position.  He leaned
+back in his chair and closed his eyes.
+
+"I suppose," he said, "that no man ever carries an unsealed letter
+of introduction without opening it to read just what praises have
+been lavished upon him.  It is human nature--I have done it often.
+May I make so bold as to inquire--"
+
+"Yes," said I.  "It was unsealed and I did read it.  Considering
+its purpose, it struck me as rather long.  There were many warm
+words for me--words beyond all reason in view of my brief
+acquaintance with Enwright.  I also recall that he mentioned how
+long he had been in Interlaken, and that he said he expected to
+reach London about the first of August."
+
+"The first of August," repeated the colonel.  "That is to-morrow.
+Now--if you'll be so kind--just what happened last night?"
+
+Again I ran over the events of that tragic evening--the quarrel;
+the heavy figure in the hall; the escape by way of the seldom-used
+gate.
+
+"My boy," said Colonel Hughes as he rose to go, "the threads of this
+tragedy stretch far--some of them to India; some to a country I
+will not name.  I may say frankly that I have other and greater
+interest in the matter than that of the captain's friend.  For the
+present that is in strict confidence between us; the police are
+well-meaning, but they sometimes blunder.  Did I understand you to
+say that you have copies of the Mail containing those odd messages?"
+
+"Right here in my desk," said I.  I got them for him.
+
+"I think I shall take them--if I may," he said.  "You will, of
+course, not mention this little visit of mine.  We shall meet again.
+Good morning."
+
+And he went away, carrying those papers with their strange signals
+to Rangoon.
+
+Somehow I feel wonderfully cheered by his call.  For the first time
+since seven last evening I begin to breathe freely again.
+
+And so, lady who likes mystery, the matter stands on the afternoon
+of the last day of July, nineteen hundred and fourteen.
+
+I shall mail you this letter to-night.  It is my third to you, and
+it carries with it three times the dreams that went with the first;
+for they are dreams that live not only at night, when the moon is
+on the courtyard, but also in the bright light of day.
+
+Yes--I am remarkably cheered.  I realize that I have not eaten at
+all--save a cup of coffee from the trembling hand of Walters
+--since last night, at Simpson's.  I am going now to dine.  I shall
+begin with grapefruit.  I realize that I am suddenly very fond of
+grapefruit.
+
+How bromidic to note it--we have many tastes in common!
+
+                                               EX-STRAWBERRY MAN.
+
+The third letter from her correspondent of the Agony Column
+increased in the mind of the lovely young woman at the Carlton the
+excitement and tension the second had created.  For a long time, on
+the Saturday morning of its receipt, she sat in her room puzzling
+over the mystery of the house in Adelphi Terrace.  When first she
+had heard that Captain Fraser-Freer, of the Indian Army, was dead
+of a knife wound over the heart, the news had shocked her like that
+of the loss of some old and dear friend.  She had desired
+passionately the apprehension of his murderer, and had turned over
+and over in her mind the possibilities of white asters, a scarab
+pin and a Homburg hat.
+
+Perhaps the girl longed for the arrest of the guilty man thus keenly
+because this jaunty young friend of hers--a friend whose name she
+did not know--to whom, indeed, she had never spoken--was so
+dangerously entangled in the affair.  For from what she knew of
+Geoffrey West, from her casual glance in the restaurant and, far
+more, from his letters, she liked him extremely.
+
+And now came his third letter, in which he related the connection
+of that hat, that pin and those asters with the column in the Mail
+which had first brought them together.  As it happened, she, too,
+had copies of the paper for the first four days of the week.  She
+went to her sitting-room, unearthed these copies, and--gasped!
+For from the column in Monday's paper stared up at her the cryptic
+words to Rangoon concerning asters in a garden at Canterbury.  In
+the other three issues as well, she found the identical messages
+her strawberry man had quoted.  She sat for a moment in deep thought;
+sat, in fact, until at her door came the enraged knocking of a
+hungry parent who had been waiting a full hour in the lobby  below
+for her to join him at breakfast.
+
+"Come, come!" boomed her father, entering at her invitation.  "Don't
+sit here all day mooning.  I'm hungry if you're not."
+
+With quick apologies she made ready to accompany him down-stairs.
+Firmly, as she planned their campaign for the day, she resolved to
+put from her mind all thought of Adelphi Terrace.  How well she
+succeeded may be judged from a speech made by her father that night
+just before dinner:
+
+"Have you lost your tongue, Marian?   You're as uncommunicative as a
+newly-elected office-holder.  If you can't get a little more life
+into these expeditions of ours we'll pack up and head for home."
+
+She smiled, patted his shoulder and promised to improve.  But he
+appeared  to be in a gloomy mood.
+
+"I believe we ought to go, anyhow," he went on.  "In my opinion this
+war is going to spread like a prairie fire.  The Kaiser got back to
+Berlin yesterday.  He'll sign the mobilization orders to-day as sure
+as fate.  For the past week, on the Berlin Bourse, Canadian Pacific
+stock has been dropping.  That means they expect England to come in."
+
+He gazed darkly into the future.  It may seem that, for an American
+statesman, he had an unusual grasp of European politics.  This is
+easily explained by the fact that he had been talking with the
+bootblack at the Carlton Hotel.
+
+"Yes," he said with sudden decision, "I'll go down to the steamship
+offices early Monday morning."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+His daughter heard these words with a sinking heart.  She had a
+most unhappy picture of herself boarding a ship and sailing out of
+Liverpool or Southampton, leaving the mystery that so engrossed her
+thoughts forever unsolved.  Wisely she diverted her father's
+thoughts toward the question of food.  She had heard, she said,
+that Simpson's, in the Strand, was an excellent place to dine.  They
+would go there, and walk.  She suggested a short detour that would
+carry them through Adelphi Terrace.  It seemed she had always wanted
+to see Adelphi Terrace.
+
+As they passed through that silent Street she sought to guess, from
+an inspection of the grim forbidding house fronts, back of which
+lay the lovely garden, the romantic mystery.  But the houses were so
+very much like one another.  Before one of them, she noted, a taxi
+waited.
+
+After dinner her father pleaded for a music-hall as against what he
+called "some highfaluting, teacup English play."  He won.  Late that
+night, as they rode back to the Carlton, special editions were being
+proclaimed in the streets.  Germany was mobilizing!
+
+The girl from Texas retired, wondering what epistolary surprise the
+morning would bring forth.  It brought forth this:
+
+DEAR DAUGHTER OF THE SENATE: Or is it Congress?  I could not quite
+decide.  But surely in one or the other of those August bodies your
+father sits when he is not at home in Texas or viewing Europe
+through his daughter's eyes.  One look at him and I had gathered
+that.
+
+But Washington is far from London, isn't it?  And it is London that
+interests us most--though father's constituents must not know that.
+It is really a wonderful, an astounding city, once you have got the
+feel of the tourist out of your soul.  I have been reading the most
+enthralling essays on it, written by a newspaper man who first fell
+desperately in love with it at seven--an age when the whole
+glittering town was symbolized for him by the fried-fish shop at the
+corner of the High Street.  With him I have been going through its
+gray and furtive thoroughfares in the dead of night, and sometimes
+we have kicked an ash-barrel and sometimes a romance.  Some day I
+might show that London to you--guarding you, of course, from the
+ash-barrels, if you are that kind.  On second thoughts, you aren't.
+But I know that it is of Adelphi Terrace and a late captain in the
+Indian Army that you want to hear now.  Yesterday, after my
+discovery of those messages in the Mail and the call of Captain
+Hughes, passed without incident.  Last night I mailed you my third
+letter, and after wandering for a time amid the alternate glare and
+gloom of the city, I went back to my rooms and smoked on my balcony
+while about me the inmates of six million homes sweltered in the heat.
+Nothing happened.  I felt a bit disappointed, a bit cheated, as one
+might feel on the first night spent at home after many successive
+visits to exciting plays.  To-day, the first of August dawned, and
+still all was quiet.  Indeed, it was not until this evening that
+further developments in the sudden death of Captain Fraser-Freer
+arrived to disturb me.  These developments are strange ones surely,
+and I shall hasten to relate them.
+
+I dined to-night at a little place in Soho.  My waiter was Italian,
+and on him I amused myself with the Italian in Ten Lessons of which
+I am foolishly proud.  We talked of Fiesole, where he had lived.
+Once I rode from Fiesole down the hill to Florence in the moonlight.
+I remember endless walls on which hung roses, fresh and blooming.
+I remember a gaunt nunnery and two-gray-robed sisters clanging shut
+the gates.  I remember the searchlight from the military encampment,
+playing constantly over the Arno and the roofs--the eye of Mars
+that, here in Europe, never closes.  And always the flowers nodding
+above me, stooping now and then to brush my face.  I came to think
+that at the end Paradise, and not a second-rate hotel, was waiting.
+One may still take that ride, I fancy.  Some day--some day--
+
+I dined in Soho.  I came back to Adelphi Terrace in the hot, reeking
+August dusk, reflecting that the mystery in which I was involved was,
+after a fashion, standing still.  In front of our house I noticed a
+taxi waiting.  I thought nothing of it as I entered the murky
+hallway and climbed the familiar stairs.
+
+My door stood open.  It was dark in my study, save for the reflection
+of the lights of London outside.  As I crossed the threshold there
+came to my nostrils the faint sweet perfume of lilacs.  There are no
+lilacs in our garden, and if there were it is not the season.  No,
+this perfume had been brought there by a woman--a woman who sat at
+my desk and raised her head as I entered.
+
+"You will pardon this intrusion," she said in the correct careful
+English of one who has learned the speech from a book.  "I have come
+for a brief word with you--then I shall go."
+
+I could think of nothing to say.  I stood gaping like a schoolboy.
+
+"My word," the woman went on, "is in the nature of advice.  We do
+not always like those who give us advice.  None the less, I trust
+that you will listen."
+
+I found my tongue then.
+
+"I am listening," I said stupidly.  "But first--a light--"  And I
+moved toward the matches on the mantelpiece.
+
+Quickly the woman rose and faced me.  I saw then that she wore a
+veil--not a heavy veil, but a fluffy, attractive thing that was
+yet sufficient to screen her features from me.
+
+"I beg of you," she cried, "no light!"  And as I paused, undecided,
+she added, in a tone which suggested lips that pout: "It is such a
+little thing to ask--surely you will not refuse."
+
+I suppose I should have insisted.  But her voice was charming, her
+manner perfect, and that odor of lilacs reminiscent of a garden I
+knew long ago, at home.
+
+"Very well," said I.
+
+"Oh--I am grateful to you," she answered.  Her tone changed.  "I
+understand that, shortly after seven o'clock last Thursday evening,
+you heard in the room above you the sounds of a struggle.  Such
+has been your testimony to the police?"
+
+"It has," said I.
+
+"Are you quite certain as to the hour?"  I felt that she was smiling
+at me.  "Might it not have been later--or earlier?"
+
+"I am sure it was just after seven," I replied.  "I'll tell you why:
+I had just returned from dinner and while I was unlocking the door
+Big Ben on the House of Parliament struck--"
+
+She raised her hand.
+
+"No matter," she said, and there was a touch of iron in her voice.
+"You are no longer sure of that.  Thinking it over, you have come
+to the conclusion that it may have been barely six-thirty when you
+heard the noise of a struggle."
+
+"Indeed?" said I.  I tried to sound sarcastic, but I was really
+too astonished by her tone.
+
+"Yes--indeed!" she replied.  "That is what you will tell Inspector
+Bray when next you see him.  'It may have been six-thirty,' you
+will tell him.  'I have thought it over and I am not certain.'"
+
+"Even for a very charming lady," I said "I can not misrepresent the
+facts in a matter so important.  It was after seven--"
+
+"I am not asking you to do a favor for a lady," she replied.  "I
+am asking you to do a favor for yourself.  If you refuse the
+consequences may be most unpleasant."
+
+"I'm rather at a loss--" I began.
+
+She was silent for a moment.  Then she turned and I felt her
+looking at me through the veil.
+
+"Who was Archibald Enwright?" she demanded.  My heart sank.  I
+recognized the weapon in her hands.  "The police," she went on,
+"do not yet know that the letter of introduction you brought to
+the captain was signed by a man who addressed Fraser-Freer as
+Dear Cousin, but who is completely unknown to the family.  Once
+that information reaches Scotland Yard, your chance of escaping
+arrest is slim.
+
+"They may not be able to fasten this crime upon you, but there will
+be complications most distasteful.  One's liberty is well worth
+keeping--and then, too, before the case ends, there will be wide
+publicity--"
+
+"'Well?" said I.
+
+"That is why you are going to suffer a lapse of memory in the
+matter of the hour at which you heard that struggle.  As you think
+it over, it is going to occur to you that it may have been
+six-thirty, not seven.  Otherwise--"
+
+"Go on."
+
+"Otherwise the letter of introduction you gave to the captain will
+be sent anonymously to Inspector Bray."
+
+"You have that letter!" I cried.
+
+"Not I," she answered.  "But it will be sent to Bray.  It will be
+pointed out to him that you were posing under false colors.  You
+could not escape!"
+
+I was most uncomfortable.  The net of suspicion seemed closing in
+about me.  But I was resentful, too, of the confidence in this
+woman's voice.
+
+"None the less," said I, "I refuse to change my testimony.  The
+truth is the truth--"
+
+The woman had moved to the door.  She turned.
+
+"To-morrow," she replied, "it is not unlikely you will see Inspector
+Bray.  As I said, I came here to give you advice.  You had better
+take it.  What does it matter--a half-hour this way or that?  And
+the difference is prison for you.  Good night."
+
+She was gone.  I followed into the hall.  Below, in the street, I
+heard the rattle of her taxi.
+
+I went back into my room and sat down. I was upset, and no mistake.
+Outside my windows the continuous symphony of the city played on
+--the busses, the trains, the never-silent voices.  I gazed out.
+What a tremendous acreage of dank brick houses and dank British
+souls!  I felt horribly alone.  I may add that I felt a bit
+frightened, as though that great city were slowly closing in on me.
+
+Who was this woman of mystery? What place had she held in the life
+--and perhaps in the death--of Captain Fraser-Freer?  Why should
+she come boldly to my rooms to make her impossible demand?
+
+I resolved that, even at the risk of my own comfort, I would stick
+to the truth.  And to that resolve I would have clung had I not
+shortly received another visit--this one far more inexplicable,
+far more surprising, than the first.
+
+It was about nine o'clock when Walters tapped at my door and told
+me two gentlemen wished to see me.  A moment later into my study
+walked Lieutenant Norman Fraser-Freer and a fine old gentleman with
+a face that suggested some faded portrait hanging on an aristocrat's
+wall.  I had never seen him before.
+
+"I hope it is quite convenient for you to see us," said young
+Fraser-Freer.
+
+I assured him that it was.  The boy's face was drawn and haggard;
+there was terrible suffering in his eyes, yet about him hung, like
+a halo, the glory of a great resolution.
+
+"May I present my father?" he said.  "General Fraser-Freer, retired.
+We have come on a matter of supreme importance--"
+
+The old man muttered something I could not catch.  I could see that
+he had been hard hit by the loss of his elder son.  I asked them
+to be seated; the general complied, but the boy walked the floor in
+a manner most distressing.
+
+"I shall not be long," he remarked.  "Nor at a time like this is
+one in the mood to be diplomatic.  I will only say, sir, that we
+have come to ask of you a great--a very great favor indeed.  You
+may not see fit to grant it.  If that is the case we can not well
+reproach you.  But if you can--"
+
+"It is a great favor, sir!" broke in the general.  "And I am in the
+odd position where I do not know whether you will serve me best by
+granting it or by refusing to do so."
+
+"Father--please--if you don't mind--"  The boy's voice was
+kindly but determined.  He turned to me.
+
+"Sir--you have testified to the police that it was a bit past
+seven when you heard in the room above the sounds of the struggle
+which--which--You understand."
+
+In view of the mission of the caller who had departed a scant hour
+previously, the boy's question startled me.
+
+"Such was my testimony," I answered.  "It was the truth."
+
+"Naturally," said Lieutenant Fraser-Freer.  "But--er--as a matter
+of fact, we are here to ask that you alter your testimony.  Could
+you, as a favor to us who have suffered so cruel a loss--a favor
+we should never forget--could you not make the hour of that
+struggle half after six?"
+
+I was quite overwhelmed.
+
+"Your--reasons?"  I managed at last to ask.
+
+"I am not able to give them to you in full," the boy answered.  "I
+can only say this: It happens that at seven o'clock last Thursday
+night I was dining with friends at the Savoy--friends who would
+not be likely to forget the occasion."
+
+The old general leaped to his feet.
+
+"Norman," he cried, "I can not let you do this thing!  I simply
+will not--"
+
+"Hush, father," said the boy wearily.  "We have threshed it all
+out.  You have promised--"
+
+The old man sank back into the chair and buried his face in his
+hands.
+
+"If you are willing to change your testimony," young Fraser-Freer
+went on to me, "I shall at once confess to the police that it was I
+who--who murdered my brother.  They suspect me.  They know that
+late last Thursday afternoon I purchased a revolver, for which, they
+believe, at the last moment I substituted the knife.  They know that
+I was in debt to him; that we had quarreled about money matters; that
+by his death I, and I alone, could profit."
+
+He broke off suddenly and came toward me, holding out his arms with
+a pleading gesture I can never forget.
+
+"Do this for me!" he cried.  "Let me confess!  Let me end this whole
+horrible business here and now."
+
+Surely no man had ever to answer such an appeal before.
+
+"Why?" I found myself saying, and over and over I repeated it--"Why?
+Why?"
+
+The lieutenant faced me, and I hope never again to see such a look
+in a man's eyes.
+
+"I loved him!" he cried.  "That is why.  For his honor, for the
+honor of our family, I am making this request of you.  Believe me,
+it is not easy.  I can tell you no more than that.  You knew my
+brother?"
+
+"Slightly."
+
+"Then, for his sake--do this thing I ask."
+
+"But--murder--"
+
+"You heard the sounds of a struggle.  I shall say that we quarreled
+--that I struck in self-defense."  He turned to his father.  "It
+will mean only a few years in prison--I can bear that!" he cried.
+"For the honor of our name!"
+
+The old man groaned, but did not raise his head.  The boy walked
+back and forth over my faded carpet like a lion caged.  I stood
+wondering what answer I should make.
+
+"I know what you are thinking," said the lieutenant.  "You can not
+credit your ears.  But you have heard correctly.  And now--as you
+might put it--it is up to you.  I have been in your country."  He
+smiled pitifully.  "I think I know you Americans.  You are not the
+sort to refuse a man when he is sore beset--as I am."
+
+I looked from him to the general and back again.
+
+"I must think this over," I answered, my mind going at once to
+Colonel Hughes.  "Later--say to-morrow--you shall have my decision."
+
+"To-morrow," said the boy, "we shall both be called before Inspector
+Bray.  I shall know your answer then--and I hope with all my heart
+it will be yes."
+
+There were a few mumbled words of farewell and he and the broken
+old man went out.  As soon as the street door closed behind them I
+hurried to the telephone and called a number Colonel Hughes had
+given me.  It was with a feeling of relief that I heard his voice
+come back over the wire.  I told him I must see him at once.  He
+replied that by a singular chance he had been on the point of
+starting for my rooms.
+
+In the half-hour that elapsed before the coming of the colonel I
+walked about like a man in a trance.  He was barely inside my door
+when I began pouring out to him the story of those two remarkable
+visits.  He made little comment on the woman's call beyond asking
+me whether I could describe her; and he smiled when I mentioned
+lilac perfume.  At mention of young Fraser-Freer's preposterous
+request he whistled.
+
+"By gad!" he said.  "Interesting--most interesting!  I am not
+surprised, however.  That boy has the stuff in him."
+
+"But what shall I do?" I demanded.
+
+Colonel Hughes smiled.
+
+"It makes little difference what you do," he said.  "Norman
+Fraser-Freer did not kill his brother, and that will be proved in
+due time."  He considered for a moment.  "Bray no doubt would be
+glad to have you alter your testimony, since he is trying to fasten
+the crime on the young lieutenant.  On the whole, if I were you, I
+think that when the opportunity comes to-morrow I should humor the
+inspector."
+
+"You mean--tell him I am no longer certain as to the hour of that
+struggle?"
+
+"Precisely.  I give you my word that young Fraser-Freer will not be
+permanently incriminated by such an act on your part.  And
+incidentally you will be aiding me."
+
+"Very well," said I.  "But I don't understand this at all."
+
+"No--of course not.  I wish I could explain to you; but I can not.
+I will say this--the death of Captain Fraser-Freer is regarded as
+a most significant thing by the War Office.  Thus it happens that
+two distinct hunts for his assassin are under way--one conducted
+by Bray, the other by me.  Bray does not suspect that I am working
+on the case and I want to keep him in the dark as long as possible.
+You may choose which of these investigations you wish to be
+identified with."
+
+"I think," said I, "that I prefer you to Bray."
+
+"Good boy!" he answered.  "You have not gone wrong.  And you can do
+me a service this evening, which is why I was on the point of coming
+here, even before you telephoned me.  I take it that you remember
+and could identify the chap who called himself Archibald Enwright
+--the man who gave you that letter to the captain?"
+
+"I surely could," said I.
+
+"Then, if you can spare me an hour, get your hat."
+
+And so it happens, lady of the Carlton, that I have just been to
+Limehouse.  You do not know where Limehouse is and I trust you never
+will.  It is picturesque; it is revolting; it is colorful and wicked.
+The weird odors of it still fill my nostrils; the sinister portrait
+of it is still before my eyes.  It is the Chinatown of London
+--Limehouse.  Down in the dregs of the town--with West India Dock
+Road for its spinal column--it lies, redolent of ways that are dark
+and tricks that are vain.  Not only the heathen Chinee so peculiar
+shuffles through its dim-lit alleys, but the scum of the earth, of
+many colors and of many climes.  The Arab and the Hindu, the Malayan
+and the Jap, black men from the Congo and fair men from Scandinavia
+--these you may meet there--the outpourings of all the ships that
+sail the Seven Seas.  There many drunken beasts, with their pay in
+their pockets, seek each his favorite sin; and for those who love
+most the opium, there is, at all too regular intervals, the Sign of
+the Open Lamp.
+
+We went there, Colonel Hughes and I.  Up and down the narrow
+Causeway, yellow at intervals with the light from gloomy shops,
+dark mostly because of tightly closed shutters through which only
+thin jets found their way, we walked until we came and stood at
+last in shadow outside the black doorway of Harry San Li's so-called
+restaurant.  We waited ten, fifteen minutes; then a man came down
+the Causeway and paused before that door.  There was something
+familiar in his jaunty walk.  Then the faint glow of the lamp that
+was the indication of Harry San's real business lit his pale face,
+and I knew that I had seen him last in the cool evening at
+Interlaken, where Limehouse could not have lived a moment, with the
+Jungfrau frowning down upon it.
+
+"Enwright?" whispered Hughes.
+
+"Not a doubt of it!" said I.
+
+"Good!" he replied with fervor.
+
+And now another man shuffled down the street and stood suddenly
+straight and waiting before the colonel.
+
+"Stay with him," said Hughes softly.  "Don't let him get out of
+your sight."
+
+"Very good, sir," said the man; and, saluting, he passed on up the
+stairs and whistled softly at that black depressing door.
+
+The clock above the Millwall Docks was striking eleven as the
+colonel and I caught a bus that should carry us back to a brighter,
+happier London.  Hughes spoke but seldom on that ride; and, repeating
+his advice that I humor Inspector Bray on the morrow, he left me in
+the Strand.
+
+So, my lady, here I sit in my study, waiting for that most important
+day that is shortly to dawn.  A full evening, you must admit.  A
+woman with the perfume of lilacs about her has threatened that unless
+I lie I shall encounter consequences most unpleasant.  A handsome
+young lieutenant has begged me to tell that same lie for the honor
+of his family, and thus condemn him to certain arrest and
+imprisonment.  And I have been down into hell, to-night and seen
+Archibald Enwright, of Interlaken, conniving with the devil.
+
+I presume I should go to bed; but I know I can not sleep.  To-morrow
+is to be, beyond all question, a red-letter day in the matter of
+the captain's murder.  And once again, against my will, I am
+down to play a leading part.
+
+The symphony of this great, gray, sad city is a mere hum in the
+distance now, for it is nearly midnight.  I shall mail this letter
+to you--post it, I should say, since I am in London--and then I
+shall wait in my dim rooms for the dawn.  And as I wait I shall be
+thinking not always of the captain, or his brother, or Hughes, or
+Limehouse and Enwright, but often--oh, very often--of you.
+
+In my last letter I scoffed at the idea of a great war.  But when
+we came back from Limehouse to-night the papers told us that the
+Kaiser had signed the order to mobilize.  Austria in; Serbia in;
+Germany, Russia and France in.  Hughes tells me that England is
+shortly to follow, and I suppose there is no doubt of it.  It is a
+frightful thing--this future that looms before us; and I pray that
+for you at least it may hold only happiness.
+
+For, my lady, when I write good night, I speak it aloud as I write;
+and there is in my voice more than I dare tell you of now.
+
+                                          THE AGONY COLUMN MAN.
+
+Not unwelcome to the violet eyes of the  girl from Texas were the
+last words of this letter, read in her room that Sunday morning.
+But the lines predicting England's early entrance into the war
+recalled to her mind a most undesirable contingency.  On the previous
+night, when the war extras came out confirming the forecast of his
+favorite bootblack, her usually calm father had shown signs of panic.
+He was not a man slow to act.  And she knew that, putty though he
+was in her hands in matters which he did not regard as important,
+he could also be firm where he thought firmness necessary.  America
+looked even better to him than usual, and he had made up his mind
+to go there immediately.  There was no use in arguing with him.
+
+At this point came a knock at her door and her father entered.  One
+look at his face--red, perspiring and decidedly unhappy--served
+to cheer his daughter.
+
+"Been down to the steamship offices," he panted, mopping his bald
+head.  "They're open to-day, just like it was a week day--but they
+might as well be closed.  There's nothing doing.  Every boat's
+booked up to the rails; we can't get out of here for two weeks
+--maybe more."
+
+"I'm sorry," said his daughter.
+
+"No, you ain't!  You're delighted!  You think it's romantic to get
+caught like this.  Wish I had the enthusiasm of youth."  He fanned
+himself with a newspaper.  "Lucky I went over to the express office
+yesterday and loaded up on gold.  I reckon when the blow falls it'll
+be tolerable hard to cash checks in this man's town."
+
+"That was a good idea."
+
+"Ready for breakfast?" he inquired.
+
+"Quite ready," she smiled.
+
+They went below, she humming a song from a revue, while he glared
+at her.  She was very glad they were to be in London a little longer.
+She felt she could not go, with that mystery still unsolved.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+The last peace Sunday London was to know in many weary months went
+by, a tense and anxious day.  Early on Monday the fifth letter from
+the young man of the Agony Column arrived, and when the girl from
+Texas read it she knew that under no circumstances could she leave
+London now.
+
+It ran:
+
+DEAR LADY FROM HOME: I call you that because the word home has for
+me, this hot afternoon in London, about the sweetest sound word
+ever had.  I can see, when I close my eyes, Broadway at midday;
+Fifth Avenue, gay and colorful, even with all the best people away;
+Washington Square, cool under the trees, lovely and desirable
+despite the presence everywhere of alien neighbors from the district
+to the South.  I long for home with an ardent longing; never was
+London so cruel, so hopeless, so drab, in my eyes.  For, as I write
+this, a constable sits at my elbow, and he and I are shortly to
+start for Scotland Yard.  I have been arrested as a suspect in the
+case of Captain Fraser-Freer's murder!
+
+I predicted last night that this was to be a red-letter day in the
+history of that case, and I also saw myself an unwilling actor in
+the drama.  But little did I suspect the series of astonishing
+events that was to come with the morning; little did I dream that
+the net I have been dreading would to-day engulf me.  I can scarcely
+blame Inspector Bray for holding me; what I can not understand is
+why Colonel Hughes--
+
+But you want, of course, the whole story from the beginning; and I
+shall give it to you.  At eleven o'clock this morning a constable
+called on me at my rooms and informed me that I was wanted at once
+by the Chief Inspector at the Yard.
+
+We climbed--the constable and I--a narrow stone stairway somewhere
+at the back of New Scotland Yard, and so came to the inspector's
+room.  Bray was waiting for us, smiling and confident.  I remember
+--silly as the detail is--that he wore in his buttonhole a white
+rose.  His manner of greeting me was more genial than usual.  He
+began by informing me that the police had apprehended the man who,
+they believed, was guilty of the captain's murder.
+
+"There is one detail to be cleared up," he said.  "You told me the
+other night that it was shortly after seven o'clock when you heard
+the sounds of struggle in the room above you.  You were somewhat
+excited at the time, and under similar circumstances men have been
+known to make mistakes.  Have you considered the matter since?  Is
+it not possible that you were in error in regard to the hour?"
+
+I recalled Hughes' advice to humor the inspector; and I said that,
+having thought it over, I was not quite sure.  It might have been
+earlier than seven--say six-thirty.
+
+"Exactly," said Bray.  He seemed rather pleased.  "The natural
+stress of the moment--I understand.  Wilkinson bring in your
+prisoner.  The constable addressed turned and left the room, coming
+back a moment later with Lieutenant Norman Fraser-Freer.  The boy
+was pale; I could see at a glance that he had not slept for several
+nights.
+
+"Lieutenant," said Bray very sharply, "will you tell me--is it true
+that your brother, the late captain, had loaned you a large sum of
+money a year or so ago?"
+
+"Quite true," answered the lieutenant in a low voice.
+
+"You and he had quarreled about the amount of money you spent?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"By his death you became the sole heir of your father, the general.
+Your position with the money-lenders was quite altered.  Am I right?"
+
+"I fancy so."
+
+"Last Thursday afternoon you went to the Army and Navy Stores and
+purchased a revolver.  You already had your service weapon, but to
+shoot a man with a bullet from that would be to make the hunt of
+the police for the murderer absurdly simple."
+
+The boy made no answer.
+
+"Let us suppose," Bray went on, "that last Thursday evening at half
+after six you called on your brother in his rooms at Adelphi Terrace.
+There was an argument about money.  You became enraged.  You saw him
+and him alone between you and the fortune you needed so badly.  Then
+--I am only supposing--you noticed on his table an odd knife he
+had brought from India--safer--more silent--than a gun.  You
+seized it--"
+
+"Why suppose?" the boy broke in.  "I'm not trying to conceal
+anything.  You're right--I did it!  I killed my brother!  Now let
+us get the whole business over as soon as may be."
+
+Into the face of Inspector Bray there came at that moment a look
+that has puzzling me ever since--a look that has recurred to my
+mind again and again,--in the stress and storm of this eventful
+day.  It was only too evident that this confession came to him as
+a shock.  I presume so easy a victory seemed hollow to him; he was
+wishing the boy had put up a fight.  Policemen are probably like
+that.
+
+"My boy," he said, "I am sorry for you.  My course is clear.  If
+you will go with one of my men--"
+
+It was at this point that the door of the inspector's room opened
+and Colonel Hughes, cool and smiling, walked in.  Bray chuckled at
+sight of the military man.
+
+"Ah, colonel," he cried, "you make a good entrance!  This morning,
+when I discovered that I had the honor of having you associated
+with me in the search for the captain's murderer, you were foolish
+enough to make a little wager--"
+
+"I remember," Hughes answered.  "A scarab pin against--a Homburg
+hat."
+
+"Precisely," said Bray.  "You wagered that you, and not I, would
+discover the guilty man.  Well, Colonel, you owe me a scarab.
+Lieutenant Norman Fraser-Freer has just told me that he killed his
+brother, and I was on the point of taking down his full confession."
+
+"Indeed!" replied Hughes calmly.  "Interesting--most interesting!
+But before we consider the wager lost--before you force the
+lieutenant to confess in full--I should like the floor."
+
+"Certainly," smiled Bray.
+
+"When you were kind enough to let me have two of your men this
+morning," said Hughes, "I told you I contemplated the arrest of a
+lady.  I have brought that lady to Scotland Yard with me."  He
+stepped to the door, opened it and beckoned.  A tall, blonde
+handsome woman of about thirty-five entered; and instantly to my
+nostrils came the pronounced odor of lilacs.  "Allow me, Inspector,"
+went on the colonel, "to introduce to you the Countess Sophie de
+Graf, late of Berlin, late of Delhi and Rangoon, now of 17 Leitrim
+Grove, Battersea Park Road."
+
+The woman faced Bray; and there was a terrified, hunted look in
+her eyes.
+
+"You are the inspector?" she asked.
+
+"I am," said Bray.
+
+"And a man--I can see that," she went on, her flashing angrily at
+Hughes.  "I appeal to you to protect me from the brutal questioning
+of this--this fiend."
+
+"You are hardly complimentary, Countess," Hughes smiled.  "But I
+am willing to forgive you if you will tell the inspector the story
+that you have recently related to me."
+
+The woman shut her lips tightly and for a long moment gazed into
+the eyes of Inspector Bray.
+
+"He"--she said at last, nodding in the direction of Colonel Hughes
+--"he got it out of me--how, I don't know."
+
+"Got what out of you?"  Bray's little eyes were blinking.
+
+"At six-thirty o'clock last Thursday evening," said the woman, "I
+went to the rooms of Captain Fraser-Freer, in Adelphi Terrace.  An
+argument arose.  I seized from his table an Indian dagger that was
+lying there--I stabbed him just above the heart!"
+
+In that room in Scotland Yard a tense silence fell.  For the first
+time we were all conscious of a tiny clock on the inspector's desk,
+for it ticked now with a loudness sudden and startling.  I gazed
+at the faces about me.  Bray's showed a momentary surprise--then
+the mask fell again.  Lieutenant Fraser-Freer was plainly amazed.
+On the face of Colonel Hughes I saw what struck me as an open sneer.
+
+"Go on, Countess," he smiled.
+
+She shrugged her shoulders and turned toward him a disdainful back.
+Her eyes were all for Bray.
+
+"It's very brief, the story," she said hastily--I thought almost
+apologetically.  "I had known the captain in Rangoon.  My husband
+was in business there--an exporter of rice--and Captain
+Fraser-Freer came often to our house.  We--he was a charming man,
+the captain--"
+
+"Go on!" ordered Hughes.
+
+"We fell desperately in love," said the countess.  "When he returned
+to England, though supposedly on a furlough, he told me he would
+never return to Rangoon.  He expected a transfer to Egypt.  So it
+was arranged that I should desert my husband and follow on the next
+boat.  I did so--believing in the captain--thinking he really
+cared for me--I gave up everything for him.  And then--"
+
+Her voice broke and she took out a handkerchief.  Again that odor
+of lilacs in the room.
+
+"For a time I saw the captain often in London; and then I began to
+notice a change.  Back among his own kind, with the lonely days in
+India a mere memory--he seemed no longer to--to care for me.
+Then--last Thursday morning--he called on me to tell me that he
+was through; that he would never see me again--in fact, that he
+was to marry a girl of his own people who had been waiting--"
+
+The woman looked piteously about at us.
+
+"I was desperate," she pleaded.  "I had given up all that life held
+for me--given it up for a man who now looked at me coldly and spoke
+of marrying another.  Can you wonder that I went in the evening to
+his rooms--went to plead with him--to beg, almost on my knees?
+It was no use.  He was done with me--he said that over and over.
+Overwhelmed with blind rage and despair, I snatched up that knife
+from the table and plunged it into his heart.  At once I was filled
+with remorse.  I--"
+
+"One moment," broke in Hughes.  "You may keep the details of your
+subsequent actions until later.  I should like to compliment you,
+Countess.  You tell it better each time."
+
+He came over and faced Bray.  I thought there was a distinct note
+of hostility in his voice.
+
+"Checkmate, Inspector!" he said.  Bray made no reply.  He sat there
+staring up at the colonel, his face turned to stone.
+
+"The scarab pin," went on Hughes, "is not yet forthcoming.  We are
+tied for honors, my friend.  You have your confession, but I have
+one to match it."
+
+"All this is beyond me," snapped Bray.
+
+"A bit beyond me, too," the colonel answered.  "Here are two people
+who wish us to believe that on the evening of Thursday last, at half
+after six of the clock, each sought out Captain Fraser-Freer in his
+rooms and murdered him."
+
+He walked to the window and then wheeled dramatically.
+
+"The strangest part of it all is," he added, "that at six-thirty
+o'clock last Thursday evening, at an obscure restaurant in Soho
+--Frigacci's--these two people were having tea together!"
+
+I must admit that, as the colonel calmly offered this information,
+I suddenly went limp all over at a realization of the endless maze
+of mystery in which we were involved.  The woman gave a little cry
+and Lieutenant Fraser-Freer leaped to his feet.
+
+"How the devil do you know that?" he cried.
+
+"I know it," said Colonel Hughes, "because one of my men happened
+to be having tea at a table near by.  He happened to be having tea
+there for the reason that ever since the arrival of this lady in
+London, at the request of--er--friends in India, I have been
+keeping track of her every move; just as I kept watch over your
+late brother, the captain."
+
+Without a word Lieutenant Fraser-Freer dropped into a chair and
+buried his face in his hands.
+
+"I'm sorry, my son," said Hughes.  "Really, I am.  You made a
+heroic effort to keep the facts from coming out--a man's-size
+effort it was.  But the War Office knew long before you did that
+your brother had succumbed to this woman's lure--that he was
+serving her and Berlin, and not his own country, England."
+
+Fraser-Freer raised his head.  When he spoke there was in his voice
+an emotion vastly more sincere than that which had moved him when
+he made his absurd confession.
+
+"The game's up," he said.  "I have done all I could.  This will
+kill my father, I am afraid.  Ours has been an honorable name,
+Colonel; you know that--a long line of military men whose loyalty
+to their country has never before been in question.  I thought my
+confession would and the whole nasty business, that the
+investigations would stop, and that I might be able to keep forever
+unknown this horrible thing about him--about my brother."
+
+Colonel Hughes laid his hand on the boy's shoulder, and the latter
+went on: "They reached me--those frightful insinuations about
+Stephen--in a round about way; and when he came home from India I
+resolved to watch him.  I saw him go often to the house of this
+woman.  I satisfied myself that she was the same one involved in
+the stories coming from Rangoon; then, under another name, I managed
+to meet her.  I hinted to her that I myself was none too loyal; not
+completely, but to a limited extent, I won her confidence.  Gradually
+I became convinced that my brother was indeed disloyal to his country,
+to his name, to us all.  It was at that tea time you have mentioned
+when I finally made up my mind.  I had already bought a revolver; and,
+with it in my pocket, I went to the Savoy for dinner."
+
+He rose and paced the floor.
+
+"I left the Savoy early and went to Stephen's rooms.  I was resolved
+to have it out with him, to put the matter to him bluntly; and if he
+had no explanation to give me I intended to kill him then and there.
+So, you see, I was guilty in intention if not in reality.  I entered
+his study.  It was filled with strangers.  On his sofa I saw my
+brother Stephen lying--stabbed above the heart--dead!"  There was
+a moment's silence.  "That is all," said Lieutenant Fraser-Freer.
+
+"I take it," said Hughes kindly, "that we have finished with the
+lieutenant.  Eh, Inspector?"
+
+"Yes," said Bray shortly.  "You may go."
+
+"Thank you," the boy answered.  As he went out he said brokenly to
+Hughes: "I must find him--my father."
+
+Bray sat in his chair, staring hard ahead, his jaw thrust out
+angrily.  Suddenly he turned on Hughes.
+
+"You don't play fair," he said.  "I wasn't told anything of the
+status of the captain at the War Office.  This is all news to me."
+
+"Very well," smiled Hughes.  "The bet is off if you like."
+
+"No, by heaven!" Bray cried.  "It's still on, and I'll win it yet.
+A fine morning's work I suppose you think you've done.  But are we
+any nearer to finding the murderer?  Tell me that."
+
+"Only a bit nearer, at any rate," replied Hughes suavely.  "This
+lady, of course, remains in custody."
+
+"Yes, yes," answered the inspector.  "Take her away!" he ordered.
+
+A constable came forward for the countess and Colonel Hughes
+gallantly held open the door.
+
+"You will have an opportunity, Sophie," he said, "to think up
+another story.  You are clever--it will not be hard."
+
+She gave him a black look and went out.  Bray got up from his desk.
+He and Colonel Hughes stood facing each other across a table, and
+to me there was something in the manner of each that suggested
+eternal conflict.
+
+"Well?" sneered Bray.
+
+"There is one possibility we have overlooked," Hughes answered.
+He turned toward me and I was startled by the coldness in his eyes.
+"Do you know, Inspector," he went on, "that this American came to
+London with a letter of introduction to the captain--a letter from
+the captain's cousin, one Archibald Enwright?  And do you know that
+Fraser-Freer had no cousin of that name?"
+
+"No!" said Bray.
+
+"It happens to be the truth," said Hughes.  "The American has
+confessed as much to me."
+
+"Then," said Bray to me, and his little blinking eyes were on me
+with a narrow calculating glance that sent the shivers up and down
+my spine, "you are under arrest.  I have exempted you so far because
+of your friend at the United States Consulate.  That exemption ends
+now."
+
+I was thunderstruck.  I turned to the colonel, the man who had
+suggested that I seek him out if I needed a friend--the man I had
+looked to to save me from just such a contingency as this.  But his
+eyes were quite fishy and unsympathetic.
+
+"Quite correct, Inspector," he said.  "Lock him up!"  And as I began
+to protest he passed very close to me and spoke in a low voice: "Say
+nothing.  Wait!"
+
+I pleaded to be allowed to go back to my rooms, to communicate with
+my friends, and pay a visit to our consulate and to the Embassy; and
+at the colonel's suggestion Bray agreed to this somewhat irregular
+course.  So this afternoon I have been abroad with a constable, and
+while I wrote this long letter to you he has been fidgeting in my
+easy chair.  Now he informs me that his patience is exhausted and
+that I must go at once.  So there is no time to wonder; no time to
+speculate as to the future, as to the colonel's sudden turn against
+me or the promise of his whisper in my ear.  I shall, no doubt,
+spend the night behind those hideous, forbidding walls that your
+guide has pointed out to you as New Scotland Yard.  And when I
+shall write again, when I shall end this series of letters so
+filled with--
+
+The constable will not wait.  He is as impatient as a child.
+Surely he is lying when he says I have kept him here an hour.
+
+Wherever I am, dear lady, whatever be the end of this amazing
+tangle, you may be sure the thought of you--Confound the man!
+
+                                         YOURS, IN DURANCE VILE.
+
+This fifth letter from the young man of the Agony Column arrived
+at the Carlton Hotel, as the reader may recall, on Monday morning,
+August the third.  And it represented to the girl from Texas the
+climax of the excitement she had experienced in the matter of the
+murder in Adelphi Terrace.  The news that her pleasant young
+friend--whom she did not know--had been arrested as a suspect in
+the case, inevitable as it had seemed for days, came none the less
+as an unhappy shock.  She wondered whether there was anything she
+could do to help.  She even considered going to Scotland Yard and,
+on the ground that her father was a Congressman from Texas,
+demanding the immediate release of her strawberry man.  Sensibly,
+however, she decided that Congressmen from Texas meant little in
+the life of the London police.  Besides, she night have difficulty
+in explaining to that same Congressman how she happened to know
+all about a crime that was as yet unmentioned in the newspapers.
+
+So she reread the latter portion of the fifth letter, which pictured
+her hero marched off ingloriously to Scotland Yard and with a
+worried little sigh, went below to join her father.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+In the course of the morning she made several mysterious inquiries
+of her parent regarding nice points of international law as it
+concerned murder, and it is probable that he would have been struck
+by the odd nature of these questions had he not been unduly excited
+about another matter.
+
+"I tell you, we've got to get home!" he announced gloomily.  "The
+German troops are ready at Aix-la-Chapelle for an assault on Liege.
+Yes, sir--they're going to strike through Belgium!  Know what that
+means?  England in the war!  Labor troubles; suffragette troubles;
+civil war in Ireland--these things will melt winter in Texas.
+They'll go in.  It would be national suicide if they didn't."
+
+His daughter stared at him.  She was unaware that it was the
+bootblack at the Carlton he was now quoting.  She began to think he
+knew more about foreign affairs than she had given him credit for.
+
+"Yes, sir," he went on; "we've got to travel--fast.  This won't be
+a healthy neighborhood for non-combatants when the ruction starts.
+I'm going if I have to buy a liner!"
+
+"Nonsense!" said the girl.  "This is the chance of a lifetime.  I
+won't be cheated out of it by a silly old dad.  Why, here we are,
+face to face with history!"
+
+"American history is good enough for me," he spread-eagled.  "What
+are you looking at?"
+
+"Provincial to the death!" she said thoughtfully.  "You old dear
+--I love you so!  Some of our statesmen over home are going to
+look pretty foolish now in the face of things they can't understand
+I hope you're not going to be one of them."
+
+"Twaddle!" he cried.  "I'm going to the steamship offices to-day
+and argue as I never argued for a vote."
+
+His daughter saw that he was determined; and, wise from long
+experience, she did not try to dissuade him.
+
+London that hot Monday was a city on the alert, a city of hearts
+heavy with dread.  The rumors in one special edition of the papers
+were denied in the next and reaffirmed in the next.  Men who could
+look into the future walked the streets with faces far from happy.
+Unrest ruled the town.  And it found its echo in the heart of the
+girl from Texas as she thought of her young friend of the  Agony
+Column "in durance vile" behind the frowning walls of Scotland Yard.
+
+That afternoon her father appeared, with the beaming mien of the
+victor, and announced that for a stupendous sum he had bought the
+tickets of a man who was to have sailed on the steamship Saronia
+three days hence.
+
+"The boat train leaves at ten Thursday morning," he said.  "Take
+your last look at Europe and be ready."
+
+Three days!  His daughter listened with sinking heart.  Could she
+in three days' time learn the end of that strange mystery, know
+the final fate of the man who had first addressed her so
+unconventionally in a public print?  Why, at the end of three days
+he might still be in Scotland Yard, a prisoner!  She could not
+leave if that were true--she simply could not.  Almost she was
+on the point of telling her father the story of the whole affair,
+confident that she could soothe his anger and enlist his aid.  She
+decided to wait until the next morning; and, if no letter came
+then--
+
+But on Tuesday morning a letter did come and the beginning of it
+brought pleasant news.  The beginning--yes.  But the end!  This
+was the letter:
+
+DEAR ANXIOUS LADY: Is it too much for me to assume that you have
+been just that, knowing as you did that I was locked up for the
+murder of a captain in the Indian Army, with the evidence all
+against me and hope a very still small voice indeed?
+
+Well, dear lady, be anxious no longer.  I have just lived through
+the most astounding day of all the astounding days that have been
+my portion since last Thursday.  And now, in the dusk, I sit again
+in my rooms, a free man, and write to you in what peace and quiet
+I can command after the startling adventure through which I have
+recently passed.
+
+Suspicion no longer points to me; constables no longer eye me;
+Scotland Yard is not even slightly interested in me.  For the
+murderer of Captain Fraser-Freer has been caught at last!
+
+Sunday night I spent ingloriously in a cell in Scotland Yard.  I
+could not sleep.  I had so much to think of--you, for example,
+and at intervals how I might escape from the folds of the net that
+had closed so tightly about me.  My friend at the consulate,
+Watson, called on me late in the evening; and he was very kind.
+But there was a note lacking in his voice, and after, he was gone
+the terrible certainty came into my mind--he believed that I was
+guilty after all.
+
+The night passed, and a goodly portion of to-day went by--as the
+poets say--with lagging feet.  I thought of London, yellow in the
+sun.  I thought of the Carlton--I suppose there are no more
+strawberries by this time.  And my waiter--that stiff-backed
+Prussian--is home in Deutschland now, I presume, marching with his
+regiment.  I thought of you.
+
+At three o'clock this afternoon they came for me and I was led
+back to the room belonging to Inspector Bray.  When I entered,
+however, the inspector was not there--only Colonel Hughes,
+immaculate and self-possessed, as usual, gazing out the window
+into the cheerless stone court.  He turned when I entered.  I
+suppose I must have had a most woebegone appearance, for a look of
+regret crossed his face.
+
+"My dear fellow," he cried, "my most humble apologies!  I intended
+to have you released last night.  But, believe me, I have been
+frightfully busy."
+
+I said nothing.  What could I say?  The fact that he had been busy
+struck me as an extremely silly excuse.  But the inference that my
+escape from the toils of the law was imminent set my heart to
+thumping.
+
+"I fear you can never forgive me for throwing you over as I did
+yesterday," he went on.  "I can only say that it was absolutely
+necessary--as you shall shortly understand."
+
+I thawed a bit.  After all, there was an unmistakable sincerity in
+his voice and manner.
+
+"We are waiting for Inspector Bray," continued the colonel.  "I
+take it you wish to see this thing through?"
+
+"To the end," I answered.
+
+"Naturally.  The inspector was called away yesterday immediately
+after our interview with him.  He had business on the Continent,
+I understand.  But fortunately I managed to reach him at Dover
+and he has come back to London.  I wanted him, you see, because
+I have found the murderer of Captain Fraser-Freer."
+
+I thrilled to hear that, for from my point of view it was certainly
+a consummation devoutly to be wished.  The colonel did not speak
+again.  In a few minutes the door opened and Bray came in.  His
+clothes looked as though he had slept in them; his little eyes were
+bloodshot.  But in those eyes there was a fire I shall never forget.
+Hughes bowed.
+
+"Good afternoon, Inspector," he said.  "I'm really sorry I had to
+interrupt you as I did; but I most awfully wanted you to know that
+you owe me a Homburg hat."  He went closer to the detective.  "You
+see, I have won that wager.  I have found the man who murdered
+Captain Fraser-Freer."
+
+Curiously enough, Bray said nothing.  He sat down at his desk and
+idly glanced through the pile of mail that lay upon it.  Finally he
+looked up and said in a weary tone:
+
+"You're very clever, I'm sure, Colonel Hughes."
+
+"Oh--I wouldn't say that," replied Hughes.  "Luck was with me
+--from the first.  I am really very glad to have been of service
+in the matter, for I am convinced that if I had not taken part in
+the search it would have gone hard with some innocent man."
+
+Bray's big pudgy hands still played idly with the mail on his desk.
+Hughes went on: "Perhaps, as a clever detective, you will be
+interested in the series of events which enabled me to win that
+Homburg hat?  You have heard, no doubt, that the man I have caught
+is Von der Herts--ten years ago the best secret-service man in
+the employ of the Berlin government, but for the past few years
+mysteriously missing from our line of vision.  We've been wondering
+about him--at the War Office."
+
+The colonel dropped into a chair, facing Bray.
+
+"You know Von der Herts, of course?" he remarked casually.
+
+"Of course," said Bray, still in that dead tired voice.
+
+"He is the head of that crowd in England," went on Hughes.  "Rather
+a feather in my cap to get him--but I mustn't boast.  Poor
+Fraser-Freer would have got him if I hadn't--only Von der Herts
+had the luck to get the captain first."
+
+Bray raised his eyes.
+
+"You said you were going to tell me--" he began.
+
+"And so I am," said Hughes.  "Captain Fraser-Freer got in rather
+a mess in India and failed of promotion.  It was suspected that he
+was discontented, soured on the Service; and the Countess Sophie
+de Graf was set to beguile him with her charms, to kill his loyalty
+and win him over to her crowd.
+
+"It was thought she had succeeded--the Wilhelmstrasse thought
+so--we at the War Office thought so, as long as he stayed in India.
+
+"But when the captain and the woman came on to London we discovered
+that we had done him a great injustice.  He let us know, when the
+first chance offered, that he was trying to redeem himself, to round
+up a dangerous band of spies by pretending to be one of them.  He
+said that it was his mission in London to meet Von der Herts, the
+greatest of them all; and that, once he had located this man, we
+would hear from him again.  In the weeks that followed I continued
+to keep a watch on the countess; and I kept track of the captain,
+too, in a general way, for I'm  ashamed to say I was not quite sure
+of him."
+
+The colonel got up and walked to the window; then turned and
+continued: "Captain Fraser-Freer and Von der Herts were completely
+unknown to each other.  The mails were barred as a means of
+communication; but Fraser-Freer knew that in some way word from the
+master would reach him, and he had had a tip to watch the personal
+column of the Daily Mail.  Now we have the explanation of those four
+odd messages.  From that column the man from Rangoon learned that
+he was to wear a white aster in his button-hole, a scarab pin in
+his tie, a Homburg hat on his head, and meet Von der Herts at Ye
+Old Gambrinus Restaurant in Regent Street, last Thursday night at
+ten o'clock.  As we know, he made all arrangements to comply with
+those directions.  He made other arrangements as well.  Since it
+was out of the question for him to come to Scotland Yard, by
+skillful maneuvering he managed to interview an inspector of police
+at the Hotel Cecil.  It was agreed that on Thursday night Von der
+Herts would be placed under arrest the moment he made himself known
+to the captain."
+
+Hughes paused.  Bray still idled with his pile of letters, while
+the colonel regarded him gravely.
+
+"Poor Fraser-Freer!" Hughes went on.  "Unfortunately for him, Von
+der Herts knew almost as soon as did the inspector that a plan was
+afoot to trap him.  There was but one course open to him: He located
+the captain's lodgings, went there at seven that night, and killed
+a loyal and brave Englishman where he stood."
+
+A tense silence filled the room.  I sat on the edge of my chair,
+wondering just where all this unwinding of the tangle was leading us.
+
+"I had little, indeed, to work on," went on Hughes.  "But I had
+this advantage: the spy thought the police, and the police alone,
+were seeking the murderer.  He was at no pains to throw me off his
+track, because he did not suspect that I was on it.  For weeks my
+men had been watching the countess.  I had them continue to do so.
+I figured that sooner or later Von der Herts would get in touch
+with her.  I was right.  And when at last I saw with my own eyes
+the man who must, beyond all question, be Von der Herts, I was
+astounded, my dear Inspector, I was overwhelmed."
+
+"Yes?" said Bray.
+
+"I set to work then in earnest to connect him with that night in
+Adelphi Terrace.  All the finger marks in the captain's study
+were for some reason destroyed, but I found others outside, in the
+dust on that seldom-used gate which leads from the garden.  Without
+his knowing, I secured from the man I suspected the imprint of his
+right thumb.  A comparison was startling.  Next I went down into
+Fleet Street and luckily managed to get hold of the typewritten
+copy sent to the Mail bearing those four messages.  I noticed that
+in these the letter a was out of alignment.  I maneuvered to get a
+letter written on a typewriter belonging to my man.  The a was out
+of alignment.  Then Archibald Enwright, a renegade and waster well
+known to us as serving other countries, came to England.  My man
+and he met--at Ye Old Gambrinus, in Regent Street.  And finally,
+on a visit to the lodgings of this man who, I was now certain, was
+Von der Herts, under the mattress of his bed I found this knife."
+
+And Colonel Hughes threw down upon the inspector's desk the knife
+from India that I had last seen in the study of Captain Fraser-Freer.
+
+"All these points of evidence were in my hands yesterday morning
+in this room," Hughes went on.  "Still, the answer they gave me was
+so unbelievable, so astounding, I was not satisfied; I wanted even
+stronger proof.  That is why I directed suspicion to my American
+friend here.  I was waiting.  I knew that at last Von der Herts
+realized the danger he was in.  I felt that if opportunity were
+offered he would attempt to escape from England; and then our proofs
+of his guilt would be unanswerable, despite his cleverness.  True
+enough, in the afternoon he secured the release of the countess,
+and together they started for the Continent.  I was lucky enough to
+get him at Dover--and glad to let the lady go on."
+
+And now, for the first time, the startling truth struck me full in
+the face as Hughes smiled down at his victim.
+
+"Inspector Bray," he said, "or Von der Herts, as you choose, I
+arrest you on two counts: First, as the head of the Wilhelmstrasse
+spy system in England; second, as the murderer of Captain
+Fraser-Freer.  And, if you will allow me, I wish to compliment you
+on your efficiency."
+
+Bray did not reply for a moment.  I sat numb in my chair.  Finally
+the inspector looked up.  He actually tried to smile.
+
+"You win the hat," he said, "but you must go to Homburg for it.  I
+will gladly pay all expenses."
+
+"Thank you," answered Hughes.  "I hope to visit your country before
+long; but I shall not be occupied with hats.  Again I congratulate
+you.  You were a bit careless, but your position justified that.  As
+head of the department at Scotland Yard given over to the hunt for
+spies, precaution doubtless struck you as unnecessary.  How unlucky
+for poor Fraser-Freer that it was to you he went to arrange for your
+own arrest!  I got that information from a clerk at the Cecil.  You
+were quite right, from your point of view, to kill him.  And, as I
+say, you could afford to be rather reckless.  You had arranged that
+when the news of his murder came to Scotland Yard you yourself would
+be on hand to conduct the search for the guilty man.  A happy
+situation, was it not?"
+
+"It seemed so at the time," admitted Bray; and at last I thought I
+detected a note of bitterness in his voice.
+
+"I'm very sorry--really," said Hughes.  "To-day, or to-morrow at
+the latest, England will enter the war.  You know what that means,
+Von der Herts.  The Tower of London--and a firing squad!"
+
+Deliberately he walked away from the inspector, and stood facing
+the window.  Von der Herts was fingering idly that Indian knife
+which lay on his desk.  With a quick hunted look about the room, he
+raised his hand; and before I could leap forward to stop him he had
+plunged the knife into his heart.
+
+Colonel Hughes turned round at my cry, but even at what met his
+eyes now that Englishman was imperturbable.
+
+"Too bad!" he said.  "Really too bad!  The man had courage and,
+beyond all doubt, brains.  But--this is most considerate of him.
+He has saved me such a lot of trouble."
+
+The colonel effected my release at once; and he and I walked down
+Whitehall together in the bright sun that seemed so good to me after
+the bleak walls of the Yard.  Again he apologized for turning
+suspicion my way the previous day; but I assured him I held no
+grudge for that.
+
+"One or two things I do not understand," I said.  "That letter I
+brought from Interlaken--"
+
+"Simple enough," he replied.  "Enwright--who, by the way, is now
+in the Tower--wanted to communicate with Fraser-Freer, who he
+supposed was a loyal member of the band.  Letters sent by post
+seemed dangerous.  With your kind assistance he informed the captain
+of his whereabouts and the date of his imminent arrival in London.
+Fraser-Freer, not wanting you entangled in his plans, eliminated you
+by denying the existence of this cousin--the truth, of course."
+
+"Why," I asked, "did the countess call on me to demand that I alter
+my testimony?"
+
+"Bray sent her.  He had rifled Fraser-Freer's desk and he held that
+letter from Enwright.  He was most anxious to fix the guilt upon
+the young lieutenant's head.  You and your testimony as to the
+hour of the crime stood in the way.  He sought to intimidate you
+with threats--"
+
+"But--"
+
+"I know--you are wondering why the countess confessed to me next
+day.  I had the woman in rather a funk.  In the meshes of my
+rapid-fire questioning she became hopelessly involved.  This was
+because she was suddenly terrified she realized I must have been
+watching her for weeks, and that perhaps Von der Herts was not so
+immune from suspicion as he supposed.  At the proper moment I
+suggested that I might have to take her to Inspector Bray.  This
+gave her an idea.  She made her fake confession to reach his side;
+once there, she warned him of his danger and they fled together."
+
+We walked along a moment in silence.  All about us the lurid special
+editions of the afternoon were flaunting their predictions of the
+horror to come.  The face of the colonel was grave.
+
+"How long had Von der Herts held his position at the Yard?" I asked.
+
+"For nearly five years," Hughes answered.
+
+"It seems incredible," I murmured.
+
+"So it does," he answered; "but it is only the first of many
+incredible things that this war will reveal.  Two months from now
+we shall all have forgotten it in the face of new revelations far
+more unbelievable." He sighed.  "If these men about us realized the
+terrible ordeal that lies ahead!  Misgoverned; unprepared--I
+shudder at the thought of the sacrifices we must make, many of them
+in vain.  But I suppose that somehow, some day, we shall muddle
+through."
+
+He bade me good-by in Trafalgar Square, saying that he must at once
+seek out the father and brother of the late captain, and tell them
+the news--that their kinsman was really loyal to his country.
+
+"It will come to them as a ray of light in the dark--my news," he
+said.  "And now, thank you once again."
+
+We parted and I came back here to my lodgings.  The mystery is
+finally solved, though in such a way it is difficult to believe
+that it was anything but a nightmare at any time.  But solved none
+the less; and I should be at peace, except for one great black fact
+that haunts me, will not let me rest.  I must tell you, dear lady
+--And yet I fear it means the end of everything.  If only I can
+make you understand!
+
+I have walked my floor, deep in thought, in puzzlement, in
+indecision.  Now I have made up my mind.  There is no other way
+--I must tell you the truth.
+
+Despite the fact that Bray was Von der Herts; despite the fact that
+he killed himself at the discovery--despite this and that, and
+everything--Bray did not kill Captain Fraser-Freer!
+
+On last Thursday evening, at a little after seven o'clock, I myself
+climbed the stairs, entered the captain's rooms, picked up that
+knife from his desk, and stabbed him just above the heart!
+
+What provocation I was under, what stern necessity moved me--all
+this you must wait until to-morrow to know.  I shall spend another
+anxious day preparing my defense, hoping that through some miracle
+of mercy you may forgive me--understand that there was nothing
+else I could do.
+
+Do not judge, dear lady, until you know everything--until all my
+evidence is in your lovely hands.
+                                        YOURS, IN ALL HUMILITY.
+
+The first few paragraphs of this the sixth and next to the last
+letter from the Agony Column man had brought a smile of relief to
+the face of the girl who read.  She was decidedly glad to learn
+that her friend no longer languished back of those gray walls on
+Victoria Embankment.  With excitement that increased as she went
+along, she followed Colonel Hughes as--in the letter--he moved
+nearer and nearer his denouement, until finally his finger pointed
+to Inspector Bray sitting guilty in his chair.  This was an
+eminently satisfactory solution, and it served the inspector right
+for locking up her friend.  Then, with the suddenness of a bomb
+from a Zeppelin, came, at the end, her strawberry man's confession
+of guilt.  He was the murderer, after all!  He admitted it!  She
+could scarcely believe her eyes.
+
+Yet there it was, in ink as violet as those eyes, on the note paper
+that had become so familiar to her during the thrilling week just
+past.  She read it a second time, and yet a third.  Her amazement
+gave way to anger; her cheeks flamed.  Still--he had asked her not
+to judge until all his evidence was in.  This was a reasonable
+request surely, and she could not in fairness refuse to grant it.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+So began an anxious day, not only for the girl from Texas but for
+all London as well.  Her father was bursting with new diplomatic
+secrets recently extracted from his bootblack adviser.  Later, in
+Washington, he was destined to be a marked man because of his
+grasp of the situation abroad.  No one suspected the bootblack,
+the power behind the throne; but the gentleman from Texas was
+destined to think of that able diplomat many times, and to wish
+that he still had him at his feet to advise him.
+
+"War by midnight, sure!" he proclaimed on the morning of this
+fateful Tuesday.  "I tell you, Marian, we're lucky to have our
+tickets on the Saronia.  Five thousand dollars wouldn't buy them
+from me to-day!  I'll be a happy man when we go aboard that liner
+day after to-morrow."
+
+Day after to-morrow!  The girl wondered.  At any rate, she would
+have that last letter then--the letter that was to contain whatever
+defense her young friend could offer to explain his dastardly act.
+She waited eagerly for that final epistle.
+
+The day dragged on, bringing at its close England's entrance into
+the war; and the Carlton bootblack was a prophet not without honor
+in a certain Texas heart.  And on the following morning there
+arrived a letter which was torn open by eager trembling fingers.
+The letter spoke:
+
+DEAR LADY JUDGE: This is by far the hardest to write of all the
+letters you have had from me.  For twenty-four hours I have been
+planning it.  Last night I walked on the Embankment while the
+hansoms jogged by and the lights of the tramcars danced on
+Westminster Bridge just as the fireflies used to in the garden
+back of our house in Kansas.  While I walked I planned.  To-day,
+shut up in my rooms, I was also planning.  And yet now, when I
+sit down to write, I am still confused; still at a loss where to
+begin and what to say, once I have begun.
+
+At the close of my last letter I confessed to you that it was I
+who murdered Captain Fraser-Freer.  That is the truth.  Soften the
+blow as I may, it all comes down to that.  The bitter truth!
+
+Not a week ago--last Thursday night at seven--I climbed our
+dark stairs and plunged a knife into the heart of that defenseless
+gentleman.  If only I could point out to you that he had offended
+me in some way; if I could prove to you that his death was
+necessary to me, as it really was to Inspector Bray--then there
+might be some hope of your ultimate pardon.  But, alas!  he had
+been most kind to me--kinder than I have allowed you to guess
+from my letters.  There was no actual need to do away with him.
+Where shall I look for a defense?
+
+At the moment the only defense I can think of is simply this--the
+captain knows I killed him!
+
+Even as I write this, I hear his footsteps above me, as I heard
+them when I sat here composing my first letter to you.  He is
+dressing for dinner.  We are to dine together at Romano's.
+
+And there, my lady, you have finally the answer to the mystery that
+has--I hope--puzzled you.  I killed my friend the captain in my
+second letter to you, and all the odd developments that followed
+lived only in my imagination as I sat here beside the green-shaded
+lamp in my study, plotting how I should write seven letters to you
+that would, as the novel advertisements say, grip your attention to
+the very end.  Oh, I am guilty--there is no denying that.  And,
+though I do not wish to ape old Adam and imply that I was tempted
+by a lovely woman, a strict regard for the truth forces me to add
+that there is also guilt upon your head.  How so?  Go back to that
+message you inserted in the Daily Mail: "The grapefruit lady's
+great fondness for mystery and romance--"
+
+You did not know it, of course; but in those words you passed me a
+challenge I could not resist; for making plots is the business of
+life--more, the breath of life--to me.  I have made many; and
+perhaps you have followed some of them, on Broadway.  Perhaps you
+have seen a play of mine announced for early production in London.
+There was mention of it in the program at the Palace.  That was the
+business which kept me in England.  The project has been abandoned
+now and I am free to go back home.
+
+Thus you see that when you granted me the privilege of those seven
+letters you played into my hands.  So, said I, she longs for mystery
+and romance.  Then, by the Lord Harry, she shall have them!
+
+And it was the tramp of Captain Fraser-Freer's boots above my head
+that showed me the way.  A fine, stalwart, cordial fellow--the
+captain--who has been very kind to me since I presented my letter
+of introduction from his cousin, Archibald Enwright.  Poor Archie!
+A meek, correct little soul, who would be horrified beyond
+expression if he knew that of him I had made a spy and a frequenter
+of Limehouse!
+
+The dim beginnings of the plot were in my mind when I wrote that
+first letter, suggesting that all was not regular in the matter of
+Archie's note of introduction.  Before I wrote my second, I knew
+that nothing but the death of Fraser-Freer would do me.  I recalled
+that Indian knife I had seen upon his desk, and from that moment he
+was doomed.  At that time I had no idea how I should solve the
+mystery.  But I had read and wondered at those four strange messages
+in the Mail, and I resolved that they must figure in the scheme of
+things.
+
+The fourth letter presented difficulties until I returned from
+dinner that night and saw a taxi waiting before our quiet house.
+Hence the visit of the woman with the lilac perfume.  I am afraid
+the Wilhelmstrasse would have little use for a lady spy who
+advertised herself in so foolish a manner.  Time for writing the
+fifth letter arrived.  I felt that I should now be placed under
+arrest.  I had a faint little hope that you would be sorry about
+that.  Oh, I'm a brute, I know!
+
+Early in the game I had told the captain of the cruel way in which
+I had disposed of him.  He was much amused; but he insisted,
+absolutely, that he must be vindicated before the close of the
+series, and I was with him there.  He had been so bully about it
+all.  A chance remark of his gave me my solution.  He said he had
+it on good authority that the chief of the Czar's bureau for
+capturing spies in Russia was himself a spy.  And so--why not a
+spy in Scotland Yard?
+
+I assure you, I am most contrite as I set all this down here.  You
+must remember that when I began my story there was no idea of war.
+Now all Europe is aflame; and in the face of the great conflict, the
+awful suffering to come, I and my little plot begin to look--well,
+I fancy you know just how we look.
+
+Forgive me.  I am afraid I can never find the words to tell you how
+important it seemed to interest you in my letters--to make you feel
+that I am an entertaining person worthy of your notice.  That
+morning when you entered the Carlton breakfast room was really the
+biggest in my life.  I felt as though you had brought with you
+through that doorway-- But I have no right to say it.  I have the
+right to say nothing save that now--it is all left to you.  If I
+have offended, then I shall never hear from you again.
+
+The captain will be here in a moment.  It is near the hour set and
+he is never late.  He is not to return to India, but expects to
+be drafted for the Expeditionary Force that will be sent to the
+Continent.  I hope the German Army will be kinder to him than I was!
+
+My name is Geoffrey West.  I live at nineteen Adelphi Terrace--in
+rooms that look down on the most wonderful garden in London.  That,
+at least, is real.  It is very quiet there to-night, with the city
+and its continuous hum of war and terror seemingly a million miles
+away.
+
+Shall we meet at last?  The answer rests entirely with you.  But,
+believe me, I shall be anxiously waiting to know; and if you decide
+to give me a chance to explain--to denounce myself to you in
+person--then a happy man will say good-by to this garden and these
+dim dusty rooms and follow you to the ends of the earth--aye, to
+Texas itself!
+
+Captain Fraser-Freer is coming down the stairs.  Is this good-by
+forever, my lady?  With all my soul, I hope not.
+
+                                    YOUR CONTRITE STRAWBERRY MAN.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Words are futile things with which to attempt a description of the
+feelings of the girl at the Carlton as she read this, the last letter
+of seven written to her through the medium of her maid, Sadie Haight.
+Turning the pages of the dictionary casually, one might enlist a
+few--for example, amazement, anger, unbelief, wonder.  Perhaps, to
+go back to the letter a, even amusement.  We may leave her with the
+solution to the puzzle in her hand, the Saronia a little more than
+a day away, and a weirdly mixed company of emotions struggling in
+her soul.
+
+And leaving her thus, let us go back to Adelphi Terrace and a young
+man exceedingly worried.
+
+Once he knew that his letter was delivered, Mr. Geoffrey West took
+his place most humbly on the anxious seat.  There he writhed through
+the long hours of Wednesday morning.  Not to prolong this painful
+picture, let us hasten to add that at three o'clock that same
+afternoon came a telegram that was to end suspense.  He tore it open
+and read:
+
+STRAWBERRY MAN: I shall never, never forgive, you.  But we are
+sailing tomorrow on the Saronia.  Were you thinking of going home soon?
+MARIAN A.  LARNED.
+
+Thus it happened that, a few minutes later, to the crowd of troubled
+Americans in a certain steamship booking office there was added a
+wild-eyed young man who further upset all who saw him.  To weary
+clerks he proclaimed in fiery tones that he must sail on the Saronia.
+There seemed to be no way of appeasing him.  The offer  of a private
+liner would not have interested him.
+
+He raved and tore his hair.  He ranted.  All to no avail.  There was,
+in plain American, "nothing doing!"
+
+Damp but determined, he sought among the crowd for one who had
+bookings on the Saronia.  He could find, at first, no one so lucky;
+but finally he ran across Tommy Gray.  Gray, an old friend, admitted
+when pressed that he had a passage on that most desirable boat.  But
+the offer of all the king's horses and all the king's gold left him
+unmoved.  Much, he said, as he would have liked to oblige, he and his
+wife were determined.  They would sail.
+
+It was then that Geoffrey West made a compact with his friend.  He
+secured from him the necessary steamer labels and it was arranged that
+his baggage was to go aboard the Saronia as the property of Gray.
+
+"But," protested Gray, "even suppose you do put this through;
+suppose you do manage to sail without a ticket--where will you
+sleep?  In chains somewhere below, I fancy."
+
+"No matter!" bubbled West.  "I'll sleep in the dining saloon, in a
+lifeboat, on the lee scuppers--whatever they are.  I'll sleep in
+the air, without any visible support!  I'll sleep anywhere--nowhere
+--but I'll sail!  And as for irons--they don't make 'em strong
+enough to hold me."
+
+At five o'clock on Thursday afternoon the Saronia slipped smoothly
+away from a Liverpool dock.  Twenty-five hundred Americans--about
+twice the number the boat could comfortably carry--stood on her
+decks and cheered.  Some of those in that crowd who had millions of
+money were booked for the steerage.  All of them were destined to
+experience during that crossing hunger, annoyance, discomfort.  They
+were to be stepped on, sat on, crowded and jostled.  They suspected
+as much when the boat left the dock.  Yet they cheered!
+
+Gayest among them was Geoffrey West, triumphant amid the confusion.
+He was safely aboard; the boat was on its way!  Little did it
+trouble him that he went as a stowaway, since he had no ticket;
+nothing but an overwhelming determination to be on the good ship
+Saronia.
+
+That night as the Saronia stole along with all deck lights out and
+every porthole curtained, West saw on the dim deck the slight figure
+of a girl who meant much to him.  She was standing staring out over
+the black waters; and, with wildly beating heart, he approached her,
+not knowing what to say, but feeling that a start must be made
+somehow.
+
+"Please pardon me for addressing--"  he began.  "But I want to tell
+you--"
+
+She turned, startled; and then smiled an odd little smile, which he
+could not see in the dark.
+
+"I beg your pardon," she said.  "I haven't met you, that I recall--"
+
+"I know," he answered.  "That's going to be arranged to-morrow.
+Mrs. Tommy Gray says you crossed with them--"
+
+"Mere steamer acquaintances," the girl replied coldly.
+
+"Of course!  But Mrs. Gray is a darling--she'll fix that all right.
+I just want to say, before to-morrow comes--"
+
+"Wouldn't it be better to wait?"
+
+"I can't!  I'm on this ship without a ticket.  I've got to go down
+in a minute and tell the purser that.  Maybe he'll throw me
+overboard; maybe he'll lock me up.  I don't know what they do with
+people like me.  Maybe they'll make a stoker of me.  And then I
+shall have to stoke, with no chance of seeing you again.  So that's
+why I want to say now--I'm sorry I have such a keen imagination.
+It carried me away--really it did!  I didn't mean to deceive you
+with those letters; but, once I got started-- You know, don't you,
+that I love you with all my heart?  From the moment you came into
+the Carlton that morning I--"
+
+"Really--Mr.--Mr.--"
+
+"West--Geoffrey West.  I adore you!  What can I do to prove it?
+I'm going to prove it--before this ship docks in the North River.
+Perhaps I'd better talk to your father, and tell him about the
+Agony Column and those seven letters--"
+
+"You'd better not!  He's in a terribly bad humor.  The dinner was
+awful, and the steward said we'd be looking back to it and calling
+it a banquet before the voyage ends.  Then, too, poor dad says he
+simply can not sleep in the stateroom they've given him--"
+
+"All the better!  I'll see him at once.  If he stands for me now
+he'll stand for me any time!  And, before I go down and beard a
+harsh-looking purser in his den, won't you believe me when I say
+I'm deeply in love--"
+
+"In love with mystery and romance!  In love with your own remarkable
+powers of invention!  Really, I can't take you seriously--"
+
+"Before this voyage is ended you'll have to.  I'll prove to you that
+I care.  If the purser lets me go free--"
+
+"You have much to prove," the girl smiled.  "To-morrow--when Mrs.
+Tommy Gray introduces us--I may accept you--as a builder of plots.
+I happen to know you are good.  But--as-- It's too silly!  Better
+go and have it out with that purser."
+
+Reluctantly he went.  In five minutes he was back.  The girl was
+still standing by the rail.
+
+"It's all right!" West said.  "I thought I was doing something
+original, but there were eleven other people in the same fix.  One
+of them is a billionaire from Wall Street.  The purser collected
+some money from us and told us to sleep on the deck--if we could
+find room."
+
+"I'm sorry," said the girl.  "I rather fancied you in the role of
+stoker."  She glanced about her at the dim deck.  "Isn't this
+exciting?  I'm sure this voyage is going to be filled with mystery
+and romance."
+
+"I know it will be full of romance," West answered.  "And the
+mystery will be--can I convince you--"
+
+"Hush!" broke in the girl.  "Here comes father!  I shall be very
+happy to meet you--to-morrow.  Poor dad!  he's looking for a place
+to sleep."
+
+Five days later poor dad, having slept each night on deck in his
+clothes while  the ship plowed through a cold drizzle, and having
+starved in a sadly depleted dining saloon, was a sight to move the
+heart of a political opponent.  Immediately after a dinner that
+had scarcely satisfied a healthy Texas appetite he lounged gloomily
+in the deck chair which was now his stateroom.  Jauntily Geoffrey
+West came and sat at his side.
+
+"Mr. Larned," he said, "I've got something for you."
+
+And, with a kindly smile, he took from his pocket and handed over
+a large, warm baked potato.  The Texan eagerly accepted the gift.
+
+"Where'd you get it?" he demanded, breaking open his treasure.
+
+"That's a secret," West answered.  "But I can get as many as I want.
+Mr. Larned, I can say this--you will not go hungry  any longer.
+And there's something else I ought to speak of.  I am sort of aiming
+to marry your daughter."
+
+Deep in his potato the Congressman spoke:
+
+"What does she say about it?"
+
+"Oh, she says there isn't a chance.  But--"
+
+"Then look out, my boy!  She's made up her mind to have you."
+
+"I'm glad to hear you say that.  I really ought to tell you who I
+am.  Also, I want you to know that, before your daughter and I met,
+I wrote her seven letters--"
+
+"One minute," broke in the Texan.  "Before you go into all that,
+won't you be a good fellow and tell me where you got this potato?"
+
+West nodded.
+
+"Sure!" he said; and, leaning over, he whispered.
+
+For the first time in days a smile appeared on the face of the
+older man.
+
+"My boy," he said, "I feel I'm going to like you.  Never mind the
+rest.  I heard all about you from your friend Gray; and as for those
+letters--they were the only thing that made the first part of this
+trip bearable.  Marian gave them to me to read the night we came on
+board."
+
+Suddenly from out of the clouds a long-lost moon appeared, and
+bathed that over-crowded ocean liner in a flood of silver.  West
+left the old man to his potato and went to find the daughter.
+
+She was standing in the moonlight by the rail of the forward deck,
+her eyes staring dreamily ahead toward the great country that had
+sent her forth light-heartedly for to adventure and to see.  She
+turned as West came up.
+
+"I have just been talking with your father," he said.  "He tells me
+he thinks you mean to take me, after all."  She laughed.
+
+"To-morrow night," she answered, "will be our last on board.  I
+shall give you my final decision then."
+
+"But that is twenty-four hours away!  Must I wait so long as that?"
+
+"A little suspense won't hurt you.  I can't forget those long days
+when I waited for your letters--"
+
+"I know!  But can't you give me--just a little hint--here
+--to-night?"
+
+"I am without mercy--absolutely without mercy!"
+
+And then, as West's fingers closed over her hand, she added softly:
+"Not even the suspicion of a hint, my dear--except  to tell you
+that--my answer will be--yes."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Agony Column, by Earl Derr Biggers
+
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