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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels, by
+Stephen Leacock
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels
+
+Author: Stephen Leacock
+
+Release Date: February 20, 2007 [EBook #20633]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WINSOME WINNIE AND OTHERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Malcolm Farmer and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WINSOME WINNIE
+AND OTHER NEW
+NONSENSE NOVELS
+
+
+_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
+
+
+THE HOHENZOLLERNS IN AMERICA
+AND OTHER IMPOSSIBILITIES
+
+LITERARY LAPSES
+
+NONSENSE NOVELS
+
+SUNSHINE SKETCHES OF A LITTLE
+TOWN. With a Frontispiece by Cyrus Cuneo
+
+BEHIND THE BEYOND AND OTHER
+CONTRIBUTIONS TO HUMAN
+KNOWLEDGE. With 17 Illustrations
+by "FISH"
+
+ARCADIAN ADVENTURES WITH
+THE IDLE RICH
+
+MOONBEAMS FROM THE LARGER
+LUNACY
+
+ESSAYS AND LITERARY STUDIES
+
+FURTHER FOOLISHNESS: SKETCHES
+AND SATIRES ON THE FOLLIES
+OF THE DAY. With coloured Frontispiece
+by "FISH" and 5 other Plates by
+M. BLOOD.
+
+FRENZIED FICTION
+
+THE UNSOLVED RIDDLE OF SOCIAL
+JUSTICE.
+
+
+THE BODLEY HEAD
+
+
+
+
+_WINSOME WINNIE
+AND OTHER NEW
+NONSENSE NOVELS_
+
+_BY STEPHEN LEACOCK_
+
+
+_LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
+NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXXI_
+
+_Printed in Great Britain by R. Clay & Sons, Ltd., London and Bungay_
+
+
+
+_CONTENTS_
+
+
+
+   CHAP.
+
+    I. WINSOME WINNIE; OR, TRIAL AND TEMPTATION
+       I. THROWN ON THE WORLD
+       II. A RENCOUNTER
+       III. FRIENDS IN DISTRESS
+       IV. A GAMBLING PARTY IN ST. JAMES'S CLOSE
+       V. THE ABDUCTION
+       VI. THE UNKNOWN
+       VII. THE PROPOSAL
+       VIII. WEDDED AT LAST
+
+    II. JOHN AND I; OR, HOW I NEARLY LOST MY HUSBAND
+
+    III. THE SPLIT IN THE CABINET; OR, THE FATE OF ENGLAND
+
+    IV. WHO DO YOU THINK DID IT? OR, THE MIXED-UP MURDER MYSTERY
+       I. HE DINED WITH ME LAST NIGHT
+       II. I MUST SAVE HER LIFE
+       III. I MUST BUY A BOOK ON BILLIARDS
+       IV. THAT IS NOT BILLIARD CHALK
+       V. HAS ANYBODY HERE SEEN KELLY?
+       VI. SHOW ME THE MAN WHO WORE THOSE BOOTS
+       VII. OH, MR. KENT, SAVE ME!
+       VIII. YOU ARE PETER KELLY
+       IX. LET ME TELL YOU THE STORY OF MY LIFE
+       X. SO DO I
+
+    V. BROKEN BARRIERS; OR, RED LOVE ON A BLUE ISLAND
+
+    VI. THE KIDNAPPED PLUMBER: A TALE OF THE NEW TIME
+
+    VII. THE BLUE AND THE GREY: A PRE-WAR WAR STORY
+
+    VIII. BUGGAM GRANGE: A GOOD OLD GHOST STORY
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+WINSOME WINNIE
+
+OR, TRIAL AND TEMPTATION
+
+(_Narrated after the best models of 1875_)
+
+
+
+
+_I.--Winsome Winnie; or, Trial and Temptation._
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THROWN ON THE WORLD
+
+
+"Miss Winnifred," said the Old Lawyer, looking keenly over and through
+his shaggy eyebrows at the fair young creature seated before him, "you
+are this morning twenty-one."
+
+Winnifred Clair raised her deep mourning veil, lowered her eyes and
+folded her hands.
+
+"This morning," continued Mr. Bonehead, "my guardianship is at an end."
+
+There was a tone of something like emotion in the voice of the stern old
+lawyer, while for a moment his eye glistened with something like a tear
+which he hastened to remove with something like a handkerchief. "I have
+therefore sent for you," he went on, "to render you an account of my
+trust."
+
+He heaved a sigh at her, and then, reaching out his hand, he pulled the
+woollen bell-rope up and down several times.
+
+An aged clerk appeared.
+
+"Did the bell ring?" he asked.
+
+"I think it did," said the Lawyer. "Be good enough, Atkinson, to fetch
+me the papers of the estate of the late Major Clair defunct."
+
+"I have them here," said the clerk, and he laid upon the table a bundle
+of faded blue papers, and withdrew.
+
+"Miss Winnifred," resumed the Old Lawyer, "I will now proceed to give
+you an account of the disposition that has been made of your property.
+This first document refers to the sum of two thousand pounds left to you
+by your great uncle. It is lost."
+
+Winnifred bowed.
+
+"Pray give me your best attention and I will endeavour to explain to you
+how I lost it."
+
+"Oh, sir," cried Winnifred, "I am only a poor girl unskilled in the
+ways of the world, and knowing nothing but music and French; I fear that
+the details of business are beyond my grasp. But if it is lost, I gather
+that it is gone."
+
+"It is," said Mr. Bonehead. "I lost it in a marginal option in an
+undeveloped oil company. I suppose that means nothing to you."
+
+"Alas," sighed Winnifred, "nothing."
+
+"Very good," resumed the Lawyer. "Here next we have a statement in
+regard to the thousand pounds left you under the will of your maternal
+grandmother. I lost it at Monte Carlo. But I need not fatigue you with
+the details."
+
+"Pray spare them," cried the girl.
+
+"This final item relates to the sum of fifteen hundred pounds placed in
+trust for you by your uncle. I lost it on a horse race. That horse,"
+added the Old Lawyer with rising excitement, "ought to have won. He was
+coming down the stretch like blue--but there, there, my dear, you must
+forgive me if the recollection of it still stirs me to anger. Suffice it
+to say the horse fell. I have kept for your inspection the score card
+of the race, and the betting tickets. You will find everything in
+order."
+
+"Sir," said Winnifred, as Mr. Bonehead proceeded to fold up his papers,
+"I am but a poor inadequate girl, a mere child in business, but tell me,
+I pray, what is left to me of the money that you have managed?"
+
+"Nothing," said the Lawyer. "Everything is gone. And I regret to say,
+Miss Clair, that it is my painful duty to convey to you a further
+disclosure of a distressing nature. It concerns your birth."
+
+"Just Heaven!" cried Winnifred, with a woman's quick intuition. "Does it
+concern my father?"
+
+"It does, Miss Clair. Your father was not your father."
+
+"Oh, sir," exclaimed Winnifred. "My poor mother! How she must have
+suffered!"
+
+"Your mother was not your mother," said the Old Lawyer gravely. "Nay,
+nay, do not question me. There is a dark secret about your birth."
+
+"Alas," said Winnifred, wringing her hands, "I am, then, alone in the
+world and penniless."
+
+"You are," said Mr. Bonehead, deeply moved. "You are, unfortunately,
+thrown upon the world. But, if you ever find yourself in a position
+where you need help and advice, do not scruple to come to me.
+Especially," he added, "for advice. And meantime let me ask you in what
+way do you propose to earn your livelihood?"
+
+"I have my needle," said Winnifred.
+
+"Let me see it," said the Lawyer.
+
+Winnifred showed it to him.
+
+"I fear," said Mr. Bonehead, shaking his head, "you will not do much
+with that."
+
+Then he rang the bell again.
+
+"Atkinson," he said, "take Miss Clair out and throw her on the world."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A RENCOUNTER
+
+
+As Winnifred Clair passed down the stairway leading from the Lawyer's
+office, a figure appeared before her in the corridor, blocking the way.
+It was that of a tall, aristocratic-looking man, whose features wore
+that peculiarly saturnine appearance seen only in the English nobility.
+The face, while entirely gentlemanly in its general aspect, was stamped
+with all the worst passions of mankind.
+
+Had the innocent girl but known it, the face was that of Lord Wynchgate,
+one of the most contemptible of the greater nobility of Britain, and the
+figure was his too.
+
+"Ha!" exclaimed the dissolute Aristocrat, "whom have we here? Stay,
+pretty one, and let me see the fair countenance that I divine behind
+your veil."
+
+"Sir," said Winnifred, drawing herself up proudly, "let me pass, I
+pray."
+
+"Not so," cried Wynchgate, reaching out and seizing his intended victim
+by the wrist, "not till I have at least seen the colour of those eyes
+and imprinted a kiss upon those fair lips."
+
+With a brutal laugh, he drew the struggling girl towards him.
+
+In another moment the aristocratic villain would have succeeded in
+lifting the veil of the unhappy girl, when suddenly a ringing voice
+cried, "Hold! stop! desist! begone! lay to! cut it out!"
+
+With these words a tall, athletic young man, attracted doubtless by the
+girl's cries, leapt into the corridor from the street without. His
+figure was that, more or less, of a Greek god, while his face, although
+at the moment inflamed with anger, was of an entirely moral and
+permissible configuration.
+
+"Save me! save me!" cried Winnifred.
+
+"I will," cried the Stranger, rushing towards Lord Wynchgate with
+uplifted cane.
+
+But the cowardly Aristocrat did not await the onslaught of the unknown.
+
+"You shall yet be mine!" he hissed in Winnifred's ear, and, releasing
+his grasp, he rushed with a bound past the rescuer into the street.
+
+"Oh, sir," said Winnifred, clasping her hands and falling on her knees
+in gratitude. "I am only a poor inadequate girl, but if the prayers of
+one who can offer naught but her prayers to her benefactor can avail to
+the advantage of one who appears to have every conceivable advantage
+already, let him know that they are his."
+
+"Nay," said the stranger, as he aided the blushing girl to rise, "kneel
+not to me, I beseech. If I have done aught to deserve the gratitude of
+one who, whoever she is, will remain for ever present as a bright memory
+in the breast of one in whose breast such memories are all too few, he
+is all too richly repaid. If she does that, he is blessed indeed."
+
+"She does. He is!" cried Winnifred, deeply moved. "Here on her knees she
+blesses him. And now," she added, "we must part. Seek not to follow me.
+One who has aided a poor girl in the hour of need will respect her wish
+when she tells him that, alone and buffeted by the world, her one
+prayer is that he will leave her."
+
+"He will!" cried the Unknown. "He will. He does."
+
+"Leave me, yes, leave me," exclaimed Winnifred.
+
+"I will," said the Unknown.
+
+"Do, do," sobbed the distraught girl. "Yet stay, one moment more. Let
+she, who has received so much from her benefactor, at least know his
+name."
+
+"He cannot! He must not!" exclaimed the Indistinguishable. "His birth is
+such--but enough!"
+
+He tore his hand from the girl's detaining clasp and rushed forth from
+the place.
+
+Winnifred Clair was alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+FRIENDS IN DISTRESS
+
+
+Winnifred was now in the humblest lodgings in the humblest part of
+London. A simple bedroom and sitting-room sufficed for her wants. Here
+she sat on her trunk, bravely planning for the future.
+
+"Miss Clair," said the Landlady, knocking at the door, "do try to eat
+something. You must keep up your health. See, I've brought you a
+kippered herring."
+
+Winnifred ate the herring, her heart filled with gratitude. With renewed
+strength she sallied forth on the street to resume her vain search for
+employment. For two weeks now Winnifred Clair had sought employment even
+of the humblest character. At various dress-making establishments she
+had offered, to no purpose, the services of her needle. They had looked
+at it and refused it.
+
+In vain she had offered to various editors and publishers the use of her
+pen. They had examined it coldly and refused it.
+
+She had tried fruitlessly to obtain a position of trust. The various
+banks and trust companies to which she had applied declined her
+services. In vain she had advertised in the newspapers offering to take
+sole charge of a little girl. No one would give her one.
+
+Her slender stock of money which she had in her purse on leaving Mr.
+Bonehead's office was almost consumed.
+
+Each night the unhappy girl returned to her lodging exhausted with
+disappointment and fatigue.
+
+Yet even in her adversity she was not altogether friendless.
+
+Each evening, on her return home, a soft tap was heard at the door.
+
+"Miss Clair," said the voice of the Landlady, "I have brought you a
+fried egg. Eat it. You must keep up your strength."
+
+Then one morning a terrible temptation had risen before her.
+
+"Miss Clair," said the manager of an agency to which she had applied, "I
+am glad to be able at last to make you a definite offer of employment.
+Are you prepared to go upon the stage?"
+
+The stage!
+
+A flush of shame and indignation swept over the girl. Had it come to
+this? Little versed in the world as Winnifred was, she knew but too well
+the horror, the iniquity, the depth of degradation implied in the word.
+
+"Yes," continued the agent, "I have a letter here asking me to recommend
+a young lady of suitable refinement to play the part of Eliza in _Uncle
+Tom's Cabin._ Will you accept?"
+
+"Sir," said Winnifred proudly, "answer me first this question fairly. If
+I go upon the stage, can I, as Eliza, remain as innocent, as simple as I
+am now?"
+
+"You can not," said the manager.
+
+"Then, sir," said Winnifred, rising from her chair, "let me say this.
+Your offer is doubtless intended to be kind. Coming from the class you
+do, and inspired by the ideas you are, you no doubt mean well. But let a
+poor girl, friendless and alone, tell you that rather than accept such a
+degradation she will die."
+
+"Very good," said the manager.
+
+"I go forth," cried Winnifred, "to perish."
+
+"All right," said the manager.
+
+The door closed behind her. Winnifred Clair, once more upon the street,
+sank down upon the steps of the building in a swoon.
+
+But at this very juncture Providence, which always watches over the
+innocent and defenceless, was keeping its eye direct upon Winnifred.
+
+At that very moment when our heroine sank fainting upon the doorstep, a
+handsome equipage, drawn by two superb black steeds, happened to pass
+along the street.
+
+Its appearance and character proclaimed it at once to be one of those
+vehicles in which only the superior classes of the exclusive aristocracy
+are privileged to ride. Its sides were emblazoned with escutcheons,
+insignia and other paraphernalia. The large gilt coronet that appeared
+up its panelling, surmounted by a bunch of huckleberries, quartered in a
+field of potatoes, indicated that its possessor was, at least, of the
+rank of marquis. A coachman and two grooms rode in front, while two
+footmen, seated in the boot, or box at the rear, contrived, by the
+immobility of their attitude and the melancholy of their faces, to
+inspire the scene with an exclusive and aristocratic grandeur.
+
+The occupants of the equipage--for we refuse to count the menials as
+being such--were two in number, a lady and gentleman, both of advanced
+years. Their snow-white hair and benign countenances indicated that they
+belonged to that rare class of beings to whom rank and wealth are but an
+incentive to nobler things. A gentle philanthropy played all over their
+faces, and their eyes sought eagerly in the passing scene of the humble
+street for new objects of benefaction.
+
+Those acquainted with the countenances of the aristocracy would have
+recognized at once in the occupants of the equipage the Marquis of
+Muddlenut and his spouse, the Marchioness.
+
+It was the eye of the Marchioness which first detected the form of
+Winnifred Clair upon the doorstep.
+
+"Hold! pause! stop!" she cried, in lively agitation.
+
+The horses were at once pulled in, the brakes applied to the wheels, and
+with the aid of a powerful lever, operated by three of the menials, the
+carriage was brought to a standstill.
+
+"See! Look!" cried the Marchioness. "She has fainted. Quick, William,
+your flask. Let us hasten to her aid."
+
+In another moment the noble lady was bending over the prostrate form of
+Winnifred Clair, and pouring brandy between her lips.
+
+Winnifred opened her eyes. "Where am I?" she asked feebly.
+
+"She speaks!" cried the Marchioness. "Give her another flaskful."
+
+After the second flask the girl sat up.
+
+"Tell me," she cried, clasping her hands, "what has happened? Where am
+I?"
+
+"With friends!" answered the Marchioness. "But do not essay to speak.
+Drink this. You must husband your strength. Meantime, let us drive you
+to your home."
+
+Winnifred was lifted tenderly by the menservants into the aristocratic
+equipage. The brake was unset, the lever reversed, and the carriage
+thrown again into motion.
+
+On the way Winnifred, at the solicitation of the Marchioness, related
+her story.
+
+"My poor child!" exclaimed the lady, "how you must have suffered. Thank
+Heaven it is over now. To-morrow we shall call for you and bring you
+away with us to Muddlenut Chase."
+
+Alas, could she but have known it, before the morrow should dawn, worse
+dangers still were in store for our heroine. But what these dangers
+were, we must reserve for another chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A GAMBLING PARTY IN ST. JAMES'S CLOSE
+
+
+We must now ask our readers to shift the scene--if they don't mind doing
+this for us--to the apartments of the Earl of Wynchgate in St. James's
+Close. The hour is nine o'clock in the evening, and the picture before
+us is one of revelry and dissipation so characteristic of the nobility
+of England. The atmosphere of the room is thick with blue Havana smoke
+such as is used by the nobility, while on the green baize table a litter
+of counters and cards, in which aces, kings, and even two spots are
+heaped in confusion, proclaim the reckless nature of the play.
+
+Seated about the table are six men, dressed in the height of fashion,
+each with collar and white necktie and broad white shirt, their faces
+stamped with all, or nearly all, of the baser passions of mankind.
+
+Lord Wynchgate--for he it was who sat at the head of the table--rose
+with an oath, and flung his cards upon the table.
+
+All turned and looked at him, with an oath. "Curse it, Dogwood," he
+exclaimed, with another oath, to the man who sat beside him. "Take the
+money. I play no more to-night. My luck is out."
+
+"Ha! ha!" laughed Lord Dogwood, with a third oath, "your mind is not on
+the cards. Who is the latest young beauty, pray, who so absorbs you? I
+hear a whisper in town of a certain misadventure of yours----"
+
+"Dogwood," said Wynchgate, clenching his fist, "have a care, man, or you
+shall measure the length of my sword."
+
+Both noblemen faced each other, their hands upon their swords.
+
+"My lords, my lords!" pleaded a distinguished-looking man of more
+advanced years, who sat at one side of the table, and in whose features
+the habitues of diplomatic circles would have recognized the handsome
+lineaments of the Marquis of Frogwater, British Ambassador to Siam, "let
+us have no quarrelling. Come, Wynchgate, come, Dogwood," he continued,
+with a mild oath, "put up your swords. It were a shame to waste time in
+private quarrelling. They may be needed all too soon in Cochin China,
+or, for the matter of that," he added sadly, "in Cambodia or in Dutch
+Guinea."
+
+"Frogwater," said young Lord Dogwood, with a generous flush, "I was
+wrong. Wynchgate, your hand."
+
+The two noblemen shook hands.
+
+"My friends," said Lord Wynchgate, "in asking you to abandon our game, I
+had an end in view. I ask your help in an affair of the heart."
+
+"Ha! excellent!" exclaimed the five noblemen. "We are with you heart and
+soul."
+
+"I propose this night," continued Wynchgate, "with your help, to carry
+off a young girl, a female!"
+
+"An abduction!" exclaimed the Ambassador somewhat sternly. "Wynchgate, I
+cannot countenance this."
+
+"Mistake me not," said the Earl, "I intend to abduct her. But I propose
+nothing dishonourable. It is my firm resolve to offer her marriage."
+
+"Then," said Lord Frogwater, "I am with you."
+
+"Gentlemen," concluded Wynchgate, "all is ready. The coach is below. I
+have provided masks, pistols, and black cloaks. Follow me."
+
+A few moments later, a coach, with the blinds drawn, in which were six
+noblemen armed to the teeth, might have been seen, were it not for the
+darkness, approaching the humble lodging in which Winnifred Clair was
+sheltered.
+
+But what it did when it got there, we must leave to another chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE ABDUCTION
+
+
+The hour was twenty minutes to ten on the evening described in our last
+chapter.
+
+Winnifred Clair was seated, still fully dressed, at the window of the
+bedroom, looking out over the great city.
+
+A light tap came at the door.
+
+"If it's a fried egg," called Winnifred softly, "I do not need it. I ate
+yesterday."
+
+"No," said the voice of the Landlady. "You are wanted below."
+
+"I!" exclaimed Winnifred, "below!"
+
+"You," said the Landlady, "below. A party of gentlemen have called for
+you."
+
+"Gentlemen," exclaimed Winnifred, putting her hand to her brow in
+perplexity, "for me! at this late hour! Here! This evening! In this
+house?"
+
+"Yes," repeated the Landlady, "six gentlemen. They arrived in a closed
+coach. They are all closely masked and heavily armed. They beg you will
+descend at once."
+
+"Just Heaven!" cried the Unhappy Girl. "Is it possible that they mean to
+abduct me?"
+
+"They do," said the Landlady. "They said so!"
+
+"Alas!" cried Winnifred, "I am powerless. Tell them"--she
+hesitated--"tell them I will be down immediately. Let them not come up.
+Keep them below on any pretext. Show them an album. Let them look at the
+goldfish. Anything, but not here! I shall be ready in a moment."
+
+Feverishly she made herself ready. As hastily as possible she removed
+all traces of tears from her face. She threw about her shoulders an
+opera cloak, and with a light Venetian scarf half concealed the beauty
+of her hair and features. "Abducted!" she murmured, "and by six of them!
+I think she said six. Oh, the horror of it!" A touch of powder to her
+cheeks and a slight blackening of her eyebrows, and the courageous girl
+was ready.
+
+Lord Wynchgate and his companions--for they it was, that is to say, they
+were it--sat below in the sitting-room looking at the albums. "Woman,"
+said Lord Wynchgate to the Landlady, with an oath, "let her hurry up. We
+have seen enough of these. We can wait no longer."
+
+"I am here," cried a clear voice upon the threshold, and Winnifred stood
+before them. "My lords, for I divine who you are and wherefore you have
+come, take me, do your worst with me, but spare, oh, spare this humble
+companion of my sorrow."
+
+"Right-oh!" said Lord Dogwood, with a brutal laugh.
+
+"Enough," exclaimed Wynchgate, and seizing Winnifred by the waist, he
+dragged her forth out of the house and out upon the street.
+
+But something in the brutal violence of his behaviour seemed to kindle
+for the moment a spark of manly feeling, if such there were, in the
+breasts of his companions.
+
+"Wynchgate," cried young Lord Dogwood, "my mind misgives me. I doubt if
+this is a gentlemanly thing to do. I'll have no further hand in it."
+
+A chorus of approval from his companions endorsed his utterance. For a
+moment they hesitated.
+
+"Nay," cried Winnifred, turning to confront the masked faces that stood
+about her, "go forward with your fell design. I am here. I am helpless.
+Let no prayers stay your hand. Go to it."
+
+"Have done with this!" cried Wynchgate, with a brutal oath. "Shove her
+in the coach."
+
+But at the very moment the sound of hurrying footsteps was heard, and a
+clear, ringing, manly, well-toned, vibrating voice cried, "Hold! Stop!
+Desist! Have a care, titled villain, or I will strike you to the earth."
+
+A tall aristocratic form bounded out of the darkness.
+
+"Gentlemen," cried Wynchgate, releasing his hold upon the frightened
+girl, "we are betrayed. Save yourselves. To the coach."
+
+In another instant the six noblemen had leaped into the coach and
+disappeared down the street.
+
+Winnifred, still half inanimate with fright, turned to her rescuer, and
+saw before her the form and lineaments of the Unknown Stranger, who had
+thus twice stood between her and disaster. Half fainting, she fell
+swooning into his arms.
+
+"Dear lady," he exclaimed, "rouse yourself. You are safe. Let me restore
+you to your home!"
+
+"That voice!" cried Winnifred, resuming consciousness. "It is my
+benefactor."
+
+She would have swooned again, but the Unknown lifted her bodily up the
+steps of her home and leant her against the door.
+
+"Farewell," he said, in a voice resonant with gloom.
+
+"Oh, sir!" cried the unhappy girl, "let one who owes so much to one who
+has saved her in her hour of need at least know his name."
+
+But the stranger, with a mournful gesture of farewell, had disappeared
+as rapidly as he had come.
+
+But, as to why he had disappeared, we must ask our reader's patience for
+another chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE UNKNOWN
+
+
+The scene is now shifted, sideways and forwards, so as to put it at
+Muddlenut Chase, and to make it a fortnight later than the events
+related in the last chapter.
+
+Winnifred is now at the Chase as the guest of the Marquis and
+Marchioness. There her bruised soul finds peace.
+
+The Chase itself was one of those typical country homes which are, or
+were till yesterday, the glory of England. The approach to the Chase lay
+through twenty miles of glorious forest, filled with fallow deer and
+wild bulls. The house itself, dating from the time of the Plantagenets,
+was surrounded by a moat covered with broad lilies and floating green
+scum. Magnificent peacocks sunned themselves on the terraces, while
+from the surrounding shrubberies there rose the soft murmur of doves,
+pigeons, bats, owls and partridges.
+
+Here sat Winnifred Clair day after day upon the terrace recovering her
+strength, under the tender solicitude of the Marchioness.
+
+Each day the girl urged upon her noble hostess the necessity of her
+departure. "Nay," said the Marchioness, with gentle insistence, "stay
+where you are. Your soul is bruised. You must rest."
+
+"Alas," cried Winnifred, "who am I that I should rest? Alone, despised,
+buffeted by fate, what right have I to your kindness?"
+
+"Miss Clair," replied the noble lady, "wait till you are stronger. There
+is something that I wish to say to you."
+
+Then at last, one morning when Winnifred's temperature had fallen to
+ninety-eight point three, the Marchioness spoke.
+
+"Miss Clair," she said, in a voice which throbbed with emotion,
+"Winnifred, if I may so call you, Lord Muddlenut and I have formed a
+plan for your future. It is our dearest wish that you should marry our
+son."
+
+"Alas," cried Winnifred, while tears rose in her eyes, "it cannot be!"
+
+"Say not so," cried the Marchioness. "Our son, Lord Mordaunt Muddlenut,
+is young, handsome, all that a girl could desire. After months of
+wandering he returns to us this morning. It is our dearest wish to see
+him married and established. We offer you his hand."
+
+"Indeed," replied Winnifred, while her tears fell even more freely, "I
+seem to requite but ill the kindness that you show. Alas, my heart is no
+longer in my keeping."
+
+"Where is it?" cried the Marchioness.
+
+"It is another's. One whose very name I do not know holds it in his
+keeping."
+
+But at this moment a blithe, gladsome step was heard upon the flagstones
+of the terrace. A manly, ringing voice, which sent a thrill to
+Winnifred's heart, cried "Mother!" and in another instant Lord Mordaunt
+Muddlenut, for he it was, had folded the Marchioness to his heart.
+
+Winnifred rose, her heart beating wildly. One glance was enough. The
+newcomer, Lord Mordaunt, was none other than the Unknown, the
+Unaccountable, to whose protection she had twice owed her life.
+
+With a wild cry Winnifred Clair leaped across the flagstones of the
+terrace and fled into the park.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE PROPOSAL
+
+
+They stood beneath the great trees of the ancestral park, into which
+Lord Mordaunt had followed Winnifred at a single bound. All about them
+was the radiance of early June.
+
+Lord Mordaunt knelt on one knee on the greensward, and with a touch in
+which respect and reverence were mingled with the deepest and manliest
+emotion, he took between his finger and thumb the tip of the girl's
+gloved hand.
+
+"Miss Clair," he uttered, in a voice suffused with the deepest
+yearning, yet vibrating with the most profound respect, "Miss
+Clair--Winnifred--hear me, I implore!"
+
+"Alas," cried Winnifred, struggling in vain to disengage the tip of her
+glove from the impetuous clasp of the young nobleman, "alas, whither can
+I fly? I do not know my way through the wood, and there are bulls in all
+directions. I am not used to them! Lord Mordaunt, I implore you, let the
+tears of one but little skilled in the art of dissimulation----"
+
+"Nay, Winnifred," said the Young Earl, "fly not. Hear me out!"
+
+"Let me fly," begged the unhappy girl.
+
+"You must not fly," pleaded Mordaunt. "Let me first, here upon bended
+knee, convey to you the expression of a devotion, a love, as ardent and
+as deep as ever burned in a human heart. Winnifred, be my bride!"
+
+"Oh, sir," sobbed Winnifred, "if the knowledge of a gratitude, a
+thankfulness from one whose heart will ever treasure as its proudest
+memory the recollection of one who did for one all that one could have
+wanted done for one--if this be some poor guerdon, let it suffice. But,
+alas, my birth, the dark secret of my birth forbids----"
+
+"Nay," cried Mordaunt, leaping now to his feet, "your birth is all
+right. I have looked into it myself. It is as good--or nearly as
+good--as my own. Till I knew this, my lips were sealed by duty. While I
+supposed that you had a lower birth and I an upper, I was bound to
+silence. But come with me to the house. There is one arrived with me who
+will explain all."
+
+Hand in hand the lovers, for such they now were, returned to the Chase.
+There in the great hall the Marquis and the Marchioness were standing
+ready to greet them.
+
+"My child!" exclaimed the noble lady, as she folded Winnifred to her
+heart. Then she turned to her son. "Let her know all!" she cried.
+
+Lord Mordaunt stepped across the room to a curtain. He drew it aside,
+and there stepped forth Mr. Bonehead, the old lawyer who had cast
+Winnifred upon the world.
+
+"Miss Clair," said the Lawyer, advancing and taking the girl's hand for
+a moment in a kindly clasp, "the time has come for me to explain all.
+You are not, you never were, the penniless girl that you suppose. Under
+the terms of your father's will, I was called upon to act a part and to
+throw you upon the world. It was my client's wish, and I followed it. I
+told you, quite truthfully, that I had put part of your money into
+options in an oil-well. Miss Clair, that well is now producing a million
+gallons of gasolene a month!'
+
+"A million gallons!" cried Winnifred. "I can never use it."
+
+"Wait till you own a motor-car, Miss Winnifred," said the Lawyer.
+
+"Then I am rich!" exclaimed the bewildered girl.
+
+"Rich beyond your dreams," answered the Lawyer. "Miss Clair, you own in
+your own right about half of the State of Texas--I think it is in Texas,
+at any rate either Texas or Rhode Island, or one of those big states in
+America. More than this, I have invested your property since your
+father's death so wisely that even after paying the income tax and the
+property tax, the inheritance tax, the dog tax and the tax on
+amusements, you will still have one half of one per cent to spend."
+
+Winnifred clasped her hands.
+
+"I knew it all the time," said Lord Mordaunt, drawing the girl to his
+embrace, "I found it out through this good man."
+
+"We knew it too," said the Marchioness. "Can you forgive us, darling,
+our little plot for your welfare? Had we not done this Mordaunt might
+have had to follow you over to America and chase you all around Newport
+and Narragansett at a fearful expense."
+
+"How can I thank you enough?" cried Winnifred. Then she added eagerly,
+"And my birth, my descent?"
+
+"It is all right," interjected the Old Lawyer. "It is A 1. Your father,
+who died before you were born, quite a little time before, belonged to
+the very highest peerage of Wales. You are descended directly from
+Claer-ap-Claer, who murdered Owen Glendower. Your mother we are still
+tracing up. But we have already connected her with Floyd-ap-Floyd, who
+murdered Prince Llewellyn."
+
+"Oh, sir," cried the grateful girl. "I only hope I may prove worthy of
+them!"
+
+"One thing more," said Lord Mordaunt, and stepping over to another
+curtain he drew it aside and there emerged Lord Wynchgate.
+
+He stood before Winnifred, a manly contrition struggling upon features
+which, but for the evil courses of he who wore them, might have been
+almost presentable.
+
+"Miss Clair," he said, "I ask your pardon. I tried to carry you off. I
+never will again. But before we part let me say that my acquaintance
+with you has made me a better man, broader, bigger and, I hope, deeper."
+
+With a profound bow, Lord Wynchgate took his leave.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+WEDDED AT LAST
+
+
+Lord Mordaunt and his bride were married forthwith in the parish church
+of Muddlenut Chase. With Winnifred's money they have drained the moat,
+rebuilt the Chase, and chased the bulls out of the park. They have six
+children, so far, and are respected, honoured and revered in the
+countryside far and wide, over a radius of twenty miles in
+circumference.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+JOHN AND I
+
+OR, HOW I NEARLY LOST MY HUSBAND
+
+(_Narrated after the approved fashion of the best Heart and Home
+Magazines_)
+
+
+
+
+_II.--John and I; or, How I Nearly Lost My Husband._
+
+
+It was after we had been married about two years that I began to feel
+that I needed more air. Every time I looked at John across the
+breakfast-table, I felt as if I must have more air, more space.
+
+I seemed to feel as if I had no room to expand. I had begun to ask
+myself whether I had been wise in marrying John, whether John was really
+sufficient for my development. I felt cramped and shut in. In spite of
+myself the question would arise in my mind whether John really
+understood my nature. He had a way of reading the newspaper, propped up
+against the sugar-bowl, at breakfast, that somehow made me feel as if
+things had gone all wrong. It was bitter to realize that the time had
+come when John could prefer the newspaper to his wife's society.
+
+But perhaps I had better go back and tell the whole miserable story from
+the beginning.
+
+I shall never forget--I suppose no woman ever does--the evening when
+John first spoke out his love for me. I had felt for some time past that
+it was there. Again and again, he seemed about to speak. But somehow his
+words seemed to fail him. Twice I took him into the very heart of the
+little wood beside Mother's house, but it was only a small wood, and
+somehow he slipped out on the other side. "Oh, John," I had said, "how
+lonely and still it seems in the wood with no one here but ourselves! Do
+you think," I said, "that the birds have souls?" "I don't know," John
+answered, "let's get out of this." I was sure that his emotion was too
+strong for him. "I never feel a bit lonesome where you are, John," I
+said, as we made our way among the underbrush. "I think we can get out
+down that little gully," he answered. Then one evening in June after tea
+I led John down a path beside the house to a little corner behind the
+garden where there was a stone wall on one side and a high fence right
+in front of us, and thorn bushes on the other side. There was a little
+bench in the angle of the wall and the fence, and we sat down on it.
+
+"Minnie," John said, "there's something I meant to say----"
+
+"Oh, John," I cried, and I flung my arms round his neck. It all came
+with such a flood of surprise.
+
+"All I meant, Minn----" John went on, but I checked him.
+
+"Oh, don't, John, don't say anything more," I said. "It's just too
+perfect." Then I rose and seized him by the wrist. "Come," I said, "come
+to Mother," and I rushed him along the path.
+
+As soon as Mother saw us come in hand in hand in this way, she guessed
+everything. She threw both her arms round John's neck and fairly pinned
+him against the wall. John tried to speak, but Mother wouldn't let him.
+"I saw it all along, John," she said. "Don't speak. Don't say a word. I
+guessed your love for Minn from the very start. I don't know what I
+shall do without her, John, but she's yours now; take her." Then Mother
+began to cry and I couldn't help crying too. "Take him to Father,"
+Mother said, and we each took one of John's wrists and took him to
+Father on the back verandah. As soon as John saw Father he tried to
+speak again--"I think I ought to say," he began, but Mother stopped him.
+"Father," she said, "he wants to take our little girl away. He loves her
+very dearly, Alfred," she said, "and I think it our duty to let her go,
+no matter how hard it is, and oh, please Heaven, Alfred, he'll treat her
+well and not misuse her, or beat her," and she began to sob again.
+
+Father got up and took John by the hand and shook it warmly.
+
+"Take her, boy," he said. "She's all yours now, take her."
+
+So John and I were engaged, and in due time our wedding day came and we
+were married. I remember that for days and days before the wedding day
+John seemed very nervous and depressed; I think he was worrying, poor
+boy, as to whether he could really make me happy and whether he could
+fill my life as it should be filled. But I told him that he was not to
+worry, because I _meant_ to be happy, and was determined just to make
+the best of everything.
+
+Father stayed with John a good deal before the wedding day, and on the
+wedding morning he went and fetched him to the church in a closed
+carriage and had him there all ready when we came. It was a beautiful
+day in September, and the church looked just lovely. I had a beautiful
+gown of white organdie with _tulle_ at the throat, and I carried a great
+bunch of white roses, and Father led John up the aisle after me.
+
+I remember that Mother cried a good deal at the wedding, and told John
+that he had stolen her darling and that he must never misuse me or beat
+me. And I remember that the clergyman spoke very severely to John, and
+told him he hoped he realized the responsibility he was taking and that
+it was his duty to make me happy. A lot of our old friends were there,
+and they all spoke quite sharply to John, and all the women kissed me
+and said they hoped I would never regret what I had done, and I just
+kept up my spirits by sheer determination, and told them that I had made
+up my mind to be happy and that I was going to be so.
+
+So presently it was all over and we were driven to the station and got
+the afternoon train for New York, and when we sat down in the
+compartment among all our bandboxes and flowers, John said, "Well, thank
+God, that's over." And I said, "Oh, John, an oath! on our wedding day,
+an oath!" John said, "I'm sorry, Minn, I didn't mean----" but I said,
+"Don't, John, don't make it worse. Swear at me if you must, but don't
+make it harder to bear."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We spent our honeymoon in New York. At first I had thought of going
+somewhere to the great lonely woods, where I could have walked under the
+great trees and felt the silence of nature, and where John should have
+been my Viking and captured me with his spear, and where I should be
+his and his alone and no other man should share me; and John had said
+all right. Or else I had planned to go away somewhere to the seashore,
+where I could have watched the great waves dashing themselves against
+the rocks. I had told John that he should be my cave man, and should
+seize me in his arms and carry me whither he would. I felt somehow that
+for my development I wanted to get as close to nature as ever I
+could--that my mind seemed to be reaching out for a great emptiness. But
+I looked over all the hotel and steamship folders I could find and it
+seemed impossible to get good accommodation, so we came to New York. I
+had a great deal of shopping to do for our new house, so I could not be
+much with John, but I felt it was not right to neglect him, so I drove
+him somewhere in a taxi each morning and called for him again in the
+evening. One day I took him to the Metropolitan Museum, and another day
+I left him at the Zoo, and another day at the aquarium. John seemed very
+happy and quiet among the fishes.
+
+So presently we came back home, and I spent many busy days in fixing and
+arranging our new house. I had the drawing-room done in blue, and the
+dining-room all in dark panelled wood, and a boudoir upstairs done in
+pink and white enamel to match my bedroom and dressing-room. There was a
+very nice little room in the basement next to the coal cellar that I
+turned into a "den" for John, so that when he wanted to smoke he could
+go down there and do it. John seemed to appreciate his den at once, and
+often would stay down there so long that I had to call to him to come
+up.
+
+When I look back on those days they seem very bright and happy. But it
+was not very long before a change came. I began to realize that John was
+neglecting me. I noticed it at first in small things. I don't know just
+how long it was after our marriage that John began to read the newspaper
+at breakfast. At first he would only pick it up and read it in little
+bits, and only on the front page. I tried not to be hurt at it, and
+would go on talking just as brightly as I could, without seeming to
+notice anything. But presently he went on to reading the inside part of
+the paper, and then one day he opened up the financial page and folded
+the paper right back and leant it against the sugar-bowl.
+
+I could not but wonder whether John's love for me was what it had been.
+Was it cooling? I asked myself. And what was cooling it? It hardly
+seemed possible, when I looked back to the wild passion with which he
+had proposed to me on the garden bench, that John's love was waning. But
+I kept noticing different little things. One day in the spring-time I
+saw John getting out a lot of fishing tackle from a box and fitting it
+together. I asked him what he was going to do, and he said that he was
+going to fish. I went to my room and had a good cry. It seemed dreadful
+that he could neglect his wife for a few worthless fish.
+
+So I decided to put John to the test. It had been my habit every morning
+after he put his coat on to go to the office to let John have one kiss,
+just one weeny kiss, to keep him happy all day. So this day when he was
+getting ready I bent my head over a big bowl of flowers and pretended
+not to notice. I think John must have been hurt, as I heard him steal
+out on tiptoe.
+
+Well, I realized that things had come to a dreadful state, and so I sent
+over to Mother, and Mother came, and we had a good cry together. I made
+up my mind to force myself to face things and just to be as bright as
+ever I could. Mother and I both thought that things would be better if I
+tried all I could to make something out of John. I have always felt that
+every woman should make all that she can out of her husband. So I did my
+best first of all to straighten up John's appearance. I shifted the
+style of collar he was wearing to a tighter kind that I liked better,
+and I brushed his hair straight backward instead of forward, which gave
+him a much more alert look. Mother said that John needed waking up, and
+so we did all we could to wake him up. Mother came over to stay with me
+a good deal, and in the evenings we generally had a little music or a
+game of cards.
+
+About this time another difficulty began to come into my married life,
+which I suppose I ought to have foreseen--I mean the attentions of other
+gentlemen. I have always called forth a great deal of admiration in
+gentlemen, but I have always done my best to act like a lady and to
+discourage it in every possible way. I had been innocent enough to
+suppose that this would end with married life, and it gave me a dreadful
+shock to realize that such was not the case. The first one I noticed was
+a young man who came to the house, at an hour when John was out, for the
+purpose, so he said at least, of reading the gas meter. He looked at me
+in just the boldest way and asked me to show him the way to the cellar.
+I don't know whether it was a pretext or not, but I just summoned all
+the courage I had and showed him to the head of the cellar stairs. I had
+determined that if he tried to carry me down with him I would scream for
+the servants, but I suppose something in my manner made him desist, and
+he went alone. When he came up he professed to have read the meter and
+he left the house quite quietly. But I thought it wiser to say nothing
+to John of what had happened.
+
+There were others too. There was a young man with large brown eyes who
+came and said he had been sent to tune the piano. He came on three
+separate days, and he bent his ear over the keys in such a mournful way
+that I knew he must have fallen in love with me. On the last day he
+offered to tune my harp for a dollar extra, but I refused, and when I
+asked him instead to tune Mother's mandoline he said he didn't know how.
+Of course I told John nothing of all this.
+
+Then there was Mr. McQueen, who came to the house several times to play
+cribbage with John. He had been desperately in love with me years
+before--at least I remember his taking me home from a hockey match once,
+and what a struggle it was for him not to come into the parlour and see
+Mother for a few minutes when I asked him; and, though he was married
+now and with three children, I felt sure when he came to play cribbage
+with John that it _meant_ something. He was very discreet and
+honourable, and never betrayed himself for a moment, and I acted my
+part as if there was nothing at all behind. But one night, when he came
+over to play and John had had to go out, he refused to stay even for an
+instant. He had got his overshoes off before I told him that John was
+out, and asked him if he wouldn't come into the parlour and hear Mother
+play the mandoline, but he just made one dive for his overshoes and was
+gone. I knew that he didn't dare to trust himself.
+
+Then presently a new trouble came. I began to suspect that John was
+drinking. I don't mean for a moment that he was drunk, or that he was
+openly cruel to me. But at times he seemed to act so queerly, and I
+noticed that one night when by accident I left a bottle of raspberry
+vinegar on the sideboard overnight, it was all gone in the morning. Two
+or three times when McQueen and John were to play cribbage, John would
+fetch home two or three bottles of bevo with him and they would sit
+sipping all evening.
+
+I think he was drinking bevo by himself, too, though I could never be
+sure of it. At any rate he often seemed queer and restless in the
+evenings, and instead of staying in his den he would wander all over the
+house. Once we heard him--I mean Mother and I and two lady friends who
+were with us that evening--quite late (after ten o'clock) apparently
+moving about in the pantry. "John," I called, "is that you?" "Yes,
+Minn," he answered, quietly enough, I admit. "What are you doing there?"
+I asked. "Looking for something to eat," he said. "John," I said, "you
+are forgetting what is due to me as your wife. You were fed at six. Go
+back."
+
+He went. But yet I felt more and more that his love must be dwindling to
+make him act as he did. I thought it all over wearily enough and asked
+myself whether I had done everything I should to hold my husband's love.
+I had kept him in at nights. I had cut down his smoking. I had stopped
+his playing cards. What more was there that I could do?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So at last the conviction came to me that I must go away. I felt that I
+must get away somewhere and think things out. At first I thought of Palm
+Beach, but the season had not opened and I felt somehow that I couldn't
+wait. I wanted to get away somewhere by myself and just face things as
+they were. So one morning I said to John, "John, I think I'd like to go
+off somewhere for a little time, just to be by myself, dear, and I don't
+want you to ask to come with me or to follow me, but just let me go."
+John said, "All right, Minn. When are you going to start?" The cold
+brutality of it cut me to the heart, and I went upstairs and had a good
+cry and looked over steamship and railroad folders. I thought of Havana
+for a while, because the pictures of the harbour and the castle and the
+queer Spanish streets looked so attractive, but then I was afraid that
+at Havana a woman alone by herself might be simply persecuted by
+attentions from gentlemen. They say the Spanish temperament is something
+fearful. So I decided on Bermuda instead. I felt that in a beautiful,
+quiet place like Bermuda I could think everything all over and face
+things, and it said on the folder that there were always at least two
+English regiments in garrison there, and the English officers, whatever
+their faults, always treat a woman with the deepest respect.
+
+So I said nothing more to John, but in the next few days I got all my
+arrangements made and my things packed. And when the last afternoon came
+I sat down and wrote John a long letter, to leave on my boudoir table,
+telling him that I had gone to Bermuda. I told him that I wanted to be
+alone: I said that I couldn't tell when I would be back--that it might
+be months, or it might be years, and I hoped that he would try to be as
+happy as he could and forget me entirely, and to send me money on the
+first of every month.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, it was just at that moment that one of those strange coincidences
+happen, little things in themselves, but which seem to alter the whole
+course of a person's life. I had nearly finished the letter to John that
+I was to leave on the writing-desk, when just then the maid came up to
+my room with a telegram. It was for John, but I thought it my duty to
+open it and read it for him before I left. And I nearly fainted when I
+saw that it was from a lawyer in Bermuda--of all places--and it said
+that a legacy of two hundred thousand dollars had been left to John by
+an uncle of his who had died there, and asking for instructions about
+the disposition of it.
+
+A great wave seemed to sweep over me, and all the wicked thoughts that
+had been in my mind--for I saw now that they _were_ wicked--were driven
+clean away. I thought how completely lost poor old John would feel if
+all this money came to him and he didn't have to work any more and had
+no one at his side to help and guide him in using it.
+
+I tore up the wicked letter I had written, and I hurried as fast as I
+could to pack up a valise with John's things (my own were packed
+already, as I said). Then presently John came in, and I broke the news
+to him as gently and as tenderly as I could about his uncle having left
+him the money and having died. I told him that I had found out all
+about the trains and the Bermuda steamer, and had everything all packed
+and ready for us to leave at once. John seemed a little dazed about it
+all, and kept saying that his uncle had taught him to play tennis when
+he was a little boy, and he was very grateful and thankful to me for
+having everything arranged, and thought it wonderful.
+
+I had time to telephone to a few of my women friends, and they just
+managed to rush round for a few minutes to say good-bye. I couldn't help
+crying a little when I told them about John's uncle dying so far away
+with none of us near him, and I told them about the legacy, and they
+cried a little to hear of it all; and when I told them that John and I
+might not come back direct from Bermuda, but might take a run over to
+Europe first, they all cried some more.
+
+We left for New York that evening, and after we had been to Bermuda and
+arranged about a suitable monument for John's uncle and collected the
+money, we sailed for Europe.
+
+All through the happy time that has followed, I like to think that
+through all our trials and difficulties affliction brought us safely
+together at last.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE SPLIT IN THE CABINET
+
+OR, THE FATE OF ENGLAND
+
+(_A political novel of the Days that Were_)
+
+
+
+
+_III.--The Split in the Cabinet; or, The Fate of England._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+"The fate of England hangs upon it," murmured Sir John Elphinspoon, as
+he sank wearily into an armchair. For a moment, as he said "England,"
+the baronet's eye glistened and his ears lifted as if in defiance, but
+as soon as he stopped saying it his eye lost its brilliance and his ears
+dropped wearily at the sides of his head.
+
+Lady Elphinspoon looked at her husband anxiously. She could not conceal
+from herself that his face, as he sank into his chair, seemed somehow
+ten years older than it had been ten years ago.
+
+"You are home early, John?" she queried.
+
+"The House rose early, my dear," said the baronet.
+
+"For the All England Ping-Pong match?"
+
+"No, for the Dog Show. The Prime Minister felt that the Cabinet ought to
+attend. He said that their presence there would help to bind the
+colonies to us. I understand also that he has a pup in the show himself.
+He took the Cabinet with him."
+
+"And why not you?" asked Lady Elphinspoon.
+
+"You forget, my dear," said the baronet, "as Foreign Secretary my
+presence at a Dog Show might be offensive to the Shah of Persia. Had it
+been a Cat Show----"
+
+The baronet paused and shook his head in deep gloom.
+
+"John," said his wife, "I feel that there is something more. Did
+anything happen at the House?"
+
+Sir John nodded.
+
+"A bad business," he said. "The Wazuchistan Boundary Bill was read this
+afternoon for the third time."
+
+No woman in England, so it was generally said, had a keener political
+insight than Lady Elphinspoon.
+
+"The third time," she repeated thoughtfully, "and how many more will it
+have to go?"
+
+Sir John turned his head aside and groaned.
+
+"You are faint," exclaimed Lady Elphinspoon, "let me ring for tea."
+
+The baronet shook his head.
+
+"An egg, John--let me beat you up an egg."
+
+"Yes, yes," murmured Sir John, still abstracted, "beat it, yes, do beat
+it."
+
+Lady Elphinspoon, in spite of her elevated position as the wife of the
+Foreign Secretary of Great Britain, held it not beneath her to perform
+for her husband the plainest household service. She rang for an egg. The
+butler broke it for her into a tall goblet filled with old sherry, and
+the noble lady, with her own hands, beat the stuff out of it. For the
+veteran politician, whose official duties rarely allowed him to eat, an
+egg was a sovereign remedy. Taken either in a goblet of sherry or in a
+mug of rum, or in half a pint of whisky, it never failed to revive his
+energies.
+
+The effect of the egg was at once visible in the brightening of his eye
+and the lengthening of his ears.
+
+"And now explain to me," said his wife, "what has happened. What _is_
+this Boundary Bill?"
+
+"We never meant it to pass," said Sir John. "It was introduced only as a
+sop to public opinion. It delimits our frontier in such a way as to
+extend our suzerainty over the entire desert of El Skrub. The Wazoos
+have claimed that this is their desert. The hill tribes are restless. If
+we attempt to advance the Wazoos will rise. If we retire it deals a blow
+at our prestige."
+
+Lady Elphinspoon shuddered. Her long political training had taught her
+that nothing was so fatal to England as to be hit in the prestige.
+
+"And on the other hand," continued Sir John, "if we move sideways, the
+Ohulis, the mortal enemies of the Wazoos, will strike us in our rear."
+
+"In our rear!" exclaimed Lady Elphinspoon in a tone of pain. "Oh, John,
+we must go forward. Take another egg."
+
+"We cannot," groaned the Foreign Secretary. "There are reasons which I
+cannot explain even to you, Caroline, reasons of State, which absolutely
+prevent us from advancing into Wazuchistan. Our hands are tied. Meantime
+if the Wazoos rise, it is all over with us. It will split the Cabinet."
+
+"Split the Cabinet!" repeated Lady Elphinspoon in alarm. She well knew
+that next to a blow in the prestige the splitting of the Cabinet was
+about the worst thing that could happen to Great Britain. "Oh, John,
+they _must_ be held together at all costs. Can nothing be done?"
+
+"Everything is being done that can be. The Prime Minister has them at
+the Dog Show at this moment. To-night the Chancellor is taking them to
+moving pictures. And to-morrow--it is a State secret, my dear, but it
+will be very generally known in the morning--we have seats for them all
+at the circus. If we can hold them together all is well, but if they
+split we are undone. Meantime our difficulties increase. At the very
+passage of the Bill itself a question was asked by one of the new labour
+members, a miner, my dear, a quite uneducated man----"
+
+"Yes?" queried Lady Elphinspoon.
+
+"He asked the Colonial Secretary"--Sir John shuddered--"to tell him
+where Wazuchistan is. Worse than that, my dear," added Sir John, "he
+defied him to tell him where it is."
+
+"What did you do? Surely he has no right to information of that sort?"
+
+"It was a close shave. Luckily the Whips saved us. They got the
+Secretary out of the House and rushed him to the British Museum. When he
+got back he said that he would answer the question a month from Friday.
+We got a great burst of cheers, but it was a close thing. But stop, I
+must speak at once with Powers. My despatch box, yes, here it is. Now
+where is young Powers? There is work for him to do at once."
+
+"Mr. Powers is in the conservatory with Angela," said Lady Elphinspoon.
+
+"With Angela!" exclaimed Sir John, while a slight shade of displeasure
+appeared upon his brow. "With Angela again! Do you think it quite
+proper, my dear, that Powers should be so constantly with Angela?"
+
+"John," said his wife, "you forget, I think, who Mr. Powers is. I am
+sure that Angela knows too well what is due to her rank, and to herself,
+to consider Mr. Powers anything more than an instructive companion. And
+I notice that, since Mr. Powers has been your secretary, Angela's mind
+is much keener. Already the girl has a wonderful grasp on foreign
+policy. Only yesterday I heard her asking the Prime Minister at luncheon
+whether we intend to extend our Senegambian protectorate over the
+Fusees. He was delighted."
+
+"Oh, very well, very well," said Sir John. Then he rang a bell for a
+manservant.
+
+"Ask Mr. Powers," he said, "to be good enough to attend me in the
+library."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Angela Elphinspoon stood with Perriton Powers among the begonias of the
+conservatory. The same news which had so agitated Sir John lay heavy on
+both their hearts.
+
+"Will the Wazoo rise?" asked Angela, clasping her hands before her,
+while her great eyes sought the young man's face and found it. "Oh, Mr.
+Powers! Tell me, will they rise? It seems too dreadful to contemplate.
+Do you think the Wazoo will rise?"
+
+"It is only too likely," said Powers. They stood looking into one
+another's eyes, their thoughts all on the Wazoo.
+
+Angelina Elphinspoon, as she stood there against the background of the
+begonias, made a picture that a painter, or even a plumber, would have
+loved. Tall and typically English in her fair beauty, her features, in
+repose, had something of the hauteur and distinction of her mother, and
+when in motion they recalled her father.
+
+Perriton Powers was even taller than Angela. The splendid frame and
+stern features of Sir John's secretary made him a striking figure. Yet
+he was, quite frankly, sprung from the people, and made no secret of it.
+His father had been simply a well-to-do London surgeon, who had been
+knighted for some mere discoveries in science. His grandfather, so it
+was whispered, had been nothing more than a successful banker who had
+amassed a fortune simply by successful banking. Yet at Oxford young
+Powers had carried all before him. He had occupied a seat, a front seat,
+in one of the boats, had got his blue and his pink, and had taken a
+double final in Sanscrit and Arithmetic.
+
+He had already travelled widely in the East, spoke Urdu and Hoodoo with
+facility, while as secretary to Sir John Elphinspoon, with a seat in the
+House in prospect, he had his foot upon the ladder of success.
+
+"Yes," repeated Powers thoughtfully, "they may rise. Our confidential
+despatches tell us that for some time they have been secretly passing
+round packets of yeast. The whole tribe is in a ferment."
+
+"But our sphere of influence is at stake," exclaimed Angela.
+
+"It is," said Powers. "As a matter of fact, for over a year we have been
+living on a mere _modus vivendi_."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Powers," cried Angela, "what a way to live."
+
+"We have tried everything," said the secretary. "We offered the Wazoo a
+condominium over the desert of El Skrub. They refused it."
+
+"But it's our desert," said Angela proudly.
+
+"It is. But what can we do? The best we can hope is that El Boob will
+acquiesce in the _status quo_."
+
+At that moment a manservant appeared in the doorway of the conservatory.
+
+"Mr. Powers, sir," he said, "Sir John desires your attendance, sir, in
+the library, sir."
+
+Powers turned to Angela, a new seriousness upon his face.
+
+"Miss Elphinspoon," he said, "I think I know what is coming. Will you
+wait for me here? I shall be back in half an hour."
+
+"I will wait," said the girl. She sat down and waited among the
+begonias, her mind still on the Wazoo, her whole intense nature strung
+to the highest pitch. "Can the _modus vivendi_ hold?" she murmured.
+
+In half an hour Powers returned. He was wearing now his hat and light
+overcoat, and carried on a strap round his neck a tin box with a white
+painted label, "_British Foreign Office. Confidential Despatches. This
+Side Up With Care._"
+
+"Miss Elphinspoon," he said, and there was a new note in his voice,
+"Angela, I leave England to-night----"
+
+"To-night!" gasped Angela.
+
+"On a confidential mission."
+
+"To Wazuchistan!" exclaimed the girl.
+
+Powers paused a moment. "To Wazuchistan," he said, "yes. But it must not
+be known. I shall return in a month--or never. If I fail"--he spoke with
+an assumed lightness--"it is only one more grave among the hills. If I
+succeed, the Cabinet is saved, and with it the destiny of England."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Powers," cried Angela, rising and advancing towards him, "how
+splendid! How noble! No reward will be too great for you."
+
+"My reward," said Powers, and as he spoke he reached out and clasped
+both of the girl's hands in his own, "yes, my reward. May I come and
+claim it here?"
+
+For a moment he looked straight into her eyes. In the next he was gone,
+and Angela was alone.
+
+"His reward!" she murmured. "What could he have meant? His reward that
+he is to claim. What can it be?"
+
+But she could not divine it. She admitted to herself that she had not
+the faintest idea.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+In the days that followed all England was thrilled to its base as the
+news spread that the Wazoo might rise at any moment.
+
+"Will the Wazoos rise?" was the question upon every lip.
+
+In London men went to their offices with a sense of gloom. At lunch they
+could hardly eat. A feeling of impending disaster pervaded all ranks.
+
+Sir John as he passed to and fro to the House was freely accosted in the
+streets.
+
+"Will the Wazoos rise, sir?" asked an honest labourer. "Lord help us
+all, sir, if they do."
+
+Sir John, deeply touched, dropped a shilling in the honest fellow's hat,
+by accident.
+
+At No. 10 Downing Street, women of the working class, with children in
+their arms, stood waiting for news.
+
+On the Exchange all was excitement. Consols fell two points in
+twenty-four hours. Even raising the Bank rate and shutting the door
+brought only a temporary relief.
+
+Lord Glump, the greatest financial expert in London, was reported as
+saying that if the Wazoos rose England would be bankrupt in forty-eight
+hours.
+
+Meanwhile, to the consternation of the whole nation, the Government did
+nothing. The Cabinet seemed to be paralysed.
+
+On the other hand the Press became all the more clamorous. The London
+_Times_ urged that an expedition should be sent at once. Twenty-five
+thousand household troops, it argued, should be sent up the Euphrates or
+up the Ganges or up something without delay. If they were taken in flat
+boats, carried over the mountains on mules, and lifted across the rivers
+in slings, they could then be carried over the desert on jackasses. They
+could reach Wazuchistan in two years. Other papers counselled
+moderation. The _Manchester Guardian_ recalled the fact that the Wazoos
+were a Christian people. Their leader, El Boob, so it was said, had
+accepted Christianity with childlike simplicity and had asked if there
+was any more of it. The _Spectator_ claimed that the Wazoos, or more
+properly the Wazi, were probably the descendants of an Iranic or perhaps
+Urgumic stock. It suggested the award of a Rhodes Scholarship. It looked
+forward to the days when there would be Wazoos at Oxford. Even the
+presence of a single Wazoo, or, more accurately, a single Wooz, would
+help.
+
+With each day the news became more ominous. It was reported in the Press
+that a Wazoo, inflamed apparently with _ghee_, or perhaps with _bhong_,
+had rushed up to the hills and refused to come down. It was said that
+the Shriek-el-Foozlum, the religious head of the tribe, had torn off his
+suspenders and sent them to Mecca.
+
+That same day the _Illustrated London News_ published a drawing "Wazoo
+Warriors Crossing a River and Shouting, Ho!" and the general
+consternation reached its height.
+
+Meantime, for Sir John and his colleagues, the question of the hour
+became, "Could the Cabinet be held together?" Every effort was made. The
+news that the Cabinet had all been seen together at the circus, for a
+moment reassured the nation. But the rumour spread that the First Lord
+of the Admiralty had said that the clowns were a bum lot. The Radical
+Press claimed that if he thought so he ought to resign.
+
+On the fatal Friday the question already referred to was scheduled for
+its answer. The friends of the Government counted on the answer to
+restore confidence. To the consternation of all, the expected answer was
+not forthcoming. The Colonial Secretary rose in his place, visibly
+nervous. Ministers, he said, had been asked where Wazuchistan was. They
+were not prepared, at the present delicate stage of negotiations, to
+say. More hung upon the answer than Ministers were entitled to divulge.
+They could only appeal to the patriotism of the nation. He could only
+say this, that _wherever_ it was, and he used the word _wherever_ with
+all the emphasis of which he was capable, the Government would accept
+the full responsibility for its being where it was.
+
+The House adjourned in something like confusion.
+
+Among those seated behind the grating of the Ladies' Gallery was Lady
+Elphinspoon. Her quick instinct told her the truth. Driving home, she
+found her husband seated, crushed, in his library.
+
+"John," she said, falling on her knees and taking her husband's hands
+in hers, "is this true? Is this the dreadful truth?"
+
+"I see you have divined it, Caroline," said the statesman sadly. "It is
+the truth. We don't know where Wazuchistan is."
+
+For a moment there was silence.
+
+"But, John, how could it have happened?"
+
+"We thought the Colonial Office knew. We were confident that they knew.
+The Colonial Secretary had stated that he had been there. Later on it
+turned out that he meant Saskatchewan. Of course they thought _we_ knew.
+And we both thought that the Exchequer must know. We understood that
+they had collected a hut tax for ten years."
+
+"And hadn't they?"
+
+"Not a penny. The Wazoos live in tents."
+
+"But, surely," pleaded Lady Elphinspoon, "you could find out. Had you no
+maps?"
+
+Sir John shook his head.
+
+"We thought of that at once, my dear. We've looked all through the
+British Museum. Once we thought we had succeeded. But it turned out to
+be Wisconsin."
+
+"But the map in the _Times_? Everybody saw it."
+
+Again the baronet shook his head. "Lord Southcliff had it made in the
+office," he said. "It appears that he always does. Otherwise the
+physical features might not suit him."
+
+"But could you not send some one to see?"
+
+"We did. We sent Perriton Powers to find out where it was. We had a
+month to the good. It was barely time, just time. Powers has failed and
+we are lost. To-morrow all England will guess the truth and the
+Government falls."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+The crowd outside of No. 10 Downing Street that evening was so dense
+that all traffic was at a standstill. But within the historic room where
+the Cabinet were seated about the long table all was calm. Few could
+have guessed from the quiet demeanour of the group of statesmen that the
+fate of an Empire hung by a thread.
+
+Seated at the head of the table, the Prime Minister was quietly looking
+over a book of butterflies, while waiting for the conference to begin.
+Beside him the Secretary for Ireland was fixing trout flies, while the
+Chancellor of the Exchequer kept his serene face bent over upon his
+needlework. At the Prime Minister's right, Sir John Elphinspoon, no
+longer agitated, but sustained and dignified by the responsibility of
+his office, was playing spillikins.
+
+The little clock on the mantel chimed eight.
+
+The Premier closed his book of butterflies.
+
+"Well, gentlemen," he said, "I fear our meeting will not be a protracted
+one. It seems we are hopelessly at variance. You, Sir Charles," he
+continued, turning to the First Sea Lord, who was in attendance, "are
+still in favour of a naval expedition?"
+
+"Send it up at once," said Sir Charles.
+
+"Up where?" asked the Premier.
+
+"Up anything," answered the Old Sea Dog, "it will get there."
+
+Voices of dissent were raised in undertones around the table.
+
+"I strongly deprecate any expedition," said the Chancellor of the
+Exchequer, "I favour a convention with the Shriek. Let the Shriek sign a
+convention recognizing the existence of a supreme being and receiving
+from us a million sterling in acknowledgment."
+
+"And where will you _find_ the Shriek?" said the Prime Minister. "Come,
+come, gentlemen, I fear that we can play this comedy no longer. The
+truth is," he added with characteristic nonchalance, "we don't know
+where the bally place is. We can't meet the House to-morrow. We are
+hopelessly split. Our existence as a Government is at an end."
+
+But, at that very moment, a great noise of shouting and clamour rose
+from the street without. The Prime Minister lifted his hand for silence.
+"Listen," he said. One of the Ministers went to a window and opened it,
+and the cries outside became audible. "A King's Messenger! Make way for
+the King's Messenger!"
+
+The Premier turned quietly to Sir John.
+
+"Perriton Powers," he said.
+
+In another moment Perriton Powers stood before the Ministers.
+
+Bronzed by the tropic sun, his face was recognizable only by the assured
+glance of his eye. An Afghan _bernous_ was thrown back from his head and
+shoulders, while his commanding figure was draped in a long _chibuok_. A
+pair of pistols and a curved _yasmak_ were in his belt.
+
+"So you got to Wazuchistan all right," said the Premier quietly.
+
+"I went in by way of the Barooda," said Powers. "For many days I was
+unable to cross it. The waters of the river were wild and swollen with
+rains. To cross it seemed certain death----"
+
+"But at last you got over," said the Premier, "and then----"
+
+"I struck out over the Fahuri desert. For days and days, blinded by the
+sun, and almost buried in sand, I despaired."
+
+"But you got through it all right. And after that?"
+
+"My first care was to disguise myself. Staining myself from head to
+foot with betel nut----"
+
+"To look like a beetle," said the Premier. "Exactly. And so you got to
+Wazuchistan. Where is it and what is it?"
+
+"My lord," said Powers, drawing himself up and speaking with emphasis,
+"I got to where it was thought to be. There is no such place!"
+
+The whole Cabinet gave a start of astonishment.
+
+"No such place!" they repeated.
+
+"What about El Boob?" asked the Chancellor.
+
+"There is no such person."
+
+"And the Shriek-el-Foozlum?"
+
+Powers shook his head.
+
+"But do you mean to say," said the Premier in astonishment, "that there
+are no Wazoos? There you _must_ be wrong. True we don't just know where
+they are. But our despatches have shown too many signs of active trouble
+traced directly to the Wazoos to disbelieve in them. There are Wazoos
+somewhere, there--there _must_ be."
+
+"The Wazoos," said Powers, "are there. But they are Irish. So are the
+Ohulis. They are both Irish."
+
+"But how the devil did they get out there?" questioned the Premier. "And
+why did they make the trouble?"
+
+"The Irish, my lord," interrupted the Chief Secretary for Ireland, "are
+everywhere, and it is their business to make trouble."
+
+"Some years ago," continued Powers, "a few Irish families settled out
+there. The Ohulis should be properly called the O'Hooleys. The word
+Wazoo is simply the Urdu for McGinnis. El Boob is the Urdu for the
+Arabic El Papa, the Pope. It was my knowledge of Urdu, itself an
+agglutinative language----"
+
+"Precisely," said the Premier. Then he turned to his Cabinet. "Well,
+gentlemen, our task is now simplified. If they are Irish, I think we
+know exactly what to do. I suppose," he continued, turning to Powers,
+"that they want some kind of Home Rule."
+
+"They do," said Powers.
+
+"Separating, of course, the Ohuli counties from the Wazoo?"
+
+"Yes," said Powers.
+
+"Precisely; the thing is simplicity itself. And what contribution will
+they make to the Imperial Exchequer?"
+
+"None."
+
+"And will they pay their own expenses?"
+
+"They refuse to."
+
+"Exactly. All this is plain sailing. Of course they must have a
+constabulary. Lord Edward," continued the Premier, turning now to the
+Secretary of War, "how long will it take to send in a couple of hundred
+constabulary? I think they'll expect it, you know. It's their right."
+
+"Let me see," said Lord Edward, calculating quickly, with military
+precision, "sending them over the Barooda in buckets and then over the
+mountains in baskets--I think in about two weeks."
+
+"Good," said the Premier. "Gentlemen, we shall meet the House to-morrow.
+Sir John, will you meantime draft us an annexation bill? And you, young
+man, what you have done is really not half bad. His Majesty will see you
+to-morrow. I am glad that you are safe."
+
+"On my way home," said Powers, with quiet modesty, "I was attacked by a
+lion----"
+
+"But you beat it off," said the Premier. "Exactly. Good night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+It was on the following afternoon that Sir John Elphinspoon presented
+the Wazoo Annexation Bill to a crowded and breathless House.
+
+Those who know the House of Commons know that it has its moods. At times
+it is grave, earnest, thoughtful. At other times it is swept with
+emotion which comes at it in waves. Or at times, again, it just seems to
+sit there as if it were stuffed.
+
+But all agreed that they had never seen the House so hushed as when Sir
+John Elphinspoon presented his Bill for the Annexation of Wazuchistan.
+And when at the close of a splendid peroration he turned to pay a
+graceful compliment to the man who had saved the nation, and thundered
+forth to the delighted ears of his listeners--
+
+     _Arma virumque cano Wazoo qui primus ab oris_,
+
+and then, with the words "England, England," still on his lips, fell
+over backwards and was carried out on a stretcher, the House broke into
+wild and unrestrained applause.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The next day Sir Perriton Powers--for the King had knighted him after
+breakfast--stood again in the conservatory of the house in Carlton
+Terrace.
+
+"I have come for my reward," he said. "Do I get it?"
+
+"You do," said Angela.
+
+Sir Perriton clasped her in his arms.
+
+"On my way home," he said, "I was attacked by a lion. I tried to beat
+it----"
+
+"Hush, dearest," she whispered, "let me take you to father."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+WHO DO YOU THINK DID IT?
+
+OR, THE MIXED-UP MURDER MYSTERY
+
+(_Done after the very latest fashion in this sort of thing_)
+
+
+
+
+_IV.--Who Do You Think Did It? or, The Mixed-Up Murder Mystery._
+
+_NOTE.--Any reader who guesses correctly who did it is entitled (in all
+fairness) to a beautiful gold watch and chain._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+HE DINED WITH ME LAST NIGHT
+
+
+The afternoon edition of the _Metropolitan Planet_ was going to press.
+Five thousand copies a minute were reeling off its giant cylinders. A
+square acre of paper was passing through its presses every hour. In the
+huge _Planet_ building, which dominated Broadway, employes, compositors,
+reporters, advertisers, surged to and fro. Placed in a single line
+(only, of course, they wouldn't be likely to consent to it) they would
+have reached across Manhattan Island. Placed in two lines, they would
+probably have reached twice as far. Arranged in a procession they would
+have taken an hour in passing a saloon: easily that.
+
+In the whole vast building all was uproar. Telephones, megaphones and
+gramophones were ringing throughout the building. Elevators flew up and
+down, stopping nowhere.
+
+Only in one place was quiet--namely, in the room where sat the big man
+on whose capacious intellect the whole organization depended.
+
+Masterman Throgton, the general manager of the _Planet_, was a man in
+middle life. There was something in his massive frame which suggested
+massiveness, and a certain quality in the poise of his great head which
+indicated a balanced intellect. His face was impenetrable and his
+expression imponderable.
+
+The big chief was sitting in his swivel chair with ink all round him.
+Through this man's great brain passed all the threads and filaments that
+held the news of a continent. Snap one, and the whole continent would
+stop.
+
+At the moment when our story opens (there was no sense in opening it
+sooner), a written message had just been handed in.
+
+The Chief read it. He seemed to grasp its contents in a flash.
+
+"Good God!" he exclaimed. It was the strongest expression that this
+solid, self-contained, semi-detached man ever allowed himself. Anything
+stronger would have seemed too near to profanity. "Good God!" he
+repeated, "Kivas Kelly murdered! In his own home! Why, he dined with me
+last night! I drove him home!"
+
+For a brief moment the big man remained plunged in thought. But with
+Throgton the moment of musing was short. His instinct was to act.
+
+"You may go," he said to the messenger. Then he seized the telephone
+that stood beside him (this man could telephone almost without stopping
+thinking) and spoke into it in quiet, measured tones, without wasting a
+word.
+
+"Hullo, operator! Put me through to two, two, two, two, two. Is that
+two, two, two, two, two? Hullo, two, two, two, two, two; I want
+Transome Kent. Kent speaking? Kent, this is Throgton speaking. Kent, a
+murder has been committed at the Kelly residence, Riverside Drive. I
+want you to go and cover it. Get it all. Don't spare expense. The
+_Planet_ is behind you. Have you got car-fare? Right."
+
+In another moment the big chief had turned round in his swivel chair (at
+least forty degrees) and was reading telegraphic despatches from
+Jerusalem. That was the way he did things.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+I MUST SAVE HER LIFE
+
+
+Within a few minutes Transome Kent had leapt into a car (a surface car)
+and was speeding north towards Riverside Drive with the full power of
+the car. As he passed uptown a newsboy was already calling, "Club Man
+Murdered! Another Club Man Murdered!" Carelessly throwing a cent to the
+boy, Kent purchased a paper and read the brief notice of the tragedy.
+
+Kivas Kelly, a well-known club man and _bon vivant_, had been found dead
+in his residence on Riverside Drive, with every indication--or, at
+least, with a whole lot of indications--of murder. The unhappy club man
+had been found, fully dressed in his evening clothes, lying on his back
+on the floor of the billiard-room, with his feet stuck up on the edge of
+the table. A narrow black scarf, presumably his evening tie, was twisted
+tightly about his neck by means of a billiard cue inserted in it. There
+was a quiet smile upon his face. He had apparently died from
+strangulation. A couple of bullet-holes passed through his body, one on
+each side, but they went out again. His suspenders were burst at the
+back. His hands were folded across his chest. One of them still held a
+white billiard ball. There was no sign of a struggle or of any
+disturbance in the room. A square piece of cloth was missing from the
+victim's dinner jacket.
+
+In its editorial columns the same paper discussed the more general
+aspects of the murder. This, it said, was the third club man murdered in
+the last fortnight. While not taking an alarmist view, the paper felt
+that the killing of club men had got to stop. There was a limit, a
+reasonable limit, to everything. Why should a club man be killed? It
+might be asked, why should a club man live? But this was hardly to the
+point. They do live. After all, to be fair, what does a club man ask of
+society? Not much. Merely wine, women and singing. Why not let him have
+them? Is it fair to kill him? Does the gain to literature outweigh the
+social wrong? The writer estimated that at the rate of killing now going
+on the club men would be all destroyed in another generation. Something
+should be done to conserve them.
+
+Transome Kent was not a detective. He was a reporter. After sweeping
+everything at Harvard in front of him, and then behind him, he had
+joined the staff of the _Planet_ two months before. His rise had been
+phenomenal. In his first week of work he had unravelled a mystery, in
+his second he had unearthed a packing scandal which had poisoned the
+food of the entire nation for ten years, and in his third he had
+pitilessly exposed some of the best and most respectable people in the
+metropolis. Kent's work on the _Planet_ consisted now almost exclusively
+of unravelling and unearthing, and it was natural that the manager
+should turn to him.
+
+The mansion was a handsome sandstone residence, standing in its own
+grounds. On Kent's arrival he found that the police had already drawn a
+cordon around it with cords. Groups of morbid curiosity-seekers hung
+about it in twos and threes, some of them in fours and fives. Policemen
+were leaning against the fence in all directions. They wore that baffled
+look so common to the detective force of the metropolis. "It seems to
+me," remarked one of them to the man beside him, "that there is an
+inexorable chain of logic about this that I am unable to follow." "So do
+I," said the other.
+
+The Chief Inspector of the Detective Department, a large, heavy-looking
+man, was standing beside a gate-post. He nodded gloomily to Transome
+Kent.
+
+"Are you baffled, Edwards?" asked Kent.
+
+"Baffled again, Mr. Kent," said the Inspector, with a sob in his voice.
+"I thought I could have solved this one, but I can't."
+
+He passed a handkerchief across his eyes.
+
+"Have a cigar, Chief," said Kent, "and let me hear what the trouble is."
+
+The Inspector brightened. Like all policemen, he was simply crazy over
+cigars. "All right, Mr. Kent," he said, "wait till I chase away the
+morbid curiosity-seekers."
+
+He threw a stick at them.
+
+"Now, then," continued Kent, "what about tracks, footmarks? Had you
+thought of them?"
+
+"Yes, first thing. The whole lawn is covered with them, all stamped
+down. Look at these, for instance. These are the tracks of a man with a
+wooden leg"--Kent nodded--"in all probability a sailor, newly landed
+from Java, carrying a Singapore walking-stick, and with a tin-whistle
+tied round his belt."
+
+"Yes, I see that," said Kent thoughtfully. "The weight of the whistle
+weighs him down a little on the right side."
+
+"Do you think, Mr. Kent, a sailor from Java with a wooden leg would
+commit a murder like this?" asked the Inspector eagerly. "Would he do
+it?"
+
+"He would," said the Investigator. "They generally do--as soon as they
+land."
+
+The Inspector nodded. "And look at these marks here, Mr. Kent. You
+recognize them, surely--those are the footsteps of a bar-keeper out of
+employment, waiting for the eighteenth amendment to pass away. See how
+deeply they sink in----"
+
+"Yes," said Kent, "he'd commit murder."
+
+"There are lots more," continued the Inspector, "but they're no good.
+The morbid curiosity-seekers were walking all over this place while we
+were drawing the cordon round it."
+
+"Stop a bit," said Kent, pausing to think a moment. "What about
+thumb-prints?"
+
+"Thumb-prints," said the Inspector. "Don't mention them. The house is
+full of them."
+
+"Any thumb-prints of Italians with that peculiar incurvature of the ball
+of the thumb that denotes a Sicilian brigand?"
+
+"There were three of those," said Inspector Edwards gloomily. "No, Mr.
+Kent, the thumb stuff is no good."
+
+Kent thought again.
+
+"Inspector," he said, "what about mysterious women? Have you seen any
+around?"
+
+"Four went by this morning," said the Inspector, "one at eleven-thirty,
+one at twelve-thirty, and two together at one-thirty. At least," he
+added sadly, "I think they were mysterious. All women look mysterious to
+me."
+
+"I must try in another direction," said Kent. "Let me reconstruct the
+whole thing. I must weave a chain of analysis. Kivas Kelly was a
+bachelor, was he not?"
+
+"He was. He lived alone here."
+
+"Very good, I suppose he had in his employ a butler who had been with
+him for twenty years----"
+
+Edwards nodded.
+
+"I suppose you've arrested him?"
+
+"At once," said the Inspector. "We always arrest the butler, Mr. Kent.
+They expect it. In fact, this man, Williams, gave himself up at once."
+
+"And let me see," continued the Investigator. "I presume there was a
+housekeeper who lived on the top floor, and who had been stone deaf for
+ten years?"
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"She had heard nothing during the murder?"
+
+"Not a thing. But this may have been on account of her deafness."
+
+"True, true," murmured Kent. "And I suppose there was a coachman, a
+thoroughly reliable man, who lived with his wife at the back of the
+house----"
+
+"But who had taken his wife over to see a relation on the night of the
+murder, and who did not return until an advanced hour. Mr. Kent, we've
+been all over that. There's nothing in it."
+
+"Were there any other persons belonging to the establishment?"
+
+"There was Mr. Kelly's stenographer, Alice Delary, but she only came in
+the mornings."
+
+"Have you seen her?" asked Kent eagerly. "What is she like?"
+
+"I have seen her," said the Inspector. "She's a looloo."
+
+"Ha," said Kent, "a looloo!" The two men looked into one another's eyes.
+
+"Yes," repeated Edwards thoughtfully, "a peach."
+
+A sudden swift flash of intuition, an inspiration, leapt into the young
+reporter's brain.
+
+This girl, this peach, at all hazards he must save her life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+I MUST BUY A BOOK ON BILLIARDS
+
+
+Kent turned to the Inspector. "Take me into the house," he said. Edwards
+led the way. The interior of the handsome mansion seemed undisturbed. "I
+see no sign of a struggle here," said Kent.
+
+"No," answered the Inspector gloomily. "We can find no sign of a
+struggle anywhere. But, then, we never do."
+
+He opened for the moment the door of the stately drawing-room. "No sign
+of a struggle there," he said. The closed blinds, the draped furniture,
+the covered piano, the muffled chandelier, showed absolutely no sign of
+a struggle.
+
+"Come upstairs to the billiard-room," said Edwards. "The body has been
+removed for the inquest, but nothing else is disturbed."
+
+They went upstairs. On the second floor was the billiard-room, with a
+great English table in the centre of it. But Kent had at once dashed
+across to the window, an exclamation on his lips. "Ha! ha!" he said,
+"what have we here?"
+
+The Inspector shook his head quietly. "The window," he said in a
+monotonous, almost sing-song tone, "has apparently been opened from the
+outside, the sash being lifted with some kind of a sharp instrument. The
+dust on the sill outside has been disturbed as if by a man of
+extraordinary agility lying on his stomach----Don't bother about that,
+Mr. Kent. It's _always_ there."
+
+"True," said Kent. Then he cast his eyes upward, and again an
+involuntary exclamation broke from him. "Did you see that trap-door?" he
+asked.
+
+"We did," said Edwards. "The dust around the rim has been disturbed. The
+trap opens into the hollow of the roof. A man of extraordinary dexterity
+might open the trap with a billiard cue, throw up a fine manila rope,
+climb up the rope and lie there on his stomach.
+
+"No use," continued the Inspector. "For the matter of that, look at this
+huge old-fashioned fireplace. A man of extraordinary precocity could
+climb up the chimney. Or this dumb-waiter on a pulley, for serving
+drinks, leading down into the maids' quarters. A man of extreme
+indelicacy might ride up and down in it."
+
+"Stop a minute," said Kent. "What is the meaning of that hat?"
+
+A light gossamer hat, gay with flowers, hung on a peg at the side of the
+room.
+
+"We thought of that," said Edwards, "and we have left it there. Whoever
+comes for that hat has had a hand in the mystery. We think----"
+
+But Transome Kent was no longer listening. He had seized the edge of the
+billiard table.
+
+"Look, look!" he cried eagerly. "The clue to the mystery! The positions
+of the billiard balls! The white ball in the very centre of the table,
+and the red just standing on the verge of the end pocket! What does it
+mean, Edwards, what does it mean?"
+
+He had grasped Edwards by the arm and was peering into his face.
+
+"I don't know," said the Inspector. "I don't play billiards."
+
+"Neither do I," said Kent, "but I can find out. Quick! The nearest
+book-store. I must buy a book on billiards."
+
+With a wave of the arm, Kent vanished.
+
+The Inspector stood for a moment in thought.
+
+"Gone!" he murmured to himself (it was his habit to murmur all really
+important speeches aloud to himself). "Now, why did Throgton telephone
+to me to put a watch on Kent? Ten dollars a day to shadow him! Why?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THAT IS NOT BILLIARD CHALK
+
+
+Meantime at the _Planet_ office Masterman Throgton was putting on his
+coat to go home.
+
+"Excuse me, sir," said an employe, "there's a lot of green billiard
+chalk on your sleeve."
+
+Throgton turned and looked the man full in the eye.
+
+"That is not billiard chalk," he said, "it is face powder."
+
+Saying which this big, imperturbable, self-contained man stepped into
+the elevator and went to the ground floor in one drop.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HAS ANYBODY HERE SEEN KELLY?
+
+
+The inquest upon the body of Kivas Kelly was held upon the following
+day. Far from offering any solution of what had now become an
+unfathomable mystery, it only made it deeper still. The medical
+testimony, though given by the most distinguished consulting expert of
+the city, was entirely inconclusive. The body, the expert testified,
+showed evident marks of violence. There was a distinct lesion of the
+oesophagus and a decided excoriation of the fibula. The mesodenum was
+gibbous. There was a certain quantity of flab in the binomium and the
+proscenium was wide open.
+
+One striking fact, however, was decided from the testimony of the
+expert, namely, that the stomach of the deceased was found to contain
+half a pint of arsenic. On this point the questioning of the district
+attorney was close and technical. Was it unusual, he asked, to find
+arsenic in the stomach? In the stomach of a club man, no. Was not half
+a pint a large quantity? He would not say that. Was it a small quantity?
+He should not care to say that it was. Would half a pint of arsenic
+cause death? Of a club man, no, not necessarily. That was all.
+
+The other testimony submitted to the inquest jury brought out various
+facts of a substantive character, but calculated rather to complicate
+than to unravel the mystery. The butler swore that on the very day of
+the murder he had served his master a half-pint of arsenic at lunch. But
+he claimed that this was quite a usual happening with his master. On
+cross-examination it appeared that he meant apollinaris. He was certain,
+however, that it was half a pint. The butler, it was shown, had been in
+Kivas Kelly's employ for twenty years.
+
+The coachman, an Irishman, was closely questioned. He had been in Mr.
+Kelly's employ for three years--ever since his arrival from the old
+country. Was it true that he had had, on the day of the murder, a
+violent quarrel with his master? It was. Had he threatened to kill him?
+No. He had threatened to knock his block off, but not to kill him.
+
+The coroner looked at his notes. "Call Alice Delary," he commanded.
+There was a deep sensation in the court as Miss Delary quietly stepped
+forward to her place in the witness-box.
+
+Tall, graceful and willowy, Alice Delary was in her first burst of
+womanhood. Those who looked at the beautiful girl realized that if her
+first burst was like this, what would the second, or the third be like?
+
+The girl was trembling, and evidently distressed, but she gave her
+evidence in a clear, sweet, low voice. She had been in Mr. Kelly's
+employ three years. She was his stenographer. But she came only in the
+mornings and always left at lunch-time. The question immediately asked
+by the jury--"Where did she generally have lunch?"--was disallowed by
+the coroner. Asked by a member of the jury what system of shorthand she
+used, she answered, "Pitman's." Asked by another juryman whether she
+ever cared to go to moving pictures, she said that she went
+occasionally. This created a favourable impression. "Miss Delary," said
+the district attorney, "I want to ask if it is your hat that was found
+hanging in the billiard-room after the crime?"
+
+"Don't you dare ask that girl that," interrupted the magistrate. "Miss
+Delary, you may step down."
+
+But the principal sensation of the day arose out of the evidence offered
+by Masterman Throgton, general manager of the _Planet_. Kivas Kelly, he
+testified, had dined with him at his club on the fateful evening. He had
+afterwards driven him to his home.
+
+"When you went into the house with the deceased," asked the district
+attorney, "how long did you remain there with him?"
+
+"That," said Throgton quietly, "I must refuse to answer."
+
+"Would it incriminate you?" asked the coroner, leaning forward.
+
+"It might," said Throgton.
+
+"Then you're perfectly right not to answer it," said the coroner.
+"Don't ask him that any more. Ask something else."
+
+"Then did you," questioned the attorney, turning to Throgton again,
+"play a game of billiards with the deceased?"
+
+"Stop, stop," said the coroner, "that question I can't allow. It's too
+direct, too brutal; there's something about that question, something
+mean, dirty. Ask another."
+
+"Very good," said the attorney. "Then tell me, Mr. Throgton, if you ever
+saw this blue envelope before?" He held up in his hand a long blue
+envelope.
+
+"Never in my life," said Throgton.
+
+"Of course he didn't," said the coroner. "Let's have a look at it. What
+is it?"
+
+"This envelope, your Honour, was found sticking out of the waistcoat
+pocket of the deceased."
+
+"You don't say," said the coroner. "And what's in it?"
+
+Amid breathless silence, the attorney drew forth a sheet of blue paper,
+bearing a stamp, and read:
+
+"This is the last will and testament of me, Kivas Kelly of New York. I
+leave everything of which I die possessed to my nephew, Peter Kelly."
+
+The entire room gasped. No one spoke. The coroner looked all around.
+"Has anybody here seen Kelly?" he asked.
+
+There was no answer.
+
+The coroner repeated the question.
+
+No one moved.
+
+"Mr. Coroner," said the attorney, "it is my opinion that if Peter Kelly
+is found the mystery is fathomed."
+
+Ten minutes later the jury returned a verdict of murder against a person
+or persons unknown, adding that they would bet a dollar that Kelly did
+it.
+
+The coroner ordered the butler to be released, and directed the issue of
+a warrant for the arrest of Peter Kelly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SHOW ME THE MAN WHO WORE THOSE BOOTS
+
+
+The remains of the unhappy club man were buried on the following day as
+reverently as those of a club man can be. None followed him to the grave
+except a few morbid curiosity-seekers, who rode on top of the hearse.
+
+The great city turned again to its usual avocations. The unfathomable
+mystery was dismissed from the public mind.
+
+Meantime Transome Kent was on the trail. Sleepless, almost foodless, and
+absolutely drinkless, he was everywhere. He was looking for Peter Kelly.
+Wherever crowds were gathered, the Investigator was there, searching for
+Kelly. In the great concourse of the Grand Central Station, Kent moved
+to and fro, peering into everybody's face. An official touched him on
+the shoulder. "Stop peering into the people's faces," he said. "I am
+unravelling a mystery," Kent answered. "I beg your pardon, sir," said
+the man, "I didn't know."
+
+Kent was here, and everywhere, moving ceaselessly, pro and con, watching
+for Kelly. For hours he stood beside the soda-water fountains examining
+every drinker as he drank. For three days he sat on the steps of
+Masterman Throgton's home, disguised as a plumber waiting for a wrench.
+
+But still no trace of Peter Kelly. Young Kelly, it appeared, had lived
+with his uncle until a little less than three years ago. Then suddenly
+he had disappeared. He had vanished, as a brilliant writer for the New
+York Press framed it, as if the earth had swallowed him up.
+
+Transome Kent, however, was not a man to be baffled by initial defeat.
+
+A week later, the Investigator called in at the office of Inspector
+Edwards.
+
+"Inspector," he said, "I must have some more clues. Take me again to the
+Kelly residence. I must re-analyse my first diaeresis."
+
+Together the two friends went to the house. "It is inevitable," said
+Kent, as they entered again the fateful billiard-room, "that we have
+overlooked something."
+
+"We always do," said Edwards gloomily.
+
+"Now tell me," said Kent, as they stood beside the billiard table, "what
+is your own theory, the police theory, of this murder? Give me your
+first theory first, and then go on with the others."
+
+"Our first theory, Mr. Kent, was that the murder was committed by a
+sailor with a wooden leg, newly landed from Java."
+
+"Quite so, quite proper," nodded Kent.
+
+"We knew that he was a sailor," the Inspector went on, dropping again
+into his sing-song monotone, "by the extraordinary agility needed to
+climb up the thirty feet of bare brick wall to the window--a landsman
+could not have climbed more than twenty; the fact that he was from the
+East Indies we knew from the peculiar knot about his victim's neck. We
+knew that he had a wooden leg----"
+
+The Inspector paused and looked troubled.
+
+"We knew it." He paused again. "I'm afraid I can't remember that one."
+
+"Tut, tut," said Kent gently, "you knew it, Edwards, because when he
+leaned against the billiard table the impress of his hand on the
+mahogany was deeper on one side than the other. The man was obviously
+top heavy. But you abandoned this first theory."
+
+"Certainly, Mr. Kent, we always do. Our second theory was----"
+
+But Kent had ceased to listen. He had suddenly stooped down and picked
+up something off the floor.
+
+"Ha ha!" he exclaimed. "What do you make of this?" He held up a square
+fragment of black cloth.
+
+"We never saw it," said Edwards.
+
+"Cloth," muttered Kent, "the missing piece of Kivas Kelly's dinner
+jacket." He whipped out a magnifying glass. "Look," he said, "it's been
+stamped upon--by a man wearing hob-nailed boots--made in Ireland--a man
+of five feet nine and a half inches high----"
+
+"One minute, Mr. Kent," interrupted the Inspector, greatly excited, "I
+don't quite get it."
+
+"The depth of the dint proves the lift of his foot," said Kent
+impatiently, "and the lift of the foot indicates at once the man's
+height. Edwards, find me the man who wore these boots and the mystery is
+solved!"
+
+At that very moment a heavy step, unmistakably to the trained ear that
+of a man in hob-nailed boots, was heard upon the stair. The door opened
+and a man stood hesitating in the doorway.
+
+Both Kent and Edwards gave a start, two starts, of surprise.
+
+The man was exactly five feet nine and a half inches high. He was
+dressed in coachman's dress. His face was saturnine and evil.
+
+It was Dennis, the coachman of the murdered man.
+
+"If you're Mr. Kent," he said, "there's a lady here asking for you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+OH, MR. KENT, SAVE ME!
+
+
+In another moment an absolutely noiseless step was heard upon the
+stair.
+
+A young girl entered, a girl, tall, willowy and beautiful, in the first
+burst, or just about the first burst, of womanhood.
+
+It was Alice Delary.
+
+She was dressed with extreme taste, but Kent's quick eye noted at once
+that she wore no hat.
+
+"Mr. Kent," she cried, "you are Mr. Kent, are you not? They told me that
+you were here. Oh, Mr. Kent, help me, save me!"
+
+She seemed to shudder into herself a moment. Her breath came and went
+quickly.
+
+She reached out her two hands.
+
+"Calm yourself, my dear young lady," said Kent, taking them. "Don't let
+your breath come and go so much. Trust me. Tell me all."
+
+"Mr. Kent," said Delary, regaining her control, but still trembling, "I
+want my hat."
+
+Kent let go the beautiful girl's hands. "Sit down," he said. Then he
+went across the room and fetched the hat, the light gossamer hat, with
+flowers in it, that still hung on a peg.
+
+"Oh, I am so glad to get it back," cried the girl. "I can never thank
+you enough. I was afraid to come for it."
+
+"It is all right," said the Inspector. "The police theory was that it
+was the housekeeper's hat. You are welcome to it."
+
+Kent had been looking closely at the girl before him.
+
+"You have more to say than that," he said. "Tell me all."
+
+"Oh, I will, I will, Mr. Kent. That dreadful night! I was here. I saw,
+at least I heard it all."
+
+She shuddered.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Kent, it was dreadful! I had come back that evening to the
+library to finish some work. I knew that Mr. Kelly was to dine out and
+that I would be alone. I had been working quietly for some time when I
+became aware of voices in the billiard-room. I tried not to listen, but
+they seemed to be quarrelling, and I couldn't help hearing. Oh, Mr.
+Kent, was I wrong?"
+
+"No," said Kent, taking her hand a moment, "you were not."
+
+"I heard one say, 'Get your foot off the table, you've no right to put
+your foot on the table.' Then the other said, 'Well, you keep your
+stomach off the cushion then.'" The girl shivered. "Then presently one
+said, quite fiercely, 'Get back into balk there, get back fifteen
+inches,' and the other voice said, 'By God! I'll shoot from here.' Then
+there was a dead stillness, and then a voice almost screamed, 'You've
+potted me. You've potted me. That ends it.' And then I heard the other
+say in a low tone, 'Forgive me, I didn't mean it. I never meant it to
+end that way.'
+
+"I was so frightened, Mr. Kent, I couldn't stay any longer. I rushed
+downstairs and ran all the way home. Then next day I read what had
+happened, and I knew that I had left my hat there, and was afraid. Oh,
+Mr. Kent, save me!"
+
+"Miss Delary," said the Investigator, taking again the girl's hands and
+looking into her eyes, "you are safe. Tell me only one thing. The man
+who played against Kivas Kelly--did you see him?"
+
+"Only for one moment"--the girl paused--"through the keyhole."
+
+"What was he like?" asked Kent. "Had he an impenetrable face?"
+
+"He had."
+
+"Was there anything massive about his face?"
+
+"Oh, yes, yes, it was all massive."
+
+"Miss Delary," said Kent, "this mystery is now on the brink of solution.
+When I have joined the last links of the chain, may I come and tell you
+all?"
+
+She looked full in his face.
+
+"At any hour of the day or night," she said, "you may come."
+
+Then she was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+YOU ARE PETER KELLY
+
+
+Within a few moments Kent was at the phone.
+
+"I want four, four, four, four. Is that four, four, four, four? Mr.
+Throgton's house? I want Mr. Throgton. Mr. Throgton speaking? Mr.
+Throgton, Kent speaking. The Riverside mystery is solved."
+
+Kent waited in silence a moment. Then he heard Throgton's voice--not a
+note in it disturbed:
+
+"Has anybody found Kelly?"
+
+"Mr. Throgton," said Kent, and he spoke with a strange meaning in his
+tone, "the story is a long one. Suppose I relate it to you"--he paused,
+and laid a peculiar emphasis on what followed--"_over a game of
+billiards_."
+
+"What the devil do you mean?" answered Throgton.
+
+"Let me come round to your house and tell the story. There are points in
+it that I can best illustrate over a billiard table. Suppose I challenge
+you to a fifty point game before I tell my story."
+
+It required no little hardihood to challenge Masterman Throgton at
+billiards. His reputation at his club as a cool, determined player was
+surpassed by few. Throgton had been known to run nine, ten, and even
+twelve at a break. It was not unusual for him to drive his ball clear
+off the table. His keen eye told him infallibly where each of the three
+balls was; instinctively he knew which to shoot with.
+
+In Kent, however, he had no mean adversary. The young reporter, though
+he had never played before, had studied his book to some purpose. His
+strategy was admirable. Keeping his ball well under the shelter of the
+cushion, he eluded every stroke of his adversary, and in his turn caused
+his ball to leap or dart across the table with such speed as to bury
+itself in the pocket at the side.
+
+The score advanced rapidly, both players standing precisely equal. At
+the end of the first half-hour it stood at ten all. Throgton, a grim
+look upon his face, had settled down to work, playing with one knee on
+the table. Kent, calm but alive with excitement, leaned well forward to
+his stroke, his eye held within an inch of the ball.
+
+At fifteen they were still even. Throgton with a sudden effort forced a
+break of three; but Kent rallied and in another twenty minutes they were
+even again at nineteen all.
+
+But it was soon clear that Transome Kent had something else in mind than
+to win the game. Presently his opportunity came. With a masterly stroke,
+such as few trained players could use, he had potted his adversary's
+ball. The red ball was left over the very jaws of the pocket. The white
+was in the centre.
+
+Kent looked into Throgton's face.
+
+The balls were standing in the very same position on the table as on the
+night of the murder.
+
+"I did that on purpose," said Kent quietly.
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Throgton.
+
+"The position of those balls," said Kent. "Mr. Throgton, come into the
+library. I have something to say to you. You know already what it is."
+
+They went into the library. Throgton, his hand unsteady, lighted a
+cigar.
+
+"Well," he said, "what is it?"
+
+"Mr. Throgton," said Kent, "two weeks ago you gave me a mystery to
+solve. To-night I can give you the solution. Do you want it?"
+
+Throgton's face never moved.
+
+"Well," he said.
+
+"A man's life," Kent went on, "may be played out on a billiard table. A
+man's soul, Throgton, may be pocketed."
+
+"What devil's foolery is this?" said Throgton. "What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that your crime is known--plotter, schemer that you are, you are
+found out--hypocrite, traitor; yes, Masterman Throgton, or rather--let
+me give you your true name-_Peter Kelly_, murderer, I denounce you!"
+
+Throgton never flinched. He walked across to where Kent stood, and with
+his open palm he slapped him over the mouth.
+
+"Transome Kent," he said, "you're a liar."
+
+Then he walked back to his chair and sat down.
+
+"Kent," he continued, "from the first moment of your mock investigation,
+I knew who you were. Your every step was shadowed, your every movement
+dogged. Transome Kent--by your true name, _Peter Kelly_, murderer, I
+denounce you."
+
+Kent walked quietly across to Throgton and dealt him a fearful blow
+behind the ear.
+
+"You're a liar," he said, "I am not Peter Kelly."
+
+They sat looking at one another.
+
+At that moment Throgton's servant appeared at the door.
+
+"A gentleman to see you, sir."
+
+"Who?" said Throgton.
+
+"I don't know, sir, he gave his card."
+
+Masterman Throgton took the card.
+
+On it was printed:
+
+_PETER KELLY_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+LET ME TELL YOU THE STORY OF MY LIFE
+
+
+For a moment Throgton and Kent sat looking at one another.
+
+"Show the man up," said Throgton.
+
+A minute later the door opened and a man entered. Kent's keen eye
+analysed him as he stood. His blue clothes, his tanned face, and the
+extraordinary dexterity of his fingers left no doubt of his calling. He
+was a sailor.
+
+"Sit down," said Throgton.
+
+"Thank you," said the sailor, "it rests my wooden leg."
+
+The two men looked again. One of the sailor's legs was made of wood.
+With a start Kent noticed that it was made of East Indian sandalwood.
+
+"I've just come from Java," said Kelly quietly, as he sat down.
+
+Kent nodded. "I see it all now," he said. "Throgton, I wronged you. We
+should have known it was a sailor with a wooden leg from Java. There is
+no other way."
+
+"Gentlemen," said Peter Kelly, "I've come to make my confession. It is
+the usual and right thing to do, gentlemen, and I want to go through
+with it while I can."
+
+"One moment," said Kent, "do you mind interrupting yourself with a
+hacking cough?"
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Kelly, "I'll get to that a little later. Let me
+begin by telling you the story of my life."
+
+"No, no," urged Throgton and Kent, "don't do that!"
+
+Kelly frowned. "I think I have a right to," he said. "You've got to hear
+it. As a boy I had a wild, impulsive nature. Had it been curbed----"
+
+"But it wasn't," said Throgton. "What next?"
+
+"I was the sole relative of my uncle, and heir to great wealth. Pampered
+with every luxury, I was on a footing of----"
+
+"One minute," interrupted Kent, rapidly analysing as he listened. "How
+many legs had you then?"
+
+"Two--on a footing of ease and indolence. I soon lost----"
+
+"Your leg," said Throgton. "Mr. Kelly, pray come to the essential
+things."
+
+"I will," said the sailor. "Gentlemen, bad as I was, I was not
+altogether bad."
+
+"Of course not," said Kent and Throgton soothingly. "Probably not more
+than ninety per cent."
+
+"Even into my life, gentlemen, love entered. If you had seen her you
+would have known that she is as innocent as the driven snow. Three years
+ago she came to my uncle's house. I loved her. One day, hardly knowing
+what I was doing, I took her----" he paused.
+
+"Yes, yes," said Throgton and Kent, "you took her?"
+
+"To the Aquarium. My uncle heard of it. There was a violent quarrel. He
+disinherited me and drove me from the house. I had a liking for the sea
+from a boy."
+
+"Excuse me," said Kent, "from what boy?"
+
+Kelly went right on. "I ran away as a sailor before the mast."
+
+"Pardon me," interrupted Kent, "I am not used to sea terms. Why didn't
+you run _behind_ the mast?"
+
+"Hear me out," said Kelly, "I am nearly done. We sailed for the East
+Indies--for Java. There a Malay pirate bit off my leg. I returned home,
+bitter, disillusioned, the mere wreck that you see. I had but one
+thought. I meant to kill my uncle."
+
+For a moment a hacking cough interrupted Kelly. Kent and Throgton nodded
+quietly to one another.
+
+"I came to his house at night. With the aid of my wooden leg I scaled
+the wall, lifted the window and entered the billiard-room. There was
+murder in my heart. Thank God I was spared from that. At the very moment
+when I got in, a light was turned on in the room and I saw before
+me--but no, I will not name her--my better angel. 'Peter!' she cried,
+then with a woman's intuition she exclaimed, 'You have come to murder
+your uncle. Don't do it.' My whole mood changed. I broke down and cried
+like a--like a----"
+
+Kelly paused a moment.
+
+"Like a boob," said Kent softly. "Go on."
+
+"When I had done crying, we heard voices. 'Quick,' she exclaimed, 'flee,
+hide, he must not see you.' She rushed into the adjoining room, closing
+the door. My eye had noticed already the trap above. I climbed up to
+it. Shall I explain how?"
+
+"Don't," said Kent, "I can analyse it afterwards."
+
+"There I saw what passed. I saw Mr. Throgton and Kivas Kelly come in. I
+watched their game. They were greatly excited and quarrelled over it.
+Throgton lost."
+
+The big man nodded with a scowl. "By his potting the white," he said.
+
+"Precisely," said Kelly, "he missed the red. Your analysis was wrong,
+Mr. Kent. The game ended. You started your reasoning from a false
+diaeresis. In billiards people never mark the last point. The board still
+showed ninety-nine all. Throgton left and my uncle, as often happens,
+kept trying over the last shot--a half-ball shot, sir, with the red over
+the pocket. He tried again and again. He couldn't make it. He tried
+various ways. His rest was too unsteady. Finally he made his tie into a
+long loop round his neck and put his cue through it. 'Now, by gad!' he
+said, 'I can do it.'"
+
+"Ha!" said Kent. "Fool that I was."
+
+"Exactly," continued Kelly. "In the excitement of watching my uncle I
+forgot where I was, I leaned too far over and fell out of the trap. I
+landed on uncle, just as he was sitting on the table to shoot. He fell."
+
+"I see it all!" said Kent. "He hit his head, the loop tightened, the cue
+spun round and he was dead."
+
+"That's it," said Kelly. "I saw that he was dead, and I did not dare to
+remain. I straightened the knot in his tie, laid his hands reverently
+across his chest, and departed as I had come."
+
+"Mr. Kelly," said Throgton thoughtfully, "the logic of your story is
+wonderful. It exceeds anything in its line that I have seen published
+for months. But there is just one point that I fail to grasp. The two
+bullet holes?"
+
+"They were old ones," answered the sailor quietly. "My uncle in his
+youth had led a wild life in the west; he was full of them."
+
+There was silence for a moment. Then Kelly spoke again:
+
+"My time, gentlemen, is short." (A hacking cough interrupted him.) "I
+feel that I am withering. It rests with you, gentlemen, whether or not I
+walk out of this room a free man."
+
+Transome Kent rose and walked over to the sailor.
+
+"Mr. Kelly," he said, "here is my hand."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+SO DO I
+
+
+A few days after the events last narrated, Transome Kent called at the
+boarding-house of Miss Alice Delary. The young Investigator wore a light
+grey tweed suit, with a salmon-coloured geranium in his buttonhole.
+There was something exultant yet at the same time grave in his
+expression, as of one who has taken a momentous decision, affecting his
+future life.
+
+"I wonder," he murmured, "whether I am acting for my happiness."
+
+He sat down for a moment on the stone steps and analysed himself.
+
+Then he rose.
+
+"I am," he said, and rang the bell.
+
+"Miss Delary?" said a maid, "she left here two days ago. If you are Mr.
+Kent, the note on the mantelpiece is for you."
+
+Without a word (Kent never wasted them) the Investigator opened the note
+and read:
+
+     "Dear Mr. Kent,
+
+     "Peter and I were married yesterday morning, and have taken an
+     apartment in Java, New Jersey. You will be glad to hear that
+     Peter's cough is ever so much better. The lawyers have given Peter
+     his money without the least demur.
+
+     "We both feel that your analysis was simply wonderful. Peter says
+     he doesn't know where he would be without it.
+
+     "Very sincerely,
+
+     "Alice Kelly.
+
+     "P.S.--I forgot to mention to you that I saw Peter in the
+     billiard-room. But your analysis was marvellous just the same."
+
+
+That evening Kent sat with Throgton talking over the details of the
+tragedy.
+
+"Throgton," he said, "it has occurred to me that there were points about
+that solution that we didn't get exactly straight somehow."
+
+"So do I," said Throgton.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+BROKEN BARRIERS
+
+OR, RED LOVE ON A BLUE ISLAND
+
+(_The kind of thing that has replaced the good Old Sea Story_)
+
+
+
+
+_V.--Broken Barriers; or, Red Love on a Blue Island._
+
+
+It was on a bright August afternoon that I stepped on board the steamer
+_Patagonia_ at Southampton outward bound for the West Indies and the
+Port of New Orleans.
+
+I had at the time no presentiment of disaster. I remember remarking to
+the ship's purser, as my things were being carried to my state-room,
+that I had never in all my travels entered upon any voyage with so
+little premonition of accident. "Very good, Mr. Borus," he answered.
+"You will find your state-room in the starboard aisle on the right." I
+distinctly recall remarking to the Captain that I had never, in any of
+my numerous seafarings, seen the sea of a more limpid blue. He agreed
+with me so entirely, as I recollect it, that he did not even trouble to
+answer.
+
+Had anyone told me on that bright summer afternoon that our ship would
+within a week be wrecked among the Dry Tortugas, I should have laughed.
+Had anyone informed me that I should find myself alone on a raft in the
+Caribbean Sea, I should have gone into hysterics.
+
+We had hardly entered the waters of the Caribbean when a storm of
+unprecedented violence broke upon us. Even the Captain had never, so he
+said, seen anything to compare with it. For two days and nights we
+encountered and endured the full fury of the sea. Our soup plates were
+secured with racks and covered with lids. In the smoking-room our
+glasses had to be set in brackets, and as our steward came and went, we
+were from moment to moment in imminent danger of seeing him washed
+overboard.
+
+On the third morning just after daybreak the ship collided with
+something, probably either a floating rock or one of the dry Tortugas.
+She blew out her four funnels, the bowsprit dropped out of its place,
+and the propeller came right off. The Captain, after a brief
+consultation, decided to abandon her. The boats were lowered, and, the
+sea being now quite calm, the passengers were emptied into them.
+
+By what accident I was left behind I cannot tell. I had been talking to
+the second mate and telling him of a rather similar experience of mine
+in the China Sea, and holding him by the coat as I did so, when quite
+suddenly he took me by the shoulders, and rushing me into the deserted
+smoking-room said, "Sit there, Mr. Borus, till I come back for you." The
+fellow spoke in such a menacing way that I thought it wiser to comply.
+
+When I came out they were all gone. By good fortune I found one of the
+ship's rafts still lying on the deck. I gathered together such articles
+as might be of use and contrived, though how I do not know, to launch it
+into the sea.
+
+On my second morning on my raft I was sitting quietly polishing my boots
+and talking to myself when I became aware of an object floating in the
+sea close beside the raft. Judge of my feelings when I realized it to be
+the inanimate body of a girl. Hastily finishing my boots and stopping
+talking to myself, I made shift as best I could to draw the unhappy girl
+towards me with a hook.
+
+After several ineffectual attempts I at last managed to obtain a hold of
+the girl's clothing and drew her on to the raft.
+
+She was still unconscious. The heavy lifebelt round her person must (so
+I divined) have kept her afloat after the wreck. Her clothes were
+sodden, so I reasoned, with the sea-water.
+
+On a handkerchief which was still sticking into the belt of her dress, I
+could see letters embroidered. Realizing that this was no time for
+hesitation, and that the girl's life might depend on my reading her
+name, I plucked it forth. It was Edith Croyden.
+
+As vigorously as I could I now set to work to rub her hands. My idea was
+(partly) to restore her circulation. I next removed her boots, which
+were now rendered useless, as I argued, by the sea-water, and began to
+rub her feet.
+
+I was just considering what to remove next, when the girl opened her
+eyes. "Stop rubbing my feet," she said.
+
+"Miss Croyden," I said, "you mistake me."
+
+I rose, with a sense of pique which I did not trouble to conceal, and
+walked to the other end of the raft. I turned my back upon the girl and
+stood looking out upon the leaden waters of the Caribbean Sea. The ocean
+was now calm. There was nothing in sight.
+
+I was still searching the horizon when I heard a soft footstep on the
+raft behind me, and a light hand was laid upon my shoulder. "Forgive
+me," said the girl's voice.
+
+I turned about. Miss Croyden was standing behind me. She had, so I
+argued, removed her stockings and was standing in her bare feet. There
+is something, I am free to confess, about a woman in her bare feet which
+hits me where I live. With instinctive feminine taste the girl had
+twined a piece of seaweed in her hair. Seaweed, as a rule, gets me every
+time. But I checked myself.
+
+"Miss Croyden," I said, "there is nothing to forgive."
+
+At the mention of her name the girl blushed for a moment and seemed
+about to say something, but stopped.
+
+"Where are we?" she queried presently.
+
+"I don't know," I answered, as cheerily as I could, "but I am going to
+find out."
+
+"How brave you are!" Miss Croyden exclaimed.
+
+"Not at all," I said, putting as much heartiness into my voice as I was
+able to.
+
+The girl watched my preparations with interest.
+
+With the aid of a bent pin hoisted on a long pole I had no difficulty in
+ascertaining our latitude.
+
+"Miss Croydon," I said, "I am now about to ascertain our longitude. To
+do this I must lower myself down into the sea. Pray do not be alarmed or
+anxious. I shall soon be back."
+
+With the help of a long line I lowered myself deep down into the sea
+until I was enabled to ascertain, approximately at any rate, our
+longitude. A fierce thrill went through me at the thought that this
+longitude was our longitude, hers and mine. On the way up, hand over
+hand, I observed a long shark looking at me. Realizing that the fellow
+if voracious might prove dangerous, I lost but little time--indeed, I
+may say I lost absolutely no time--in coming up the rope.
+
+The girl was waiting for me.
+
+"Oh, I am so glad you have come back," she exclaimed, clasping her
+hands.
+
+"It was nothing," I said, wiping the water from my ears, and speaking as
+melodiously as I could.
+
+"Have you found our whereabouts?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," I answered. "Our latitude is normal, but our longitude is, I
+fear, at least three degrees out of the plumb. I am afraid, Miss
+Croyden," I added, speaking as mournfully as I knew how, "that you must
+reconcile your mind to spending a few days with me on this raft."
+
+"Is it as bad as that?" she murmured, her eyes upon the sea.
+
+In the long day that followed, I busied myself as much as I could with
+my work upon the raft, so as to leave the girl as far as possible to
+herself. It was, so I argued, absolutely necessary to let her feel that
+she was safe in my keeping. Otherwise she might jump off the raft and I
+should lose her.
+
+I sorted out my various cans and tins, tested the oil in my chronometer,
+arranged in neat order my various ropes and apparatus, and got my
+frying-pan into readiness for any emergency. Of food we had for the
+present no lack.
+
+With the approach of night I realized that it was necessary to make
+arrangements for the girl's comfort. With the aid of a couple of upright
+poles I stretched a grey blanket across the raft so as to make a
+complete partition.
+
+"Miss Croyden," I said, "this end of the raft is yours. Here you may
+sleep in peace."
+
+"How kind you are," the girl murmured.
+
+"You will be quite safe from interference," I added. "I give you my
+word that I will not obtrude upon you in any way."
+
+"How chivalrous you are," she said.
+
+"Not at all," I answered, as musically as I could. "Understand me, I am
+now putting my head over this partition for the last time. If there is
+anything you want, say so now."
+
+"Nothing," she answered.
+
+"There is a candle and matches beside you. If there is anything that you
+want in the night, call me instantly. Remember, at any hour I shall be
+here. I promise it."
+
+"Good night," she murmured. In a few minutes her soft regular breathing
+told me that she was asleep.
+
+I went forward and seated myself in a tar-bucket, with my head against
+the mast, to get what sleep I could.
+
+But for some time--why, I do not know--sleep would not come.
+
+The image of Edith Croyden filled my mind. In vain I told myself that
+she was a stranger to me: that--beyond her longitude--I knew nothing of
+her. In some strange way this girl had seized hold of me and dominated
+my senses.
+
+The night was very calm and still, with great stars in a velvet sky. In
+the darkness I could hear the water lapping the edge of the raft.
+
+I remained thus in deep thought, sinking further and further into the
+tar-bucket. By the time I reached the bottom of it I realized that I was
+in love with Edith Croyden.
+
+Then the thought of my wife occurred to me and perplexed me. Our unhappy
+marriage had taken place three years before. We brought to one another
+youth, wealth and position. Yet our marriage was a failure. My wife--for
+what reason I cannot guess--seemed to find my society irksome. In vain I
+tried to interest her with narratives of my travels. They seemed--in
+some way that I could not divine--to fatigue her. "Leave me for a
+little, Harold," she would say (I forgot to mention that my name is
+Harold Borus), "I have a pain in my neck." At her own suggestion I had
+taken a trip around the world. On my return she urged me to go round
+again. I was going round for the third time when the wrecking of the
+steamer had interrupted my trip.
+
+On my own part, too, I am free to confess that my wife's attitude had
+aroused in me a sense of pique, not to say injustice. I am not in any
+way a vain man. Yet her attitude wounded me. I would no sooner begin,
+"When I was in the Himalayas hunting the humpo or humped buffalo," than
+she would interrupt and say, "Oh, Harold, would you mind going down to
+the billiard-room and seeing if I left my cigarettes under the
+billiard-table?" When I returned, she was gone.
+
+By agreement we had arranged for a divorce. On my completion of my third
+voyage we were to meet in New Orleans. Clara was to go there on a
+separate ship, giving me the choice of oceans.
+
+Had I met Edith Croyden three months later I should have been a man free
+to woo and win her. As it was I was bound. I must put a clasp of iron on
+my feelings. I must wear a mask. Cheerful, helpful, and full of
+narrative, I must yet let fall no word of love to this defenceless girl.
+
+After a great struggle I rose at last from the tar-bucket, feeling, if
+not a brighter, at least a cleaner man.
+
+Dawn was already breaking. I looked about me. As the sudden beams of the
+tropic sun illumined the placid sea, I saw immediately before me, only a
+hundred yards away, an island. A sandy beach sloped back to a rocky
+eminence, broken with scrub and jungle. I could see a little stream
+leaping among the rocks. With eager haste I paddled the raft close to
+the shore till it ground in about ten inches of water.
+
+I leaped into the water.
+
+With the aid of a stout line, I soon made the raft fast to a rock. Then
+as I turned I saw that Miss Croyden was standing upon the raft, fully
+dressed, and gazing at me. The morning sunlight played in her hair, and
+her deep blue eyes were as soft as the Caribbean Sea itself.
+
+"Don't attempt to wade ashore, Miss Croyden," I cried in agitation.
+"Pray do nothing rash. The waters are simply infested with bacilli."
+
+"But how can I get ashore?" she asked, with a smile which showed all, or
+nearly all, of her pearl-like teeth.
+
+"Miss Croyden," I said, "there is only one way. I must carry you."
+
+In another moment I had walked back to the raft and lifted her as
+tenderly and reverently as if she had been my sister--indeed more so--in
+my arms.
+
+Her weight seemed nothing. When I get a girl like that in my arms I
+simply don't feel it. Just for one moment as I clasped her thus in my
+arms, a fierce thrill ran through me. But I let it run.
+
+When I had carried her well up the sand close to the little stream, I
+set her down. To my surprise, she sank down in a limp heap.
+
+The girl had fainted.
+
+I knew that it was no time for hesitation.
+
+Running to the stream, I filled my hat with water and dashed it in her
+face. Then I took up a handful of mud and threw it at her with all my
+force. After that I beat her with my hat.
+
+At length she opened her eyes and sat up.
+
+"I must have fainted," she said, with a little shiver. "I am cold. Oh,
+if we could only have a fire."
+
+"I will do my best to make one, Miss Croyden," I replied, speaking as
+gymnastically as I could. "I will see what I can do with two dry
+sticks."
+
+"With dry sticks?" queried the girl. "Can you light a fire with that?
+How wonderful you are!"
+
+"I have often seen it done," I replied thoughtfully; "when I was hunting
+the humpo, or humped buffalo, in the Himalayas, it was our usual
+method."
+
+"Have you really hunted the humpo?" she asked, her eyes large with
+interest.
+
+"I have indeed," I said, "but you must rest; later on I will tell you
+about it."
+
+"I wish you could tell me now," she said with a little moan.
+
+Meantime I had managed to select from the driftwood on the beach two
+sticks that seemed absolutely dry. Placing them carefully together, in
+Indian fashion, I then struck a match and found no difficulty in setting
+them on fire.
+
+In a few moments the girl was warming herself beside a generous fire.
+
+Together we breakfasted upon the beach beside the fire, discussing our
+plans like comrades.
+
+Our meal over, I rose.
+
+"I will leave you here a little," I said, "while I explore."
+
+With no great difficulty I made my way through the scrub and climbed the
+eminence of tumbled rocks that shut in the view.
+
+On my return Miss Croyden was still seated by the fire, her head in her
+hands.
+
+"Miss Croyden," I said, "we are on an island."
+
+"Is it inhabited?" she asked.
+
+"Once, perhaps, but not now. It is one of the many keys of the West
+Indies. Here, in old buccaneering days, the pirates landed and careened
+their ships."
+
+"How did they do that?" she asked, fascinated.
+
+"I am not sure," I answered. "I think with white-wash. At any rate, they
+gave them a good careening. But since then these solitudes are only the
+home of the sea-gull, the sea-mew, and the albatross."
+
+The girl shuddered.
+
+"How lonely!" she said.
+
+"Lonely or not," I said with a laugh (luckily I can speak with a laugh
+when I want to), "I must get to work."
+
+I set myself to work to haul up and arrange our effects. With a few
+stones I made a rude table and seats. I took care to laugh and sing as
+much as possible while at my work. The close of the day found me still
+busy with my labours.
+
+"Miss Croyden," I said, "I must now arrange a place for you to sleep."
+
+With the aid of four stakes driven deeply into the ground and with
+blankets strung upon them, I managed to fashion a sort of rude tent,
+roofless, but otherwise quite sheltered.
+
+"Miss Croyden," I said when all was done, "go in there."
+
+Then, with little straps which I had fastened to the blankets, I buckled
+her in reverently.
+
+"Good night, Miss Croyden," I said.
+
+"But you," she exclaimed, "where will you sleep?"
+
+"Oh, I?" I answered, speaking as exuberantly as I could, "I shall do
+very well on the ground. But be sure to call me at the slightest sound."
+
+Then I went out and lay down in a patch of cactus plants.
+
+I need not dwell in detail upon the busy and arduous days that followed
+our landing upon the island. I had much to do. Each morning I took our
+latitude and longitude. By this I then set my watch, cooked porridge,
+and picked flowers till Miss Croyden appeared.
+
+With every day the girl came forth from her habitation as a new surprise
+in her radiant beauty. One morning she had bound a cluster of wild
+arbutus about her brow. Another day she had twisted a band of
+convolvulus around her waist. On a third she had wound herself up in a
+mat of bulrushes.
+
+With her bare feet and wild bulrushes all around her, she looked as a
+cave woman might have looked, her eyes radiant with the Caribbean dawn.
+My whole frame thrilled at the sight of her. At times it was all I could
+do not to tear the bulrushes off her and beat her with the heads of
+them. But I schooled myself to restraint, and handed her a rock to sit
+upon, and passed her her porridge on the end of a shovel with the calm
+politeness of a friend.
+
+Our breakfast over, my more serious labours of the day began. I busied
+myself with hauling rocks or boulders along the sand to build us a house
+against the rainy season. With some tackle from the raft I had made
+myself a set of harness, by means of which I hitched myself to a
+boulder. By getting Miss Croyden to beat me over the back with a stick,
+I found that I made fair progress.
+
+But even as I worked thus for our common comfort, my mind was fiercely
+filled with the thought of Edith Croyden. I knew that if once the
+barriers broke everything would be swept away. Heaven alone knows the
+effort that it cost me. At times nothing but the sternest resolution
+could hold my fierce impulses in check. Once I came upon the girl
+writing in the sand with a stick. I looked to see what she had written.
+I read my own name "Harold." With a wild cry I leapt into the sea and
+dived to the bottom of it. When I came up I was calmer. Edith came
+towards me; all dripping as I was, she placed her hands upon my
+shoulders. "How grand you are!" she said. "I am," I answered; then I
+added, "Miss Croyden, for Heaven's sake don't touch me on the ear. I
+can't stand it." I turned from her and looked out over the sea.
+Presently I heard something like a groan behind me. The girl had thrown
+herself on the sand and was coiled up in a hoop. "Miss Croyden," I said,
+"for God's sake don't coil up in a hoop."
+
+I rushed to the beach and rubbed gravel on my face.
+
+With such activities, alternated with wild bursts of restraint, our life
+on the island passed as rapidly as in a dream. Had I not taken care to
+notch the days upon a stick and then cover the stick with tar, I could
+not have known the passage of the time. The wearing out of our clothing
+had threatened a serious difficulty. But by good fortune I had seen a
+large black and white goat wandering among the rocks and had chased it
+to a standstill. From its skin, leaving the fur still on, Edith had
+fashioned us clothes. Our boots we had replaced with alligator hide. I
+had, by a lucky chance, found an alligator upon the beach, and attaching
+a string to the fellow's neck I had led him to our camp. I had then
+poisoned the fellow with tinned salmon and removed his hide.
+
+Our costume was now brought into harmony with our surroundings. For
+myself, garbed in goatskin with the hair outside, with alligator sandals
+on my feet and with whiskers at least six inches long, I have no doubt
+that I resembled the beau ideal of a cave man. With the open-air life a
+new agility seemed to have come into my limbs. With a single leap in my
+alligator sandals I was enabled to spring into a coco-nut tree.
+
+As for Edith Croyden, I can only say that as she stood beside me on the
+beach in her suit of black goatskin (she had chosen the black spots)
+there were times when I felt like seizing her in the frenzy of my
+passion and hurling her into the sea. Fur always acts on me just like
+that.
+
+It was at the opening of the fifth week of our life upon the island that
+a new and more surprising turn was given to our adventure. It arose out
+of a certain curiosity, harmless enough, on Edith Croyden's part. "Mr.
+Borus," she said one morning, "I should like so much to see the rest of
+our island. Can we?"
+
+"Alas, Miss Croyden," I said, "I fear that there is but little to see.
+Our island, so far as I can judge, is merely one of the uninhabited keys
+of the West Indies. It is nothing but rock and sand and scrub. There is
+no life upon it. I fear," I added, speaking as jauntily as I could,
+"that unless we are taken off it we are destined to stay on it."
+
+"Still I should like to see it," she persisted.
+
+"Come on, then," I answered, "if you are good for a climb we can take a
+look over the ridge of rocks where I went up on the first day."
+
+We made our way across the sand of the beach, among the rocks and
+through the close matted scrub, beyond which an eminence of rugged
+boulders shut out the further view.
+
+Making our way to the top of this we obtained a wide look over the sea.
+The island stretched away to a considerable distance to the eastward,
+widening as it went, the complete view of it being shut off by similar
+and higher ridges of rock.
+
+But it was the nearer view, the foreground, that at once arrested our
+attention. Edith seized my arm. "Look, oh, look!" she said.
+
+Down just below us on the right hand was a similar beach to the one
+that we had left. A rude hut had been erected on it and various articles
+lay strewn about.
+
+Seated on a rock with their backs towards us were a man and a woman. The
+man was dressed in goatskins, and his whiskers, so I inferred from what
+I could see of them from the side, were at least as exuberant as mine.
+The woman was in white fur with a fillet of seaweed round her head. They
+were sitting close together as if in earnest colloquy.
+
+"Cave people," whispered Edith, "aborigines of the island."
+
+But I answered nothing. Something in the tall outline of the seated
+woman held my eye. A cruel presentiment stabbed me to the heart.
+
+In my agitation my foot overset a stone, which rolled noisily down the
+rocks. The noise attracted the attention of the two seated below us.
+They turned and looked searchingly towards the place where we were
+concealed. Their faces were in plain sight. As I looked at that of the
+woman I felt my heart cease beating and the colour leave my face.
+
+I looked into Edith's face. It was as pale as mine.
+
+"What does it mean?" she whispered.
+
+"Miss Croyden," I answered, "Edith--it means this. I have never found
+the courage to tell you. I am a married man. The woman seated there is
+my wife. And I love you."
+
+Edith put out her arms with a low cry and clasped me about the neck.
+"Harold," she murmured, "my Harold."
+
+"Have I done wrong?" I whispered.
+
+"Only what I have done too," she answered. "I, too, am married, Harold,
+and the man sitting there below, John Croyden, is my husband."
+
+With a wild cry such as a cave man might have uttered, I had leapt to my
+feet.
+
+"Your husband!" I shouted. "Then, by the living God, he or I shall never
+leave this place alive."
+
+He saw me coming as I bounded down the rocks. In an instant he had
+sprung to his feet. He gave no cry. He asked no question. He stood
+erect as a cave man would, waiting for his enemy.
+
+And there upon the sands beside the sea we fought, barehanded and
+weaponless. We fought as cave men fight.
+
+For a while we circled round one another, growling. We circled four
+times, each watching for an opportunity. Then I picked up a great
+handful of sand and threw it flap into his face. He grabbed a coco-nut
+and hit me with it in the stomach. Then I seized a twisted strand of wet
+seaweed and landed him with it behind the ear. For a moment he
+staggered. Before he could recover I jumped forward, seized him by the
+hair, slapped his face twice and then leaped behind a rock. Looking from
+the side I could see that Croyden, though half dazed, was feeling round
+for something to throw. To my horror I saw a great stone lying ready to
+his hand. Beside me was nothing. I gave myself up for lost, when at that
+very moment I heard Edith's voice behind me saying, "The shovel, quick,
+the shovel!" The noble girl had rushed back to our encampment and had
+fetched me the shovel. "Swat him with that," she cried. I seized the
+shovel, and with the roar of a wounded bull--or as near as I could make
+it--I rushed out from the rock, the shovel swung over my head.
+
+But the fight was all out of Croyden.
+
+"Don't strike," he said, "I'm all in. I couldn't stand a crack with that
+kind of thing."
+
+He sat down upon the sand, limp. Seen thus, he somehow seemed to be
+quite a small man, not a cave man at all. His goatskin suit shrunk in on
+him. I could hear his pants as he sat.
+
+"I surrender," he said. "Take both the women. They are yours."
+
+I stood over him leaning upon the shovel. The two women had closed in
+near to us.
+
+"I suppose you are _her_ husband, are you?" Croyden went on.
+
+I nodded.
+
+"I thought you were. Take her."
+
+Meantime Clara had drawn nearer to me. She looked somehow very beautiful
+with her golden hair in the sunlight, and the white furs draped about
+her.
+
+"Harold!" she exclaimed. "Harold, is it you? How strange and masterful
+you look. I didn't know you were so strong."
+
+I turned sternly towards her.
+
+"When I was alone," I said, "on the Himalayas hunting the humpo or
+humped buffalo----"
+
+Clara clasped her hands, looking into my face.
+
+"Yes," she said, "tell me about it."
+
+Meantime I could see that Edith had gone over to John Croyden.
+
+"John," she said, "you shouldn't sit on the wet sand like that. You will
+get a chill. Let me help you to get up."
+
+I looked at Clara and at Croyden.
+
+"How has this happened?" I asked. "Tell me."
+
+"We were on the same ship," Croyden said. "There came a great storm.
+Even the Captain had never seen----"
+
+"I know," I interrupted, "so had ours."
+
+"The ship struck a rock, and blew out her four funnels----"
+
+"Ours did too," I nodded.
+
+"The bowsprit was broken, and the steward's pantry was carried away. The
+Captain gave orders to leave the ship----"
+
+"It is enough, Croyden," I said, "I see it all now. You were left behind
+when the boats cleared, by what accident you don't know----"
+
+"I don't," said Croyden.
+
+"As best you could, you constructed a raft, and with such haste as you
+might you placed on it such few things----"
+
+"Exactly," he said, "a chronometer, a sextant----"
+
+"I know," I continued, "two quadrants, a bucket of water, and a
+lightning rod. I presume you picked up Clara floating in the sea."
+
+"I did," Croyden said; "she was unconscious when I got her, but by
+rubbing----"
+
+"Croyden," I said, raising the shovel again, "cut that out."
+
+"I'm sorry," he said.
+
+"It's all right. But you needn't go on. I see all the rest of your
+adventures plainly enough."
+
+"Well, I'm done with it all anyway," said Croyden gloomily. "You can do
+what you like. As for me, I've got a decent suit back there at our camp,
+and I've got it dried and pressed and I'm going to put it on."
+
+He rose wearily, Edith standing beside him.
+
+"What's more, Borus," he said, "I'll tell you something. This island is
+not uninhabited at all."
+
+"Not uninhabited!" exclaimed Clara and Edith together. I saw each of
+them give a rapid look at her goatskin suit.
+
+"Nonsense, Croyden," I said, "this island is one of the West Indian
+keys. On such a key as this the pirates used to land. Here they careened
+their ships----"
+
+"Did what to them?" asked Croyden.
+
+"Careened them all over from one end to the other," I said. "Here they
+got water and buried treasure; but beyond that the island was, and
+remained, only the home of the wild gull and the sea-mews----"
+
+"All right," said Croyden, "only it doesn't happen to be that kind of
+key. It's a West Indian island all right, but there's a summer hotel on
+the other end of it not two miles away."
+
+"A summer hotel!" we exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, a hotel. I suspected it all along. I picked up a tennis racket on
+the beach the first day; and after that I walked over the ridge and
+through the jungle and I could see the roof of the hotel. Only," he
+added rather shamefacedly, "I didn't like to tell her."
+
+"Oh, you coward!" cried Clara. "I could slap you."
+
+"Don't you dare," said Edith. "I'm sure you knew it as well as he did.
+And anyway, I was certain of it myself. I picked up a copy of last
+week's paper in a lunch-basket on the beach, and hid it from Mr. Borus.
+I didn't want to hurt his feelings."
+
+At that moment Croyden pointed with a cry towards the sea.
+
+"Look," he said, "for Heaven's sake, look!"
+
+He turned.
+
+Less than a quarter of a mile away we could see a large white motor
+launch coming round the corner. The deck was gay with awnings and bright
+dresses and parasols.
+
+"Great Heavens!" said Croyden. "I know that launch. It's the
+Appin-Joneses'."
+
+"The Appin-Joneses'!" cried Clara. "Why, we know them too. Don't you
+remember, Harold, the Sunday we spent with them on the Hudson?"
+
+Instinctively we had all jumped for cover, behind the rocks.
+
+"Whatever shall we do?" I exclaimed.
+
+"We must get our things," said Edith Croyden. "Jack, if your suit is
+ready run and get it and stop the launch. Mrs. Borus and Mr. Borus and I
+can get our things straightened up while you keep them talking. My suit
+is nearly ready anyway; I thought some one might come. Mr. Borus, would
+you mind running and fetching me my things, they're all in a parcel
+together? And perhaps if you have a looking-glass and some pins, Mrs.
+Borus, I could come over and dress with you."
+
+That same evening we found ourselves all comfortably gathered on the
+piazza of the Hotel Christopher Columbus. Appin-Jones insisted on making
+himself our host, and the story of our adventures was related again and
+again to an admiring audience, with the accompaniment of cigars and iced
+champagne. Only one detail was suppressed, by common instinct. Both
+Clara and I felt that it would only raise needless comment to explain
+that Mr. and Mrs. Croyden had occupied separate encampments.
+
+Nor is it necessary to relate our safe and easy return to New York.
+
+Both Clara and I found Mr. and Mrs. Croyden delightful travelling
+companions, though perhaps we were not sorry when the moment came to say
+good-bye.
+
+"The word 'good-bye,'" I remarked to Clara, as we drove away, "is always
+a painful one. Oddly enough when I was hunting the humpo, or humped
+buffalo, of the Himalayas----"
+
+"Do tell me about it, darling," whispered Clara, as she nestled beside
+me in the cab.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE KIDNAPPED PLUMBER
+
+A TALE OF THE NEW TIME
+
+(_Being one chapter--and quite enough---from the Reminiscences of an
+Operating Plumber_)
+
+
+
+
+_VI.--The Kidnapped Plumber: A Tale of the New Time._
+
+
+"Personally," said Thornton, speaking for the first time, "I never care
+to take a case that involves cellar work."
+
+We were sitting--a little group of us--round about the fire in a
+comfortable corner of the Steam and Air Club. Our talk had turned, as
+always happens with a group of professional men, into more or less
+technical channels. I will not say that we were talking shop; the word
+has an offensive sound and might be misunderstood. But we were talking
+as only a group of practising plumbers--including some of the biggest
+men in the profession--would talk. With the exception of Everett, who
+had a national reputation as a Consulting Barber, and Thomas, who was a
+vacuum cleaner expert, I think we all belonged to the same profession.
+We had been holding a convention, and Fortescue, who had one of the
+biggest furnace practices in the country, had read us a paper that
+afternoon--a most revolutionary thing--on External Diagnosis of
+Defective Feed Pipes, and naturally the thing had bred discussion.
+Fortescue, who is one of the most brilliant men in the profession, had
+stoutly maintained his thesis that the only method of diagnosis for
+trouble in a furnace is to sit down in front of it and look at it for
+three days; others held out for unscrewing it and carrying it home for
+consideration; others of us, again, claimed that by tapping the affected
+spot with a wrench the pipe might be fractured in such a way as to prove
+that it was breakable. It was at this point that Thornton interrupted
+with his remark about never being willing to accept a cellar case.
+
+Naturally all the men turned to look at the speaker. Henry Thornton, at
+the time of which I relate, was at the height of his reputation.
+Beginning, quite literally, at the bottom of the ladder, he had in
+twenty years of practice as an operating plumber raised himself to the
+top of his profession. There was much in his appearance to suggest the
+underlying reasons of his success. His face, as is usual with men of our
+calling, had something of the dreamer in it, but the bold set of the jaw
+indicated determination of an uncommon kind. Three times President of
+the Plumbers' Association, Henry Thornton had enjoyed the highest
+honours of his chosen profession. His book on _Nut Coal_ was recognized
+as the last word on the subject, and had been crowned by the French
+Academy of Nuts.
+
+I suppose that one of the principal reasons for his success was his
+singular coolness and resource. I have seen Thornton enter a kitchen,
+with that quiet reassuring step of his, and lay out his instruments on
+the table, while a kitchen tap with a broken washer was sprizzling
+within a few feet of him, as calmly and as quietly as if he were in his
+lecture-room of the Plumbers' College.
+
+"You never go into a cellar?" asked Fortescue. "But hang it, man, I
+don't see how one can avoid it!"
+
+"Well, I do avoid it," answered Thornton, "at least as far as I possibly
+can. I send down my solderist, of course, but personally, unless it is
+absolutely necessary, I never go down."
+
+"That's all very well, my dear fellow," Fortescue cut in, "but you know
+as well as I do that you get case after case where the cellar diagnosis
+is simply vital. I had a case last week, a most interesting thing--" he
+turned to the group of us as he spoke--"a double lesion of a gas-pipe
+under a cement floor--half a dozen of my colleagues had been absolutely
+baffled. They had made an entirely false diagnosis, operated on the
+dining-room floor, which they removed and carried home, and when I was
+called in they had just obtained permission from the Stone Mason's
+Protective Association to knock down one side of the house."
+
+"Excuse me interrupting just a minute," interjected a member of the
+group who hailed from a distant city, "have you much trouble about
+that? I mean about knocking the sides out of houses?"
+
+"No trouble now," said Fortescue. "We did have. But the public is
+getting educated up to it. Our law now allows us to knock the side out
+of a house when we feel that we would really like to see what is in it.
+We are not allowed, of course, to build it up again."
+
+"No, of course not," said the other speaker. "But I suppose you can
+throw the bricks out on the lawn."
+
+"Yes," said Fortescue, "and sit on them to eat lunch. We had a big fight
+in the legislature over that, but we got it through."
+
+"Thank you, but I feel I am interrupting."
+
+"Well, I was only saying that, as soon as I had made up my mind that the
+trouble was in the cellar, the whole case was simple. I took my
+colleagues down at once, and we sat on the floor of the cellar and held
+a consultation till the overpowering smell of gas convinced me that
+there was nothing for it but an operation on the floor. The whole thing
+was most successful. I was very glad, as it happened that the
+proprietor of the house was a very decent fellow, employed, I think, as
+a manager of a bank, or something of the sort. He was most grateful. It
+was he who gave me the engraved monkey wrench that some of you were
+admiring before dinner. After we had finished the whole operation--I
+forgot to say that we had thrown the coal out on the lawn to avoid any
+complication--he quite broke down. He offered us to take his whole house
+and keep it."
+
+"You don't do that, do you?" asked the outsider.
+
+"Oh no, never," said Fortescue. "We've made a very strict professional
+rule against it. We found that some of the younger men were apt to take
+a house when they were given it, and we had to frown down on it. But,
+gentlemen, I feel that when Mr. Thornton says that he never goes down
+into a cellar there must be a story behind it. I think we should invite
+him to relate it to us."
+
+A murmur of assent greeted the speaker's suggestion. For myself I was
+particularly pleased, inasmuch as I have long felt that Thornton as a
+_raconteur_ was almost as interesting as in the role of an operating
+plumber. I have often told him that, if he had not happened to meet
+success in his chosen profession, he could have earned a living as a day
+writer: a suggestion which he has always taken in good part and without
+offence.
+
+Those of my readers who have looked through the little volume of
+Reminiscences which I have put together, will recall the narrative of
+_The Missing Nut_ and the little tale entitled _The Blue Blow Torch_ as
+instances in point.
+
+"Not much of a story, perhaps," said Thornton, "but such as it is you
+are welcome to it. So, if you will just fill up your glasses with
+raspberry vinegar, you may have the tale for what it is worth."
+
+We gladly complied with the suggestion and Thornton continued:
+
+"It happened a good many years ago at a time when I was only a young
+fellow fresh from college, very proud of my Plumb. B., and inclined to
+think that I knew it all. I had done a little monograph on _Choked Feed
+in the Blow Torch_, which had attracted attention, and I suppose that
+altogether I was about as conceited a young puppy as one would find in
+the profession. I should mention that at this time I was not married,
+but had set up a modest apartment of my own with a consulting-room and a
+single manservant. Naturally I could not afford the services of a
+solderist or a gassist and did everything for myself, though Simmons, my
+man, could at a pinch be utilized to tear down plaster and break
+furniture."
+
+Thornton paused to take a sip of raspberry vinegar and went on:
+
+"Well, then. I had come home to dinner particularly tired after a long
+day. I had sat in an attic the greater part of the afternoon (a case of
+top story valvular trouble) and had had to sit in a cramped position
+which practically forbade sleep. I was feeling, therefore, none too well
+pleased, when a little while after dinner the bell rang and Simmons
+brought word to the library that there was a client in the
+consulting-room. I reminded the fellow that I could not possibly
+consider a case at such an advanced hour unless I were paid emergency
+overtime wages with time and a half during the day of recovery."
+
+"One moment," interrupted the outside member. "You don't mention
+compensation for mental shock. Do you not draw that here?"
+
+"We do _now_" explained Thornton, "but the time of which I speak is some
+years ago and we still got nothing for mental shock, nor disturbance of
+equilibrium. Nowadays, of course, one would insist on a substantial
+retainer in advance.
+
+"Well, to continue. Simmons, to my surprise, told me that he had already
+informed the client of this fact, and that the answer had only been a
+plea that the case was too urgent to admit of delay. He also supplied
+the further information that the client was a young lady. I am afraid,"
+added Thornton, looking round his audience with a sympathetic smile,
+"that Simmons (I had got him from Harvard and he had not yet quite
+learned his place) even said something about her being strikingly
+handsome."
+
+A general laugh greeted Thornton's announcement.
+
+"After all," said Fortescue, "I never could see why an Ice Man should be
+supposed to have a monopoly on gallantry."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Thornton. "For my part--I say it without
+affectation--the moment I am called in professionally, women, as women,
+cease to exist for me. I can stand beside them in the kitchen and
+explain to them the feed tap of a kitchen range without feeling them to
+be anything other than simply clients. And for the most part, I think,
+they reciprocate that attention. There are women, of course, who will
+call a man in with motives--but that's another story. I must get back to
+what I was saying.
+
+"On entering the consulting-room I saw at once that Simmons had
+exaggerated nothing in describing my young client as beautiful. I have
+seldom, even among our own class, seen a more strikingly handsome girl.
+She was dressed in a very plain and simple fashion which showed me at
+once that she belonged merely to the capitalist class. I am, as I think
+you know, something of an observer, and my eye at once noted the absence
+of heavy gold ear-rings and wrist-bangles. The blue feathers at the side
+of her hat were none of them more than six inches long, and the buttons
+on her jacket were so inconspicuous that one would hardly notice them.
+In short, while her dress was no doubt good and serviceable, there was
+an absence of _chic_, a lack of noise about it, that told at once the
+tale of narrow circumstances.
+
+"She was evidently in great distress.
+
+"'Oh, Mr. Thornton,' she exclaimed, advancing towards me, 'do come to
+our house at once. I simply don't know what to do.'
+
+"She spoke with great emotion, and seemed almost on the point of
+breaking into tears.
+
+"'Pray, calm yourself, my dear young lady,' I said, 'and try to tell me
+what is the trouble.'
+
+"'Oh, don't lose any time,' she said, 'do, do come at once.'
+
+"'We will lose no time' I said reassuringly, as I looked at my watch.
+'It is now seven-thirty. We will reckon the time from now, with overtime
+at time and a half. But if I am to do anything for you I must have some
+idea of what has happened.'
+
+"'The cellar boiler,' she moaned, clasping her hands together, 'the
+cellar boiler won't work!'
+
+"'Ah!' I said soothingly. 'The cellar boiler won't work. Now tell me, is
+the feed choked, miss?'
+
+"'I don't know,' she exclaimed.
+
+"'Have you tried letting off the exhaust?'
+
+"She shook her head with a doleful look.
+
+"'I don't know what it is,' she said.
+
+"But already I was hastily gathering together a few instruments,
+questioning her rapidly as I did so.
+
+"'How's your pressure gauge?' I asked. 'How's your water? Do you draw
+from the mains or are you on the high level reservoir?'
+
+"It had occurred to me at once that it might be merely a case of
+stoppage of her main feed, complicated, perhaps, with a valvular trouble
+in her exhaust. On the other hand it was clear enough that, if her feed
+was full and her gauges working, her trouble was more likely a leak
+somewhere in her piping.
+
+"But all attempts to draw from the girl any clear idea of the symptoms
+were unavailing. All she could tell me was that the cellar boiler
+wouldn't work. Beyond that her answers were mere confusion. I gathered
+enough, however, to feel sure that her main feed was still working, and
+that her top story check valve was probably in order. With that I had to
+be content.
+
+"As a young practitioner, I had as yet no motor car. Simmons, however,
+summoned me a taxi, into which I hurriedly placed the girl and my basket
+of instruments, and was soon speeding in the direction she indicated. It
+was a dark, lowering night, with flecks of rain against the windows of
+the cab, and there was something in the lateness of the hour (it was now
+after half-past eight) and the nature of my mission which gave me a
+stimulating sense of adventure. The girl directed me, as I felt sure
+she would, towards the capitalist quarter of the town. We had soon sped
+away from the brightly lighted streets and tall apartment buildings
+among which my usual practice lay, and entered the gloomy and
+dilapidated section of the city where the unhappy capitalist class
+reside. I need not remind those of you who know it that it is scarcely a
+cheerful place to find oneself in after nightfall. The thick growth of
+trees, the silent gloom of the ill-lighted houses, and the rank
+undergrowth of shrubs give it an air of desolation, not to say danger.
+It is certainly not the place that a professional man would choose to be
+abroad in after dark. The inhabitants, living, so it is said, on their
+scanty dividends and on such parts of their income as our taxation is
+still unable to reach, are not people that one would care to fall in
+with after nightfall.
+
+"Since the time of which I speak we have done much to introduce a better
+state of things. The opening of day schools of carpentry, plumbing and
+calcimining for the children of the capitalist is already producing
+results. Strange though it may seem, one of the most brilliant of our
+boiler fitters of to-day was brought up haphazard in this very quarter
+of the town and educated only by a French governess and a university
+tutor. But at the time practically nothing had been done. The place was
+infested with consumers, and there were still, so it was said, servants
+living in some of the older houses. A butler had been caught one night
+in a thick shrubbery beside one of the gloomy streets.
+
+"We alighted at one of the most sombre of the houses, and our
+taxi-driver, with evident relief, made off in the darkness.
+
+"The girl admitted us into a dark hall, where she turned on an electric
+light. 'We have light,' she said, with that peculiar touch of pride that
+one sees so often in her class, 'we have four bulbs.'
+
+"Then she called down a flight of stairs that apparently led to the
+cellar:
+
+"'Father, the plumber has come. Do come up now, dear, and rest.'
+
+"A step sounded on the stairs, and there appeared beside us one of the
+most forbidding-looking men that I have ever beheld. I don't know
+whether any of you have ever seen an Anglican Bishop. Probably not.
+Outside of the bush, they are now never seen. But at the time of which I
+speak there were a few still here and there in the purlieus of the city.
+The man before us was tall and ferocious, and his native ferocity was
+further enhanced by the heavy black beard which he wore in open defiance
+of the compulsory shaving laws. His black shovel-shaped hat and his
+black clothes lent him a singularly sinister appearance, while his legs
+were bound in tight gaiters, as if ready for an instant spring. He
+carried in his hand an enormous monkey wrench, on which his fingers were
+clasped in a restless grip.
+
+"'Can you fix the accursed thing?' he asked.
+
+"I was not accustomed to being spoken to in this way, but I was willing
+for the girl's sake to strain professional courtesy to the limit.
+
+"'I don't know,' I answered, 'but if you will have the goodness first to
+fetch me a little light supper, I shall be glad to see what I can do
+afterwards.'
+
+"My firm manner had its effect. With obvious reluctance the fellow
+served me some biscuits and some not bad champagne in the dining-room.
+
+"The girl had meantime disappeared upstairs.
+
+"'If you're ready now,' said the Bishop, 'come on down.'
+
+"We went down to the cellar. It was a huge, gloomy place, with a cement
+floor, lighted by a dim electric bulb. I could see in the corner the
+outline of a large furnace (in those days the poorer classes had still
+no central heat) and near it a tall boiler. In front of this a man was
+kneeling, evidently trying to unscrew a nut, but twisting it the wrong
+way. He was an elderly man with a grey moustache, and was dressed, in
+open defiance of the law, in a military costume or uniform.
+
+"He turned round towards us and rose from his knees.
+
+"'I'm dashed if I can make the rotten thing go round,' he said.
+
+"'It's all right, General,' said the Bishop. 'I have brought a plumber.'
+
+"For the next few minutes my professional interest absorbed all my
+faculties. I laid out my instruments upon a board, tapped the boiler
+with a small hammer, tested the feed-tube, and in a few moments had made
+what I was convinced was a correct diagnosis of the trouble.
+
+"But here I encountered the greatest professional dilemma in which I
+have ever been placed. There was nothing wrong with the boiler at all.
+It connected, as I ascertained at once by a thermo-dynamic valvular
+test, with the furnace (in fact, I could see it did), and the furnace
+quite evidently had been allowed to go out.
+
+"What was I to do? If I told them this, I broke every professional rule
+of our union. If the thing became known I should probably be disbarred
+and lose my overalls for it. It was my plain professional duty to take a
+large hammer and knock holes in the boiler with it, smash up the furnace
+pipes, start a leak of gas, and then call in three or more of my
+colleagues.
+
+"But somehow I couldn't find it in my heart to do it. The thought of the
+girl's appealing face arose before me.
+
+"'How long has this trouble been going on?' I asked sternly.
+
+"'Quite a time,' answered the Bishop. 'It began, did it not, General,
+the same day that the confounded furnace went out? The General here and
+Admiral Hay and I have been working at it for three days.'
+
+"'Well, gentlemen,' I said, 'I don't want to read you a lesson on your
+own ineptitude, and I don't suppose you would understand it if I did.
+But don't you see that the whole trouble is _because_ you let the
+furnace out? The boiler itself is all right, but you see, gents, it
+feeds off the furnace.'
+
+"'Ah,' said the Bishop in a deep melodious tone, 'it feeds off the
+furnace. Now that is most interesting. Let me repeat that; I must try to
+remember it; it feeds _off_ the furnace. Just so.'
+
+"The upshot was that in twenty minutes we had the whole thing put to
+rights. I set the General breaking up boxes and had the Bishop rake out
+the clinkers, and very soon we had the furnace going and the boiler in
+operation.
+
+"'But now tell me,' said the Bishop, 'suppose one wanted to let the
+furnace out--suppose, I mean to say, that it was summer-time, and
+suppose one rather felt that one didn't care about a furnace and yet one
+wanted one's boiler going for one's hot water, and that sort of thing,
+what would one do?'
+
+"'In that case,' I said, 'you couldn't run your heating off your
+furnace: you'd have to connect in your tubing with a gas generator.'
+
+"'Ah, there you get me rather beyond my depth,' said the Bishop.
+
+"The General shook his head. 'Bishop,' he said, 'just step upstairs a
+minute; I have an idea.'
+
+"They went up together, leaving me below. To my surprise and
+consternation, as they reached the top of the cellar stairs, I saw the
+General swing the door shut and heard a key turn in the lock. I rushed
+to the top of the stairs and tried in vain to open the door. I was
+trapped. In a moment I realized my folly in trusting myself in the hands
+of these people.
+
+"I could hear their voices in the hall, apparently in eager discussion.
+
+"'But the fellow is priceless,' the General was saying. 'We could take
+him round to all the different houses and make him fix them all. Hang
+it, Bishop, I haven't had a decent tap running for two years, and
+Admiral Hay's pantry has been flooded since last March.'
+
+"'But one couldn't compel him?'
+
+"'Certainly, why not? I'd compel him bally quick with this.'
+
+"I couldn't see what the General referred to, but had no doubt that it
+was the huge wrench that he still carried in his hand.
+
+"'We could gag the fellow,' he went on, 'take him from house to house
+and make him put everything right.'
+
+"'Ah, but afterwards?' said the Bishop.
+
+"'Afterwards,' answered the General, 'why kill him! Knock him on the
+head and bury him under the cement in the cellar. Hay and I could
+easily bury him, or for that matter I imagine one could easily use the
+furnace itself to dispose of him.'
+
+"I must confess that my blood ran cold as I listened.
+
+"'But do you think it right?' objected the Bishop. 'You will say, of
+course, that it is only killing a plumber; but yet one asks oneself
+whether it wouldn't be just a _leetle_ bit unjustifiable.'
+
+"'Nonsense,' said the General. 'You remember that last year, when Hay
+strangled the income tax collector, you yourself were very keen on it.'
+
+"'Ah, that was different,' said the Bishop, 'one felt there that there
+was an end to serve, but here----'
+
+"'Nonsense,' repeated the General, 'come along and get Hay. He'll make
+short work of him.'
+
+"I heard their retreating footsteps and then all was still.
+
+"The horror which filled my mind as I sat in the half darkness waiting
+for their return I cannot describe. My fate appeared sealed and I gave
+myself up for lost, when presently I heard a light step in the hall and
+the key turned in the lock.
+
+"The girl stood in front of me. She was trembling with emotion.
+
+"'Quick, quick, Mr. Thornton,' she said. 'I heard all that they said.
+Oh, I think it's dreadful of them, simply dreadful. Mr. Thornton, I'm
+really ashamed that Father should act that way.'
+
+"I came out into the hall still half dazed.
+
+"'They've gone over to Admiral Hay's house, there among the trees.
+That's their lantern. Please, please, don't lose a minute. Do you mind
+not having a cab? I think really you'd prefer not to wait. And look,
+won't you please take this?'--she handed me a little packet as she
+spoke--'this is a piece of pie: you always get that, don't you? and
+there's a bit of cheese with it, but please run.'
+
+"In another moment I had bounded from the door into the darkness. A wild
+rush through the darkened streets, and in twenty minutes I was safe
+back again in my own consulting-room."
+
+Thornton paused in his narrative, and at that moment one of the stewards
+of the club came and whispered something in his ear.
+
+He rose.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said, with a grave face. "I'm called away; a very old
+client of mine. Valvular trouble of the worst kind. I doubt if I can do
+anything, but I must at least go. Please don't let me break up your
+evening, however."
+
+With a courtly bow he left us.
+
+"And do you know the sequel to Thornton's story?" asked Fortescue with a
+smile.
+
+We looked expectantly at him.
+
+"Why, he married the girl," explained Fortescue. "You see, he had to go
+back to her house for his wrench. One always does."
+
+"Of course," we exclaimed.
+
+"In fact he went three times; and the last time he asked the girl to
+marry him and she said 'yes.' He took her out of her surroundings, had
+her educated at a cooking school, and had her given lessons on the
+parlour organ. She's Mrs. Thornton now."
+
+"And the Bishop?" asked some one.
+
+"Oh, Thornton looked after him. He got him a position heating furnaces
+in the synagogues. He worked at it till he died a few years ago. They
+say that once he got the trick of it he took the greatest delight in it.
+Well, I must go too. Good night."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE BLUE AND THE GREY
+
+A PRE-WAR WAR STORY
+
+(_The title is selected for its originality. A set of seventy-five maps
+will be supplied to any reader free for seventy-five cents. This offer
+is only open till it is closed_)
+
+
+
+
+_VII.--The Blue and the Grey: A Pre-War War Story._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The scene was a striking one. It was night. Never had the Mississippi
+presented a more remarkable appearance. Broad bayous, swollen beyond our
+powers of description, swirled to and fro in the darkness under trees
+garlanded with Spanish moss. All moss other than Spanish had been swept
+away by the angry flood of the river.
+
+Eggleston Lee Carey Randolph, a young Virginian, captain of the ----th
+company of the ----th regiment of ----'s brigade--even this is more than
+we ought to say, and is hard to pronounce--attached to the Army of the
+Tennessee, struggled in vain with the swollen waters. At times he sank.
+At other times he went up.
+
+In the intervals he wondered whether it would ever be possible for him
+to rejoin the particular platoon of the particular regiment to which he
+belonged, and of which's whereabouts (not having the volume of the army
+record at hand) he was in ignorance. In the intervals, also, he
+reflected on his past life to a sufficient extent to give the reader a
+more or less workable idea as to who and to what he was. His father, the
+old grey-haired Virginian aristocrat, he could see him still. "Take this
+sword, Eggleston," he had said, "use it for the State; never for
+anything else: don't cut string with it or open tin cans. Never sheathe
+it till the soil of Virginia is free. Keep it bright, my boy: oil it
+every now and then, and you'll find it an A 1 sword."
+
+Did Eggleston think, too, in his dire peril of another--younger than his
+father and fairer? Necessarily, he did. "Go, Eggleston!" she had
+exclaimed, as they said farewell under the portico of his father's house
+where she was visiting, "it is your duty. But mine lies elsewhere. I
+cannot forget that I am a Northern girl. I must return at once to my
+people in Pennsylvania. Oh, Egg, when will this cruel war end?"
+
+So had the lovers parted.
+
+Meanwhile--while Eggleston is going up and down for the third time,
+which is of course the last--suppose we leave him, and turn to consider
+the general position of the Confederacy. All right: suppose we do.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+At this date the Confederate Army of the Tennessee was extended in a
+line with its right resting on the Tennessee and its left resting on the
+Mississippi. Its rear rested on the rugged stone hills of the Chickasaba
+range, while its front rested on the marshes and bayous of the Yazoo.
+Having thus--as far as we understand military matters--both its flanks
+covered and its rear protected, its position was one which we ourselves
+consider very comfortable.
+
+It was thus in an admirable situation for holding a review or for
+discussing the Constitution of the United States in reference to the
+right of secession.
+
+The following generals rode up and down in front of the army, namely,
+Mr. A. P. Hill, Mr. Longstreet, and Mr. Joseph Johnston. All these three
+celebrated men are thus presented to our readers at one and the same
+time without extra charge.
+
+But who is this tall, commanding figure who rides beside them, his head
+bent as if listening to what they are saying (he really isn't) while his
+eye alternately flashes with animation or softens to its natural
+melancholy? (In fact, we can only compare it to an electric light bulb
+with the power gone wrong.) Who is it? It is Jefferson C. Davis,
+President, as our readers will be gratified to learn, of the Confederate
+States.
+
+It being a fine day and altogether suitable for the purpose, General
+Longstreet reined in his prancing black charger (during this distressed
+period all the horses in both armies were charged: there was no other
+way to pay for them), and in a few terse words, about three pages, gave
+his views on the Constitution of the United States.
+
+Jefferson Davis, standing up in his stirrups, delivered a stirring
+harangue, about six columns, on the powers of the Supreme Court,
+admirably calculated to rouse the soldiers to frenzy. After which
+General A. P. Hill offered a short address, soldier-like and to the
+point, on the fundamental principles of international law, which
+inflamed the army to the highest pitch.
+
+At this moment an officer approached the President, saluted and stood
+rigidly at attention. Davis, with that nice punctilio which marked the
+Southern army, returned the salute.
+
+"Do you speak first?" he said, "or did I?"
+
+"Let me," said the officer. "Your Excellency," he continued, "a young
+Virginian officer has just been fished out of the Mississippi."
+
+Davis's eye flashed. "Good!" he said. "Look and see if there are many
+more," and then he added with a touch of melancholy, "The South needs
+them: fish them all out. Bring this one here."
+
+Eggleston Lee Carey Randolph, still dripping from the waters of the
+bayou, was led by the faithful negroes who had rescued him before the
+generals. Davis, who kept every thread of the vast panorama of the war
+in his intricate brain, eyed him keenly and directed a few searching
+questions to him, such as: "Who are you? Where are you? What day of the
+week is it? How much is nine times twelve?" and so forth. Satisfied with
+Eggleston's answers, Davis sat in thought a moment, and then continued:
+
+"I am anxious to send some one through the entire line of the
+Confederate armies in such a way that he will be present at all the
+great battles and end up at the battle of Gettysburg. Can you do it?"
+
+Randolph looked at his chief with a flush of pride.
+
+"I can."
+
+"Good!" resumed Davis. "To accomplish this task you must carry
+despatches. What they will be about I have not yet decided. But it is
+customary in such cases to write them so that they are calculated, if
+lost, to endanger the entire Confederate cause. The main thing is, can
+you carry them?"
+
+"Sir," said Eggleston, raising his hand in a military salute, "I am a
+Randolph."
+
+Davis with soldierly dignity removed his hat. "I am proud to hear it,
+Captain Randolph," he said.
+
+"And a Carey," continued our hero.
+
+Davis, with a graciousness all his own, took off his gloves. "I trust
+you, _Major_ Randolph," he said.
+
+"And I am a Lee," added Eggleston quickly.
+
+Davis with a courtly bow unbuttoned his jacket. "It is enough," he said.
+"I trust you. You shall carry the despatches. You are to carry them on
+your person and, as of course you understand, you are to keep on losing
+them. You are to drop them into rivers, hide them in old trees, bury
+them under moss, talk about them in your sleep. In fact, sir," said
+Davis, with a slight gesture of impatience--it was his _one_
+fault--"you must act towards them as any bearer of Confederate
+despatches is expected to act. The point is, can you do it, or can't
+you?"
+
+"Sir," said Randolph, saluting again with simple dignity, "I come from
+Virginia."
+
+"Pardon me," said the President, saluting with both hands, "I had
+forgotten it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Randolph set out that night, mounted upon the fastest horse, in fact the
+fleetest, that the Confederate Army could supply. He was attended only
+by a dozen faithful negroes, all devoted to his person.
+
+Riding over the Tennessee mountains by paths known absolutely to no one
+and never advertised, he crossed the Tombigbee, the Tahoochie and the
+Tallahassee, all frightfully swollen, and arrived at the headquarters of
+General Braxton Bragg.
+
+At this moment Bragg was extended over some seven miles of bush and
+dense swamp. His front rested on the marshes of the Tahoochie River,
+while his rear was doubled sharply back and rested on a dense growth of
+cactus plants. Our readers can thus form a fairly accurate idea of
+Bragg's position. Over against him, not more than fifty miles to the
+north, his indomitable opponent, Grant, lay in a frog-swamp. The space
+between them was filled with Union and Confederate pickets,
+fraternizing, joking, roasting corn, and firing an occasional shot at
+one another.
+
+One glance at Randolph's despatches was enough.
+
+"Take them at once to General Hood," said Bragg.
+
+"Where is he?" asked Eggleston, with military precision.
+
+Bragg waved his sword towards the east. It was characteristic of the man
+that even on active service he carried a short sword, while a pistol,
+probably loaded, protruded from his belt. But such was Bragg. Anyway, he
+waved his sword. "Over there beyond the Tahoochicaba range," he said.
+"Do you know it?"
+
+"No," said Randolph, "but I can find it."
+
+"Do," said Bragg, and added, "One thing more. On your present mission
+let nothing stop you. Go forward at all costs. If you come to a river,
+swim it. If you come to a tree, cut it down. If you strike a fence,
+climb over it. But don't stop! If you are killed, never mind. Do you
+understand?"
+
+"Almost," said Eggleston.
+
+Two days later Eggleston reached the headquarters of General Hood, and
+flung himself, rather than dismounted, from his jaded horse.
+
+"Take me to the General!" he gasped.
+
+They pointed to the log cabin in which General Hood was quartered.
+
+Eggleston flung himself, rather than stepped, through the door.
+
+Hood looked up from the table.
+
+"Who was that flung himself in?" he asked.
+
+Randolph reached out his hand. "Despatches!" he gasped. "Food, whisky!"
+
+"Poor lad," said the General, "you are exhausted. When did you last have
+food?"
+
+"Yesterday morning," gasped Eggleston.
+
+"You're lucky," said Hood bitterly. "And when did you last have a
+drink?"
+
+"Two weeks ago," answered Randolph.
+
+"Great Heaven!" said Hood, starting up. "Is it possible? Here, quick,
+drink it!"
+
+He reached out a bottle of whisky. Randolph drained it to the last drop.
+
+"Now, General," he said, "I am at your service."
+
+Meanwhile Hood had cast his eye over the despatches.
+
+"Major Randolph," he said, "you have seen General Bragg?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"And Generals Johnston and Smith?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You have been through Mississippi and Tennessee and seen all the
+battles there?"
+
+"I have," said Randolph.
+
+"Then," said Hood, "there is nothing left except to send you at once to
+the army in Virginia under General Lee. Remount your horse at once and
+ride to Gettysburg. Lose no time."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+It was at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania that Randolph found General Lee.
+
+The famous field is too well known to need description. The armies of
+the North and the South lay in and around the peaceful village of
+Gettysburg. About it the yellow cornfields basked in the summer sun. The
+voices of the teachers and the laughter of merry children rose in the
+harvest-fields. But already the shadow of war was falling over the
+landscape. As soon as the armies arrived, the shrewder of the farmers
+suspected that there would be trouble.
+
+General Lee was seated gravely on his horse, looking gravely over the
+ground before him.
+
+"Major Randolph," said the Confederate chieftain gravely, "you are just
+in time. We are about to go into action. I need your advice."
+
+Randolph bowed. "Ask me anything you like," he said.
+
+"Do you like the way I have the army placed?" asked Lee.
+
+Our hero directed a searching look over the field. "Frankly, I don't,"
+he said.
+
+"What's the matter with it?" questioned Lee eagerly. "I felt there was
+something wrong myself. What is it?"
+
+"Your left," said Randolph, "is too far advanced. It sticks out."
+
+"By Heaven!" said Lee, turning to General Longstreet, "the boy is right!
+Is there anything else?"
+
+"Yes," said Randolph, "your right is crooked. It is all sideways."
+
+"It is. It is!" said Lee, striking his forehead. "I never noticed it.
+I'll have it straightened at once. Major Randolph, if the Confederate
+cause is saved, you, and you alone, have saved it."
+
+"One thing more," said Randolph. "Is your artillery loaded?"
+
+"Major Randolph," said Lee, speaking very gravely, "you have saved us
+again. I never thought of it."
+
+At this moment a bullet sang past Eggleston's ear. He smiled.
+
+"The battle has begun," he murmured. Another bullet buzzed past his
+other ear. He laughed softly to himself. A shell burst close to his
+feet. He broke into uncontrolled laughter. This kind of thing always
+amused him. Then, turning grave in a moment, "Put General Lee under
+cover," he said to those about him, "spread something over him."
+
+In a few moments the battle was raging in all directions. The
+Confederate Army was nominally controlled by General Lee, but in reality
+by our hero. Eggleston was everywhere. Horses were shot under him. Mules
+were shot around him and behind him. Shells exploded all over him; but
+with undaunted courage he continued to wave his sword in all directions,
+riding wherever the fight was hottest.
+
+The battle raged for three days.
+
+On the third day of the conflict, Randolph, his coat shot to rags, his
+hat pierced, his trousers practically useless, still stood at Lee's
+side, urging and encouraging him.
+
+Mounted on his charger, he flew to and fro in all parts of the field,
+moving the artillery, leading the cavalry, animating and directing the
+infantry. In fact, he was the whole battle.
+
+But his efforts were in vain.
+
+He turned sadly to General Lee. "It is bootless," he said.
+
+"What is?" asked Lee.
+
+"The army," said Randolph. "We must withdraw it."
+
+"Major Randolph," said the Confederate chief, "I yield to your superior
+knowledge. We must retreat."
+
+A few hours later the Confederate forces, checked but not beaten, were
+retiring southward towards Virginia.
+
+Eggleston, his head sunk in thought, rode in the rear.
+
+As he thus slowly neared a farmhouse, a woman--a girl--flew from it
+towards him with outstretched arms.
+
+"Eggleston!" she cried.
+
+Randolph flung himself from his horse. "Leonora!" he gasped. "You here!
+In all this danger! How comes it? What brings you here?"
+
+"We live here," she said. "This is Pa's house. This is our farm.
+Gettysburg is our home. Oh, Egg, it has been dreadful, the noise of the
+battle! We couldn't sleep for it. Pa's all upset about it. But come in.
+Do come in. Dinner's nearly ready."
+
+Eggleston gazed a moment at the retreating army. Duty and affection
+struggled in his heart.
+
+"I will," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+The strife is done. The conflict has ceased. The wounds are healed.
+North and South are one. East and West are even less. The Civil War is
+over. Lee is dead. Grant is buried in New York. The Union Pacific runs
+from Omaha to San Francisco. There is total prohibition in the United
+States. The output of dressed beef last year broke all records.
+
+And Eggleston Lee Carey Randolph survives, hale and hearty, bright and
+cheery, free and easy--and so forth. There is grey hair upon his temples
+(some, not much), and his step has lost something of its elasticity (not
+a great deal), and his form is somewhat bowed (though not really
+crooked).
+
+But he still lives there in the farmstead at Gettysburg, and Leonora,
+now, like himself, an old woman, is still at his side.
+
+You may see him any day. In fact, he is the old man who shows you over
+the battlefield for fifty cents and explains how he himself fought and
+won the great battle.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+BUGGAM GRANGE
+
+A GOOD OLD GHOST STORY
+
+
+
+
+_VIII.--Buggam Grange: A Good Old Ghost Story._
+
+
+The evening was already falling as the vehicle in which I was contained
+entered upon the long and gloomy avenue that leads to Buggam Grange.
+
+A resounding shriek echoed through the wood as I entered the avenue. I
+paid no attention to it at the moment, judging it to be merely one of
+those resounding shrieks which one might expect to hear in such a place
+at such a time. As my drive continued, however I found myself wondering
+in spite of myself why such a shriek should have been uttered at the
+very moment of my approach.
+
+I am not by temperament in any degree a nervous man, and yet there was
+much in my surroundings to justify a certain feeling of apprehension.
+The Grange is situated in the loneliest part of England, the marsh
+country of the fens to which civilization has still hardly penetrated.
+The inhabitants, of whom there are only one and a half to the square
+mile, live here and there among the fens and eke out a miserable
+existence by frog-fishing and catching flies. They speak a dialect so
+broken as to be practically unintelligible, while the perpetual rain
+which falls upon them renders speech itself almost superfluous.
+
+Here and there where the ground rises slightly above the level of the
+fens there are dense woods tangled with parasitic creepers and filled
+with owls. Bats fly from wood to wood. The air on the lower ground is
+charged with the poisonous gases which exude from the marsh, while in
+the woods it is heavy with the dank odours of deadly nightshade and
+poison ivy.
+
+It had been raining in the afternoon, and as I drove up the avenue the
+mournful dripping of the rain from the dark trees accentuated the
+cheerlessness of the gloom. The vehicle in which I rode was a fly on
+three wheels, the fourth having apparently been broken and taken off,
+causing the fly to sag on one side and drag on its axle over the muddy
+ground, the fly thus moving only at a foot's pace in a way calculated to
+enhance the dreariness of the occasion. The driver on the box in front
+of me was so thickly muffled up as to be indistinguishable, while the
+horse which drew us was so thickly coated with mist as to be practically
+invisible. Seldom, I may say, have I had a drive of so mournful a
+character.
+
+The avenue presently opened out upon a lawn with overgrown shrubberies,
+and in the half darkness I could see the outline of the Grange itself, a
+rambling, dilapidated building. A dim light struggled through the
+casement of a window in a tower room. Save for the melancholy cry of a
+row of owls sitting on the roof, and croaking of the frogs in the moat
+which ran around the grounds, the place was soundless. My driver halted
+his horse at the hither side of the moat. I tried in vain to urge him,
+by signs, to go further. I could see by the fellow's face that he was
+in a paroxysm of fear, and indeed nothing but the extra sixpence which I
+had added to his fare would have made him undertake the drive up the
+avenue. I had no sooner alighted than he wheeled his cab about and made
+off.
+
+Laughing heartily at the fellow's trepidation (I have a way of laughing
+heartily in the dark), I made my way to the door and pulled the
+bell-handle. I could hear the muffled reverberations of the bell far
+within the building. Then all was silent. I bent my ear to listen, but
+could hear nothing except, perhaps, the sound of a low moaning as of a
+person in pain or in great mental distress. Convinced, however, from
+what my friend Sir Jeremy Buggam had told me, that the Grange was not
+empty, I raised the ponderous knocker and beat with it loudly against
+the door.
+
+But perhaps at this point I may do well to explain to my readers (before
+they are too frightened to listen to me) how I came to be beating on the
+door of Buggam Grange at nightfall on a gloomy November evening.
+
+A year before I had been sitting with Sir Jeremy Buggam, the present
+baronet, on the verandah of his ranch in California.
+
+"So you don't believe in the supernatural?" he was saying.
+
+"Not in the slightest," I answered, lighting a cigar as I spoke. When I
+want to speak very positively, I generally light a cigar as I speak.
+
+"Well, at any rate, Digby," said Sir Jeremy, "Buggam Grange is haunted.
+If you want to be assured of it go down there any time and spend the
+night and you'll see for yourself."
+
+"My dear fellow," I replied, "nothing will give me greater pleasure. I
+shall be back in England in six weeks, and I shall be delighted to put
+your ideas to the test. Now tell me," I added somewhat cynically, "is
+there any particular season or day when your Grange is supposed to be
+specially terrible?"
+
+Sir Jeremy looked at me strangely. "Why do you ask that?" he said. "Have
+you heard the story of the Grange?"
+
+"Never heard of the place in my life," I answered cheerily. "Till you
+mentioned it to-night, my dear fellow, I hadn't the remotest idea that
+you still owned property in England."
+
+"The Grange is shut up," said Sir Jeremy, "and has been for twenty
+years. But I keep a man there--Horrod--he was butler in my father's time
+and before. If you care to go, I'll write him that you're coming. And,
+since you are taking your own fate in your hands, the fifteenth of
+November is the day."
+
+At that moment Lady Buggam and Clara and the other girls came trooping
+out on the verandah, and the whole thing passed clean out of my mind.
+Nor did I think of it again until I was back in London. Then, by one of
+those strange coincidences or premonitions--call it what you will--it
+suddenly occurred to me one morning that it was the fifteenth of
+November. Whether Sir Jeremy had written to Horrod or not, I did not
+know. But none the less nightfall found me, as I have described,
+knocking at the door of Buggam Grange.
+
+The sound of the knocker had scarcely ceased to echo when I heard the
+shuffling of feet within, and the sound of chains and bolts being
+withdrawn. The door opened. A man stood before me holding a lighted
+candle which he shaded with his hand. His faded black clothes, once
+apparently a butler's dress, his white hair and advanced age left me in
+no doubt that he was Horrod of whom Sir Jeremy had spoken.
+
+Without a word he motioned me to come in, and, still without speech, he
+helped me to remove my wet outer garments, and then beckoned me into a
+great room, evidently the dining-room of the Grange.
+
+I am not in any degree a nervous man by temperament, as I think I
+remarked before, and yet there was something in the vastness of the
+wainscoted room, lighted only by a single candle, and in the silence of
+the empty house, and still more in the appearance of my speechless
+attendant, which gave me a feeling of distinct uneasiness. As Horrod
+moved to and fro I took occasion to scrutinize his face more narrowly. I
+have seldom seen features more calculated to inspire a nervous dread.
+The pallor of his face and the whiteness of his hair (the man was at
+least seventy), and still more the peculiar furtiveness of his eyes,
+seemed to mark him as one who lived under a great terror. He moved with
+a noiseless step and at times he turned his head to glance in the dark
+corners of the room.
+
+"Sir Jeremy told me," I said, speaking as loudly and as heartily as I
+could, "that he would apprise you of my coming."
+
+I was looking into his face as I spoke.
+
+In answer Horrod laid his finger across his lips and I knew that he was
+deaf and dumb. I am not nervous (I think I said that), but the
+realization that my sole companion in the empty house was a deaf mute
+struck a cold chill to my heart.
+
+Horrod laid in front of me a cold meat pie, a cold goose, a cheese, and
+a tall flagon of cider. But my appetite was gone. I ate the goose, but
+found that after I had finished the pie I had but little zest for the
+cheese, which I finished without enjoyment. The cider had a sour taste,
+and after having permitted Horrod to refill the flagon twice I found
+that it induced a sense of melancholy and decided to drink no more.
+
+My meal finished, the butler picked up the candle and beckoned me to
+follow him. We passed through the empty corridors of the house, a long
+line of pictured Buggams looking upon us as we passed, their portraits
+in the flickering light of the taper assuming a strange and life-like
+appearance, as if leaning forward from their frames to gaze upon the
+intruder.
+
+Horrod led me upstairs and I realized that he was taking me to the tower
+in the east wing, in which I had observed a light.
+
+The rooms to which the butler conducted me consisted of a sitting-room
+with an adjoining bedroom, both of them fitted with antique wainscoting
+against which a faded tapestry fluttered. There was a candle burning on
+the table in the sitting-room, but its insufficient light only rendered
+the surroundings the more dismal. Horrod bent down in front of the
+fireplace and endeavoured to light a fire there. But the wood was
+evidently damp and the fire flickered feebly on the hearth.
+
+The butler left me, and in the stillness of the house I could hear his
+shuffling step echo down the corridor. It may have been fancy, but it
+seemed to me that his departure was the signal for a low moan that came
+from somewhere behind the wainscot. There was a narrow cupboard door at
+one side of the room, and for the moment I wondered whether the moaning
+came from within. I am not as a rule lacking in courage (I am sure my
+reader will be decent enough to believe this), yet I found myself
+entirely unwilling to open the cupboard door and look within. In place
+of doing so I seated myself in a great chair in front of the feeble
+fire. I must have been seated there for some time when I happened to
+lift my eyes to the mantel above and saw, standing upon it, a letter
+addressed to myself. I knew the handwriting at once to be that of Sir
+Jeremy Buggam.
+
+I opened it, and spreading it out within reach of the feeble
+candlelight, I read as follows:
+
+
+     "My dear Digby,
+
+     "In our talk that you will remember, I had no time to finish
+     telling you about the mystery of Buggam Grange. I take for granted,
+     however, that you will go there and that Horrod will put you in the
+     tower rooms, which are the only ones that make any pretence of
+     being habitable. I have, therefore, sent him this letter to deliver
+     at the Grange itself.
+
+     "The story is this:
+
+     "On the night of the fifteenth of November, fifty years ago, my
+     grandfather was murdered in the room in which you are sitting, by
+     his cousin, Sir Duggam Buggam. He was stabbed from behind while
+     seated at the little table at which you are probably reading this
+     letter. The two had been playing cards at the table and my
+     grandfather's body was found lying in a litter of cards and gold
+     sovereigns on the floor. Sir Duggam Buggam, insensible from drink,
+     lay beside him, the fatal knife at his hand, his fingers smeared
+     with blood. My grandfather, though of the younger branch,
+     possessed a part of the estates which were to revert to Sir Duggam
+     on his death. Sir Duggam Buggam was tried at the Assizes and was
+     hanged. On the day of his execution he was permitted by the
+     authorities, out of respect for his rank, to wear a mask to the
+     scaffold. The clothes in which he was executed are hanging at full
+     length in the little cupboard to your right, and the mask is above
+     them. It is said that on every fifteenth of November at midnight
+     the cupboard door opens and Sir Duggam Buggam walks out into the
+     room. It has been found impossible to get servants to remain at the
+     Grange, and the place--except for the presence of Horrod--has been
+     unoccupied for a generation. At the time of the murder Horrod was a
+     young man of twenty-two, newly entered into the service of the
+     family. It was he who entered the room and discovered the crime. On
+     the day of the execution he was stricken with paralysis and has
+     never spoken since. From that time to this he has never consented
+     to leave the Grange, where he lives in isolation.
+
+     "Wishing you a pleasant night after your tiring journey,
+
+     "I remain,
+
+     "Very faithfully,
+
+     "Jeremy Buggam."
+
+
+I leave my reader to imagine my state of mind when I completed the
+perusal of the letter.
+
+I have as little belief in the supernatural as anyone, yet I must
+confess that there was something in the surroundings in which I now
+found myself which rendered me at least uncomfortable. My reader may
+smile if he will, but I assure him that it was with a very distinct
+feeling of uneasiness that I at length managed to rise to my feet, and,
+grasping my candle in my hand, to move backward into the bedroom. As I
+backed into it something so like a moan seemed to proceed from the
+closed cupboard that I accelerated my backward movement to a
+considerable degree. I hastily blew out the candle, threw myself upon
+the bed and drew the bedclothes over my head, keeping, however, one eye
+and one ear still out and available.
+
+How long I lay thus listening to every sound, I cannot tell. The
+stillness had become absolute. From time to time I could dimly hear the
+distant cry of an owl, and once far away in the building below a sound
+as of some one dragging a chain along a floor. More than once I was
+certain that I heard the sound of moaning behind the wainscot. Meantime
+I realized that the hour must now be drawing close upon the fatal moment
+of midnight. My watch I could not see in the darkness, but by reckoning
+the time that must have elapsed I knew that midnight could not be far
+away. Then presently my ear, alert to every sound, could just
+distinguish far away across the fens the striking of a church bell, in
+the clock tower of Buggam village church, no doubt, tolling the hour of
+twelve.
+
+On the last stroke of twelve, the cupboard door in the next room opened.
+There is no need to ask me how I knew it. I couldn't, of course, see it,
+but I could hear, or sense in some way, the sound of it. I could feel
+my hair, all of it, rising upon my head. I was aware that there was a
+_presence_ in the adjoining room, I will not say a person, a living
+soul, but a _presence_. Anyone who has been in the next room to a
+presence will know just how I felt. I could hear a sound as of some one
+groping on the floor and the faint rattle as of coins.
+
+My hair was now perpendicular. My reader can blame it or not, but it
+was.
+
+Then at this very moment from somewhere below in the building there came
+the sound of a prolonged and piercing cry, a cry as of a soul passing in
+agony. My reader may censure me or not, but right at this moment I
+decided to beat it. Whether I should have remained to see what was
+happening is a question that I will not discuss. My one idea was to get
+out, and to get out quickly. The window of the tower room was some
+twenty-five feet above the ground. I sprang out through the casement in
+one leap and landed on the grass below. I jumped over the shrubbery in
+one bound and cleared the moat in one jump. I went down the avenue in
+about six strides and ran five miles along the road through the fens in
+three minutes. This at least is an accurate transcription of my
+sensations. It may have taken longer. I never stopped till I found
+myself on the threshold of the _Buggam Arms_ in Little Buggam, beating
+on the door for the landlord.
+
+I returned to Buggam Grange on the next day in the bright sunlight of a
+frosty November morning, in a seven-cylinder motor car with six local
+constables and a physician. It makes all the difference. We carried
+revolvers, spades, pickaxes, shotguns and an ouija board.
+
+What we found cleared up for ever the mystery of the Grange. We
+discovered Horrod the butler lying on the dining-room floor quite dead.
+The physician said that he had died from heart failure. There was
+evidence from the marks of his shoes in the dust that he had come in the
+night to the tower room. On the table he had placed a paper which
+contained a full confession of his having murdered Jeremy Buggam fifty
+years before. The circumstances of the murder had rendered it easy for
+him to fasten the crime upon Sir Duggam, already insensible from drink.
+A few minutes with the ouija board enabled us to get a full
+corroboration from Sir Duggam. He promised, moreover, now that his name
+was cleared, to go away from the premises for ever.
+
+My friend, the present Sir Jeremy, has rehabilitated Buggam Grange. The
+place is rebuilt. The moat is drained. The whole house is lit with
+electricity. There are beautiful motor drives in all directions in the
+woods. He has had the bats shot and the owls stuffed. His daughter,
+Clara Buggam, became my wife. She is looking over my shoulder as I
+write. What more do you want?
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+LITERARY LAPSES
+
+_Twelfth Edition. Crown 8vo. 5s. net_
+
+
+     _Spectator._--"This little book is a happy example of the way in
+     which the double life can be lived blamelessly and to the great
+     advantage of the community. The book fairly entitles Mr. Leacock to
+     be considered not only a humorist but a benefactor. The contents
+     should appeal to English readers with the double virtue that
+     attaches to work which is at once new and richly humorous."
+
+     _Globe._--"One specimen of Mr. Leacock's humour, 'Boarding-House
+     Geometry,' has long been treasured on this side."
+
+     _The Guardian._--"Much to be welcomed is Professor Stephen Leacock's
+     'Literary Lapses,'--this charming and humorous work. All the
+     sketches have a freshness and a new personal touch. Mr. Leacock is,
+     as the politicians say, 'a national asset,' and Mr. Leacock is a
+     Canadian to be proud of. One has the comfortable feeling as one
+     reads that one is in the company of a cultured person capable of
+     attractive varieties of foolishness."
+
+     _Pall Mall Gazette._--"The appearance of 'Literary Lapses' is
+     practically the English debut of a young Canadian writer who is
+     turning from medicine to literature with every success. Dr. Stephen
+     Leacock is at least the equal of many who are likely to be long
+     remembered for their short comic sketches and essays; he has
+     already shown that he has the high spirits of 'Max Adeler' and the
+     fine sense of quick fun. There are many sketches in 'Literary
+     Lapses' that are worthy of comparison with the best American
+     humour."
+
+     _Morning Post._--"The close connection between imagination, humour,
+     and the mathematical faculty has never been so delightfully
+     demonstrated."
+
+     _Outlook._--"Mr. John Lane must be credited with the desire of
+     associating the Bodley Head with the discovery of new humorists.
+     Mr. Leacock sets out to make people laugh. He succeeds and makes
+     them laugh at the right thing. He has a wide range of new subjects;
+     the world will gain in cheerfulness if Mr. Leacock continues to
+     produce so many excellent jests to the book as there are in the one
+     under notice."
+
+     _Truth._--"By the publication of Mr. Stephen Leacock's 'Literary
+     Lapses' Mr. John Lane has introduced to the British Public a new
+     American humorist for whom a widespread popularity can be
+     confidently predicted."
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+NONSENSE NOVELS
+
+_THIRTEENTH EDITION_
+
+_Crown 8vo. 5s. net_
+
+
+     _Spectator._--"We can assure our readers who delight in mere joyous
+     desipience that they will find a rich harvest of laughter in the
+     purely irresponsible outpourings of Professor Leacock's fancy."
+
+     _Pall Mall Gazette._--"It is all not only healthy satire, but
+     healthy humour as well, and shows that the author of 'Literary
+     Lapses' is capable of producing a steady flow of high spirits put
+     into a form which is equal to the best traditions of contemporary
+     humour. Mr. Leacock certainly bids fair to rival the immortal
+     'Lewis Carroll' in combining the irreconcilable--exact science with
+     perfect humour--and making the amusement better the instruction."
+
+     _Daily Mail._--"In his 'Literary Lapses' Mr. Stephen Leacock gave
+     the laughter-loving world assurance of a new humorist of
+     irresistible high spirits and rare spontaneity and freshness. By
+     this rollicking collection of 'Nonsense Novels,' in tabloid form,
+     he not only confirms the excellent impression of his earlier work,
+     but establishes his reputation as a master of the art of literary
+     burlesque. The whole collection is a sheer delight, and places its
+     author in the front rank as a literary humorist."
+
+     Mr. JAMES DOUGLAS in _The Star_.--"We have all laughed
+     over Mr. Stephen Leacock's 'Literary Lapses.' It is one of those
+     books one would die rather than lend, for to lend it is to lose it
+     for ever. Mr. Leacock's new book, 'Nonsense Novels,' is more
+     humorous than 'Literary Lapses.' That is to say, it is the most
+     humorous book we have had since Mr. Dooley swum into our ken. Its
+     humour is so rich that it places Mr. Leacock beside Mark Twain."
+
+     _Morning Leader._--"Mr. Leacock possesses infinite verbal
+     dexterity.... Mr. Leacock must be added as a recognized humorist."
+
+     _Daily Express._--"Mr. Stephen Leacock's 'Nonsense Novels' is the
+     best collection of parodies I have read for many a day. The whole
+     book is a scream, witty, ingenious, irresistible."
+
+     _Public Opinion._--"A most entertaining book."
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+SUNSHINE SKETCHES OF A LITTLE TOWN
+
+WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY CYRUS CUNEO
+
+_Ninth Edition. Crown 8vo. 5s. net_
+
+
+     _The Times._--"His real hard work, for which no emolument would be
+     a fitting reward, is distilling sunshine. This new book is full of
+     it--the sunshine of humour, the thin keen sunshine of irony, the
+     mellow evening sunshine of sentiment."
+
+     _Spectator._--"This is not the first but the third volume in which
+     he has contributed to the gaiety of the Old as well as the New
+     World.... A most welcome freedom from the pessimism of Old-World
+     fiction."
+
+     _Academy._--"One of the best and most enjoyable series of sketches
+     that we have read for some time ... they are all bright and
+     sparkling, and bristle with wit and humour."
+
+     _Pall Mall Gazette._--"Like all real humorists Mr. Leacock steps at
+     once into his proper position.... His touch of humour will make the
+     Anglo-Saxon world his reader.... We cannot recall a more laughable
+     book."
+
+     _Globe._--"Professor Leacock never fails to provide a feast of
+     enjoyment.... No one who wishes to dispose intellectually of a few
+     hours should neglect Professor Leacock's admirable contribution to
+     English literature. It is warranted to bring sunshine into every
+     home."
+
+     _Country Life._--"Informed by a droll humour, quite unforced, Mr.
+     Leacock reviews his little community for the sport of the thing,
+     and the result is a natural and delightful piece of work."
+
+     _Daily Telegraph._--"His Sketches are so fresh and delightful in
+     the manner of their presentation.... Allowing for differences of
+     theme, and of the human materials for study, Mr. Leacock strikes us
+     as a sort of Americanised Mr. W. W. Jacobs. Like the English
+     humorist, the Canadian one has a delightfully fresh and amusing way
+     of putting things, of suggesting more than he says, of narrating
+     more or less ordinary happenings in an irresistibly comical
+     fashion.... Mr. Leacock should be popular with readers who can
+     appreciate fun shot with kindly satire."
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+BEHIND THE BEYOND
+
+AND OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS TO HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. With 16 Illustrations by
+A. H. FISH.
+
+_Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo. 5s. net_
+
+
+     _Punch._--"In his latest book, 'Behind the Beyond,' he is in
+     brilliant scoring form. I can see 'Behind the Beyond' breaking up
+     many homes; for no family will be able to stand the sudden sharp
+     yelps of laughter which must infallibly punctuate the decent
+     after-dinner silence when one of its members gets hold of this
+     book. It is Mr. Leacock's peculiar gift that he makes you laugh out
+     loud. When Mr. Leacock's literal translation of Homer, on p. 193,
+     met my eye, a howl of mirth broke from me. I also forgot myself
+     over the interview with the photographer. As for the sketch which
+     gives its title, to the book, it is the last word in polished
+     satire. The present volume is Mr. Leacock at his best."
+
+     _Spectator._--"Beneficent contributions to the gaiety of nations.
+     The longest and best thing in the book is the delightful burlesque
+     of a modern problem play. Miss Fish's illustrations are decidedly
+     clever."
+
+     _Observer._--"There are delicious touches in it."
+
+     _Queen._--"All through the book the author furnishes a continual
+     feast of enjoyment."
+
+     _Dundee Advertiser._--"'Behind the Beyond' is a brilliant parody,
+     and the other sketches are all of Mr. Leacock's very best, 'Homer
+     and Humbug' being as fine a piece of raillery as Mr. Leacock has
+     written. Mr. Leacock is a humorist of the first rank, unique in his
+     own sphere, and this volume will add yet more to his reputation."
+
+     _Aberdeen Free Press._--"Exquisite quality ... amazingly funny."
+
+     _Yorkshire Daily Post._--"In the skit on the problem play which
+     gives the book its title the author reaches his high-water mark."
+
+     _Glasgow Herald._--"Another welcome addition to the gaiety of the
+     nations. The title-piece is an inimitably clever skit. It is both
+     genial and realistic, and there is a genuine laugh in every line of
+     it. Humour and artistry are finely blended in the drawings."
+
+     _Daily Express._--"The pictures have genuine and rare distinction."
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+ARCADIAN ADVENTURES WITH THE IDLE RICH
+
+_FOURTH EDITION_
+
+_Crown 8vo. 5s. net_
+
+
+     _Spectator._--"A blend of delicious fooling and excellent satire.
+     Once more the author of 'Literary Lapses' has proved himself a
+     benefactor of his kind."
+
+     _Morning Post._--"All the 'Adventures' are full of the fuel of the
+     laughter which is an intellectual thing."
+
+     _Pall Mall Gazette._--"Professor Leacock shows no falling off
+     either in his fund of social observation or his power of turning it
+     to sarcasm and humour. The book is full to the brim with honest
+     laughter and clever ideas."
+
+     _Bystander._--"It is necessary to laugh, now even more necessary
+     than at ordinary times. Fortunately, Professor Leacock produces a
+     new book at the right moment. It will cause many chuckles. He is
+     simply irresistible."
+
+     _Westminster Gazette._--"Marks a distinct advance in Mr. Leacock's
+     artistic development."
+
+     _Daily Chronicle._--"This altogether delightful and brilliant
+     comedy of life.... Mr. Leacock's humour comes from the very depths
+     of a strong personality, and in the midst of a thousand
+     whimsicalities, a thousand searchlights on the puerilities of human
+     nature he never loses touch with the essential bite of life."
+
+     _Saturday Review._--"Professor Leacock is a delightful writer of
+     irresponsible nonsense with a fresh and original touch. These
+     'Arcadian Adventures' are things of sheer delight."
+
+     _Tatler._--"I have not felt so full of eagerness and life since the
+     war began as after I had read this delightfully humorous and clever
+     book."
+
+     _Evening Standard._--"In this book the satire is brilliantly
+     conspicuous."
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+MOONBEAMS FROM THE LARGER LUNACY
+
+_FOURTH EDITION_
+
+_Crown 8vo. 5s. net_
+
+
+     _Times._--"Such a perfect piece of social observation and joyful
+     castigation as the description of the last man in Europe ... the
+     portrait of So-and-so is not likely to be forgotten ... it is so
+     funny and so true."
+
+     _Morning Post._--"Excellent fooling ... wisdom made laughable."
+
+     _Daily Chronicle._--"Here is wit, fun, frolic, nonsense, verse,
+     satire, comedy, criticism--a perfect gold mine for those who love
+     laughter."
+
+     _Sunday Times._--"Very pungent and telling satire. Buy the book--it
+     will give you a happy hour."
+
+     _Standard._--"Under the beams of the moon of his delight, the
+     author never fails to be amusing."
+
+     _Pall Mall Gazette._--"Mr. Leacock's humour is a credit to Canada,
+     for it has a depth and a polish such as are both rare in the
+     literature of a young nation."
+
+     _Land and Water._--"Unlike a number of so-called humorists, Mr.
+     Leacock is really funny, as these sketches prove."
+
+     _Field._--"Indeed a very pleasant hour can be spent with this
+     author, who is full of humour, wit, and cleverness, and by his work
+     adds much to the gaiety of life."
+
+     _Spectator._--"Mr. Leacock has added to our indebtedness by his new
+     budget of refreshing absurdities.... In shooting folly as it flies,
+     he launches darts that find their billet on both sides of the
+     Atlantic."
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+ESSAYS AND LITERARY STUDIES
+
+_Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo. 5s. net_
+
+
+     _Truth._--"Full of practical wisdom, as sober as it is sound."
+
+     _Morning Post._--"He is the subtlest of all transatlantic
+     humorists, and, as we have pointed out before, might almost be
+     defined as the discoverer of a method combining English and
+     American humour. But he never takes either his subject or himself
+     too seriously, and the result is a book which is as readable as any
+     of its mirthful predecessors."
+
+     _World._--"Those readers who fail to find pleasure in this new
+     volume of Essays will be difficult to please. Here are discourses
+     in the author's happiest vein."
+
+     _Daily News._--"All are delightful."
+
+     _Bystander._--"No sane person will object to Professor Leacock
+     professing, so long as he periodically issues such good
+     entertainment as 'Essays and Literary Studies.'"
+
+     _Daily Telegraph._--"The engaging talent of this Canadian author
+     has hitherto been exercised in the lighter realm of wit and fancy.
+     In his latest volume there is the same irresistible humour, the
+     same delicate satire, the same joyous freshness; but the wisdom he
+     distils is concerned more with realities of our changing age."
+
+     _Outlook._--"Mr. Leacock's humour is his own, whimsical with the
+     ease of a self-confident personality, far-sighted, quick-witted,
+     and invariably humane."
+
+     _Times._--"Professor Leacock's paper on American humour is quite
+     the best that we know upon the subject."
+
+     _Spectator._--"Those of us who are grateful to Mr. Leacock as an
+     intrepid purveyor of wholesome food for laughter have not failed to
+     recognize that he mingles shrewdness with levity--that he is, in
+     short, wise as well as merry."
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+Further Foolishness
+
+SKETCHES AND SATIRES ON THE FOLLIES OF THE DAY
+
+With Coloured Frontispiece by "Fish," and five other Plates by
+M. Blood
+
+_Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. 5s. net_
+
+
+     _Morning Post._--"An excellent antidote to war worry."
+
+     _Evening Standard._--"You will acknowledge, if you have not done so
+     before, the satirical keenness of Mr. Leacock."
+
+     _Daily Graphic._--"The book is a joy all through, laughter on every
+     page."
+
+     _Times._--"Further examples of the diverting humour of Professor
+     Leacock."
+
+     _Bystander._--"'Further Foolishness,' in a word, is the most
+     admirable tonic which I can prescribe to-day ... the jolliest
+     possible medley."
+
+     _Daily Chronicle._--"Mr. Leacock's fun is fine and delicate, full
+     of quaint surprises; guaranteed to provoke cheerfulness in the
+     dullest. He is a master-humorist, and this book is one of the
+     cleverest examples of honest humour and witty satire ever
+     produced."
+
+     _Spectator._--"In this new budget of absurdities we are more than
+     ever reminded of Mr. Leacock's essential affinity with Artemus
+     Ward, in whose wildest extravagances there was nearly always a core
+     of wholesome sanity, who was always on the side of the angels, and
+     who was a true patriot as well as a great humorist."
+
+     _Pall Mall Gazette._--"A humorist of high excellence."
+
+     _Daily Express._--"Really clever and admirably good fun."
+
+     _Star._--"Some day there will be a Leacock Club. Its members will
+     all possess a sense of humour."
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+FRENZIED FICTION
+
+_FOURTH EDITION_
+
+_Crown 8vo. 5s. net_
+
+
+     "Everything in 'Frenzied Fiction' is exhilarating. Full of good
+     things."--_Morning Post._
+
+     "More delightful samples of Leacock humour. These delightful
+     chapters show Mr. Leacock at his best."
+
+     _Daily Graphic._
+
+     "Stephen Leacock has firmly established himself in public favour as
+     one of our greatest humorists. His readers will be more than
+     pleased with 'Frenzied Fiction.'"--_Evening Standard._
+
+     "It is enough to say that Mr. Leacock retains an unimpaired command
+     of his happy gift of disguising sanity in the garb of the
+     ludicrous. There is always an ultimate core of shrewd common-sense
+     in his burlesques."--_Spectator._
+
+     "Full of mellow humour."--_Daily Mail._
+
+     "From beginning to end the book is one long gurgle of
+     delight."--_World._
+
+     "If it is your first venture into the Leacockian world read that
+     delicious parody 'My Revelations as a Spy,' and we will be sworn
+     that before you've turned half a dozen pages you will have become a
+     life-member of the Leacock Lodge."--_Town Topics._
+
+     "When humour is such as you get in 'Frenzied Fiction' it is a very
+     good thing indeed."--_Sketch._
+
+     "There is always sufficient sense under Stephen Leacock's nonsense
+     to enable one to read him at least twice."--_Land and Water._
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+THE HOHENZOLLERNS IN AMERICA
+
+AND OTHER IMPOSSIBILITIES
+
+_Crown 8vo. 5s. net_
+
+
+     "Equal in gay humour and deft satire to any of its predecessors,
+     and no holiday will be so gay but this volume will make it
+     gayer.... It is a book of rollicking good humour that will keep you
+     chuckling long past summer-time."--_Daily Chronicle._
+
+     "At his best, full of whims and oddities ... the most cheerful of
+     humorists and the wisest of wayside philosophers."--_Daily
+     Telegraph._
+
+     "He has never provided finer food for quiet enjoyment ... his
+     precious quality of Rabelaisian humanism has matured and broadened
+     in its sympathy."--_Globe._
+
+     "In the author's merriest mood. All of it is distilled wit and
+     wisdom of the best brand, full of honest laughter, fun and frolic,
+     comedy and criticism."--_Daily Graphic._
+
+     "The book is inspired by that spirit of broad farce which runs
+     glorious riot through nearly all that Stephen Leacock has
+     written."--_Bookman._
+
+     "He has all the energy and exuberance of the born humorist.... All
+     admirers will recognize it as typical of Mr. Leacock's best
+     work."--_Manchester Guardian._
+
+     "An entertaining volume."--_Scotsman._
+
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+THE UNSOLVED RIDDLE OF SOCIAL JUSTICE
+
+_Crown 8vo. 5s. net_
+
+
+     A discussion of the new social unrest, the transformation of
+     society which it portends and the social catastrophe which it might
+     precipitate.
+
+     The point of view taken by the author leads towards the conclusion
+     that the safety of the future lies in a progressive movement of
+     social control alleviating at least the misery it cannot
+     obliterate, and based upon the broad general principle of equality
+     of opportunity, and a fair start. The chief immediate opportunities
+     for social betterment, as the writer sees them, lie in the attempt
+     to give every human being in childhood, education and opportunity.
+
+     "His book is short, lucid, always to the point, and sometimes
+     witty."--_Times._
+
+     "A book for the times, suggestive, critical and highly stimulating.
+     Mr. Leacock surveys the troubled hour and discusses the popular
+     palliatives with a keen, unbiassed intelligence and splendid
+     sympathy. I hope it will have as large a circulation as any of his
+     humorous books, for it has much wisdom in it."--_Daily Chronicle._
+
+     "The charm of Mr. Leacock's book is ... that it deals tersely and
+     clearly with the problem of Social Justice without technical jargon
+     or any abuse of generalities."--_Morning Post._
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE HUMOROUS NOVELS OF HARRY LEON WILSON
+
+
+BUNKER BEAN
+MA PETTENGILL
+SOMEWHERE IN RED GAP
+RUGGLES OF RED GAP
+
+
+_Crown 8vo. 7s. net_
+
+    Harry Leon Wilson is one of the first of American humorists, and in
+    popularity he is a close rival of O. Henry. His "Ruggles of Red
+    Gap," published at the beginning of the war, achieved a distinct
+    success in England, while the raciness and vivacity of "Ma
+    Pettengill" have furthered the author's reputation as an inimitable
+    delineator of Western comedy. An English edition of this author's
+    works is in course of preparation, of which the above are the first
+    volumes.
+
+
+     "The author has the rare and precious gift of original
+     humour."--_Daily Graphic._
+
+     "Thackeray would have enjoyed Mr. Wilson's merry tale of 'Ruggles
+     of Red Gap.' A very triumph of farce."--_Sunday Times._
+
+     "Mr. Wilson is an American humorist of the first water. We have not
+     for a long time seen anything so clever in its way and so
+     outrageously funny."--_Literary World._
+
+
+LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense
+Novels, by Stephen Leacock
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WINSOME WINNIE AND OTHERS ***
+
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