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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Crooked House, by Brandon Fleming
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Crooked House
+
+
+Author: Brandon Fleming
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 30, 2007  [eBook #22820]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CROOKED HOUSE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by D. Alexander and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from digital material
+generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/americana)
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/crookedhouse00flemiala
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CROOKED HOUSE
+
+by
+
+BRANDON FLEMING
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Edward J. Clode
+
+Copyright, 1921, by
+Edward J. Clode
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                      PAGE
+
+     I A STRANGE RIDDLE                        9
+
+    II THE CROOKED HOUSE                      19
+
+   III THE ENDLESS GARDEN                     33
+
+    IV DESTRUCTION                            45
+
+     V COPPLESTONE                            53
+
+    VI THE TRAIL OF CORPSES                   65
+
+   VII TRANTER                                71
+
+  VIII MRS. ASTLEY-ROLFE                      80
+
+    IX THE DANSEUSE                           83
+
+     X MR. GLUCKSTEIN                         85
+
+    XI THE CLERGYMAN                          87
+
+   XII MR. BOLSOVER                           89
+
+  XIII THE TRINITY OF DEATH                   92
+
+   XIV WITHOUT TRACE                         105
+
+    XV A BUILDER OF MEN                      117
+
+   XVI A TRIPLE ALLIANCE                     133
+
+  XVII MR. GLUCKSTEIN IN CONFIDENCE          142
+
+ XVIII THE WIT OF THE PINK LADY              151
+
+   XIX DETAINED ON SUSPICION                 159
+
+    XX THE BIRTH OF THE KILLER               176
+
+   XXI A HASTY FLIGHT                        187
+
+  XXII TRANTER ATTACKS THE CROOKED HOUSE     195
+
+ XXIII A DUEL                                203
+
+  XXIV THE SECRET OF THE HOUSE               220
+
+   XXV TRUER COLORS                          233
+
+  XXVI PROVIDING FOR THE WORST               241
+
+ XXVII THE DISAPPEARANCE OF TRANTER      250
+
+XXVIII IN PURSUIT                            259
+
+  XXIX ETHICS OF KILLING                     262
+
+   XXX MONSIEUR DUPONT'S TASK                273
+
+  XXXI WHAT THEY HEARD                       279
+
+ XXXII THE BEAUTY-KILLER                     288
+
+XXXIII LAST TRUTHS                           291
+
+ XXXIV CONCLUSION                            312
+
+
+
+
+THE CROOKED HOUSE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A STRANGE RIDDLE
+
+
+"Monsieur Tranter! A moment!"
+
+The Right-Honorable John Tranter swung round, latch-key in hand. Behind
+him, an enormous figure emerged, with surprisingly agile and noiseless
+steps, from the shadow of the adjoining house--a figure almost grotesque
+and monstrous in the dim light of the street lamp. The very hugeness of
+the apparition was so disconcerting that John Tranter drew back with a
+startled exclamation.
+
+"Good Lord! Monsieur Dupont? You in London?"
+
+Monsieur Dupont described circles with his country's largest silk hat.
+
+"I in London! An event, my friend, in the history of your city!"
+
+He laughed softly, and replaced the hat on his head. They shook hands
+warmly.
+
+"This is a delightful surprise," Tranter said, turning back to the door.
+"Come in."
+
+"It is late," Monsieur Dupont apologized--"but I entreat a moment. It is
+three hours only since I arrived, and I have passed one of them on your
+doorstep."
+
+"An hour?" Tranter exclaimed. "But surely----"
+
+Monsieur Dupont squeezed himself into the narrow hall with difficulty.
+
+"I possess the gift of patience," he claimed modestly. "In London it is
+of great value."
+
+In the small library he looked about him with surprise. The plain,
+almost scanty furniture of Tranter's house evidently did not accord with
+his expectations of the residence of an English Privy Councillor.
+Monsieur Dupont sat down on a well-worn leather couch, and stared,
+somewhat blankly, at the rows of dull, monotonous bindings in the simple
+mahogany bookcases.
+
+He placed the drink Tranter mixed for him on a small table by his side,
+accepted a cigar, and puffed at it serenely. And in that position,
+Monsieur Victorien Dupont presented a pleasing picture of elephantine
+geniality. He was so large that his presence seemed to fill half the
+room. His great face was one tremendous smile. His eyes, though capable
+of a disconcertingly direct gaze, were clear and even childlike. His
+English was perfect, his evening-dress faultless, and, though obviously
+a _bon-viveur_, he was also unmistakably a man with a purpose.
+
+"And what has brought you to London?" Tranter asked, sitting opposite to
+him.
+
+"My friend," said Monsieur Dupont, "I am here with a remarkable object.
+I have come to use the eyes the good God has given me. And to do so I
+beg the assistance of the great position the good God has given you."
+
+"I hope," Tranter returned, "that what you require will enable me to
+make some sort of return to the man who saved my life."
+
+Monsieur Dupont waved his hands in a gigantic gesture.
+
+"To restore to the world one of its great men--it was a privilege for
+which I, myself, should pay! The service I ask of you is small."
+
+"You have but to name it," said the Privy Councillor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Suddenly there was no smile on Monsieur Dupont's face. Without the smile
+it was a very much less pleasant face.
+
+"Two years ago, in my own country," his voice acquired a new snap, "some
+one asked me a riddle."
+
+"A riddle?" Tranter echoed, surprised at the change.
+
+"A very strange riddle. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you what it was. I
+cannot tell any one what it was. I undertook to find the answer. From
+France the riddle took me far away to another country--and there, after
+a year's work, I found half the answer. The other half is in London. And
+I am in London to find it."
+
+"This is interesting," said Tranter, smiling slightly at the huge
+Frenchman's intense seriousness.
+
+"You, my friend, can help me."
+
+"I am at your service," the other promised.
+
+Monsieur Dupont half-emptied his glass, and the smile began to reappear
+on his face in gradual creases. In a moment the shadow had vanished. He
+laughed like a jolly giant.
+
+"Ah, forgive me! I had almost committed the crime to be serious. It is a
+fault that is easy in your London."
+
+"What do you want me to do for you?" Tranter asked.
+
+"I want," said Monsieur Dupont, "to be taken with you, as your friend
+from Paris, to one or two society functions--where I may be likely to
+meet ... what I seek."
+
+Tranter was somewhat taken aback.
+
+"Unconsciously," he returned--"though of course, I will make it my
+business to fulfill your wishes--you have really asked me a difficult
+thing. No man goes less into society than I do. Most people have given
+up inviting me."
+
+"Forgive me," said Monsieur Dupont again. "I had imagined I should be
+asking a thing the most simple."
+
+"So you are," Tranter assured him. "The fault is with me. Where women
+are concerned I am utterly hopeless. I fly from a pretty woman as you
+might fly from a crocodile."
+
+"An ugly woman," said Monsieur Dupont, "is the real friend of man--if he
+would but know it."
+
+"The dull family dinners of dull family people are the only 'functions'
+I ever attend. However, let me see what can be done for you." Tranter
+rose, and with an amused expression began to sort out a small pile of
+cards on the mantel-piece.
+
+Monsieur Dupont smiled on. He emptied his glass, and inhaled the smoke
+of his excellent cigar with all the enjoyment of a satisfied
+connoisseur. His glance played from one article of furniture to another,
+from the floor to the ceiling, from bookcase to bookcase, from picture
+to picture. The very plainness of the room seemed to fascinate him. His
+gaze sought out the ugliest picture, and became fixed on it. Tranter
+turned over all the cards, and shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
+
+"In a couple of days I shall be able to fix you up a dozen times over,"
+he said. "But I am afraid I have scarcely anything to offer you for
+to-morrow night. Why didn't you drop me a line in advance?"
+
+"Let us dispense with to-morrow night, then," said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+Tranter ran through the cards again.
+
+"There is a dinner at Lord Crumbleton's--which I have too much regard
+for you to suggest. The Countess is a most estimable lady, who has spent
+the last fifteen years in vain attempts to become unfaithful to her
+husband, and now reads the Apocrypha all day for stimulation. You could
+dine with a high-church clergyman who absolves sins, or an actor-manager
+who commits them. But stay----" he paused quickly. "I forgot. There is
+something else." He sorted out a card. "Here is a possibility of
+amusement that had escaped me."
+
+"Ah!" said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"George Copplestone has favored me with an invitation to a select
+gathering at his house at Richmond, which would be very much more likely
+to provide answers to riddles. I never accept Copplestone's invitations
+on principle--although he goes on sending them. But, if you like, I will
+break my rule, and take you. It is sure to be entertaining, if nothing
+more."
+
+Monsieur Dupont bowed his gratitude. Tranter replaced the cards, and
+returned to his seat.
+
+"Copplestone is a remarkable individual, who has learnt what a multitude
+of sins even a slight financial connection with the Theater will cover.
+He puts various sums of money into the front of the house to gain
+unquestioned admission to the back. He has an extraordinary taste for
+fantasy, and is always startling his friends with some new eccentricity.
+He is not generally considered to be a desirable acquaintance--and
+certainly no man in London has less regard for the conventions."
+
+"To confine myself to desirable acquaintances," said Monsieur Dupont,
+"would be my last wish."
+
+"Then we will go to Richmond to-morrow night. He lives in a very strange
+house, in a stranger garden--the sort of place that no ordinary normal
+person could possibly live in. And I warn you that you will find nothing
+ordinary or normal in it. If you are interested in some of the
+unaccountable vagaries of human nature, you will enjoy yourself."
+
+"The unaccountable vagaries of human nature," said Monsieur Dupont, "are
+the foundation of my riddle."
+
+"Then," Tranter returned, "I could give you no better chance to solve
+it. In addition, you will probably make the acquaintance of a certain
+pretty society widow, who wants to marry him because of his vices, and
+one or two other well-known people who owe him money and can't afford to
+refuse to dine with him. Also, as the invitation is an unusually
+pressing one, we can rely on the introduction of some unexpected freaks
+for our entertainment."
+
+"It is arranged," Monsieur Dupont declared, "I go with you to Richmond."
+
+"Very well," Tranter agreed. "Call for me here at eight o'clock, and we
+will go. Help yourself to another drink."
+
+Monsieur Dupont helped himself to another drink.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE CROOKED HOUSE
+
+
+It was no unusual thing for George Copplestone to spring surprises on
+his guests. He had a twisted sense of the dramatic, and twisted things
+were expected from him. On some occasions he perpetrated the wildest and
+most extravagant eccentricities, without the slightest regard for the
+moral or artistic sensibilities of those on whom he imposed them--on
+others he contented himself with less harrowing minor freaks--but the
+object of thoroughly upsetting and confounding the mental balances of
+his victims was invariably achieved. He delighted, and displayed
+remarkable ingenuity, in providing orgies of the abnormal. He reveled in
+producing an atmosphere of brain-storm, and in dealing sledge-hammer
+blows at the intellects of his better balanced acquaintances. Often he
+was in uncontrollable spirits--on fire with mental and physical
+exuberance--sometimes he was morose and silent, and apparently weak.
+Frequently he disappeared for considerable periods, and his house
+appeared to be closed. But none saw his coming or going.
+
+Strange rumors circulated about him from time to time. Certain social
+circles, to which his wealth and position entitled him to the entrée,
+were closed to him. Over and above his wild extravagancies, he was
+credited with vices that remained unnamed. It was said that things took
+place in his house that sealed the lips of men and women. When his name
+was mentioned in the clubs, some men shrugged their shoulders. When it
+was spoken in the drawing-rooms, some women remained silent. There had
+been an attempt to stab him, and twice he had been shot at. After the
+second attempt, a woman had been heard to say bitterly that he must bear
+a charmed life. He continued to pursue his strange ways with supreme
+indifference to the opinions of his fellow-creatures.
+
+The house he lived in was the only sort of house he could have lived
+in. From the foundations to the topmost brick it was a mass of
+bewildering crookedness. Nothing was straight. Not a single passage led
+where it would have been expected to lead--not a staircase fulfilled
+normal anticipations. Scarcely two windows in the whole building were
+the same size--scarcely two rooms were the same shape--and not even two
+contortions corresponded. There must have been a mile of unnecessary
+corridors, dozens of incomprehensible corners and turnings, and at least
+a score of unwanted entrances and exits. If the aim and object of the
+architect, whoever he was, had been to reduce the unfortunate occupants
+of his handiwork to a condition of hopeless mental entanglement, he
+could not have created a more effective instrument for the purpose.
+George Copplestone found it a residence after his own heart, and
+delighted in the means it provided for gratifying his feverish
+inspirations.
+
+The room into which John Tranter and Monsieur Victorien Dupont were
+ushered at eight-thirty on the following night presented an
+extraordinary spectacle of lavish and indiscriminate decoration,
+arriving at a general suggestion of something between a Royal visit and
+preparations for a wildly enthusiastic Christmas. Flags and festoons,
+flowers, real and imitation, fairy-candles and colored lamps, burning
+with strange heavy scents, quaint fantastic shapes of paper, startlingly
+illuminated--all massed into an indescribable disorder of light and
+color. Five amazed people were awaiting further developments.
+
+Mrs. Astley-Rolfe was a charming widow of twenty-seven, who had
+successfully gambled on her late husband's probable lease of life, and
+was now in the throes of a wild attachment to George Copplestone, to
+which he had shown himself by no means averse. She was somewhat languid
+from an excess of luxury, unable to brook opposition even to a whim, and
+as yet undefeated in the attainment of her desires, which were not,
+perhaps, always to the credit of her sex. She had an insufficient
+income, and a weakness for inscribing her signature on stamped slips of
+paper, several of which, it was rumored, were in Copplestone's
+possession. Her house in Grosvenor Gardens was an artistic paradise, and
+was frequently visited by gentlemen from Jermyn Street, who seemed fond
+of assuring themselves that its treasures remained intact.
+
+A West-End clergyman, of Evangelical appearance, who translated French
+farces under a _nom-de-plume_, was advocating, in confidence, the
+abolition of the Censor to a well-known theatrical manager, whose assets
+were all in the name of his wife. A bejeweled Russian danseuse, who
+spoke broken English with a Highland accent, extolled the attractions of
+theatrical investment to a Hebrew financier, who was feasting his eyes
+on the curves of her figure, and hoping that she was sufficiently
+hard-up. The entrance of Tranter and his huge companion created general
+surprise. Mrs. Astley-Rolfe held up her hands prettily.
+
+"You?" she exclaimed, to Tranter. "You--of all people--condescending to
+visit our plane? The mystery is explained at once. The decorations are
+for you--the Pillar of the State!"
+
+"Indeed they are not," he assured her. He stood aside. "Permit me to
+introduce my friend, Monsieur Dupont."
+
+"This is delightful!" she smiled.
+
+Monsieur Dupont bent over her hand.
+
+"Madame," he declared, "I change completely my opinion of London."
+
+"Where is Copplestone?" Tranter inquired, gazing with amazement round
+the festooned room.
+
+A frown passed over Mrs. Astley-Rolfe's face.
+
+"He has not yet appeared. He sent in a message asking us to wait for him
+here. He is up to some freak obviously."
+
+"It is certainly a strange medley of color," Tranter admitted.
+"Fortunately, I am not particularly susceptible--but to an artistic
+temperament I can understand that the effect would be acute. What
+extraordinary event can such a blaze be intended to celebrate?"
+
+"I don't know," she returned, a little shortly. "He has told us
+nothing."
+
+Her eyes strayed anxiously to the door. The movements of her hands were
+nervous.
+
+"I wish he would come," she muttered--and stood away from them.
+
+Tranter drew his companion across the room.
+
+"Well?" he asked, smiling. "How do you like this somewhat showy
+welcome?"
+
+"My friend," said Monsieur Dupont slowly--"into what manner of house
+have you brought me?"
+
+"Copplestone is a curious fellow," Tranter replied. "I warned you to be
+prepared for something unusual."
+
+"It is a crooked house," said Monsieur Dupont. "It stands on a crooked
+road, and there are crooked paths all round it. And everything is
+crooked inside it."
+
+"These decorations are crooked enough, at any rate," Tranter laughed.
+
+"These decorations," said Monsieur Dupont, "are not only crooked--they
+are bad. Very bad."
+
+He lowered his voice. There was a gleam of excitement in his eyes.
+
+"Don't you see," he whispered, "that decorations can be good or bad,
+just as men and women can be good or bad? These decorations are bad.
+They are a mockery of all decorations--a travesty the most heartless of
+the motives for which good and pure people decorate. There is nothing
+honest or straightforward about them. They are a mean confusion of all
+the symbols of joy. They are put up for some cruel and detestable
+purpose----"
+
+The door flew open with a snap, and a young man of dishevelled
+appearance burst into the room. His eyes were wild, and his face was
+working with the intensity of his passion.
+
+"Christine," he panted. "Christine...."
+
+He stopped, and gazed round in a dazed fashion, clenching and
+unclenching his hands.
+
+Mrs. Astley-Rolfe sprang forward with a suppressed cry, and confronted
+him tensely.
+
+"Well?" she cried sharply--"what about Christine?"
+
+He did not seem to be aware of her. He was staring at the flags, the
+lights, the flowers, and the colored paper.
+
+"It is true then," he muttered. "These things...."
+
+The woman was as white as death. Her hands were locked together. She
+swayed.
+
+"What is true?" she gasped.
+
+The young man took no notice of her. Copplestone's elderly manservant
+appeared in the doorway, and approached him.
+
+"Mr. Copplestone declines to see you, sir--and requests that you will
+leave his house. I have orders, otherwise, to send for the police."
+
+The young man drew himself up. He was suddenly quite composed and
+dignified. The passion died out of his face, leaving an expression
+almost of contentment in its place.
+
+"I wish it to be understood," he said, addressing himself to the room
+generally with perfect evenness, "that, rather than allow Christine
+Manderson to become engaged to George Copplestone, I will tear her to
+pieces with my own hands, and utterly destroy her." And he turned, and
+walked quietly out of the room.
+
+In the silence that followed all eyes were fixed on the white, rigid
+woman. Her face was drawn and haggard. She seemed to have grown old and
+weak. Her whole frame appeared to have shrunk under an overwhelming
+blow. For some moments she stood motionless. Then, with a supreme effort
+of self-control, she turned, and faced them steadily.
+
+"I think," she said calmly, "that if Miss Manderson is in the house she
+should be warned."
+
+"Fellow was mad," said the theatrical manager.
+
+"_Tout-a-fait_ daft," agreed the Russian danseuse.
+
+"It would have been safer," Tranter remarked, "if he had been given in
+charge."
+
+There was something very like contempt in Mrs. Astley-Rolfe's glance.
+
+"Do you know," she said quietly, "that that young man is a millionaire
+who lives on a pound a week, and spends the remaining nine hundred and
+ninety-nine pounds a week on saving lives and souls in places in London
+that people like us try to avoid even hearing about? If it is madness to
+devote your life and money to lifting some of the world's shadows--then
+he is very mad."
+
+"Mosth creditable," said the Hebrew financier.
+
+She turned her back on them, and stood apart.
+
+Monsieur Dupont laid a hand on Tranter's arm.
+
+"My friend," he said--and there was the faintest tremor in his voice, "I
+ask you again--into what manner of house have you brought me?"
+
+"I am beginning to wish that I had _not_ brought you," Tranter returned.
+"I don't like the atmosphere."
+
+"That," said Monsieur Dupont, drawing him aside, "is where we differ. To
+me the atmosphere is extremely interesting. If I were a sportsman, I
+would make you a bet that this will be an eventful evening."
+
+"I feel strongly," said Tranter seriously, "that we should be wise to
+leave. We don't want to be mixed up in an affair with a madman."
+
+Monsieur Dupont shook his head.
+
+"The millionaire was not mad, my friend. He may have been mad yesterday.
+He may be mad to-morrow. But he is very sane to-night."
+
+"I don't like it," Tranter maintained. "I would much rather go. Events
+under this roof have a trick of being a little too dramatic."
+
+Laughter from the clergyman, the financier, and the danseuse, greeted
+the conclusion of a story with which the theatrical manager had
+attempted to relieve the strain. Monsieur Dupont drew Tranter still
+further back.
+
+"This Mademoiselle Manderson--do you know her?"
+
+"No," Tranter replied. "I've never heard of her. I suppose she is some
+new friend of Copplestone's. If she is really engaged to him, I don't
+think she is altogether to be envied."
+
+Monsieur Dupont's glance found Mrs. Astley-Rolfe.
+
+"No," he remarked softly--"I do not think she is."
+
+Two heavy curtains at the extreme end of the room were drawn apart, and
+the figure of a man appeared between them--a tall, thick-set man, in
+full evening-dress, with a large white flower in his button-hole. For a
+moment he stood still, looking intently down the room.
+
+"Copplestone," Tranter whispered to his companion.
+
+"_Mon Dieu_," muttered Monsieur Dupont.
+
+It was the face of a fanatic--wonderful, fascinating, cruel--a fanatic
+who neither feared God nor regarded man--an infinite egotist. The fires
+of a great distorted soul smoldered in his eyes. The broad, lofty
+forehead proclaimed a mind that might have placed him among the rulers
+of men--but instead he was little above the level of a clown. The
+destinies of a nation might have rested in the hands that he turned only
+to selfish fantasy. The whole appearance of him, arresting and almost
+awe-inspiring as it undoubtedly was, had in it the repulsiveness of the
+unnatural--and, with that, all the tragedy of pitiful waste.
+
+To-night, he confronted his guests in an attitude, and with an air, of
+triumph. But as Mrs. Astley-Rolfe turned quickly to him with something
+of a challenge in her bearing, a faint mocking smile appeared and
+lingered for a moment on his face. Then he moved aside, his hand on the
+curtains.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," he said deliberately, "permit me to present you
+to my fiancée--Miss Christine Manderson."
+
+He drew the curtains apart.
+
+"_Mon Dieu_," said Monsieur Dupont again.
+
+A half-strangled sob came from the lips of Mrs. Astley-Rolfe. Tranter
+uttered an exclamation. The danseuse, the clergyman, and the theatrical
+manager burst into vigorous applause.
+
+Framed in the darkness behind him was the white form of a woman, of
+transcendent loveliness. In the soft light it seemed almost a celestial
+figure. She smiled with entrancing sweetness, and held out her hands.
+
+But as her gaze swept over the occupants of the room, the smile
+vanished. Her eyes became fixed and staring; her face set. She uttered a
+sharp cry--and fell forward in a dead faint.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE ENDLESS GARDEN
+
+
+Confusion followed. Copplestone knelt beside her, calling her by name in
+a strange excess of fear. The theatrical manager tore a flask from his
+pocket, and administered its contents freely. The spirit revived her.
+She opened her eyes. They lifted her gently, and laid her on a couch.
+
+"It was that madman rushing in unnerved her," Copplestone cried
+fiercely. "Wish I'd called in the police. Curse him!"
+
+Her hand closed on his. "No, no," she whispered. "He must not be
+touched. He didn't mean it."
+
+"Mean it be damned!" said Copplestone savagely. "If I see any more of
+him, he'll find himself in jail in less time than it takes to say it."
+
+The manager proffered further stimulant. The color began to return to
+her face, but her eyes were wide and strained. Copplestone watched her
+closely.
+
+"Look here," said the manager, re-corking his empty flask, "she'd better
+rest. Let's all clear off, and go on with this another night."
+
+"Thertainly," agreed the financier.
+
+But Christine Manderson rose, and leant on Copplestone's arm. Her
+self-control was exerted to the utmost, but she trembled.
+
+"Forgive me," she said softly. "I am all right now. Please don't go."
+
+"Good!" Copplestone exclaimed, recovering his equanimity. "It would be a
+pity to break up. We'll have a jolly night." He laughed loudly.
+"Tranter, of all people!" he cried boisterously. "And----" he looked
+towards Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"I was sure you wouldn't mind my bringing a friend with me," Tranter
+said. "Monsieur Dupont has just arrived from Paris."
+
+"Delighted," said Copplestone, shaking hands with great heartiness.
+"Forgive this unhappy beginning. We'll make up for it now. Come along to
+dinner. It's all ready."
+
+In the dining-room they sat down to a table that glittered and gleamed
+with a hundred lights, concealed under strands of white crystallized
+leaves, springing from a frosted tree. Such a table might have been set
+in Fairyland, for the betrothal feast of Oberon.
+
+"Glad we didn't miss this," said the theatrical manager.
+
+He regaled the company with a selection of his less offensive stories,
+and found ready applause. The gayety was loud and forced. Every one
+attempted to keep it at fever-heat. Jest followed jest with increasing
+rapidity. Laughter rang out on the smallest provocation. It was a
+competition in hilarity. And the gayest of all were Christine Manderson,
+and Mrs. Astley-Rolfe.
+
+The night was hot and sultry. The distant roll of thunder added to the
+tenseness of the atmosphere. And hearing it, Christine Manderson
+shuddered.
+
+"Storms are unlucky to me," she said, listening until the sullen roll
+died away. "Why should we have one to-night--of all nights?"
+
+The clergyman adroitly twisted the subject of lightning into a
+compliment. As the dinner drew to a somewhat loud conclusion,
+Copplestone's face grew flushed, and his hands unsteady. The manager's
+voice and stories thickened, and the thoughts of the Russian danseuse
+became fixed on Aberdeen. Tranter and Monsieur Dupont were abstemious
+guests. But the Frenchman seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.
+
+They rose from the fairy table, and strolled out through the open
+windows into the garden. The air had grown hotter and more oppressive,
+the thunder louder. Frequent flashes lit up the darkness.
+
+The glowing tips of cigars and cigarettes disappeared in various
+directions across the lawns.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Monsieur Dupont discovered, to his cost, the truth of his remark that
+the house was surrounded by crooked paths. The grounds were a veritable
+maze. He had purposely slipped away alone, and in five minutes was
+involved in a network of twisting, thickly-hedged paths, all of which
+seemed only to lead still further into the darkness.
+
+He stopped, and listened. He could hear no voices. Not a sound, except
+the gathering thunder, disturbed the silence. He was completely cut off.
+Even the lights of the house were hidden from him. He had turned about
+so many times that he did not even know in which direction it lay.
+Coupled with the effect of what had happened in the house, the influence
+of this tortuous garden was sinister and unnerving. In the lightning
+flashes, now more vivid and frequent, he tried in vain to determine his
+position. He wandered about, trying path after path, doubling back on
+his own tracks--only to find himself more and more helplessly lost.
+
+"_Nom de Dieu_," said Monsieur Dupont, in despair.
+
+He halted suddenly, standing as still as a figure of stone. On his right
+the hedge was thick and high. He could see nothing. But the whisper of a
+voice had reached him.
+
+The path took a sharp turn. He stepped noiselessly on to the grass
+border, and crept round, with wonderful agility for a man of his size.
+The foliage gradually thinned, and kneeling down he was able to listen
+and peer through until the next flash should reveal what lay beyond.
+
+The whisper thrilled with indescribable passion.
+
+"I love you. You are my body, my soul, my god, my all. I love you--I
+love you--I love you."
+
+It was the voice of Christine Manderson.
+
+Not a tremor escaped the listener. Parting the leaves with a hand as
+steady as the ground itself, he waited for the light.
+
+"I have no world but you--no thought but you. I want nothing but you ...
+you ... you." A sob broke her voice.
+
+"Go," the answer was almost inaudible in its tenseness. "Go--and forget.
+I have nothing for you."
+
+The lightning came. In a small open space on the other side of the hedge
+it illuminated the wild tortured face of Christine Manderson. And
+standing before her, gripping both her hands and holding her away from
+him--John Tranter.
+
+She struggled to bring herself closer to him.
+
+"I thought you were dead," she gasped.
+
+"I _am_ dead," he answered. "I am dead to you. Let me go."
+
+The listener could almost hear the effort of her breathing.
+
+"I waited for you," she panted. "I was broken. I had to seem happy--but
+my heart was a tomb. You were all my life--all my hope. I know I wasn't
+what I might have been. I was what people call an adventuress. But my
+love for you was the one great, true thing of my life. Oh, why did you
+leave me?"
+
+"For your own sake," he said slowly. "I am no mate for such a woman as
+you."
+
+"My own sake?" she repeated. "My own sake--to take from me the only
+thing I had--my only chance?--to throw my life into the shadows? My own
+sake ... to have made me what I am?"
+
+"I would have spared you this meeting," he returned, "if I had known.
+But the name Christine Manderson was strange to me. I had never heard
+it before."
+
+"I changed my name," she said sadly. "I couldn't bear that any one
+should use the name that you had used. I called myself Christine
+Manderson, and went on the stage in New York. Oh, it was dreadful. All
+those long years since you left me I have lived under a mask--as you
+have seen me to-night. You thought I was smiling--but I didn't smile.
+You thought I was laughing--but I didn't laugh. It was all ... only
+disguised tears ... to hide myself."
+
+"Go," his voice was torn. "For God's sake go ... Thea."
+
+A second flash showed them again to the listener. Tranter was still
+holding her away from him. In that vivid fraction of a second the agony
+of her face was terrible.
+
+"Thea!" she echoed pitifully. "Ah, yes--call me Thea! Poor Thea! Oh,
+doesn't that name awaken ... something? Hasn't it still some charm? Once
+you said it was the only name in all the world. Is it nothing to you
+now?"
+
+"Nothing," he answered.
+
+In spite of his resistance she was forcing herself nearer to him. The
+magic of her presence was binding him.
+
+"Am I less beautiful?" she whispered. "Have I lost anything that used to
+draw you? Is not my hair as golden? Are not my eyes as bright--my lips
+as red? Am I not as soft to touch? Where could you find anything better
+than me?"
+
+"Keep back!" he muttered.
+
+Her hands were about him. In the darkness he could feel the deadly
+loveliness of her face almost touching his own. He was yielding, inch by
+inch. The warmth of her breath ... the perfume of her body.... Her
+closeness was intoxicating--maddening.
+
+"Oh, let me come to you," she prayed. "I will follow you barefooted to
+the end of the world. I will live for you--slave for you--die for you.
+Only let me come. Let me leave all this--and come to you ...
+to-morrow...."
+
+A groan was wrung from him. He crushed her to him.
+
+"Come then!" he cried desperately. "Come, if you will!..."
+
+A vivid flash, which seemed to burst almost over their heads, showed
+them locked in each other's arms, their lips pressed together.
+
+Monsieur Dupont raised himself quickly. There was the sound of running
+footsteps on the path behind him. Monsieur Dupont had just time to turn
+the corner before the disordered figure of the theatrical manager loomed
+up before him.
+
+"The madman is in the garden! He ran this way."
+
+"_Diable!_" said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"I found him sneaking towards the house. He bolted out here."
+
+Unaccustomed to physical exertion, the manager laid a heavy hand on
+Monsieur Dupont's shoulder, and mopped his forehead breathlessly.
+
+"The scoundrel means mischief," he declared. "He must be found."
+
+"Where is Mr. Copplestone?"
+
+"I called him, but couldn't get an answer. He must be away at the other
+end of the garden."
+
+"No one has passed this way," Monsieur Dupont assured him. "For a
+half-hour I have been wandering about these horrible paths."
+
+"It's a devil of a garden," the manager admitted. "The fellow won't get
+very far. Let's look about here."
+
+Fortified with a fresh supply of breath, he released Monsieur Dupont's
+shoulder, and made a brisk movement towards the direction from which the
+Frenchman had come.
+
+Monsieur Dupont blocked the way.
+
+"No, no--it would be a waste of time. I have come from there."
+
+"To the river, then," the manager cried, bearing him round. "He may be
+trying to get across."
+
+He was evidently familiar with the intricacies of the garden. In a few
+minutes, after a dozen turnings, they reached the gleam of water.
+
+"Keep your eyes open for the next flash," the manager directed.
+
+He peered about. A moment later the lightning lit up the calm stretch of
+the river and the broad lawns sloping down to it. Monsieur Dupont
+detected no form or movement--but with a startling shout, the manager
+bounded away from him across the lawns.
+
+Monsieur Dupont blinked after him in astonishment.
+
+He was alone again--in a new and even darker part of the endless
+garden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+DESTRUCTION
+
+
+A deep-toned clock in the house struck twelve.
+
+Rain began to fall. A few moments later the financier hurried across the
+lawns with his collar turned up. The danseuse followed him. She seemed a
+disappointed and indignant woman.
+
+"It's almost an insult," she complained overtaking him.
+
+"Noth a penny more," said the financier firmly.
+
+They both turned quickly. Her hand gripped his arm convulsively. Wild
+shouting arose in the darkness, and the sound of someone forcing a
+headlong way through hedge and bush.
+
+The Reverend Percival Delamere was rushing towards the house as if the
+entire penalties of sin were at his heels.
+
+"A corpse! A corpse by the river! Miss Manderson has been murdered!"
+
+The danseuse uttered a terrified cry. The financier shook.
+
+"Murderedth?" he gasped, shrinking back.
+
+The clergyman was shattered by horror.
+
+"By the river ... almost torn to pieces...."
+
+The danseuse screamed loudly. A figure bounded up behind them, and a
+hand seized the clergyman's throat in a savage grip. The furious,
+distorted face of George Copplestone glared down at him. He struggled,
+freeing himself with all his strength.
+
+"Copplestone," he choked, "something dreadful has happened to Miss
+Manderson. I found her by the river ... horribly torn...."
+
+From another direction, Tranter reached them, breathless.
+
+"What is the matter? What has happened?"
+
+The financier clung to him.
+
+"Mith Manderthon ... murderedth."
+
+Tranter shook him off, and stood very still. The agony on his face
+passed unnoticed. As the theatrical manager and Mrs. Astley-Rolfe
+arrived at a run, Copplestone, with a sound like the cry of a raging
+animal, grasped the unhappy clergyman by the arm, and dashed off towards
+the river.
+
+The others followed. They found her lying a few yards from the water's
+edge. The manager struck a match, and they looked down.
+
+The danseuse shrieked, and fainted. Mrs. Astley-Rolfe sank on her knees,
+sobbing, and covered her face with her hands. The financier sickened,
+and turned away, trembling violently.
+
+"God!" Tranter cried--"some one must have stamped on her!"
+
+He bent down. "Thea...." he whispered.
+
+Something like a sob shook him. But the others did not see.
+
+"It must have been a wild beast," shuddered the clergyman.
+
+"It is the work of a madman," said the manager hoarsely. "He has utterly
+destroyed her--as he threatened."
+
+George Copplestone stood without a tremor. As he looked down at the
+broken form all his frenzy disappeared. The distortion of his first fury
+faded from his face, leaving it set in a pallid, lifeless mask. He
+contemplated the dreadful destruction at his feet without a sign of
+horror, or even of pity. He was perfectly steady. Not a quiver escaped
+him. Stooping down, he asked quietly for assistance to carry the body to
+the house.
+
+"Wait a bit," said the manager, looking at him curiously. "She ought not
+to be moved before the police come."
+
+Copplestone straightened himself, and remained silent.
+
+"Let Gluckstein take the women in, and telephone to the Police Station,"
+the manager suggested.
+
+Mrs. Astley-Rolfe raised her bloodless face.
+
+"Yes, yes," she sobbed. "Let me go. It's too horrible. I can't bear it."
+
+Tranter raised her up. The danseuse had recovered consciousness, and was
+crying hysterically. Suddenly the financier startled them in a thin high
+voice, pointing a shaking finger into the darkness.
+
+"Someone ith moving! Out there behind uth! Whoth there? Whoth there?"
+
+They swung round, straining their eyes into the blackness.
+
+"Who's there?" the manager called.
+
+An answering voice reached them. The manager struck another match. On
+the edge of the darkness they saw an enormous figure.
+
+"It's Monsieur Dupont!" Tranter cried.
+
+"My friends," exclaimed Monsieur Dupont, "at last I find you! What is
+the matter?"
+
+Copplestone looked at him steadily.
+
+"The matter," he said evenly, "is that Miss Manderson has been
+murdered."
+
+Monsieur Dupont uttered an extraordinary exclamation. He was instantly
+galvanized into a condition of seething energy. With what was almost a
+snarl, he brushed the financier aside, and reached the white mangled
+form on the ground.
+
+For a tense minute he knelt beside it. The others waited.
+
+"Destroyed," they heard him mutter--"utterly destroyed...."
+
+When he rose, his eyes were full of tears.
+
+"It is terrible. Who was with her last?"
+
+"I was with her less than a quarter of an hour ago," Tranter replied.
+"She said she was going back to the house, and asked me to find Mr.
+Copplestone, and tell him that she was not feeling well."
+
+"Where are your police?" asked Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"Gluckstein is going to take the ladies back to the house, and telephone
+for them," the manager returned.
+
+The financier departed with his charges. The four men remained, facing
+each other over the dead body. Rain was falling heavily.
+
+"Poor girl," said the clergyman huskily.
+
+"That such a brute should be at large," the manager added.
+
+Copplestone's gaze again became rivetted to the ground. He seemed
+unconscious of their presence. He was like a man alone and dazed in a
+strange world.
+
+Then the storm burst over them with all its fury. The rain poured down
+in torrents, the lightning was incessant. It was as if the elements
+themselves, in their rage, were seeking to complete the work of
+destruction.
+
+"We can't leave her out in this--police or no police," the clergyman
+shivered.
+
+Copplestone bent down again. The manager moved to assist, but Tranter
+put him aside, and assisted Copplestone to lift the ghastly burden in
+his arms. Then they picked their way slowly along the winding paths to
+the house.
+
+When they entered the decorated room, Copplestone's strange immobility
+flashed upon him with startling suddenness. Uttering a oath, he placed
+what he had previously been carrying with dull indifference roughly on a
+couch, and hurled himself furiously upon the confusion of decorations,
+tearing and crushing everything into a smashed heap on the floor. So
+overwhelming was his violence that no one dared attempt to stop him. He
+dashed the lights to the ground, and rent the flags with appalling
+ferocity. In a few moments a shattered pile was all that remained of the
+medley of illumination. He stood on the pile and ground his heels into
+it.
+
+Then all the energy was snuffed out of him like the switching off of an
+electric current. The dull heavy cloud descended on him again. He stared
+vacantly at the others, shrugged his shoulders slightly, and turned his
+back on them.
+
+The silence remained unbroken until a loud ringing at the front door
+bell announced the arrival of the police.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+COPPLESTONE
+
+
+Detective-Inspector Fay was an able and successful officer, of
+international reputation, whose achievements had placed a substantial
+price on his head in most countries sufficiently civilized to possess
+their criminal organizations. His bag had included many famous
+law-breakers, and, though now employed in less strenuous directions, he
+was admitted to be one of the most skilful and reliable of Scotland
+Yard's unravelers of mystery. But, experienced as he was, the inspector
+could not suppress his horror and indignation when the mutilated body of
+Christine Manderson was uncovered to him.
+
+"What, in God's name, was there in this garden to-night?" he demanded,
+shuddering.
+
+"A madman," the theatrical manager muttered.
+
+The inspector's glance rested on him for an instant, but passed on. He
+made no further remarks during his examination--but when, concluding it,
+he carefully replaced the covering and turned again to the others, there
+was a concentrated gleam in his eyes and a certain set to his face that
+were known to bode ill to the perpetrators of the deeds that inspired
+them.
+
+"There can scarcely be a whole bone in her body," he declared, regarding
+them all intently. "Her face is smashed to pulp; some of the hair has
+been wrenched from her head; and even the bones of her fingers are
+broken. It is the most brutal and disgusting crime I have had the
+misfortune to meet with in the whole of my thirty years experience."
+
+He gave a brief order to an attendant constable, who moved to the door.
+
+"If you will kindly retire with the constable to the next room," he
+requested, "I will take a separate account from every one. Perhaps Mr.
+Copplestone will give me his information first."
+
+The constable marshalled them into an adjoining room, which the
+danseuse filled with complaints at this prolonged detention. Copplestone
+remained behind. His dullness and immobility had increased almost to a
+stupor.
+
+"She was engaged to marry me," he said, in a slow lifeless tone, "since
+yesterday."
+
+Inspector Fay seated himself at a table, and opened his note-book.
+
+"We fully sympathize with you, Mr. Copplestone," he said quietly, "and I
+am afraid it is poor consolation to promise you that justice shall be
+done on the inhuman criminal, whoever it may be."
+
+"Justice?" Copplestone returned, in the same weary, monotonous voice.
+"Of what use is Justice? Can it call her back--or mend her broken body?"
+
+"Unfortunately, it cannot," the inspector admitted. "But it is all
+humanity can do. Will you answer a few questions, as clearly and briefly
+as possible? The great thing in a case like this is to lose no time at
+the beginning."
+
+Copplestone sat down, and passed an unsteady hand across his forehead.
+
+"Go on," he said dully.
+
+"Where and when did you first meet Miss Manderson?"
+
+"She came over from New York two months ago, to play in a new piece at
+the Imperial. I have an interest in the theater, and saw her there for
+the first time about a week after her arrival."
+
+"Do you know anything of her life and associations in America?"
+
+"Very little. She was not communicative. She only told me a few of her
+theatrical experiences."
+
+"So far as you know," the inspector proceeded, "had she an enemy in this
+country--or was there any one who could have wished to harm her?"
+
+"Apparently there was," Copplestone returned. "I did not know it until
+to-night."
+
+Mechanically, in the manner of one repeating a lesson, he described the
+visit of the young millionaire, and his threat against Christine
+Manderson.
+
+"And the name of this young man?" the inspector asked, bending over his
+note-book.
+
+"James Layton."
+
+Inspector Fay looked up sharply.
+
+"Layton? The man they call the Mad Philanthropist?"
+
+"I don't know," Copplestone replied wearily. "He may be."
+
+"James Layton is very well known to us," the inspector said slowly. "He
+is a charitable fanatic, who does more good in the East End than all the
+Royally Patronized Associations put together. But how in the world did
+he come to know Miss Manderson?"
+
+"She never mentioned him to me," Copplestone stated. "I had not heard of
+him until he burst into this house to-night."
+
+The inspector made several notes.
+
+"He has educated and trained as his assistant a particularly wild
+specimen of a coster girl, who is madly in love with him...." He closed
+his note-book with a snap. "You say the words he used were that rather
+than allow Miss Manderson to become engaged to you, he would tear her to
+pieces with his own hands, and utterly destroy her?"
+
+"So they told me," Copplestone answered heavily. "I was not in the
+room. I refused to see him."
+
+"And he left quite quietly?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did Miss Manderson show any particular fear of the threat?"
+
+"She was very much upset, and fainted when she came into the room. I
+should have sent for the police at once, but she begged me not to, and
+insisted that he didn't mean what he said. I wish to God I hadn't
+listened."
+
+"So there was no doubt that she knew him?"
+
+"No. She certainly knew him."
+
+"Afterwards, you say, he was seen in the garden when you were all out
+after dinner?" the inspector continued.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Who saw him?"
+
+"Mr. Bolsover, the theatrical manager, found him sneaking about the
+house, and chased him out in the direction of the crime."
+
+"Did any one see him, besides Mr. Bolsover?"
+
+"Apparently not. He says he called to me--but I had gone into the house
+to fill my cigarette-case, and did not hear him."
+
+"He escaped from Mr. Bolsover, and was not seen again?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Was there any one else," the inspector asked slowly, "who might, for
+any reason, have entertained unfriendly feelings towards Miss
+Manderson?"
+
+Copplestone's glance sharpened a little under the question.
+
+"I suppose there was," he admitted, with some reluctance.
+
+"Who was it?"
+
+Copplestone paused, frowning.
+
+"Please do not hesitate," the inspector pressed firmly. "We must know
+everything."
+
+"Perhaps," the tired voice confessed, "it wasn't altogether playing the
+game to announce my engagement so unexpectedly to--to----"
+
+"Well?" the inspector insisted--"to whom?"
+
+"To Phyllis Astley-Rolfe."
+
+There was silence for a moment. The inspector waited quietly. With an
+effort, Copplestone continued.
+
+"I am afraid it was rather cruel. She'd annoyed me lately, and I put up
+some decorations, and announced the news in a dramatic way ... to mock
+her." He broke off, staring at the remains of the decorations on the
+floor. "But I tore them down. I shall never decorate again...."
+
+The inspector watched him closely. He seemed to be on the verge of
+sleep.
+
+"Then Mrs. Astley-Rolfe had reason to be jealous of Miss Manderson?" the
+inspector demanded briskly.
+
+"I suppose ... she had."
+
+"Good reason?"
+
+"Possibly."
+
+"Had you given her definite cause to believe that you intended to ask
+her to marry you?"
+
+"Perhaps so. At any rate ... I had not given her definite cause to
+believe that I didn't."
+
+His voice sank to a whisper. He leant back limply in his chair.
+
+"There is only one more question I need trouble you with at present,"
+the inspector said. "Who was the last person to be with Miss Manderson
+before the crime was discovered?"
+
+Copplestone scarcely opened his eyes.
+
+"Mr. Tranter was with her near the river. She left him to go back to the
+house, and asked him to find me, and tell me she was not well."
+
+"Did he find you?"
+
+"Yes. And I at once went into the house."
+
+"Where were you when Mr. Tranter found you?"
+
+"I was crossing the second lawn--towards the tennis courts."
+
+The inspector was busy with his note-book.
+
+"Were you alone?"
+
+"Yes. I had just come out of the house after filling my cigarette-case,
+as I told you. I was looking for Miss Manderson, and wondering where she
+had got to. If only I had gone in the right direction ... I might have
+been in time...."
+
+"After Mr. Tranter had spoken to you, you say you went into the house at
+once?"
+
+"At once. I waited nearly ten minutes for her, and came out again just
+as Mr. Delamere gave the alarm. I'm afraid I handled him roughly...."
+
+The words trailed off into silence. A convulsive shudder passed through
+him.
+
+"Then we all ran off ... to where she lay," his voice shook. "Something
+seemed to give way ... here...." he pressed his hands to his head. "Is
+there ... anything more ... you want to know?"
+
+The inspector rose.
+
+"Only one thing. Will you kindly give me the names of your guests in the
+other room?"
+
+Copplestone complied slowly. Inspector Fay wrote the names down.
+
+"Thank you," he said, laying down his book. "I am sorry to have had to
+give you the pain of answering so many questions. I am afraid you are
+quite overwrought. I should advise you to try to get some sleep."
+
+"Sleep," Copplestone murmured, rising weakly from his chair. "Sleep....
+Good God."
+
+The inspector himself made a gesture of fatigue.
+
+"I only got back from another heavy case as your message came in," he
+apologized, stifling a yawn. "Tobacco is the only thing that keeps me
+going. Could you give me a cigarette?"
+
+Without answering, Copplestone languidly produced an elaborately jeweled
+gold cigarette-case, and handed it to the inspector.
+
+There were two cigarettes in it.
+
+Inspector Fay took one, with a perfectly impassive countenance, and
+returned the case. Copplestone replaced it in his pocket.
+
+"Please give whatever instructions you like to my man," he said
+dully--"and let me know if you want me. I shall be in my room."
+
+He turned, and moved away with slow heavy steps, disappearing between
+the same curtains through which, a few hours before, he had presented
+Christine Manderson to his guests.
+
+The inspector stood looking after him, fingering the cigarette
+thoughtfully, a very curious expression on his face. He showed no
+further signs of fatigue.
+
+"I wonder why you lied to me," he muttered--and laid the cigarette on
+the table.
+
+He glanced down the list of names, and went to the door. The constable
+had mounted guard over his prisoners with extraordinary dignity. The
+voice of the danseuse was still raised in lamentation.
+
+"Monsieur Dupont," the inspector called.
+
+The constable passed on the summons--and Monsieur Dupont instantly
+obeyed it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE TRAIL OF CORPSES
+
+
+The inspector closed the door behind him. "What has brought you back
+into the arena?" he asked quietly.
+
+"A riddle," the Frenchman answered, in an equally low tone.
+
+"It must have been something pretty big to have tempted _you_," the
+inspector remarked, coming closer to him.
+
+"It was," Monsieur Dupont admitted.
+
+The other glanced cautiously towards the curtains at the far end of the
+room.
+
+"Why are you here--in this house?" he demanded softly.
+
+"By chance," Monsieur Dupont replied.
+
+"Did you know Copplestone before?"
+
+"I did not. I had never seen him. I came with my friend, Tranter."
+
+"You were here all the evening?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Anything to tell me?" the inspector asked, looking at him intently.
+
+Monsieur Dupont smiled.
+
+"Only, my friend, that I imagine you will find it an interesting and
+somewhat unusual case."
+
+"That's not enough--from you," the inspector retorted.
+
+"If I may be permitted to advise--it is a case in which you would do
+well to ignore the obvious."
+
+"I want more than that," insisted the inspector.
+
+The huge Frenchman remained silent.
+
+"You are not a man to waste your time on this kind of entertainment,"
+said the inspector slowly. "Is there any connection between the crime
+to-night, and your so-called 'riddle'?"
+
+"The connection of death," said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+There was something of awe in his voice and manner.
+
+"For two years," he said, "I have been following in the track of
+something, which, in the words of our great Dumas--'must have passed
+this way, for I see a corpse.'"
+
+"That quotation referred to a woman," said the inspector quickly.
+
+"From me," returned Monsieur Dupont evenly, "it is sexless--at present."
+
+The inspector frowned.
+
+"Come," he said impatiently--"in what way are you mixed up in this?"
+
+"In the way of my quotation--a corpse. I started my quest two years
+ago--over a dead body, torn and mutilated. At the end of the first year
+I found another dead body, torn and mutilated. I follow on and on--from
+one point to the next point--often with no more than the instinct of the
+hunter to guide me. And here, at the end of the second year, there is
+yet another dead body, torn and mutilated. It is horrible. I sicken. I
+wish I had remained in my retirement."
+
+"What were the two previous crimes?" the inspector asked.
+
+"Two women--two very beautiful women."
+
+Inspector Fay started, staring at him.
+
+"Miss Manderson was a beautiful woman," he said slowly.
+
+Monsieur Dupont's enormous head nodded several times.
+
+"She was," he agreed deliberately. "The most beautiful of the three."
+
+There was silence for a moment. Then the inspector laid a hand on the
+Frenchman's shoulder.
+
+"We have worked together a good many times in the past," he said, with
+more cordiality than before.
+
+"We have, indeed," Monsieur Dupont responded pleasantly.
+
+"And though your methods were always fanciful compared with our's, I
+know enough of your powers to ask you a simple, straight question."
+
+"I am at your service," said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"You were here on the spot when this crime was committed. Who, or what,
+smashed the body of that unfortunate woman to pulp in this garden
+to-night?"
+
+Monsieur Dupont's gigantic form seemed to acquire a new, strange
+dignity--a solemnity--as though he were in the presence, or speaking, of
+something before which humanity must bow its head.
+
+"A Destroyer," he whispered. "A Destroyer who strikes with neither fear
+nor compunction--and passes on without pity or remorse. A Destroyer who
+is as old as the sins of men, and as young as the futures of their
+children."
+
+"You always spoke in parables," the inspector exclaimed irritably. "What
+do you mean?"
+
+"I mean," said Monsieur Dupont, "that I believe the thing which passed
+through this crooked garden to-night, leaving death so horribly behind
+it, is the same thing that has already passed on twice before me, and
+left the same death in its wake. I cannot tell you any more. Let us both
+go our own ways, as we have done so many times before. I do not wish to
+take any credit in this affair. If I am able to prove its connection
+with my own case, and to solve it, I shall hand the whole matter over to
+you."
+
+The inspector appeared somewhat relieved.
+
+Monsieur Dupont's eyes were fixed on an unframed photograph of Christine
+Manderson, which stood on a small cabinet in front of him.
+
+"Please compound a felony," he said softly--and slipped it into his
+pocket.
+
+"Where are you to be found?" the inspector asked.
+
+"At the Hotel Savoy." He yawned. "I am very sleepy," he complained. "If
+you will finish with Mr. Tranter as soon as possible, he will take me
+back in his car."
+
+He turned to the door.
+
+"Stay," said the inspector.
+
+He stopped.
+
+"You have not lost your old fantastic kink," said the inspector, with a
+faint smile. "The last time we ran together you were five minutes ahead
+of me at the finish. This time--we will see who is the first to pass the
+post."
+
+"My friend," said Monsieur Dupont, "I will do my best to give you a good
+race."
+
+He passed out of the room. The inspector followed him to the door, and
+called for Mr. Tranter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+TRANTER
+
+
+"Mr. Tranter," said the inspector, "I understand that you were the last
+person to see Miss Manderson alive."
+
+"I believe I was," Tranter replied.
+
+The inspector sat down again at the table, and re-opened his note-book.
+
+"Will you kindly tell me exactly what happened from the time you went
+out into the garden after dinner, and the time you left Miss Manderson?"
+
+"We strolled away from the house together, in the direction of the
+river. The events of the evening seemed to have upset her very much, and
+she was nervous of the storm. We walked about, I should think, for
+nearly half an hour, until the lightning became very vivid----"
+
+"Did you see or hear any one in that part of the garden?" the inspector
+interrupted.
+
+"No. Most of the others went to the lawns, in the opposite direction.
+When the lightning became very vivid, Miss Manderson said she would
+return to the house, and asked me to go down to the lawns to find Mr.
+Copplestone, and send him in to her. She was obviously unwell."
+
+"You will be able to show me the place where you left her?"
+
+"I think so. It was very dark--but I remember that we had just passed
+under a number of rose-arches across the path."
+
+"It was, I presume, further away from the house than the spot where the
+body was found?"
+
+"The body was found close to the river, about half-way between the house
+and the place where I left her," Tranter replied.
+
+"So we may surmise that she had got about half-way to the house before
+the attack was made. How far would that actually be?"
+
+"Along those winding paths," Tranter calculated, "I should say roughly
+about a hundred and fifty yards."
+
+"Did she start to walk to the house immediately you left her?"
+
+"Yes. She started in that direction as I started in the other."
+
+"Then," mused the inspector, "she must have met the criminal, whoever it
+was, at the most within three minutes of leaving you?"
+
+"Presumably she must," Tranter agreed.
+
+"And was that," pursued the inspector, "about the spot where she might
+have met the young man, Layton, who was, it appears, being chased out
+towards the river by Mr. Bolsover?"
+
+"It might be. But I do not know anything about the chase. If I had known
+that Layton was in the garden, I should not have left her."
+
+"Where did you find Mr. Copplestone?"
+
+"On the lawns."
+
+"How long after you parted from her?"
+
+"Only a few minutes. Four or five."
+
+"Was he alone?"
+
+"Yes. He was looking for Miss Manderson himself. He went into the house
+at once."
+
+Silence followed while the inspector added to his notes.
+
+"Mr. Tranter," he said quietly--and his eyes rested for a moment on the
+cigarette on the table, "I have only one suggestion to make. You will
+understand that it is only a suggestion, but I want to be perfectly
+clear. Considering that this was the evening of Miss Manderson's
+engagement to Mr. Copplestone, might she not have been expected to have
+strolled away from the house, and to have spent that following
+half-hour, with him rather than with you?"
+
+Tranter hesitated.
+
+"I suppose she might," he admitted.
+
+The inspector was looking at him sharply.
+
+"It is a small point," he said smoothly. "Perhaps you can clear it up."
+
+There was another pause. Tranter was plainly embarrassed.
+
+"Inspector," he said at last, "I must, of course, tell you
+everything--but I should be obliged if for obvious reasons, you will
+keep as much as possible to yourself."
+
+"That, sir," returned the inspector firmly, "you must leave to my
+discretion."
+
+"I am content to do so," Tranter said. "The truth is--I had met Miss
+Manderson before."
+
+"Ah!" said the inspector softly.
+
+"I knew her first nearly six years ago, in Chicago. Her real name was
+not Christine Manderson."
+
+The inspector's eyes began to brighten. He turned to a fresh page in his
+note-book.
+
+"She took that name, she told me to-night, when she went on the stage in
+New York. She was really Thea Colville."
+
+Inspector Fay started.
+
+"Thea Colville? The Chicago adventuress?"
+
+"I believe some people called her that," Tranter returned shortly.
+
+"The woman who ruined Michael Cranbourne, son of Joshua Cranbourne, the
+Nitrate King?"
+
+"She had finished with Cranbourne before I knew her," Tranter replied.
+"He was a scoundrel. Whatever happened, she certainly could not be
+blamed."
+
+The inspector was making rapid notes.
+
+"She was not so wild as she was painted," Tranter continued. "Women with
+such beauty as hers have a thousand temptations. The sins of a
+beautiful woman are always many degrees blacker than the sins of a plain
+one. We became very intimate--and I am afraid I allowed her to expect
+more from me than I actually intended. I was called back to England
+unexpectedly, and heard nothing more of her until Mr. Copplestone
+brought her into this room to-night."
+
+He stopped. Emotion had crept into his voice.
+
+"During the most part of your conversation with her, were you walking
+about, or standing still?"
+
+"Standing still."
+
+"You have said that you did not hear any one moving about near you while
+you were speaking to her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Were there trees or hedges about, where some one might have hidden to
+overhear you?"
+
+"There was a hedge," Tranter replied. "But I did not notice the spot
+particularly."
+
+"You will be able to point it out to me to-morrow."
+
+"I think so. As I say, I did not particularly notice it--and the
+possibility of being overheard certainly did not occur to me. I am
+afraid at that moment caution was hardly a consideration with either of
+us."
+
+The inspector closed his note-book.
+
+"Unless circumstances compel me to do otherwise," he promised, "I will
+keep your story to myself. Will you tell me whether the announcement of
+Mr. Copplestone's engagement to Miss Manderson produced a noticeable
+effect on any particular person in the room? Please do not hesitate to
+answer."
+
+"It certainly appeared to be unwelcome news to Mrs. Astley-Rolfe,"
+Tranter replied, "but she very quickly recovered herself."
+
+"It seemed, in fact, to be a considerable shock to her?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Were you in the room when this young man, James Layton, burst in?"
+
+"I was. Monsieur Dupont and I had just arrived."
+
+"It is true that he said that rather than allow Miss Manderson to
+become engaged to Mr. Copplestone, he would tear her to pieces with his
+own hands?"
+
+"Those were his exact words."
+
+The inspector rose.
+
+"I understand that you brought Monsieur Dupont here with you as your
+friend?" he remarked casually.
+
+"Yes. He only arrived in London last night."
+
+"Do you know him well?"
+
+"Fairly," Tranter replied. "I am under a great obligation to him. He
+saved my life in Paris, a year ago."
+
+"Has he mentioned anything of the business that has brought him to this
+country?" the inspector asked, moving to the door.
+
+"Only that he had come to solve a strange riddle."
+
+A faint, rather grim smile passed over the inspector's face.
+
+"I am obliged to you, sir," he said, opening the door. "If you will
+kindly return here at ten o'clock in the morning--and bring Monsieur
+Dupont with you--I shall ask you to show me the various places you have
+referred to in the garden."
+
+When Tranter returned to the waiting-room, he found Monsieur Dupont
+asleep in an armchair. The room was very quiet. The danseuse had
+subsided into an interim condition of mute tension. Mrs. Astley-Rolfe
+was deathly white, but perfectly composed. The men made occasional
+remarks to each other.
+
+"Mrs. Astley-Rolfe," the inspector called.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+MRS. ASTLEY-ROLFE
+
+
+"Madam," said the inspector, placing a chair for her, "I need only
+trouble you with one or two questions. You will understand that it is
+necessary for me to account for each member of this party, so that I may
+know which of them can, or cannot, assist me in my investigations."
+
+She sat down with a weary movement. Her hands trembled slightly.
+
+"It is very dreadful," she shuddered. "Such a frightful crime is
+inconceivable. Who could have hated the poor girl so dreadfully?"
+
+"That remains to be discovered," the inspector returned quietly. "I have
+no doubt we shall succeed in clearing it up."
+
+"I hope you will," she said fervently. "Please ask me any questions you
+like."
+
+The inspector kept his eyes fixed on his note-book.
+
+"You went into the garden with the others after dinner?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Will you please tell me with whom, and in what part of the garden, you
+passed the time before the crime was discovered?"
+
+"I was alone," she said slowly.
+
+"The whole time?"
+
+"Yes. I was not feeling very well, and did not want the trouble of
+talking. I walked away by myself."
+
+"You know the way about the garden quite well?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"In what direction did you walk?"
+
+"To the croquet lawn."
+
+"Did you see anything of the others?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Or hear any voices?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nothing until the alarm was given?"
+
+"Nothing. It was an isolated part of the garden. When I heard Mr.
+Delamere shouting, I ran back to the house, and found them on the
+lawn."
+
+The inspector shot a keen glance at her.
+
+"Did you know Miss Manderson well?"
+
+"I had only met her three or four times."
+
+"I suppose--being one of the most beautiful women on the American stage,
+and about to appear for the first time in London--you heard her a good
+deal talked about?"
+
+"Yes." Her voice was just perceptibly harder. "People were taking great
+interest in her."
+
+"Did you hear her private affairs, and mode of life, discussed at any
+time?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Or the name of James Layton, the millionaire philanthropist, mentioned
+in conjunction with her's?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Thank you, madam. I need not trouble you any further. Will you kindly
+leave me your address, in case I should have to ask you for any more
+information?"
+
+He wrote the address down, and bowed her out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE DANSEUSE
+
+
+"Madame Krashoff," summoned the inspector.
+
+The danseuse was in a condition of the utmost distress.
+
+"_Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!_" she wept.
+
+"Please calm yourself, madame," the inspector requested patiently.
+
+"I ken nothin' o' the creeme!" she sobbed thoughtlessly.
+
+"I am sure of that," he declared gravely. "I merely wish to establish
+the movements of every one here. With whom did you pass the time after
+you went out into the garden until the alarm was given?"
+
+"Wi' M'soo Gluckstein," she whimpered.
+
+"All the time?"
+
+"N-no."
+
+"How much of the time?"
+
+She became more collected.
+
+"He said to me something that made me angry," she replied, with a touch
+of viciousness. "I walk away from him. Then it rain, and I overtook him
+as I go back to the house."
+
+"How long were you away from him?" the inspector asked.
+
+"_Ma foi_, I cannot tell. Maybe ten minutes."
+
+"Did you see any one else?"
+
+"No."
+
+"In what part of the garden were you when you left him?"
+
+"Behind the tennis courts."
+
+"That is some way from the river?"
+
+"Yes, yes--ver' far away."
+
+"Thank you, madame."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+MR. GLUCKSTEIN
+
+
+The financier was extremely agitated, and tried to shake hands with the
+inspector.
+
+"Mr. Gluckstein, I understand from Madame Krashoff that you were with
+her in the garden for the greater part of the time before the crime was
+discovered."
+
+"I wath," the financier quivered--"indeed I wath, inthpector."
+
+"Then she left you for about ten minutes?"
+
+"Not tho much ath ten minutes," corrected the financier hastily.
+
+"What did you do after she left you?"
+
+"I stayed vere I vath--until the rain commenthed."
+
+"Did you see any one else?"
+
+"No one at allth."
+
+"Thank you," said the inspector. "Please leave me your address, in case
+I should want to ask you any further questions."
+
+The financier produced a card with trembling fingers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE CLERGYMAN
+
+
+"Mr. Delamere," said the inspector, "you discovered the body?"
+
+"I did," replied the clergyman, with a shiver.
+
+"Were you alone when you found it?"
+
+"Yes. I had been walking with Mr. Bolsover for about quarter of an hour.
+Then he turned back to find some of the others, and I strolled on to the
+river."
+
+"Did you meet any one else?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You saw nothing of this young man, Layton, who was chased towards the
+river by Mr. Bolsover?"
+
+"Nothing whatever."
+
+"No sounds of a struggle?"
+
+"No. I heard nothing."
+
+"Was the body lying in your path?"
+
+"No. Some distance aside. I saw something white on the ground in one of
+the lightning flashes, and went to see what it was."
+
+"I shall have to ask you to return here at ten o'clock, to show me the
+exact spot."
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Delamere."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+MR. BOLSOVER
+
+
+"My God!" exclaimed the manager, "what an appalling business!"
+
+"It is," the inspector agreed shortly.
+
+"She was to have appeared at my theater, too," said the manager
+ruefully.
+
+"I understand that you found Layton sneaking about the house?"
+
+"Yes. I first strolled out with Mr. Delamere. Then I left him, and went
+back to see where the others had got to, and saw Layton creeping round
+the side of the house towards the open drawing-room windows. He heard my
+footsteps on the path, and bolted."
+
+"To the river?"
+
+"Yes. I shouted for Mr. Copplestone, but there was no answer--so I
+followed him."
+
+"You are quite certain it was Layton?"
+
+"Perfectly. I saw his face in the light of the windows, and he was
+wearing the peculiar kind of slouch hat he had carried when he came into
+the room."
+
+"Apparently no one saw him in the garden except yourself."
+
+"Unfortunately not. I met the Frenchman, Monsieur Dupont, a little way
+from the river--but he had not seen him."
+
+"It was a pity you did not manage to catch him," the inspector remarked.
+
+"Confound it, yes! But it was easy to get away in such a garden as this.
+There wasn't a chance of finding him."
+
+"What did you do, after meeting Monsieur Dupont?"
+
+"We went on to the river together. I thought I saw a movement among the
+trees when the lightning lit them up--but there was nothing. I walked
+round about there for a few minutes, and then went back to warn
+Copplestone."
+
+"Leaving Monsieur Dupont by the river?"
+
+"Yes. Before I reached the house, I heard Mr. Delamere shouting the
+alarm."
+
+"Thank you," said the inspector, closing his note-book. "I am afraid I
+shall have to trouble you to come here at ten o'clock and show me
+certain places in the garden."
+
+"I am entirely at your disposal," said the manager.
+
+He went out. The inspector sat down at the table, and remained perfectly
+still for half an hour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE TRINITY OF DEATH
+
+
+In Tranter's car, its owner and Monsieur Dupont started, at half-past
+one, on their return from the crooked house.
+
+The storm had passed, and the air was fresh and cool. It was possibly
+the atmospheric clearance which accounted for the fact, that, however,
+fatigued he had been, or appeared to be, at the end of his conversation
+with the inspector, Monsieur Dupont was now particularly wide-awake and
+alert.
+
+"_Dieu!_" he cried, "what a terrible crime! Almost to tear that woman to
+pieces--to crush her--to rend her! And what a woman! _Ma foi_, what a
+woman!"
+
+There was a pause. Monsieur Dupont accepted and lit a cigar from
+Tranter's case.
+
+"My friend," he said quietly, "I wish to be quite fair to you."
+
+"Fair to me?" Tranter echoed, surprised.
+
+"Something happened to-night which you doubtless believe to be unknown
+to every one except yourself."
+
+Tranter turned to him quickly.
+
+"I have not the habit," Monsieur Dupont continued, "of listening to
+private conversations between other people. It is only on very rare
+occasions that I have done so. I did so to-night."
+
+"What do you mean?" Tranter exclaimed.
+
+"In that horrible garden, before the crime was committed," pursued
+Monsieur Dupont evenly, "I lost my way. Such a garden must have been
+especially designed to cause innocent people to lose their way. I
+wandered about. How I wandered!"
+
+"What did you overhear?" asked Tranter, in a strained voice.
+
+"A conversation--between that unfortunate Mademoiselle Manderson, and
+yourself."
+
+"You heard it?" Tranter cried sharply.
+
+"I heard it," admitted Monsieur Dupont. "I heard a great part of it. I
+believe nearly all. I should not have done so. Understand, I make you
+all my apologies. It was improper to listen. But the storm, the
+surroundings, the scene itself, excited me. I listened."
+
+Tranter remained silent.
+
+"I continued to listen, until Mr. Bolsover found me. He was following
+that young man, Layton. I went with him to the river."
+
+Tranter was still silent--staring straight in front of him with fixed
+eyes.
+
+"You saw a picture of weakness," he said, at last. "I am not proud of
+it. I should much prefer to be able to think that no one had seen it. I
+gave Inspector Fay an account of the whole scene, and of my previous
+acquaintance with Christine Manderson. He promised to keep it to
+himself. I hope you will do the same."
+
+"I shall indeed," the other assured him.
+
+"I am only human," Tranter went on, with an effort--"more human than I
+thought. I resisted her once by taking flight. I couldn't resist her
+to-night."
+
+He mastered his emotion.
+
+"From the moment she first came into the room I was helpless. I knew
+what would come of it--but I couldn't tear myself away. It was the
+whole spell--with all the new strength of memories. I knew she intended
+to find me alone in the garden." He paused. "I had to let her."
+
+"Human nature," said Monsieur Dupont consolingly, "is human nature."
+
+Silence followed. Monsieur Dupont thoughtfully puffed at his cigar.
+
+"A crooked house in a crooked garden," he said, at length, "is a
+combination from which all honest people should shrink. Those who
+frequent it must be, for the most part, crooked people. They were, for
+the most part, crooked people to-night."
+
+"It was a crooked evening from beginning to end," Tranter said wearily.
+
+"It was a wicked evening," Monsieur Dupont declared--"full of wicked
+thoughts. A crime was the natural and logical end to such an evening. It
+would have been surprising if there had not been one."
+
+He smoked vigorously for some moments--then made an expansive gesture.
+
+"Are there not," he demanded, "houses and gardens and thunder-storms
+that awaken cruel and shameful impulses that would never be aroused in
+other houses and other gardens and other storms? Does not the influence
+of good and noble decorations uplift us to joy and patriotism? Why
+should not the influence of mean and sinful decorations degrade us to
+murder and destruction? The flags that fly over the innocent revels of
+children are innocent flags, and inspire kind feelings and happiness.
+But remove the same flags to a Bull-ring, and they become evil flags,
+inspiring lust for the blood and slaughter of helpless creatures--the
+basest of human instincts."
+
+"You are fantastic," said Tranter, with a gloomy smile.
+
+"In fantasy," returned Monsieur Dupont, "are the world's greatest
+truths."
+
+He carefully deposed the ash from his cigar.
+
+"Will you please tell me," he went on, "something more about our strange
+host to-night--the man who chooses so much crookedness to live in, when
+there is straightness to be had for the same price?"
+
+"I know very little more about him than I told you last night," Tranter
+replied. "He is wealthy, and very eccentric. He seems to pass his life
+in a perpetual effort to be different from other people."
+
+"He is more than eccentric," Monsieur Dupont stated. "He is mad. In a
+few years he will be a dangerous lunatic. And the Good God only knows
+what he may make of himself in the meantime."
+
+"There are plenty of strange stories about him," Tranter said. "But I
+have always looked on them as greatly exaggerated."
+
+"Probably," Monsieur Dupont remarked, "they were true."
+
+"Whatever his reputation may be, women seem very ready to put up with
+his eccentricities, or pander to them, in return, no doubt, for big
+inroads into his banking account. He is very free with his money where
+the opposite sex is concerned."
+
+"It is always so," said Monsieur Dupont, "with such men."
+
+"He mixes chiefly in theatrical and bohemian circles--and often by no
+means the most desirable of those. The better people look askance on
+him--but he is supremely indifferent to the opinions of others, and to
+all the conventions. Whatever he takes it into his head to do he does,
+quite regardless of the approval or disapproval of other people. He is
+certainly not a man I would introduce to any woman who possessed even
+the smallest degree of physical attraction. He is supposed to be quite
+unscrupulous in the attainment of his objects."
+
+"Most of us are," said Monsieur Dupont. "But we dislike to admit it."
+
+He looked steadily out of the window for a moment.
+
+"I wonder," he said, turning back, "what he does with the rest of that
+house."
+
+"The rest of the house?" Tranter repeated.
+
+"It is very large," said Monsieur Dupont. "It is large enough for twenty
+men."
+
+"In this country," Tranter smiled, "there is no law against one man
+living in a house large enough for twenty, if he chooses."
+
+"When only a small part of a house is used for ordinary purposes,"
+remarked Monsieur Dupont, "the remainder is often used for extraordinary
+ones."
+
+"You know as much of the house as I do," Tranter returned.
+
+"As a practical man," Monsieur Dupont continued, "you may smile when I
+speak of such a thing as 'psychic intuition.' But you may smile, and
+again you may smile. I possess that intuition strongly. It has been of
+great use to me. The moment I entered that house to-night, I knew it was
+a house of sin. I knew there were hidden things in it--things that were
+not for honest eyes to see. I do not say--at present--that they have any
+connection with the crime. But they are there."
+
+"I do not smile at such instincts," Tranter said. "I quite admit that
+there is a strange, uncanny atmosphere about the place. And if there are
+secrets in it, I am equally ready to admit that they are probably bad
+ones."
+
+"They are bad ones," declared Monsieur Dupont. "They could not be
+anything but bad ones. When that excellent Inspector Fay has solved the
+mystery of the garden, he would be wise to turn his attention to the
+secrets of the house."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Did Layton kill her?" Tranter asked suddenly.
+
+Monsieur Dupont shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"The evidence is against him," he replied judicially. "Your Coroner's
+jury will find him guilty, and the police will not look further. They
+will build up a strong case. They will doubtless find that he was
+cruelly treated by that poor girl, and was furious to know that she was
+engaged to another man. He threatened, in the presence of many
+witnesses, to kill her in a horrible way. He was seen later in the
+garden, and afterwards she was found--killed in exactly that horrible
+way. Who would not say that in his rage and jealousy he had fulfilled
+his threat? Every one will be perfectly satisfied. It is enough for
+justice if the most likely person is hanged. And, so far, he is not only
+the most likely, but the only, person."
+
+"Perhaps so," Tranter acknowledged. "But--he didn't look like a
+murderer. He looked a good fellow. Is there no other alternative?"
+
+"There _is_ an alternative," said Monsieur Dupont steadily.
+
+"There is?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Monsieur Dupont smoked composedly for a minute.
+
+"My friend," he said--"are you inclined for an adventure?"
+
+"I am rather busy," Tranter replied. "What is it?"
+
+"Suppose ... I were to declare to you positively that James Layton is
+innocent--that he did not commit that crime in the crooked garden
+to-night--and that I do not intend to allow him to be hanged for a crime
+that he did not commit--would you give a certain amount of your time to
+help me to save him?"
+
+"Certainly. I will do anything I can."
+
+"Then," said Monsieur Dupont, "I answer the question you asked a moment
+ago. He did _not_ kill her."
+
+"Who did?" Tranter demanded, looking at him in astonishment.
+
+"That is another matter. It is one thing to say who did not--but quite
+another to say who did. That is for us to discover. There will be very
+little time. I think I can promise you excitement. Possibly there will
+be danger. You do not object to that?"
+
+"I have faced a certain amount of danger in my time," Tranter replied.
+
+"Good," said Monsieur Dupont. "Then we will set ourselves--quite apart
+from the efforts of our friend, Inspector Fay--to solve the mystery of
+the crooked garden. And we will not speak a word to any one of our
+intention."
+
+"You seem to have some very definite ideas on the subject already,"
+Tranter observed.
+
+"Ah, no," demurred Monsieur Dupont--"do not credit me with the
+superhuman. We have a very difficult task before us."
+
+"But what of your other object," Tranter inquired--"the 'riddle' that
+you came over to solve?"
+
+"It may be," Monsieur Dupont replied carefully, "that there is some
+connection between my riddle and this dreadful affair to-night. At
+present I cannot say. Only events themselves can prove that.
+But that very possibility compels me to take up a peculiar
+attitude--unfortunately a most necessary one. If you will assist me--as
+I beg you to do--you must be content to follow my guidance and
+instructions without question, and remain, as you call it, in the dark,
+until the time comes for all to be told."
+
+"You are certainly the most mysterious person I have ever met!" Tranter
+exclaimed.
+
+"It is not that I have the smallest doubt of yourself or your
+discretion," Monsieur Dupont hastened to explain. "On the contrary. It
+is simply that my position at this moment is an extraordinary one, and I
+cannot do what would seem to be the natural and ordinary thing. Will you
+help me on that understanding?"
+
+"I will help you in any case," Tranter agreed, smiling slightly at his
+companion's intense seriousness. "What is to be my first task?"
+
+"Your first task," said Monsieur Dupont gravely, "is to deposit me at
+the Hotel Savoy, and call for me later on your way back to Richmond."
+
+Tranter spoke some instructions through the speaking-tube to the
+chauffeur. When he turned again, Monsieur Dupont was asleep. He did not
+open his eyes again until the car stopped at the Savoy.
+
+Entering the hotel, he ascended to his room. In it, he mixed himself a
+whisky-and-soda, sat down at the writing-table, and unlocked a
+despatch-box.
+
+He took out two photographs--each of a remarkably beautiful woman.
+
+Under one was neatly written--
+
+_Colette d'Orsel. Nice. August 1900._
+
+And under the other--
+
+_Margaret McCall. Boston. Dec. 1910._
+
+From his pocket he took the photograph which the inspector had allowed
+him to appropriate, and laid it beside the others. The face that smiled
+up at him was the most beautiful of the three.
+
+He dipped a pen in the ink, and wrote under it, in the same neat
+handwriting--
+
+_Christine Manderson. London. July 1919._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+WITHOUT TRACE
+
+
+At ten o'clock, Tranter and Monsieur Dupont stood with Inspector Fay in
+the garden. The Rev. Percival Delamere joined them a few minutes later,
+and the theatrical manager arrived shortly afterwards. Finally, still in
+the same half-dazed condition, George Copplestone emerged from the
+house.
+
+"_Mon Dieu_," Monsieur Dupont whispered quickly. "Look at that man!"
+
+His face was white, with a sickly pasty whiteness. In the few hours that
+had passed he seemed to have wasted to a startling gauntness. His cheeks
+were drawn, his sunken eyes dull and filmy. He moved slowly and heavily,
+as if compelling himself under an utter weariness.
+
+"What do you want first?" he asked the inspector curtly.
+
+"First," replied Inspector Fay, "I want to be shown the spot where the
+body was found."
+
+Copplestone led the way across the lawns. In the daylight Monsieur
+Dupont eagerly followed the maze of winding paths and hedges that had
+imprisoned him so helplessly in the darkness. It was a veritable
+looking-glass garden. The end of every path mocked its beginning. To
+reach an object it was necessary to walk away from it. To arrive at the
+bank of the river, Copplestone conducted his followers in the opposite
+direction.
+
+"This garden might have been designed for a crime," the inspector
+remarked, as they turned yet another corner.
+
+"It was," Monsieur Dupont agreed from the rear. "It was designed for the
+most abominable crime of making men and women go backwards instead of
+forwards. And last night it attained the height of its purpose."
+
+For an instant Copplestone glanced back at him, a quickening in his dull
+eyes. A moment afterwards they turned a final corner, and emerged on to
+the broad lawns, sloping down to the edge of the river.
+
+Copplestone halted, and looked round, measuring distances. Then he moved
+on, keeping close to the trees.
+
+"About here, I think," said the clergyman, pausing.
+
+Copplestone stopped a few paces ahead.
+
+"It was very dark," he said, looking at the ground. "I don't think I
+knew exactly where we were. As near as I can judge, it was just here."
+
+"There ought to have been some sign left to mark the place when the body
+was taken away," the inspector said sharply.
+
+"You will find," said the quiet voice of Monsieur Dupont, "a pencil in
+the ground at the exact spot. It is a useful pencil, and I should be
+obliged if you would kindly return it to me."
+
+The inspector shot him a rather grim smile. All, except Copplestone,
+bent down to look for the sign.
+
+"Here it is," Tranter exclaimed, pulling a pencil out of the ground.
+They stood aside to give the inspector room.
+
+"The rain has washed away any traces that might have helped us," that
+official grumbled, after a fruitless search.
+
+"And even if it had not," the manager observed, "you would only have
+found traces of all of us, as we were all here."
+
+The inspector continued his examination. Copplestone stood apart, his
+eyes fixed on the river. He did not appear to be taking the slightest
+interest in the proceedings.
+
+"In what position was the body lying?" the inspector asked, looking up
+at the clergyman.
+
+"It was so horribly contorted that it is difficult to say in what
+position it _was_ lying," the latter replied, bending down beside him.
+"The head, I think, lay towards the river, and the feet towards the
+trees."
+
+"It was so when we came," Copplestone corroborated, without turning his
+head.
+
+"There are no signs of a struggle here," said the inspector,
+straightening himself after another pause. "If there had been one, some
+of the heavier indications might have remained in spite of the rain."
+
+"It is possible," Monsieur Dupont suggested, "that the body was carried
+here from the place where the struggle did take place."
+
+"Quite possible," the inspector agreed. He turned to Tranter. "Will you
+show us now, Mr. Tranter, where you parted from Miss Manderson?"
+
+"I am not familiar with the garden," Tranter replied. "I only know, as I
+told you last night, that we had just passed under some arches across
+the path. I do not know where they are."
+
+"Mr. Copplestone will show us," said the inspector.
+
+Copplestone started at the sound of his own name, and turned to them.
+
+"What next?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"The rose arches," returned the inspector.
+
+Copplestone indicated an opening in the trees, some distance ahead of
+them.
+
+"Over here," he directed, moving towards it.
+
+There were twelve ornamental arches, overgrown with roses. Monsieur
+Dupont looked at the wealth of flowers almost with reverence.
+
+"So far," he muttered, "the only innocent things I have seen in this
+garden."
+
+Tranter stopped at a point where several paths intersected.
+
+"I left her here," he said. "I went down that path to the right, which
+she told me would lead to the main lawns where I should be most likely
+to Mr. Copplestone. She said she was going straight back to the house."
+
+"She should have taken that path," Copplestone said, turning to one in
+another direction. "That is the way to the house."
+
+"Did she know the garden well?" asked the inspector.
+
+"Perfectly well."
+
+"Still, she might easily have taken a wrong turning in the darkness."
+
+"She might. But it is about the straightest path in the garden. I don't
+think she would have made a mistake."
+
+Slowly and carefully Inspector Fay followed the path to the house, under
+the guidance of Copplestone. Every yard of the way was examined, but
+yielded nothing. The inspector's face became darker and darker. He
+stopped when they turned a corner and found themselves at the house.
+
+"She could not possibly have got so far as this before the attack was
+made," he said discontentedly.
+
+"Impossible," agreed the manager. "If the murderer had killed her here,
+he would have left her here. He would not have taken the risk of
+dragging her all the way to the river."
+
+"It seems a curious thing," the clergyman remarked, "that apparently she
+did not utter any cry for help."
+
+"Ah!" said Monsieur Dupont quietly.
+
+He looked at the clergyman with a new interest. Copplestone also glanced
+at him quickly.
+
+"Even the thunder would hardly have drowned a sharp cry, and some one
+would surely have heard it."
+
+"Probably she hadn't time," suggested the manager. "No doubt he sprang
+out and attacked her from the back. He must have been as quick as the
+lightning itself."
+
+Monsieur Dupont drew Tranter aside.
+
+"Our clerical friend does not realize the importance of his own point,"
+he said softly. "But he has put his finger on the key to the whole
+mystery."
+
+"The key?" Tranter repeated.
+
+"If Christine Manderson had uttered a cry for help, this would have been
+a simple, straightforward case," said Monsieur Dupont. "In the fact that
+she did not lies the whole secret of the crime."
+
+"Bolsover's reason would seem to be the obvious one," Tranter returned.
+"The assault must have been made so quickly that she had no time."
+
+"Mr. Bolsover's reason is, as you say, the obvious one," admitted
+Monsieur Dupont. "But it is not the correct one. I have already warned
+Inspector Fay to disregard the obvious. If he will not take my advice,
+that is his affair."
+
+"But what do you mean?" asked Tranter.
+
+Monsieur Dupont's voice sank lower.
+
+"Don't you see that a cry for help would have completely transformed the
+whole case? It would have brought it down in one crash to a human
+level. It is the silence--the utter, horrible silence--that makes it
+what it is. It is the silence----"
+
+The inspector's voice recalled them.
+
+"Now, Mr. Bolsover, just whereabouts was Layton when you disturbed him?"
+
+"He was sneaking round there," the manager replied, pointing to a corner
+of the house, "towards the drawing-room windows."
+
+"Which path did he run to when he saw you?"
+
+"That one--to the river."
+
+"Does that path communicate anywhere with the one which we presume Miss
+Manderson was following to the house?"
+
+"Yes," said Copplestone.
+
+They moved along the path indicated by the manager. It twisted about
+unproductively for some distance.
+
+"How far was he in front of you?" asked the inspector.
+
+"I don't know," confessed the manager. "I should say about ten yards
+when we started--but I am not much of a runner. I had lost him
+altogether before I got here."
+
+They went on.
+
+"That cursed rain," the inspector muttered.
+
+"This is the branch that leads to the other path," said Copplestone,
+halting.
+
+"And it was further along there, by that fir tree that I met Monsieur
+Dupont," added the manager.
+
+"That is so," agreed Monsieur Dupont. "Layton certainly did not come
+beyond this point in my direction."
+
+"By taking that branch," the inspector calculated, "he would have met
+Miss Manderson just at the time that the crime was committed."
+
+"He would," said the manager.
+
+Monsieur Dupont turned again to Tranter.
+
+"We must be quick," he whispered, "Layton is already hanged."
+
+"There doesn't seem to be much chance for him," returned Tranter. "It
+will be a very strong case. No criminal could complain at being hanged
+on such evidence."
+
+"And yet," said Monsieur Dupont slowly, "so far as the actual crime is
+concerned, there is not a single trace. Not one single trace. Is it not
+extraordinary?"
+
+He doubled his fists.
+
+"That luck!" he ground out angrily. "Again that luck!"
+
+"What luck?" Tranter exclaimed.
+
+"If that most unfortunate young man had not come here and made a fool of
+himself last night, the police might have searched forever without
+finding a clue. There is no clue here. And there was the rain. The very
+elements sweep up after the passing of the Destroyer."
+
+"What on earth do you mean?" Tranter cried.
+
+"Hush!" said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"I am obliged to you, gentlemen," said the inspector. "Your evidence
+will of course be required at the inquest, of which you will receive
+notice. I need not detain you any longer."
+
+The clergyman and the manager hurried away. Monsieur Dupont lingered at
+the inspector's side, and Tranter strolled back with Copplestone.
+
+"Well?" queried the inspector. "Not much doubt about it, is there?"
+
+"You have a strong case," said Monsieur Dupont. "Very strong."
+
+"You agree with it?"
+
+Monsieur Dupont shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"At all events, I am not in position, at present, to contradict it."
+
+"You will have your work cut out to build up another one," said the
+inspector complacently. "There isn't a trace."
+
+"That is it," said the other sharply. "There is no trace. There is never
+a trace." He lowered his voice cautiously. "One point I recommend to
+you, as I have just recommended it to Tranter--that remark of Mr.
+Delamere that there was no cry for help."
+
+"What of it?" returned the inspector.
+
+"It is the key," said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+He moved on abruptly, and overtook Tranter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+A BUILDER OF MEN
+
+
+James Layton occupied two dingy rooms, in a dilapidated house, situated
+between a church and a public-house, in as squalid and unwholesome a
+street as any in the East End of London. In them he spent such time as
+was left to him--and it was not much--after his active ministrations
+among the denizens of the miserable neighborhood. They were scantily
+furnished, and of comforts there were none. He denied himself anything
+beyond the barest necessities of existence, with the exception of a few
+books and pipes, which were the companions of his odd moments of
+leisure, and he read and smoked in a hard wicker chair, destitute even
+of a cushion. He ate sparingly, of food scarcely better than that on
+which his neighbors subsisted, and drank little. His clothes were poor,
+his shirts frayed, and his boots patched--and his income was a thousand
+pounds a week.
+
+In his work he was unusually broad-minded and unprejudiced. He spent
+none of his time in efforts to lure the occupants of the public-house on
+his left into the church on his right. Indeed, he was an excellent
+customer of the former institution, and was on the best of terms with
+its landlord, who was an ex-pugilist after his kind. He made no
+discrimination in the dispensation of his charity. He worked on the
+principle that before he reformed a man he must feed him--so before he
+attempted to deal with the mind he relieved the body. He was open-handed
+and unsuspicious--and wonderfully beloved. There were hundreds of people
+in that street, and many other streets, who would gladly have laid down
+their lives for him--and who imposed on him shockingly day after day in
+the minor matters of life. The Mad Philanthropist never turned
+away--never refused. He was a builder of Men. No one knew, or cared, who
+he was or whence he came. He never gave account of himself, or spoke of
+his own affairs. Curiosity was the one thing he resented. He enclosed
+himself, so far as private matters were concerned, within the
+fortifications of a reserve which no one had succeeded in penetrating.
+Though he held a thousand confidences, he made none. In listening to the
+experiences of others he never referred to his own, or even hinted
+whether they had been sweet or bitter. He went on his silent way--and
+the world was the better for him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In his bare sitting-room he sat with his face between his hands. A girl
+knelt on the floor beside him.
+
+She was a remarkable girl. Wild, wayward, with all the passions--brimful
+with untamed vitality--incapable of the common restraints. Her face was
+neither beautiful, nor, perhaps, even pretty--but Diana herself might
+have envied the full, lithe figure, the free grace of her movements. She
+was the creature of her desires--knowing no laws that opposed them. A
+Primitive Woman, from the dawn of the world.
+
+"Jim," she pleaded. "Jim...."
+
+He made no movement.
+
+"Be a man," she whispered. "Pull yourself together."
+
+He put her away from him roughly.
+
+"I wish you'd go," he said dully. "I don't want you here."
+
+Her face grew whiter. Her hands crept to him again. The light of a great
+love was in her eyes.
+
+"Oh, Jim," she whispered, "I know I'm not like she was. I'm not
+beautiful. I'm not wonderful. I haven't anything that she had. Oh, I
+know all that ... so well."
+
+He uncovered his face--it was haggard and bloodless, the face of a man
+in the throes of a mental hell--and looked at her, almost with
+revulsion.
+
+"You?" he cried harshly. "You...? You dare to name yourself to me in
+the same breath with her? Get up, and look at yourself!" He pointed to a
+cracked mirror on the mantel-piece. "Look!" he said hoarsely, thrusting
+her away from him again. "Do you see how coarse and heavy and rough you
+are? She was light and delicate--like a snowflake. She never seemed to
+touch the ground. Your hair is like string--your hands are large--your
+voice is harsh. Her hair was like silk--gold silk in the sunshine. I
+could see through her hands. Her voice was music. I want you to go. You
+are in my way."
+
+She sprang up, raging.
+
+"She never loved you!" she cried. "She never cared for you--or even
+thought of you! She wasn't fit to touch you--to look at you!"
+
+His face was aflame.
+
+"Stop!" he shouted.
+
+"I hate her!" she declared fiercely. "I hate her memory! I'm glad she's
+dead!"
+
+He lunged forward from his chair, and seized her. In his fury he nearly
+struck her.
+
+"As God's above us," he panted, "one more word...." His rage choked him.
+The words jammed in his throat.
+
+She wrenched herself free. His arms dropped to his sides. He reeled
+dizzily.
+
+"You may do what you like to me," she cried passionately. "I tell
+you--I'm glad she's dead! She deserved to die. She was wicked and cruel.
+I think God Himself destroyed her."
+
+He sank back into his chair weakly. A sob shook him.
+
+"God did not destroy her," he said slowly. "God never destroys. He only
+builds. It is men and women who destroy."
+
+There was a long silence. She came close to him again, all her anger
+swallowed up in a great sympathy.
+
+"Jim," she asked softly ... "was she so much to you?"
+
+He became suddenly rigid.
+
+"How did you come to know her? She wasn't your sort. She couldn't have
+had anything in common with you. What have you to do with women like
+that?"
+
+His eyes narrowed threateningly. Her questions had struck him into a new
+alertness. She noticed that his knees were pressed together.
+
+"The papers said she only came to England two months ago--for the first
+time. It hasn't all happened since then. I know it hasn't. There must
+have been something else. Something before. What was it?"
+
+He sat glaring at her--locking and unlocking his hands.
+
+"It all happened since then," he said jerkily. "I had never seen her
+before. There was nothing else."
+
+"I don't believe it, Jim," she declared. "You are hiding something."
+
+He avoided her steady gaze.
+
+"Believe it or not, as you like," he retorted.
+
+"People say there is some secret in your life," she said. "I believe
+there is. And I believe it was her secret too."
+
+He lunged forward again, in a fresh paroxysm of fury.
+
+"What is it to you?" he cried shrilly--"or to any one? Why do you pry?
+Suppose I have my secrets. They are no concern of yours. I give away my
+money--my life. Isn't it enough? What would you be--what would any of
+them be now--but for me? I work day and night for others. Can't I keep
+my soul to myself?"
+
+"Jim," she said gently, "I'm not prying. I don't want to know your
+secrets. I only wanted to make it lighter for you, if you'd let me."
+
+"You can't make it lighter for me," he returned. "No one can make it
+lighter. I don't want to be interfered with. I want to be left alone.
+What right have you to try to judge me?"
+
+"Judge you?" she echoed. "Who could want to judge you? Why, you are the
+noblest man in all the world. No one could do more good than you do.
+Every man, woman, and child here worships you, and would die for you."
+
+His anger instantly subsided.
+
+"Ah, yes!" he said greedily--"tell me that. That's what I want to hear.
+Tell me they worship me--that no one could do more good than I do--that
+men and women would die for me. Go on telling me that!"
+
+Her voice thrilled with her love for him.
+
+"You brought us light and life. You have raised hundreds--as you raised
+me--out of misery and filth. Think of all the children you have sent
+away from this poison into the green fields and the sunshine--who would
+have died."
+
+"Yes! yes!" he cried. "Go on! Go on! All the children...."
+
+"You are building them," she said--her whole being transformed with
+tenderness. "You are making them fit to be men and women. They wouldn't
+have been fit without you. You are teaching them how to be clean and
+happy. You are showing them that they needn't be the dregs of
+humanity--that these hovels needn't be their world. You are giving them
+new interests, new thoughts, new hopes. Oh, what could be more
+wonderful--more splendid? It is God's own work."
+
+"Yes! yes!" he cried again. "God's work! I am doing God's work!"
+
+He paced up and down the room eagerly--feasting on her words--drinking
+her praises as an exhausted man might drink an invigorating draught. He
+was in the grip of a feverish energy. His blood was racing.
+
+His quick steps shook the wretched room. The floor creaked under his
+tread. A lamp on the table rattled. The girl watched him nervously. She
+put out a hand to check him, but he brushed it aside. His looks, his
+movements, frightened her. He seemed to be gazing out beyond the narrow
+walls into a space of surging memories, that sported with his reason. He
+muttered incoherently, oblivious of her presence. She grew frightened.
+
+"Jim!" she cried sharply.
+
+He started, and stopped, looking at her vacantly.
+
+"My work," he said restlessly. "I must get on with my work. I haven't
+done enough ... nearly enough. I must go on building ... go on giving
+light."
+
+He let her put a hand on his arm and move him gently back to his chair.
+He sat down, and stared at her in a dazed fashion, as one returning to
+consciousness.
+
+"Why haven't you gone?" he said heavily. "I asked you to go."
+
+"I'm not going, Jim," she returned. "I can't leave you like this. You're
+not fit to be left."
+
+His face darkened again.
+
+"I am perfectly fit to be left," he said hardly. "And I wish to be
+alone."
+
+"When you are better, I'll go," she said quietly--"if you want me to."
+
+He made a gesture of impatience.
+
+"I am better now," he said wearily. "I am quite well. I want you to go.
+Why do you persist in staying when I want you to go?"
+
+The girl's self-control deserted her. She burst into a storm of weeping.
+
+"I won't go," she sobbed. "I won't go--because you are in trouble--and I
+love you. I don't care whether you want me or not. I love you."
+
+He heard her indifferently. Neither her tears nor her passion moved him.
+
+"Don't talk nonsense," he snapped. "Love is nothing to me. I hate the
+word. You might as well talk of loving the Monument as me."
+
+"You lifted me up," she cried. "You saved my soul and body. I was lower
+than any of the others before you came. You taught me--and I've tried to
+learn your lessons. But, oh, if you didn't mean me to love you, you
+should have left me where I was."
+
+"You were a good girl," he said, with tired tolerance. "You learnt
+well. But I didn't mean you to love me. I don't want you to love me.
+What I have done for you was only part of my work--like the others. I
+don't want any woman to love me. I tell you, I hate the word. It means
+nothing to me. I only want to go on...."
+
+Her sobs ceased. She stood very still. Her face was torn, but he was not
+looking at her. She turned, and went slowly towards the door, her head
+bowed. She seemed to be shrunken and small. All her vitality had gone.
+She moved like an old woman, weakly.
+
+The door opened before she reached it. Two men stood in the passage. She
+started back. One of them came a few paces into the room, looking at the
+man in the chair.
+
+"Mr. James Layton?"
+
+He rose unsteadily.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I am James Layton. What do you want?"
+
+"We are police officers, investigating the murder of Miss Christine
+Manderson."
+
+The girl uttered a cry, and sprang between them.
+
+"What do you want with him?" she demanded fiercely. "He knows nothing
+about it. How should he? What is it to do with him?"
+
+The men looked at her with quick interest. But Layton silenced her with
+an imperative gesture.
+
+"I am at your service," he said quietly. "What can I do for you?"
+
+"We are instructed to ask you to be kind enough to return with us to
+Scotland Yard to answer a few questions that may assist the
+investigation of the crime."
+
+"Certainly," Layton returned, without hesitation.
+
+His face was perfectly calm. He showed no fear or agitation.
+
+"We have a taxi waiting," the man said. He spoke to Layton--but he was
+looking at the girl.
+
+"I will come with you at once," Layton replied.
+
+He took up his hat and stick. The girl leant against the wall panting, a
+hand pressed to her heart.
+
+"Jim," she gasped faintly. "Jim...."
+
+He turned, with the first sign of kindness he had yet shown to her.
+
+"Don't be frightened," he said gently. "I shall be back in an hour or
+so."
+
+She clutched him desperately.
+
+"You sha'n't go!" she cried wildly. "You sha'n't go!"
+
+He put her aside firmly.
+
+"Why shouldn't I go? There is nothing to be afraid of. I must help if I
+can."
+
+The door closed behind them. The girl moved from the wall, and staggered
+to the table, leaning on it heavily. She was ashen. Her lips were gray.
+She heard them leave the house--heard the car start, and listened until
+the sound of it died away in the length of the street. Her strength
+failed. She sank to her knees. A moan of agony escaped her.
+
+"For nothing...." she whispered. "Oh, God ... for nothing...."
+
+She heard a quiet tap at the door, but could not answer. She saw the
+door open slowly. An enormous figure stood on the threshold.
+
+She struggled to her feet.
+
+"What do you want?" she murmured fearfully. "Have you come ... for me?"
+
+The figure squeezed its way through the narrow doorway, and closed the
+door.
+
+"Mademoiselle, you are a friend of Mr. James Layton, who was taken, a
+few minutes ago, to Scotland Yard?"
+
+"Yes," she cried, "yes. I am his friend. What is it?"
+
+"Before the end of the day, Mr. Layton will be detained on the charge of
+murder."
+
+She screamed.
+
+"He didn't do it! He didn't do it!"
+
+"The evidence is strong," said the stranger. "He threatened her. He was
+in the garden when the crime was committed----"
+
+She raised her hand, as if to ward off a blow.
+
+"In the garden?" she shivered. "He was in the garden ... then?"
+
+"He will require much assistance," continued the huge unknown--"and
+there is no time to lose. Will you help him?"
+
+"I would die for him," she choked. "What can I do?"
+
+The stranger re-opened the door.
+
+"Come with me, mademoiselle," he said softly--"and I will tell you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+A TRIPLE ALLIANCE
+
+
+He led the girl out of the house. At the corner of the street a taxi was
+waiting. He opened the door.
+
+"Where are we going?" she demanded suspiciously.
+
+"To the Hotel Savoy, mademoiselle," he answered.
+
+She hung back.
+
+"Why should I go with you?" she asked defiantly. "I have never seen you
+before. I don't know who you are."
+
+"Mademoiselle," he replied, "your friend is in great danger. He will not
+be able to help himself. If you do not come with me, you will not be
+able to help him. And I assure you that he needs your help."
+
+She got in without another word. He placed himself beside her, and the
+car started.
+
+"Who are you?" she asked.
+
+"My name," he told her, "is Dupont--Victorien Dupont. I arrived in
+London from Paris a few days ago."
+
+"What have you to do with this?" she said doubtfully.
+
+"That," he replied, "I cannot at the moment explain to you. I am
+concerned in this case for reasons of my own, which must remain my own
+for the present. I was in the garden when Christine Manderson was
+killed."
+
+She started, staring at him.
+
+"You were in the garden too?" she cried.
+
+"I was," he affirmed. "And I know that Monsieur Layton did not kill
+her."
+
+"He didn't!" she declared. "He couldn't kill anything. He spends his
+time giving life--not taking it."
+
+"The police will be satisfied that he did, and they will have a strong
+case. Unless we can help him by discovering the truth in time, he will
+not be able to clear himself. Are you prepared to work for him?"
+
+"I told you," she repeated passionately, "I would die for him."
+
+"It is well," he said. "There will be three people on his side. You--my
+friend, Mr. Tranter, who was also in the garden--and myself. Together we
+will save him. There will be separate tasks for us all. Mr. Tranter will
+be waiting at the hotel when we arrive, and we will settle our plan of
+campaign. Until then, mademoiselle, let us not refer to the subject
+again. Do me the favor thoroughly to compose yourself. In these matters
+coolness is of the utmost importance."
+
+He compressed himself further into his corner, and closed his eyes. The
+girl said nothing more. The rapidity of the whole catastrophe, and the
+sudden appearance of this new adventure bewildered her. The huge
+mysterious stranger almost frightened her. Though his eyes were shut and
+he made neither sound nor movement, she felt that he was searching her,
+that he was straining all his mental forces to steal the thoughts that
+were throbbing through her mind. As they drew near to their destination,
+she fiercely exerted the self-control that was one of her least
+developed virtues, and by the time they reached the Savoy, and Monsieur
+Dupont opened his eyes, she was steady and watchful.
+
+"Mademoiselle," said Monsieur Dupont softly, "you will be of the
+greatest assistance. Already you know the value of silence."
+
+In his private sitting-room they found Tranter awaiting them.
+
+"My friend," said Monsieur Dupont, "this lady will work with us. She is
+much attached to James Layton, and her assistance will be most
+valuable." He turned to her. "Mademoiselle, I have not the honor...."
+
+"My name's Jenny West," she said, comprehending the request.
+
+"Where is Layton?" Tranter asked, as Monsieur Dupont placed a chair for
+the girl, and sat down himself.
+
+"By this time," Monsieur Dupont replied, "he will have arrived at
+Scotland Yard. Our friend Inspector Fay will question him, and he will
+certainly be detained. As I have just explained to mademoiselle, he is
+in great danger. Unless we succeed in our object, his position is
+without hope."
+
+Tears welled up in the girl's eyes, but she checked them with an effort.
+
+"I wish," Monsieur Dupont continued, with careful emphasis, "that my own
+position also should be clearly understood, in so far as I am at liberty
+to explain it. I cannot yet tell you how I come to be interested in this
+affair. Soon I may do so--but until then you must be content to take me
+on trust, and to accept my assurance that I am fully qualified to direct
+you. Are you willing to follow my instructions without question--to save
+this innocent man, who will be accused of a horrible crime which he did
+not commit?"
+
+"Yes, yes," the girl cried. "I am ready. I will do anything."
+
+"And I," said Tranter.
+
+"The directions I give may seem to be strange," Monsieur Dupont went on
+impressively--"but they must be followed. The errands on which I send
+you may seem to be unimportant and even foolish--but they must be
+carried out. Do not look for explanations, until I make them. I give
+account to no one. Those who work with me work much in the dark--but
+they reach the light. There must be no hesitation. Is that understood?"
+
+Again the others agreed.
+
+"Then," said Monsieur Dupont confidently, "we shall succeed. Layton will
+be saved--but it will be a hard and difficult task. The first law I have
+to impose on you is--silence. Complete silence, to every one except
+myself."
+
+He turned to the girl.
+
+"At three o'clock this afternoon, mademoiselle, unless you hear from me
+to the contrary, you will go to Scotland Yard, where Mr. Layton will be
+detained. That I shall verify by telephone. You will see him, and you
+will tell him this: You will say that I, Dupont, know how and why
+Christine Manderson died--that I, and those with me, will not allow the
+innocent to suffer--and that he shall be delivered from this charge. And
+say to him, also, anything from yourself that you may wish to say."
+
+They were both gazing at him blankly.
+
+"You know?" the girl gasped. "You know who killed her?"
+
+The great Frenchman seemed to develop before their eyes into a figure
+of tremendous menace, every inch of him alive with implacable,
+relentless purpose.
+
+"I know," he declared slowly, "just what I have told you--how and why
+she died. Ask me no more. Remember our conditions. There must be no
+questions until the time comes."
+
+He rose, and took an envelope from his pocket.
+
+"Certain things that I shall ask you to do, mademoiselle, may involve
+expense. In this envelope you will find a sufficient sum. Do not
+hesitate to accept it. Ample funds are at our command. When you return
+from Scotland Yard, report to me here. If I am not in, wait for me. And,
+above all, remember--silence."
+
+He opened the door, and bowed her out. Then he turned to Tranter with a
+faint smile.
+
+"Well, my friend?" he asked quietly.
+
+"Do you really mean," Tranter exclaimed, "that you know the truth of the
+crime?"
+
+Monsieur Dupont offered him a cigar, and lit one himself with great
+composure.
+
+"I know just as much about the crime, my friend, as I have said. I
+repeat--I know how and why that unfortunate woman died. Who, or what,
+caused her to die is another matter, which we are setting ourselves to
+solve."
+
+"You are certain that Layton is innocent?"
+
+"James Layton did not commit the crime," Monsieur Dupont returned
+firmly. "But he will be hanged for it--if we are not in time."
+
+"Well," said Tranter, "what is there for me to do?"
+
+"For you," replied Monsieur Dupont, "there is the most important task in
+the case, so far. And the most dangerous. Within twenty-four hours you
+must discover, and bring to me here, the secret of the Crooked House."
+
+"Good Lord!" Tranter exclaimed, taken aback, "how on earth am I to do
+that?"
+
+"I do not know," Monsieur Dupont admitted. "Nor have I any helpful
+suggestions to make. The method of procedure I leave to you."
+
+"Housebreaking is entirely out of my province," Tranter objected. "And
+the secret of that house, if there is one, is likely to be very well
+guarded."
+
+"Probably," agreed Monsieur Dupont. "But the fact remains that before
+the end of the next twenty-four hours I must have that secret--and you
+are the person who must bring it to me."
+
+Tranter took up his hat and stick, without further protest.
+
+"Very well," he said stoutly. "I will do my best."
+
+Monsieur Dupont looked at his watch.
+
+"It is one o'clock," he said, opening the door. "At one o'clock
+to-morrow I shall be waiting for you in this room."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+MR. GLUCKSTEIN IN CONFIDENCE
+
+
+Mrs. Astley-Rolfe invariably received her creditors in pink deshabille.
+
+The financier, Mr. Solomon Gluckstein, original and senior
+representative of John Brown & Co., Jermyn Street, was particularly fond
+of pink, and extremely susceptible to deshabille. Whiskey-and-soda,
+personally prepared for him in sufficient strength by his charming
+debtor, increased the fondness and the susceptibility.
+
+"Ma tear lady," said Mr. Gluckstein, with desperate firmness, "I have
+come on an unplethant errand."
+
+Mrs. Astley-Rolfe pouted petulantly.
+
+"Am I to have no peace?" she complained, from an alluring attitude on a
+couch. "Isn't it enough to have gone through the last two days? Look at
+me. I am a nervous wreck."
+
+"Then all women wouldth with to be nervouth wrecks," said Mr. Gluckstein
+gallantly.
+
+"I believe that odious detective actually imagined at the beginning that
+I might have murdered the poor girl."
+
+"Nonthenth," the financier assured her.
+
+"I have scarcely had any sleep," she went on reproachfully. "It is a
+wonder I am not thoroughly ill. And now you--from whom I should have
+expected consideration--come here with a face like a rock, and announce
+your intention to be unpleasant. If I didn't know you so well, I might
+have believed you."
+
+Mr. Gluckstein glanced towards the door, and drew his chair closer to
+her.
+
+"Let us understand each other," he said deliberately. "At the present
+time you owe me a large thum of money."
+
+"Gospel truth," she admitted.
+
+"Very much more than you could pothibly pay, if I came down on you."
+
+She uttered a sigh of relief.
+
+"At last you realize that!" she exclaimed thankfully.
+
+"Also," continued Mr. Gluckstein, "you owe money to various other
+people."
+
+"Your veracity," she confessed, "is beyond question."
+
+"Almosth ath much ath you owe to me."
+
+"Quite as much," she said cheerfully.
+
+"And you owe me," he continued--"twelve thousand poundth."
+
+"The first time I have looked the evil fully in the face," she
+shuddered.
+
+His small eyes regarded her intently.
+
+"The last half of that--I lent to you on a certain understanding."
+
+"Understanding?" she echoed languidly.
+
+"Yeth."
+
+"What did you understand?"
+
+"That you intended to become engaged to George Copplesthone, who would
+pay your debths when you married him."
+
+A quick change swept over her. She became hard and calculating.
+
+"Well?" she returned.
+
+"You have not become engaged to him."
+
+"No."
+
+"Some one elth became engaged to him."
+
+"Yes," she said calmly.
+
+"That doth not look," he concluded, "like fulfillment of the
+understanding."
+
+"Doesn't it?" she retorted.
+
+He glanced again at the door, and came still closer.
+
+"Lithen," he said slowly. "I have been your friendth. I have done for
+you what I would not have done for any one elth. I have treated you
+fairly, and I have never prethed you."
+
+She softened immediately.
+
+"You have been very kind to me," she said gratefully.
+
+"You muth be my friendth too. I muth tell you my thecret. Promith me
+faithfully that you will keep it."
+
+She looked at him in astonishment.
+
+"Certainly I will keep it," she agreed.
+
+"Five days ago," Mr. Gluckstein informed her painfully, "my partner
+abthconded, and left me almosth a ruined man."
+
+Her face expressed genuine sympathy.
+
+"I am very sorry," she said feelingly. "What a dreadful blow for you."
+
+"It ith unnethecessary to explain bithness details to you," the
+financier proceeded. "My working capital hath gone, and the fact thimply
+is that I cannot carry on--unleth----" he paused to give his words
+additional emphasis, "unleth you repay me my twelve thousand poundth in
+full within two months."
+
+"Two months?" she exclaimed blankly.
+
+"Two months," he repeatedly firmly. "That ith the utmost time I can give
+you. Have you any other means of raithing the money?"
+
+"Not a ghost of one," she replied frankly. "I might as well try to push
+over the Marble Arch as raise a single thousand."
+
+"Then," he said steadily, "if you do not marry Copplesthone I am a
+bankrupt--and a bankrupt I will not be."
+
+"I shall marry him," she said. "I told you I should--and I shall. You
+will have your money."
+
+"I believed you," he returned. "But another woman beat you."
+
+She looked away from him.
+
+"Did she?" she replied evenly.
+
+There was silence for a moment.
+
+"When Copplesthone announthed his engagement to Mith Manderthon," the
+financier went on, "I stood ruined. I admit it. I stood ruined by your
+defeat. That ith the thecret that you muth keep. I was sure that you had
+no other means of paying me back. Nothing could save me but a
+miraculouth removal of the obstacle."
+
+"The obstacle was removed," she said, in the same even tone.
+
+He shuddered.
+
+"It wath. The obstacle that stood between you and Copplesthone, and me
+and ruination, wath removed. It was a ghastly thing, and we are very
+thorry. But let uth be candid. It wath to our advantage."
+
+"Yes," she agreed slowly--"it was to our advantage."
+
+"There must not be another obstacle," he said.
+
+"There will not be another," she replied. "George Copplestone will marry
+me--and you shall have your twelve thousand pounds, as I promised. You
+need not be anxious."
+
+He looked round the luxurious room, and sighed deeply. It surprised her
+that she had not noticed before how much he had aged.
+
+"I must begin again," he said. "I am getting old--but I will rebuild my
+fortune. I will not be the only poor Jew in London."
+
+"You have been a good friend to me," she said gently. "I am very sorry."
+
+He paused to finish his drink, but his crafty eyes never left her face.
+She did not meet them.
+
+"I wonder," he said, in a slightly lower tone, replacing his empty glass
+on the table, "what the police will discover."
+
+"I should imagine that there is very little to be discovered," she
+returned. "There seems no doubt that it was James Layton, the Mad
+Millionaire, as he is called. He will probably be arrested within the
+next twenty-four hours. It appears to be a clear case. He threatened
+her--in front of us all. And he was in the garden."
+
+"It ought to be enough," he admitted, more easily. "What more could they
+want?"
+
+"The evidence is very strong," she said, lazily settling her deshabille.
+"Many people have been hanged on less. Apparently the police are
+satisfied. At least, they have not arrested either of us."
+
+The financier started violently.
+
+"Either of uth?" he cried, aghast. "What do you mean, either of uth?"
+
+Her smile was enigmatical.
+
+"As you said just now--the removal of the obstacle was to the advantage
+of both of us."
+
+"But they don't know," he shivered. "They can't know."
+
+"I hope not," she said shortly.
+
+Perspiration began to stand out on his forehead. He had lost color
+considerably.
+
+"You promised to keep my thecret," he exclaimed nervously. "Noth a word
+to any one."
+
+"I shall keep my promise," she replied.
+
+"There is no cause for alarm. I don't think Inspector Fay will trouble
+us."
+
+There was a tap at the door. They turned as the butler entered.
+
+"Inspector Fay would like to see you for a few minutes, madam."
+
+They looked at each other. The financier was agitated. The woman was
+perfectly calm.
+
+"Talk of the devil!" she smiled.
+
+Mr. Gluckstein gripped his hat, stick, and gloves, and rose hurriedly.
+
+"He must not see me here," he said jerkily. "Let me out another way."
+
+"Go through there," she said, pointing to a door at the opposite end of
+the room, "and when he has come in, Parker will let you out. Bring the
+inspector in, Parker."
+
+The financier did not wait to shake hands.
+
+"Remember," he whispered passing her--"both your promises."
+
+"They will be kept," she said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE WIT OF THE PINK LADY
+
+
+Inspector Fay entered the room at one end a few seconds after Mr.
+Gluckstein left it at the other.
+
+Mrs. Astley-Rolfe greeted him in a friendly fashion. She showed
+considerable strain--but, otherwise, was looking her best. And her best
+was delightful.
+
+"Good morning, inspector," she said languidly.
+
+"Good morning, madam." He glanced back to make certain that the door was
+closed. "I trust you have recovered from the shock of the crime."
+
+"I still feel it very much," she replied, shuddering. "It was the most
+horrible experience I have ever had. To think of seeing that poor girl
+alive and well one minute, and the next--like that. It's too dreadful to
+think of."
+
+"It was certainly a most disgusting crime," the inspector agreed.
+
+"I suppose it was James Layton?"
+
+"I am afraid I cannot make any statement at present," he replied. "Our
+investigations are proceeding as quickly as possible. I hope we shall
+clear it up in a few days."
+
+"I hope you will," she declared fervently. "Such a brutal criminal can
+expect no mercy."
+
+"In the meantime," continued the inspector, "I should be much obliged if
+you would kindly give me a little information."
+
+"Certainly," she said readily. "Sit down."
+
+He sat down, facing her. She made a charming picture. But Inspector Fay
+had been taken in by charming women several times during the early part
+of his career, and at this stage of it was as impervious as an oyster.
+
+"Please understand," he began, "that in asking these questions I am
+making no insinuations or suggestions of any kind. It is necessary to
+establish certain facts."
+
+"I quite understand," she assured him. "What do you want to know?"
+
+"I want to know what you were saying to Mr. Copplestone in the garden,
+before Mr. Tranter came to tell him that Miss Manderson had gone into
+the house."
+
+She started.
+
+"I?" she exclaimed. "I was not with Mr. Copplestone."
+
+He remained silent.
+
+"I told you, I was not with any one. I did not feel quite myself, and
+strolled about alone."
+
+The inspector's face was quite impassive.
+
+"You wish me to accept that answer?" he asked quietly.
+
+She stiffened haughtily.
+
+"What do you mean?" she said sharply.
+
+"I mean that you wish that answer to be accepted as the truth?"
+
+"Of course. Are you suggesting that it is not?"
+
+"I am suggesting nothing," he returned, with unruffled composure. "But I
+must tell you that if I am to accept that answer, it may have serious
+consequences."
+
+"Serious consequences?" she echoed, startled.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"For whom?"
+
+"Possibly for Mr. Copplestone himself."
+
+Signs of uneasiness began to appear, in spite of her wonderful
+self-control.
+
+"For Mr. Copplestone...?"
+
+"For Mr. Copplestone," the inspector affirmed steadily.
+
+"I don't understand," she said. "Will you kindly explain?"
+
+"Certainly." His voice dropped slightly. "Mr. Copplestone lied to me."
+
+"Lied to you?"
+
+"Lied to me," he repeated. "In accounting for himself, from the time he
+came out into the garden after dinner until Mr. Tranter found him to
+deliver Miss Manderson's message, he lied to me deliberately. I want to
+know why."
+
+"You had better ask him," she retorted. "I do not know."
+
+"Mr. Bolsover, the theatrical manager, told me that he found James
+Layton lurking by the house, and called to Mr. Copplestone before
+following him. Mr. Copplestone stated that the reason he did not hear
+that call was that he had gone into the house to refill his
+cigarette-case, and did not come out again until just before Mr. Tranter
+found him after leaving Miss Manderson. That statement was false."
+
+"How do you know?" she asked quickly.
+
+"He did not go into the house to refill his cigarette-case. He had had
+no opportunity to smoke afterwards, and when I questioned him his case
+was almost empty. He may have gone in for another reason----or he may
+not have gone in at all."
+
+"Is it not very trivial?" she said.
+
+"If you had been dealing with crimes and criminals as long as I have,"
+the inspector returned, "you would know that nothing is trivial. At
+present, Mr. Copplestone's time while the crime was being committed is
+unaccounted for--and he is detected in a lie. It is not a pleasant
+position to be in."
+
+She was silent. Her hands moved nervously.
+
+"What is the use of telling me this?" she asked.
+
+"It occurred to me," he replied, "that you might be able to extricate
+him from that position."
+
+"Why?" she demanded resentfully.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Can you?" he insisted, watching her closely.
+
+For a moment she paused. There was malevolence in her gaze.
+
+"I do not know what he was doing," she said obstinately.
+
+"Madam," said the inspector impressively, "if George Copplestone stood
+in the dock in front of you, and his life depended on the truth of your
+answer--would it still be the same answer?"
+
+She turned on him.
+
+"In the dock? What do you mean?"
+
+"Would it still be the same answer?" he repeated sternly.
+
+"Do you suggest that he may have committed the crime?" she exclaimed
+contemptuously. "Its absurd!"
+
+"I told you," he said, "I suggest nothing. My case must be complete. I
+want to know the truth."
+
+Silence followed. She plucked angrily at the lace edge of her gown.
+Inspector Fay waited imperturbably.
+
+"He was with me," she said, at last, sullenly.
+
+"Thank you," said the inspector.
+
+There was another pause.
+
+"Please go on," he pressed her.
+
+She did not attempt to conceal her resentment at his insistence. But the
+inspector's attitude was compelling.
+
+"We had a private conversation," she said viciously. "What passed
+between us concerned only ourselves."
+
+"I have no wish to pry into that," he told her. "But I should like to
+know why both you and Mr. Copplestone preferred to tell me a falsehood
+rather than admit that you were talking together in the garden."
+
+"We had our reasons," she snapped, "for not wishing it to be known that
+we had been together. We had no time to speak privately after the crime
+was discovered, and it evidently seemed best to both of us, rather than
+risk conflicting statements, not to admit that we had spoken to each
+other at all. I hope you have nothing more to ask me."
+
+The inspector rose.
+
+"I have nothing more to ask you, madam," he said politely. "I trust it
+will not be necessary for me to trouble you again in this case. But if
+it should be--you will find that in such serious matters it is always
+better to speak the truth. Good morning."
+
+He walked quickly out of the room, leaving a lady in pink deshabille
+quivering with an emotion that was not anger, but a new triumph.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+DETAINED ON SUSPICION
+
+
+Inspector Fay left the house of the lady in pink with a satisfied
+expression on his face. At the corner of the street he hailed a taxi,
+and drove to Scotland Yard.
+
+Under the watchful eyes of his escort, James Layton awaited him. The
+millionaire was perfectly composed, and appeared to be under no
+apprehension as to the outcome of his visit. He accompanied the
+inspector to a private room, and sat down in a comfortable chair without
+the smallest sign of alarm.
+
+"Mr. James Layton?" the inspector began, seating himself at a table.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Mr. Layton, I am Inspector Fay--in charge of the investigations of the
+death of Miss Christine Manderson, at Richmond, on Tuesday night. I want
+you to be good enough to answer the questions I have to ask you as
+clearly as possible."
+
+"Certainly," the young man replied, unhesitatingly.
+
+"To begin with--did you go to Richmond on that night?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"Were you alone?"
+
+"I was."
+
+"Did you call at Mr. Copplestone's house at half-past eight?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You asked to see Mr. Copplestone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And he refused to see you?"
+
+"He did."
+
+"What was your object in calling on him, in that manner, at such an
+inconvenient time?"
+
+"I had just ascertained that Miss Manderson had, or was about to, become
+engaged to marry him. My object was to tell him that he was not a fit
+person to be her husband, and that I would prevent the marriage at all
+costs."
+
+"That you would prevent the marriage?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Because, in your opinion, he was unworthy of her?"
+
+"Totally."
+
+"Had you any right to take upon yourself the control of Miss Manderson's
+choice of a husband?"
+
+"No right, perhaps--as you use the term."
+
+"As any one would use it?"
+
+"To my mind, yes."
+
+"To your mind you had a right to interfere in that engagement?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"We will come back to that presently," the inspector proceeded. "What
+did you do when Mr. Copplestone refused to see you?"
+
+"I am afraid my excitement got the better of me. I forced my way past
+the servant, and went into a room from which I heard voices, thinking
+that he was there with her."
+
+"You knew, then, that she was in the house at the time?"
+
+"Yes. I had previously telephoned to her hotel, and her maid had told me
+that she was spending the evening at Copplestone's house."
+
+"I am told you burst into the room uttering her name."
+
+"Possibly."
+
+"But you found only some guests of Mr. Copplestone's, who had been
+invited to dinner?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Was there anything strange about the room?"
+
+"It was decorated in an extraordinary manner."
+
+"I think you made some remark about the decorations?"
+
+"Perhaps I did. I had been told something of Mr. Copplestone's
+eccentricities, and I inferred that the engagement was an accomplished
+fact, and that the decorations had been put up in celebration of it."
+
+"Do you remember saying anything else in the room?"
+
+"I said that rather than allow Miss Manderson to be engaged to George
+Copplestone, I would tear her to pieces with my own hands."
+
+"And utterly destroy her?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"A somewhat violent announcement," the inspector observed.
+
+"I am afraid it was."
+
+"You were in a state of great excitement, were you not?"
+
+"I was very excited."
+
+"Almost beside yourself?"
+
+"I cannot say that."
+
+"Were you responsible for your words and actions at the time?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"You really meant what you said?"
+
+"I meant what I said," the young man declared calmly.
+
+The inspector was writing rapidly.
+
+"You were then requested to leave the house, and I think you left quite
+quietly?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What did you do then?"
+
+"I climbed over the wall into the garden and waited for an opportunity
+to get into the house again and speak to Copplestone or Miss Manderson."
+
+"You were behaving rather strangely, were you not, Mr. Layton?" the
+inspector asked.
+
+"I suppose I was."
+
+"If you had heard of any one else acting in the same way, you would have
+thought that he could hardly have been in a normal state of mind?"
+
+"I expect I should."
+
+"Yet you say you were quite yourself?"
+
+"I was quite myself."
+
+"And prepared to carry out your threat?"
+
+"I do not know what I was prepared to do. I did not carry it out."
+
+"Later on, one of the guests, Mr. Bolsover, found you creeping round the
+house towards an open window?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Before he ran after you, do you remember hearing him call to Mr.
+Copplestone?"
+
+"Yes, he did."
+
+"Was there any answer?"
+
+"I did not hear one."
+
+"Mr. Bolsover then followed you out in the direction in which the crime
+was committed?"
+
+"I do not know where the crime was committed," Layton replied firmly.
+"I know nothing of the crime."
+
+"Whoever committed it managed to fulfill your own threat fairly fully."
+
+"Unfortunately, yes."
+
+"Have you any suggestion to make as to who that person may have been?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What, then, did you do when Mr. Bolsover ran after you?"
+
+"I eluded him in the darkness, climbed over the wall again, and went
+away."
+
+"Without having fulfilled your object?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Had you seen anything at all of Miss Manderson, or Mr. Copplestone?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+There was a pause. James Layton waited quietly while the inspector
+finished off his notes. His face was a trifle paler than before, but he
+betrayed no sign of agitation.
+
+"Now," resumed the inspector, "let us go back. You said that to your
+mind you had a right to interfere in Miss Manderson's engagement?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"What had given you that right?"
+
+"I am sorry," the young man returned courteously--"but I decline to
+answer that question."
+
+"When and where did you first meet her?"
+
+"I cannot tell you."
+
+"You would be wiser to do so."
+
+"Possibly."
+
+The inspector's face darkened.
+
+"Mr. Layton," he said, with unmistakable emphasis, "you had better not
+decline to answer any question. I must warn you that your position may
+become extremely serious."
+
+"I am afraid," Layton remarked quietly, "that you have already made up
+your mind that I am guilty of the crime."
+
+"That is as it may be," replied the inspector. "I am advising you for
+your own good. To refuse to answer questions is not the way to allay
+suspicion--but to increase it."
+
+"I realize that," the young man said. "But I still refuse."
+
+Inspector Fay leant back in his chair patiently.
+
+"Come, Mr. Layton, you will only put us to the trouble and delay of
+proving what you might as well tell us at once. And it will do you no
+good."
+
+"I should be sorry to cause you any additional trouble," Layton replied.
+"But I have my reasons."
+
+"Let me help you," continued the inspector. "I have had inquiries made
+at Miss Manderson's hotel, at the theater at which she was to have
+appeared, of her maid, and various other sources. We have got her time
+pretty well accounted for. It seems that you have not seen her at all
+since she arrived in this country two months ago. Is that so?"
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"Anyway, if you did see her once or twice, there were certainly no
+opportunities for anything to develop between you to account for your
+behavior, or justify to the right to which you considered yourself
+entitled. You must have known her before."
+
+Layton was still silent. The inspector continued easily.
+
+"I am wondering whether a cable across the Atlantic would bring me a
+description of a certain Michael Cranbourne, once well known in the
+United States--particularly in Chicago--son of a multi-millionaire."
+
+James Layton stiffened in his chair. He had become white and tense.
+
+"A large part in the career of Michael Cranbourne was played by an
+adventuress named Thea Colville--said, at one time, to have been the
+most beautiful woman in America--and known later, on the stage in New
+York, as Christine Manderson."
+
+The young man rose. On his face there was a wonderful new dignity and
+calm--a relief, as if some heavy burden had dropped from him and left
+him free.
+
+"Yes," he said quietly, "I am Michael Cranbourne. I might have admitted
+it at first. What do you want now?"
+
+"The whole story," the inspector replied, motioning him back to his
+chair.
+
+"I will tell you," he said.
+
+He sat down again. A great contentment seemed to rest upon him, as on
+one who reaches the end of a difficult and tiring journey. There was a
+long pause.
+
+"I first met Thea Colville," he began, at last, "in Chicago, when I was
+twenty-five--seven years ago. She was twenty. It would be no use
+attempting to give you an idea of what she was like. You never saw her
+alive. No description could convey an impression of her beauty--of her
+awful fascination. From the moment I first saw her there was no other
+woman in my world. I was engaged to be married, but I put an end to it.
+People said I behaved badly, but I didn't care. I couldn't look at, or
+think of, another woman after I had seen her. She enslaved me. I was
+hers, body and soul. She held me helpless. I was only one of many, but I
+was a favored one--at least, I thought so."
+
+He told his story slowly, in a low voice, without emotion. He was
+staring out straight in front of him, forgetful of his surroundings and
+his listener. The past held him.
+
+"My family warned me, and threatened me. I knew they were telling me the
+truth--but I wouldn't listen. I hadn't been brought up to care what
+results my actions brought on other people. I thought only of myself--of
+the indulgence of my own desires. I lived a useless, contemptible
+life--entirely without scruples or restraints. There was scarcely a vice
+that I was not steeped in--hardly a sin that I had not explored. I had
+enough money to gratify all my senses. Nothing was beneath me. I plunged
+into every depravity. I made new depths for myself." He clenched his
+hands. "And I led others after me."
+
+There was another pause. He sat rigid. The inspector waited patiently.
+
+"I need not trouble you with unnecessary details," the low voice went
+on. "It is enough that for her sake I sacrificed all my prospects--I
+threw away my heritage. To keep her for myself I squandered every cent I
+could lay my hands on. I robbed my own brother. I forged my father's
+name. I did ... other things. It was only the generosity of my family
+that kept me from gaol. And Thea threw me over."
+
+"Apparently," the inspector remarked, not unsympathetically, "her
+standard of morality was on a somewhat similar level."
+
+"She is dead," said the young man gently. "'_De mortuis nil nisi
+bonum._'"
+
+The inspector shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"As you please," he said. "Go on."
+
+"She refused to see me--to have anything more to do with me. She cut me
+out of her life with one stroke. For the first time I knew she hadn't
+cared. That broke me. I was very ill. For a year I knew no one. I
+couldn't hear or speak. They fed me like a child. They thought I was
+mad"--his eyes began to gleam unnaturally, his words quickened--"but in
+reality I was in the presence of God. I was in the image I had brought
+upon my soul--black, hideous, distorted, reeking with the filth of my
+sins. I saw myself--in all the degradation I had brought upon the Shape
+of God. I saw my own page in the Book of Life. All the entries were on
+the debit side. The credit side was bare. I waited for damnation--but
+there is no damnation. There is only Building. I went out from the
+presence of God--a Builder."
+
+His face was transformed. His voice rang with triumph--with the pride of
+victory.
+
+"I came to myself. It was like waking from the dead. It was a long time
+before I recovered even a little of my strength. Every hand was against
+me--except my mother's. She stood by me. When she died, a year later, I
+inherited the whole of her fortune. The others tried to take it away
+from me, but I fought them. I had new uses for the money. I came over to
+this country, and began my work. For four years I have given myself and
+all I have. Go and see for yourself what I have done. Go and see the
+men, women, and children who would die for me. Go and hear them bless my
+name. Hear of the lives I have built--the light I have brought. I have
+filled up my credit side. I have a balance in hand in the Book of Life."
+
+Inspector Fay remained silent. He was a severely practical man. Before
+his mind there was only the outcome of the interview. The young man
+controlled himself with an effort. His excitement passed. He was again
+quiet and composed.
+
+"None of my old passions or inclinations remained--except my love for
+Thea. I couldn't crush it. I fought against it with all my strength. I
+struggled to stamp it out, but it was unconquerable. Her face was always
+in front of me, day and night. Her voice was always in my ears. I
+couldn't escape. I heard nothing more of her until about six weeks ago,
+when I saw a photograph of her in one of the papers under the name of
+Christine Manderson, with a statement that she had arrived in London to
+play at the Imperial Theater. The longing to see her again was too
+strong for me. Day after day I waited outside the stage-door of the
+theater--until she came, in all her fatal, maddening beauty. We stood
+facing each other ... and she passed me by without a word."
+
+His voice broke. He pressed his thin hands together.
+
+"The madness came over me again. The sight of her fanned all the old
+flames. I was on fire. I tried to follow her, but they kept me out. I
+wrote to her that night, telling her what I had done, how I had
+suffered, and begging, imploring her to let me see her. The answer was
+a curt note, in the third person, saying that she declined to receive
+any communication from me whatsoever."
+
+Again he paused. The inspector made no comment.
+
+"I found out where she was staying, what her plans were, and who were
+her friends. I discovered that she had come under the influence of
+George Copplestone, who is little better than I was once. The thought
+that she was to be the sport of his depravity drove me to frenzy. I
+neglected my work. I could do nothing. Then I heard that they were on
+the point of becoming engaged. The rest you know. I followed her to
+Copplestone's house. She had evidently warned him against me. I forced
+my way into the room, calling her by the name of Christine----"
+
+"Why?" the inspector asked
+
+"Because it was obvious that she would not wish the name of Thea
+Colville to be known to London. That is all I have to tell you."
+
+The inspector rose.
+
+"Mr. Cranbourne," he said formally, "after hearing your story, I am
+afraid I have no option but to detain you on suspicion of having caused
+the death of Christine Manderson, otherwise Thea Colville, and to warn
+you that anything you say may be used in evidence against you."
+
+The young man heard him without a tremor.
+
+"I did not kill her," he said firmly. "God's will be done."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE BIRTH OF THE KILLER
+
+
+Monsieur Dupont was one of those fortunate individuals who can sleep in
+a train.
+
+He left Paddington at one o'clock, and slept for an hour, a sleep of
+childlike ease and innocence. When he woke the train was within five
+minutes of his destination. He alighted at a small country station, and
+instituted inquiries for a conveyance.
+
+Twenty minutes later, an unimpressionable horse, attached to a hybrid
+vehicle, was jogging him along country lanes which would have delighted
+a man with less serious purposes. But Monsieur Dupont was too much
+occupied with the uglinesses of humanity to heed the beauties of nature.
+It was not until they arrived at the outskirts of a small village that
+he began to look about him with interest.
+
+It was a lovely spot, nestling in primeval innocence under the shelter
+of protecting hills. Monsieur Dupont uttered a heavy sigh, and spoke,
+for the first time during the drive, to the stout, sunburnt lad who
+conducted the equipage.
+
+"My friend," he said sorrowfully, "who could imagine that such a corner
+of heaven could have been the cradle of one of the most terrible
+tragedies of the world? I feel like a purveyor of sins, creeping into
+the preserves of God."
+
+The startled stare that confronted him was not helpful to further
+conversation. The disconcerted youth vigorously obtained fresh impetus
+from their source of progress, and drew up at length, with obvious
+relief, before a low, creeper-covered house, lying in a nest of flowers.
+
+Monsieur Dupont's gentle knock produced a rubicund housekeeper, of about
+eighty, who blended in perfect harmony with the house, the creeper, and
+the flowers.
+
+"Doctor Lessing, if you please, madame," said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+He was shown into a small library, opening on to the garden. The room
+was flooded with sunshine. There were flowers everywhere.
+
+"_Mon Dieu_," said Monsieur Dupont, aloud, "that I should come to ask
+such questions here."
+
+He turned as the door opened, and bowed before a sturdy, white-haired
+old man, bronzed with the health of the country.
+
+"Monsieur Dupont?" said the doctor. "What can I do for you?"
+
+Monsieur Dupont took a letter from his pocket, and unfolded it.
+
+"Monsieur, I beg you to read this letter. It is from the French Embassy,
+and begs assistance to me in an investigation that I am making."
+
+Doctor Lessing read the letter, and returned it.
+
+"I shall be happy to assist you in any way I can," he said, courteously.
+"Please sit down."
+
+Monsieur Dupont sat down by the open windows and drank in the fragrance
+of the garden.
+
+"Doctor Lessing," he began, "I believe it is for a long time that you
+have lived in this beautiful place?"
+
+"For forty-five years," the old doctor smiled contentedly. "But I am by
+no means one of its oldest inhabitants. Lives are long in the country.
+To what period do you wish to refer?"
+
+"A period," Monsieur Dupont replied, "nearly forty years ago. I do not
+know exactly."
+
+"A long stretch," said Doctor Lessing ruefully. "But my memory shall do
+its best for you. That is all I can promise."
+
+"I am engaged," said Monsieur Dupont, "on an extraordinary quest. I do
+not think that any human being has ever been engaged on a more
+extraordinary quest."
+
+"A pleasant one, I trust," said the doctor.
+
+"As much to the contrary as it is possible to imagine."
+
+The doctor murmured a regret and waited for his huge visitor to
+continue.
+
+"Do you," Monsieur Dupont inquired, "recollect the name of Winslowe?"
+
+Doctor Lessing started slightly.
+
+"Winslowe?"
+
+"Oscar Winslowe."
+
+A keen glance flashed from the doctor's eyes.
+
+"Yes," he said quickly, "I recollect the name."
+
+"He lived, I think in this village at the time I have said?"
+
+"Yes." The reply was a trifle curt.
+
+"Perhaps," Monsieur Dupont proceeded evenly, "there were circumstances
+in connection with that name which helped to fix it in your memory?"
+
+"There were certain circumstances," the doctor admitted, "which made it
+a name that I am unlikely to forget."
+
+"Unpleasant circumstances?" queried Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"The most unpleasant that have ever occurred to me in the whole length
+of my practice."
+
+"It is for that story," said Monsieur Dupont, "that I have come to ask.
+May I beg all the details that you can recall?"
+
+"Perhaps you will first tell me," the doctor returned, "for what purpose
+you require this information?"
+
+"I require it," Monsieur Dupont replied impressively, "to save the life
+of an innocent man, who is wrongly accused of the crime of murder. I
+require it also prove three deaths, and possibly to prevent another
+three."
+
+Again the doctor started. His hands gripped the arms of his chair.
+
+"Three deaths?" he exclaimed sharply. "What do you mean?"
+
+"Three deaths," repeated Monsieur Dupont. "Of three very beautiful
+women."
+
+The doctor sprang to his feet.
+
+"My God!" he cried hoarsely.
+
+"Will you tell me the story?" said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+Doctor Lessing sat down again in his chair. He was considerably shaken.
+He leant back and closed his eyes, remaining silent for a few moments.
+
+"I think," he began at last, "that I can, at all events, remember the
+chief facts of the case. It was such a remarkable and distressing one
+that it stands out in the annals of such a peaceful spot as this, and it
+has therefore remained in my memory, though so much else has faded. But
+you must make allowances for the flight of time. Look out of the window
+to the left, and you will see a large red house, on the slope of the
+hill."
+
+"I see it," said Monsieur Dupont, following the direction.
+
+"That was Oscar Winslowe's house, forty years ago. Winslowe was an
+unprincipled and dissolute man. He was only about twenty-five or six at
+that time, but already he was sodden with drink, drugs, and vice of
+every description. He was the worst kind of blackguard. But his wife was
+the exact opposite to him, a gentle, delicate girl. She was not
+beautiful, but her nature more than compensated for lack of beauty. He
+had married her for her money, and treated her abominably. I became
+friendly with her, partly because of the pity I felt for her on account
+of his treatment, and partly because I sincerely admired the beauty of
+her character. In consequence of that friendship, I undertook to watch
+over her entry into motherhood."
+
+"That is what I want," said Monsieur Dupont. "Her entry into
+motherhood."
+
+"The more I saw of her," continued the doctor, "the greater grew my
+pity. There have been wonderful women in the world who have made history
+by their patience and endurance--but this woman was one of those,
+equally brave and equally patient, of whom history knows nothing. She
+worshipped her husband, blindly, dumbly--as an animal will still love
+the man or woman who ill-treats it. She never uttered a word of
+complaint or blame. Her greatest hope was that the advent of the child
+would induce from him something of the consideration and tenderness that
+he had never given her. She believed it was some fault, some
+shortcoming, of hers that had kept it from her. It didn't occur to her
+that it might be the beauty of another woman."
+
+"Ah!" said Monsieur Dupont eagerly.
+
+"She discovered that about three months before the child was born. I
+can't remember how the discovery came about. She followed him to
+London--and found him, even that short time before the birth of his
+child, lavishing on a beautiful society woman all that should have been
+hers."
+
+In spite of the years that had passed the doctor's voice still rose in
+anger. He paused, checking himself.
+
+"Before that supreme insult, that shattering of her hopes, the poor girl
+lost her reason. In the state of her health, it was not surprising. She,
+who would never have harmed a fly, who had never wished ill to any one
+in her life, became possessed with an awful fury to stamp out the beauty
+that had robbed her--to destroy the face and body that were more to the
+man she loved than her own. The other woman, undeserving of
+consideration as she was, narrowly escaped a horrible punishment. The
+unfortunate girl was brought back here, and I was sent for to attend
+her. She grew worse hour after hour. Her mind was completely unhinged.
+From a furious hatred of the beauty of the woman who had wronged her,
+the mania increased into a furious hatred of beauty in any shape or
+form, and a savage lust to destroy it. In the house there were many
+portraits of the beautiful women of the Winslowe family. She tore the
+pictures to shreds. There were statues and valuable works of art. She
+smashed them all to pulp. Her madness was the most terrible thing I
+have ever seen. She had to be forcibly restrained."
+
+Monsieur Dupont listened intently. There was an expression of triumph on
+his face.
+
+"A pitiful story," he said softly.
+
+"She partially recovered in a few weeks," the doctor went on, "and
+before the three months were up her reason, if not actually sound again,
+was at least restored. But she was a wreck of a woman. There was
+darkness all round her. She heard nothing more of Winslowe. He never
+came back to the house. The madness returned when she gave birth to her
+child, and she died in an asylum a fortnight afterwards."
+
+A longer pause followed. The recitation of his memories moved the good
+old doctor as the actual experience must have moved the young man of
+forty years before. He rose, and walked to the window, sniffing the
+scent of the flowers with relief.
+
+"She left the care of the child to the nurse who was devoted to her,
+with ample funds for its future. When the affairs were settled up, the
+nurse took the child away with her, and I have not seen her since."
+
+He made a relieved gesture.
+
+"That is the whole story," he said.
+
+"The nurse," inquired Monsieur Dupont, "what was her name?"
+
+"Masters. Miss Elizabeth Masters."
+
+"Is she still alive?"
+
+"So far as I know she is," the doctor replied. "But I should not have
+been likely to have heard of her death, if it had taken place."
+
+"Can you assist me to discover her address?"
+
+"She wrote to me periodically," Doctor Lessing returned. "She was an
+excellent nurse, and I got her some cases in town. But it is a long time
+since I last heard from her. There may be one or two old letters of hers
+in my desk. If you will excuse me for a moment, I will see if I can find
+them for you."
+
+He left the room. Monsieur Dupont turned to the window, and gazed
+dreamily out into the sunshine.
+
+"And so," he muttered--"in this corner of paradise the Destroyer was
+born."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+A HASTY FLIGHT
+
+
+Doctor Lessing re-entered the room with a letter in his hand.
+
+"The last address I can find," he said, "is 35, De Vere Terrace,
+Streatham. That is sixteen years old, but as it tells me that she had
+only just moved in, you might find her still there."
+
+Monsieur Dupont made a note of the address.
+
+"There remains only one question," he said, replacing his pocket-book.
+"Can you tell me the name of the child?"
+
+The doctor shook his head.
+
+"I'm afraid I can't. The child was christened in the church here, but I
+was away at the time, and when I returned Miss Masters had gone to
+London."
+
+"It is very important," said Monsieur Dupont. "Perhaps I can discover
+it at the church?"
+
+"You will not find any one to tell you at this time," the doctor
+replied. "But, if you will leave me your address, I will send over to
+the parsonage this evening and ask Mr. Wickham to turn it up in the
+register, and let you know."
+
+Monsieur Dupont delivered himself of profuse thanks. Five minutes later
+he had taken leave of the old doctor, and was returning to the station
+under the guidance of the sunburnt youth, who was obviously relieved
+when the expedition terminated.
+
+He slept peacefully until the train reached Paddington.
+
+It was five o'clock when he returned to the Savoy. The girl, Jenny West,
+was waiting for him. She was as white as death.
+
+"They have charged him," she sobbed. "He is remanded for a week."
+
+He laid a hand gently on her shoulder.
+
+"Do not be afraid," he said. "He will be saved. I have given my
+word--the word of Dupont--that he will be saved."
+
+He sat down at his writing table, and wrote rapidly for several minutes.
+He covered four or five sheets of paper, and placed them in an envelope.
+
+"Here, mademoiselle," he said, rising, "are your instructions for
+to-morrow morning. Do not read them until you are alone. A car will be
+waiting for you here at ten o'clock in the morning. In the afternoon you
+will be at liberty to visit Monsieur Layton. I shall expect to see you
+here at one o'clock."
+
+He bowed her out of the room. Half an hour later, he was on his way to
+Streatham.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A grim expression settled on his face as the journey proceeded, yet it
+was not altogether unmixed with pity. He was a man of ready sympathy.
+The doctor's story had evidently moved him to view his task with a new
+compassion.
+
+As his car turned into De Vere Terrace, he became alert, and scrutinized
+the houses closely. They were small semi-detached villas. He alighted in
+front of number 35, passed up the carefully kept front garden, and
+knocked at the door.
+
+There was no response. He knocked again, several times, but the silence
+of the house remained undisturbed. He left the door, and glanced in at
+the front windows, but the room was so dark that he could discern
+nothing. He walked round to the back. Through the uncurtained kitchen
+windows he saw a fire in the range. It had almost burnt itself out.
+There were cooking utensils on the table. Some pastry was rolled out on
+a board. Apparently the household operations had been somewhat rudely
+interrupted, and very hastily abandoned. The back door and windows were
+securely fastened. Returning to the front, he carefully closed the gate,
+and knocked at the door of the adjoining house.
+
+The name of the house was "Sans Souci," and the door was opened by a
+lady in rich purple, with a string of pearls.
+
+Monsieur Dupont swept off his hat.
+
+"Madame, I make a thousand apologies! Can you tell me when I shall find
+Miss Masters at home."
+
+His extreme bulk and the fact that he was not an Englishman seemed to
+cause the lady considerable amusement.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," she said engagingly. "I think she's gone away."
+
+"Away?" Monsieur Dupont echoed.
+
+"She left in a great hurry two hours ago," the lady informed him. "In a
+motor."
+
+Monsieur Dupont appeared somewhat staggered.
+
+"Two hours ago...." he muttered.
+
+"I heard a noise going on in the house," continued the lady, "as if she
+was packing quickly. She went off with a couple of boxes, and seemed
+very impatient."
+
+"It is most unfortunate," said Monsieur Dupont mildly. "I have come all
+the way from the Strand to see her."
+
+The lady laughed freely.
+
+"I'm very sorry," she said good-naturedly. "Won't you come in and rest a
+bit?"
+
+"Madame," he said, "you are very good, but I must return to the Strand.
+Would you allow me to ask you some questions, without finding me
+impertinent?"
+
+"What are they?" she asked.
+
+"Will you tell me if any particular person was in the habit of visiting
+Miss Masters?"
+
+The lady stiffened slightly.
+
+"Are you a friend of Miss Masters?" she inquired, shortly.
+
+"I am not," Monsieur Dupont admitted frankly. "I have never seen her. It
+is a few hours ago that I heard her name for the first time."
+
+"I really cannot answer any questions to a stranger," said the lady
+stiffly. "I don't know you."
+
+Monsieur Dupont bowed.
+
+"If you did, madame," he said, "I should be the proudest of men. Do me
+the favor to read this letter."
+
+He produced the letter from the French Embassy, and handed it to her.
+She read it, and was duly impressed.
+
+"Of course I'll do anything for the French Embassy," she said, returning
+the letter with dignity. "Miss Masters wasn't what you might call a
+friend of mine. I used to speak to her because she lived in the next
+house, but it didn't go beyond that. She kept very much to herself. I
+don't want to say anything at all unkind, but very few ladies in our set
+knew her. Of course it wasn't her fault, but she was not exactly classy.
+And when one lives in a neighborhood like this, it's class that tells."
+
+Monsieur Dupont bowed again.
+
+"Obviously, madame," he said.
+
+"The only person that used to visit her," continued the gratified lady,
+"was a man who often used to arrive in the evening and stay the night.
+We understood she was an old nurse of his, or something of the kind, and
+that he more or less provided for her."
+
+"And this man, madame--what was he like?"
+
+"He was rather tall," she said, "and had a dark moustache. He was always
+well dressed, and looked quite a gentleman."
+
+"You heard his name?"
+
+"No--we never heard his name. I did tell my house-parlor-maid to try to
+find out once, but she couldn't. Miss Masters actually accused me of
+prying."
+
+"_Mon Dieu_," said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"We had a bit of a row," said the lady candidly.
+
+"Does she live alone, madame?"
+
+"Yes, quite alone. She does everything for herself."
+
+"My last question," said Monsieur Dupont, "may seem remarkable. It is
+this. Have strange things appeared to be happening in the house during
+the visits of the tall gentleman with the dark moustache?"
+
+She started, looking at him curiously.
+
+"Strange things?" she repeated slowly.
+
+"Perhaps--violent things."
+
+"Well, that's queer," she exclaimed. "As a matter of fact, we once heard
+the most extraordinary noises going on when he was there. My husband
+thought of sending in to ask if anything was the matter."
+
+"What kind of noises, madame?"
+
+"Like as it might be heavy things being thrown about and smashed," said
+the lady elegantly.
+
+Monsieur Dupont swept off his hat again.
+
+"Thank you, madame," he said--and went back to his car.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+TRANTER ATTACKS THE CROOKED HOUSE
+
+
+In the evening, Tranter set off to the Crooked House.
+
+It was dark when he reached it, and the roads were empty. Through the
+open lodge gates he slipped into the garden unseen. The place seemed
+deserted. The front of the house showed not a glimmer of light. The
+whole ugly shape of it stood out gauntly against the sky of the summer
+night. In the shadow of the trees, he stood watching it, alert to detect
+a sign of life. But no such sign appeared. The Crooked House was as dark
+and silent as a tomb.
+
+He crept nearer, keeping under cover of the trees, and skirted the lawns
+to the back of the house. There, also, darkness reigned. No sound
+disturbed the stillness. Facing him were the dark shapes of the trees
+surrounding the wing of the house which extended from the opposite
+corner. The foliage was so dense that no part of the wing itself was
+visible. He moved quickly across the back of the house, and reached the
+trees. As he passed under them, it seemed that he was feeling his way
+among monstrous sentinels of a dark mystery.
+
+A thick hedge loomed up in front of him. It appeared to surround the
+entire wing. He walked round, trying to find a place thin enough to
+allow him to push his way through--but the hedge was evidently there for
+the express purpose of defeating such an intention. It was impossible to
+penetrate it, to creep under it, or to climb over it. At the extremity
+of the wing, about which the trees were thickest, he saw a faint light,
+escaping round the edge of a blind.
+
+He stopped beneath it. It was a meager, unpleasant light, too dim to be
+of any greater use in the room than to afford the barest relief from
+complete darkness. The window was half overgrown with ivy, and he could
+see that it was filthily dirty. The light continually flickered, and
+once or twice it seemed to have died out altogether. An eerie sensation
+began to possess him. He felt very strongly the evil influence of the
+house. Curiosity to discover what sinister secret it really harbored
+increased and nerved him.
+
+Again he tried to force a way through the hedge, but everywhere it was
+an impassable barrier. Slowly and noiselessly he worked his way round
+the wing, only to find it completely enclosed on all sides. He returned,
+and stood looking up at the window. Either the light was brighter, or
+the gap at the edge of the blind had widened. He thought he saw a faint
+shadow pass and re-pass.
+
+It was not until, in moving to one side, he struck his head against a
+massive bough of one of the great trees that the possibility of
+utilizing them as a means of access to the forbidden enclosure occurred
+to him. He examined the bough. It extended well over the hedge, and
+would form a perfectly secure bridge. By creeping a few feet along it,
+he would be able to drop down on the other side of the hedge. Finding
+the main trunk, he tested his weight on a smaller bough, and swung
+himself up into the tree.
+
+A few minutes later he stood within the barrier. The window was some
+twelve or fifteen feet above him. But the walls were thickly clad with
+ivy, and ivy is an excellent ladder. Carefully he began to climb.
+
+He reached the window, found himself a secure footing, and peered round
+the edge of the blind. But the light was so poor, and the panes were so
+dirty, on both sides, that had there been anything to see he could have
+been very little the wiser. As it was, the small area of the room into
+which he could dimly peer seemed to be carpetless and unfurnished. There
+was no movement, no sound. The light itself apparently came from the
+further end of the room, from the level of a table. He clung on,
+undecided how to proceed. It appeared that the only thing to do was to
+wait and listen for some indication of the purpose of the dismal
+illumination.
+
+He looked at his watch. It was ten-thirty. After a wait of what seemed
+at least half an hour, he looked again. Ten minutes only had passed. No
+discernible movement had taken place in the room. Yet he felt perfectly,
+and very unpleasantly, certain that it was occupied--that something was
+proceeding within it which, had the blind not intervened, would have
+revealed the secret of the house. Of what it might be he could form no
+idea--but, for the first time in his life, he was experiencing, in his
+mental tenseness and the sinister silence of the surroundings, that
+sensation which attests a proximity to evil. He was daunted. Fear was a
+condition to which he was a stranger, but a vivid nervousness was
+beginning to seize upon him. A sense of personal danger, an element
+which, so far, he had scarcely considered, was attacking him, and
+gaining ground. The perspiration was standing out on his face. He found
+that his hands were cold and wet. The pulses of his body were throbbing;
+he felt his strength growing less. Muttering a curse, he braced himself
+with a strong effort. He was accustomed to consider his nerves
+impregnable. Many times in his life he had known himself to be in far
+greater danger than he could attribute to the present situation, and
+such weakness had never assailed him. On four occasions he had been
+aware that his life was hanging by a thread, and had gloried in his own
+coolness. And now ... without a doubt the Crooked House was evil.
+
+Still he waited. Another twenty minutes slowly passed.
+
+He started. His hands closed tightly on the trunk of the ivy to which he
+was clinging. The door of the room had been closed with a slam. He could
+hear heavy footsteps on the uncarpeted floor. A shadow blotted out the
+light.
+
+A moment later, a voice--a man's voice, horribly strained and
+unnatural--rose in a shout of fury.
+
+"Damn you!" it screamed. "Look at your work! Look at it again! Open your
+rotten eyes and look! Look! Look!"
+
+Tranter was so startled that he almost lost his footing on the ivy.
+There was no mistaking the voice--it was the scream of madness. He
+listened for an answer, but there was no sound in response. Then the
+same voice laughed--a laugh of awful bitterness.
+
+"Are you satisfied? The thing is creeping on. I am getting nearer to
+you hour by hour. I am more like you to-night. One more grain went
+yesterday--another to-day. Another will go to-morrow...." Again the
+voice rose to a shriek of rage and hatred. "Oh, God! There is no hope!
+No hope! Only on--and on--to that!"
+
+The words trailed off into a sob of agony. Still Tranter could hear no
+reply.
+
+Silence followed. The shadow again blotted out the light; then sprang
+aside, and the voice burst out into a fresh paroxysm of madness, yelling
+a stream of curses at the object of its fury. The madman's frenzy was
+utterly revolting to listen to, but Tranter searched it closely for some
+clue to the identity of the person, or thing, to whom it was addressed.
+The voice rose again to a shriek; then subsided as before into a feeble
+wail of misery.
+
+"Oh God!" it moaned--"is there no way ... no way? No road but that road?
+No end but that end? Oh God, have mercy ... have mercy...."
+
+It was a cry of unspeakable anguish--the prayer of a soul in torment. It
+seemed to Tranter that the speaker had thrown himself down, and was
+beating the floor with his hands.
+
+There was silence again. Then, for the first time, Tranter became aware
+of another presence in the room. Though he could neither see nor hear
+anything, he was conscious of a new, indefinable movement. For a moment
+horror almost overcame him. He trembled. His nerves failed. The support
+of the ivy seemed to be giving way under him. He clutched at the
+framework of the window itself.
+
+The shadow of a figure leapt up from the floor and bounded to the
+window. The blind was wrenched aside, the window thrown open, and before
+Tranter had time to recover himself or attempt to escape, the livid,
+distorted face of George Copplestone was almost touching his own.
+
+A hand closed on his throat in a murderous grip, another seized his
+wrist. In spite of his frantic struggles, he was dragged with superhuman
+strength through the window into the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+A DUEL
+
+
+On the afternoon of the same day, an hour after the departure of
+Inspector Fay, Mrs. Astley-Rolfe had sped herself to Richmond, in a
+luxurious motor car, which was her's through the instrumentality of Mr.
+Gluckstein.
+
+She had found the house of George Copplestone plunged into the darkness
+of a house of mourning. Every blind was drawn. Every particle of color
+had been removed or draped. Black reigned supreme.
+
+Copplestone was not pleased to see her, and made no attempt to assume
+the contrary. He was sitting in his library, moody and melancholy, still
+in the half-dazed condition into which the death of Christine Manderson
+had cast him. His face was drawn, haggard, and sickly; his eyes were
+bloodshot. He looked up at her with a forbidding frown, and did not
+move from his chair.
+
+"Well?" he said curtly.
+
+She waved a hand round the black room.
+
+"Isn't this ... a trifle theatrical?" she asked coolly.
+
+He said nothing. She sat down opposite to him uninvited. She was
+perfectly self-possessed.
+
+"Inspector Fay was kind enough to call on me this morning," she remarked
+pleasantly.
+
+Again there was no reply.
+
+"He may not be an example of dagger-like intelligence," she continued,
+looking at him steadily--"but he is just a little too sharp to play
+with."
+
+He scowled at her.
+
+"Have you come to tell me that?" he asked rudely.
+
+"That--and other things," she returned unruffled.
+
+"I don't want to hear them," he retorted.
+
+"They concern you," she said--"rather closely."
+
+"I don't want to hear them," he repeated.
+
+Her lips tightened.
+
+"It is scarcely pleasant to be such an obviously unwelcome visitor," she
+said evenly. "But I am afraid you must listen."
+
+"I am not in the humor to talk to you," he declared roughly. "I don't
+want to talk to any one. I want to be left alone. Isn't it enough to be
+pestered by the police and the papers, and all the damnable business for
+the inquest? Don't you see that my house is in mourning? Can't you let
+me be--even for a few days?"
+
+"If I had let you be," she replied easily, "Inspector Fay would probably
+be here in my place--with much less pleasant intentions."
+
+His glance sharpened.
+
+"What do you mean?" he growled.
+
+"You were not wise," she proceeded tranquilly, "to treat his mental
+capabilities with quite so much contempt. They are possibly not
+startlingly brilliant, and he is perfectly easy to deceive. But even an
+official detective can see through a clumsy lie."
+
+Uneasiness flashed across his face. She smiled slightly.
+
+"And I am afraid, my friend, that you are a clumsy liar."
+
+"I don't know what you are talking about," he snapped.
+
+"Come," she said quietly--"however freely we may trifle with the very
+much overrated Arm of the Law, at least let us be honest with each
+other. For some reason or other, you did not tell Inspector Fay the
+truth."
+
+He sat upright with a jerk, flamed with passion.
+
+"What the devil is it to do with you?" he demanded fiercely.
+
+"I will tell you in a moment," she returned smoothly. "When you
+accounted for your time to the inspector, you told him that you went
+into the house to refill your cigarette case?"
+
+His lethargy had disappeared. He leant forward, staring at her, his
+hands clutching the arms of his chair.
+
+"But, unfortunately, you did not take the elementary precaution of
+having a full case to support the story. In nine times out of ten you
+would have got away with it. This was the tenth."
+
+There was silence for a moment. She sat in an easy attitude, meeting his
+gaze with complete confidence. No trace of his previous dullness
+remained. He was alert and taut.
+
+She went on, with delightful smoothness.
+
+"With an unpardonable lack of respect for the statement of a gentleman,
+it occurred to the inspector to test the truth of that account. He did
+not want to smoke--but he asked you for a cigarette. It was a gentle
+trap. There were only two in your case."
+
+He ground out an oath under his breath.
+
+"Obviously you had not gone into the house to refill your case. Perhaps
+you went in for some other reason. Perhaps you didn't go in at all.
+Anyway, you lied--and when people deliberately lie in such serious cases
+as these, it may safely be imagined that they have some object to serve
+in doing so. The inspector was concerned to discover what your object
+was. So he came to me."
+
+"To you...." he muttered.
+
+"I told you," she returned, "that he is a little too sharp to play
+with--clumsily. He suspected, from what had been told him, that we might
+have had a stormy scene together, and had wished to keep it to
+ourselves. He was quite ready to believe that the time you had failed so
+lamentably to account for had really been passed with me in '_une petite
+scène de jalousie_.' Fortunately, I had given him a true account of
+myself, which was that I had been alone. So after the necessary
+hesitation, and with just the right amount of annoyance, I was able to
+confess that we had both lied, and that we had in fact been
+together--and he went away satisfied. I am a better liar than you."
+
+She regarded him serenely. His expression was ugly. There was that in
+the look of him that might have daunted any woman, but Phyllis
+Astley-Rolfe had lived chiefly by her wits for a sufficient time to be
+quite impervious where another would have been silenced. She was as
+completely without fear as she was without scruple. Her objects were
+objects to be gained, by the most convenient and speedy means, and
+quite irrespective of considerations which might have withheld another
+from attempting to fulfill them. In furtherance of her present object,
+she gave Copplestone look for look.
+
+"I return good for evil," she said. "It is not a habit of mine. It is
+really quite contrary to my usual practice. I told a lie to save you
+from further suspicion. Considering the circumstances, you must admit
+that it was exceedingly generous of me. And I expect you to be
+grateful."
+
+Anything but an expression of gratitude confronted her. He remained
+silent, making a strong effort to mask his agitation. But his fingers
+twitched spasmodically, and there was unmistakable fear in his eyes. She
+watched him intently, losing no point of the effect she had created.
+
+"Well...?" she said steadily.
+
+There was no answer. She bent towards him.
+
+"I said you were with me. You were not with me. Where were you?"
+
+The man breathed heavily, his baleful gaze fixed on her. She met it
+with unassailable composure.
+
+"Listen," she said slowly--"there are strange things in this house. I
+know it. I've known it for some time. Things that the light of day never
+shines on. What are they?"
+
+He sprang up, and stood over her with clenched hands, his face torn with
+fury.
+
+"Damn you!" he cried hoarsely. "What is my house, or what happens in it,
+to you?"
+
+"Sit down," she said firmly. "You are not frightening me. To threaten a
+woman is merely to increase her tenacity, and mine requires no
+fortification. Please move away from me."
+
+He obeyed, muttering. Her calmness disarmed him.
+
+"I am not sure," she continued, "that I wanted you to answer my
+question--anyway at present. Perhaps your secrets might be too much,
+even for my conscience--and that is saying a great deal."
+
+He had resumed his chair. There was a moment's pause.
+
+"You were foolish to mock me," she went on.
+
+"Mockery is the one thing a woman cannot accept, or forgive. She can
+stand any amount of ill-treatment and cruelty, in a sufficient cause.
+But she cannot be mocked in any cause whatever. You made me certain
+promises, which honor bound you to fulfil--and then flung your
+renunciation of them in my face, before strangers who understood. It was
+a very mean and low-down thing to do."
+
+A faint, sneering smile passed over his face. Her voice hardened.
+
+"I am not a woman to defy--and I am still less a woman to mock. You are
+going to keep your promises."
+
+"I'll see you in hell first!" he retorted brutally.
+
+She laughed. "You will not see me in hell first," she said calmly. "You
+may quite possibly see me in hell after--because if there is a hell we
+shall certainly meet there. But in the meantime--you are going to redeem
+your word."
+
+He made a slow gesture round the black room.
+
+"You come to me now ... within a few hours...."
+
+"Why not?" she returned hardly.
+
+"Almost before her body is cold...."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Christine Manderson was an incident," she said indifferently. "A
+disagreeable episode. She merely infatuated you, as she might have
+infatuated any man. She has passed."
+
+"Passed," he muttered. "Passed...."
+
+"I do not profess to equal her in appearance," she admitted. "But I am
+not repulsive. I am considered to be extremely good-looking, and I am
+much more interesting to talk to than she was. Also, I am well-bred.
+Most people would find the balance in my favor. But, even if you do not,
+the difference can only be very small. You will have to make the best of
+it."
+
+"Or else?" he snarled.
+
+"Or else, if you prefer it, I will exchange your promises for the
+secrets of this house--with no undertaking to keep them."
+
+He sat biting his nails in the suppression of his rage. She languidly
+corrected the folds of her dress, leant back in a charming attitude,
+and waited with unassailable self-possession. The silence was long.
+
+"How much do you want?" he demanded, at last.
+
+"I am not asking you for money," she replied coldly.
+
+"I am offering it unasked," he retorted. "How much do you want?"
+
+"If you had offered to buy back your promises a week ago," she said, "I
+might have sold them to you. I do not know that I particularly looked
+forward to their fulfilment. But you flaunted another woman in my face."
+
+"Put it all in the bill," he said coarsely.
+
+"Therefore I will give you nothing back. You shall have only your bond."
+
+"Why waste your breath on heroics to me?" he sneered. "You would sell
+your soul for money. You have often boasted it."
+
+"I would sell my soul for money any day," she agreed frankly--"but not
+my pride. I am too much of a sinner already to scruple over the disposal
+of my soul. But it would not profit me to gain the whole world, and lose
+my pride."
+
+"Bosh!" he said contemptuously. "Pride pays no bills--and you owe too
+many to let it deprive you of the pleasure of getting rid of a few."
+
+"That is as it may be," she returned. "I have told you the only exchange
+I will make."
+
+He sprang up again. This time his anger was scornful.
+
+"Fool!" he cried harshly. "Take your warning! Do you think my
+secrets--if I have any--are for you? Or that I, myself, am for you? Why
+do you try to force yourself on to dangerous ground? There are things in
+the world into which it is not good to pry."
+
+"Plenty," she said, unmoved.
+
+"I may have made you careless promises," he admitted. "I have made many
+women promises. It is a bad habit. I cannot keep them. I cannot, and
+will not, marry you, or any other woman. The only one I might have
+married ... is dead."
+
+"Again you throw her in my face," she murmured, through closed teeth.
+
+"I daresay I used you meanly," he acknowledged. "I _did_ use you meanly.
+It was not the game to do what I did that night. I freely admit it. And
+I offer you reparation--the only reparation I can make. It would be the
+wisest act of your life to take it."
+
+"You have heard my conditions," she replied. "I shall not change them.
+Unlike most women, I have been gifted with the faculty of being able to
+make up my mind. The time for compromise has passed."
+
+"You don't care for me," he persisted. "You couldn't care for any man.
+You're not capable of it. It's not in you."
+
+"Whether or not I care for you does not enter into the matter at all,"
+she rejoined calmly. "My capability for affection has no bearing on the
+present question."
+
+"You were relying on marrying me to pay your debts," he declared. "You
+could not have built a more forlorn hope. I should not pay your debts if
+I did marry you. I will give you five thousand pounds for your lie this
+morning."
+
+She was very angry. The insult dashed all the color from her face,
+leaving it white and set in lines that made her look almost old. Her
+eyes glittered menacingly.
+
+"You dare," she said slowly, "to offer _me_ five thousand pounds?"
+
+"And consider yourself damned lucky!" he retorted.
+
+He took out his case, and lit a cigarette with a show of indifference.
+
+"I am not bound to offer you anything," he said carelessly. "That small
+point seems to have escaped you. You have no claim on me. I consider my
+suggestion an exceedingly generous one. You can take it or leave it.
+It's all you'll get."
+
+She rose.
+
+"You insult me again," she said, in measured tones. "You are not wise."
+
+He laughed easily.
+
+"My dear Phyllis," he said, "you are adorable in a rage--but I am afraid
+I must steel myself against your gentle exactions. Let me convince you
+that I am really treating you in a highly preferential manner. During my
+career three women have attempted to blackmail me. They were all
+ugly--so they got nothing. You are charming--so you get five thousand
+pounds. That is the most I have ever paid for my smaller indiscretions.
+And I take the liberty of thinking it more than sufficient compensation
+for the few erroneous impressions I may have allowed you to contract."
+
+"You are making the mistake," she said, in the same controlled tones,
+"of imagining that you are buying back your promises to me, which I can
+quite understand that you value lightly. But I have told you that those
+promises are not for sale. You have wandered from the real issue. You
+are not buying the promises of your heart--you are buying the secrets of
+your house. Are they not on a different scale of values?"
+
+"You know nothing of my house," he returned. "You do not know whether
+there are secrets in it or not."
+
+"I don't know," she confessed candidly. "Possibly there are not. But I
+am prepared to take a sporting chance that there are. And if I am
+wrong--so much the better for you."
+
+He was silent, looking at her thoughtfully, as if carefully weighing his
+course of action.
+
+"You were under the suspicion of Scotland Yard," she reminded him,
+"until I told my lie. You will be under it again if I admit my lie.
+Inspector Fay would certainly not rest until he had thoroughly
+investigated your reasons for giving a false account of yourself. He is
+by no means a fool--and I very much doubt that he is to be bought,
+anyway so reasonably as I am."
+
+Copplestone's face wore a strange expression. There was now no animosity
+in it, but rather a mild resignation, in strange contrast to his
+previous anger.
+
+"So," he said, after a pause, "you would put them on to me again...?"
+
+"I need not have taken them off you," she replied.
+
+"I have offered you five thousand pounds for that," he said slowly.
+
+"I have refused them."
+
+"Think over it well," he advised her impressively.
+
+"I do not need to," she returned.
+
+For a moment they faced each other steadily.
+
+"You mean that--finally?" he asked.
+
+"Finally," she answered.
+
+He moved to a door at the further end of the room, and opened it.
+
+"Come," he said quietly. "You have gone too far to draw back. You shall
+see the secrets of my house. Follow me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE SECRET OF THE HOUSE
+
+
+She followed him out of the black room into a dark, narrow passage.
+
+Her calmness and self-possession remained undisturbed. Without a tremor
+she accepted this unexpected invitation to the secrets of the Crooked
+House--quite ignorant of, and indifferent to, the danger to which she
+might be committing herself. That there were hidden things in the house
+she had for a long time been convinced, but of their nature she had been
+unable to form even a conjecture, in spite of many attempts to creep
+into the mystery. Copplestone's sudden decision to reveal them to her
+was a surprise, and an unpleasant check to the development of her
+schemes. Either he placed a much lower value on his secrets than she had
+expected, or her participation in them was by no means to be dreaded to
+the extent that she had relied upon. In any case her position was
+considerably weakened, and the success of her plans was no longer the
+assured thing she had believed it to be.
+
+In silence they ascended a flight of stairs, and reached a door which
+appeared to be the entrance into a separate part of the building. It was
+a massive oak door, fitted with double locks of remarkable strength for
+a private house. Copplestone held it open, motioning her to pass before
+him, and relocked it on the other side. She was still without any
+nervousness, but her curiosity increased with every step. He led the way
+on, and she followed him unhesitatingly. They traversed several
+corridors, and turned many corners. Her sense of direction told her that
+they had entered an extreme wing of the house, hidden away among the
+thickest trees of the garden, and to all appearances unused. The place
+was damp, dusty, and silent, with the intense silence of emptiness. Some
+of the doors were open, showing unfurnished, neglected rooms. The papers
+were peeling off the walls; the fittings were covered with the rust and
+dirt of years; the soiled blinds half covered the closed, uncleaned
+windows. The atmosphere was close and unhealthy.
+
+"What a parable of waste!" she said.
+
+He did not reply. They came to a square landing, and another heavy door
+faced them. Copplestone stopped, and for a moment stood looking at her
+intently. She did not flinch. He shrugged his shoulders, and took a key
+from his pocket. It was a peculiar key, and was attached to a strong
+chain. He fitted it into the lock, and opened the door. Then he turned
+to her again, and she saw a change coming over his face.
+
+"Go in," he said curtly.
+
+She hesitated, for the first time. He withdrew the key, and returned it
+to his pocket.
+
+"You need not be afraid," he said.
+
+"I will follow you," she returned, watching him carefully.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders again, and went into the room. She entered
+after him.
+
+It was a long, low room. There was a window at the far end, but it was
+so dirty, and the curtains in front of it were so thick and discolored,
+that the place was in semi-darkness, and the air overwhelmingly heavy
+and unwholesome. There was a little rough furniture, a strip of worn
+carpet on the floor, and some untasted food on the table--but it was not
+any of those dismal objects that attached the woman's gaze. It was
+rather a white, pasty face that seemed to gleam at her from the darkest
+corner of the room--the drawn pallid face, and dull lifeless eyes, of a
+white-haired man, who was sitting in a huddled, contorted attitude on a
+bare wooden chair.
+
+She shrank back with a startled exclamation, and turned to Copplestone.
+His face was convulsed with fury, his eyes aflame with hatred.
+
+"Well?" he said harshly.
+
+She drew away from him fearfully.
+
+"What wickedness is this?" she shuddered.
+
+"None of mine," he answered.
+
+The vacant eyes rested on them with a fixed stare, completely devoid of
+intelligence. The huddled figure evinced no sign of life. It appeared
+to be unconscious of their presence. Copplestone advanced a few paces;
+but the woman hung back, horrified.
+
+"Is that ... a living thing?" she whispered.
+
+He laughed--an unnatural, metallic laugh.
+
+"Yes," he said--"it's living ... with as much life as its sins have left
+it, and its rotten body can hold."
+
+He turned back to her.
+
+"Come nearer," he said. "There is nothing to be afraid of."
+
+But the glassy stare of the motionless figure had unnerved her. She was
+white, and shaking.
+
+"No, no," she muttered, shrinking further back.
+
+He seized her arm.
+
+"I warned you," he cried roughly, "but you wouldn't listen. You were
+brave enough then--when you thought I daren't stand up to you. You shall
+learn your lesson--you who talked so glibly of my secrets. Come closer."
+
+He dragged her with him towards the corner.
+
+"Look!" he commanded. "Look at that thing in front of you--that thing
+crouching there like an ape. It was once a man. It was once an active,
+intelligent, healthy human being--a strong handsome member of a strong
+handsome family. Everything was in its favor. There were no obstacles in
+its path. It had many more natural gifts than the average man is endowed
+with. It might have ruled an empire. It might have loaded its name with
+honor, and left it to its children. It had the capability, the power,
+and the opportunity to leave the world a better place than it found it.
+Look at it now."
+
+She stood silent, her head turned away. He went on, with increasing
+rage.
+
+"Look at that man now! He has brought himself to a state of gibbering
+insanity by a life of indulgence in every form of vice and depravity
+known to humanity. He knowingly and deliberately drained his mental and
+physical resources by every insult to nature that depraved men and
+women--the lowest creatures of the earth--have devised for the
+satisfaction of their diseased senses. He was a drunkard and drug-fiend
+before he was twenty. Every effort was made to check and reclaim him,
+but he defied them all. He was fully warned. He knew what the
+consequences would be. He knew that nature cannot be violated
+continuously without exacting her penalty, sooner or later. But he
+plunged on. Step by step he brought himself to this. His brain and his
+body are decaying from the unnameable excesses he has committed with
+both. He is literally rotting in front of us at this moment."
+
+She put her hands up to her face.
+
+"Can he hear you?" she gasped.
+
+"I don't know," he replied savagely. "Perhaps he can. I hope he can. I
+hope he can hear every word. It wouldn't be the first time he had heard
+the story of his shame. And it won't be the last. Curse him!"
+
+She tried to draw him back.
+
+"Come away," she cried. "How can you stand in front of the poor
+creature, and talk like that before his face?"
+
+His iron grip closed on her wrist, and held her helpless.
+
+"Why not?" he demanded, with dreadful bitterness. "Why should he be
+spared because he is suffering a fraction of the just and natural
+consequences of his own deliberate acts? What is there to pity in that?
+It is a merciful retribution. If you have any sympathy to show--show it
+to me."
+
+"To you?" she echoed.
+
+"To me," he repeated.
+
+She screamed, and tried to wrench herself from his grasp. The horrible
+head had begun to move slowly from side to side. A faint, ghastly smile
+appeared round the twisted lips.
+
+"Let me go," she cried. "It's too dreadful."
+
+He dragged her round again.
+
+"You forced yourself into my secrets," he said hardly. "It is too late
+to shrink back now. You shall know them to the full--and then you may
+go."
+
+He paused, still holding her. In her horror, and under the sickly,
+stifling atmosphere of the room, she was almost fainting. But he paid no
+heed to her condition. His eyes were fixed malignantly on the grinning
+object of his hatred.
+
+"That man," he said slowly, "was free from any hereditary weakness. His
+viciousness was not inherent. He came of a good, clean stock. When he
+was thirty--although the inevitable results of his violations had
+already seized upon him--he committed the crime of marrying. It was the
+foulest sin of his life. He knew what the result would be--what it was
+bound by every natural law to be. He knew that the sins of the fathers
+must be visited on the children"--he clenched his hands, and she winced
+as her wrist was crushed in his grip--"and knowing that, he dared to
+marry."
+
+His voice rose. His face began to work with passion.
+
+"He married a good woman--who bore all the cruelties he heaped upon her
+because she loved him. Her money had been his only consideration--and
+when he had got all that he treated her like dirt. But there are limits
+even to what a woman can bear. He broke her heart, and she died ...
+mad. If only she had died a little sooner...."
+
+She steadied herself with an effort.
+
+"Who is he?" she asked. "Why is he here, in your house?"
+
+A flood of fury shook him.
+
+"His name is Oscar Winslowe," he said fiercely. "He is my father."
+
+She uttered a sharp cry, and wrenched her hand away from him.
+
+"Your father? That creature ... your father...."
+
+"Yes," he cried wildly--"he is my father. I am George Copplestone
+Winslowe. Do you wonder that I hate him? I am the victim of his
+vices--the heir to his sins. He has left me the legacy of outraged
+nature. I am mad."
+
+She recoiled from him, panting. He was beside himself. His face was
+distorted; madness glared in his eyes. Then, suddenly, the paroxysm left
+him. He turned to her weakly, with the appeal of his utter despair.
+
+"Pity me," he said. "Oh, if you are capable of pitying anything in this
+dreadful world, pity me! My awful inheritance is closing in on me.
+Every day one more grain of reason leaves me. Like him, I might have
+been a leader of men. Like him, I have power and capability. I have a
+brain that could have raised me to the greatest heights. I have a body
+that can bear any strain. But I am mad."
+
+His agony was pitiful. He sobbed, wringing his hands.
+
+"I can feel the hideous thing growing in me, hour by hour--a little
+more--a little more. I can feel its clutch tightening on me. And I can't
+resist. I can't escape. The little mental balance I have is being
+dragged away from me. In a few years--if I let myself live to it--I
+shall be a babbling maniac. Nothing can save me. I knew it when I was a
+boy--before that thing there completely lost its reason. I knew I was
+born a madman for my father's sins. It crept on me gradually--one sign
+after another--one horrible secret impulse after another. The slow, sure
+growth of madness." He buried his face in his hands. "Oh, God! Oh,
+God!"
+
+In the silence that followed the figure on the chair straightened itself
+with a jerk, and gibbered at him, twitching spasmodically. The woman
+turned away, shaking.
+
+"I live in hell," he moaned--"in all the torment of the uttermost hell.
+I fly from one thing to another for respite, for relief--but there is no
+relief. I can only make madness of them all. Everything twists and turns
+in my hands. I can keep nothing straight." Then another gust of passion
+seized him. He shouted, beating his hands together. "What right," he
+cried furiously, "have men and women to marry and bequeath disease and
+madness to their children? What right have they to propagate the
+rottenness of their minds and bodies? It's worse than murder. It's the
+cruelest, the most wicked, of all crimes. What are the feelings of a
+child to such parents? Is it not to hate them--as I hate that foul thing
+there?--to curse them, as I curse him, with every breath?" His arms
+dropped limply to his sides. "What is the use of hating?" he said dully.
+"It can't cure me. It can't cure me."
+
+He looked at her fixedly.
+
+"Well?" he asked bitterly. "You know the secrets of my house. Are you
+satisfied?"
+
+She laid a hand on his arm, and turned him gently towards the door.
+There were tears in her eyes.
+
+"Come away," she said weakly. "Let us speak somewhere else."
+
+He followed her. They went out, without another look at the figure
+behind them, and returned in silence to the black room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+TRUER COLORS
+
+
+A great change had come over her. All the hardness had disappeared from
+her face. It was transformed by a wonderful new pity--a latent
+compassion, stirred for the first time by this miserable man's utter
+tragedy. And so transformed she was very lovely--with a loveliness that
+all the arts of an accomplished society woman had never bestowed upon
+her.
+
+"Forgive me," she said gently. "I would not have said what I did if I
+had even thought ... of that."
+
+He looked down at her, a world of agony in his tortured eyes.
+
+"Well," he asked--"do you still want to marry me ... now?"
+
+For an instant the old hardness flashed back.
+
+"You would have married _her_," she returned.
+
+"I wonder," he said slowly. "I wonder ... if I should."
+
+His gaze wandered vacantly round the room.
+
+"She intoxicated me," he said. "Her memory intoxicates me still. She set
+fire to all my passions. She made me forget the barrier. But I think I
+really hated her. Perhaps ... if she hadn't died in the garden ... I
+might have killed her...."
+
+The madness was leaving him, and the weakness of reaction taking its
+place. He put a hand on her shoulder, and leant heavily on her. His face
+was mild and kind--the face of the normal man.
+
+"Phyllis," he said softly, "I mocked you, and treated you badly. But it
+wasn't really I. Forgive a poor madman the sins of his madness."
+
+She made no attempt to check her tears. He took her hand, as gently as a
+child.
+
+"Don't cry," he begged. "See--I am all right now. Sit down, and let us
+talk."
+
+Still leaning on her, he moved to a couch, and drew her down beside him.
+
+"First," he said, "I will tell you why I lied to Inspector Fay. I did
+not go into the house to fill my cigarette case. I was mad. It came on
+me--as it often does--when I see sane people about me--a rush of hatred
+and despair."
+
+He spoke dispassionately, without a trace of the terrible disorder that
+had possessed him a few minutes before. Only the gloom remained--the
+shadow that never left him.
+
+"You can understand," he went on, "what my life has been since this
+cloud first settled on me. I tried to fight against it--but how could I
+fight against a thing that I knew to be there, creeping on me day after
+day--when I knew that in the end I must give way? Every hour seemed to
+bring some fresh proof of the madness that was in me--some proof that
+made resistance more and more futile and hopeless. A thousand times I
+have been tempted to kill myself--but always there was the dim,
+desperate hope that some miraculous twist of sanity might yet deliver
+me. I can't convey to you a tenth--a hundredth--part of the agony of
+that struggle. There were times when I shrank into the farthest corner
+of my darkest cellar, and prayed, as only a madman could pray, to be
+spared from the unjust curse. There were times when I stood out on the
+roof of my house, and defied the God I had prayed to...."
+
+He stared straight out in front of him, a figure of unutterable
+pathos--a helpless accuser of Eternal Laws.
+
+"If I were suffering for a fault of my own, I would bear my punishment
+uncomplaining. But I am innocent. I have done nothing to deserve this
+torture. And there is always the thought of what I might have been--of
+what I know I could have been. That is the cruelest torment of all. I
+have to see sane men and women wasting every minute of their
+lives--without the slightest appreciation of the value, or the
+responsibilities, of reason--who might as well be mad, for all the use
+they are to their fellow-creatures. And I...." He broke off. "That is
+enough about myself," he said. "I want to talk about you."
+
+He looked at her in surprise, as if noticing the alteration in her for
+the first time.
+
+"How changed you are," he said. "You have never looked like that before.
+You have always been so hard. Why have you never looked like that
+before?"
+
+She was silent. She bent her head, as if ashamed of betraying herself.
+
+"Was all that hardness ... only a cloak ... to hide yourself?"
+
+He seized her hand tightly.
+
+"You fool! You fool!" he cried--"to make yourself hard and unfeeling and
+unnatural--to try to stamp all the heart out of your life--to blaspheme
+your sex. Don't you know that a hard woman is the most terrible thing in
+the world? Don't you know that while men dare to think that they have
+the image of God, it is women who can really have the heart of God? And
+to think that all the time you have disguised yourself, you have been
+capable of looking like that."
+
+"I have been up against the world," she said. "I have never had enough
+money to be soft-hearted. No woman with feeling can get five hundred
+per cent. out of her income."
+
+"What does it matter," he returned, "if she can get five hundred per
+cent. out of life?"
+
+He still held her hand, his eyes fixed longingly on her face.
+
+"If only I were not mad," he said, with all his sadness--"now I know
+that you are really a woman...."
+
+"Let me go," she said brokenly, withdrawing her hand from his.
+
+"Not yet," he returned, detaining her. "There is something more I want
+to do." He paused. "My dear," he said softly, "an hour ago I would not
+have married you even if I had been sane. Now I want to marry you
+although I am mad. But, since that cannot be, there is something else."
+He released her, and stood up. "I want you always to look like that," he
+said. "I want you to forget that you have ever tried to disguise
+yourself. I want to make it possible for you to go through the rest of
+your life with your heart in its proper place."
+
+He took his check book from his pocket.
+
+"No, no," she said quickly--"not that."
+
+"Please," he insisted.
+
+"I would have taken it before," she said, forcing back her tears. "But
+not now."
+
+"You must," he declared. "My money is no use to me. I can't do anything
+worth doing with it. With all my fantastic extravagancies, I only spend
+a small part of my income. The rest has been accumulating for years. I
+shall never use it, and when I die it will pass to some one I have never
+seen. It is doing no good--and I want it to do some good. What better
+thing could I do with it than give it ... to the woman I would marry if
+I could?"
+
+She sprang up.
+
+"For God's sake," she cried, "don't say that! I can't bear it!"
+
+He laid a hand again on her shoulder.
+
+"Do you care?" he asked slowly. "I don't think you cared before. I
+thought you were only sorry for me now. Do you really care?"
+
+"I do care!" she cried recklessly. "I care--and care--and care. My God,
+how I care!"
+
+He turned his face upwards, and over it passed a dreadful, mocking
+smile.
+
+"O God of Mercy!" he muttered--"another torment!"
+
+He drew away from her.
+
+"I shall do this for you," he said firmly. "I intend to do this. And
+then we must not see each other again. I hope that when you marry, as
+you must, you will marry a good, clean man--a man who can stand out
+among his fellow-creatures, and need not shrink away from them, as I
+must. I want you to be very happy and bring happy children to the
+world...." His voice shook. "And forget there are unfortunate people in
+it ... who may only gaze hungrily over the gulf that they can never
+cross."
+
+He left her sobbing, and went to his writing table.
+
+"No one will know," he said. "I will draw it to myself. The bank is
+quite close here. I will walk there and cash it at once."
+
+He wrote the check, and rose.
+
+"Wait for me here," he said. "I shall only be a few minutes." And he
+went out with the face of a stricken man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+PROVIDING FOR THE WORST
+
+
+Though Inspector Fay had disclosed no more than was necessary for the
+purpose of the initial charge, the arrest of James Layton was popularly
+considered to have solved the mystery of the murder of Christine
+Manderson.
+
+No one realized more fully than Layton himself the overwhelming strength
+of the case against him. He was as good as condemned already. Beyond his
+own assertion of innocence, he was utterly defenseless against a
+sequence of evidence that might well have shattered the strongest reply.
+And he was without any reply at all, except his own denial. He could
+only admit the truth of the damning train of circumstances, in face of
+which his mere word was hopelessly--and, he was compelled to
+acknowledge, justly--inadequate. The secret of his identity--most
+crushing fact of all--was lost. He was the Michael Cranbourne whom
+Christine Manderson, then Thea Colville, had drawn on to ruin and
+disgrace. He had threatened her, in the presence of witness, with just
+such an end as she had met with. He had been seen lurking in the garden
+at the time of the crime. He had been beside himself. And to all that he
+had no more convincing answer than the plea of not guilty. He placed
+himself, quite dispassionately, in the position of his own judge and
+jury. There could be only one result.
+
+The strange message of hope, brought to him by Jenny West, from a
+mysterious foreigner who had declared knowledge of his innocence and of
+half the truth, aroused his curiosity, if no more. That one person, at
+all events, had discovered, and was apparently pursuing, an alternative
+to his own guilt was interesting, if a slender encouragement to build
+on. He was not disposed to cling to flimsy hopes. He accepted his
+position with perfect calmness. Since the confession of his identity to
+Inspector Fay a load seemed to have been lifted from his mind, and with
+it had passed the revival of mad passion which the sight of Christine
+Manderson's fatal beauty had aroused. He found himself able to dwell on
+her memory--even to contemplate her death--with a cold detachment which
+surprised himself. He no longer shrank from conjuring up her image--but
+now it was a dead image from a dead world. And--not without surprise
+also, and perhaps a certain satisfaction--he found himself looking
+forward to a visit from Jenny West.
+
+She came to him at the appointed time. She was very white. The deep
+shadows of sleepless grief and anxiety were round her eyes--but in them
+shone the fire of a dogged, dauntless courage. Her great untamed soul
+was aflame with revolt against the implacable circumstances that had
+placed the man whose name a thousand had blessed on the highroad to the
+gallows. She threw herself against the wall of facts with all the force
+of her primitive love. She was one of those whose trust rises to its
+greatest heights when opposed to reason.
+
+He greeted her kindly. He was cheerful and composed. He showed that he
+was glad to see her.
+
+"We shall save you, Jim!" she declared, straining back the tears that
+sprang to her eyes at his kindness. "I know we shall! I know it!"
+
+"God will save His workman," he returned quietly--"if it is His will."
+
+He looked at her closely. And something very like affection came into
+his face.
+
+"You are pale," he said. "You are over strained. You haven't slept."
+
+She bent her head, to hide her brimming eyes.
+
+"My child...." he said gently.
+
+"What does it matter," she sobbed, "if I haven't slept? How can I
+sleep--when you are ... here?"
+
+"Listen, my dear," he said--"we must face this thing squarely. It's no
+use trying to shut our eyes to the truth, however unpleasant it may be.
+As the case stands at present, no jury in the world could acquit me. I
+have no reply to the charge, except to declare that I did not kill
+Christine Manderson--and that will not help me. The evidence is more
+than enough to satisfy any impartial, clear-thinking man or woman. It
+would satisfy me. That I know myself to be innocent will not assist me
+to establish my innocence. Thousands of things may happen in the
+meantime--but I must prepare to suffer the penalty for a crime that I
+did not commit."
+
+"You shall not!" she cried passionately. "If there is justice in heaven
+or earth, you shall not!"
+
+"I do not cling to life," he returned. "It has very little to give me,
+or to take away. Men may find me guilty--but I shall stand before God
+innocent. It will not be the first time I have stood before God."
+
+A spark of his old fanaticism flashed into his eyes for a moment, then
+faded.
+
+"I shall be ready," he said steadily, "for whatever He sends."
+
+"Men shall not find you guilty," she declared. "There are three people
+working for you. The truth will be discovered."
+
+"Your mysterious Frenchman?" he smiled. "What has he done?"
+
+"I don't know," she confessed. "He tells me nothing--except to keep on
+promising that you will be saved. And that is enough for me."
+
+A frown darkened Layton's face.
+
+"I wish you would not put yourself so completely into the hands of a
+stranger," he said doubtfully. "Who and what, is this man? And how does
+he come to be mixed up in this affair?"
+
+"I know nothing whatever about him," she replied. "But there is
+something that makes me trust him. I believe he will keep his promise."
+
+"I don't like it," he insisted.
+
+"If I didn't help him," she said, "I could do nothing. And I should go
+mad."
+
+"What has he given you to do?" he asked.
+
+"I promised not to tell any one," she hesitated.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"You had better tell me. You have no one else to protect you."
+
+"It is something I can't understand," she said slowly. "This morning I
+had to write out the names and addresses of all the Art and Picture
+Dealers from the _Directory_, and this afternoon I am to go round in a
+car to as many of them as I can, with a letter from the French Embassy,
+to ask if any articles have ever been supplied to, or orders taken from,
+a Miss Masters, of 35, De Vere Terrace, Streatham, and if so, what."
+
+Layton stared at her in astonishment.
+
+"What possible connection can that have with the case?" he exclaimed.
+
+"I don't know," she said again. "I've tried to think."
+
+"The French Embassy," he mused. "That is strange...."
+
+He checked himself, and looked at his watch.
+
+"You time is nearly up," he said. "Listen to me carefully. There is one
+very important thing that I want you to understand. Whatever may develop
+in the meantime, I intend to prepare for the worst."
+
+He kept her silent with a firm gesture.
+
+"My work must go on. No matter what happens to me, my work must go on.
+And it must be carried on as I have begun it, by some one who has worked
+with me, and understands my objects--by some one who is human, and
+unlimited by sect or creed. I don't want to make people religious--it
+would spoil most of them. I want to make them healthy and happy. I would
+rather they were clean pagans than unclean Christians. No soul is saved
+or lost because it happens to take a certain view of the Mysteries of
+God. It is the bodies I care for--the bodies I want to build. Humanity
+should be a song of thanksgiving, not a prayer for alleviation."
+
+The fires kindled again. His face was lit up.
+
+"You must continue my work. If I should have to leave it ... you will
+find everything yours. There is over a million. Use it as I have taught
+you. Use it to help children to grow into men and women, and men and
+women to grow into old men and women. Use it to help human beings
+against the cruelties they inflict on each other--and animals against
+the cruelties inflicted on them. Promise me that if the worst happens,
+you will go on where I leave off."
+
+Tears blinded her. She could not speak.
+
+"Promise," he insisted.
+
+"I will," she sobbed. "I will go on--as long as I can live after you."
+
+He stood still, looking at her fixedly. There was the dawn of an
+awakening on his face.
+
+"My God!" he whispered, "I was wrong. I do cling to life. I want to
+live. O God, save me!"
+
+And the girl uttered a great sigh of thankfulness, and fell fainting
+against the wire partition that stood between them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE DISAPPEARANCE OF TRANTER
+
+
+At one o'clock on the following day, Monsieur Dupont sat in his room
+waiting for Tranter. At half-past one he had become impatient. At two he
+seized the telephone directory, and, a minute later, the instrument. At
+two-thirty he obtained his number.
+
+The answer to his first question stiffened him into an attitude of rigid
+tensity.
+
+"Mr. Tranter is not in, sir," a voice told him. "He has disappeared."
+
+"Disappeared?" Monsieur Dupont echoed sharply.
+
+"We do not know what has happened to him. He went out last night at nine
+o'clock, and has not returned."
+
+"Not returned...." the listener muttered.
+
+"We are getting anxious," the voice went on. "He left orders for his
+supper, and there is no doubt that he intended to return. We have
+telephoned to the hospitals and the police stations, but nothing has
+been heard of him. Do you happen to know where he was going?"
+
+There was a moment's pause. Monsieur Dupont's hands were clenched so
+tightly round the instrument that the veins stood out on them like
+cords.
+
+"Yes," he said slowly, "I know where he was going."
+
+He rose quickly.
+
+"I will find him," he promised and rang off.
+
+He replaced the instrument, and stood still. For the first time since
+his arrival in London fear found a place in the expression of his face.
+
+"_Dieu_," he whispered--"that Crooked House...."
+
+He seized his hat and stick, and hurried out to his car.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Remarkable changes were in progress when he arrived at the Crooked
+House. A small army of workmen swarmed over the whole place in a
+condition of feverish energy. There were stacks of tools, dozens of
+machines, and cartloads of material. At first sight it might have
+appeared as if nothing less than the effects of an earthquake could have
+been in process of repair--but, as Monsieur Dupont stood staring about
+him in amazement, it became apparent that the men were engaged in
+eliminating the crookedness of the garden, and must have been so engaged
+from a very early hour. Many of the twisting paths had been shorn of
+their high maze-like walls of hedge, and the paths themselves were in
+varying stages of conversion or disappearance. Under rapid and ruthless
+hands straightness was already appearing out of the confusion. Monsieur
+Dupont looked positively frightened.
+
+"_Mon Dieu_," he exclaimed aloud, "they are making it a human garden!"
+
+The house itself presented a no less startling aspect. It was no longer
+gloomy, deserted, and silent. It was teeming with life. Every window was
+open, and from within came sounds of rapacious cleaning. A hundred
+painters had commenced a vigorous assault upon the exterior, and
+representatives of every branch of house decoration were attacking the
+interior. It was a scene of resurrection.
+
+Monsieur Dupont almost ran to the open front door. Copplestone's
+manservant was at work in the hall, and came forward with a sphinx-like
+expression.
+
+"Mr. Copplestone?" said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"Mr. Copplestone is away, sir."
+
+"Away...?"
+
+"He left in the car early this morning, sir, without saying where he was
+going or when he would be back."
+
+Monsieur Dupont was plainly staggered.
+
+"Was he alone?"
+
+"I do not know, sir."
+
+"You do not know?"
+
+"I did not see him leave, sir. He gave me my instructions in the
+library, and ordered me to remain there until he had gone."
+
+Monsieur Dupont took a threatening step towards him.
+
+"Where is Mr. Tranter?" he demanded, with sudden fierceness.
+
+The man met his challenging gaze steadily.
+
+"Mr. Tranter, sir?"
+
+"Mr. Tranter came here last night--between ten and eleven o'clock."
+
+"I think you must be mistaken, sir. If he had come here, I should have
+seen him."
+
+Monsieur Dupont clenched his fists.
+
+"I am not mistaken! I say that he came here last night!"
+
+"I did not see him, sir."
+
+"Since then he has disappeared. He has not returned to his house, and
+nothing has been heard of him. Where is he?"
+
+"I know nothing of Mr. Tranter, sir."
+
+"That is not true!" Monsieur Dupont almost shouted.
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"I say that is not true!"
+
+The man drew himself up.
+
+"It certainly is true, sir."
+
+"It is not! Will you tell the truth to me--or to the police?"
+
+"I have nothing to tell," the man insisted doggedly.
+
+Monsieur Dupont appeared to be beside himself.
+
+"_Dieu!_" he cried, "if any harm has come to Mr. Tranter, you shall pay
+for it--all of you!"
+
+The man shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I can only repeat, sir, that I have not seen Mr. Tranter, and that, so
+far as I know, he has not been to this house. He is certainly not here
+now. You are welcome to search every room for him if you like. Mr.
+Copplestone left word that the house was to be open to any one who might
+wish to go over it."
+
+"He said that?" Monsieur Dupont exclaimed, his anger giving place to
+astonishment.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Monsieur Dupont turned away without another word, and walked slowly to
+the gates. Reaching them, he stopped, and looked back.
+
+"In the name of heaven," he muttered, "what happened in that house last
+night?"
+
+He went back to his car. Amazement and anxiety were blended on his face.
+It was plain that his calculations had received an unexpected check, the
+meaning of which he could not at present grasp. The sudden
+transformation of the house and garden was a development that had not
+entered into his scheme of procedure. It presented him with an entirely
+new and unlooked-for problem. After a moment's indecision, he took out
+his pocket-book, referred to an address, and gave it to his chauffeur.
+
+During the return journey he sat with his face between his hands, buried
+in thought. When the car stopped before a house in Grosvenor Gardens, he
+lifted his head slowly and heavily, as if rousing himself from a stupor.
+
+"Mrs. Astley-Rolfe, if you please," he said to the footman who answered
+his summons.
+
+"Mrs. Astley-Rolfe is not at home, sir."
+
+"It is most important," said Monsieur Dupont. "I wished to speak to her
+of a matter connected with Mr. George Copplestone."
+
+"She went away early this morning, sir."
+
+"Away?" Monsieur Dupont repeated.
+
+"With Mr. Copplestone."
+
+Monsieur Dupont started back.
+
+"With Mr. Copplestone?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Just before eight o'clock."
+
+"With Mr. Copplestone...."
+
+"He came in his car, sir, and insisted on Mrs. Astley-Rolfe getting up
+to see him. She went away with him ten minutes afterwards, without
+telling us where she was going or when to expect her back."
+
+Monsieur Dupont's face had become blanker and blanker. He stared at the
+man speechlessly then turned from the door, and gazed in a helpless
+fashion up and down the street.
+
+"_Mille diables!_" he murmured, "what does it mean...."
+
+He got into his car again. He looked about him like a man dazed by a
+heavy blow. Returning to the Savoy, he went up to his room.
+
+There was a telegram on the table. He opened it, and read:
+
+     "The name was George Copplestone Winslowe,
+                                  LESSING."
+
+Monsieur Dupont uttered an extraordinary sound. In a flash the gloom and
+uncertainty that had held him gave place to a seething excitement.
+Crushing the telegram into his pocket, he rushed from the room. Two
+minutes later he was on his way to Scotland Yard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+IN PURSUIT
+
+
+Inspector Fay was occupied with the arrangement of the evidence to be
+presented at the inquest on the body of Christine Manderson. He disliked
+interruptions when at work, but the appearance of Monsieur Dupont
+banished his annoyance, and called forth a smile of complacent triumph.
+
+"My friend," said Monsieur Dupont, "you know me well enough to be sure
+that I would not mislead you?"
+
+There was that in the look of him that caused the smile to fade from the
+inspector's face.
+
+"Of course," he replied, laying down his papers.
+
+"There is not a moment to lose. You must come with me."
+
+"Come with you?"
+
+"Now--immediately."
+
+"But where?"
+
+"Wherever it may be necessary to go. I do not yet know myself. I only
+know that we must go."
+
+"Impossible," the inspector declared. "I must be ready for the inquest."
+
+"If you do not come with me," Monsieur Dupont retorted, "you will not be
+ready for the inquest." He allowed his excitement to overflow. "Why do
+you stand there?" he cried. "I tell you, there is not a moment to lose.
+Cannot you see that I am serious? In all the years that you have known
+me I have never been more serious. Come!"
+
+"What for?" demanded the inspector sharply.
+
+"To discover the truth of the death of Christine Manderson."
+
+"The truth is discovered," returned the inspector, looking down at his
+papers.
+
+"The truth is _not_ discovered," said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"It is a perfectly clear case," the inspector retorted. "There cannot be
+the smallest doubt that Layton killed her."
+
+"Layton did not kill her. At the beginning I warned you to ignore the
+obvious. But you did not. Layton is no more guilty of the crime than you
+are."
+
+"I am satisfied," the inspector said shortly.
+
+"You must please yourself," said Monsieur Dupont. "I cannot wait. There
+are two lives to save--his and another. I came here to keep my word to
+you. I promised that if I succeeded in solving the mystery, I would hand
+the rest to you. I do not want credit from this affair. There is another
+meaning in it for me. I am ready to hand the rest to you, if you will
+come and take it. If you will not come--I must go on to the end myself.
+The choice is to you."
+
+Inspector Fay looked at him steadily for a moment. Then he turned back
+to his desk, and locked up his papers.
+
+"I will come," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+ETHICS OF KILLING
+
+
+They swung out from Scotland Yard into Whitehall.
+
+"What has happened?" the inspector asked.
+
+Monsieur Dupont leant forward, controlling his excitement with an
+effort.
+
+"_Mon Dieu_," he said, "I wish I knew!"
+
+He took the telegram from his pocket.
+
+"It is an hour only that I have returned from Richmond. I found the
+house of George Copplestone in course of transformation. I found all the
+windows open. I found men and women cleaning--painting--making new. I
+found a hundred men ... making the crooked garden straight."
+
+"Well?" said the inspector--"why not?"
+
+Monsieur Dupont brought his hands together impatiently.
+
+"Why not? There are a thousand reasons why not. But the reason why...."
+
+"Is it an extraordinary thing for a man to open his windows, paint his
+house, and straighten his garden?"
+
+"It is!" exclaimed Monsieur Dupont. "It is more than an extraordinary
+thing--it is a gigantic, a brain-splitting thing--if he has kept his
+windows closed, his house unpainted, and his garden crooked for twenty
+years. The house of a man is the reflection of his soul. It was the
+reflection of George Copplestone's soul yesterday. But ... something
+happened in it last night. And to-day...."
+
+He broke off, and began to smooth out the telegram on his knee.
+
+"The moment I entered that house," he continued, "I knew it was a wicked
+house. And when that dreadful thing happened, I felt positively that the
+wickedness of the house had some direct connection with the crime in the
+garden. I felt that it would be impossible to solve one without solving
+the other. I knew, also, that you would certainly be satisfied with the
+evidence against James Layton, and would consider no other possibility.
+That evidence, I admit, was unanswerable--but I, with some previous
+knowledge to help me, knew that Layton was innocent. The difficulty in
+front of me was to prove the guilt of the real criminal in time. My
+friend Tranter, and that remarkable young protégée of Layton, Jenny
+West, agreed to help me. Together we began to draw the nets, and the
+criminal was aware of our movements. In the country yesterday I
+discovered the identity of the most important witness in the case--but
+when I went to find her in the evening, she had been snatched away. I
+instructed Tranter to discover and bring to me the secret of the Crooked
+House, whatever it might be. He set out to do so at nine o'clock last
+night. And he has disappeared."
+
+"Disappeared?" the inspector exclaimed.
+
+"Without a trace. I, only, knew where he was going. And not only has he
+disappeared--but Copplestone and Mrs. Astley-Rolfe have disappeared with
+him."
+
+Inspector Fay began to show more interest.
+
+"They will be wanted for the inquest," he said sharply.
+
+"If we do not find them in time for the inquest," Monsieur Dupont
+returned, "there will be two inquests to hold."
+
+"Two inquests?" the inspector echoed.
+
+"I could not understand it," continued Monsieur Dupont. "It was contrary
+to all my calculations. I was bewildered--and you may recollect that I
+am not often bewildered. But when I returned to my hotel, I found this."
+He held out the telegram. "It is the answer to a certain inquiry I have
+made."
+
+"What does it mean?" the inspector asked, handing it back.
+
+"It means," said Monsieur Dupont slowly, "that we shall be lucky if we
+find Tranter alive."
+
+"Where can they have gone?"
+
+"I do not know. I can only guess--and if I have not guessed rightly, we
+shall not see him again."
+
+"Are you telling me," the inspector demanded, "that Copplestone killed
+the woman he had just become engaged to?"
+
+"I shall tell you who killed her within twelve hours," Monsieur Dupont
+replied. "I will tell you why she was killed now."
+
+He paused.
+
+"Why," he asked, "did the murderer, whoever it was, kill her so
+horribly? Why was it not enough to deprive her of life? Could one have
+desired more? Why was she stamped on, and torn, and crushed?"
+
+"It was obviously done in the madness of jealousy and revenge," replied
+the inspector.
+
+"It was done in madness," said Monsieur Dupont--"but it was not the
+madness of jealousy or revenge. It was the madness of a strange and
+terrible hatred. It was done--because the killer hated her beauty and
+not her."
+
+The inspector stared at him blankly.
+
+"Hated her beauty, and not her...?"
+
+"Twenty years ago," said Monsieur Dupont, "there was in France a very
+beautiful woman. She was named Colette d'Orsel. It was said that she was
+the most beautiful woman in the country. She was also very rich, very
+generous, and very kind. She was always doing good actions. She had not
+an enemy in the world. There was no one who could have wished her a
+moment's pain. She was only twenty-five. With several of her friends she
+went to stay at Nice. One night she was found in the gardens of her
+hotel--almost torn to pieces."
+
+"I remember the case," said the inspector. "It was a ghastly affair."
+
+"There appeared no motive. She was wearing some splendid jewels. They
+had been crushed with her, but nothing was missing--not a stone. She had
+just returned from the tables, and had not troubled to deposit her
+winnings of the evening with the cashier of the hotel. Forty thousand
+francs were found on the body. Not a note had been touched. The greatest
+detectives of France were called in to solve the mystery--but they
+solved nothing. They made the mistake of trying to find a motive. They
+looked for a person who could have had a reason to kill her. But it was
+time lost. They should have looked among the people who had no reason to
+kill her. The weeks became months, and still they discovered nothing.
+That crime is a mystery to-day."
+
+The inspector's attention was rivetted. He remained silent.
+
+"Ten years ago," Monsieur Dupont proceeded, "there was in Boston a young
+girl named Margaret McCall. She was wonderfully beautiful. Her parents
+were poor people, and she worked for her living. She was quiet and
+reserved by nature. She made few friends, and cared little for the
+society of men. Naturally there were hundreds who regretted, and
+attempted to overcome, that characteristic; but she went her own way
+quietly and firmly. One evening her body was found in a lonely part of
+one of the public parks torn and crushed in the most terrible manner.
+The police were helpless. The thing that baffled them completely was the
+absence of any motive for the crime. They tried to find one--but all
+that they found was what I have said, that she had been a good, honest
+girl--that she had had no enemies--that she had not jilted a man, or
+wronged a woman--that she had never flirted, or encouraged men to pay
+attentions to her. Yet there she had been found--broken and mutilated.
+The small sum of money she carried had remained untouched. The crime
+was never solved."
+
+His voice had sunk lower. He had dwelt on each detail with impassive
+deliberation.
+
+"This week, Christine Manderson--without doubt the most beautiful woman
+of the three--was found in that crooked garden at Richmond, if possible
+in a more horrible condition than either of the others."
+
+"You mean," exploded the inspector, "that the murderer of Colette
+d'Orsel at Nice twenty years ago also killed Margaret McCall in Boston
+ten years after?"
+
+"I do," replied the low voice.
+
+"And Christine Manderson here three days ago?"
+
+"And Christine Manderson here three days ago. But this time there was a
+difference. An unfortunate chain of circumstances provided clear
+evidence against an innocent man--James Layton. I admit that as the case
+stood you had no option but to arrest him. But in doing so you committed
+the same mistake that your French and American brothers had committed
+before you. They had looked for a motive, and could not find one. You
+found a motive, and devoted yourself to the man with the motive. You
+should have looked for the Destroyer."
+
+There was something of awe in the silence that followed, like the hush
+that succeeds the passing of a storm.
+
+"My friend," said the inspector slowly, "what utterly monstrous thing
+are you telling me?"
+
+Monsieur Dupont turned to him a face of massive innocence.
+
+"Is it monstrous?" he said mildly. "If a man is born with a longing to
+kill elephants, he is a daring sportsman. If the longing is to kill
+beetles, he is a scientist. But if the inclination is to kill men--or
+women--he is a criminal lunatic. Why? If the desire to kill is not in
+itself monstrous, the desire to kill a particular thing, whatever it may
+be, cannot be monstrous. It can only be illegal. If it is dreadful to
+kill a young child, it must be dreadful to kill anything young. If it is
+cowardly for a man to kill a woman, it is cowardly for a man to kill the
+female sex in any shape or form. Yet, what scientist allows the matter
+of sex to interfere with the impalement of his beetle? Nor would he do
+so if his hobby were to impale human beings. If he searches for a
+beautiful beetle to kill, it only requires a broadening of his
+particular outlook for him to search for a beautiful woman to kill.
+There may be a perfectly sane and moral country in the world (although I
+have never heard of it) in which it would be criminal to kill the
+beetle, and scientific to kill the woman. I confess that a well-mounted
+collection of beautiful women would be very much more interesting to me
+than the finest collection of beautiful beetles. But if I have the one,
+I am made a member of a Royal Society--and if I have the other, I am
+executed. And the only reason for that is that the human beings make the
+laws, and not the beetles."
+
+The car swung round a sharp corner, and the inspector's amazement was
+interrupted by the sudden necessity of keeping his position. Monsieur
+Dupont continued slowly.
+
+"But the monstrousness of this case is not that three people have been
+killed--but that three people have been more than killed. It is
+monstrous because we have none of the simple dignity of the primitive
+slayer, and all the morbid excesses of the modern despoiler. While it
+might be an entirely respectable thing to kill a woman to preserve her
+beauty, it is an entirely monstrous thing to kill her to destroy it.
+That is the only reason why the collector of beetles and butterflies is
+not the most cold-blooded of murderers. That is the only----"
+
+"What in the name of all that's unholy," gasped the inspector, "are you
+going to say next?"
+
+Monsieur Dupont leant forward as the car stopped, and opened the door.
+
+"Next," he replied gravely, "I am going to inform you that we have
+arrived at Paddington, and request you to get out."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+MONSIEUR DUPONT'S TASK
+
+
+He bought the tickets, and conducted the inspector to a train.
+
+"Where are we going?" demanded the bewildered officer, as Monsieur
+Dupont settled himself in a corner, and produced his cigar case.
+
+"We are going," said Monsieur Dupont, "to a delightful little village,
+hidden away in the hills of the country--far from the sins of
+cities--where they do not even know that Paris is the center of the
+world."
+
+Fortunately they had the carriage to themselves. Monsieur Dupont smoked
+in silence for some minutes.
+
+"I will explain to you," he began, at last, "how I came to be concerned
+in this affair. The reason was that, after my retirement, I had the
+honor to marry a cousin of Colette d'Orsel. The brother of my wife had
+been one of the party at Nice at the time of the crime, and, though
+there was not the least evidence against him, the police had allowed it
+to be known that they looked upon him as the guilty person. You know how
+ready certain people are to discuss and even to credit the wildest
+theories--and you know also that after sufficient discussion the wildest
+theories become not only possibilities, but probabilities. The cloud of
+suspicion hung over him, ruining his health and his life, and casting a
+shadow over the whole family. When I married my wife, I determined that
+the shadow should be removed. And for the past two years I have devoted
+myself to that object.
+
+"You can imagine," he went on, after a pause, "the difficulties that
+confronted me. Eighteen years had elapsed since the crime had been
+committed. Men, women, and even buildings, had passed, and been
+replaced--records had been lost--memories failed. But money,
+perseverance, and imagination slowly conquered. Step by step the years
+were overcome. With the aid of a small army of assistants, I succeeded
+in isolating a certain person. I placed that person beside the dead body
+of Colette d'Orsel, and began my pursuit. _Mon Dieu_, how I worked!
+After the hardest year of my life, I at last established a link between
+the death of Colette d'Orsel and the death of Margaret McCall--and that
+link was the personality I had isolated in the first place at Nice. But
+it had changed itself. I followed scent after scent--trail after trail.
+When I came to London a few days ago, I had sufficient information to
+allow me to commence the final stage of the adventure. I had solved the
+most difficult question of all--the present identity of my quarry. The
+second most difficult question remained to be solved--proofs of guilt.
+How could I obtain them? How could I prove that this person--living here
+in all the security of time--was the person who had torn those two women
+to pieces in America and France ten and twenty years ago? I had certain
+clues to follow up, but the results could not possibly have been
+sufficient to prove such an accusation. What was I to do? To rely upon
+observation? To search for--and wait for--a proof in this person's
+daily intercourse with the world? To place a beautiful woman within
+reach, and watch for a betrayal? That was actually the object in my mind
+when I called on my friend Tranter, and requested him to open to me the
+doors of London society. Sooner or later, I should have found, or
+brought about, the situation I was looking for. It might have been
+years--doubtless it would have been years--if he had not, by the most
+remarkable chance, taken me direct to that house at Richmond. Then came
+the death of Christine Manderson. It was horrible--appalling! And to
+think that I, who had detected and tracked the Destroyer, had been there
+in the same garden, within a few yards of the third death, and yet was
+no nearer my proofs! And to add to my difficulties, there was the
+certainty that an innocent man would suffer unjustly if I could not
+succeed in time."
+
+He paused, looking grimly out at the passing scenery.
+
+"And if I had not sent Tranter to the Crooked House yesterday, I do not
+know how I could have succeeded in time."
+
+He turned abruptly from the window, put his feet up on the seat, and
+closed his eyes.
+
+"I am a little tired," he said. "If you will excuse me, I will take a
+nap."
+
+He slept for an hour.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They got out at a small country station. The shadows of the hot twilight
+were merging into darkness. A few minutes walking brought them to an
+inn, at which Monsieur Dupont demanded, and obtained, a conveyance.
+
+For half an hour they drove through the heavily scented air of the
+country. Scarcely a word was spoken until they reached another village.
+There, Monsieur Dupont requested the inspector to alight and they
+proceeded on foot.
+
+The red rear-light of a motor-car appeared at the turn of a corner.
+Monsieur Dupont drew a deep breath.
+
+"_Le bon Dieu_ be thanked!" he muttered.
+
+The car was stationary and empty. Monsieur Dupont laid a hand on the
+radiator.
+
+"It is hot," he said. "They have only been here a few minutes. Do not
+make a sound."
+
+He opened a gate. The long low shape of a house was in front of them.
+They stood still, listening. There was no sound, no light.
+
+"To the back," Monsieur Dupont whispered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+WHAT THEY HEARD
+
+
+They crept round the house. At the back a pair of French windows were
+open, but heavy curtains were drawn across them. No light was visible.
+They listened. A voice was speaking--slowly, scarcely above a whisper,
+but a whisper of contemptuous pride.
+
+"Yes," it said, "I am the Destroyer! I was born to kill. It was the
+curse of my birth."
+
+The silence of the room was broken only by the faint sound of a woman
+sobbing. Monsieur Dupont and the inspector drew nearer to the window.
+
+"You fools!" said the arrogant voice. "What are your laws of Right and
+Wrong to me? I _am_ Right and Wrong. What are your Codes of Sin? I _am_
+Sin. Who are you to judge me? Who are you to set your little laws
+against My Madness?"
+
+There was a long pause. Then the voice continued, in a tone of dull
+bitterness.
+
+"Ever since I had strength to break, I have broken--to tear, I have
+torn. The disease took command of me long before I knew its meaning.
+When I was a child the sight of pretty things frightened me. I used to
+shrink from them, and hide my face. I was only quiet and normal when
+there were plain, colorless things about me. As I grew older the fear
+developed into hatred--and with hatred grew, slowly and subtly, the
+inclination to destroy. At first the opposition of all that was normal
+in me sufficed to keep the desire in check, but day by day it grew
+stronger and stronger, and day by day the power to resist became less
+and less. The increase of the hatred into madness followed the growth of
+the impulse towards the first surrender. It came upon me for the first
+time when I was twelve. How well I remember that day! My sanity had
+fought its strongest battle, and my head was still throbbing and
+swimming with the strain of it. I was taken to a strange house, and left
+alone in a bright room. On the wall there was a picture of a very
+beautiful woman. I couldn't take my eyes off it. I couldn't move from in
+front of it. New passions, that I had never felt before, were tearing
+me. The picture seemed to be alive, to be mocking me. I hated it. I felt
+that it was cruel and loathsome--that it had wronged me. My whole body
+was on fire--my brain was flaming. Then something seemed to snap in my
+head. I lost myself. Irresistible forces took possession of me, and used
+me. When I came to myself ... the picture was lying at my feet ... in
+fragments."
+
+The voice settled down into an expressionless monotone, pursuing its
+story without emotion.
+
+"From that moment my doom lay on me. I had made the initial submission.
+Any attempt at resistance after that was futile. I was helpless. Out of
+my hatred of beauty in any shape or form came the desire to obtain the
+most beautiful things I could find to enjoy the mad ecstasy of
+shattering them. I had all the morbid secret longing to induce attacks
+of my own madness--to enjoy the awful exaltation, the triumph of
+destruction. I was not ashamed. I found myself entirely without
+scruple, without conscience, incapable of remorse. When the periods of
+desire were upon me, I hesitated at nothing to gratify them. At first
+they were frequent--sometimes there were only a few days between--but as
+I grew older the intervals lengthened, until sometimes I dared to think
+myself free. But, sooner or later, it came again. I knew all the warning
+signals--the creeping in of uncontrollable thoughts--the brain
+pictures--the quickening of mind and body--then the grip of the madness.
+All I could do at such times was to collect a number of things
+sufficiently beautiful to satisfy my lust, and lock myself in to an orgy
+of destruction. Then I was normal again for another period. So I grew
+up. When I was twenty, I learnt the truth."
+
+"I told him," a woman's broken voice said. "I hadn't the heart to tell
+him before. I was hoping against hope that the curse would pass away as
+he grew into manhood. But when I saw that it would not ... I told him."
+
+"Then I knew there was no escape," the dull voice went on. "The results
+of my father's vices and my mother's madness were my inheritance.
+God! ... what a legacy!"
+
+The voice flamed for an instant--then subsided again into its previous
+monotony.
+
+"The intervals became longer and longer, but each time the madness
+recurred it tightened its clutches. Each time it made me more and more
+its own property. Whenever the warnings showed themselves I fled to the
+refuge of Miss Masters's house. She bought and kept there things on
+which, when the mania was at its height, it satisfied me to expend my
+lust. But those inanimate things, though sufficient for that purpose,
+had no power in themselves to produce an attack of the madness. The
+capability to do that was reserved to a woman's beauty--the effect of
+which, so far, I had had no opportunity to experience. That opportunity
+came to me for the first time at Nice--twenty years ago. I had never
+seen a really beautiful woman before I saw Colette d'Orsel."
+
+Another pause followed the name. The room behind the curtains remained
+in tense silence until the voice resumed.
+
+"I can remember it now--as if it were yesterday. How she stood
+there--in the soft shaded light--terribly beautiful. And I--the
+Destroyer--watched her paralyzed--knowing for the first time the
+pinnacle of my madness. The sight of her numbed all my sanity. I could
+no more have torn myself away from that place than I could have resisted
+the new flood of my disease that broke over me like a nightmare wave. I
+was introduced to her. As I bent over her hand I almost laughed at the
+thought of what her horror would have been if she had known the impulses
+that surged through me. Her voice--the touch of her--burnt into me like
+flames. I knew what the end would be, but I was powerless in the grip of
+my inheritance. And she--in the pitiless irony of it--liked me! Three
+evenings later I met her in the gardens of the hotel. We sat together
+... alone for the first time. I struggled. My God, I struggled! But it
+was useless. The white shape of her next to me--the dim outline of her
+features--the whole nearness of her beauty.... Then it came on me, as I
+knew it would--the final rush of irresistible hatred. When I knew myself
+again ... she was lying on the ground ... smashed ... my first living
+victim."
+
+The woman sobbed.
+
+"God forgive him!" she cried. "He was innocent himself. It wasn't really
+him...."
+
+Light footsteps moved across the floor.
+
+"Let me be," said the voice hardly. "What God does with me is for God to
+do. Sit down again."
+
+The footsteps returned.
+
+"I left her there, and went back to the hotel. I sat down in my room,
+and analyzed my feelings. The madness had left me. My mind was perfectly
+clear and steady. I felt no horror at what I had done--no remorse--only
+a sense of impersonal regret at the death of an innocent woman, and a
+faint detached pity for her misfortune in crossing my path. I carefully
+considered my position, and certainty that there could be no evidence
+against me dispelled any fears for myself--but my cold-blooded sanity
+realized that the odds were tremendously against a recurrence of the
+same good fortune, and that the avoidance of the opposite sex must
+become the chief care of my life. Then I went to bed, and slept
+soundly. The discovery of Colette d'Orsel's body early the next morning
+provided the sensation of the year at Nice. The police were confounded.
+There was no motive--no clue. It is an unsolved mystery to-day."
+
+The callousness of the story was so revolting that even the inspector,
+seasoned as he was, allowed a muttered expression of disgust to escape
+him. But Monsieur Dupont remained as silent and still as the house
+itself.
+
+"Ten years later," continued the voice, "I went to America. For five
+years I had been free from any return of the madness. You can imagine
+the longing to be like other men--to presume on the years of immunity. I
+felt unshakably sane. I even felt that I had never been mad. I gloried
+in the keenness of my intellect, the absolute order and control of my
+thoughts. What had I to do with madness? But in Boston ... I saw
+Margaret McCall. In an instant I was mad. In an instant----"
+
+A cry tore the air--a cry so awful in its inhuman fury that the two
+listeners shrank back horrified. For a moment the room seethed with
+confusion. The voices of men and women were blended in rage, terror, and
+command. Then the curtains were wrenched aside, and two figures rushed
+out shrieking into the darkness of the garden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+THE BEAUTY-KILLER
+
+
+Four more figures dashed out through the curtains--two women and two
+men. The inspector and Monsieur Dupont joined them. Guided by the sounds
+in front of them, they dashed across the garden at the top of their
+speed.
+
+A black wall of earth loomed up before them, like the rising of a
+gigantic wave. It was strongly rivetted, and must have been at least ten
+feet high. It was quite inaccessible from where the pursuers stopped
+beneath it.
+
+"Look! Look!" a woman screamed.
+
+They looked up.
+
+"My God!" the inspector exclaimed.
+
+On the height above them, silhouetted against the pale sky of the summer
+night, they saw a figure--its arms uplifted in an attitude of majesty,
+of triumphant defiance. The white light of the moon lit up a face
+terrible beyond words in its pride, its sin, and its utter madness.
+
+"I am the Beauty-Killer! I killed Colette d'Orsel! I killed Margaret
+McCall. I killed Christine Manderson...."
+
+Another figure scrambled up out of the darkness on to the height, and
+the silver head of Oscar Winslowe gleamed in the light. For a moment he
+crouched--then sprang forward with a yell. The two figures swayed
+backwards in a fierce struggle.
+
+"They will go down!" a man's voice cried. "It is the edge of a gravel
+pit. The fence will not bear. There is a sheer drop of fifty feet."
+
+"Let them go," another woman sobbed. "It is the best way."
+
+And, even as she spoke, there was the sound of tearing woodwork. The
+struggling figures stood out for an instant with startling
+clearness--then disappeared like the sudden shutting off of a moving
+picture. And the whole night seemed to wince at the thud that followed.
+
+"We must go down," the man's voice said, breaking the silence in an
+awestruck whisper. "There is a way round the other side."
+
+They followed him round the edge of the pit. It seemed like walking
+round the world. They descended a steep slope--and then, in the vast
+gray silence, a circle of pale faces surrounded the dead bodies of Oscar
+Winslowe, and John Tranter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+LAST TRUTHS
+
+
+"My friends," said Monsieur Dupont, "you have already heard a great part
+of the story. John Tranter was the son of Oscar Winslowe. He was mad. He
+was, as he called himself truly, a Beauty-Killer. That strange lust he
+inherited from his mother, who had been robbed of all she cared for, and
+hoped for, in life by a beautiful woman, and rendered insane three
+months before his birth. It was a most pathetic tragedy. We shall now
+hear----"
+
+"One moment," Inspector Fay interrupted. "As I represent the police
+here, I should be glad to know, before we go any further, whose house I
+am in."
+
+"Pardon me," Monsieur Dupont apologized. "I had forgotten. You are in
+the house of Doctor Lessing," he inclined himself towards the doctor,
+"who will in due course repeat to you a statement which he made to me
+yesterday. This lady is Miss Masters, who was Tranter's nurse. Mrs.
+Astley-Rolfe and Mr. Copplestone--which, I fancy, is not his correct
+name--you know already."
+
+He added a high compliment to the inspector's present position and past
+achievements, and then turned to Copplestone.
+
+"Mr. Copplestone, when Tranter did not return to me at the appointed
+time this afternoon, I went to your house. I found great changes. I
+found it, as you say, upside down."
+
+Copplestone was radiant with happiness. Every trace of the old gloom had
+left him. He was a new man.
+
+"I should think you did!" he retorted. "And you'd have found the earth
+upside down as well, if I'd been able to turn it."
+
+"I was puzzled," Monsieur Dupont admitted. "I could not understand it.
+But I knew this--that when the shadows roll away from a man's house,
+they roll away from his life. When he draws the blinds and throws open
+the windows of his house to the light and the air, he draws the blinds
+and throws open the windows of his soul. When he straightens his garden,
+he straightens himself. I knew that before you would lift the cloud from
+your house something must have lifted the cloud from you. You had been
+delivered----"
+
+"There was a fellow in the Bible," said Copplestone--"I think he was a
+king--who was cured of leprosy by taking a dip in a river. I don't know
+what happened afterwards, but I am quite sure that he turned his palace
+upside down when he got back."
+
+He sprang up, his face illuminated with all the wonder of his new birth.
+
+"I am free!" he cried. "Free! That's what my house told you. I had been
+brought out into the light after half a life of darkness. I had been
+released after forty years of prison, of torment that all the tortures
+of the Inquisition at once couldn't have equalled!"
+
+He stared about him, like an intoxicated man.
+
+"This room is too small!" he almost shouted. "Everything is too small. I
+want to dance on the Universe. I want the world to be a football. I want
+to play enormous games with giants--" He checked himself abruptly, and
+sat down. "Forgive me," he said. "You would understand, if you knew what
+I have suffered."
+
+"I can, for one," agreed the doctor heartily.
+
+"And I, indeed," said Monsieur Dupont. "But to proceed with the story--I
+think it would be better to commence with what Miss Masters has to tell
+us."
+
+He bowed to a gray-haired, grief-stricken woman. There was a pause
+before she overcame her emotion sufficiently to speak.
+
+"I took charge of Mary Winslowe's child from its birth," she began, at
+last. "She entrusted it to me in her sane moments, and I kept my trust
+faithfully. Perhaps it would have been better if I had not."
+
+"You did your duty," the doctor said.
+
+"It was a condition that he should never come under his father's
+influence, or even know his real name. He was to be kept in complete
+ignorance of the tragedy of his birth. It was necessary for him to be
+christened in his proper name to legalize the inheritance of his
+mother's fortune, but after that I took him away, and brought him up in
+strict accordance with my promises. He was told that both his parents
+had been drowned at sea. I gave him the name of John Tranter--Tranter
+was an old family name of mine. He was a bonny little fellow. I never
+thought that he might have inherited his mother's madness."
+
+"The Laws of Nature are inexorable," said the doctor. "If only the
+Second Commandment were given to people as the Law of Nature instead of
+the threat of God, it would be of some value."
+
+"I hardly realized it," she went on, "even when the symptoms had
+unmistakably developed. But it increased too plainly to be denied. I
+hoped and prayed that the horrible disease would pass away from him as
+he grew up--but it grew stronger and stronger with him. At last he made
+me tell him what it really was. It was against my promise, but he had to
+know. I pledged my word that I would keep his secret, and it was
+arranged that whenever he felt the approach of an attack he would come
+to me. I kept things for him. At first smaller things satisfied him. He
+was content to destroy flowers, pictures, prettily colored china,
+anything that was beautiful. But after that visit to France, when he was
+twenty, there was a change. He never told me what had happened--that he
+had killed a woman--but from that time only a woman's beauty would
+satisfy him. The attacks became few and far between, but when they came
+he would have died with the very force of his madness if he had not had
+some representation of a beautiful woman to expend it on."
+
+"It's frightful--incredible," the inspector exclaimed.
+
+"It was all the more pitiful," she said, "because his sanity was so
+wonderful. He had a towering intellect. He succeeded in anything he put
+his hand to."
+
+"He was looked upon as one of the greatest authorities on finance in the
+country," said the inspector.
+
+"He could have been a Member of Parliament before he was thirty if he
+had cared for politics. He refused a title. To be a Privy Councillor was
+the only honor he accepted. And he--one of England's great men--came to
+my little house at Streatham to gratify his madness to destroy."
+
+She looked round at them defiantly, anger displacing the sorrow on her
+face.
+
+"But he was not guilty," she declared. "His hands may have killed those
+three women--but he was not guilty. Nor was that poor innocent woman,
+his mother, who died in the madhouse. They were both clean of sin. It
+was on his wicked father that the guilt lay. It was Oscar Winslowe who
+was responsible for the lives that have fallen to his sins. Oscar
+Winslowe, and no one else."
+
+"I bear witness to that," agreed Doctor Lessing. "Mary Winslowe was the
+gentlest, the sweetest, and the most patient woman that ever walked this
+earth, as you will see when I tell you my story. And he was the biggest
+blackguard that ever blasphemed the likeness of his Maker."
+
+"It is true," said the woman.
+
+She drew back in her chair, and pressed a hand to her forehead.
+
+"That is all I have to tell you," she concluded.
+
+"Last night," said Monsieur Dupont, "I called at your house, and was
+told by the lady who lives next door that you had left in a hurry two
+hours before."
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+"I presume that you did so on instructions from Tranter?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Evidently he shadowed me to Paddington Station, as I expected he would,
+and decided to remove you in case I should get on the right track."
+
+"He sent me an urgent message," she said, "saying that a great disaster
+hung over his head, and that I must go away without leaving any trace.
+He told me where to go, and promised to come to me and explain."
+
+"He knew that it was only you who could give any proof against him?"
+
+"After forty years," she returned, with a touch of bitterness, "he ought
+to have known that I should not betray him."
+
+"Even if one had told you of those three dreadful crimes that he had
+committed, and that an innocent man was accused of the last one?"
+
+She locked her hands together.
+
+"Don't ask me," she cried. "I don't know what I should have done."
+
+"He foresaw that problem," said Monsieur Dupont. "His sanity was, as you
+have said, wonderful. But the sanity of madness is always
+wonderful--that is why madmen are such superb criminals. It is only a
+madman who can be really sane. Although I allowed him to see that I knew
+already something of the truth, he never betrayed himself by even a
+tremor. He had all the grand egotism of the born criminal. His disguise
+was impenetrable. He was never sure how far my knowledge went, but not a
+sign of anxiety did he ever show. We played a game of cross purposes. I
+used him, under the pretense of requiring his assistance, to keep him by
+my side, and in the hope that as he saw me draw nearer to him step by
+step, he would break down. He, on his side, allowed himself to be used
+in order to keep watch on my moves, and safeguard himself against them,
+as he did in the case of Miss Masters. He dared not leave me. In all my
+conversations with him, I placed him more and more at his wit's end to
+know how much I really knew. As much from curiosity as from anything, I
+instructed him to discover the secret of Mr. Copplestone's house, for I
+was convinced that it did contain an interesting secret. He was quite
+willing to make the attempt. It did not promise to lead me any nearer to
+him. He little thought when he went--and I had little thought when I
+sent him--that he was going to his own undoing."
+
+"And my salvation," Copplestone added.
+
+"There," said Monsieur Dupont, "it passes to you to enlighten me."
+
+"First," returned Copplestone, "I should like to know what caused you to
+be so positive, after being in my house only two or three hours, that
+there was a secret in it."
+
+"My instinct for the mysterious is seldom at fault," said Monsieur
+Dupont. "Have you not observed how, by their characters, their habits,
+and their desires, human beings draw to themselves certain events and
+conditions of life? And it is equally true that houses draw to
+themselves certain contents and certain kinds of inhabitants. If a house
+is particularly adapted to contain a secret, in the course of time will
+certainly contain one. By a few strokes of his pencil an architect can
+condemn a house to become the scene of a murder, as surely as he can
+make it a convenient or inconvenient dwelling. Your house was
+constructed to hide a secret. And I was not only sure that it did hide
+one, but that it hid one which was in some way connected with the crime
+in the garden."
+
+"I have had some experience of that instinct of yours," the inspector
+remarked, with a somewhat rueful smile.
+
+"Well," said Copplestone, "instinct or no instinct, it certainly did
+hide a secret, and that secret was that Oscar Winslowe lived in it--if
+his condition could be called living. For the last five years he had
+been practically a helpless imbecile. He seldom uttered a sound beyond a
+gibber, and hardly seemed to be conscious. He was suffering the natural
+consequences of his vices. He had been gradually reaching that
+condition since nature had dealt him her first stroke of vengeance more
+than thirty years ago. One by one his faculties had rotted. He was a
+living mass of decay."
+
+"It was a sure thing," the doctor said. "Such a condition was bound to
+come. I prophesied it to his face when I first knew him."
+
+"That was the secret of my house," Copplestone proceeded. "My own secret
+was that I believed myself to be his son--the inheritor of the curse
+that really belonged to Tranter. And the horror of it, the helplessness,
+the constant contemplation of the awful state of the man I knew as my
+father, and the morbid certainty that sooner or later I must come to the
+same state, actually drove me to the madness that was not really in me
+at all."
+
+"But how had you come to believe yourself to be his son?" the inspector
+asked.
+
+"That was the last of Winslowe's diabolical acts. He inherited a large
+fortune on condition that a child of his, to whom it could succeed, was
+alive at the time of the testator's death. He did not know anything of
+his own child, and did not want to. He was afraid that if he made
+public inquiries for it, he might learn publicly that it was dead, and
+lose his claim. Also, he was afraid of other complications and
+exposures."
+
+"And with good reason," said the doctor grimly.
+
+"He wanted a child of five to produce as his son, George Copplestone
+Winslowe--and possibly make away with in due course after the business
+was settled. I am quite sure that would have been my fate if nature had
+not come to my rescue by striking him. He knew, from his knowledge of
+the underworld of London, how such things could be arranged without
+risk. No doubt he bought me for a few pounds. I am not the first heir to
+an estate who has been produced by such means."
+
+"True enough," agreed the inspector. "The heir to a million has been
+bought for a fiver."
+
+"But a few years after taking possession of the fortune, he was struck
+down, as I have said, by the first instalment of nature's retribution,
+and was incapable of carrying out his plans. No one cared for me. No one
+thought of removing me from the sight and influence of his growing
+imbecility. I was brought up under the shadow of it. And so the horror
+was born in me--the belief that I was mad. What chance had I to resist
+it, in those surroundings? When I came to an age to do so, I searched
+out the story of my birth, of my father's excesses and my mother's
+madness, and my doom crashed upon me. Can you wonder that I became what
+I was?"
+
+"No, indeed," said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"I dropped the name of Winslowe. It was loathsome to me. I used my other
+two names, George Copplestone. They, at least, had come from my mother's
+side. My old manservant and his wife stuck to me, and kept my secrets.
+The income devolved on me in consequence of Winslowe's incapability. And
+so things went on. In my morbid demoralization I saw myself growing
+nearer and nearer to that wretched creature day by day."
+
+"Dreadful!" shuddered the doctor. "It must have been a living hell."
+
+"Then, last night, Tranter came. He climbed up on the ivy, and tried to
+spy into Winslowe's room. But I was there, and heard him. I dragged him
+in through the window. I suppose it was some look, some likeness to his
+mother, that stirred Winslowe's memory. He recognized him, and a flash
+of sanity came back to him. Under that sudden mental stimulation he
+recovered his power of movement, and was able to confess at least a part
+of the truth. Tranter was taken off his guard, and I forced him to admit
+his madness. I compelled him to take Winslowe and myself to Miss
+Masters, and she, in her turn, brought us here."
+
+"I imagined she would," Monsieur Dupont remarked.
+
+Copplestone drew a deep breath, and laughed aloud.
+
+"And I am like other men! I can live as other men live. I can do what
+other men do. I can----" His eyes rested on the woman beside him, and
+his face grew tender. "Yes," he repeated slowly, "I can ... I can...."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"And it was Tranter who killed Christine Manderson...." the inspector
+said, almost to himself.
+
+"It was," said Monsieur Dupont. "He admitted to you on the night of the
+crime that he had known her in America years ago. And here we have a
+curious study in conflicting emotions. When he first met her, he had
+already killed two beautiful women. She was certainly more beautiful
+than either--yet he was able to associate with her on intimate terms for
+a considerable time, and even to tear himself away from her at last,
+without adding her to the victims of his madness. How was he able to do
+that? It was undoubtedly because he loved her. He had not loved either
+of the other two, so there had been no opposing emotion to his mania.
+But he loved Christine Manderson, and love was capable of holding the
+madness in check, because love, in its full strength, is the strongest
+of all human emotions. Love is stronger than madness, and ten times
+stronger than sanity. But after he left her the love faded to a certain
+extent, while the madness increased. Therefore, when he was suddenly
+confronted with her extraordinary beauty a few nights ago, the love that
+had faded was unable to restrain the madness that had not. And he killed
+her."
+
+"My God!" exclaimed Copplestone, "to think that he stood there with us
+over the body he had torn--and even lifted it into my arms--without so
+much as a quiver."
+
+"He was not capable of remorse or regret," Monsieur Dupont returned. "If
+he had been, he would have killed himself long ago." He paused. "There
+remain now a few points of my own part in this affair to tell you, and
+we will then ask the doctor for his statement."
+
+"Before you do that," said Doctor Lessing, bluntly, "I, for one, am
+curious to know who you really are, and how you came to take such a
+large hand in the whole business."
+
+"My connection with the whole business," replied Monsieur Dupont, "is a
+long story. I have already told it to Inspector Fay, and I will tell it
+again with pleasure when all the more important statements have been
+made. As regards myself----"
+
+Inspector Fay took upon himself the continuation of the sentence.
+
+"Up to a few years ago," he said, "Monsieur Dupont was, under a certain
+pseudonym, the most brilliant member of the French Secret Service--and
+was, in fact, admitted to have no equal in the whole of Europe."
+
+"A gross exaggeration, my friends," protested Monsieur Dupont. He waved
+the inspector to silence. "When I came to London last week," he told
+them, "I came knowing that John Tranter had killed two women. I had
+known that when I returned from America six months before. You can
+imagine the difficulties in front of me then. I was to prove that an
+English Privy Councillor, a well-known and highly respected man, was in
+reality a madman who was responsible for two of the most dreadful crimes
+that had ever been committed. I had never seen him, but fortunately he
+was in Paris at that time, and I had no difficulty in making his
+acquaintance. By extreme good fortune, I was able to render him a
+service in the streets which placed him under an obligation to me. I
+observed him carefully, only to find him to all appearances the sanest
+and most level-headed man I had ever met. But there was one thing--he
+shut himself away completely from the society of women, and he avoided
+all places where beauty was to be found in any form. But I was so far
+from any proof. My next step was to test my own belief that his madness
+was an inherent disease, and to do that I employed inquiry agents in
+this country to discover whether there were any records of such a case
+in existence. It is only two weeks since I received information from
+them that a woman named Mary Winslowe had died in an asylum from that
+very kind of madness, forty years ago."
+
+"That is true," corroborated the doctor.
+
+"I came to London immediately. While following up my clues, I renewed my
+acquaintance with Tranter, and pressed him to act as my cicerone in
+London society, hoping to be able to entrap him into a situation that
+would lead him to betray himself. And he took me to Richmond. What
+happened there, you know. Though he knew when Christine Manderson first
+came into the room what the outcome would be, he was unable to tear
+himself away. And in the garden she forced herself upon him. He tried to
+resist her, but his madness overcame him. That is the explanation of
+the absence of a cry for help, which once I stated to be the key to the
+mystery. If she had been walking along that path to the house, she would
+have had time to cry out, no matter how quickly the assailant had sprung
+out at her. But she did not utter a cry because she was already in the
+arms of the assailant, compelling him to a passionate embrace, and
+without doubt it was a simple thing to strangle her silently in that
+very position."
+
+"Good God!" Copplestone shuddered.
+
+"His account of how she had asked him to find Mr. Copplestone, and tell
+him she was not well, and of how he had left her on her way to the
+house, was a succession of ingenious lies which could not be disproved.
+That is my story," concluded Monsieur Dupont. "The next most important
+point at the moment is that James Layton is cleared of a charge from
+which he could not possibly have saved himself."
+
+"Layton will be released with full honors to-morrow," the inspector
+said.
+
+"And I think," added Monsieur Dupont, "that there will be another
+matter--not unconnected with a young lady named Jenny West--upon which
+we shall have to congratulate him--and with very good reason."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+Half-an-hour later, when the doctor's statement had been made,
+Copplestone and Mrs. Astley-Rolfe stood together in the flower-laden
+garden.
+
+"My dear," said the new man, "I brought you here to witness my
+deliverance. Yesterday, when you had left me, I made up my mind to put
+an end to my life. To-day I am free. The cloud has rolled away. I am fit
+to keep my promise--if you wish it kept."
+
+She smiled up at him through happy tears.
+
+"If I wish it kept!" she whispered.
+
+"By Jove!" Copplestone exclaimed, "I believe in every miracle that has
+ever been reported, suggested, or hinted at, from the first hour of the
+world!"
+
+
+
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+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Crooked House, by Brandon Fleming</h1>
+<pre>
+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 <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Crooked House</p>
+<p>Author: Brandon Fleming</p>
+<p>Release Date: September 30, 2007  [eBook #22820]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CROOKED HOUSE***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>E-text prepared by D. Alexander<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net/c/">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br />
+    from digital material generously made available by<br />
+    Internet Archive/American Libraries<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.archive.org/details/americana">http://www.archive.org/details/americana</a>)</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;" cellpadding="10">
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">
+      Note:
+    </td>
+    <td>
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
+      <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/crookedhouse00flemiala">
+      http://www.archive.org/details/crookedhouse00flemiala</a>
+	</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="smallgap">&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>THE</h1>
+<h1>CROOKED HOUSE</h1>
+
+<p class="gap">&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>BY</h3>
+<h2>BRANDON FLEMING</h2>
+
+<p class="biggap">&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>NEW YORK</h4>
+<h4>EDWARD J. CLODE</h4>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1921, by</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">EDWARD J. CLODE</p>
+
+<p class="center">PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h2><a name="Contents" id="Contents"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+<table border="0" width="500" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<col style="width:15%;" />
+<col style="width:5%;"  />
+<col style="width:70%;" />
+<col style="width:10%;" />
+<tr>
+    <td align='right'><span style='font-size:x-small'>CHAPTER</span></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td align='right'><span style='font-size:x-small'>PAGE</span></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">I</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Strange Riddle</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#THE_CROOKED_HOUSE">9</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">II</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Crooked House</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">19</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">III</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Endless Garden</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">33</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">IV</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">Destruction</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">45</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">V</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">Copplestone</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">53</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">VI</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Trail of Corpses</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">65</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">VII</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">Tranter</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">71</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">VIII</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">Mrs. Astley-Rolfe</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">80</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">IX</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Danseuse</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">83</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">X</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">Mr. Gluckstein</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">85</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XI</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Clergyman</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">87</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XII</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">Mr. Bolsolver</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">89</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XIII</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Trinity of Death</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">92</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XIV</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">Without Trace</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">105</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XV</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Builder of Men</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">117</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XVI</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Triple Alliance</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">133</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XVII</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">Mr. Gluckstein in Confidence</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">142</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XVIII</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Wit of the Pink Lady</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">151</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XIX</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">Detained on Suspicion</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">159</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XX</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Birth of the Killer</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">176</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XXI</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Hasty Flight</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">187</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XXII</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">Tranter Attacks the Crooked House</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">195</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XXIII</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Duel</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">205</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XXIV</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Secret of the House</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">220</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XXV</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">Truer Colors</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">233</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XXVI</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">Providing for the Worst</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">241</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XXVII</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Disappearance of Tranter</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">250</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XXVIII</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">In Pursuit</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">259</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XXIX</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">Ethics of Killing</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">262</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XXX</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">Monsieur Dupont's Task</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">273</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XXXI</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">What They Heard</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">279</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XXXII</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Beauty-Killer</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">288</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XXXIII</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">Last Truths</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII">291</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XXXIV</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left"><span class="smcap">Conclusion</span></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV">312</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+<h1><a name="THE_CROOKED_HOUSE" id="THE_CROOKED_HOUSE"></a>THE CROOKED HOUSE</h1>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Strange Riddle</span></p>
+
+
+<p>"Monsieur Tranter! A
+moment!"</p>
+
+<p>The Right-Honorable John
+Tranter swung round, latch-key
+in hand. Behind him, an enormous figure
+emerged, with surprisingly agile and noiseless
+steps, from the shadow of the adjoining house&mdash;a
+figure almost grotesque and monstrous in
+the dim light of the street lamp. The very
+hugeness of the apparition was so disconcerting
+that John Tranter drew back with a startled
+exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord! Monsieur Dupont? You in
+London?"</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont described circles with his
+country's largest silk hat.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+"I in London! An event, my friend, in the
+history of your city!"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed softly, and replaced the hat on
+his head. They shook hands warmly.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a delightful surprise," Tranter said,
+turning back to the door. "Come in."</p>
+
+<p>"It is late," Monsieur Dupont apologized&mdash;"but
+I entreat a moment. It is three hours
+only since I arrived, and I have passed one of
+them on your doorstep."</p>
+
+<p>"An hour?" Tranter exclaimed. "But
+surely&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont squeezed himself into the
+narrow hall with difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>"I possess the gift of patience," he claimed
+modestly. "In London it is of great value."</p>
+
+<p>In the small library he looked about him with
+surprise. The plain, almost scanty furniture
+of Tranter's house evidently did not accord
+with his expectations of the residence of an
+English Privy Councillor. Monsieur Dupont
+sat down on a well-worn leather couch, and
+stared, somewhat blankly, at the rows of dull,
+monotonous bindings in the simple mahogany
+bookcases.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+He placed the drink Tranter mixed for him
+on a small table by his side, accepted a cigar,
+and puffed at it serenely. And in that position,
+Monsieur Victorien Dupont presented a
+pleasing picture of elephantine geniality. He
+was so large that his presence seemed to fill
+half the room. His great face was one tremendous
+smile. His eyes, though capable of
+a disconcertingly direct gaze, were clear and
+even childlike. His English was perfect, his
+evening-dress faultless, and, though obviously
+a <i>bon-viveur</i>, he was also unmistakably a man
+with a purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"And what has brought you to London?"
+Tranter asked, sitting opposite to him.</p>
+
+<p>"My friend," said Monsieur Dupont, "I am
+here with a remarkable object. I have come to
+use the eyes the good God has given me. And
+to do so I beg the assistance of the great position
+the good God has given you."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope," Tranter returned, "that what you
+require will enable me to make some sort of return
+to the man who saved my life."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont waved his hands in a gigantic
+gesture.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+"To restore to the world one of its great
+men&mdash;it was a privilege for which I, myself,
+should pay! The service I ask of you is
+small."</p>
+
+<p>"You have but to name it," said the Privy
+Councillor.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Suddenly there was no smile on Monsieur
+Dupont's face. Without the smile it was a
+very much less pleasant face.</p>
+
+<p>"Two years ago, in my own country," his
+voice acquired a new snap, "some one asked
+me a riddle."</p>
+
+<p>"A riddle?" Tranter echoed, surprised at the
+change.</p>
+
+<p>"A very strange riddle. Unfortunately, I
+cannot tell you what it was. I cannot tell any
+one what it was. I undertook to find the answer.
+From France the riddle took me far
+away to another country&mdash;and there, after a
+year's work, I found half the answer. The
+other half is in London. And I am in London
+to find it."</p>
+
+<p>"This is interesting," said Tranter, smiling
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+slightly at the huge Frenchman's intense seriousness.</p>
+
+<p>"You, my friend, can help me."</p>
+
+<p>"I am at your service," the other promised.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont half-emptied his glass, and
+the smile began to reappear on his face in
+gradual creases. In a moment the shadow had
+vanished. He laughed like a jolly giant.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, forgive me! I had almost committed
+the crime to be serious. It is a fault that is
+easy in your London."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want me to do for you?"
+Tranter asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I want," said Monsieur Dupont, "to be
+taken with you, as your friend from Paris, to
+one or two society functions&mdash;where I may be
+likely to meet ... what I seek."</p>
+
+<p>Tranter was somewhat taken aback.</p>
+
+<p>"Unconsciously," he returned&mdash;"though of
+course, I will make it my business to fulfill your
+wishes&mdash;you have really asked me a difficult
+thing. No man goes less into society than I
+do. Most people have given up inviting me."</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me," said Monsieur Dupont again.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+"I had imagined I should be asking a thing the
+most simple."</p>
+
+<p>"So you are," Tranter assured him. "The
+fault is with me. Where women are concerned
+I am utterly hopeless. I fly from a
+pretty woman as you might fly from a crocodile."</p>
+
+<p>"An ugly woman," said Monsieur Dupont,
+"is the real friend of man&mdash;if he would but
+know it."</p>
+
+<p>"The dull family dinners of dull family people
+are the only 'functions' I ever attend.
+However, let me see what can be done for you."
+Tranter rose, and with an amused expression
+began to sort out a small pile of cards on the
+mantel-piece.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont smiled on. He emptied
+his glass, and inhaled the smoke of his excellent
+cigar with all the enjoyment of a satisfied
+connoisseur. His glance played from one
+article of furniture to another, from the floor
+to the ceiling, from bookcase to bookcase, from
+picture to picture. The very plainness of the
+room seemed to fascinate him. His gaze
+sought out the ugliest picture, and became fixed
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+on it. Tranter turned over all the cards, and
+shrugged his shoulders helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>"In a couple of days I shall be able to fix
+you up a dozen times over," he said. "But
+I am afraid I have scarcely anything to offer
+you for to-morrow night. Why didn't you
+drop me a line in advance?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let us dispense with to-morrow night,
+then," said Monsieur Dupont.</p>
+
+<p>Tranter ran through the cards again.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a dinner at Lord Crumbleton's&mdash;which
+I have too much regard for you to suggest.
+The Countess is a most estimable lady,
+who has spent the last fifteen years in vain attempts
+to become unfaithful to her husband,
+and now reads the Apocrypha all day for stimulation.
+You could dine with a high-church
+clergyman who absolves sins, or an actor-manager
+who commits them. But stay&mdash;&mdash;"
+he paused quickly. "I forgot. There is
+something else." He sorted out a card.
+"Here is a possibility of amusement that had
+escaped me."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said Monsieur Dupont.</p>
+
+<p>"George Copplestone has favored me wit
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+an invitation to a select gathering at his house
+at Richmond, which would be very much more
+likely to provide answers to riddles. I never
+accept Copplestone's invitations on principle&mdash;although
+he goes on sending them. But, if
+you like, I will break my rule, and take you.
+It is sure to be entertaining, if nothing more."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont bowed his gratitude.
+Tranter replaced the cards, and returned to his
+seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Copplestone is a remarkable individual,
+who has learnt what a multitude of sins even a
+slight financial connection with the Theater
+will cover. He puts various sums of money
+into the front of the house to gain unquestioned
+admission to the back. He has an
+extraordinary taste for fantasy, and is always
+startling his friends with some new eccentricity.
+He is not generally considered to be a
+desirable acquaintance&mdash;and certainly no man
+in London has less regard for the conventions."</p>
+
+<p>"To confine myself to desirable acquaintances,"
+said Monsieur Dupont, "would be my
+last wish."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+"Then we will go to Richmond to-morrow
+night. He lives in a very strange house, in a
+stranger garden&mdash;the sort of place that no
+ordinary normal person could possibly live in.
+And I warn you that you will find nothing
+ordinary or normal in it. If you are interested
+in some of the unaccountable vagaries of human
+nature, you will enjoy yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"The unaccountable vagaries of human nature,"
+said Monsieur Dupont, "are the foundation
+of my riddle."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," Tranter returned, "I could give
+you no better chance to solve it. In addition,
+you will probably make the acquaintance of a
+certain pretty society widow, who wants to
+marry him because of his vices, and one or two
+other well-known people who owe him money
+and can't afford to refuse to dine with him.
+Also, as the invitation is an unusually pressing
+one, we can rely on the introduction of
+some unexpected freaks for our entertainment."</p>
+
+<p>"It is arranged," Monsieur Dupont declared,
+"I go with you to Richmond."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," Tranter agreed. "Call for
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+me here at eight o'clock, and we will go. Help
+yourself to another drink."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont helped himself to another
+drink.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Crooked House</span></p>
+
+
+<p>It was no unusual thing for George Copplestone
+to spring surprises on his guests.
+He had a twisted sense of the dramatic,
+and twisted things were expected from
+him. On some occasions he perpetrated the
+wildest and most extravagant eccentricities,
+without the slightest regard for the moral or
+artistic sensibilities of those on whom he imposed
+them&mdash;on others he contented himself
+with less harrowing minor freaks&mdash;but the object
+of thoroughly upsetting and confounding
+the mental balances of his victims was invariably
+achieved. He delighted, and displayed
+remarkable ingenuity, in providing orgies of
+the abnormal. He reveled in producing an
+atmosphere of brain-storm, and in dealing
+sledge-hammer blows at the intellects of his
+better balanced acquaintances. Often he was
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+in uncontrollable spirits&mdash;on fire with mental
+and physical exuberance&mdash;sometimes he was
+morose and silent, and apparently weak. Frequently
+he disappeared for considerable periods,
+and his house appeared to be closed.
+But none saw his coming or going.</p>
+
+<p>Strange rumors circulated about him from
+time to time. Certain social circles, to which
+his wealth and position entitled him to the
+entr&eacute;e, were closed to him. Over and above
+his wild extravagancies, he was credited with
+vices that remained unnamed. It was said
+that things took place in his house that sealed
+the lips of men and women. When his name
+was mentioned in the clubs, some men
+shrugged their shoulders. When it was spoken
+in the drawing-rooms, some women remained
+silent. There had been an attempt to stab
+him, and twice he had been shot at. After
+the second attempt, a woman had been heard
+to say bitterly that he must bear a charmed
+life. He continued to pursue his strange ways
+with supreme indifference to the opinions of his
+fellow-creatures.</p>
+
+<p>The house he lived in was the only sort of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+house he could have lived in. From the
+foundations to the topmost brick it was a mass
+of bewildering crookedness. Nothing was
+straight. Not a single passage led where it
+would have been expected to lead&mdash;not a
+staircase fulfilled normal anticipations.
+Scarcely two windows in the whole building
+were the same size&mdash;scarcely two rooms were
+the same shape&mdash;and not even two contortions
+corresponded. There must have been a mile
+of unnecessary corridors, dozens of incomprehensible
+corners and turnings, and at least a
+score of unwanted entrances and exits. If
+the aim and object of the architect, whoever
+he was, had been to reduce the unfortunate
+occupants of his handiwork to a condition of
+hopeless mental entanglement, he could not
+have created a more effective instrument for
+the purpose. George Copplestone found it a
+residence after his own heart, and delighted
+in the means it provided for gratifying his feverish
+inspirations.</p>
+
+<p>The room into which John Tranter and
+Monsieur Victorien Dupont were ushered at
+eight-thirty on the following night presented
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+an extraordinary spectacle of lavish and indiscriminate
+decoration, arriving at a general
+suggestion of something between a Royal visit
+and preparations for a wildly enthusiastic
+Christmas. Flags and festoons, flowers, real
+and imitation, fairy-candles and colored lamps,
+burning with strange heavy scents, quaint fantastic
+shapes of paper, startlingly illuminated&mdash;all
+massed into an indescribable disorder of
+light and color. Five amazed people were
+awaiting further developments.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Astley-Rolfe was a charming widow of
+twenty-seven, who had successfully gambled
+on her late husband's probable lease of life, and
+was now in the throes of a wild attachment to
+George Copplestone, to which he had shown
+himself by no means averse. She was somewhat
+languid from an excess of luxury, unable
+to brook opposition even to a whim, and as yet
+undefeated in the attainment of her desires,
+which were not, perhaps, always to the credit
+of her sex. She had an insufficient income,
+and a weakness for inscribing her signature on
+stamped slips of paper, several of which, it was
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+rumored, were in Copplestone's possession.
+Her house in Grosvenor Gardens was an artistic
+paradise, and was frequently visited by
+gentlemen from Jermyn Street, who seemed
+fond of assuring themselves that its treasures
+remained intact.</p>
+
+<p>A West-End clergyman, of Evangelical appearance,
+who translated French farces under
+a <i>nom-de-plume</i>, was advocating, in confidence,
+the abolition of the Censor to a well-known
+theatrical manager, whose assets were all in
+the name of his wife. A bejeweled Russian
+danseuse, who spoke broken English with a
+Highland accent, extolled the attractions of
+theatrical investment to a Hebrew financier,
+who was feasting his eyes on the curves of her
+figure, and hoping that she was sufficiently
+hard-up. The entrance of Tranter and his
+huge companion created general surprise.
+Mrs. Astley-Rolfe held up her hands prettily.</p>
+
+<p>"You?" she exclaimed, to Tranter. "You&mdash;of
+all people&mdash;condescending to visit our plane?
+The mystery is explained at once. The decorations
+are for you&mdash;the Pillar of the State!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+"Indeed they are not," he assured her. He
+stood aside. "Permit me to introduce my
+friend, Monsieur Dupont."</p>
+
+<p>"This is delightful!" she smiled.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont bent over her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame," he declared, "I change completely
+my opinion of London."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Copplestone?" Tranter inquired,
+gazing with amazement round the festooned
+room.</p>
+
+<p>A frown passed over Mrs. Astley-Rolfe's
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"He has not yet appeared. He sent in a
+message asking us to wait for him here. He
+is up to some freak obviously."</p>
+
+<p>"It is certainly a strange medley of color,"
+Tranter admitted. "Fortunately, I am not
+particularly susceptible&mdash;but to an artistic
+temperament I can understand that the effect
+would be acute. What extraordinary event
+can such a blaze be intended to celebrate?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," she returned, a little shortly.
+"He has told us nothing."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes strayed anxiously to the door.
+The movements of her hands were nervous.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+"I wish he would come," she muttered&mdash;and
+stood away from them.</p>
+
+<p>Tranter drew his companion across the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" he asked, smiling. "How do you
+like this somewhat showy welcome?"</p>
+
+<p>"My friend," said Monsieur Dupont slowly&mdash;"into
+what manner of house have you
+brought me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Copplestone is a curious fellow," Tranter
+replied. "I warned you to be prepared for
+something unusual."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a crooked house," said Monsieur Dupont.
+"It stands on a crooked road, and there
+are crooked paths all round it. And everything
+is crooked inside it."</p>
+
+<p>"These decorations are crooked enough, at
+any rate," Tranter laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"These decorations," said Monsieur Dupont,
+"are not only crooked&mdash;they are bad. Very
+bad."</p>
+
+<p>He lowered his voice. There was a gleam
+of excitement in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you see," he whispered, "that decorations
+can be good or bad, just as men and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+women can be good or bad? These decorations
+are bad. They are a mockery of all decorations&mdash;a
+travesty the most heartless of the motives
+for which good and pure people decorate.
+There is nothing honest or straightforward
+about them. They are a mean confusion of all
+the symbols of joy. They are put up for some
+cruel and detestable purpose&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The door flew open with a snap, and a young
+man of dishevelled appearance burst into the
+room. His eyes were wild, and his face was
+working with the intensity of his passion.</p>
+
+<p>"Christine," he panted. "Christine...."</p>
+
+<p>He stopped, and gazed round in a dazed
+fashion, clenching and unclenching his hands.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Astley-Rolfe sprang forward with a
+suppressed cry, and confronted him tensely.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" she cried sharply&mdash;"what about
+Christine?"</p>
+
+<p>He did not seem to be aware of her. He was
+staring at the flags, the lights, the flowers, and
+the colored paper.</p>
+
+<p>"It is true then," he muttered. "These
+things...."</p>
+
+<p>The woman was as white as death. Her
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+hands were locked together. She swayed.</p>
+
+<p>"What is true?" she gasped.</p>
+
+<p>The young man took no notice of her. Copplestone's
+elderly manservant appeared in the
+doorway, and approached him.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Copplestone declines to see you, sir&mdash;and
+requests that you will leave his house. I
+have orders, otherwise, to send for the police."</p>
+
+<p>The young man drew himself up. He was
+suddenly quite composed and dignified. The
+passion died out of his face, leaving an expression
+almost of contentment in its place.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish it to be understood," he said, addressing
+himself to the room generally with
+perfect evenness, "that, rather than allow
+Christine Manderson to become engaged to
+George Copplestone, I will tear her to pieces
+with my own hands, and utterly destroy her."
+And he turned, and walked quietly out of the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>In the silence that followed all eyes were
+fixed on the white, rigid woman. Her face
+was drawn and haggard. She seemed to have
+grown old and weak. Her whole frame appeared
+to have shrunk under an overwhelming
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+blow. For some moments she stood motionless.
+Then, with a supreme effort of self-control,
+she turned, and faced them steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"I think," she said calmly, "that if Miss
+Manderson is in the house she should be
+warned."</p>
+
+<p>"Fellow was mad," said the theatrical manager.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tout-a-fait</i> daft," agreed the Russian danseuse.</p>
+
+<p>"It would have been safer," Tranter remarked,
+"if he had been given in charge."</p>
+
+<p>There was something very like contempt in
+Mrs. Astley-Rolfe's glance.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know," she said quietly, "that that
+young man is a millionaire who lives on a
+pound a week, and spends the remaining nine
+hundred and ninety-nine pounds a week on
+saving lives and souls in places in London that
+people like us try to avoid even hearing about?
+If it is madness to devote your life and money
+to lifting some of the world's shadows&mdash;then
+he is very mad."</p>
+
+<p>"Mosth creditable," said the Hebrew financier.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+She turned her back on them, and stood
+apart.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont laid a hand on Tranter's
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>"My friend," he said&mdash;and there was the
+faintest tremor in his voice, "I ask you again&mdash;into
+what manner of house have you brought
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am beginning to wish that I had <i>not</i>
+brought you," Tranter returned. "I don't like
+the atmosphere."</p>
+
+<p>"That," said Monsieur Dupont, drawing
+him aside, "is where we differ. To me the atmosphere
+is extremely interesting. If I were
+a sportsman, I would make you a bet that this
+will be an eventful evening."</p>
+
+<p>"I feel strongly," said Tranter seriously,
+"that we should be wise to leave. We don't
+want to be mixed up in an affair with a madman."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"The millionaire was not mad, my friend.
+He may have been mad yesterday. He may
+be mad to-morrow. But he is very sane to-night."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+"I don't like it," Tranter maintained. "I
+would much rather go. Events under this
+roof have a trick of being a little too dramatic."</p>
+
+<p>Laughter from the clergyman, the financier,
+and the danseuse, greeted the conclusion of a
+story with which the theatrical manager had
+attempted to relieve the strain. Monsieur Dupont
+drew Tranter still further back.</p>
+
+<p>"This Mademoiselle Manderson&mdash;do you
+know her?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," Tranter replied. "I've never heard
+of her. I suppose she is some new friend of
+Copplestone's. If she is really engaged to him,
+I don't think she is altogether to be envied."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont's glance found Mrs. Astley-Rolfe.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he remarked softly&mdash;"I do not think
+she is."</p>
+
+<p>Two heavy curtains at the extreme end of
+the room were drawn apart, and the figure of
+a man appeared between them&mdash;a tall, thick-set
+man, in full evening-dress, with a large white
+flower in his button-hole. For a moment he
+stood still, looking intently down the room.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+"Copplestone," Tranter whispered to his
+companion.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mon Dieu</i>," muttered Monsieur Dupont.</p>
+
+<p>It was the face of a fanatic&mdash;wonderful,
+fascinating, cruel&mdash;a fanatic who neither
+feared God nor regarded man&mdash;an infinite
+egotist. The fires of a great distorted soul
+smoldered in his eyes. The broad, lofty forehead
+proclaimed a mind that might have placed
+him among the rulers of men&mdash;but instead he
+was little above the level of a clown. The
+destinies of a nation might have rested in the
+hands that he turned only to selfish fantasy.
+The whole appearance of him, arresting and
+almost awe-inspiring as it undoubtedly was,
+had in it the repulsiveness of the unnatural&mdash;and,
+with that, all the tragedy of pitiful waste.</p>
+
+<p>To-night, he confronted his guests in an
+attitude, and with an air, of triumph. But as
+Mrs. Astley-Rolfe turned quickly to him with
+something of a challenge in her bearing, a faint
+mocking smile appeared and lingered for a
+moment on his face. Then he moved aside,
+his hand on the curtains.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+"Ladies and gentlemen," he said deliberately,
+"permit me to present you to my fianc&eacute;e&mdash;Miss
+Christine Manderson."</p>
+
+<p>He drew the curtains apart.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mon Dieu</i>," said Monsieur Dupont again.</p>
+
+<p>A half-strangled sob came from the lips of
+Mrs. Astley-Rolfe. Tranter uttered an exclamation.
+The danseuse, the clergyman, and
+the theatrical manager burst into vigorous applause.</p>
+
+<p>Framed in the darkness behind him was the
+white form of a woman, of transcendent loveliness.
+In the soft light it seemed almost a
+celestial figure. She smiled with entrancing
+sweetness, and held out her hands.</p>
+
+<p>But as her gaze swept over the occupants of
+the room, the smile vanished. Her eyes became
+fixed and staring; her face set. She uttered
+a sharp cry&mdash;and fell forward in a dead
+faint.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Endless Garden</span></p>
+
+
+<p>Confusion followed. Copplestone
+knelt beside her, calling her by name
+in a strange excess of fear. The
+theatrical manager tore a flask from
+his pocket, and administered its contents freely.
+The spirit revived her. She opened her eyes.
+They lifted her gently, and laid her on a couch.</p>
+
+<p>"It was that madman rushing in unnerved
+her," Copplestone cried fiercely. "Wish I'd
+called in the police. Curse him!"</p>
+
+<p>Her hand closed on his. "No, no," she
+whispered. "He must not be touched. He
+didn't mean it."</p>
+
+<p>"Mean it be damned!" said Copplestone
+savagely. "If I see any more of him, he'll
+find himself in jail in less time than it takes to
+say it."</p>
+
+<p>The manager proffered further stimulant.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+The color began to return to her face, but her
+eyes were wide and strained. Copplestone
+watched her closely.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," said the manager, re-corking
+his empty flask, "she'd better rest. Let's all
+clear off, and go on with this another night."</p>
+
+<p>"Thertainly," agreed the financier.</p>
+
+<p>But Christine Manderson rose, and leant on
+Copplestone's arm. Her self-control was exerted
+to the utmost, but she trembled.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me," she said softly. "I am all
+right now. Please don't go."</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" Copplestone exclaimed, recovering
+his equanimity. "It would be a pity to break
+up. We'll have a jolly night." He laughed
+loudly. "Tranter, of all people!" he cried
+boisterously. "And&mdash;&mdash;" he looked towards
+Monsieur Dupont.</p>
+
+<p>"I was sure you wouldn't mind my bringing
+a friend with me," Tranter said. "Monsieur
+Dupont has just arrived from Paris."</p>
+
+<p>"Delighted," said Copplestone, shaking
+hands with great heartiness. "Forgive this
+unhappy beginning. We'll make up for it now.
+Come along to dinner. It's all ready."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+In the dining-room they sat down to a table
+that glittered and gleamed with a hundred
+lights, concealed under strands of white crystallized
+leaves, springing from a frosted tree.
+Such a table might have been set in Fairyland,
+for the betrothal feast of Oberon.</p>
+
+<p>"Glad we didn't miss this," said the theatrical
+manager.</p>
+
+<p>He regaled the company with a selection of
+his less offensive stories, and found ready applause.
+The gayety was loud and forced.
+Every one attempted to keep it at fever-heat.
+Jest followed jest with increasing rapidity.
+Laughter rang out on the smallest provocation.
+It was a competition in hilarity. And
+the gayest of all were Christine Manderson,
+and Mrs. Astley-Rolfe.</p>
+
+<p>The night was hot and sultry. The distant
+roll of thunder added to the tenseness of the
+atmosphere. And hearing it, Christine Manderson
+shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"Storms are unlucky to me," she said, listening
+until the sullen roll died away. "Why
+should we have one to-night&mdash;of all nights?"</p>
+
+<p>The clergyman adroitly twisted the subject
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+of lightning into a compliment. As the dinner
+drew to a somewhat loud conclusion, Copplestone's
+face grew flushed, and his hands unsteady.
+The manager's voice and stories
+thickened, and the thoughts of the Russian
+danseuse became fixed on Aberdeen. Tranter
+and Monsieur Dupont were abstemious guests.
+But the Frenchman seemed to be enjoying himself
+immensely.</p>
+
+<p>They rose from the fairy table, and strolled
+out through the open windows into the garden.
+The air had grown hotter and more oppressive,
+the thunder louder. Frequent flashes lit up
+the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>The glowing tips of cigars and cigarettes
+disappeared in various directions across the
+lawns.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont discovered, to his cost, the
+truth of his remark that the house was surrounded
+by crooked paths. The grounds were
+a veritable maze. He had purposely slipped
+away alone, and in five minutes was involved
+in a network of twisting, thickly-hedged paths,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+all of which seemed only to lead still further
+into the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>He stopped, and listened. He could hear
+no voices. Not a sound, except the gathering
+thunder, disturbed the silence. He was completely
+cut off. Even the lights of the house
+were hidden from him. He had turned about
+so many times that he did not even know in
+which direction it lay. Coupled with the effect
+of what had happened in the house, the influence
+of this tortuous garden was sinister and
+unnerving. In the lightning flashes, now more
+vivid and frequent, he tried in vain to determine
+his position. He wandered about, trying
+path after path, doubling back on his own
+tracks&mdash;only to find himself more and more
+helplessly lost.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Nom de Dieu</i>," said Monsieur Dupont, in
+despair.</p>
+
+<p>He halted suddenly, standing as still as a
+figure of stone. On his right the hedge was
+thick and high. He could see nothing. But
+the whisper of a voice had reached him.</p>
+
+<p>The path took a sharp turn. He stepped
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+noiselessly on to the grass border, and crept
+round, with wonderful agility for a man of his
+size. The foliage gradually thinned, and
+kneeling down he was able to listen and peer
+through until the next flash should reveal what
+lay beyond.</p>
+
+<p>The whisper thrilled with indescribable passion.</p>
+
+<p>"I love you. You are my body, my soul,
+my god, my all. I love you&mdash;I love you&mdash;I
+love you."</p>
+
+<p>It was the voice of Christine Manderson.</p>
+
+<p>Not a tremor escaped the listener. Parting
+the leaves with a hand as steady as the ground
+itself, he waited for the light.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no world but you&mdash;no thought but
+you. I want nothing but you ... you ...
+you." A sob broke her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Go," the answer was almost inaudible in
+its tenseness. "Go&mdash;and forget. I have nothing
+for you."</p>
+
+<p>The lightning came. In a small open space
+on the other side of the hedge it illuminated
+the wild tortured face of Christine Manderson.
+And standing before her, gripping both her
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+hands and holding her away from him&mdash;John
+Tranter.</p>
+
+<p>She struggled to bring herself closer to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you were dead," she gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>am</i> dead," he answered. "I am dead to
+you. Let me go."</p>
+
+<p>The listener could almost hear the effort of
+her breathing.</p>
+
+<p>"I waited for you," she panted. "I was
+broken. I had to seem happy&mdash;but my heart
+was a tomb. You were all my life&mdash;all my
+hope. I know I wasn't what I might have
+been. I was what people call an adventuress.
+But my love for you was the one great, true
+thing of my life. Oh, why did you leave
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>"For your own sake," he said slowly. "I
+am no mate for such a woman as you."</p>
+
+<p>"My own sake?" she repeated. "My own
+sake&mdash;to take from me the only thing I had&mdash;my
+only chance?&mdash;to throw my life into the
+shadows? My own sake ... to have made
+me what I am?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would have spared you this meeting," he
+returned, "if I had known. But the name
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+Christine Manderson was strange to me. I
+had never heard it before."</p>
+
+<p>"I changed my name," she said sadly. "I
+couldn't bear that any one should use the name
+that you had used. I called myself Christine
+Manderson, and went on the stage in New
+York. Oh, it was dreadful. All those long
+years since you left me I have lived under a
+mask&mdash;as you have seen me to-night. You
+thought I was smiling&mdash;but I didn't smile.
+You thought I was laughing&mdash;but I didn't
+laugh. It was all ... only disguised tears
+... to hide myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Go," his voice was torn. "For God's sake
+go ... Thea."</p>
+
+<p>A second flash showed them again to the
+listener. Tranter was still holding her away
+from him. In that vivid fraction of a second
+the agony of her face was terrible.</p>
+
+<p>"Thea!" she echoed pitifully. "Ah, yes&mdash;call
+me Thea! Poor Thea! Oh, doesn't
+that name awaken ... something? Hasn't
+it still some charm? Once you said it was the
+only name in all the world. Is it nothing to
+you now?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+"Nothing," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of his resistance she was forcing
+herself nearer to him. The magic of her presence
+was binding him.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I less beautiful?" she whispered.
+"Have I lost anything that used to draw you?
+Is not my hair as golden? Are not my eyes
+as bright&mdash;my lips as red? Am I not as soft
+to touch? Where could you find anything better
+than me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Keep back!" he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>Her hands were about him. In the darkness
+he could feel the deadly loveliness of her face
+almost touching his own. He was yielding,
+inch by inch. The warmth of her breath ...
+the perfume of her body.... Her closeness
+was intoxicating&mdash;maddening.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, let me come to you," she prayed. "I
+will follow you barefooted to the end of the
+world. I will live for you&mdash;slave for you&mdash;die
+for you. Only let me come. Let me leave
+all this&mdash;and come to you ... to-morrow...."</p>
+
+<p>A groan was wrung from him. He crushed
+her to him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+"Come then!" he cried desperately. "Come,
+if you will!..."</p>
+
+<p>A vivid flash, which seemed to burst almost
+over their heads, showed them locked in each
+other's arms, their lips pressed together.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont raised himself quickly.
+There was the sound of running footsteps on
+the path behind him. Monsieur Dupont had
+just time to turn the corner before the disordered
+figure of the theatrical manager loomed
+up before him.</p>
+
+<p>"The madman is in the garden! He ran
+this way."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Diable!</i>" said Monsieur Dupont.</p>
+
+<p>"I found him sneaking towards the house.
+He bolted out here."</p>
+
+<p>Unaccustomed to physical exertion, the
+manager laid a heavy hand on Monsieur Dupont's
+shoulder, and mopped his forehead
+breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"The scoundrel means mischief," he declared.
+"He must be found."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Mr. Copplestone?"</p>
+
+<p>"I called him, but couldn't get an answer.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+He must be away at the other end of the garden."</p>
+
+<p>"No one has passed this way," Monsieur
+Dupont assured him. "For a half-hour I have
+been wandering about these horrible paths."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a devil of a garden," the manager admitted.
+"The fellow won't get very far.
+Let's look about here."</p>
+
+<p>Fortified with a fresh supply of breath, he
+released Monsieur Dupont's shoulder, and
+made a brisk movement towards the direction
+from which the Frenchman had come.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont blocked the way.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no&mdash;it would be a waste of time. I
+have come from there."</p>
+
+<p>"To the river, then," the manager cried,
+bearing him round. "He may be trying to get
+across."</p>
+
+<p>He was evidently familiar with the intricacies
+of the garden. In a few minutes, after a
+dozen turnings, they reached the gleam of
+water.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep your eyes open for the next flash,"
+the manager directed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+He peered about. A moment later the
+lightning lit up the calm stretch of the river
+and the broad lawns sloping down to it. Monsieur
+Dupont detected no form or movement&mdash;but
+with a startling shout, the manager
+bounded away from him across the lawns.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont blinked after him in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>He was alone again&mdash;in a new and even
+darker part of the endless garden.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Destruction</span></p>
+
+
+<p>A deep-toned clock in the house
+struck twelve.</p>
+
+<p>Rain began to fall. A few moments
+later the financier hurried
+across the lawns with his collar turned up.
+The danseuse followed him. She seemed a
+disappointed and indignant woman.</p>
+
+<p>"It's almost an insult," she complained overtaking
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Noth a penny more," said the financier
+firmly.</p>
+
+<p>They both turned quickly. Her hand
+gripped his arm convulsively. Wild shouting
+arose in the darkness, and the sound of someone
+forcing a headlong way through hedge and
+bush.</p>
+
+<p>The Reverend Percival Delamere was rushing
+towards the house as if the entire penalties
+of sin were at his heels.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+"A corpse! A corpse by the river! Miss
+Manderson has been murdered!"</p>
+
+<p>The danseuse uttered a terrified cry. The
+financier shook.</p>
+
+<p>"Murderedth?" he gasped, shrinking back.</p>
+
+<p>The clergyman was shattered by horror.</p>
+
+<p>"By the river ... almost torn to pieces...."</p>
+
+<p>The danseuse screamed loudly. A figure
+bounded up behind them, and a hand seized
+the clergyman's throat in a savage grip. The
+furious, distorted face of George Copplestone
+glared down at him. He struggled, freeing
+himself with all his strength.</p>
+
+<p>"Copplestone," he choked, "something dreadful
+has happened to Miss Manderson. I found
+her by the river ... horribly torn...."</p>
+
+<p>From another direction, Tranter reached
+them, breathless.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter? What has happened?"</p>
+
+<p>The financier clung to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Mith Manderthon ... murderedth."</p>
+
+<p>Tranter shook him off, and stood very still.
+The agony on his face passed unnoticed. As
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+the theatrical manager and Mrs. Astley-Rolfe
+arrived at a run, Copplestone, with a sound like
+the cry of a raging animal, grasped the unhappy
+clergyman by the arm, and dashed off
+towards the river.</p>
+
+<p>The others followed. They found her lying
+a few yards from the water's edge. The
+manager struck a match, and they looked
+down.</p>
+
+<p>The danseuse shrieked, and fainted. Mrs.
+Astley-Rolfe sank on her knees, sobbing, and
+covered her face with her hands. The financier
+sickened, and turned away, trembling
+violently.</p>
+
+<p>"God!" Tranter cried&mdash;"some one must have
+stamped on her!"</p>
+
+<p>He bent down. "Thea...." he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Something like a sob shook him. But the
+others did not see.</p>
+
+<p>"It must have been a wild beast," shuddered
+the clergyman.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the work of a madman," said the manager
+hoarsely. "He has utterly destroyed her&mdash;as
+he threatened."</p>
+
+<p>George Copplestone stood without a tremor.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+As he looked down at the broken form all his
+frenzy disappeared. The distortion of his first
+fury faded from his face, leaving it set in a
+pallid, lifeless mask. He contemplated the
+dreadful destruction at his feet without a sign
+of horror, or even of pity. He was perfectly
+steady. Not a quiver escaped him. Stooping
+down, he asked quietly for assistance to carry
+the body to the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a bit," said the manager, looking at
+him curiously. "She ought not to be moved
+before the police come."</p>
+
+<p>Copplestone straightened himself, and remained
+silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Let Gluckstein take the women in, and telephone
+to the Police Station," the manager suggested.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Astley-Rolfe raised her bloodless face.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," she sobbed. "Let me go. It's
+too horrible. I can't bear it."</p>
+
+<p>Tranter raised her up. The danseuse had
+recovered consciousness, and was crying hysterically.
+Suddenly the financier startled
+them in a thin high voice, pointing a shaking
+finger into the darkness.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+"Someone ith moving! Out there behind
+uth! Whoth there? Whoth there?"</p>
+
+<p>They swung round, straining their eyes into
+the blackness.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's there?" the manager called.</p>
+
+<p>An answering voice reached them. The
+manager struck another match. On the edge
+of the darkness they saw an enormous figure.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Monsieur Dupont!" Tranter cried.</p>
+
+<p>"My friends," exclaimed Monsieur Dupont,
+"at last I find you! What is the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>Copplestone looked at him steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"The matter," he said evenly, "is that Miss
+Manderson has been murdered."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont uttered an extraordinary
+exclamation. He was instantly galvanized
+into a condition of seething energy. With
+what was almost a snarl, he brushed the
+financier aside, and reached the white mangled
+form on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>For a tense minute he knelt beside it. The
+others waited.</p>
+
+<p>"Destroyed," they heard him mutter&mdash;"utterly
+destroyed...."</p>
+
+<p>When he rose, his eyes were full of tears.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+"It is terrible. Who was with her last?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was with her less than a quarter of an
+hour ago," Tranter replied. "She said she
+was going back to the house, and asked me to
+find Mr. Copplestone, and tell him that she was
+not feeling well."</p>
+
+<p>"Where are your police?" asked Monsieur
+Dupont.</p>
+
+<p>"Gluckstein is going to take the ladies back
+to the house, and telephone for them," the manager
+returned.</p>
+
+<p>The financier departed with his charges.
+The four men remained, facing each other over
+the dead body. Rain was falling heavily.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor girl," said the clergyman huskily.</p>
+
+<p>"That such a brute should be at large," the
+manager added.</p>
+
+<p>Copplestone's gaze again became rivetted to
+the ground. He seemed unconscious of their
+presence. He was like a man alone and dazed
+in a strange world.</p>
+
+<p>Then the storm burst over them with all its
+fury. The rain poured down in torrents, the
+lightning was incessant. It was as if the
+elements themselves, in their rage, were seeking
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+to complete the work of destruction.</p>
+
+<p>"We can't leave her out in this&mdash;police or
+no police," the clergyman shivered.</p>
+
+<p>Copplestone bent down again. The manager
+moved to assist, but Tranter put him aside,
+and assisted Copplestone to lift the ghastly
+burden in his arms. Then they picked their
+way slowly along the winding paths to the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>When they entered the decorated room,
+Copplestone's strange immobility flashed upon
+him with startling suddenness. Uttering a
+oath, he placed what he had previously
+been carrying with dull indifference roughly
+on a couch, and hurled himself furiously
+upon the confusion of decorations, tearing
+and crushing everything into a smashed
+heap on the floor. So overwhelming was his
+violence that no one dared attempt to stop
+him. He dashed the lights to the ground, and
+rent the flags with appalling ferocity. In a
+few moments a shattered pile was all that remained
+of the medley of illumination. He
+stood on the pile and ground his heels into it.</p>
+
+<p>Then all the energy was snuffed out of him
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+like the switching off of an electric current.
+The dull heavy cloud descended on him again.
+He stared vacantly at the others, shrugged his
+shoulders slightly, and turned his back on
+them.</p>
+
+<p>The silence remained unbroken until a loud
+ringing at the front door bell announced the
+arrival of the police.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copplestone</span></p>
+
+
+<p>Detective-Inspector Fay
+was an able and successful officer,
+of international reputation, whose
+achievements had placed a substantial
+price on his head in most countries sufficiently
+civilized to possess their criminal organizations.
+His bag had included many famous
+law-breakers, and, though now employed in
+less strenuous directions, he was admitted to be
+one of the most skilful and reliable of Scotland
+Yard's unravelers of mystery. But, experienced
+as he was, the inspector could not suppress
+his horror and indignation when the
+mutilated body of Christine Manderson was
+uncovered to him.</p>
+
+<p>"What, in God's name, was there in this
+garden to-night?" he demanded, shuddering.</p>
+
+<p>"A madman," the theatrical manager muttered.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+The inspector's glance rested on him for
+an instant, but passed on. He made no further
+remarks during his examination&mdash;but when,
+concluding it, he carefully replaced the covering
+and turned again to the others, there was
+a concentrated gleam in his eyes and a certain
+set to his face that were known to bode ill
+to the perpetrators of the deeds that inspired
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"There can scarcely be a whole bone in her
+body," he declared, regarding them all intently.
+"Her face is smashed to pulp; some of the
+hair has been wrenched from her head; and
+even the bones of her fingers are broken. It is
+the most brutal and disgusting crime I have
+had the misfortune to meet with in the whole
+of my thirty years experience."</p>
+
+<p>He gave a brief order to an attendant constable,
+who moved to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"If you will kindly retire with the constable
+to the next room," he requested, "I will take
+a separate account from every one. Perhaps
+Mr. Copplestone will give me his information
+first."</p>
+
+<p>The constable marshalled them into an adjoining
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+room, which the danseuse filled with
+complaints at this prolonged detention. Copplestone
+remained behind. His dullness and
+immobility had increased almost to a stupor.</p>
+
+<p>"She was engaged to marry me," he said,
+in a slow lifeless tone, "since yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>Inspector Fay seated himself at a table, and
+opened his note-book.</p>
+
+<p>"We fully sympathize with you, Mr. Copplestone,"
+he said quietly, "and I am afraid
+it is poor consolation to promise you that
+justice shall be done on the inhuman criminal,
+whoever it may be."</p>
+
+<p>"Justice?" Copplestone returned, in the same
+weary, monotonous voice. "Of what use is
+Justice? Can it call her back&mdash;or mend her
+broken body?"</p>
+
+<p>"Unfortunately, it cannot," the inspector
+admitted. "But it is all humanity can do.
+Will you answer a few questions, as clearly
+and briefly as possible? The great thing in a
+case like this is to lose no time at the beginning."</p>
+
+<p>Copplestone sat down, and passed an unsteady
+hand across his forehead.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+"Go on," he said dully.</p>
+
+<p>"Where and when did you first meet Miss
+Manderson?"</p>
+
+<p>"She came over from New York two months
+ago, to play in a new piece at the Imperial.
+I have an interest in the theater, and saw her
+there for the first time about a week after her
+arrival."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know anything of her life and associations
+in America?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very little. She was not communicative.
+She only told me a few of her theatrical experiences."</p>
+
+<p>"So far as you know," the inspector proceeded,
+"had she an enemy in this country&mdash;or
+was there any one who could have wished
+to harm her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Apparently there was," Copplestone returned.
+"I did not know it until to-night."</p>
+
+<p>Mechanically, in the manner of one repeating
+a lesson, he described the visit of the young
+millionaire, and his threat against Christine
+Manderson.</p>
+
+<p>"And the name of this young man?" the
+inspector asked, bending over his note-book.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+"James Layton."</p>
+
+<p>Inspector Fay looked up sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Layton? The man they call the Mad
+Philanthropist?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," Copplestone replied wearily.
+"He may be."</p>
+
+<p>"James Layton is very well known to us,"
+the inspector said slowly. "He is a charitable
+fanatic, who does more good in the East End
+than all the Royally Patronized Associations
+put together. But how in the world did he
+come to know Miss Manderson?"</p>
+
+<p>"She never mentioned him to me," Copplestone
+stated. "I had not heard of him until
+he burst into this house to-night."</p>
+
+<p>The inspector made several notes.</p>
+
+<p>"He has educated and trained as his assistant
+a particularly wild specimen of a coster
+girl, who is madly in love with him...."
+He closed his note-book with a snap. "You
+say the words he used were that rather
+than allow Miss Manderson to become engaged
+to you, he would tear her to pieces with his
+own hands, and utterly destroy her?"</p>
+
+<p>"So they told me," Copplestone answered
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+heavily. "I was not in the room. I refused
+to see him."</p>
+
+<p>"And he left quite quietly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Did Miss Manderson show any particular
+fear of the threat?"</p>
+
+<p>"She was very much upset, and fainted when
+she came into the room. I should have sent
+for the police at once, but she begged me not to,
+and insisted that he didn't mean what he said.
+I wish to God I hadn't listened."</p>
+
+<p>"So there was no doubt that she knew
+him?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. She certainly knew him."</p>
+
+<p>"Afterwards, you say, he was seen in the
+garden when you were all out after dinner?"
+the inspector continued.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Who saw him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Bolsover, the theatrical manager,
+found him sneaking about the house, and
+chased him out in the direction of the crime."</p>
+
+<p>"Did any one see him, besides Mr. Bolsover?"</p>
+
+<p>"Apparently not. He says he called to me&mdash;but
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+I had gone into the house to fill my cigarette-case,
+and did not hear him."</p>
+
+<p>"He escaped from Mr. Bolsover, and was not
+seen again?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Was there any one else," the inspector asked
+slowly, "who might, for any reason, have entertained
+unfriendly feelings towards Miss
+Manderson?"</p>
+
+<p>Copplestone's glance sharpened a little under
+the question.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose there was," he admitted, with
+some reluctance.</p>
+
+<p>"Who was it?"</p>
+
+<p>Copplestone paused, frowning.</p>
+
+<p>"Please do not hesitate," the inspector
+pressed firmly. "We must know everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," the tired voice confessed, "it
+wasn't altogether playing the game to announce
+my engagement so unexpectedly to&mdash;to&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" the inspector insisted&mdash;"to whom?"</p>
+
+<p>"To Phyllis Astley-Rolfe."</p>
+
+<p>There was silence for a moment. The
+inspector waited quietly. With an effort,
+Copplestone continued.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+"I am afraid it was rather cruel. She'd
+annoyed me lately, and I put up some decorations,
+and announced the news in a dramatic
+way ... to mock her." He broke off, staring
+at the remains of the decorations on the
+floor. "But I tore them down. I shall never
+decorate again...."</p>
+
+<p>The inspector watched him closely. He
+seemed to be on the verge of sleep.</p>
+
+<p>"Then Mrs. Astley-Rolfe had reason to be
+jealous of Miss Manderson?" the inspector
+demanded briskly.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose ... she had."</p>
+
+<p>"Good reason?"</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly."</p>
+
+<p>"Had you given her definite cause to believe
+that you intended to ask her to marry you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps so. At any rate ... I had not
+given her definite cause to believe that I didn't."</p>
+
+<p>His voice sank to a whisper. He leant back
+limply in his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"There is only one more question I need
+trouble you with at present," the inspector said.
+"Who was the last person to be with Miss Manderson
+before the crime was discovered?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+Copplestone scarcely opened his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Tranter was with her near the river.
+She left him to go back to the house, and asked
+him to find me, and tell me she was not
+well."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he find you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And I at once went into the house."</p>
+
+<p>"Where were you when Mr. Tranter found
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was crossing the second lawn&mdash;towards
+the tennis courts."</p>
+
+<p>The inspector was busy with his note-book.</p>
+
+<p>"Were you alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I had just come out of the house
+after filling my cigarette-case, as I told you.
+I was looking for Miss Manderson, and wondering
+where she had got to. If only I had
+gone in the right direction ... I might have
+been in time...."</p>
+
+<p>"After Mr. Tranter had spoken to you, you
+say you went into the house at once?"</p>
+
+<p>"At once. I waited nearly ten minutes for
+her, and came out again just as Mr. Delamere
+gave the alarm. I'm afraid I handled him
+roughly...."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+The words trailed off into silence. A convulsive
+shudder passed through him.</p>
+
+<p>"Then we all ran off ... to where she
+lay," his voice shook. "Something seemed to
+give way ... here...." he pressed his
+hands to his head. "Is there ... anything
+more ... you want to know?"</p>
+
+<p>The inspector rose.</p>
+
+<p>"Only one thing. Will you kindly give me
+the names of your guests in the other room?"</p>
+
+<p>Copplestone complied slowly. Inspector Fay
+wrote the names down.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," he said, laying down his book.
+"I am sorry to have had to give you the pain
+of answering so many questions. I am afraid
+you are quite overwrought. I should advise
+you to try to get some sleep."</p>
+
+<p>"Sleep," Copplestone murmured, rising
+weakly from his chair. "Sleep.... Good
+God."</p>
+
+<p>The inspector himself made a gesture of
+fatigue.</p>
+
+<p>"I only got back from another heavy case
+as your message came in," he apologized,
+stifling a yawn. "Tobacco is the only thing
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+that keeps me going. Could you give me a
+cigarette?"</p>
+
+<p>Without answering, Copplestone languidly
+produced an elaborately jeweled gold cigarette-case,
+and handed it to the inspector.</p>
+
+<p>There were two cigarettes in it.</p>
+
+<p>Inspector Fay took one, with a perfectly impassive
+countenance, and returned the case.
+Copplestone replaced it in his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"Please give whatever instructions you like
+to my man," he said dully&mdash;"and let me know
+if you want me. I shall be in my room."</p>
+
+<p>He turned, and moved away with slow heavy
+steps, disappearing between the same curtains
+through which, a few hours before, he had
+presented Christine Manderson to his guests.</p>
+
+<p>The inspector stood looking after him, fingering
+the cigarette thoughtfully, a very curious
+expression on his face. He showed no further
+signs of fatigue.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder why you lied to me," he muttered&mdash;and
+laid the cigarette on the table.</p>
+
+<p>He glanced down the list of names, and went
+to the door. The constable had mounted guard
+over his prisoners with extraordinary dignity.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+The voice of the danseuse was still raised in
+lamentation.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Dupont," the inspector called.</p>
+
+<p>The constable passed on the summons&mdash;and
+Monsieur Dupont instantly obeyed it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Trail Of Corpses</span></p>
+
+
+<p>The inspector closed the door behind
+him. "What has brought you back
+into the arena?" he asked quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"A riddle," the Frenchman answered,
+in an equally low tone.</p>
+
+<p>"It must have been something pretty big to
+have tempted <i>you</i>," the inspector remarked,
+coming closer to him.</p>
+
+<p>"It was," Monsieur Dupont admitted.</p>
+
+<p>The other glanced cautiously towards the
+curtains at the far end of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you here&mdash;in this house?" he demanded
+softly.</p>
+
+<p>"By chance," Monsieur Dupont replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you know Copplestone before?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not. I had never seen him. I came
+with my friend, Tranter."</p>
+
+<p>"You were here all the evening?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+"Anything to tell me?" the inspector asked,
+looking at him intently.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Only, my friend, that I imagine you will
+find it an interesting and somewhat unusual
+case."</p>
+
+<p>"That's not enough&mdash;from you," the inspector
+retorted.</p>
+
+<p>"If I may be permitted to advise&mdash;it is a
+case in which you would do well to ignore the
+obvious."</p>
+
+<p>"I want more than that," insisted the inspector.</p>
+
+<p>The huge Frenchman remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not a man to waste your time on
+this kind of entertainment," said the inspector
+slowly. "Is there any connection between the
+crime to-night, and your so-called 'riddle'?"</p>
+
+<p>"The connection of death," said Monsieur
+Dupont.</p>
+
+<p>There was something of awe in his voice and
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>"For two years," he said, "I have been following
+in the track of something, which, in
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+the words of our great Dumas&mdash;'must have
+passed this way, for I see a corpse.'"</p>
+
+<p>"That quotation referred to a woman," said
+the inspector quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"From me," returned Monsieur Dupont
+evenly, "it is sexless&mdash;at present."</p>
+
+<p>The inspector frowned.</p>
+
+<p>"Come," he said impatiently&mdash;"in what way
+are you mixed up in this?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the way of my quotation&mdash;a corpse. I
+started my quest two years ago&mdash;over a dead
+body, torn and mutilated. At the end of the
+first year I found another dead body, torn and
+mutilated. I follow on and on&mdash;from one
+point to the next point&mdash;often with no more
+than the instinct of the hunter to guide me.
+And here, at the end of the second year, there
+is yet another dead body, torn and mutilated.
+It is horrible. I sicken. I wish I had remained
+in my retirement."</p>
+
+<p>"What were the two previous crimes?" the
+inspector asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Two women&mdash;two very beautiful women."</p>
+
+<p>Inspector Fay started, staring at him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+"Miss Manderson was a beautiful woman,"
+he said slowly.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont's enormous head nodded
+several times.</p>
+
+<p>"She was," he agreed deliberately. "The
+most beautiful of the three."</p>
+
+<p>There was silence for a moment. Then the
+inspector laid a hand on the Frenchman's
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"We have worked together a good many
+times in the past," he said, with more cordiality
+than before.</p>
+
+<p>"We have, indeed," Monsieur Dupont responded
+pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>"And though your methods were always
+fanciful compared with our's, I know enough
+of your powers to ask you a simple, straight
+question."</p>
+
+<p>"I am at your service," said Monsieur Dupont.</p>
+
+<p>"You were here on the spot when this crime
+was committed. Who, or what, smashed the
+body of that unfortunate woman to pulp in
+this garden to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont's gigantic form seemed to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
+acquire a new, strange dignity&mdash;a solemnity&mdash;as
+though he were in the presence, or speaking,
+of something before which humanity must bow
+its head.</p>
+
+<p>"A Destroyer," he whispered. "A Destroyer
+who strikes with neither fear nor compunction&mdash;and
+passes on without pity or remorse.
+A Destroyer who is as old as the sins
+of men, and as young as the futures of their
+children."</p>
+
+<p>"You always spoke in parables," the inspector
+exclaimed irritably. "What do you
+mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean," said Monsieur Dupont, "that I
+believe the thing which passed through this
+crooked garden to-night, leaving death so
+horribly behind it, is the same thing that has
+already passed on twice before me, and left
+the same death in its wake. I cannot tell you
+any more. Let us both go our own ways, as
+we have done so many times before. I do not
+wish to take any credit in this affair. If I am
+able to prove its connection with my own case,
+and to solve it, I shall hand the whole matter
+over to you."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+The inspector appeared somewhat relieved.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont's eyes were fixed on an unframed
+photograph of Christine Manderson,
+which stood on a small cabinet in front of him.</p>
+
+<p>"Please compound a felony," he said softly&mdash;and
+slipped it into his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you to be found?" the inspector
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"At the Hotel Savoy." He yawned. "I
+am very sleepy," he complained. "If you will
+finish with Mr. Tranter as soon as possible, he
+will take me back in his car."</p>
+
+<p>He turned to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Stay," said the inspector.</p>
+
+<p>He stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"You have not lost your old fantastic kink,"
+said the inspector, with a faint smile. "The
+last time we ran together you were five minutes
+ahead of me at the finish. This time&mdash;we will
+see who is the first to pass the post."</p>
+
+<p>"My friend," said Monsieur Dupont, "I will
+do my best to give you a good race."</p>
+
+<p>He passed out of the room. The inspector
+followed him to the door, and called for Mr.
+Tranter.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Tranter</span></p>
+
+
+<p>"Mr. Tranter," said the inspector,
+"I understand that you
+were the last person to see Miss
+Manderson alive."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe I was," Tranter replied.</p>
+
+<p>The inspector sat down again at the table,
+and re-opened his note-book.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you kindly tell me exactly what happened
+from the time you went out into the
+garden after dinner, and the time you left Miss
+Manderson?"</p>
+
+<p>"We strolled away from the house together,
+in the direction of the river. The events of
+the evening seemed to have upset her very
+much, and she was nervous of the storm. We
+walked about, I should think, for nearly half
+an hour, until the lightning became very
+vivid&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see or hear any one in that part
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+of the garden?" the inspector interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Most of the others went to the lawns,
+in the opposite direction. When the lightning
+became very vivid, Miss Manderson said she
+would return to the house, and asked me to
+go down to the lawns to find Mr. Copplestone,
+and send him in to her. She was obviously
+unwell."</p>
+
+<p>"You will be able to show me the place
+where you left her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think so. It was very dark&mdash;but I remember
+that we had just passed under a number
+of rose-arches across the path."</p>
+
+<p>"It was, I presume, further away from the
+house than the spot where the body was
+found?"</p>
+
+<p>"The body was found close to the river,
+about half-way between the house and the place
+where I left her," Tranter replied.</p>
+
+<p>"So we may surmise that she had got about
+half-way to the house before the attack was
+made. How far would that actually be?"</p>
+
+<p>"Along those winding paths," Tranter calculated,
+"I should say roughly about a hundred
+and fifty yards."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+"Did she start to walk to the house immediately
+you left her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. She started in that direction as I
+started in the other."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," mused the inspector, "she must have
+met the criminal, whoever it was, at the most
+within three minutes of leaving you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Presumably she must," Tranter agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"And was that," pursued the inspector,
+"about the spot where she might have met the
+young man, Layton, who was, it appears, being
+chased out towards the river by Mr. Bolsover?"</p>
+
+<p>"It might be. But I do not know anything
+about the chase. If I had known that Layton
+was in the garden, I should not have left her."</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you find Mr. Copplestone?"</p>
+
+<p>"On the lawns."</p>
+
+<p>"How long after you parted from her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only a few minutes. Four or five."</p>
+
+<p>"Was he alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He was looking for Miss Manderson
+himself. He went into the house at once."</p>
+
+<p>Silence followed while the inspector added
+to his notes.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Tranter," he said quietly&mdash;and his eyes
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+rested for a moment on the cigarette on the
+table, "I have only one suggestion to make.
+You will understand that it is only a suggestion,
+but I want to be perfectly clear. Considering
+that this was the evening of Miss
+Manderson's engagement to Mr. Copplestone,
+might she not have been expected to have
+strolled away from the house, and to have spent
+that following half-hour, with him rather than
+with you?"</p>
+
+<p>Tranter hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose she might," he admitted.</p>
+
+<p>The inspector was looking at him sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a small point," he said smoothly.
+"Perhaps you can clear it up."</p>
+
+<p>There was another pause. Tranter was
+plainly embarrassed.</p>
+
+<p>"Inspector," he said at last, "I must, of
+course, tell you everything&mdash;but I should be
+obliged if for obvious reasons, you will keep as
+much as possible to yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"That, sir," returned the inspector firmly,
+"you must leave to my discretion."</p>
+
+<p>"I am content to do so," Tranter said. "The
+truth is&mdash;I had met Miss Manderson before."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+"Ah!" said the inspector softly.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew her first nearly six years ago, in
+Chicago. Her real name was not Christine
+Manderson."</p>
+
+<p>The inspector's eyes began to brighten. He
+turned to a fresh page in his note-book.</p>
+
+<p>"She took that name, she told me to-night,
+when she went on the stage in New York.
+She was really Thea Colville."</p>
+
+<p>Inspector Fay started.</p>
+
+<p>"Thea Colville? The Chicago adventuress?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe some people called her that,"
+Tranter returned shortly.</p>
+
+<p>"The woman who ruined Michael Cranbourne,
+son of Joshua Cranbourne, the Nitrate
+King?"</p>
+
+<p>"She had finished with Cranbourne before
+I knew her," Tranter replied. "He was a
+scoundrel. Whatever happened, she certainly
+could not be blamed."</p>
+
+<p>The inspector was making rapid notes.</p>
+
+<p>"She was not so wild as she was painted,"
+Tranter continued. "Women with such beauty
+as hers have a thousand temptations. The
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+sins of a beautiful woman are always many
+degrees blacker than the sins of a plain one.
+We became very intimate&mdash;and I am afraid I
+allowed her to expect more from me than I
+actually intended. I was called back to
+England unexpectedly, and heard nothing
+more of her until Mr. Copplestone brought her
+into this room to-night."</p>
+
+<p>He stopped. Emotion had crept into his
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"During the most part of your conversation
+with her, were you walking about, or standing
+still?"</p>
+
+<p>"Standing still."</p>
+
+<p>"You have said that you did not hear any
+one moving about near you while you were
+speaking to her?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Were there trees or hedges about, where
+some one might have hidden to overhear you?"</p>
+
+<p>"There was a hedge," Tranter replied.
+"But I did not notice the spot particularly."</p>
+
+<p>"You will be able to point it out to me to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+"I think so. As I say, I did not particularly
+notice it&mdash;and the possibility of being overheard
+certainly did not occur to me. I am
+afraid at that moment caution was hardly a
+consideration with either of us."</p>
+
+<p>The inspector closed his note-book.</p>
+
+<p>"Unless circumstances compel me to do
+otherwise," he promised, "I will keep your story
+to myself. Will you tell me whether the announcement
+of Mr. Copplestone's engagement
+to Miss Manderson produced a noticeable effect
+on any particular person in the room? Please
+do not hesitate to answer."</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly appeared to be unwelcome news
+to Mrs. Astley-Rolfe," Tranter replied, "but
+she very quickly recovered herself."</p>
+
+<p>"It seemed, in fact, to be a considerable shock
+to her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Were you in the room when this young man,
+James Layton, burst in?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was. Monsieur Dupont and I had just
+arrived."</p>
+
+<p>"It is true that he said that rather than
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+allow Miss Manderson to become engaged to
+Mr. Copplestone, he would tear her to pieces
+with his own hands?"</p>
+
+<p>"Those were his exact words."</p>
+
+<p>The inspector rose.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand that you brought Monsieur
+Dupont here with you as your friend?" he remarked
+casually.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He only arrived in London last
+night."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know him well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fairly," Tranter replied. "I am under a
+great obligation to him. He saved my life
+in Paris, a year ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Has he mentioned anything of the business
+that has brought him to this country?" the
+inspector asked, moving to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Only that he had come to solve a strange
+riddle."</p>
+
+<p>A faint, rather grim smile passed over the
+inspector's face.</p>
+
+<p>"I am obliged to you, sir," he said, opening
+the door. "If you will kindly return here at
+ten o'clock in the morning&mdash;and bring Monsieur
+Dupont with you&mdash;I shall ask you to show
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+me the various places you have referred to in
+the garden."</p>
+
+<p>When Tranter returned to the waiting-room,
+he found Monsieur Dupont asleep in an armchair.
+The room was very quiet. The danseuse
+had subsided into an interim condition
+of mute tension. Mrs. Astley-Rolfe was
+deathly white, but perfectly composed. The
+men made occasional remarks to each other.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Astley-Rolfe," the inspector called.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Mrs. Astley-Rolfe</span></p>
+
+
+<p>"Madam," said the inspector,
+placing a chair for her, "I need
+only trouble you with one or
+two questions. You will understand
+that it is necessary for me to account
+for each member of this party, so that I may
+know which of them can, or cannot, assist me
+in my investigations."</p>
+
+<p>She sat down with a weary movement.
+Her hands trembled slightly.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very dreadful," she shuddered. "Such
+a frightful crime is inconceivable. Who could
+have hated the poor girl so dreadfully?"</p>
+
+<p>"That remains to be discovered," the inspector
+returned quietly. "I have no doubt
+we shall succeed in clearing it up."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you will," she said fervently.
+"Please ask me any questions you like."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+The inspector kept his eyes fixed on his note-book.</p>
+
+<p>"You went into the garden with the others
+after dinner?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you please tell me with whom, and
+in what part of the garden, you passed the time
+before the crime was discovered?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was alone," she said slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"The whole time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I was not feeling very well, and did
+not want the trouble of talking. I walked
+away by myself."</p>
+
+<p>"You know the way about the garden quite
+well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite."</p>
+
+<p>"In what direction did you walk?"</p>
+
+<p>"To the croquet lawn."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see anything of the others?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Or hear any voices?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing until the alarm was given?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing. It was an isolated part of the
+garden. When I heard Mr. Delamere shouting,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+I ran back to the house, and found them
+on the lawn."</p>
+
+<p>The inspector shot a keen glance at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you know Miss Manderson well?"</p>
+
+<p>"I had only met her three or four times."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose&mdash;being one of the most beautiful
+women on the American stage, and about to
+appear for the first time in London&mdash;you heard
+her a good deal talked about?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." Her voice was just perceptibly
+harder. "People were taking great interest
+in her."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you hear her private affairs, and mode
+of life, discussed at any time?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Or the name of James Layton, the millionaire
+philanthropist, mentioned in conjunction
+with her's?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, madam. I need not trouble
+you any further. Will you kindly leave me
+your address, in case I should have to ask you
+for any more information?"</p>
+
+<p>He wrote the address down, and bowed her
+out.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Danseuse</span></p>
+
+
+<p>"Madame Krashoff," summoned
+the inspector.</p>
+
+<p>The danseuse was in a condition
+of the utmost distress.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!</i>" she wept.</p>
+
+<p>"Please calm yourself, madame," the inspector
+requested patiently.</p>
+
+<p>"I ken nothin' o' the creeme!" she sobbed
+thoughtlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure of that," he declared gravely.
+"I merely wish to establish the movements of
+every one here. With whom did you pass the
+time after you went out into the garden until
+the alarm was given?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wi' M'soo Gluckstein," she whimpered.</p>
+
+<p>"All the time?"</p>
+
+<p>"N-no."</p>
+
+<p>"How much of the time?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>
+She became more collected.</p>
+
+<p>"He said to me something that made me
+angry," she replied, with a touch of viciousness.
+"I walk away from him. Then it rain, and I
+overtook him as I go back to the house."</p>
+
+<p>"How long were you away from him?" the
+inspector asked.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ma foi</i>, I cannot tell. Maybe ten minutes."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see any one else?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"In what part of the garden were you when
+you left him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Behind the tennis courts."</p>
+
+<p>"That is some way from the river?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes&mdash;ver' far away."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, madame."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Mr. Gluckstein</span></p>
+
+
+<p>The financier was extremely agitated,
+and tried to shake hands with the
+inspector.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Gluckstein, I understand
+from Madame Krashoff that you were with her
+in the garden for the greater part of the time
+before the crime was discovered."</p>
+
+<p>"I wath," the financier quivered&mdash;"indeed I
+wath, inthpector."</p>
+
+<p>"Then she left you for about ten minutes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not tho much ath ten minutes," corrected
+the financier hastily.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you do after she left you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I stayed vere I vath&mdash;until the rain commenthed."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see any one else?"</p>
+
+<p>"No one at allth."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said the inspector. "Please
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+leave me your address, in case I should want
+to ask you any further questions."</p>
+
+<p>The financier produced a card with trembling
+fingers.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Clergyman</span></p>
+
+
+<p>"Mr. Delamere," said the inspector,
+"you discovered the
+body?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did," replied the clergyman,
+with a shiver.</p>
+
+<p>"Were you alone when you found it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I had been walking with Mr. Bolsover
+for about quarter of an hour. Then he
+turned back to find some of the others, and I
+strolled on to the river."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you meet any one else?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"You saw nothing of this young man, Layton,
+who was chased towards the river by Mr.
+Bolsover?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing whatever."</p>
+
+<p>"No sounds of a struggle?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I heard nothing."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+"Was the body lying in your path?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Some distance aside. I saw something
+white on the ground in one of the lightning
+flashes, and went to see what it was."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to ask you to return here at
+ten o'clock, to show me the exact spot."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Mr. Delamere."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Mr. Bolsolver</span></p>
+
+
+<p>"My God!" exclaimed the manager,
+"what an appalling business!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is," the inspector agreed
+shortly.</p>
+
+<p>"She was to have appeared at my theater,
+too," said the manager ruefully.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand that you found Layton sneaking
+about the house?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I first strolled out with Mr. Delamere.
+Then I left him, and went back to see
+where the others had got to, and saw Layton
+creeping round the side of the house towards
+the open drawing-room windows. He heard
+my footsteps on the path, and bolted."</p>
+
+<p>"To the river?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I shouted for Mr. Copplestone, but
+there was no answer&mdash;so I followed him."</p>
+
+<p>"You are quite certain it was Layton?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+"Perfectly. I saw his face in the light of
+the windows, and he was wearing the peculiar
+kind of slouch hat he had carried when he
+came into the room."</p>
+
+<p>"Apparently no one saw him in the garden
+except yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Unfortunately not. I met the Frenchman,
+Monsieur Dupont, a little way from the river&mdash;but
+he had not seen him."</p>
+
+<p>"It was a pity you did not manage to catch
+him," the inspector remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"Confound it, yes! But it was easy to get
+away in such a garden as this. There wasn't
+a chance of finding him."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you do, after meeting Monsieur
+Dupont?"</p>
+
+<p>"We went on to the river together. I
+thought I saw a movement among the trees
+when the lightning lit them up&mdash;but there was
+nothing. I walked round about there for a
+few minutes, and then went back to warn Copplestone."</p>
+
+<p>"Leaving Monsieur Dupont by the river?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Before I reached the house, I heard
+Mr. Delamere shouting the alarm."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+"Thank you," said the inspector, closing his
+note-book. "I am afraid I shall have to trouble
+you to come here at ten o'clock and show me
+certain places in the garden."</p>
+
+<p>"I am entirely at your disposal," said the
+manager.</p>
+
+<p>He went out. The inspector sat down at
+the table, and remained perfectly still for half
+an hour.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Trinity of Death</span></p>
+
+
+<p>In Tranter's car, its owner and Monsieur
+Dupont started, at half-past one, on their
+return from the crooked house.</p>
+
+<p>The storm had passed, and the air was
+fresh and cool. It was possibly the atmospheric
+clearance which accounted for the fact,
+that, however, fatigued he had been, or appeared
+to be, at the end of his conversation
+with the inspector, Monsieur Dupont was now
+particularly wide-awake and alert.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Dieu!</i>" he cried, "what a terrible crime!
+Almost to tear that woman to pieces&mdash;to crush
+her&mdash;to rend her! And what a woman! <i>Ma
+foi</i>, what a woman!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. Monsieur Dupont accepted
+and lit a cigar from Tranter's case.</p>
+
+<p>"My friend," he said quietly, "I wish to be
+quite fair to you."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+"Fair to me?" Tranter echoed, surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"Something happened to-night which you
+doubtless believe to be unknown to every one
+except yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Tranter turned to him quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"I have not the habit," Monsieur Dupont
+continued, "of listening to private conversations
+between other people. It is only on very
+rare occasions that I have done so. I did so
+to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" Tranter exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"In that horrible garden, before the crime
+was committed," pursued Monsieur Dupont
+evenly, "I lost my way. Such a garden must
+have been especially designed to cause innocent
+people to lose their way. I wandered about.
+How I wandered!"</p>
+
+<p>"What did you overhear?" asked Tranter, in
+a strained voice.</p>
+
+<p>"A conversation&mdash;between that unfortunate
+Mademoiselle Manderson, and yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"You heard it?" Tranter cried sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard it," admitted Monsieur Dupont.
+"I heard a great part of it. I believe nearly
+all. I should not have done so. Understand,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
+I make you all my apologies. It was improper
+to listen. But the storm, the surroundings,
+the scene itself, excited me. I listened."</p>
+
+<p>Tranter remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>"I continued to listen, until Mr. Bolsover
+found me. He was following that young man,
+Layton. I went with him to the river."</p>
+
+<p>Tranter was still silent&mdash;staring straight in
+front of him with fixed eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You saw a picture of weakness," he said,
+at last. "I am not proud of it. I should
+much prefer to be able to think that no one
+had seen it. I gave Inspector Fay an account
+of the whole scene, and of my previous acquaintance
+with Christine Manderson. He
+promised to keep it to himself. I hope you
+will do the same."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall indeed," the other assured him.</p>
+
+<p>"I am only human," Tranter went on, with
+an effort&mdash;"more human than I thought. I
+resisted her once by taking flight. I couldn't
+resist her to-night."</p>
+
+<p>He mastered his emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"From the moment she first came into the
+room I was helpless. I knew what would come
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
+of it&mdash;but I couldn't tear myself away. It was
+the whole spell&mdash;with all the new strength of
+memories. I knew she intended to find me
+alone in the garden." He paused. "I had to
+let her."</p>
+
+<p>"Human nature," said Monsieur Dupont
+consolingly, "is human nature."</p>
+
+<p>Silence followed. Monsieur Dupont
+thoughtfully puffed at his cigar.</p>
+
+<p>"A crooked house in a crooked garden," he
+said, at length, "is a combination from which
+all honest people should shrink. Those who
+frequent it must be, for the most part, crooked
+people. They were, for the most part, crooked
+people to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"It was a crooked evening from beginning
+to end," Tranter said wearily.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a wicked evening," Monsieur Dupont
+declared&mdash;"full of wicked thoughts. A
+crime was the natural and logical end to such
+an evening. It would have been surprising if
+there had not been one."</p>
+
+<p>He smoked vigorously for some moments&mdash;then
+made an expansive gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"Are there not," he demanded, "houses and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+gardens and thunder-storms that awaken cruel
+and shameful impulses that would never be
+aroused in other houses and other gardens and
+other storms? Does not the influence of good
+and noble decorations uplift us to joy and
+patriotism? Why should not the influence of
+mean and sinful decorations degrade us to murder
+and destruction? The flags that fly over
+the innocent revels of children are innocent
+flags, and inspire kind feelings and happiness.
+But remove the same flags to a Bull-ring, and
+they become evil flags, inspiring lust for the
+blood and slaughter of helpless creatures&mdash;the
+basest of human instincts."</p>
+
+<p>"You are fantastic," said Tranter, with a
+gloomy smile.</p>
+
+<p>"In fantasy," returned Monsieur Dupont,
+"are the world's greatest truths."</p>
+
+<p>He carefully deposed the ash from his cigar.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you please tell me," he went on, "something
+more about our strange host to-night&mdash;the
+man who chooses so much crookedness to
+live in, when there is straightness to be had for
+the same price?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+"I know very little more about him than I
+told you last night," Tranter replied. "He is
+wealthy, and very eccentric. He seems to pass
+his life in a perpetual effort to be different from
+other people."</p>
+
+<p>"He is more than eccentric," Monsieur Dupont
+stated. "He is mad. In a few years he
+will be a dangerous lunatic. And the Good
+God only knows what he may make of himself
+in the meantime."</p>
+
+<p>"There are plenty of strange stories about
+him," Tranter said. "But I have always
+looked on them as greatly exaggerated."</p>
+
+<p>"Probably," Monsieur Dupont remarked,
+"they were true."</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever his reputation may be, women
+seem very ready to put up with his eccentricities,
+or pander to them, in return, no doubt,
+for big inroads into his banking account. He
+is very free with his money where the opposite
+sex is concerned."</p>
+
+<p>"It is always so," said Monsieur Dupont,
+"with such men."</p>
+
+<p>"He mixes chiefly in theatrical and bohemian
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+circles&mdash;and often by no means the most
+desirable of those. The better people look
+askance on him&mdash;but he is supremely indifferent
+to the opinions of others, and to all the
+conventions. Whatever he takes it into his
+head to do he does, quite regardless of the
+approval or disapproval of other people. He
+is certainly not a man I would introduce to any
+woman who possessed even the smallest degree
+of physical attraction. He is supposed to be
+quite unscrupulous in the attainment of his
+objects."</p>
+
+<p>"Most of us are," said Monsieur Dupont.
+"But we dislike to admit it."</p>
+
+<p>He looked steadily out of the window for a
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder," he said, turning back, "what he
+does with the rest of that house."</p>
+
+<p>"The rest of the house?" Tranter repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very large," said Monsieur Dupont.
+"It is large enough for twenty men."</p>
+
+<p>"In this country," Tranter smiled, "there is
+no law against one man living in a house large
+enough for twenty, if he chooses."</p>
+
+<p>"When only a small part of a house is used
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
+for ordinary purposes," remarked Monsieur
+Dupont, "the remainder is often used for
+extraordinary ones."</p>
+
+<p>"You know as much of the house as I do,"
+Tranter returned.</p>
+
+<p>"As a practical man," Monsieur Dupont
+continued, "you may smile when I speak of
+such a thing as 'psychic intuition.' But you
+may smile, and again you may smile. I possess
+that intuition strongly. It has been of great
+use to me. The moment I entered that house
+to-night, I knew it was a house of sin. I knew
+there were hidden things in it&mdash;things that
+were not for honest eyes to see. I do not say&mdash;at
+present&mdash;that they have any connection
+with the crime. But they are there."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not smile at such instincts," Tranter
+said. "I quite admit that there is a strange,
+uncanny atmosphere about the place. And if
+there are secrets in it, I am equally ready to
+admit that they are probably bad ones."</p>
+
+<p>"They are bad ones," declared Monsieur
+Dupont. "They could not be anything but bad
+ones. When that excellent Inspector Fay has
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+solved the mystery of the garden, he would be
+wise to turn his attention to the secrets of the
+house."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Did Layton kill her?" Tranter asked suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"The evidence is against him," he replied
+judicially. "Your Coroner's jury will find him
+guilty, and the police will not look further.
+They will build up a strong case. They
+will doubtless find that he was cruelly
+treated by that poor girl, and was furious to
+know that she was engaged to another man.
+He threatened, in the presence of many witnesses,
+to kill her in a horrible way. He was
+seen later in the garden, and afterwards she
+was found&mdash;killed in exactly that horrible way.
+Who would not say that in his rage and jealousy
+he had fulfilled his threat? Every one will
+be perfectly satisfied. It is enough for justice
+if the most likely person is hanged. And, so
+far, he is not only the most likely, but the only,
+person."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps so," Tranter acknowledged. "But&mdash;he
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+didn't look like a murderer. He looked
+a good fellow. Is there no other alternative?"</p>
+
+<p>"There <i>is</i> an alternative," said Monsieur
+Dupont steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"There is?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont smoked composedly for a
+minute.</p>
+
+<p>"My friend," he said&mdash;"are you inclined for
+an adventure?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am rather busy," Tranter replied.
+"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose ... I were to declare to you
+positively that James Layton is innocent&mdash;that
+he did not commit that crime in the crooked
+garden to-night&mdash;and that I do not intend to
+allow him to be hanged for a crime that he did
+not commit&mdash;would you give a certain amount
+of your time to help me to save him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. I will do anything I can."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said Monsieur Dupont, "I answer
+the question you asked a moment ago. He
+did <i>not</i> kill her."</p>
+
+<p>"Who did?" Tranter demanded, looking at
+him in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+"That is another matter. It is one thing to
+say who did not&mdash;but quite another to say who
+did. That is for us to discover. There will
+be very little time. I think I can promise you
+excitement. Possibly there will be danger.
+You do not object to that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have faced a certain amount of danger in
+my time," Tranter replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Good," said Monsieur Dupont. "Then we
+will set ourselves&mdash;quite apart from the efforts
+of our friend, Inspector Fay&mdash;to solve the mystery
+of the crooked garden. And we will not
+speak a word to any one of our intention."</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to have some very definite ideas
+on the subject already," Tranter observed.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, no," demurred Monsieur Dupont&mdash;"do
+not credit me with the superhuman. We have
+a very difficult task before us."</p>
+
+<p>"But what of your other object," Tranter
+inquired&mdash;"the 'riddle' that you came over to
+solve?"</p>
+
+<p>"It may be," Monsieur Dupont replied carefully,
+"that there is some connection between
+my riddle and this dreadful affair to-night.
+At present I cannot say. Only events themselves
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+can prove that. But that very possibility
+compels me to take up a peculiar attitude&mdash;unfortunately
+a most necessary one. If you will assist me&mdash;as I beg you to
+do&mdash;you must be content to follow my guidance and instructions
+without question, and remain, as you call
+it, in the dark, until the time comes for all to
+be told."</p>
+
+<p>"You are certainly the most mysterious person
+I have ever met!" Tranter exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not that I have the smallest doubt of
+yourself or your discretion," Monsieur Dupont
+hastened to explain. "On the contrary. It
+is simply that my position at this moment is an
+extraordinary one, and I cannot do what would
+seem to be the natural and ordinary thing.
+Will you help me on that understanding?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will help you in any case," Tranter agreed,
+smiling slightly at his companion's intense
+seriousness. "What is to be my first task?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your first task," said Monsieur Dupont
+gravely, "is to deposit me at the Hotel Savoy,
+and call for me later on your way back to Richmond."</p>
+
+<p>Tranter spoke some instructions through
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+the speaking-tube to the chauffeur. When he
+turned again, Monsieur Dupont was asleep.
+He did not open his eyes again until the car
+stopped at the Savoy.</p>
+
+<p>Entering the hotel, he ascended to his room.
+In it, he mixed himself a whisky-and-soda, sat
+down at the writing-table, and unlocked a
+despatch-box.</p>
+
+<p>He took out two photographs&mdash;each of a
+remarkably beautiful woman.</p>
+
+<p>Under one was neatly written&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Colette d'Orsel. Nice. August 1900.</i></p>
+
+<p>And under the other&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Margaret McCall. Boston. Dec. 1910.</i></p>
+
+<p>From his pocket he took the photograph
+which the inspector had allowed him to appropriate,
+and laid it beside the others. The face
+that smiled up at him was the most beautiful
+of the three.</p>
+
+<p>He dipped a pen in the ink, and wrote under
+it, in the same neat handwriting&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Christine Manderson. London. July 1919.</i></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Without Trace</span></p>
+
+
+<p>At ten o'clock, Tranter and Monsieur
+Dupont stood with Inspector Fay
+in the garden. The Rev. Percival
+Delamere joined them a few minutes
+later, and the theatrical manager arrived
+shortly afterwards. Finally, still in the same
+half-dazed condition, George Copplestone
+emerged from the house.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mon Dieu</i>," Monsieur Dupont whispered
+quickly. "Look at that man!"</p>
+
+<p>His face was white, with a sickly pasty
+whiteness. In the few hours that had passed
+he seemed to have wasted to a startling gauntness.
+His cheeks were drawn, his sunken eyes
+dull and filmy. He moved slowly and heavily,
+as if compelling himself under an utter weariness.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want first?" he asked the inspector
+curtly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+"First," replied Inspector Fay, "I want to
+be shown the spot where the body was found."</p>
+
+<p>Copplestone led the way across the lawns.
+In the daylight Monsieur Dupont eagerly followed
+the maze of winding paths and hedges
+that had imprisoned him so helplessly in the
+darkness. It was a veritable looking-glass
+garden. The end of every path mocked its beginning.
+To reach an object it was necessary
+to walk away from it. To arrive at the bank
+of the river, Copplestone conducted his followers
+in the opposite direction.</p>
+
+<p>"This garden might have been designed for
+a crime," the inspector remarked, as they
+turned yet another corner.</p>
+
+<p>"It was," Monsieur Dupont agreed from
+the rear. "It was designed for the most
+abominable crime of making men and women
+go backwards instead of forwards. And last
+night it attained the height of its purpose."</p>
+
+<p>For an instant Copplestone glanced back at
+him, a quickening in his dull eyes. A moment
+afterwards they turned a final corner, and
+emerged on to the broad lawns, sloping down
+to the edge of the river.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+Copplestone halted, and looked round, measuring
+distances. Then he moved on, keeping
+close to the trees.</p>
+
+<p>"About here, I think," said the clergyman,
+pausing.</p>
+
+<p>Copplestone stopped a few paces ahead.</p>
+
+<p>"It was very dark," he said, looking at the
+ground. "I don't think I knew exactly where
+we were. As near as I can judge, it was just
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"There ought to have been some sign left
+to mark the place when the body was taken
+away," the inspector said sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"You will find," said the quiet voice of Monsieur
+Dupont, "a pencil in the ground at the
+exact spot. It is a useful pencil, and I should
+be obliged if you would kindly return it to
+me."</p>
+
+<p>The inspector shot him a rather grim smile.
+All, except Copplestone, bent down to look for
+the sign.</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is," Tranter exclaimed, pulling a
+pencil out of the ground. They stood aside to
+give the inspector room.</p>
+
+<p>"The rain has washed away any traces that
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+might have helped us," that official grumbled,
+after a fruitless search.</p>
+
+<p>"And even if it had not," the manager observed,
+"you would only have found traces of
+all of us, as we were all here."</p>
+
+<p>The inspector continued his examination.
+Copplestone stood apart, his eyes fixed on the
+river. He did not appear to be taking the
+slightest interest in the proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>"In what position was the body lying?"
+the inspector asked, looking up at the clergyman.</p>
+
+<p>"It was so horribly contorted that it is difficult
+to say in what position it <i>was</i> lying,"
+the latter replied, bending down beside him.
+"The head, I think, lay towards the river, and
+the feet towards the trees."</p>
+
+<p>"It was so when we came," Copplestone corroborated,
+without turning his head.</p>
+
+<p>"There are no signs of a struggle here,"
+said the inspector, straightening himself after
+another pause. "If there had been one, some
+of the heavier indications might have remained
+in spite of the rain."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
+"It is possible," Monsieur Dupont suggested,
+"that the body was carried here from the place
+where the struggle did take place."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite possible," the inspector agreed. He
+turned to Tranter. "Will you show us now,
+Mr. Tranter, where you parted from Miss
+Manderson?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not familiar with the garden," Tranter
+replied. "I only know, as I told you last night,
+that we had just passed under some arches
+across the path. I do not know where they
+are."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Copplestone will show us," said the
+inspector.</p>
+
+<p>Copplestone started at the sound of his own
+name, and turned to them.</p>
+
+<p>"What next?" he asked abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"The rose arches," returned the inspector.</p>
+
+<p>Copplestone indicated an opening in the trees,
+some distance ahead of them.</p>
+
+<p>"Over here," he directed, moving towards
+it.</p>
+
+<p>There were twelve ornamental arches, overgrown
+with roses. Monsieur Dupont looked
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+at the wealth of flowers almost with reverence.</p>
+
+<p>"So far," he muttered, "the only innocent
+things I have seen in this garden."</p>
+
+<p>Tranter stopped at a point where several
+paths intersected.</p>
+
+<p>"I left her here," he said. "I went down
+that path to the right, which she told me would
+lead to the main lawns where I should be most
+likely to Mr. Copplestone. She said she was
+going straight back to the house."</p>
+
+<p>"She should have taken that path," Copplestone
+said, turning to one in another direction.
+"That is the way to the house."</p>
+
+<p>"Did she know the garden well?" asked the
+inspector.</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly well."</p>
+
+<p>"Still, she might easily have taken a wrong
+turning in the darkness."</p>
+
+<p>"She might. But it is about the straightest
+path in the garden. I don't think she
+would have made a mistake."</p>
+
+<p>Slowly and carefully Inspector Fay followed
+the path to the house, under the guidance of
+Copplestone. Every yard of the way was examined,
+but yielded nothing. The inspector's
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+face became darker and darker. He stopped
+when they turned a corner and found themselves
+at the house.</p>
+
+<p>"She could not possibly have got so far as
+this before the attack was made," he said discontentedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible," agreed the manager. "If the
+murderer had killed her here, he would have
+left her here. He would not have taken the
+risk of dragging her all the way to the river."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems a curious thing," the clergyman
+remarked, "that apparently she did not utter
+any cry for help."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said Monsieur Dupont quietly.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at the clergyman with a new interest.
+Copplestone also glanced at him
+quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Even the thunder would hardly have
+drowned a sharp cry, and some one would
+surely have heard it."</p>
+
+<p>"Probably she hadn't time," suggested the
+manager. "No doubt he sprang out and attacked
+her from the back. He must have been
+as quick as the lightning itself."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont drew Tranter aside.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+"Our clerical friend does not realize the
+importance of his own point," he said softly.
+"But he has put his finger on the key to the
+whole mystery."</p>
+
+<p>"The key?" Tranter repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"If Christine Manderson had uttered a cry
+for help, this would have been a simple,
+straightforward case," said Monsieur Dupont.
+"In the fact that she did not lies the whole
+secret of the crime."</p>
+
+<p>"Bolsover's reason would seem to be the
+obvious one," Tranter returned. "The assault
+must have been made so quickly that
+she had no time."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Bolsover's reason is, as you say, the
+obvious one," admitted Monsieur Dupont.
+"But it is not the correct one. I have already
+warned Inspector Fay to disregard the obvious.
+If he will not take my advice, that is his affair."</p>
+
+<p>"But what do you mean?" asked Tranter.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont's voice sank lower.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you see that a cry for help would
+have completely transformed the whole case?
+It would have brought it down in one crash to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+a human level. It is the silence&mdash;the utter,
+horrible silence&mdash;that makes it what it is. It
+is the silence&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The inspector's voice recalled them.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Mr. Bolsover, just whereabouts was
+Layton when you disturbed him?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was sneaking round there," the manager
+replied, pointing to a corner of the house,
+"towards the drawing-room windows."</p>
+
+<p>"Which path did he run to when he saw
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"That one&mdash;to the river."</p>
+
+<p>"Does that path communicate anywhere with
+the one which we presume Miss Manderson
+was following to the house?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Copplestone.</p>
+
+<p>They moved along the path indicated by the
+manager. It twisted about unproductively for
+some distance.</p>
+
+<p>"How far was he in front of you?" asked
+the inspector.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," confessed the manager.
+"I should say about ten yards when we started&mdash;but
+I am not much of a runner. I had lost
+him altogether before I got here."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+They went on.</p>
+
+<p>"That cursed rain," the inspector muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the branch that leads to the other
+path," said Copplestone, halting.</p>
+
+<p>"And it was further along there, by that
+fir tree that I met Monsieur Dupont," added
+the manager.</p>
+
+<p>"That is so," agreed Monsieur Dupont.
+"Layton certainly did not come beyond this
+point in my direction."</p>
+
+<p>"By taking that branch," the inspector calculated,
+"he would have met Miss Manderson
+just at the time that the crime was committed."</p>
+
+<p>"He would," said the manager.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont turned again to Tranter.</p>
+
+<p>"We must be quick," he whispered, "Layton
+is already hanged."</p>
+
+<p>"There doesn't seem to be much chance for
+him," returned Tranter. "It will be a very
+strong case. No criminal could complain at
+being hanged on such evidence."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet," said Monsieur Dupont slowly,
+"so far as the actual crime is concerned, there
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+is not a single trace. Not one single trace.
+Is it not extraordinary?"</p>
+
+<p>He doubled his fists.</p>
+
+<p>"That luck!" he ground out angrily.
+"Again that luck!"</p>
+
+<p>"What luck?" Tranter exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"If that most unfortunate young man had
+not come here and made a fool of himself last
+night, the police might have searched forever
+without finding a clue. There is no clue here.
+And there was the rain. The very elements
+sweep up after the passing of the Destroyer."</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth do you mean?" Tranter
+cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" said Monsieur Dupont.</p>
+
+<p>"I am obliged to you, gentlemen," said the
+inspector. "Your evidence will of course be
+required at the inquest, of which you will receive
+notice. I need not detain you any
+longer."</p>
+
+<p>The clergyman and the manager hurried
+away. Monsieur Dupont lingered at the inspector's
+side, and Tranter strolled back with
+Copplestone.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+"Well?" queried the inspector. "Not much
+doubt about it, is there?"</p>
+
+<p>"You have a strong case," said Monsieur
+Dupont. "Very strong."</p>
+
+<p>"You agree with it?"</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"At all events, I am not in position, at present,
+to contradict it."</p>
+
+<p>"You will have your work cut out to build
+up another one," said the inspector complacently.
+"There isn't a trace."</p>
+
+<p>"That is it," said the other sharply. "There
+is no trace. There is never a trace." He
+lowered his voice cautiously. "One point I
+recommend to you, as I have just recommended
+it to Tranter&mdash;that remark of Mr.
+Delamere that there was no cry for help."</p>
+
+<p>"What of it?" returned the inspector.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the key," said Monsieur Dupont.</p>
+
+<p>He moved on abruptly, and overtook Tranter.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Builder of Men</span></p>
+
+
+<p>James Layton occupied two dingy
+rooms, in a dilapidated house, situated
+between a church and a public-house,
+in as squalid and unwholesome a street
+as any in the East End of London. In them he
+spent such time as was left to him&mdash;and it was
+not much&mdash;after his active ministrations
+among the denizens of the miserable neighborhood.
+They were scantily furnished, and of
+comforts there were none. He denied himself
+anything beyond the barest necessities of existence,
+with the exception of a few books and
+pipes, which were the companions of his odd
+moments of leisure, and he read and smoked in
+a hard wicker chair, destitute even of a cushion.
+He ate sparingly, of food scarcely better than
+that on which his neighbors subsisted, and
+drank little. His clothes were poor, his shirts
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+frayed, and his boots patched&mdash;and his income
+was a thousand pounds a week.</p>
+
+<p>In his work he was unusually broad-minded
+and unprejudiced. He spent none of his time
+in efforts to lure the occupants of the public-house
+on his left into the church on his right.
+Indeed, he was an excellent customer of the
+former institution, and was on the best of terms
+with its landlord, who was an ex-pugilist after
+his kind. He made no discrimination in the
+dispensation of his charity. He worked on
+the principle that before he reformed a man
+he must feed him&mdash;so before he attempted to
+deal with the mind he relieved the body. He
+was open-handed and unsuspicious&mdash;and wonderfully
+beloved. There were hundreds of
+people in that street, and many other streets,
+who would gladly have laid down their lives
+for him&mdash;and who imposed on him shockingly
+day after day in the minor matters of life.
+The Mad Philanthropist never turned away&mdash;never
+refused. He was a builder of Men. No
+one knew, or cared, who he was or whence he
+came. He never gave account of himself, or
+spoke of his own affairs. Curiosity was the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+one thing he resented. He enclosed himself, so
+far as private matters were concerned, within
+the fortifications of a reserve which no one had
+succeeded in penetrating. Though he held a
+thousand confidences, he made none. In listening
+to the experiences of others he never referred
+to his own, or even hinted whether
+they had been sweet or bitter. He went on
+his silent way&mdash;and the world was the better
+for him.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In his bare sitting-room he sat with his face
+between his hands. A girl knelt on the floor
+beside him.</p>
+
+<p>She was a remarkable girl. Wild, wayward,
+with all the passions&mdash;brimful with untamed
+vitality&mdash;incapable of the common restraints.
+Her face was neither beautiful, nor,
+perhaps, even pretty&mdash;but Diana herself might
+have envied the full, lithe figure, the free grace
+of her movements. She was the creature of
+her desires&mdash;knowing no laws that opposed
+them. A Primitive Woman, from the dawn
+of the world.</p>
+
+<p>"Jim," she pleaded. "Jim...."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+He made no movement.</p>
+
+<p>"Be a man," she whispered. "Pull yourself
+together."</p>
+
+<p>He put her away from him roughly.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you'd go," he said dully. "I don't
+want you here."</p>
+
+<p>Her face grew whiter. Her hands crept to
+him again. The light of a great love was in
+her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Jim," she whispered, "I know I'm not
+like she was. I'm not beautiful. I'm not wonderful.
+I haven't anything that she had. Oh,
+I know all that ... so well."</p>
+
+<p>He uncovered his face&mdash;it was haggard and
+bloodless, the face of a man in the throes of a
+mental hell&mdash;and looked at her, almost with
+revulsion.</p>
+
+<p>"You?" he cried harshly. "You...?
+You dare to name yourself to me in the same
+breath with her? Get up, and look at yourself!"
+He pointed to a cracked mirror on the
+mantel-piece. "Look!" he said hoarsely,
+thrusting her away from him again. "Do you
+see how coarse and heavy and rough you are?
+She was light and delicate&mdash;like a snowflake.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
+She never seemed to touch the ground. Your
+hair is like string&mdash;your hands are large&mdash;your
+voice is harsh. Her hair was like silk&mdash;gold
+silk in the sunshine. I could see through her
+hands. Her voice was music. I want you to
+go. You are in my way."</p>
+
+<p>She sprang up, raging.</p>
+
+<p>"She never loved you!" she cried. "She
+never cared for you&mdash;or even thought of you!
+She wasn't fit to touch you&mdash;to look at you!"</p>
+
+<p>His face was aflame.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop!" he shouted.</p>
+
+<p>"I hate her!" she declared fiercely. "I hate
+her memory! I'm glad she's dead!"</p>
+
+<p>He lunged forward from his chair, and
+seized her. In his fury he nearly struck her.</p>
+
+<p>"As God's above us," he panted, "one more
+word...." His rage choked him. The
+words jammed in his throat.</p>
+
+<p>She wrenched herself free. His arms
+dropped to his sides. He reeled dizzily.</p>
+
+<p>"You may do what you like to me," she cried
+passionately. "I tell you&mdash;I'm glad she's dead!
+She deserved to die. She was wicked and
+cruel. I think God Himself destroyed her."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+He sank back into his chair weakly. A sob
+shook him.</p>
+
+<p>"God did not destroy her," he said slowly.
+"God never destroys. He only builds. It is
+men and women who destroy."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence. She came close
+to him again, all her anger swallowed up in a
+great sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>"Jim," she asked softly ... "was she so
+much to you?"</p>
+
+<p>He became suddenly rigid.</p>
+
+<p>"How did you come to know her? She
+wasn't your sort. She couldn't have had anything
+in common with you. What have you
+to do with women like that?"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes narrowed threateningly. Her
+questions had struck him into a new alertness.
+She noticed that his knees were pressed together.</p>
+
+<p>"The papers said she only came to England
+two months ago&mdash;for the first time. It hasn't
+all happened since then. I know it hasn't.
+There must have been something else. Something
+before. What was it?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
+He sat glaring at her&mdash;locking and unlocking
+his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"It all happened since then," he said jerkily.
+"I had never seen her before. There was nothing
+else."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe it, Jim," she declared.
+"You are hiding something."</p>
+
+<p>He avoided her steady gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"Believe it or not, as you like," he retorted.</p>
+
+<p>"People say there is some secret in your
+life," she said. "I believe there is. And I
+believe it was her secret too."</p>
+
+<p>He lunged forward again, in a fresh paroxysm
+of fury.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it to you?" he cried shrilly&mdash;"or
+to any one? Why do you pry? Suppose I
+have my secrets. They are no concern of
+yours. I give away my money&mdash;my life.
+Isn't it enough? What would you be&mdash;what
+would any of them be now&mdash;but for me? I
+work day and night for others. Can't I keep
+my soul to myself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jim," she said gently, "I'm not prying. I
+don't want to know your secrets. I only
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+wanted to make it lighter for you, if you'd let
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't make it lighter for me," he returned.
+"No one can make it lighter. I don't
+want to be interfered with. I want to be left
+alone. What right have you to try to judge
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Judge you?" she echoed. "Who could
+want to judge you? Why, you are the noblest
+man in all the world. No one could do more
+good than you do. Every man, woman, and
+child here worships you, and would die for
+you."</p>
+
+<p>His anger instantly subsided.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes!" he said greedily&mdash;"tell me that.
+That's what I want to hear. Tell me they
+worship me&mdash;that no one could do more good
+than I do&mdash;that men and women would die for
+me. Go on telling me that!"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice thrilled with her love for him.</p>
+
+<p>"You brought us light and life. You have
+raised hundreds&mdash;as you raised me&mdash;out of
+misery and filth. Think of all the children
+you have sent away from this poison into the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+green fields and the sunshine&mdash;who would have
+died."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! yes!" he cried. "Go on! Go on!
+All the children...."</p>
+
+<p>"You are building them," she said&mdash;her
+whole being transformed with tenderness.
+"You are making them fit to be men and
+women. They wouldn't have been fit without
+you. You are teaching them how to be clean
+and happy. You are showing them that they
+needn't be the dregs of humanity&mdash;that these
+hovels needn't be their world. You are giving
+them new interests, new thoughts, new
+hopes. Oh, what could be more wonderful&mdash;more
+splendid? It is God's own work."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! yes!" he cried again. "God's work!
+I am doing God's work!"</p>
+
+<p>He paced up and down the room eagerly&mdash;feasting
+on her words&mdash;drinking her praises as
+an exhausted man might drink an invigorating
+draught. He was in the grip of a feverish
+energy. His blood was racing.</p>
+
+<p>His quick steps shook the wretched room.
+The floor creaked under his tread. A lamp on
+the table rattled. The girl watched him nervously.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+She put out a hand to check him, but
+he brushed it aside. His looks, his movements,
+frightened her. He seemed to be gazing out
+beyond the narrow walls into a space of surging
+memories, that sported with his reason.
+He muttered incoherently, oblivious of her
+presence. She grew frightened.</p>
+
+<p>"Jim!" she cried sharply.</p>
+
+<p>He started, and stopped, looking at her vacantly.</p>
+
+<p>"My work," he said restlessly. "I must get
+on with my work. I haven't done enough
+... nearly enough. I must go on building
+... go on giving light."</p>
+
+<p>He let her put a hand on his arm and move
+him gently back to his chair. He sat down,
+and stared at her in a dazed fashion, as one
+returning to consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>"Why haven't you gone?" he said heavily.
+"I asked you to go."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going, Jim," she returned. "I can't
+leave you like this. You're not fit to be left."</p>
+
+<p>His face darkened again.</p>
+
+<p>"I am perfectly fit to be left," he said hardly.
+"And I wish to be alone."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+"When you are better, I'll go," she said
+quietly&mdash;"if you want me to."</p>
+
+<p>He made a gesture of impatience.</p>
+
+<p>"I am better now," he said wearily. "I
+am quite well. I want you to go. Why do
+you persist in staying when I want you to go?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl's self-control deserted her. She
+burst into a storm of weeping.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't go," she sobbed. "I won't go&mdash;because
+you are in trouble&mdash;and I love you.
+I don't care whether you want me or not. I
+love you."</p>
+
+<p>He heard her indifferently. Neither her
+tears nor her passion moved him.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk nonsense," he snapped. "Love
+is nothing to me. I hate the word. You
+might as well talk of loving the Monument as
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"You lifted me up," she cried. "You saved
+my soul and body. I was lower than any of
+the others before you came. You taught me&mdash;and
+I've tried to learn your lessons. But,
+oh, if you didn't mean me to love you, you
+should have left me where I was."</p>
+
+<p>"You were a good girl," he said, with tired
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+tolerance. "You learnt well. But I didn't
+mean you to love me. I don't want you to love
+me. What I have done for you was only part
+of my work&mdash;like the others. I don't want
+any woman to love me. I tell you, I hate the
+word. It means nothing to me. I only want
+to go on...."</p>
+
+<p>Her sobs ceased. She stood very still.
+Her face was torn, but he was not looking at
+her. She turned, and went slowly towards the
+door, her head bowed. She seemed to be
+shrunken and small. All her vitality had gone.
+She moved like an old woman, weakly.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened before she reached it. Two
+men stood in the passage. She started back.
+One of them came a few paces into the room,
+looking at the man in the chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. James Layton?"</p>
+
+<p>He rose unsteadily.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said, "I am James Layton. What
+do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"We are police officers, investigating the
+murder of Miss Christine Manderson."</p>
+
+<p>The girl uttered a cry, and sprang between
+them.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+"What do you want with him?" she demanded
+fiercely. "He knows nothing about
+it. How should he? What is it to do with
+him?"</p>
+
+<p>The men looked at her with quick interest.
+But Layton silenced her with an imperative
+gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"I am at your service," he said quietly.
+"What can I do for you?"</p>
+
+<p>"We are instructed to ask you to be kind
+enough to return with us to Scotland Yard to
+answer a few questions that may assist the
+investigation of the crime."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," Layton returned, without hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>His face was perfectly calm. He showed
+no fear or agitation.</p>
+
+<p>"We have a taxi waiting," the man said.
+He spoke to Layton&mdash;but he was looking at the
+girl.</p>
+
+<p>"I will come with you at once," Layton replied.</p>
+
+<p>He took up his hat and stick. The girl
+leant against the wall panting, a hand pressed
+to her heart.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+"Jim," she gasped faintly. "Jim...."</p>
+
+<p>He turned, with the first sign of kindness
+he had yet shown to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be frightened," he said gently. "I
+shall be back in an hour or so."</p>
+
+<p>She clutched him desperately.</p>
+
+<p>"You sha'n't go!" she cried wildly. "You
+sha'n't go!"</p>
+
+<p>He put her aside firmly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't I go? There is nothing to
+be afraid of. I must help if I can."</p>
+
+<p>The door closed behind them. The girl
+moved from the wall, and staggered to the
+table, leaning on it heavily. She was ashen.
+Her lips were gray. She heard them leave the
+house&mdash;heard the car start, and listened until
+the sound of it died away in the length of the
+street. Her strength failed. She sank to her
+knees. A moan of agony escaped her.</p>
+
+<p>"For nothing...." she whispered. "Oh,
+God ... for nothing...."</p>
+
+<p>She heard a quiet tap at the door, but could
+not answer. She saw the door open slowly.
+An enormous figure stood on the threshold.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+She struggled to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want?" she murmured fearfully.
+"Have you come ... for me?"</p>
+
+<p>The figure squeezed its way through the
+narrow doorway, and closed the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Mademoiselle, you are a friend of Mr.
+James Layton, who was taken, a few minutes
+ago, to Scotland Yard?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she cried, "yes. I am his friend.
+What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Before the end of the day, Mr. Layton will
+be detained on the charge of murder."</p>
+
+<p>She screamed.</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't do it! He didn't do it!"</p>
+
+<p>"The evidence is strong," said the stranger.
+"He threatened her. He was in the garden
+when the crime was committed&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She raised her hand, as if to ward off a blow.</p>
+
+<p>"In the garden?" she shivered. "He was
+in the garden ... then?"</p>
+
+<p>"He will require much assistance," continued
+the huge unknown&mdash;"and there is no
+time to lose. Will you help him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would die for him," she choked. "What
+can I do?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+The stranger re-opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Come with me, mademoiselle," he said
+softly&mdash;"and I will tell you."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Triple Alliance</span></p>
+
+
+<p>He led the girl out of the house.
+At the corner of the street a taxi
+was waiting. He opened the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are we going?" she demanded suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>"To the Hotel Savoy, mademoiselle," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>She hung back.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I go with you?" she asked
+defiantly. "I have never seen you before. I
+don't know who you are."</p>
+
+<p>"Mademoiselle," he replied, "your friend is
+in great danger. He will not be able to help
+himself. If you do not come with me, you will
+not be able to help him. And I assure you that
+he needs your help."</p>
+
+<p>She got in without another word. He placed
+himself beside her, and the car started.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
+"Who are you?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"My name," he told her, "is Dupont&mdash;Victorien
+Dupont. I arrived in London from
+Paris a few days ago."</p>
+
+<p>"What have you to do with this?" she said
+doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"That," he replied, "I cannot at the moment
+explain to you. I am concerned in this case
+for reasons of my own, which must remain
+my own for the present. I was in the garden
+when Christine Manderson was killed."</p>
+
+<p>She started, staring at him.</p>
+
+<p>"You were in the garden too?" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"I was," he affirmed. "And I know that
+Monsieur Layton did not kill her."</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't!" she declared. "He couldn't
+kill anything. He spends his time giving life&mdash;not
+taking it."</p>
+
+<p>"The police will be satisfied that he did, and
+they will have a strong case. Unless we can
+help him by discovering the truth in time, he
+will not be able to clear himself. Are you prepared
+to work for him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I told you," she repeated passionately, "I
+would die for him."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+"It is well," he said. "There will be three
+people on his side. You&mdash;my friend, Mr.
+Tranter, who was also in the garden&mdash;and
+myself. Together we will save him. There
+will be separate tasks for us all. Mr. Tranter
+will be waiting at the hotel when we arrive,
+and we will settle our plan of campaign. Until
+then, mademoiselle, let us not refer to the
+subject again. Do me the favor thoroughly
+to compose yourself. In these matters coolness
+is of the utmost importance."</p>
+
+<p>He compressed himself further into his
+corner, and closed his eyes. The girl said nothing
+more. The rapidity of the whole catastrophe,
+and the sudden appearance of this new
+adventure bewildered her. The huge mysterious
+stranger almost frightened her. Though
+his eyes were shut and he made neither sound
+nor movement, she felt that he was searching
+her, that he was straining all his mental forces
+to steal the thoughts that were throbbing
+through her mind. As they drew near to their
+destination, she fiercely exerted the self-control
+that was one of her least developed virtues,
+and by the time they reached the Savoy,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+and Monsieur Dupont opened his eyes, she was
+steady and watchful.</p>
+
+<p>"Mademoiselle," said Monsieur Dupont
+softly, "you will be of the greatest assistance.
+Already you know the value of silence."</p>
+
+<p>In his private sitting-room they found Tranter
+awaiting them.</p>
+
+<p>"My friend," said Monsieur Dupont, "this
+lady will work with us. She is much attached
+to James Layton, and her assistance will be
+most valuable." He turned to her. "Mademoiselle,
+I have not the honor...."</p>
+
+<p>"My name's Jenny West," she said, comprehending
+the request.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Layton?" Tranter asked, as Monsieur
+Dupont placed a chair for the girl, and
+sat down himself.</p>
+
+<p>"By this time," Monsieur Dupont replied,
+"he will have arrived at Scotland Yard. Our
+friend Inspector Fay will question him, and
+he will certainly be detained. As I have just
+explained to mademoiselle, he is in great
+danger. Unless we succeed in our object, his
+position is without hope."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+Tears welled up in the girl's eyes, but she
+checked them with an effort.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish," Monsieur Dupont continued, with
+careful emphasis, "that my own position also
+should be clearly understood, in so far as I am
+at liberty to explain it. I cannot yet tell you
+how I come to be interested in this affair.
+Soon I may do so&mdash;but until then you must be
+content to take me on trust, and to accept my
+assurance that I am fully qualified to direct
+you. Are you willing to follow my instructions
+without question&mdash;to save this innocent
+man, who will be accused of a horrible crime
+which he did not commit?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," the girl cried. "I am ready. I
+will do anything."</p>
+
+<p>"And I," said Tranter.</p>
+
+<p>"The directions I give may seem to be
+strange," Monsieur Dupont went on impressively&mdash;"but
+they must be followed. The errands
+on which I send you may seem to be unimportant
+and even foolish&mdash;but they must be
+carried out. Do not look for explanations,
+until I make them. I give account to no one.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+Those who work with me work much in the
+dark&mdash;but they reach the light. There must
+be no hesitation. Is that understood?"</p>
+
+<p>Again the others agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said Monsieur Dupont confidently,
+"we shall succeed. Layton will be saved&mdash;but
+it will be a hard and difficult task. The first
+law I have to impose on you is&mdash;silence. Complete
+silence, to every one except myself."</p>
+
+<p>He turned to the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"At three o'clock this afternoon, mademoiselle,
+unless you hear from me to the contrary,
+you will go to Scotland Yard, where Mr. Layton
+will be detained. That I shall verify by
+telephone. You will see him, and you will tell
+him this: You will say that I, Dupont, know
+how and why Christine Manderson died&mdash;that
+I, and those with me, will not allow the innocent
+to suffer&mdash;and that he shall be delivered
+from this charge. And say to him, also, anything
+from yourself that you may wish to say."</p>
+
+<p>They were both gazing at him blankly.</p>
+
+<p>"You know?" the girl gasped. "You know
+who killed her?"</p>
+
+<p>The great Frenchman seemed to develop before
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+their eyes into a figure of tremendous
+menace, every inch of him alive with implacable,
+relentless purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"I know," he declared slowly, "just what
+I have told you&mdash;how and why she died. Ask
+me no more. Remember our conditions.
+There must be no questions until the time
+comes."</p>
+
+<p>He rose, and took an envelope from his
+pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"Certain things that I shall ask you to do,
+mademoiselle, may involve expense. In this
+envelope you will find a sufficient sum. Do
+not hesitate to accept it. Ample funds are at
+our command. When you return from Scotland
+Yard, report to me here. If I am not in,
+wait for me. And, above all, remember&mdash;silence."</p>
+
+<p>He opened the door, and bowed her out.
+Then he turned to Tranter with a faint smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my friend?" he asked quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really mean," Tranter exclaimed,
+"that you know the truth of the crime?"</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont offered him a cigar, and
+lit one himself with great composure.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+"I know just as much about the crime, my
+friend, as I have said. I repeat&mdash;I know how
+and why that unfortunate woman died. Who,
+or what, caused her to die is another matter,
+which we are setting ourselves to solve."</p>
+
+<p>"You are certain that Layton is innocent?"</p>
+
+<p>"James Layton did not commit the crime,"
+Monsieur Dupont returned firmly. "But he
+will be hanged for it&mdash;if we are not in time."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Tranter, "what is there for me
+to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"For you," replied Monsieur Dupont,
+"there is the most important task in the case,
+so far. And the most dangerous. Within
+twenty-four hours you must discover, and bring
+to me here, the secret of the Crooked House."</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord!" Tranter exclaimed, taken
+aback, "how on earth am I to do that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know," Monsieur Dupont admitted.
+"Nor have I any helpful suggestions to
+make. The method of procedure I leave to
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Housebreaking is entirely out of my province,"
+Tranter objected. "And the secret of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+that house, if there is one, is likely to be very
+well guarded."</p>
+
+<p>"Probably," agreed Monsieur Dupont.
+"But the fact remains that before the end of
+the next twenty-four hours I must have that
+secret&mdash;and you are the person who must bring
+it to me."</p>
+
+<p>Tranter took up his hat and stick, without
+further protest.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," he said stoutly. "I will do my
+best."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont looked at his watch.</p>
+
+<p>"It is one o'clock," he said, opening the door.
+"At one o'clock to-morrow I shall be waiting
+for you in this room."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Mr. Gluckstein In Confidence</span></p>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Astley-Rolfe invariably
+received her creditors in pink
+deshabille.</p>
+
+<p>The financier, Mr. Solomon
+Gluckstein, original and senior representative
+of John Brown &amp; Co., Jermyn Street, was particularly
+fond of pink, and extremely susceptible
+to deshabille. Whiskey-and-soda, personally
+prepared for him in sufficient strength by
+his charming debtor, increased the fondness
+and the susceptibility.</p>
+
+<p>"Ma tear lady," said Mr. Gluckstein, with
+desperate firmness, "I have come on an unplethant
+errand."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Astley-Rolfe pouted petulantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I to have no peace?" she complained,
+from an alluring attitude on a couch. "Isn't
+it enough to have gone through the last two
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
+days? Look at me. I am a nervous wreck."</p>
+
+<p>"Then all women wouldth with to be nervouth
+wrecks," said Mr. Gluckstein gallantly.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe that odious detective actually
+imagined at the beginning that I might have
+murdered the poor girl."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonthenth," the financier assured her.</p>
+
+<p>"I have scarcely had any sleep," she went
+on reproachfully. "It is a wonder I am not
+thoroughly ill. And now you&mdash;from whom I
+should have expected consideration&mdash;come
+here with a face like a rock, and announce your
+intention to be unpleasant. If I didn't know
+you so well, I might have believed you."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gluckstein glanced towards the door,
+and drew his chair closer to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us understand each other," he said deliberately.
+"At the present time you owe me
+a large thum of money."</p>
+
+<p>"Gospel truth," she admitted.</p>
+
+<p>"Very much more than you could pothibly
+pay, if I came down on you."</p>
+
+<p>She uttered a sigh of relief.</p>
+
+<p>"At last you realize that!" she exclaimed
+thankfully.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+"Also," continued Mr. Gluckstein, "you owe
+money to various other people."</p>
+
+<p>"Your veracity," she confessed, "is beyond
+question."</p>
+
+<p>"Almosth ath much ath you owe to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite as much," she said cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>"And you owe me," he continued&mdash;"twelve
+thousand poundth."</p>
+
+<p>"The first time I have looked the evil fully
+in the face," she shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>His small eyes regarded her intently.</p>
+
+<p>"The last half of that&mdash;I lent to you on a
+certain understanding."</p>
+
+<p>"Understanding?" she echoed languidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yeth."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"That you intended to become engaged to
+George Copplesthone, who would pay your
+debths when you married him."</p>
+
+<p>A quick change swept over her. She became
+hard and calculating.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" she returned.</p>
+
+<p>"You have not become engaged to him."</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Some one elth became engaged to him."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+"Yes," she said calmly.</p>
+
+<p>"That doth not look," he concluded, "like
+fulfillment of the understanding."</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't it?" she retorted.</p>
+
+<p>He glanced again at the door, and came still
+closer.</p>
+
+<p>"Lithen," he said slowly. "I have been
+your friendth. I have done for you what I
+would not have done for any one elth. I have
+treated you fairly, and I have never prethed
+you."</p>
+
+<p>She softened immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"You have been very kind to me," she said
+gratefully.</p>
+
+<p>"You muth be my friendth too. I muth tell
+you my thecret. Promith me faithfully that
+you will keep it."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly I will keep it," she agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"Five days ago," Mr. Gluckstein informed
+her painfully, "my partner abthconded, and left
+me almosth a ruined man."</p>
+
+<p>Her face expressed genuine sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>"I am very sorry," she said feelingly.
+"What a dreadful blow for you."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+"It ith unnethecessary to explain bithness
+details to you," the financier proceeded. "My
+working capital hath gone, and the fact thimply
+is that I cannot carry on&mdash;unleth&mdash;&mdash;" he
+paused to give his words additional emphasis,
+"unleth you repay me my twelve thousand
+poundth in full within two months."</p>
+
+<p>"Two months?" she exclaimed blankly.</p>
+
+<p>"Two months," he repeatedly firmly. "That
+ith the utmost time I can give you. Have you
+any other means of raithing the money?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a ghost of one," she replied frankly.
+"I might as well try to push over the Marble
+Arch as raise a single thousand."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," he said steadily, "if you do not
+marry Copplesthone I am a bankrupt&mdash;and a
+bankrupt I will not be."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall marry him," she said. "I told you
+I should&mdash;and I shall. You will have your
+money."</p>
+
+<p>"I believed you," he returned. "But another
+woman beat you."</p>
+
+<p>She looked away from him.</p>
+
+<p>"Did she?" she replied evenly.</p>
+
+<p>There was silence for a moment.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+"When Copplesthone announthed his engagement
+to Mith Manderthon," the financier went
+on, "I stood ruined. I admit it. I stood
+ruined by your defeat. That ith the thecret
+that you muth keep. I was sure that you had
+no other means of paying me back. Nothing
+could save me but a miraculouth removal of the
+obstacle."</p>
+
+<p>"The obstacle was removed," she said, in the
+same even tone.</p>
+
+<p>He shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"It wath. The obstacle that stood between
+you and Copplesthone, and me and ruination,
+wath removed. It was a ghastly thing, and
+we are very thorry. But let uth be candid.
+It wath to our advantage."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she agreed slowly&mdash;"it was to our
+advantage."</p>
+
+<p>"There must not be another obstacle," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"There will not be another," she replied.
+"George Copplestone will marry me&mdash;and you
+shall have your twelve thousand pounds, as I
+promised. You need not be anxious."</p>
+
+<p>He looked round the luxurious room, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+sighed deeply. It surprised her that she had
+not noticed before how much he had aged.</p>
+
+<p>"I must begin again," he said. "I am getting
+old&mdash;but I will rebuild my fortune. I
+will not be the only poor Jew in London."</p>
+
+<p>"You have been a good friend to me," she
+said gently. "I am very sorry."</p>
+
+<p>He paused to finish his drink, but his crafty
+eyes never left her face. She did not meet
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder," he said, in a slightly lower tone,
+replacing his empty glass on the table, "what
+the police will discover."</p>
+
+<p>"I should imagine that there is very little
+to be discovered," she returned. "There seems
+no doubt that it was James Layton, the Mad
+Millionaire, as he is called. He will probably
+be arrested within the next twenty-four hours.
+It appears to be a clear case. He threatened
+her&mdash;in front of us all. And he was in the
+garden."</p>
+
+<p>"It ought to be enough," he admitted, more
+easily. "What more could they want?"</p>
+
+<p>"The evidence is very strong," she said, lazily
+settling her deshabille. "Many people have
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+been hanged on less. Apparently the police
+are satisfied. At least, they have not arrested
+either of us."</p>
+
+<p>The financier started violently.</p>
+
+<p>"Either of uth?" he cried, aghast. "What
+do you mean, either of uth?"</p>
+
+<p>Her smile was enigmatical.</p>
+
+<p>"As you said just now&mdash;the removal of the
+obstacle was to the advantage of both of us."</p>
+
+<p>"But they don't know," he shivered.
+"They can't know."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope not," she said shortly.</p>
+
+<p>Perspiration began to stand out on his forehead.
+He had lost color considerably.</p>
+
+<p>"You promised to keep my thecret," he exclaimed
+nervously. "Noth a word to any
+one."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall keep my promise," she replied.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no cause for alarm. I don't think
+Inspector Fay will trouble us."</p>
+
+<p>There was a tap at the door. They turned
+as the butler entered.</p>
+
+<p>"Inspector Fay would like to see you for a
+few minutes, madam."</p>
+
+<p>They looked at each other. The financier
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+was agitated. The woman was perfectly calm.</p>
+
+<p>"Talk of the devil!" she smiled.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gluckstein gripped his hat, stick, and
+gloves, and rose hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>"He must not see me here," he said jerkily.
+"Let me out another way."</p>
+
+<p>"Go through there," she said, pointing to
+a door at the opposite end of the room, "and
+when he has come in, Parker will let you out.
+Bring the inspector in, Parker."</p>
+
+<p>The financier did not wait to shake hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Remember," he whispered passing her&mdash;"both
+your promises."</p>
+
+<p>"They will be kept," she said.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Wit of the Pink Lady</span></p>
+
+
+<p>Inspector Fay entered the room at
+one end a few seconds after Mr. Gluckstein
+left it at the other.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Astley-Rolfe greeted him in a
+friendly fashion. She showed considerable
+strain&mdash;but, otherwise, was looking her best.
+And her best was delightful.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, inspector," she said languidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, madam." He glanced
+back to make certain that the door was closed.
+"I trust you have recovered from the shock of
+the crime."</p>
+
+<p>"I still feel it very much," she replied, shuddering.
+"It was the most horrible experience
+I have ever had. To think of seeing that poor
+girl alive and well one minute, and the next&mdash;like
+that. It's too dreadful to think of."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
+"It was certainly a most disgusting crime,"
+the inspector agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it was James Layton?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid I cannot make any statement
+at present," he replied. "Our investigations
+are proceeding as quickly as possible. I hope
+we shall clear it up in a few days."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you will," she declared fervently.
+"Such a brutal criminal can expect no mercy."</p>
+
+<p>"In the meantime," continued the inspector,
+"I should be much obliged if you would
+kindly give me a little information."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," she said readily. "Sit down."</p>
+
+<p>He sat down, facing her. She made a
+charming picture. But Inspector Fay had
+been taken in by charming women several times
+during the early part of his career, and at this
+stage of it was as impervious as an oyster.</p>
+
+<p>"Please understand," he began, "that in asking
+these questions I am making no insinuations
+or suggestions of any kind. It is necessary
+to establish certain facts."</p>
+
+<p>"I quite understand," she assured him.
+"What do you want to know?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want to know what you were saying to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+Mr. Copplestone in the garden, before Mr.
+Tranter came to tell him that Miss Manderson
+had gone into the house."</p>
+
+<p>She started.</p>
+
+<p>"I?" she exclaimed. "I was not with Mr.
+Copplestone."</p>
+
+<p>He remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you, I was not with any one. I did
+not feel quite myself, and strolled about alone."</p>
+
+<p>The inspector's face was quite impassive.</p>
+
+<p>"You wish me to accept that answer?" he
+asked quietly.</p>
+
+<p>She stiffened haughtily.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" she said sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that you wish that answer to be
+accepted as the truth?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. Are you suggesting that it is
+not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am suggesting nothing," he returned,
+with unruffled composure. "But I must tell
+you that if I am to accept that answer, it may
+have serious consequences."</p>
+
+<p>"Serious consequences?" she echoed,
+startled.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+"For whom?"</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly for Mr. Copplestone himself."</p>
+
+<p>Signs of uneasiness began to appear, in spite
+of her wonderful self-control.</p>
+
+<p>"For Mr. Copplestone...?"</p>
+
+<p>"For Mr. Copplestone," the inspector affirmed
+steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand," she said. "Will you
+kindly explain?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly." His voice dropped slightly.
+"Mr. Copplestone lied to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Lied to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lied to me," he repeated. "In accounting
+for himself, from the time he came out into
+the garden after dinner until Mr. Tranter
+found him to deliver Miss Manderson's message,
+he lied to me deliberately. I want to
+know why."</p>
+
+<p>"You had better ask him," she retorted.
+"I do not know."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Bolsover, the theatrical manager, told
+me that he found James Layton lurking by the
+house, and called to Mr. Copplestone before
+following him. Mr. Copplestone stated that
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+the reason he did not hear that call was that he
+had gone into the house to refill his cigarette-case,
+and did not come out again until just before
+Mr. Tranter found him after leaving Miss
+Manderson. That statement was false."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know?" she asked quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"He did not go into the house to refill his
+cigarette-case. He had had no opportunity
+to smoke afterwards, and when I questioned
+him his case was almost empty. He may have
+gone in for another reason&mdash;&mdash;or he may not
+have gone in at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it not very trivial?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"If you had been dealing with crimes and
+criminals as long as I have," the inspector returned,
+"you would know that nothing is trivial.
+At present, Mr. Copplestone's time while the
+crime was being committed is unaccounted for&mdash;and
+he is detected in a lie. It is not a pleasant
+position to be in."</p>
+
+<p>She was silent. Her hands moved nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the use of telling me this?" she
+asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
+"It occurred to me," he replied, "that you
+might be able to extricate him from that position."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" she demanded resentfully.</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you?" he insisted, watching her closely.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment she paused. There was
+malevolence in her gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know what he was doing," she said
+obstinately.</p>
+
+<p>"Madam," said the inspector impressively,
+"if George Copplestone stood in the dock in
+front of you, and his life depended on the truth
+of your answer&mdash;would it still be the same answer?"</p>
+
+<p>She turned on him.</p>
+
+<p>"In the dock? What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Would it still be the same answer?" he repeated
+sternly.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you suggest that he may have committed
+the crime?" she exclaimed contemptuously.
+"Its absurd!"</p>
+
+<p>"I told you," he said, "I suggest nothing.
+My case must be complete. I want to know
+the truth."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+Silence followed. She plucked angrily at
+the lace edge of her gown. Inspector Fay
+waited imperturbably.</p>
+
+<p>"He was with me," she said, at last, sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said the inspector.</p>
+
+<p>There was another pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Please go on," he pressed her.</p>
+
+<p>She did not attempt to conceal her resentment
+at his insistence. But the inspector's attitude
+was compelling.</p>
+
+<p>"We had a private conversation," she said
+viciously. "What passed between us concerned
+only ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no wish to pry into that," he told
+her. "But I should like to know why both
+you and Mr. Copplestone preferred to tell me a
+falsehood rather than admit that you were
+talking together in the garden."</p>
+
+<p>"We had our reasons," she snapped, "for
+not wishing it to be known that we had been
+together. We had no time to speak privately
+after the crime was discovered, and it evidently
+seemed best to both of us, rather than
+risk conflicting statements, not to admit that
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
+we had spoken to each other at all. I hope
+you have nothing more to ask me."</p>
+
+<p>The inspector rose.</p>
+
+<p>"I have nothing more to ask you, madam,"
+he said politely. "I trust it will not be necessary
+for me to trouble you again in this case.
+But if it should be&mdash;you will find that in such
+serious matters it is always better to speak the
+truth. Good morning."</p>
+
+<p>He walked quickly out of the room, leaving
+a lady in pink deshabille quivering with an
+emotion that was not anger, but a new triumph.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Detained on Suspicion</span></p>
+
+
+<p>Inspector Fay left the house of the
+lady in pink with a satisfied expression on
+his face. At the corner of the street he
+hailed a taxi, and drove to Scotland Yard.</p>
+
+<p>Under the watchful eyes of his escort, James
+Layton awaited him. The millionaire was
+perfectly composed, and appeared to be under
+no apprehension as to the outcome of his visit.
+He accompanied the inspector to a private
+room, and sat down in a comfortable chair
+without the smallest sign of alarm.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. James Layton?" the inspector began,
+seating himself at a table.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Layton, I am Inspector Fay&mdash;in charge
+of the investigations of the death of Miss
+Christine Manderson, at Richmond, on Tuesday
+night. I want you to be good enough to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
+answer the questions I have to ask you as
+clearly as possible."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," the young man replied, unhesitatingly.</p>
+
+<p>"To begin with&mdash;did you go to Richmond
+on that night?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did."</p>
+
+<p>"Were you alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you call at Mr. Copplestone's house at
+half-past eight?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"You asked to see Mr. Copplestone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And he refused to see you?"</p>
+
+<p>"He did."</p>
+
+<p>"What was your object in calling on him,
+in that manner, at such an inconvenient time?"</p>
+
+<p>"I had just ascertained that Miss Manderson
+had, or was about to, become engaged to
+marry him. My object was to tell him that
+he was not a fit person to be her husband, and
+that I would prevent the marriage at all costs."</p>
+
+<p>"That you would prevent the marriage?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Because, in your opinion, he was unworthy
+of her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Totally."</p>
+
+<p>"Had you any right to take upon yourself
+the control of Miss Manderson's choice of a
+husband?"</p>
+
+<p>"No right, perhaps&mdash;as you use the term."</p>
+
+<p>"As any one would use it?"</p>
+
+<p>"To my mind, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"To your mind you had a right to interfere
+in that engagement?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"We will come back to that presently," the
+inspector proceeded. "What did you do when
+Mr. Copplestone refused to see you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid my excitement got the better
+of me. I forced my way past the servant, and
+went into a room from which I heard voices,
+thinking that he was there with her."</p>
+
+<p>"You knew, then, that she was in the house
+at the time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I had previously telephoned to her
+hotel, and her maid had told me that she was
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+spending the evening at Copplestone's house."</p>
+
+<p>"I am told you burst into the room uttering
+her name."</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly."</p>
+
+<p>"But you found only some guests of Mr.
+Copplestone's, who had been invited to dinner?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Was there anything strange about the
+room?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was decorated in an extraordinary manner."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you made some remark about the
+decorations?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I did. I had been told something
+of Mr. Copplestone's eccentricities, and I inferred
+that the engagement was an accomplished
+fact, and that the decorations had been
+put up in celebration of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember saying anything else in
+the room?"</p>
+
+<p>"I said that rather than allow Miss Manderson
+to be engaged to George Copplestone, I
+would tear her to pieces with my own hands."</p>
+
+<p>"And utterly destroy her?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"A somewhat violent announcement," the
+inspector observed.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid it was."</p>
+
+<p>"You were in a state of great excitement,
+were you not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was very excited."</p>
+
+<p>"Almost beside yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot say that."</p>
+
+<p>"Were you responsible for your words and
+actions at the time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly."</p>
+
+<p>"You really meant what you said?"</p>
+
+<p>"I meant what I said," the young man declared
+calmly.</p>
+
+<p>The inspector was writing rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>"You were then requested to leave the house,
+and I think you left quite quietly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you do then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I climbed over the wall into the garden
+and waited for an opportunity to get into the
+house again and speak to Copplestone or Miss
+Manderson."</p>
+
+<p>"You were behaving rather strangely, were
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+you not, Mr. Layton?" the inspector asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I was."</p>
+
+<p>"If you had heard of any one else acting in
+the same way, you would have thought that
+he could hardly have been in a normal state of
+mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"I expect I should."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet you say you were quite yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was quite myself."</p>
+
+<p>"And prepared to carry out your threat?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know what I was prepared to do.
+I did not carry it out."</p>
+
+<p>"Later on, one of the guests, Mr. Bolsover,
+found you creeping round the house towards
+an open window?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Before he ran after you, do you remember
+hearing him call to Mr. Copplestone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he did."</p>
+
+<p>"Was there any answer?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not hear one."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Bolsover then followed you out in
+the direction in which the crime was committed?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know where the crime was committed,"
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+Layton replied firmly. "I know
+nothing of the crime."</p>
+
+<p>"Whoever committed it managed to fulfill
+your own threat fairly fully."</p>
+
+<p>"Unfortunately, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you any suggestion to make as to
+who that person may have been?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"What, then, did you do when Mr. Bolsover
+ran after you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I eluded him in the darkness, climbed over
+the wall again, and went away."</p>
+
+<p>"Without having fulfilled your object?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Had you seen anything at all of Miss Manderson,
+or Mr. Copplestone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. James Layton waited
+quietly while the inspector finished off his
+notes. His face was a trifle paler than before,
+but he betrayed no sign of agitation.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," resumed the inspector, "let us go
+back. You said that to your mind you had a
+right to interfere in Miss Manderson's engagement?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
+"I did."</p>
+
+<p>"What had given you that right?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry," the young man returned
+courteously&mdash;"but I decline to answer that
+question."</p>
+
+<p>"When and where did you first meet her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"You would be wiser to do so."</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly."</p>
+
+<p>The inspector's face darkened.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Layton," he said, with unmistakable
+emphasis, "you had better not decline to answer
+any question. I must warn you that your
+position may become extremely serious."</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid," Layton remarked quietly,
+"that you have already made up your mind
+that I am guilty of the crime."</p>
+
+<p>"That is as it may be," replied the inspector.
+"I am advising you for your own good. To
+refuse to answer questions is not the way to
+allay suspicion&mdash;but to increase it."</p>
+
+<p>"I realize that," the young man said. "But
+I still refuse."</p>
+
+<p>Inspector Fay leant back in his chair patiently.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+"Come, Mr. Layton, you will only put us to
+the trouble and delay of proving what you
+might as well tell us at once. And it will do
+you no good."</p>
+
+<p>"I should be sorry to cause you any additional
+trouble," Layton replied. "But I have
+my reasons."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me help you," continued the inspector.
+"I have had inquiries made at Miss Manderson's
+hotel, at the theater at which she was to
+have appeared, of her maid, and various other
+sources. We have got her time pretty well
+accounted for. It seems that you have not
+seen her at all since she arrived in this country
+two months ago. Is that so?"</p>
+
+<p>There was no answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyway, if you did see her once or twice,
+there were certainly no opportunities for anything
+to develop between you to account for
+your behavior, or justify to the right to which
+you considered yourself entitled. You must
+have known her before."</p>
+
+<p>Layton was still silent. The inspector continued
+easily.</p>
+
+<p>"I am wondering whether a cable across the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+Atlantic would bring me a description of a
+certain Michael Cranbourne, once well known
+in the United States&mdash;particularly in Chicago&mdash;son
+of a multi-millionaire."</p>
+
+<p>James Layton stiffened in his chair. He
+had become white and tense.</p>
+
+<p>"A large part in the career of Michael Cranbourne
+was played by an adventuress named
+Thea Colville&mdash;said, at one time, to have been
+the most beautiful woman in America&mdash;and
+known later, on the stage in New York, as
+Christine Manderson."</p>
+
+<p>The young man rose. On his face there was
+a wonderful new dignity and calm&mdash;a relief, as
+if some heavy burden had dropped from him
+and left him free.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said quietly, "I am Michael Cranbourne.
+I might have admitted it at first.
+What do you want now?"</p>
+
+<p>"The whole story," the inspector replied,
+motioning him back to his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"I will tell you," he said.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down again. A great contentment
+seemed to rest upon him, as on one who reaches
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
+the end of a difficult and tiring journey. There
+was a long pause.</p>
+
+<p>"I first met Thea Colville," he began, at
+last, "in Chicago, when I was twenty-five&mdash;seven
+years ago. She was twenty. It would
+be no use attempting to give you an idea of
+what she was like. You never saw her alive.
+No description could convey an impression of
+her beauty&mdash;of her awful fascination. From
+the moment I first saw her there was no other
+woman in my world. I was engaged to be
+married, but I put an end to it. People said I
+behaved badly, but I didn't care. I couldn't
+look at, or think of, another woman after I
+had seen her. She enslaved me. I was hers,
+body and soul. She held me helpless. I was
+only one of many, but I was a favored one&mdash;at
+least, I thought so."</p>
+
+<p>He told his story slowly, in a low voice, without
+emotion. He was staring out straight in
+front of him, forgetful of his surroundings
+and his listener. The past held him.</p>
+
+<p>"My family warned me, and threatened me.
+I knew they were telling me the truth&mdash;but I
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+wouldn't listen. I hadn't been brought up to
+care what results my actions brought on other
+people. I thought only of myself&mdash;of the indulgence
+of my own desires. I lived a useless,
+contemptible life&mdash;entirely without scruples or
+restraints. There was scarcely a vice that I
+was not steeped in&mdash;hardly a sin that I had not
+explored. I had enough money to gratify all
+my senses. Nothing was beneath me. I
+plunged into every depravity. I made new
+depths for myself." He clenched his hands.
+"And I led others after me."</p>
+
+<p>There was another pause. He sat rigid.
+The inspector waited patiently.</p>
+
+<p>"I need not trouble you with unnecessary
+details," the low voice went on. "It is enough
+that for her sake I sacrificed all my prospects&mdash;I
+threw away my heritage. To keep her for
+myself I squandered every cent I could lay my
+hands on. I robbed my own brother. I
+forged my father's name. I did ... other
+things. It was only the generosity of my
+family that kept me from gaol. And Thea
+threw me over."</p>
+
+<p>"Apparently," the inspector remarked, not
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+unsympathetically, "her standard of morality
+was on a somewhat similar level."</p>
+
+<p>"She is dead," said the young man gently.
+"'<i>De mortuis nil nisi bonum.</i>'"</p>
+
+<p>The inspector shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"As you please," he said. "Go on."</p>
+
+<p>"She refused to see me&mdash;to have anything
+more to do with me. She cut me out of her
+life with one stroke. For the first time I knew
+she hadn't cared. That broke me. I was very
+ill. For a year I knew no one. I couldn't
+hear or speak. They fed me like a child.
+They thought I was mad"&mdash;his eyes began to
+gleam unnaturally, his words quickened&mdash;"but
+in reality I was in the presence of God. I was
+in the image I had brought upon my soul&mdash;black,
+hideous, distorted, reeking with the filth
+of my sins. I saw myself&mdash;in all the degradation
+I had brought upon the Shape of God.
+I saw my own page in the Book of Life. All
+the entries were on the debit side. The credit
+side was bare. I waited for damnation&mdash;but
+there is no damnation. There is only Building.
+I went out from the presence of God&mdash;a
+Builder."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+His face was transformed. His voice rang
+with triumph&mdash;with the pride of victory.</p>
+
+<p>"I came to myself. It was like waking from
+the dead. It was a long time before I recovered
+even a little of my strength. Every
+hand was against me&mdash;except my mother's.
+She stood by me. When she died, a year later,
+I inherited the whole of her fortune. The
+others tried to take it away from me, but I
+fought them. I had new uses for the money.
+I came over to this country, and began my
+work. For four years I have given myself and
+all I have. Go and see for yourself what I
+have done. Go and see the men, women, and
+children who would die for me. Go and hear
+them bless my name. Hear of the lives I have
+built&mdash;the light I have brought. I have filled
+up my credit side. I have a balance in hand
+in the Book of Life."</p>
+
+<p>Inspector Fay remained silent. He was a
+severely practical man. Before his mind there
+was only the outcome of the interview. The
+young man controlled himself with an effort.
+His excitement passed. He was again quiet
+and composed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+"None of my old passions or inclinations
+remained&mdash;except my love for Thea. I
+couldn't crush it. I fought against it with all
+my strength. I struggled to stamp it out, but
+it was unconquerable. Her face was always in
+front of me, day and night. Her voice was
+always in my ears. I couldn't escape. I heard
+nothing more of her until about six weeks ago,
+when I saw a photograph of her in one of the
+papers under the name of Christine Manderson,
+with a statement that she had arrived in
+London to play at the Imperial Theater. The
+longing to see her again was too strong for
+me. Day after day I waited outside the stage-door
+of the theater&mdash;until she came, in all her
+fatal, maddening beauty. We stood facing
+each other ... and she passed me by without
+a word."</p>
+
+<p>His voice broke. He pressed his thin hands
+together.</p>
+
+<p>"The madness came over me again. The
+sight of her fanned all the old flames. I was
+on fire. I tried to follow her, but they kept me
+out. I wrote to her that night, telling her what
+I had done, how I had suffered, and begging,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+imploring her to let me see her. The answer
+was a curt note, in the third person, saying
+that she declined to receive any communication
+from me whatsoever."</p>
+
+<p>Again he paused. The inspector made no
+comment.</p>
+
+<p>"I found out where she was staying, what
+her plans were, and who were her friends. I
+discovered that she had come under the influence
+of George Copplestone, who is little better
+than I was once. The thought that she was to
+be the sport of his depravity drove me to
+frenzy. I neglected my work. I could do
+nothing. Then I heard that they were on the
+point of becoming engaged. The rest you
+know. I followed her to Copplestone's house.
+She had evidently warned him against me.
+I forced my way into the room, calling her by
+the name of Christine&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" the inspector asked</p>
+
+<p>"Because it was obvious that she would not
+wish the name of Thea Colville to be known to
+London. That is all I have to tell you."</p>
+
+<p>The inspector rose.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Cranbourne," he said formally, "after
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+hearing your story, I am afraid I have no
+option but to detain you on suspicion of having
+caused the death of Christine Manderson,
+otherwise Thea Colville, and to warn you that
+anything you say may be used in evidence
+against you."</p>
+
+<p>The young man heard him without a
+tremor.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not kill her," he said firmly. "God's
+will be done."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Birth of the Killer</span></p>
+
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont was one of
+those fortunate individuals who
+can sleep in a train.</p>
+
+<p>He left Paddington at one
+o'clock, and slept for an hour, a sleep of childlike
+ease and innocence. When he woke the
+train was within five minutes of his destination.
+He alighted at a small country station, and instituted
+inquiries for a conveyance.</p>
+
+<p>Twenty minutes later, an unimpressionable
+horse, attached to a hybrid vehicle, was jogging
+him along country lanes which would have
+delighted a man with less serious purposes.
+But Monsieur Dupont was too much occupied
+with the uglinesses of humanity to heed the
+beauties of nature. It was not until they arrived
+at the outskirts of a small village that
+he began to look about him with interest.</p>
+
+<p>It was a lovely spot, nestling in primeval
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+innocence under the shelter of protecting hills.
+Monsieur Dupont uttered a heavy sigh, and
+spoke, for the first time during the drive, to
+the stout, sunburnt lad who conducted the
+equipage.</p>
+
+<p>"My friend," he said sorrowfully, "who
+could imagine that such a corner of heaven
+could have been the cradle of one of the most
+terrible tragedies of the world? I feel like
+a purveyor of sins, creeping into the preserves
+of God."</p>
+
+<p>The startled stare that confronted him was
+not helpful to further conversation. The disconcerted
+youth vigorously obtained fresh impetus
+from their source of progress, and drew
+up at length, with obvious relief, before a low,
+creeper-covered house, lying in a nest of
+flowers.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont's gentle knock produced a
+rubicund housekeeper, of about eighty, who
+blended in perfect harmony with the house, the
+creeper, and the flowers.</p>
+
+<p>"Doctor Lessing, if you please, madame,"
+said Monsieur Dupont.</p>
+
+<p>He was shown into a small library, opening
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+on to the garden. The room was flooded with
+sunshine. There were flowers everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mon Dieu</i>," said Monsieur Dupont, aloud,
+"that I should come to ask such questions
+here."</p>
+
+<p>He turned as the door opened, and bowed
+before a sturdy, white-haired old man, bronzed
+with the health of the country.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Dupont?" said the doctor.
+"What can I do for you?"</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont took a letter from his
+pocket, and unfolded it.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur, I beg you to read this letter. It
+is from the French Embassy, and begs assistance
+to me in an investigation that I am making."</p>
+
+<p>Doctor Lessing read the letter, and returned
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be happy to assist you in any way I
+can," he said, courteously. "Please sit down."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont sat down by the open windows
+and drank in the fragrance of the garden.</p>
+
+<p>"Doctor Lessing," he began, "I believe it is
+for a long time that you have lived in this
+beautiful place?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
+"For forty-five years," the old doctor smiled
+contentedly. "But I am by no means one of
+its oldest inhabitants. Lives are long in the
+country. To what period do you wish to
+refer?"</p>
+
+<p>"A period," Monsieur Dupont replied,
+"nearly forty years ago. I do not know
+exactly."</p>
+
+<p>"A long stretch," said Doctor Lessing ruefully.
+"But my memory shall do its best for
+you. That is all I can promise."</p>
+
+<p>"I am engaged," said Monsieur Dupont, "on
+an extraordinary quest. I do not think that
+any human being has ever been engaged on a
+more extraordinary quest."</p>
+
+<p>"A pleasant one, I trust," said the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"As much to the contrary as it is possible
+to imagine."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor murmured a regret and waited
+for his huge visitor to continue.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you," Monsieur Dupont inquired, "recollect
+the name of Winslowe?"</p>
+
+<p>Doctor Lessing started slightly.</p>
+
+<p>"Winslowe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oscar Winslowe."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
+A keen glance flashed from the doctor's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said quickly, "I recollect the
+name."</p>
+
+<p>"He lived, I think in this village at the time
+I have said?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." The reply was a trifle curt.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," Monsieur Dupont proceeded
+evenly, "there were circumstances in connection
+with that name which helped to fix it in
+your memory?"</p>
+
+<p>"There were certain circumstances," the
+doctor admitted, "which made it a name that I
+am unlikely to forget."</p>
+
+<p>"Unpleasant circumstances?" queried Monsieur
+Dupont.</p>
+
+<p>"The most unpleasant that have ever occurred
+to me in the whole length of my practice."</p>
+
+<p>"It is for that story," said Monsieur Dupont,
+"that I have come to ask. May I beg
+all the details that you can recall?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you will first tell me," the doctor
+returned, "for what purpose you require this
+information?"</p>
+
+<p>"I require it," Monsieur Dupont replied impressively,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+"to save the life of an innocent
+man, who is wrongly accused of the crime
+of murder. I require it also prove three
+deaths, and possibly to prevent another three."</p>
+
+<p>Again the doctor started. His hands
+gripped the arms of his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Three deaths?" he exclaimed sharply.
+"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three deaths," repeated Monsieur Dupont.
+"Of three very beautiful women."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor sprang to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"My God!" he cried hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you tell me the story?" said Monsieur
+Dupont.</p>
+
+<p>Doctor Lessing sat down again in his chair.
+He was considerably shaken. He leant back
+and closed his eyes, remaining silent for a few
+moments.</p>
+
+<p>"I think," he began at last, "that I can, at
+all events, remember the chief facts of the case.
+It was such a remarkable and distressing one
+that it stands out in the annals of such a peaceful
+spot as this, and it has therefore remained
+in my memory, though so much else has faded.
+But you must make allowances for the flight
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+of time. Look out of the window to the left,
+and you will see a large red house, on the slope
+of the hill."</p>
+
+<p>"I see it," said Monsieur Dupont, following
+the direction.</p>
+
+<p>"That was Oscar Winslowe's house, forty
+years ago. Winslowe was an unprincipled and
+dissolute man. He was only about twenty-five
+or six at that time, but already he was
+sodden with drink, drugs, and vice of every
+description. He was the worst kind of blackguard.
+But his wife was the exact opposite
+to him, a gentle, delicate girl. She was not
+beautiful, but her nature more than compensated
+for lack of beauty. He had married
+her for her money, and treated her abominably.
+I became friendly with her, partly because of
+the pity I felt for her on account of his treatment,
+and partly because I sincerely admired
+the beauty of her character. In consequence
+of that friendship, I undertook to watch over
+her entry into motherhood."</p>
+
+<p>"That is what I want," said Monsieur Dupont.
+"Her entry into motherhood."</p>
+
+<p>"The more I saw of her," continued the doctor,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+"the greater grew my pity. There have
+been wonderful women in the world who have
+made history by their patience and endurance&mdash;but
+this woman was one of those, equally
+brave and equally patient, of whom history
+knows nothing. She worshipped her husband,
+blindly, dumbly&mdash;as an animal will still love
+the man or woman who ill-treats it. She never
+uttered a word of complaint or blame. Her
+greatest hope was that the advent of the child
+would induce from him something of the consideration
+and tenderness that he had never
+given her. She believed it was some fault,
+some shortcoming, of hers that had kept it
+from her. It didn't occur to her that it might
+be the beauty of another woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said Monsieur Dupont eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"She discovered that about three months before
+the child was born. I can't remember
+how the discovery came about. She followed
+him to London&mdash;and found him, even that
+short time before the birth of his child, lavishing
+on a beautiful society woman all that should
+have been hers."</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the years that had passed the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+doctor's voice still rose in anger. He paused,
+checking himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Before that supreme insult, that shattering
+of her hopes, the poor girl lost her reason.
+In the state of her health, it was not surprising.
+She, who would never have harmed a fly, who
+had never wished ill to any one in her life,
+became possessed with an awful fury to stamp
+out the beauty that had robbed her&mdash;to destroy
+the face and body that were more to the man
+she loved than her own. The other woman,
+undeserving of consideration as she was, narrowly
+escaped a horrible punishment. The unfortunate
+girl was brought back here, and I
+was sent for to attend her. She grew worse
+hour after hour. Her mind was completely
+unhinged. From a furious hatred of the beauty
+of the woman who had wronged her, the mania
+increased into a furious hatred of beauty in any
+shape or form, and a savage lust to destroy it.
+In the house there were many portraits of the
+beautiful women of the Winslowe family. She
+tore the pictures to shreds. There were
+statues and valuable works of art. She
+smashed them all to pulp. Her madness was
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+the most terrible thing I have ever seen. She
+had to be forcibly restrained."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont listened intently. There
+was an expression of triumph on his face.</p>
+
+<p>"A pitiful story," he said softly.</p>
+
+<p>"She partially recovered in a few weeks,"
+the doctor went on, "and before the three
+months were up her reason, if not actually
+sound again, was at least restored. But she
+was a wreck of a woman. There was darkness
+all round her. She heard nothing more of
+Winslowe. He never came back to the house.
+The madness returned when she gave birth to
+her child, and she died in an asylum a fortnight
+afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>A longer pause followed. The recitation of
+his memories moved the good old doctor as
+the actual experience must have moved the
+young man of forty years before. He rose,
+and walked to the window, sniffing the scent
+of the flowers with relief.</p>
+
+<p>"She left the care of the child to the nurse
+who was devoted to her, with ample funds for
+its future. When the affairs were settled up,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+the nurse took the child away with her, and I
+have not seen her since."</p>
+
+<p>He made a relieved gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"That is the whole story," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"The nurse," inquired Monsieur Dupont,
+"what was her name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Masters. Miss Elizabeth Masters."</p>
+
+<p>"Is she still alive?"</p>
+
+<p>"So far as I know she is," the doctor replied.
+"But I should not have been likely
+to have heard of her death, if it had taken
+place."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you assist me to discover her address?"</p>
+
+<p>"She wrote to me periodically," Doctor Lessing
+returned. "She was an excellent nurse,
+and I got her some cases in town. But it is a
+long time since I last heard from her. There
+may be one or two old letters of hers in my
+desk. If you will excuse me for a moment, I
+will see if I can find them for you."</p>
+
+<p>He left the room. Monsieur Dupont turned
+to the window, and gazed dreamily out into
+the sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>"And so," he muttered&mdash;"in this corner of
+paradise the Destroyer was born."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Hasty Flight</span></p>
+
+
+<p>Doctor Lessing re-entered the
+room with a letter in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"The last address I can find," he
+said, "is 35, De Vere Terrace,
+Streatham. That is sixteen years old, but as
+it tells me that she had only just moved in,
+you might find her still there."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont made a note of the address.</p>
+
+<p>"There remains only one question," he said,
+replacing his pocket-book. "Can you tell me
+the name of the child?"</p>
+
+<p>The doctor shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I can't. The child was christened
+in the church here, but I was away at
+the time, and when I returned Miss Masters
+had gone to London."</p>
+
+<p>"It is very important," said Monsieur Dupont.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+"Perhaps I can discover it at the
+church?"</p>
+
+<p>"You will not find any one to tell you at
+this time," the doctor replied. "But, if you
+will leave me your address, I will send over
+to the parsonage this evening and ask Mr.
+Wickham to turn it up in the register, and
+let you know."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont delivered himself of profuse
+thanks. Five minutes later he had taken
+leave of the old doctor, and was returning to
+the station under the guidance of the sunburnt
+youth, who was obviously relieved when the
+expedition terminated.</p>
+
+<p>He slept peacefully until the train reached
+Paddington.</p>
+
+<p>It was five o'clock when he returned to the
+Savoy. The girl, Jenny West, was waiting for
+him. She was as white as death.</p>
+
+<p>"They have charged him," she sobbed. "He
+is remanded for a week."</p>
+
+<p>He laid a hand gently on her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not be afraid," he said. "He will be
+saved. I have given my word&mdash;the word of
+Dupont&mdash;that he will be saved."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+He sat down at his writing table, and wrote
+rapidly for several minutes. He covered four
+or five sheets of paper, and placed them in an
+envelope.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, mademoiselle," he said, rising, "are
+your instructions for to-morrow morning. Do
+not read them until you are alone. A car will
+be waiting for you here at ten o'clock in the
+morning. In the afternoon you will be at
+liberty to visit Monsieur Layton. I shall expect
+to see you here at one o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>He bowed her out of the room. Half an
+hour later, he was on his way to Streatham.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A grim expression settled on his face as the
+journey proceeded, yet it was not altogether
+unmixed with pity. He was a man of ready
+sympathy. The doctor's story had evidently
+moved him to view his task with a new compassion.</p>
+
+<p>As his car turned into De Vere Terrace, he
+became alert, and scrutinized the houses
+closely. They were small semi-detached villas.
+He alighted in front of number 35, passed up
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
+the carefully kept front garden, and knocked
+at the door.</p>
+
+<p>There was no response. He knocked again,
+several times, but the silence of the house remained
+undisturbed. He left the door, and
+glanced in at the front windows, but the room
+was so dark that he could discern nothing.
+He walked round to the back. Through the
+uncurtained kitchen windows he saw a fire
+in the range. It had almost burnt itself out.
+There were cooking utensils on the table.
+Some pastry was rolled out on a board.
+Apparently the household operations had
+been somewhat rudely interrupted, and very
+hastily abandoned. The back door and windows
+were securely fastened. Returning to
+the front, he carefully closed the gate, and
+knocked at the door of the adjoining house.</p>
+
+<p>The name of the house was "Sans Souci,"
+and the door was opened by a lady in rich
+purple, with a string of pearls.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont swept off his hat.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, I make a thousand apologies!
+Can you tell me when I shall find Miss Masters
+at home."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
+His extreme bulk and the fact that he was
+not an Englishman seemed to cause the lady
+considerable amusement.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure I don't know," she said engagingly.
+"I think she's gone away."</p>
+
+<p>"Away?" Monsieur Dupont echoed.</p>
+
+<p>"She left in a great hurry two hours ago,"
+the lady informed him. "In a motor."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont appeared somewhat staggered.</p>
+
+<p>"Two hours ago...." he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard a noise going on in the house,"
+continued the lady, "as if she was packing
+quickly. She went off with a couple of boxes,
+and seemed very impatient."</p>
+
+<p>"It is most unfortunate," said Monsieur Dupont
+mildly. "I have come all the way from
+the Strand to see her."</p>
+
+<p>The lady laughed freely.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm very sorry," she said good-naturedly.
+"Won't you come in and rest a bit?"</p>
+
+<p>"Madame," he said, "you are very good, but
+I must return to the Strand. Would you allow
+me to ask you some questions, without finding
+me impertinent?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+"What are they?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you tell me if any particular person
+was in the habit of visiting Miss Masters?"</p>
+
+<p>The lady stiffened slightly.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you a friend of Miss Masters?" she
+inquired, shortly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not," Monsieur Dupont admitted
+frankly. "I have never seen her. It is a few
+hours ago that I heard her name for the first
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"I really cannot answer any questions to a
+stranger," said the lady stiffly. "I don't know
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont bowed.</p>
+
+<p>"If you did, madame," he said, "I should
+be the proudest of men. Do me the favor to
+read this letter."</p>
+
+<p>He produced the letter from the French
+Embassy, and handed it to her. She read it,
+and was duly impressed.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I'll do anything for the French
+Embassy," she said, returning the letter with
+dignity. "Miss Masters wasn't what you
+might call a friend of mine. I used to speak
+to her because she lived in the next house, but
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+it didn't go beyond that. She kept very much
+to herself. I don't want to say anything at
+all unkind, but very few ladies in our set knew
+her. Of course it wasn't her fault, but she
+was not exactly classy. And when one lives
+in a neighborhood like this, it's class that tells."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont bowed again.</p>
+
+<p>"Obviously, madame," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"The only person that used to visit her,"
+continued the gratified lady, "was a man who
+often used to arrive in the evening and stay the
+night. We understood she was an old nurse
+of his, or something of the kind, and that he
+more or less provided for her."</p>
+
+<p>"And this man, madame&mdash;what was he
+like?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was rather tall," she said, "and had a
+dark moustache. He was always well dressed,
+and looked quite a gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>"You heard his name?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;we never heard his name. I did tell
+my house-parlor-maid to try to find out once,
+but she couldn't. Miss Masters actually accused
+me of prying."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mon Dieu</i>," said Monsieur Dupont.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+"We had a bit of a row," said the lady candidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Does she live alone, madame?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, quite alone. She does everything for
+herself."</p>
+
+<p>"My last question," said Monsieur Dupont,
+"may seem remarkable. It is this. Have
+strange things appeared to be happening in the
+house during the visits of the tall gentleman
+with the dark moustache?"</p>
+
+<p>She started, looking at him curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Strange things?" she repeated slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps&mdash;violent things."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's queer," she exclaimed. "As
+a matter of fact, we once heard the most
+extraordinary noises going on when he was
+there. My husband thought of sending in to
+ask if anything was the matter."</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of noises, madame?"</p>
+
+<p>"Like as it might be heavy things being
+thrown about and smashed," said the lady
+elegantly.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont swept off his hat again.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, madame," he said&mdash;and went
+back to his car.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Tranter Attacks the Crooked House</span></p>
+
+
+<p>In the evening, Tranter set off to the
+Crooked House.</p>
+
+<p>It was dark when he reached it, and the
+roads were empty. Through the open
+lodge gates he slipped into the garden unseen.
+The place seemed deserted. The front of the
+house showed not a glimmer of light. The
+whole ugly shape of it stood out gauntly against
+the sky of the summer night. In the shadow
+of the trees, he stood watching it, alert to detect
+a sign of life. But no such sign appeared.
+The Crooked House was as dark and silent as
+a tomb.</p>
+
+<p>He crept nearer, keeping under cover of the
+trees, and skirted the lawns to the back of the
+house. There, also, darkness reigned. No
+sound disturbed the stillness. Facing him
+were the dark shapes of the trees surrounding
+the wing of the house which extended from
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+the opposite corner. The foliage was so dense
+that no part of the wing itself was visible. He
+moved quickly across the back of the house,
+and reached the trees. As he passed under
+them, it seemed that he was feeling his way
+among monstrous sentinels of a dark mystery.</p>
+
+<p>A thick hedge loomed up in front of him.
+It appeared to surround the entire wing. He
+walked round, trying to find a place thin
+enough to allow him to push his way through&mdash;but
+the hedge was evidently there for the
+express purpose of defeating such an intention.
+It was impossible to penetrate it, to creep under
+it, or to climb over it. At the extremity of
+the wing, about which the trees were thickest,
+he saw a faint light, escaping round the edge
+of a blind.</p>
+
+<p>He stopped beneath it. It was a meager,
+unpleasant light, too dim to be of any greater
+use in the room than to afford the barest relief
+from complete darkness. The window was
+half overgrown with ivy, and he could see that
+it was filthily dirty. The light continually
+flickered, and once or twice it seemed to have
+died out altogether. An eerie sensation began
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+to possess him. He felt very strongly the evil
+influence of the house. Curiosity to discover
+what sinister secret it really harbored increased
+and nerved him.</p>
+
+<p>Again he tried to force a way through the
+hedge, but everywhere it was an impassable
+barrier. Slowly and noiselessly he worked his
+way round the wing, only to find it completely
+enclosed on all sides. He returned, and stood
+looking up at the window. Either the light
+was brighter, or the gap at the edge of the
+blind had widened. He thought he saw a faint
+shadow pass and re-pass.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until, in moving to one side, he
+struck his head against a massive bough of
+one of the great trees that the possibility of
+utilizing them as a means of access to the forbidden
+enclosure occurred to him. He examined
+the bough. It extended well over the
+hedge, and would form a perfectly secure
+bridge. By creeping a few feet along it, he
+would be able to drop down on the other side
+of the hedge. Finding the main trunk, he
+tested his weight on a smaller bough, and
+swung himself up into the tree.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+A few minutes later he stood within the barrier.
+The window was some twelve or fifteen
+feet above him. But the walls were thickly
+clad with ivy, and ivy is an excellent ladder.
+Carefully he began to climb.</p>
+
+<p>He reached the window, found himself a
+secure footing, and peered round the edge of
+the blind. But the light was so poor, and the
+panes were so dirty, on both sides, that had
+there been anything to see he could have been
+very little the wiser. As it was, the small area
+of the room into which he could dimly peer
+seemed to be carpetless and unfurnished.
+There was no movement, no sound. The light
+itself apparently came from the further end
+of the room, from the level of a table. He
+clung on, undecided how to proceed. It appeared
+that the only thing to do was to wait and
+listen for some indication of the purpose of the
+dismal illumination.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at his watch. It was ten-thirty.
+After a wait of what seemed at least half an
+hour, he looked again. Ten minutes only had
+passed. No discernible movement had taken
+place in the room. Yet he felt perfectly, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+very unpleasantly, certain that it was occupied&mdash;that
+something was proceeding within it
+which, had the blind not intervened, would
+have revealed the secret of the house. Of
+what it might be he could form no idea&mdash;but,
+for the first time in his life, he was experiencing,
+in his mental tenseness and the sinister
+silence of the surroundings, that sensation
+which attests a proximity to evil. He was
+daunted. Fear was a condition to which he
+was a stranger, but a vivid nervousness was
+beginning to seize upon him. A sense of personal
+danger, an element which, so far, he had
+scarcely considered, was attacking him, and
+gaining ground. The perspiration was standing
+out on his face. He found that his hands
+were cold and wet. The pulses of his body
+were throbbing; he felt his strength growing
+less. Muttering a curse, he braced himself
+with a strong effort. He was accustomed to
+consider his nerves impregnable. Many times
+in his life he had known himself to be in far
+greater danger than he could attribute to the
+present situation, and such weakness had never
+assailed him. On four occasions he had
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
+been aware that his life was hanging by a
+thread, and had gloried in his own coolness.
+And now ... without a doubt the Crooked
+House was evil.</p>
+
+<p>Still he waited. Another twenty minutes
+slowly passed.</p>
+
+<p>He started. His hands closed tightly on the
+trunk of the ivy to which he was clinging.
+The door of the room had been closed with a
+slam. He could hear heavy footsteps on the
+uncarpeted floor. A shadow blotted out the
+light.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later, a voice&mdash;a man's voice,
+horribly strained and unnatural&mdash;rose in a
+shout of fury.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn you!" it screamed. "Look at your
+work! Look at it again! Open your rotten
+eyes and look! Look! Look!"</p>
+
+<p>Tranter was so startled that he almost lost
+his footing on the ivy. There was no mistaking
+the voice&mdash;it was the scream of madness.
+He listened for an answer, but there was no
+sound in response. Then the same voice
+laughed&mdash;a laugh of awful bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you satisfied? The thing is creeping
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
+on. I am getting nearer to you hour by hour.
+I am more like you to-night. One more grain
+went yesterday&mdash;another to-day. Another
+will go to-morrow...." Again the voice rose
+to a shriek of rage and hatred. "Oh, God!
+There is no hope! No hope! Only on&mdash;and
+on&mdash;to that!"</p>
+
+<p>The words trailed off into a sob of agony.
+Still Tranter could hear no reply.</p>
+
+<p>Silence followed. The shadow again blotted
+out the light; then sprang aside, and the voice
+burst out into a fresh paroxysm of madness,
+yelling a stream of curses at the object of its
+fury. The madman's frenzy was utterly revolting
+to listen to, but Tranter searched it
+closely for some clue to the identity of the
+person, or thing, to whom it was addressed.
+The voice rose again to a shriek; then subsided
+as before into a feeble wail of misery.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh God!" it moaned&mdash;"is there no way
+... no way? No road but that road? No
+end but that end? Oh God, have mercy ...
+have mercy...."</p>
+
+<p>It was a cry of unspeakable anguish&mdash;the
+prayer of a soul in torment. It seemed to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
+Tranter that the speaker had thrown himself
+down, and was beating the floor with his hands.</p>
+
+<p>There was silence again. Then, for the first
+time, Tranter became aware of another presence
+in the room. Though he could neither
+see nor hear anything, he was conscious of a
+new, indefinable movement. For a moment
+horror almost overcame him. He trembled.
+His nerves failed. The support of the ivy
+seemed to be giving way under him. He
+clutched at the framework of the window itself.</p>
+
+<p>The shadow of a figure leapt up from the
+floor and bounded to the window. The blind
+was wrenched aside, the window thrown open,
+and before Tranter had time to recover himself
+or attempt to escape, the livid, distorted face
+of George Copplestone was almost touching
+his own.</p>
+
+<p>A hand closed on his throat in a murderous
+grip, another seized his wrist. In spite of his
+frantic struggles, he was dragged with superhuman
+strength through the window into the
+room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Duel</span></p>
+
+
+<p>On the afternoon of the same day,
+an hour after the departure of Inspector
+Fay, Mrs. Astley-Rolfe had
+sped herself to Richmond, in a
+luxurious motor car, which was her's through
+the instrumentality of Mr. Gluckstein.</p>
+
+<p>She had found the house of George Copplestone
+plunged into the darkness of a house of
+mourning. Every blind was drawn. Every
+particle of color had been removed or draped.
+Black reigned supreme.</p>
+
+<p>Copplestone was not pleased to see her, and
+made no attempt to assume the contrary. He
+was sitting in his library, moody and melancholy,
+still in the half-dazed condition into
+which the death of Christine Manderson had
+cast him. His face was drawn, haggard, and
+sickly; his eyes were bloodshot. He looked up
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+at her with a forbidding frown, and did not
+move from his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" he said curtly.</p>
+
+<p>She waved a hand round the black room.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't this ... a trifle theatrical?" she
+asked coolly.</p>
+
+<p>He said nothing. She sat down opposite to
+him uninvited. She was perfectly self-possessed.</p>
+
+<p>"Inspector Fay was kind enough to call on
+me this morning," she remarked pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>Again there was no reply.</p>
+
+<p>"He may not be an example of dagger-like
+intelligence," she continued, looking at him
+steadily&mdash;"but he is just a little too sharp to
+play with."</p>
+
+<p>He scowled at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you come to tell me that?" he asked
+rudely.</p>
+
+<p>"That&mdash;and other things," she returned unruffled.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to hear them," he retorted.</p>
+
+<p>"They concern you," she said&mdash;"rather
+closely."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to hear them," he repeated.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+Her lips tightened.</p>
+
+<p>"It is scarcely pleasant to be such an obviously
+unwelcome visitor," she said evenly.
+"But I am afraid you must listen."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not in the humor to talk to you,"
+he declared roughly. "I don't want to talk
+to any one. I want to be left alone. Isn't
+it enough to be pestered by the police and the
+papers, and all the damnable business for the
+inquest? Don't you see that my house is in
+mourning? Can't you let me be&mdash;even for a
+few days?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I had let you be," she replied easily,
+"Inspector Fay would probably be here in my
+place&mdash;with much less pleasant intentions."</p>
+
+<p>His glance sharpened.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" he growled.</p>
+
+<p>"You were not wise," she proceeded tranquilly,
+"to treat his mental capabilities with
+quite so much contempt. They are possibly
+not startlingly brilliant, and he is perfectly easy
+to deceive. But even an official detective can
+see through a clumsy lie."</p>
+
+<p>Uneasiness flashed across his face. She
+smiled slightly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+"And I am afraid, my friend, that you are
+a clumsy liar."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what you are talking about,"
+he snapped.</p>
+
+<p>"Come," she said quietly&mdash;"however freely
+we may trifle with the very much overrated
+Arm of the Law, at least let us be honest with
+each other. For some reason or other, you did
+not tell Inspector Fay the truth."</p>
+
+<p>He sat upright with a jerk, flamed with
+passion.</p>
+
+<p>"What the devil is it to do with you?" he
+demanded fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>"I will tell you in a moment," she returned
+smoothly. "When you accounted for your
+time to the inspector, you told him that you
+went into the house to refill your cigarette
+case?"</p>
+
+<p>His lethargy had disappeared. He leant
+forward, staring at her, his hands clutching
+the arms of his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"But, unfortunately, you did not take the
+elementary precaution of having a full case
+to support the story. In nine times out of ten
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
+you would have got away with it. This was
+the tenth."</p>
+
+<p>There was silence for a moment. She sat
+in an easy attitude, meeting his gaze with complete
+confidence. No trace of his previous
+dullness remained. He was alert and taut.</p>
+
+<p>She went on, with delightful smoothness.</p>
+
+<p>"With an unpardonable lack of respect for
+the statement of a gentleman, it occurred to the
+inspector to test the truth of that account. He
+did not want to smoke&mdash;but he asked you for a
+cigarette. It was a gentle trap. There were
+only two in your case."</p>
+
+<p>He ground out an oath under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Obviously you had not gone into the house
+to refill your case. Perhaps you went in for
+some other reason. Perhaps you didn't go in
+at all. Anyway, you lied&mdash;and when people
+deliberately lie in such serious cases as these, it
+may safely be imagined that they have some
+object to serve in doing so. The inspector was
+concerned to discover what your object was.
+So he came to me."</p>
+
+<p>"To you...." he muttered.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+"I told you," she returned, "that he is a little
+too sharp to play with&mdash;clumsily. He suspected,
+from what had been told him, that we
+might have had a stormy scene together, and
+had wished to keep it to ourselves. He was
+quite ready to believe that the time you had
+failed so lamentably to account for had really
+been passed with me in '<i>une petite sc&egrave;ne de
+jalousie</i>.' Fortunately, I had given him a true
+account of myself, which was that I had been
+alone. So after the necessary hesitation, and
+with just the right amount of annoyance, I was
+able to confess that we had both lied, and that
+we had in fact been together&mdash;and he went
+away satisfied. I am a better liar than
+you."</p>
+
+<p>She regarded him serenely. His expression
+was ugly. There was that in the look of him
+that might have daunted any woman, but
+Phyllis Astley-Rolfe had lived chiefly by her
+wits for a sufficient time to be quite impervious
+where another would have been silenced. She
+was as completely without fear as she was
+without scruple. Her objects were objects to
+be gained, by the most convenient and speedy
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
+means, and quite irrespective of considerations
+which might have withheld another from attempting
+to fulfill them. In furtherance of her
+present object, she gave Copplestone look for
+look.</p>
+
+<p>"I return good for evil," she said. "It
+is not a habit of mine. It is really quite contrary
+to my usual practice. I told a lie to
+save you from further suspicion. Considering
+the circumstances, you must admit that it was
+exceedingly generous of me. And I expect
+you to be grateful."</p>
+
+<p>Anything but an expression of gratitude confronted
+her. He remained silent, making a
+strong effort to mask his agitation. But his
+fingers twitched spasmodically, and there was
+unmistakable fear in his eyes. She watched
+him intently, losing no point of the effect she
+had created.</p>
+
+<p>"Well...?" she said steadily.</p>
+
+<p>There was no answer. She bent towards
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"I said you were with me. You were not
+with me. Where were you?"</p>
+
+<p>The man breathed heavily, his baleful gaze
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+fixed on her. She met it with unassailable
+composure.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen," she said slowly&mdash;"there are strange
+things in this house. I know it. I've known
+it for some time. Things that the light of day
+never shines on. What are they?"</p>
+
+<p>He sprang up, and stood over her with
+clenched hands, his face torn with fury.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn you!" he cried hoarsely. "What is
+my house, or what happens in it, to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down," she said firmly. "You are not
+frightening me. To threaten a woman is
+merely to increase her tenacity, and mine requires
+no fortification. Please move away
+from me."</p>
+
+<p>He obeyed, muttering. Her calmness disarmed
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not sure," she continued, "that I
+wanted you to answer my question&mdash;anyway
+at present. Perhaps your secrets might be too
+much, even for my conscience&mdash;and that is saying
+a great deal."</p>
+
+<p>He had resumed his chair. There was a moment's
+pause.</p>
+
+<p>"You were foolish to mock me," she went on.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
+"Mockery is the one thing a woman cannot
+accept, or forgive. She can stand any amount
+of ill-treatment and cruelty, in a sufficient cause.
+But she cannot be mocked in any cause whatever.
+You made me certain promises, which
+honor bound you to fulfil&mdash;and then flung your
+renunciation of them in my face, before
+strangers who understood. It was a very
+mean and low-down thing to do."</p>
+
+<p>A faint, sneering smile passed over his face.
+Her voice hardened.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not a woman to defy&mdash;and I am still
+less a woman to mock. You are going to keep
+your promises."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll see you in hell first!" he retorted
+brutally.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed. "You will not see me in hell
+first," she said calmly. "You may quite possibly
+see me in hell after&mdash;because if there is
+a hell we shall certainly meet there. But in
+the meantime&mdash;you are going to redeem your
+word."</p>
+
+<p>He made a slow gesture round the black
+room.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
+"You come to me now ... within a few
+hours...."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" she returned hardly.</p>
+
+<p>"Almost before her body is cold...."</p>
+
+<p>She shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Christine Manderson was an incident," she
+said indifferently. "A disagreeable episode.
+She merely infatuated you, as she might have
+infatuated any man. She has passed."</p>
+
+<p>"Passed," he muttered. "Passed...."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not profess to equal her in appearance,"
+she admitted. "But I am not repulsive.
+I am considered to be extremely good-looking,
+and I am much more interesting to talk to than
+she was. Also, I am well-bred. Most people
+would find the balance in my favor. But, even
+if you do not, the difference can only be very
+small. You will have to make the best of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Or else?" he snarled.</p>
+
+<p>"Or else, if you prefer it, I will exchange
+your promises for the secrets of this house&mdash;with
+no undertaking to keep them."</p>
+
+<p>He sat biting his nails in the suppression of
+his rage. She languidly corrected the folds of
+her dress, leant back in a charming attitude,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+and waited with unassailable self-possession.
+The silence was long.</p>
+
+<p>"How much do you want?" he demanded,
+at last.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not asking you for money," she replied
+coldly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am offering it unasked," he retorted.
+"How much do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you had offered to buy back your promises
+a week ago," she said, "I might have sold
+them to you. I do not know that I particularly
+looked forward to their fulfilment. But you
+flaunted another woman in my face."</p>
+
+<p>"Put it all in the bill," he said coarsely.</p>
+
+<p>"Therefore I will give you nothing back.
+You shall have only your bond."</p>
+
+<p>"Why waste your breath on heroics to me?"
+he sneered. "You would sell your soul for
+money. You have often boasted it."</p>
+
+<p>"I would sell my soul for money any day,"
+she agreed frankly&mdash;"but not my pride. I am
+too much of a sinner already to scruple over the
+disposal of my soul. But it would not profit
+me to gain the whole world, and lose my pride."</p>
+
+<p>"Bosh!" he said contemptuously. "Pride
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+pays no bills&mdash;and you owe too many to let it
+deprive you of the pleasure of getting rid of
+a few."</p>
+
+<p>"That is as it may be," she returned. "I
+have told you the only exchange I will make."</p>
+
+<p>He sprang up again. This time his anger
+was scornful.</p>
+
+<p>"Fool!" he cried harshly. "Take your
+warning! Do you think my secrets&mdash;if I have
+any&mdash;are for you? Or that I, myself, am for
+you? Why do you try to force yourself on to
+dangerous ground? There are things in the
+world into which it is not good to pry."</p>
+
+<p>"Plenty," she said, unmoved.</p>
+
+<p>"I may have made you careless promises,"
+he admitted. "I have made many women
+promises. It is a bad habit. I cannot keep
+them. I cannot, and will not, marry you, or
+any other woman. The only one I might have
+married ... is dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Again you throw her in my face," she
+murmured, through closed teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay I used you meanly," he acknowledged.
+"I <i>did</i> use you meanly. It was not
+the game to do what I did that night. I freely
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
+admit it. And I offer you reparation&mdash;the
+only reparation I can make. It would be the
+wisest act of your life to take it."</p>
+
+<p>"You have heard my conditions," she replied.
+"I shall not change them. Unlike most
+women, I have been gifted with the faculty of
+being able to make up my mind. The time for
+compromise has passed."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't care for me," he persisted.
+"You couldn't care for any man. You're not
+capable of it. It's not in you."</p>
+
+<p>"Whether or not I care for you does not enter
+into the matter at all," she rejoined calmly.
+"My capability for affection has no bearing
+on the present question."</p>
+
+<p>"You were relying on marrying me to pay
+your debts," he declared. "You could not have
+built a more forlorn hope. I should not pay
+your debts if I did marry you. I will give you
+five thousand pounds for your lie this morning."</p>
+
+<p>She was very angry. The insult dashed all
+the color from her face, leaving it white and
+set in lines that made her look almost old.
+Her eyes glittered menacingly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+"You dare," she said slowly, "to offer <i>me</i>
+five thousand pounds?"</p>
+
+<p>"And consider yourself damned lucky!"
+he retorted.</p>
+
+<p>He took out his case, and lit a cigarette
+with a show of indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not bound to offer you anything," he
+said carelessly. "That small point seems to
+have escaped you. You have no claim on me.
+I consider my suggestion an exceedingly generous
+one. You can take it or leave it. It's
+all you'll get."</p>
+
+<p>She rose.</p>
+
+<p>"You insult me again," she said, in measured
+tones. "You are not wise."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed easily.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Phyllis," he said, "you are adorable
+in a rage&mdash;but I am afraid I must steel
+myself against your gentle exactions. Let me
+convince you that I am really treating you in
+a highly preferential manner. During my
+career three women have attempted to blackmail
+me. They were all ugly&mdash;so they got
+nothing. You are charming&mdash;so you get five
+thousand pounds. That is the most I have
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
+ever paid for my smaller indiscretions. And
+I take the liberty of thinking it more than sufficient
+compensation for the few erroneous impressions
+I may have allowed you to contract."</p>
+
+<p>"You are making the mistake," she said,
+in the same controlled tones, "of imagining
+that you are buying back your promises to me,
+which I can quite understand that you value
+lightly. But I have told you that those promises
+are not for sale. You have wandered
+from the real issue. You are not buying the
+promises of your heart&mdash;you are buying the
+secrets of your house. Are they not on a different
+scale of values?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know nothing of my house," he returned.
+"You do not know whether there are
+secrets in it or not."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," she confessed candidly.
+"Possibly there are not. But I am prepared
+to take a sporting chance that there are. And
+if I am wrong&mdash;so much the better for you."</p>
+
+<p>He was silent, looking at her thoughtfully,
+as if carefully weighing his course of action.</p>
+
+<p>"You were under the suspicion of Scotland
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
+Yard," she reminded him, "until I told my
+lie. You will be under it again if I admit my
+lie. Inspector Fay would certainly not rest
+until he had thoroughly investigated your reasons
+for giving a false account of yourself.
+He is by no means a fool&mdash;and I very much
+doubt that he is to be bought, anyway so reasonably
+as I am."</p>
+
+<p>Copplestone's face wore a strange expression.
+There was now no animosity in it, but
+rather a mild resignation, in strange contrast
+to his previous anger.</p>
+
+<p>"So," he said, after a pause, "you would
+put them on to me again...?"</p>
+
+<p>"I need not have taken them off you," she
+replied.</p>
+
+<p>"I have offered you five thousand pounds
+for that," he said slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"I have refused them."</p>
+
+<p>"Think over it well," he advised her impressively.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not need to," she returned.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment they faced each other steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that&mdash;finally?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Finally," she answered.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+He moved to a door at the further end of
+the room, and opened it.</p>
+
+<p>"Come," he said quietly. "You have gone
+too far to draw back. You shall see the secrets
+of my house. Follow me."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Secret of the House</span></p>
+
+
+<p>She followed him out of the black room
+into a dark, narrow passage.</p>
+
+<p>Her calmness and self-possession
+remained undisturbed. Without a
+tremor she accepted this unexpected invitation
+to the secrets of the Crooked House&mdash;quite
+ignorant of, and indifferent to, the danger to
+which she might be committing herself. That
+there were hidden things in the house she had
+for a long time been convinced, but of their
+nature she had been unable to form even a conjecture,
+in spite of many attempts to creep into
+the mystery. Copplestone's sudden decision
+to reveal them to her was a surprise, and an
+unpleasant check to the development of her
+schemes. Either he placed a much lower
+value on his secrets than she had expected, or
+her participation in them was by no means to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+be dreaded to the extent that she had relied
+upon. In any case her position was considerably
+weakened, and the success of her plans
+was no longer the assured thing she had believed
+it to be.</p>
+
+<p>In silence they ascended a flight of stairs,
+and reached a door which appeared to be the
+entrance into a separate part of the building.
+It was a massive oak door, fitted with double
+locks of remarkable strength for a private
+house. Copplestone held it open, motioning
+her to pass before him, and relocked it on the
+other side. She was still without any nervousness,
+but her curiosity increased with every
+step. He led the way on, and she followed
+him unhesitatingly. They traversed several
+corridors, and turned many corners. Her
+sense of direction told her that they had
+entered an extreme wing of the house, hidden
+away among the thickest trees of the garden,
+and to all appearances unused. The place
+was damp, dusty, and silent, with the intense
+silence of emptiness. Some of the doors were
+open, showing unfurnished, neglected rooms.
+The papers were peeling off the walls; the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+fittings were covered with the rust and dirt
+of years; the soiled blinds half covered the
+closed, uncleaned windows. The atmosphere
+was close and unhealthy.</p>
+
+<p>"What a parable of waste!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>He did not reply. They came to a square
+landing, and another heavy door faced them.
+Copplestone stopped, and for a moment stood
+looking at her intently. She did not flinch.
+He shrugged his shoulders, and took a key
+from his pocket. It was a peculiar key, and
+was attached to a strong chain. He fitted it
+into the lock, and opened the door. Then he
+turned to her again, and she saw a change
+coming over his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Go in," he said curtly.</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated, for the first time. He
+withdrew the key, and returned it to his
+pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"You need not be afraid," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I will follow you," she returned, watching
+him carefully.</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders again, and went
+into the room. She entered after him.</p>
+
+<p>It was a long, low room. There was a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+window at the far end, but it was so dirty, and
+the curtains in front of it were so thick and
+discolored, that the place was in semi-darkness,
+and the air overwhelmingly heavy and unwholesome.
+There was a little rough furniture,
+a strip of worn carpet on the floor, and
+some untasted food on the table&mdash;but it was not
+any of those dismal objects that attached the
+woman's gaze. It was rather a white, pasty
+face that seemed to gleam at her from the
+darkest corner of the room&mdash;the drawn pallid
+face, and dull lifeless eyes, of a white-haired
+man, who was sitting in a huddled, contorted
+attitude on a bare wooden chair.</p>
+
+<p>She shrank back with a startled exclamation,
+and turned to Copplestone. His face was
+convulsed with fury, his eyes aflame with
+hatred.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" he said harshly.</p>
+
+<p>She drew away from him fearfully.</p>
+
+<p>"What wickedness is this?" she shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"None of mine," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>The vacant eyes rested on them with a fixed
+stare, completely devoid of intelligence. The
+huddled figure evinced no sign of life. It appeared
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
+to be unconscious of their presence.
+Copplestone advanced a few paces; but the
+woman hung back, horrified.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that ... a living thing?" she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed&mdash;an unnatural, metallic laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said&mdash;"it's living ... with as
+much life as its sins have left it, and its rotten
+body can hold."</p>
+
+<p>He turned back to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Come nearer," he said. "There is nothing
+to be afraid of."</p>
+
+<p>But the glassy stare of the motionless figure
+had unnerved her. She was white, and shaking.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," she muttered, shrinking further
+back.</p>
+
+<p>He seized her arm.</p>
+
+<p>"I warned you," he cried roughly, "but you
+wouldn't listen. You were brave enough then&mdash;when
+you thought I daren't stand up to you.
+You shall learn your lesson&mdash;you who talked
+so glibly of my secrets. Come closer."</p>
+
+<p>He dragged her with him towards the
+corner.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+"Look!" he commanded. "Look at that
+thing in front of you&mdash;that thing crouching
+there like an ape. It was once a man. It was
+once an active, intelligent, healthy human being&mdash;a
+strong handsome member of a strong
+handsome family. Everything was in its
+favor. There were no obstacles in its path.
+It had many more natural gifts than the average
+man is endowed with. It might have
+ruled an empire. It might have loaded its
+name with honor, and left it to its children. It
+had the capability, the power, and the opportunity
+to leave the world a better place than it
+found it. Look at it now."</p>
+
+<p>She stood silent, her head turned away. He
+went on, with increasing rage.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at that man now! He has brought
+himself to a state of gibbering insanity by a
+life of indulgence in every form of vice and
+depravity known to humanity. He knowingly
+and deliberately drained his mental and
+physical resources by every insult to nature
+that depraved men and women&mdash;the lowest
+creatures of the earth&mdash;have devised for the
+satisfaction of their diseased senses. He was
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+a drunkard and drug-fiend before he was
+twenty. Every effort was made to check and
+reclaim him, but he defied them all. He was
+fully warned. He knew what the consequences
+would be. He knew that nature cannot
+be violated continuously without exacting
+her penalty, sooner or later. But he plunged
+on. Step by step he brought himself to this.
+His brain and his body are decaying from the
+unnameable excesses he has committed with
+both. He is literally rotting in front of us at
+this moment."</p>
+
+<p>She put her hands up to her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Can he hear you?" she gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," he replied savagely. "Perhaps
+he can. I hope he can. I hope he can
+hear every word. It wouldn't be the first time
+he had heard the story of his shame. And it
+won't be the last. Curse him!"</p>
+
+<p>She tried to draw him back.</p>
+
+<p>"Come away," she cried. "How can you
+stand in front of the poor creature, and talk
+like that before his face?"</p>
+
+<p>His iron grip closed on her wrist, and held
+her helpless.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+"Why not?" he demanded, with dreadful
+bitterness. "Why should he be spared because
+he is suffering a fraction of the just and
+natural consequences of his own deliberate
+acts? What is there to pity in that? It is a
+merciful retribution. If you have any sympathy
+to show&mdash;show it to me."</p>
+
+<p>"To you?" she echoed.</p>
+
+<p>"To me," he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>She screamed, and tried to wrench herself
+from his grasp. The horrible head had begun
+to move slowly from side to side. A faint,
+ghastly smile appeared round the twisted
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go," she cried. "It's too dreadful."</p>
+
+<p>He dragged her round again.</p>
+
+<p>"You forced yourself into my secrets," he
+said hardly. "It is too late to shrink back
+now. You shall know them to the full&mdash;and
+then you may go."</p>
+
+<p>He paused, still holding her. In her horror,
+and under the sickly, stifling atmosphere of the
+room, she was almost fainting. But he paid
+no heed to her condition. His eyes were fixed
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+malignantly on the grinning object of his
+hatred.</p>
+
+<p>"That man," he said slowly, "was free from
+any hereditary weakness. His viciousness
+was not inherent. He came of a good, clean
+stock. When he was thirty&mdash;although the inevitable
+results of his violations had already
+seized upon him&mdash;he committed the crime of
+marrying. It was the foulest sin of his life.
+He knew what the result would be&mdash;what it
+was bound by every natural law to be. He
+knew that the sins of the fathers must be visited
+on the children"&mdash;he clenched his hands,
+and she winced as her wrist was crushed in
+his grip&mdash;"and knowing that, he dared to
+marry."</p>
+
+<p>His voice rose. His face began to work
+with passion.</p>
+
+<p>"He married a good woman&mdash;who bore all
+the cruelties he heaped upon her because she
+loved him. Her money had been his only consideration&mdash;and
+when he had got all that he treated her like dirt. But there are
+limits even to what a woman can bear. He broke her
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>
+heart, and she died ... mad. If only she
+had died a little sooner...."</p>
+
+<p>She steadied herself with an effort.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is he?" she asked. "Why is he here,
+in your house?"</p>
+
+<p>A flood of fury shook him.</p>
+
+<p>"His name is Oscar Winslowe," he said
+fiercely. "He is my father."</p>
+
+<p>She uttered a sharp cry, and wrenched her
+hand away from him.</p>
+
+<p>"Your father? That creature ... your
+father...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he cried wildly&mdash;"he is my father.
+I am George Copplestone Winslowe. Do you
+wonder that I hate him? I am the victim of
+his vices&mdash;the heir to his sins. He has left
+me the legacy of outraged nature. I am mad."</p>
+
+<p>She recoiled from him, panting. He was
+beside himself. His face was distorted; madness
+glared in his eyes. Then, suddenly, the
+paroxysm left him. He turned to her weakly,
+with the appeal of his utter despair.</p>
+
+<p>"Pity me," he said. "Oh, if you are capable
+of pitying anything in this dreadful world,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
+pity me! My awful inheritance is closing in
+on me. Every day one more grain of reason
+leaves me. Like him, I might have been a
+leader of men. Like him, I have power and
+capability. I have a brain that could have
+raised me to the greatest heights. I have a
+body that can bear any strain. But I am
+mad."</p>
+
+<p>His agony was pitiful. He sobbed, wringing
+his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I can feel the hideous thing growing in
+me, hour by hour&mdash;a little more&mdash;a little more.
+I can feel its clutch tightening on me. And
+I can't resist. I can't escape. The little mental
+balance I have is being dragged away from
+me. In a few years&mdash;if I let myself live to
+it&mdash;I shall be a babbling maniac. Nothing
+can save me. I knew it when I was a boy&mdash;before
+that thing there completely lost its reason.
+I knew I was born a madman for my father's
+sins. It crept on me gradually&mdash;one sign after
+another&mdash;one horrible secret impulse after another.
+The slow, sure growth of madness."
+He buried his face in his hands. "Oh, God!
+Oh, God!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
+In the silence that followed the figure on
+the chair straightened itself with a jerk, and
+gibbered at him, twitching spasmodically.
+The woman turned away, shaking.</p>
+
+<p>"I live in hell," he moaned&mdash;"in all the torment
+of the uttermost hell. I fly from one
+thing to another for respite, for relief&mdash;but
+there is no relief. I can only make madness of
+them all. Everything twists and turns in my
+hands. I can keep nothing straight." Then
+another gust of passion seized him. He
+shouted, beating his hands together. "What
+right," he cried furiously, "have men and
+women to marry and bequeath disease and madness
+to their children? What right have they
+to propagate the rottenness of their minds and
+bodies? It's worse than murder. It's the
+cruelest, the most wicked, of all crimes. What
+are the feelings of a child to such parents?
+Is it not to hate them&mdash;as I hate that foul thing
+there?&mdash;to curse them, as I curse him, with
+every breath?" His arms dropped limply to
+his sides. "What is the use of hating?" he
+said dully. "It can't cure me. It can't cure
+me."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+He looked at her fixedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" he asked bitterly. "You know the
+secrets of my house. Are you satisfied?"</p>
+
+<p>She laid a hand on his arm, and turned him
+gently towards the door. There were tears
+in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Come away," she said weakly. "Let us
+speak somewhere else."</p>
+
+<p>He followed her. They went out, without
+another look at the figure behind them, and
+returned in silence to the black room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Truer Colors</span></p>
+
+
+<p>A great change had come over her.
+All the hardness had disappeared
+from her face. It was transformed
+by a wonderful new pity&mdash;a latent
+compassion, stirred for the first time by this
+miserable man's utter tragedy. And so transformed
+she was very lovely&mdash;with a loveliness
+that all the arts of an accomplished society
+woman had never bestowed upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me," she said gently. "I would
+not have said what I did if I had even thought
+... of that."</p>
+
+<p>He looked down at her, a world of agony in
+his tortured eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he asked&mdash;"do you still want to
+marry me ... now?"</p>
+
+<p>For an instant the old hardness flashed
+back.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+"You would have married <i>her</i>," she returned.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder," he said slowly. "I wonder
+... if I should."</p>
+
+<p>His gaze wandered vacantly round the room.</p>
+
+<p>"She intoxicated me," he said. "Her
+memory intoxicates me still. She set fire to
+all my passions. She made me forget the barrier.
+But I think I really hated her. Perhaps
+... if she hadn't died in the garden
+... I might have killed her...."</p>
+
+<p>The madness was leaving him, and the
+weakness of reaction taking its place. He put
+a hand on her shoulder, and leant heavily on
+her. His face was mild and kind&mdash;the face
+of the normal man.</p>
+
+<p>"Phyllis," he said softly, "I mocked you, and
+treated you badly. But it wasn't really I.
+Forgive a poor madman the sins of his madness."</p>
+
+<p>She made no attempt to check her tears.
+He took her hand, as gently as a child.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't cry," he begged. "See&mdash;I am all
+right now. Sit down, and let us talk."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+Still leaning on her, he moved to a couch,
+and drew her down beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"First," he said, "I will tell you why I lied
+to Inspector Fay. I did not go into the house
+to fill my cigarette case. I was mad. It came
+on me&mdash;as it often does&mdash;when I see sane people
+about me&mdash;a rush of hatred and despair."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke dispassionately, without a trace
+of the terrible disorder that had possessed him
+a few minutes before. Only the gloom remained&mdash;the
+shadow that never left him.</p>
+
+<p>"You can understand," he went on, "what
+my life has been since this cloud first settled
+on me. I tried to fight against it&mdash;but how
+could I fight against a thing that I knew to be
+there, creeping on me day after day&mdash;when
+I knew that in the end I must give way?
+Every hour seemed to bring some fresh proof
+of the madness that was in me&mdash;some proof
+that made resistance more and more futile and
+hopeless. A thousand times I have been
+tempted to kill myself&mdash;but always there was
+the dim, desperate hope that some miraculous
+twist of sanity might yet deliver me. I can't
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
+convey to you a tenth&mdash;a hundredth&mdash;part of
+the agony of that struggle. There were times
+when I shrank into the farthest corner of my
+darkest cellar, and prayed, as only a madman
+could pray, to be spared from the unjust curse.
+There were times when I stood out on the roof
+of my house, and defied the God I had prayed
+to...."</p>
+
+<p>He stared straight out in front of him, a
+figure of unutterable pathos&mdash;a helpless accuser
+of Eternal Laws.</p>
+
+<p>"If I were suffering for a fault of my own,
+I would bear my punishment uncomplaining.
+But I am innocent. I have done nothing to
+deserve this torture. And there is always the
+thought of what I might have been&mdash;of what
+I know I could have been. That is the cruelest
+torment of all. I have to see sane men
+and women wasting every minute of their lives&mdash;without
+the slightest appreciation of the
+value, or the responsibilities, of reason&mdash;who
+might as well be mad, for all the use they are
+to their fellow-creatures. And I...." He
+broke off. "That is enough about myself," he
+said. "I want to talk about you."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
+He looked at her in surprise, as if noticing
+the alteration in her for the first time.</p>
+
+<p>"How changed you are," he said. "You
+have never looked like that before. You have
+always been so hard. Why have you never
+looked like that before?"</p>
+
+<p>She was silent. She bent her head, as if
+ashamed of betraying herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Was all that hardness ... only a cloak
+... to hide yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>He seized her hand tightly.</p>
+
+<p>"You fool! You fool!" he cried&mdash;"to make
+yourself hard and unfeeling and unnatural&mdash;to
+try to stamp all the heart out of your life&mdash;to
+blaspheme your sex. Don't you know that
+a hard woman is the most terrible thing in the
+world? Don't you know that while men dare
+to think that they have the image of God, it is
+women who can really have the heart of God?
+And to think that all the time you have disguised
+yourself, you have been capable of looking
+like that."</p>
+
+<p>"I have been up against the world," she
+said. "I have never had enough money to be
+soft-hearted. No woman with feeling can get
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+five hundred per cent. out of her income."</p>
+
+<p>"What does it matter," he returned, "if she
+can get five hundred per cent. out of life?"</p>
+
+<p>He still held her hand, his eyes fixed longingly
+on her face.</p>
+
+<p>"If only I were not mad," he said, with all
+his sadness&mdash;"now I know that you are really
+a woman...."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go," she said brokenly, withdrawing
+her hand from his.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet," he returned, detaining her.
+"There is something more I want to do." He
+paused. "My dear," he said softly, "an hour
+ago I would not have married you even if I had
+been sane. Now I want to marry you although
+I am mad. But, since that cannot be, there is
+something else." He released her, and stood
+up. "I want you always to look like that," he
+said. "I want you to forget that you have ever
+tried to disguise yourself. I want to make it
+possible for you to go through the rest of your
+life with your heart in its proper place."</p>
+
+<p>He took his check book from his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," she said quickly&mdash;"not that."</p>
+
+<p>"Please," he insisted.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>
+"I would have taken it before," she said,
+forcing back her tears. "But not now."</p>
+
+<p>"You must," he declared. "My money is
+no use to me. I can't do anything worth doing
+with it. With all my fantastic extravagancies,
+I only spend a small part of my income.
+The rest has been accumulating for
+years. I shall never use it, and when I die
+it will pass to some one I have never seen. It
+is doing no good&mdash;and I want it to do some
+good. What better thing could I do with it
+than give it ... to the woman I would marry
+if I could?"</p>
+
+<p>She sprang up.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake," she cried, "don't say that!
+I can't bear it!"</p>
+
+<p>He laid a hand again on her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you care?" he asked slowly. "I don't
+think you cared before. I thought you were
+only sorry for me now. Do you really care?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do care!" she cried recklessly. "I care&mdash;and
+care&mdash;and care. My God, how I
+care!"</p>
+
+<p>He turned his face upwards, and over it
+passed a dreadful, mocking smile.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+"O God of Mercy!" he muttered&mdash;"another
+torment!"</p>
+
+<p>He drew away from her.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall do this for you," he said firmly.
+"I intend to do this. And then we must not
+see each other again. I hope that when you
+marry, as you must, you will marry a good,
+clean man&mdash;a man who can stand out among
+his fellow-creatures, and need not shrink away
+from them, as I must. I want you to be very
+happy and bring happy children to the world...."
+His voice shook. "And forget there
+are unfortunate people in it ... who may
+only gaze hungrily over the gulf that they can
+never cross."</p>
+
+<p>He left her sobbing, and went to his writing
+table.</p>
+
+<p>"No one will know," he said. "I will draw
+it to myself. The bank is quite close here. I
+will walk there and cash it at once."</p>
+
+<p>He wrote the check, and rose.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait for me here," he said. "I shall only
+be a few minutes." And he went out with the
+face of a stricken man.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Providing for the Worst</span></p>
+
+
+<p>Though Inspector Fay had disclosed
+no more than was necessary for the
+purpose of the initial charge, the arrest
+of James Layton was popularly
+considered to have solved the mystery of the
+murder of Christine Manderson.</p>
+
+<p>No one realized more fully than Layton himself
+the overwhelming strength of the case
+against him. He was as good as condemned
+already. Beyond his own assertion of innocence,
+he was utterly defenseless against a
+sequence of evidence that might well have shattered
+the strongest reply. And he was without
+any reply at all, except his own denial. He
+could only admit the truth of the damning
+train of circumstances, in face of which his
+mere word was hopelessly&mdash;and, he was compelled
+to acknowledge, justly&mdash;inadequate.
+The secret of his identity&mdash;most crushing fact
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+of all&mdash;was lost. He was the Michael Cranbourne
+whom Christine Manderson, then Thea
+Colville, had drawn on to ruin and disgrace.
+He had threatened her, in the presence of
+witness, with just such an end as she had met
+with. He had been seen lurking in the garden
+at the time of the crime. He had been beside
+himself. And to all that he had no more convincing
+answer than the plea of not guilty.
+He placed himself, quite dispassionately, in
+the position of his own judge and jury. There
+could be only one result.</p>
+
+<p>The strange message of hope, brought to him
+by Jenny West, from a mysterious foreigner
+who had declared knowledge of his innocence
+and of half the truth, aroused his curiosity, if
+no more. That one person, at all events, had
+discovered, and was apparently pursuing, an
+alternative to his own guilt was interesting,
+if a slender encouragement to build on. He
+was not disposed to cling to flimsy hopes. He
+accepted his position with perfect calmness.
+Since the confession of his identity to Inspector
+Fay a load seemed to have been lifted from
+his mind, and with it had passed the revival
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>
+of mad passion which the sight of Christine
+Manderson's fatal beauty had aroused. He
+found himself able to dwell on her memory&mdash;even
+to contemplate her death&mdash;with a cold detachment
+which surprised himself. He no
+longer shrank from conjuring up her image&mdash;but
+now it was a dead image from a dead
+world. And&mdash;not without surprise also, and
+perhaps a certain satisfaction&mdash;he found himself
+looking forward to a visit from Jenny
+West.</p>
+
+<p>She came to him at the appointed time. She
+was very white. The deep shadows of sleepless
+grief and anxiety were round her eyes&mdash;but
+in them shone the fire of a dogged, dauntless
+courage. Her great untamed soul was
+aflame with revolt against the implacable circumstances
+that had placed the man whose
+name a thousand had blessed on the highroad
+to the gallows. She threw herself against the
+wall of facts with all the force of her primitive
+love. She was one of those whose trust rises
+to its greatest heights when opposed to reason.</p>
+
+<p>He greeted her kindly. He was cheerful
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>
+and composed. He showed that he was glad
+to see her.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall save you, Jim!" she declared,
+straining back the tears that sprang to her
+eyes at his kindness. "I know we shall! I
+know it!"</p>
+
+<p>"God will save His workman," he returned
+quietly&mdash;"if it is His will."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her closely. And something
+very like affection came into his face.</p>
+
+<p>"You are pale," he said. "You are over
+strained. You haven't slept."</p>
+
+<p>She bent her head, to hide her brimming
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"My child...." he said gently.</p>
+
+<p>"What does it matter," she sobbed, "if I
+haven't slept? How can I sleep&mdash;when you
+are ... here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, my dear," he said&mdash;"we must face
+this thing squarely. It's no use trying to shut
+our eyes to the truth, however unpleasant it
+may be. As the case stands at present, no
+jury in the world could acquit me. I have
+no reply to the charge, except to declare that
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>
+I did not kill Christine Manderson&mdash;and that
+will not help me. The evidence is more than
+enough to satisfy any impartial, clear-thinking
+man or woman. It would satisfy me.
+That I know myself to be innocent will not assist
+me to establish my innocence. Thousands
+of things may happen in the meantime&mdash;but I
+must prepare to suffer the penalty for a crime
+that I did not commit."</p>
+
+<p>"You shall not!" she cried passionately.
+"If there is justice in heaven or earth, you
+shall not!"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not cling to life," he returned. "It
+has very little to give me, or to take away.
+Men may find me guilty&mdash;but I shall stand
+before God innocent. It will not be the first
+time I have stood before God."</p>
+
+<p>A spark of his old fanaticism flashed into
+his eyes for a moment, then faded.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be ready," he said steadily, "for
+whatever He sends."</p>
+
+<p>"Men shall not find you guilty," she declared.
+"There are three people working for
+you. The truth will be discovered."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+"Your mysterious Frenchman?" he smiled.
+"What has he done?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," she confessed. "He tells
+me nothing&mdash;except to keep on promising that
+you will be saved. And that is enough for
+me."</p>
+
+<p>A frown darkened Layton's face.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you would not put yourself so completely
+into the hands of a stranger," he said
+doubtfully. "Who and what, is this man?
+And how does he come to be mixed up in this
+affair?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know nothing whatever about him," she
+replied. "But there is something that makes
+me trust him. I believe he will keep his
+promise."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like it," he insisted.</p>
+
+<p>"If I didn't help him," she said, "I could
+do nothing. And I should go mad."</p>
+
+<p>"What has he given you to do?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I promised not to tell any one," she hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"You had better tell me. You have no one
+else to protect you."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+"It is something I can't understand," she
+said slowly. "This morning I had to write
+out the names and addresses of all the Art and
+Picture Dealers from the <i>Directory</i>, and this
+afternoon I am to go round in a car to as many
+of them as I can, with a letter from the French
+Embassy, to ask if any articles have ever been
+supplied to, or orders taken from, a Miss
+Masters, of 35, De Vere Terrace, Streatham,
+and if so, what."</p>
+
+<p>Layton stared at her in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"What possible connection can that have
+with the case?" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," she said again. "I've tried
+to think."</p>
+
+<p>"The French Embassy," he mused. "That
+is strange...."</p>
+
+<p>He checked himself, and looked at his watch.</p>
+
+<p>"You time is nearly up," he said. "Listen
+to me carefully. There is one very important
+thing that I want you to understand. Whatever
+may develop in the meantime, I intend
+to prepare for the worst."</p>
+
+<p>He kept her silent with a firm gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"My work must go on. No matter what
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
+happens to me, my work must go on. And
+it must be carried on as I have begun it, by
+some one who has worked with me, and understands
+my objects&mdash;by some one who is human,
+and unlimited by sect or creed. I don't want
+to make people religious&mdash;it would spoil most
+of them. I want to make them healthy and
+happy. I would rather they were clean pagans
+than unclean Christians. No soul is saved or
+lost because it happens to take a certain view
+of the Mysteries of God. It is the bodies I
+care for&mdash;the bodies I want to build. Humanity
+should be a song of thanksgiving, not
+a prayer for alleviation."</p>
+
+<p>The fires kindled again. His face was lit
+up.</p>
+
+<p>"You must continue my work. If I should
+have to leave it ... you will find everything
+yours. There is over a million. Use it as
+I have taught you. Use it to help children
+to grow into men and women, and men and
+women to grow into old men and women. Use
+it to help human beings against the cruelties
+they inflict on each other&mdash;and animals against
+the cruelties inflicted on them. Promise me
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>
+that if the worst happens, you will go on where
+I leave off."</p>
+
+<p>Tears blinded her. She could not speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Promise," he insisted.</p>
+
+<p>"I will," she sobbed. "I will go on&mdash;as long
+as I can live after you."</p>
+
+<p>He stood still, looking at her fixedly. There
+was the dawn of an awakening on his face.</p>
+
+<p>"My God!" he whispered, "I was wrong.
+I do cling to life. I want to live. O God,
+save me!"</p>
+
+<p>And the girl uttered a great sigh of thankfulness,
+and fell fainting against the wire partition
+that stood between them.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Disappearance of Tranter</span></p>
+
+
+<p>At one o'clock on the following day,
+Monsieur Dupont sat in his room
+waiting for Tranter. At half-past
+one he had become impatient. At
+two he seized the telephone directory, and, a
+minute later, the instrument. At two-thirty
+he obtained his number.</p>
+
+<p>The answer to his first question stiffened
+him into an attitude of rigid tensity.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Tranter is not in, sir," a voice told
+him. "He has disappeared."</p>
+
+<p>"Disappeared?" Monsieur Dupont echoed
+sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"We do not know what has happened to
+him. He went out last night at nine o'clock,
+and has not returned."</p>
+
+<p>"Not returned...." the listener muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"We are getting anxious," the voice went
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
+on. "He left orders for his supper, and there
+is no doubt that he intended to return. We
+have telephoned to the hospitals and the police
+stations, but nothing has been heard of him.
+Do you happen to know where he was going?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's pause. Monsieur
+Dupont's hands were clenched so tightly round
+the instrument that the veins stood out on
+them like cords.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said slowly, "I know where he
+was going."</p>
+
+<p>He rose quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"I will find him," he promised and rang
+off.</p>
+
+<p>He replaced the instrument, and stood still.
+For the first time since his arrival in London
+fear found a place in the expression of his
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Dieu</i>," he whispered&mdash;"that Crooked
+House...."</p>
+
+<p>He seized his hat and stick, and hurried out
+to his car.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Remarkable changes were in progress when
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
+he arrived at the Crooked House. A small
+army of workmen swarmed over the whole
+place in a condition of feverish energy. There
+were stacks of tools, dozens of machines, and
+cartloads of material. At first sight it might
+have appeared as if nothing less than the effects
+of an earthquake could have been in process
+of repair&mdash;but, as Monsieur Dupont stood
+staring about him in amazement, it became apparent
+that the men were engaged in eliminating
+the crookedness of the garden, and must
+have been so engaged from a very early hour.
+Many of the twisting paths had been shorn of
+their high maze-like walls of hedge, and the
+paths themselves were in varying stages of conversion
+or disappearance. Under rapid and
+ruthless hands straightness was already appearing
+out of the confusion. Monsieur Dupont
+looked positively frightened.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mon Dieu</i>," he exclaimed aloud, "they are
+making it a human garden!"</p>
+
+<p>The house itself presented a no less startling
+aspect. It was no longer gloomy, deserted,
+and silent. It was teeming with life. Every
+window was open, and from within came
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+sounds of rapacious cleaning. A hundred
+painters had commenced a vigorous assault
+upon the exterior, and representatives of every
+branch of house decoration were attacking the
+interior. It was a scene of resurrection.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont almost ran to the open
+front door. Copplestone's manservant was at
+work in the hall, and came forward with a
+sphinx-like expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Copplestone?" said Monsieur Dupont.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Copplestone is away, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Away...?"</p>
+
+<p>"He left in the car early this morning, sir,
+without saying where he was going or when he
+would be back."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont was plainly staggered.</p>
+
+<p>"Was he alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"You do not know?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not see him leave, sir. He gave me
+my instructions in the library, and ordered me
+to remain there until he had gone."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont took a threatening step
+towards him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
+"Where is Mr. Tranter?" he demanded,
+with sudden fierceness.</p>
+
+<p>The man met his challenging gaze steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Tranter, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Tranter came here last night&mdash;between
+ten and eleven o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you must be mistaken, sir. If he
+had come here, I should have seen him."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont clenched his fists.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not mistaken! I say that he came
+here last night!"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not see him, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Since then he has disappeared. He has
+not returned to his house, and nothing has been
+heard of him. Where is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know nothing of Mr. Tranter, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"That is not true!" Monsieur Dupont almost
+shouted.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"I say that is not true!"</p>
+
+<p>The man drew himself up.</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly is true, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not! Will you tell the truth to me&mdash;or
+to the police?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+"I have nothing to tell," the man insisted
+doggedly.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont appeared to be beside himself.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Dieu!</i>" he cried, "if any harm has come
+to Mr. Tranter, you shall pay for it&mdash;all of
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>The man shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"I can only repeat, sir, that I have not seen
+Mr. Tranter, and that, so far as I know, he has
+not been to this house. He is certainly not
+here now. You are welcome to search every
+room for him if you like. Mr. Copplestone
+left word that the house was to be open to any
+one who might wish to go over it."</p>
+
+<p>"He said that?" Monsieur Dupont exclaimed,
+his anger giving place to astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont turned away without another
+word, and walked slowly to the gates.
+Reaching them, he stopped, and looked back.</p>
+
+<p>"In the name of heaven," he muttered,
+"what happened in that house last night?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
+He went back to his car. Amazement and
+anxiety were blended on his face. It was
+plain that his calculations had received an unexpected
+check, the meaning of which he could
+not at present grasp. The sudden transformation
+of the house and garden was a development
+that had not entered into his scheme of
+procedure. It presented him with an entirely
+new and unlooked-for problem. After a moment's
+indecision, he took out his pocket-book,
+referred to an address, and gave it to his chauffeur.</p>
+
+<p>During the return journey he sat with his
+face between his hands, buried in thought.
+When the car stopped before a house in Grosvenor
+Gardens, he lifted his head slowly and
+heavily, as if rousing himself from a stupor.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Astley-Rolfe, if you please," he said
+to the footman who answered his summons.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Astley-Rolfe is not at home, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"It is most important," said Monsieur Dupont.
+"I wished to speak to her of a matter
+connected with Mr. George Copplestone."</p>
+
+<p>"She went away early this morning, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Away?" Monsieur Dupont repeated.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
+"With Mr. Copplestone."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont started back.</p>
+
+<p>"With Mr. Copplestone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. Just before eight o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>"With Mr. Copplestone...."</p>
+
+<p>"He came in his car, sir, and insisted on Mrs.
+Astley-Rolfe getting up to see him. She went
+away with him ten minutes afterwards, without
+telling us where she was going or when
+to expect her back."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont's face had become blanker
+and blanker. He stared at the man speechlessly
+then turned from the door, and gazed
+in a helpless fashion up and down the street.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mille diables!</i>" he murmured, "what does
+it mean...."</p>
+
+<p>He got into his car again. He looked about
+him like a man dazed by a heavy blow. Returning
+to the Savoy, he went up to his room.</p>
+
+<p>There was a telegram on the table. He
+opened it, and read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"The name was George Copplestone Winslowe,</p>
+<p class="authorsc">Lessing."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>
+Monsieur Dupont uttered an extraordinary
+sound. In a flash the gloom and uncertainty
+that had held him gave place to a seething excitement.
+Crushing the telegram into his
+pocket, he rushed from the room. Two minutes
+later he was on his way to Scotland Yard.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">In Pursuit</span></p>
+
+
+<p>Inspector Fay was occupied with the
+arrangement of the evidence to be presented
+at the inquest on the body of
+Christine Manderson. He disliked interruptions
+when at work, but the appearance
+of Monsieur Dupont banished his annoyance,
+and called forth a smile of complacent triumph.</p>
+
+<p>"My friend," said Monsieur Dupont, "you
+know me well enough to be sure that I would
+not mislead you?"</p>
+
+<p>There was that in the look of him that caused
+the smile to fade from the inspector's face.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," he replied, laying down his
+papers.</p>
+
+<p>"There is not a moment to lose. You must
+come with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Come with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now&mdash;immediately."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
+"But where?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wherever it may be necessary to go. I
+do not yet know myself. I only know that we
+must go."</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible," the inspector declared. "I
+must be ready for the inquest."</p>
+
+<p>"If you do not come with me," Monsieur
+Dupont retorted, "you will not be ready for
+the inquest." He allowed his excitement to
+overflow. "Why do you stand there?" he
+cried. "I tell you, there is not a moment to
+lose. Cannot you see that I am serious? In
+all the years that you have known me I have
+never been more serious. Come!"</p>
+
+<p>"What for?" demanded the inspector
+sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"To discover the truth of the death of Christine
+Manderson."</p>
+
+<p>"The truth is discovered," returned the inspector,
+looking down at his papers.</p>
+
+<p>"The truth is <i>not</i> discovered," said Monsieur
+Dupont.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a perfectly clear case," the inspector
+retorted. "There cannot be the smallest doubt
+that Layton killed her."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
+"Layton did not kill her. At the beginning
+I warned you to ignore the obvious. But you
+did not. Layton is no more guilty of the crime
+than you are."</p>
+
+<p>"I am satisfied," the inspector said shortly.</p>
+
+<p>"You must please yourself," said Monsieur
+Dupont. "I cannot wait. There are two
+lives to save&mdash;his and another. I came here
+to keep my word to you. I promised that if
+I succeeded in solving the mystery, I would
+hand the rest to you. I do not want credit
+from this affair. There is another meaning
+in it for me. I am ready to hand the rest to
+you, if you will come and take it. If you will
+not come&mdash;I must go on to the end myself.
+The choice is to you."</p>
+
+<p>Inspector Fay looked at him steadily for a
+moment. Then he turned back to his desk,
+and locked up his papers.</p>
+
+<p>"I will come," he said.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Ethics of Killing</span></p>
+
+
+<p>They swung out from Scotland Yard
+into Whitehall.</p>
+
+<p>"What has happened?" the inspector
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont leant forward, controlling
+his excitement with an effort.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mon Dieu</i>," he said, "I wish I knew!"</p>
+
+<p>He took the telegram from his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"It is an hour only that I have returned from
+Richmond. I found the house of George
+Copplestone in course of transformation. I
+found all the windows open. I found men and
+women cleaning&mdash;painting&mdash;making new. I
+found a hundred men ... making the crooked
+garden straight."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" said the inspector&mdash;"why not?"</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont brought his hands together
+impatiently.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>
+"Why not? There are a thousand reasons
+why not. But the reason why...."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it an extraordinary thing for a man to
+open his windows, paint his house, and
+straighten his garden?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is!" exclaimed Monsieur Dupont. "It is
+more than an extraordinary thing&mdash;it is a
+gigantic, a brain-splitting thing&mdash;if he has kept
+his windows closed, his house unpainted, and
+his garden crooked for twenty years. The
+house of a man is the reflection of his soul.
+It was the reflection of George Copplestone's
+soul yesterday. But ... something happened
+in it last night. And to-day...."</p>
+
+<p>He broke off, and began to smooth out the
+telegram on his knee.</p>
+
+<p>"The moment I entered that house," he continued,
+"I knew it was a wicked house. And
+when that dreadful thing happened, I felt positively
+that the wickedness of the house had
+some direct connection with the crime in the
+garden. I felt that it would be impossible to
+solve one without solving the other. I knew,
+also, that you would certainly be satisfied with
+the evidence against James Layton, and would
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
+consider no other possibility. That evidence, I
+admit, was unanswerable&mdash;but I, with some
+previous knowledge to help me, knew that Layton
+was innocent. The difficulty in front of
+me was to prove the guilt of the real criminal
+in time. My friend Tranter, and that remarkable
+young prot&eacute;g&eacute;e of Layton, Jenny West,
+agreed to help me. Together we began to
+draw the nets, and the criminal was aware of
+our movements. In the country yesterday I
+discovered the identity of the most important
+witness in the case&mdash;but when I went to find
+her in the evening, she had been snatched away.
+I instructed Tranter to discover and bring to
+me the secret of the Crooked House, whatever
+it might be. He set out to do so at nine o'clock
+last night. And he has disappeared."</p>
+
+<p>"Disappeared?" the inspector exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Without a trace. I, only, knew where he
+was going. And not only has he disappeared&mdash;but
+Copplestone and Mrs. Astley-Rolfe have
+disappeared with him."</p>
+
+<p>Inspector Fay began to show more interest.</p>
+
+<p>"They will be wanted for the inquest," he
+said sharply.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>
+"If we do not find them in time for the
+inquest," Monsieur Dupont returned, "there
+will be two inquests to hold."</p>
+
+<p>"Two inquests?" the inspector echoed.</p>
+
+<p>"I could not understand it," continued Monsieur
+Dupont. "It was contrary to all my calculations.
+I was bewildered&mdash;and you may
+recollect that I am not often bewildered. But
+when I returned to my hotel, I found this."
+He held out the telegram. "It is the answer to
+a certain inquiry I have made."</p>
+
+<p>"What does it mean?" the inspector asked,
+handing it back.</p>
+
+<p>"It means," said Monsieur Dupont slowly,
+"that we shall be lucky if we find Tranter
+alive."</p>
+
+<p>"Where can they have gone?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know. I can only guess&mdash;and
+if I have not guessed rightly, we shall not see
+him again."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you telling me," the inspector demanded,
+"that Copplestone killed the woman
+he had just become engaged to?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall tell you who killed her within twelve
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
+hours," Monsieur Dupont replied. "I will tell
+you why she was killed now."</p>
+
+<p>He paused.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," he asked, "did the murderer, whoever
+it was, kill her so horribly? Why was it
+not enough to deprive her of life? Could one
+have desired more? Why was she stamped
+on, and torn, and crushed?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was obviously done in the madness of
+jealousy and revenge," replied the inspector.</p>
+
+<p>"It was done in madness," said Monsieur
+Dupont&mdash;"but it was not the madness of jealousy
+or revenge. It was the madness of a
+strange and terrible hatred. It was done&mdash;because
+the killer hated her beauty and not
+her."</p>
+
+<p>The inspector stared at him blankly.</p>
+
+<p>"Hated her beauty, and not her...?"</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty years ago," said Monsieur Dupont,
+"there was in France a very beautiful woman.
+She was named Colette d'Orsel. It was said
+that she was the most beautiful woman in the
+country. She was also very rich, very generous,
+and very kind. She was always doing
+good actions. She had not an enemy in the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+world. There was no one who could have
+wished her a moment's pain. She was only
+twenty-five. With several of her friends she
+went to stay at Nice. One night she was found
+in the gardens of her hotel&mdash;almost torn to
+pieces."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember the case," said the inspector.
+"It was a ghastly affair."</p>
+
+<p>"There appeared no motive. She was wearing
+some splendid jewels. They had been
+crushed with her, but nothing was missing&mdash;not
+a stone. She had just returned from the
+tables, and had not troubled to deposit her
+winnings of the evening with the cashier of the
+hotel. Forty thousand francs were found on
+the body. Not a note had been touched. The
+greatest detectives of France were called in to
+solve the mystery&mdash;but they solved nothing.
+They made the mistake of trying to find a
+motive. They looked for a person who could
+have had a reason to kill her. But it was time
+lost. They should have looked among the
+people who had no reason to kill her. The
+weeks became months, and still they discovered
+nothing. That crime is a mystery to-day."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+The inspector's attention was rivetted. He
+remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Ten years ago," Monsieur Dupont proceeded,
+"there was in Boston a young girl
+named Margaret McCall. She was wonderfully
+beautiful. Her parents were poor people,
+and she worked for her living. She was quiet
+and reserved by nature. She made few
+friends, and cared little for the society of men.
+Naturally there were hundreds who regretted,
+and attempted to overcome, that characteristic;
+but she went her own way quietly and
+firmly. One evening her body was found in
+a lonely part of one of the public parks torn
+and crushed in the most terrible manner. The
+police were helpless. The thing that baffled
+them completely was the absence of any
+motive for the crime. They tried to find one&mdash;but
+all that they found was what I have said,
+that she had been a good, honest girl&mdash;that
+she had had no enemies&mdash;that she had not
+jilted a man, or wronged a woman&mdash;that she
+had never flirted, or encouraged men to pay
+attentions to her. Yet there she had been
+found&mdash;broken and mutilated. The small sum
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>
+of money she carried had remained untouched.
+The crime was never solved."</p>
+
+<p>His voice had sunk lower. He had dwelt
+on each detail with impassive deliberation.</p>
+
+<p>"This week, Christine Manderson&mdash;without
+doubt the most beautiful woman of the three&mdash;was
+found in that crooked garden at Richmond,
+if possible in a more horrible condition
+than either of the others."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean," exploded the inspector, "that
+the murderer of Colette d'Orsel at Nice twenty
+years ago also killed Margaret McCall in
+Boston ten years after?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do," replied the low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"And Christine Manderson here three days
+ago?"</p>
+
+<p>"And Christine Manderson here three days
+ago. But this time there was a difference.
+An unfortunate chain of circumstances provided
+clear evidence against an innocent man&mdash;James
+Layton. I admit that as the case
+stood you had no option but to arrest him.
+But in doing so you committed the same mistake
+that your French and American brothers
+had committed before you. They had looked
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+for a motive, and could not find one. You
+found a motive, and devoted yourself to the
+man with the motive. You should have looked
+for the Destroyer."</p>
+
+<p>There was something of awe in the silence
+that followed, like the hush that succeeds the
+passing of a storm.</p>
+
+<p>"My friend," said the inspector slowly,
+"what utterly monstrous thing are you telling
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont turned to him a face of
+massive innocence.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it monstrous?" he said mildly. "If a
+man is born with a longing to kill elephants,
+he is a daring sportsman. If the longing is
+to kill beetles, he is a scientist. But if the
+inclination is to kill men&mdash;or women&mdash;he is a
+criminal lunatic. Why? If the desire to kill
+is not in itself monstrous, the desire to kill
+a particular thing, whatever it may be, cannot
+be monstrous. It can only be illegal. If it
+is dreadful to kill a young child, it must be
+dreadful to kill anything young. If it is
+cowardly for a man to kill a woman, it is
+cowardly for a man to kill the female sex in
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
+any shape or form. Yet, what scientist allows
+the matter of sex to interfere with the impalement
+of his beetle? Nor would he do so if
+his hobby were to impale human beings. If
+he searches for a beautiful beetle to kill, it
+only requires a broadening of his particular
+outlook for him to search for a beautiful
+woman to kill. There may be a perfectly sane
+and moral country in the world (although I
+have never heard of it) in which it would be
+criminal to kill the beetle, and scientific to kill
+the woman. I confess that a well-mounted
+collection of beautiful women would be very
+much more interesting to me than the finest
+collection of beautiful beetles. But if I have
+the one, I am made a member of a Royal
+Society&mdash;and if I have the other, I am executed.
+And the only reason for that is that
+the human beings make the laws, and not the
+beetles."</p>
+
+<p>The car swung round a sharp corner, and
+the inspector's amazement was interrupted by
+the sudden necessity of keeping his position.
+Monsieur Dupont continued slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"But the monstrousness of this case is not
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
+that three people have been killed&mdash;but that
+three people have been more than killed. It
+is monstrous because we have none of the
+simple dignity of the primitive slayer, and all
+the morbid excesses of the modern despoiler.
+While it might be an entirely respectable thing
+to kill a woman to preserve her beauty, it is an
+entirely monstrous thing to kill her to destroy
+it. That is the only reason why the collector
+of beetles and butterflies is not the most cold-blooded
+of murderers. That is the only&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What in the name of all that's unholy,"
+gasped the inspector, "are you going to say
+next?"</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Dupont leant forward as the car
+stopped, and opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Next," he replied gravely, "I am going to
+inform you that we have arrived at Paddington,
+and request you to get out."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Monsieur Dupont's Task</span></p>
+
+
+<p>He bought the tickets, and conducted
+the inspector to a train.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are we going?" demanded
+the bewildered officer, as
+Monsieur Dupont settled himself in a corner,
+and produced his cigar case.</p>
+
+<p>"We are going," said Monsieur Dupont, "to
+a delightful little village, hidden away in the
+hills of the country&mdash;far from the sins of cities&mdash;where
+they do not even know that Paris is the center of the world."</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately they had the carriage to themselves.
+Monsieur Dupont smoked in silence
+for some minutes.</p>
+
+<p>"I will explain to you," he began, at last,
+"how I came to be concerned in this affair.
+The reason was that, after my retirement, I
+had the honor to marry a cousin of Colette
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>
+d'Orsel. The brother of my wife had been
+one of the party at Nice at the time of the
+crime, and, though there was not the least
+evidence against him, the police had allowed
+it to be known that they looked upon him as
+the guilty person. You know how ready certain
+people are to discuss and even to credit the
+wildest theories&mdash;and you know also that after
+sufficient discussion the wildest theories become
+not only possibilities, but probabilities. The
+cloud of suspicion hung over him, ruining his
+health and his life, and casting a shadow over
+the whole family. When I married my wife,
+I determined that the shadow should be removed.
+And for the past two years I have devoted
+myself to that object.</p>
+
+<p>"You can imagine," he went on, after a
+pause, "the difficulties that confronted me.
+Eighteen years had elapsed since the crime had
+been committed. Men, women, and even
+buildings, had passed, and been replaced&mdash;records
+had been lost&mdash;memories failed. But
+money, perseverence, and imagination slowly
+conquered. Step by step the years were overcome.
+With the aid of a small army of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>
+assistants, I succeeded in isolating a certain
+person. I placed that person beside the dead
+body of Colette d'Orsel, and began my pursuit.
+<i>Mon Dieu</i>, how I worked! After the hardest
+year of my life, I at last established a link
+between the death of Colette d'Orsel and the
+death of Margaret McCall&mdash;and that link was
+the personality I had isolated in the first place
+at Nice. But it had changed itself. I followed
+scent after scent&mdash;trail after trail.
+When I came to London a few days ago, I
+had sufficient information to allow me to commence
+the final stage of the adventure. I had
+solved the most difficult question of all&mdash;the
+present identity of my quarry. The second
+most difficult question remained to be solved&mdash;proofs
+of guilt. How could I obtain them?
+How could I prove that this person&mdash;living
+here in all the security of time&mdash;was the person
+who had torn those two women to pieces in
+America and France ten and twenty years ago?
+I had certain clues to follow up, but the results
+could not possibly have been sufficient to prove
+such an accusation. What was I to do? To
+rely upon observation? To search for&mdash;and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
+wait for&mdash;a proof in this person's daily intercourse
+with the world? To place a beautiful
+woman within reach, and watch for a betrayal?
+That was actually the object in my mind when
+I called on my friend Tranter, and requested
+him to open to me the doors of London society.
+Sooner or later, I should have found, or
+brought about, the situation I was looking for.
+It might have been years&mdash;doubtless it would
+have been years&mdash;if he had not, by the most
+remarkable chance, taken me direct to that
+house at Richmond. Then came the death of
+Christine Manderson. It was horrible&mdash;appalling!
+And to think that I, who had detected
+and tracked the Destroyer, had been
+there in the same garden, within a few yards
+of the third death, and yet was no nearer my
+proofs! And to add to my difficulties, there
+was the certainty that an innocent man would
+suffer unjustly if I could not succeed in time."</p>
+
+<p>He paused, looking grimly out at the passing
+scenery.</p>
+
+<p>"And if I had not sent Tranter to the
+Crooked House yesterday, I do not know how
+I could have succeeded in time."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
+He turned abruptly from the window, put
+his feet up on the seat, and closed his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I am a little tired," he said. "If you will
+excuse me, I will take a nap."</p>
+
+<p>He slept for an hour.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>They got out at a small country station.
+The shadows of the hot twilight were merging
+into darkness. A few minutes walking
+brought them to an inn, at which Monsieur
+Dupont demanded, and obtained, a conveyance.</p>
+
+<p>For half an hour they drove through the
+heavily scented air of the country. Scarcely
+a word was spoken until they reached another
+village. There, Monsieur Dupont requested
+the inspector to alight and they proceeded on
+foot.</p>
+
+<p>The red rear-light of a motor-car appeared
+at the turn of a corner. Monsieur Dupont
+drew a deep breath.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Le bon Dieu</i> be thanked!" he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>The car was stationary and empty. Monsieur
+Dupont laid a hand on the radiator.</p>
+
+<p>"It is hot," he said. "They have only been
+here a few minutes. Do not make a sound."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>
+He opened a gate. The long low shape of a
+house was in front of them. They stood still,
+listening. There was no sound, no light.</p>
+
+<p>"To the back," Monsieur Dupont whispered.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">What They Heard</span></p>
+
+
+<p>They crept round the house. At the
+back a pair of French windows were
+open, but heavy curtains were drawn
+across them. No light was visible.
+They listened. A voice was speaking&mdash;slowly,
+scarcely above a whisper, but a whisper of contemptuous
+pride.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," it said, "I am the Destroyer! I was
+born to kill. It was the curse of my birth."</p>
+
+<p>The silence of the room was broken only by
+the faint sound of a woman sobbing. Monsieur
+Dupont and the inspector drew nearer
+to the window.</p>
+
+<p>"You fools!" said the arrogant voice.
+"What are your laws of Right and Wrong
+to me? I <i>am</i> Right and Wrong. What are
+your Codes of Sin? I <i>am</i> Sin. Who are you
+to judge me? Who are you to set your little
+laws against My Madness?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>
+There was a long pause. Then the voice
+continued, in a tone of dull bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>"Ever since I had strength to break, I have
+broken&mdash;to tear, I have torn. The disease
+took command of me long before I knew its
+meaning. When I was a child the sight of
+pretty things frightened me. I used to shrink
+from them, and hide my face. I was only quiet
+and normal when there were plain, colorless
+things about me. As I grew older the fear
+developed into hatred&mdash;and with hatred grew,
+slowly and subtly, the inclination to destroy.
+At first the opposition of all that was normal
+in me sufficed to keep the desire in check, but
+day by day it grew stronger and stronger, and
+day by day the power to resist became less and
+less. The increase of the hatred into madness
+followed the growth of the impulse towards the
+first surrender. It came upon me for the first
+time when I was twelve. How well I remember
+that day! My sanity had fought its strongest
+battle, and my head was still throbbing and
+swimming with the strain of it. I was taken
+to a strange house, and left alone in a bright
+room. On the wall there was a picture of a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>
+very beautiful woman. I couldn't take my
+eyes off it. I couldn't move from in front of
+it. New passions, that I had never felt before,
+were tearing me. The picture seemed to be
+alive, to be mocking me. I hated it. I felt
+that it was cruel and loathsome&mdash;that it had
+wronged me. My whole body was on fire&mdash;my
+brain was flaming. Then something seemed to
+snap in my head. I lost myself. Irresistible
+forces took possession of me, and used me.
+When I came to myself ... the picture was
+lying at my feet ... in fragments."</p>
+
+<p>The voice settled down into an expressionless
+monotone, pursuing its story without emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"From that moment my doom lay on me.
+I had made the initial submission. Any attempt
+at resistance after that was futile. I
+was helpless. Out of my hatred of beauty in
+any shape or form came the desire to obtain
+the most beautiful things I could find to enjoy
+the mad ecstasy of shattering them. I had all
+the morbid secret longing to induce attacks of
+my own madness&mdash;to enjoy the awful exaltation,
+the triumph of destruction. I was not
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+ashamed. I found myself entirely without
+scruple, without conscience, incapable of remorse.
+When the periods of desire were upon
+me, I hesitated at nothing to gratify them.
+At first they were frequent&mdash;sometimes there
+were only a few days between&mdash;but as I grew
+older the intervals lengthened, until sometimes
+I dared to think myself free. But, sooner or
+later, it came again. I knew all the warning
+signals&mdash;the creeping in of uncontrollable
+thoughts&mdash;the brain pictures&mdash;the quickening
+of mind and body&mdash;then the grip of the madness.
+All I could do at such times was to
+collect a number of things sufficiently beautiful
+to satisfy my lust, and lock myself in to an
+orgy of destruction. Then I was normal again
+for another period. So I grew up. When I
+was twenty, I learnt the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"I told him," a woman's broken voice said.
+"I hadn't the heart to tell him before. I was
+hoping against hope that the curse would pass
+away as he grew into manhood. But when I
+saw that it would not ... I told him."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I knew there was no escape," the dull
+voice went on. "The results of my father's
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
+vices and my mother's madness were my inheritance.
+God! ... what a legacy!"</p>
+
+<p>The voice flamed for an instant&mdash;then subsided
+again into its previous monotony.</p>
+
+<p>"The intervals became longer and longer,
+but each time the madness recurred it tightened
+its clutches. Each time it made me more and
+more its own property. Whenever the warnings
+showed themselves I fled to the refuge
+of Miss Masters's house. She bought and
+kept there things on which, when the mania was
+at its height, it satisfied me to expend my lust.
+But those inanimate things, though sufficient
+for that purpose, had no power in themselves to
+produce an attack of the madness. The capability
+to do that was reserved to a woman's
+beauty&mdash;the effect of which, so far, I had had
+no opportunity to experience. That opportunity
+came to me for the first time at Nice&mdash;twenty
+years ago. I had never seen a really
+beautiful woman before I saw Colette d'Orsel."</p>
+
+<p>Another pause followed the name. The
+room behind the curtains remained in tense
+silence until the voice resumed.</p>
+
+<p>"I can remember it now&mdash;as if it were yesterday.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>
+How she stood there&mdash;in the soft
+shaded light&mdash;terribly beautiful. And I&mdash;the
+Destroyer&mdash;watched her paralyzed&mdash;knowing
+for the first time the pinnacle of my madness.
+The sight of her numbed all my sanity. I
+could no more have torn myself away from
+that place than I could have resisted the new
+flood of my disease that broke over me like a
+nightmare wave. I was introduced to her.
+As I bent over her hand I almost laughed at
+the thought of what her horror would have
+been if she had known the impulses that surged
+through me. Her voice&mdash;the touch of her&mdash;burnt
+into me like flames. I knew what the
+end would be, but I was powerless in the grip
+of my inheritance. And she&mdash;in the pitiless
+irony of it&mdash;liked me! Three evenings later
+I met her in the gardens of the hotel. We sat
+together ... alone for the first time. I
+struggled. My God, I struggled! But it was
+useless. The white shape of her next to me&mdash;the
+dim outline of her features&mdash;the whole
+nearness of her beauty.... Then it came on
+me, as I knew it would&mdash;the final rush of irresistible
+hatred. When I knew myself again
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>
+... she was lying on the ground ...
+smashed ... my first living victim."</p>
+
+<p>The woman sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>"God forgive him!" she cried. "He was
+innocent himself. It wasn't really him...."</p>
+
+<p>Light footsteps moved across the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me be," said the voice hardly. "What
+God does with me is for God to do. Sit down
+again."</p>
+
+<p>The footsteps returned.</p>
+
+<p>"I left her there, and went back to the hotel.
+I sat down in my room, and analyzed my feelings.
+The madness had left me. My mind
+was perfectly clear and steady. I felt no horror
+at what I had done&mdash;no remorse&mdash;only a
+sense of impersonal regret at the death of an
+innocent woman, and a faint detached pity for
+her misfortune in crossing my path. I carefully
+considered my position, and certainty
+that there could be no evidence against me dispelled
+any fears for myself&mdash;but my cold-blooded
+sanity realized that the odds were tremendously
+against a recurrence of the same
+good fortune, and that the avoidance of the
+opposite sex must become the chief care of my
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>
+life. Then I went to bed, and slept soundly.
+The discovery of Colette d'Orsel's body early
+the next morning provided the sensation of the
+year at Nice. The police were confounded.
+There was no motive&mdash;no clue. It is an unsolved
+mystery to-day."</p>
+
+<p>The callousness of the story was so revolting
+that even the inspector, seasoned as he was,
+allowed a muttered expression of disgust to
+escape him. But Monsieur Dupont remained
+as silent and still as the house itself.</p>
+
+<p>"Ten years later," continued the voice, "I
+went to America. For five years I had been
+free from any return of the madness. You
+can imagine the longing to be like other men&mdash;to
+presume on the years of immunity. I felt
+unshakably sane. I even felt that I had never
+been mad. I gloried in the keenness of my
+intellect, the absolute order and control of my
+thoughts. What had I to do with madness?
+But in Boston ... I saw Margaret McCall.
+In an instant I was mad. In an instant&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A cry tore the air&mdash;a cry so awful in its
+inhuman fury that the two listeners shrank
+back horrified. For a moment the room
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
+seethed with confusion. The voices of men
+and women were blended in rage, terror, and
+command. Then the curtains were wrenched
+aside, and two figures rushed out shrieking into
+the darkness of the garden.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Beauty-Killer</span></p>
+
+
+<p>Four more figures dashed out through
+the curtains&mdash;two women and two
+men. The inspector and Monsieur
+Dupont joined them. Guided by the
+sounds in front of them, they dashed across
+the garden at the top of their speed.</p>
+
+<p>A black wall of earth loomed up before them,
+like the rising of a gigantic wave. It was
+strongly rivetted, and must have been at least
+ten feet high. It was quite inaccessible from
+where the pursuers stopped beneath it.</p>
+
+<p>"Look! Look!" a woman screamed.</p>
+
+<p>They looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"My God!" the inspector exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>On the height above them, silhouetted
+against the pale sky of the summer night, they
+saw a figure&mdash;its arms uplifted in an attitude
+of majesty, of triumphant defiance. The white
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>
+light of the moon lit up a face terrible beyond
+words in its pride, its sin, and its utter madness.</p>
+
+<p>"I am the Beauty-Killer! I killed Colette
+d'Orsel! I killed Margaret McCall. I killed
+Christine Manderson...."</p>
+
+<p>Another figure scrambled up out of the darkness
+on to the height, and the silver head of
+Oscar Winslowe gleamed in the light. For
+a moment he crouched&mdash;then sprang forward
+with a yell. The two figures swayed backwards
+in a fierce struggle.</p>
+
+<p>"They will go down!" a man's voice cried.
+"It is the edge of a gravel pit. The fence
+will not bear. There is a sheer drop of fifty
+feet."</p>
+
+<p>"Let them go," another woman sobbed. "It
+is the best way."</p>
+
+<p>And, even as she spoke, there was the sound
+of tearing woodwork. The struggling figures
+stood out for an instant with startling clearness&mdash;then
+disappeared like the sudden shutting
+off of a moving picture. And the whole
+night seemed to wince at the thud that followed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>
+"We must go down," the man's voice said,
+breaking the silence in an awestruck whisper.
+"There is a way round the other side."</p>
+
+<p>They followed him round the edge of the pit.
+It seemed like walking round the world. They
+descended a steep slope&mdash;and then, in the vast
+gray silence, a circle of pale faces surrounded
+the dead bodies of Oscar Winslowe, and John
+Tranter.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Last Truths</span></p>
+
+
+<p>"My friends," said Monsieur Dupont,
+"you have already heard a
+great part of the story. John
+Tranter was the son of Oscar
+Winslowe. He was mad. He was, as he
+called himself truly, a Beauty-Killer. That
+strange lust he inherited from his mother, who
+had been robbed of all she cared for, and hoped
+for, in life by a beautiful woman, and rendered
+insane three months before his birth. It was
+a most pathetic tragedy. We shall now
+hear&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"One moment," Inspector Fay interrupted.
+"As I represent the police here, I should be
+glad to know, before we go any further, whose
+house I am in."</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me," Monsieur Dupont apologized.
+"I had forgotten. You are in the house of
+Doctor Lessing," he inclined himself towards
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+the doctor, "who will in due course repeat to
+you a statement which he made to me yesterday.
+This lady is Miss Masters, who was
+Tranter's nurse. Mrs. Astley-Rolfe and Mr.
+Copplestone&mdash;which, I fancy, is not his correct
+name&mdash;you know already."</p>
+
+<p>He added a high compliment to the inspector's
+present position and past achievements,
+and then turned to Copplestone.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Copplestone, when Tranter did not
+return to me at the appointed time this afternoon,
+I went to your house. I found great
+changes. I found it, as you say, upside down."</p>
+
+<p>Copplestone was radiant with happiness.
+Every trace of the old gloom had left him.
+He was a new man.</p>
+
+<p>"I should think you did!" he retorted. "And
+you'd have found the earth upside down as
+well, if I'd been able to turn it."</p>
+
+<p>"I was puzzled," Monsieur Dupont admitted.
+"I could not understand it. But I knew this&mdash;that
+when the shadows roll away from a man's
+house, they roll away from his life. When he
+draws the blinds and throws open the windows
+of his house to the light and the air, he draws
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>
+the blinds and throws open the windows of his
+soul. When he straightens his garden, he
+straightens himself. I knew that before you
+would lift the cloud from your house something
+must have lifted the cloud from you. You had
+been delivered&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"There was a fellow in the Bible," said Copplestone&mdash;"I
+think he was a king&mdash;who was
+cured of leprosy by taking a dip in a river.
+I don't know what happened afterwards, but I
+am quite sure that he turned his palace upside
+down when he got back."</p>
+
+<p>He sprang up, his face illuminated with all
+the wonder of his new birth.</p>
+
+<p>"I am free!" he cried. "Free! That's what
+my house told you. I had been brought out
+into the light after half a life of darkness. I
+had been released after forty years of prison,
+of torment that all the tortures of the Inquisition
+at once couldn't have equalled!"</p>
+
+<p>He stared about him, like an intoxicated man.</p>
+
+<p>"This room is too small!" he almost shouted.
+"Everything is too small. I want to dance on
+the Universe. I want the world to be a football.
+I want to play enormous games with
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>
+giants&mdash;" He checked himself abruptly, and
+sat down. "Forgive me," he said. "You
+would understand, if you knew what I have
+suffered."</p>
+
+<p>"I can, for one," agreed the doctor heartily.</p>
+
+<p>"And I, indeed," said Monsieur Dupont.
+"But to proceed with the story&mdash;I think it
+would be better to commence with what Miss
+Masters has to tell us."</p>
+
+<p>He bowed to a gray-haired, grief-stricken
+woman. There was a pause before she overcame
+her emotion sufficiently to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"I took charge of Mary Winslowe's child
+from its birth," she began, at last. "She entrusted
+it to me in her sane moments, and I
+kept my trust faithfully. Perhaps it would
+have been better if I had not."</p>
+
+<p>"You did your duty," the doctor said.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a condition that he should never
+come under his father's influence, or even know
+his real name. He was to be kept in complete
+ignorance of the tragedy of his birth. It was
+necessary for him to be christened in his proper
+name to legalize the inheritance of his mother's
+fortune, but after that I took him away, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+brought him up in strict accordance with my
+promises. He was told that both his parents
+had been drowned at sea. I gave him the name
+of John Tranter&mdash;Tranter was an old family
+name of mine. He was a bonny little fellow.
+I never thought that he might have inherited
+his mother's madness."</p>
+
+<p>"The Laws of Nature are inexorable," said
+the doctor. "If only the Second Commandment
+were given to people as the Law of
+Nature instead of the threat of God, it would
+be of some value."</p>
+
+<p>"I hardly realized it," she went on, "even
+when the symptoms had unmistakably developed.
+But it increased too plainly to be denied.
+I hoped and prayed that the horrible disease
+would pass away from him as he grew up&mdash;but
+it grew stronger and stronger with him.
+At last he made me tell him what it really was.
+It was against my promise, but he had to know.
+I pledged my word that I would keep his secret,
+and it was arranged that whenever he felt the
+approach of an attack he would come to me. I
+kept things for him. At first smaller things
+satisfied him. He was content to destroy
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>
+flowers, pictures, prettily colored china, anything
+that was beautiful. But after that visit
+to France, when he was twenty, there was a
+change. He never told me what had happened&mdash;that
+he had killed a woman&mdash;but from that
+time only a woman's beauty would satisfy him.
+The attacks became few and far between, but
+when they came he would have died with the
+very force of his madness if he had not had
+some representation of a beautiful woman to
+expend it on."</p>
+
+<p>"It's frightful&mdash;incredible," the inspector exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"It was all the more pitiful," she said, "because
+his sanity was so wonderful. He had
+a towering intellect. He succeeded in anything
+he put his hand to."</p>
+
+<p>"He was looked upon as one of the greatest
+authorities on finance in the country," said the
+inspector.</p>
+
+<p>"He could have been a Member of Parliament
+before he was thirty if he had cared for
+politics. He refused a title. To be a Privy
+Councillor was the only honor he accepted.
+And he&mdash;one of England's great men&mdash;came
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>
+to my little house at Streatham to gratify his
+madness to destroy."</p>
+
+<p>She looked round at them defiantly, anger
+displacing the sorrow on her face.</p>
+
+<p>"But he was not guilty," she declared. "His
+hands may have killed those three women&mdash;but
+he was not guilty. Nor was that poor innocent
+woman, his mother, who died in the madhouse.
+They were both clean of sin. It was on his
+wicked father that the guilt lay. It was Oscar
+Winslowe who was responsible for the lives
+that have fallen to his sins. Oscar Winslowe,
+and no one else."</p>
+
+<p>"I bear witness to that," agreed Doctor
+Lessing. "Mary Winslowe was the gentlest,
+the sweetest, and the most patient woman that
+ever walked this earth, as you will see when I
+tell you my story. And he was the biggest
+blackguard that ever blasphemed the likeness
+of his Maker."</p>
+
+<p>"It is true," said the woman.</p>
+
+<p>She drew back in her chair, and pressed a
+hand to her forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"That is all I have to tell you," she concluded.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>
+"Last night," said Monsieur Dupont, "I
+called at your house, and was told by the lady
+who lives next door that you had left in a
+hurry two hours before."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I presume that you did so on instructions
+from Tranter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Evidently he shadowed me to Paddington
+Station, as I expected he would, and decided
+to remove you in case I should get on the right
+track."</p>
+
+<p>"He sent me an urgent message," she said,
+"saying that a great disaster hung over his
+head, and that I must go away without leaving
+any trace. He told me where to go, and promised
+to come to me and explain."</p>
+
+<p>"He knew that it was only you who could
+give any proof against him?"</p>
+
+<p>"After forty years," she returned, with a
+touch of bitterness, "he ought to have known
+that I should not betray him."</p>
+
+<p>"Even if one had told you of those three
+dreadful crimes that he had committed, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>
+that an innocent man was accused of the last
+one?"</p>
+
+<p>She locked her hands together.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ask me," she cried. "I don't know
+what I should have done."</p>
+
+<p>"He foresaw that problem," said Monsieur
+Dupont. "His sanity was, as you have said,
+wonderful. But the sanity of madness is
+always wonderful&mdash;that is why madmen are
+such superb criminals. It is only a madman
+who can be really sane. Although I allowed
+him to see that I knew already something of
+the truth, he never betrayed himself by even a
+tremor. He had all the grand egotism of the
+born criminal. His disguise was impenetrable.
+He was never sure how far my knowledge
+went, but not a sign of anxiety did he ever
+show. We played a game of cross purposes.
+I used him, under the pretense of requiring
+his assistance, to keep him by my side, and in
+the hope that as he saw me draw nearer to him
+step by step, he would break down. He, on
+his side, allowed himself to be used in order to
+keep watch on my moves, and safeguard himself
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>
+against them, as he did in the case of
+Miss Masters. He dared not leave me. In all
+my conversations with him, I placed him more
+and more at his wit's end to know how much I
+really knew. As much from curiosity as from
+anything, I instructed him to discover the
+secret of Mr. Copplestone's house, for I was
+convinced that it did contain an interesting
+secret. He was quite willing to make the
+attempt. It did not promise to lead me any
+nearer to him. He little thought when he
+went&mdash;and I had little thought when I sent
+him&mdash;that he was going to his own undoing."</p>
+
+<p>"And my salvation," Copplestone added.</p>
+
+<p>"There," said Monsieur Dupont, "it passes
+to you to enlighten me."</p>
+
+<p>"First," returned Copplestone, "I should
+like to know what caused you to be so positive,
+after being in my house only two or three
+hours, that there was a secret in it."</p>
+
+<p>"My instinct for the mysterious is seldom
+at fault," said Monsieur Dupont. "Have you
+not observed how, by their characters, their
+habits, and their desires, human beings draw
+to themselves certain events and conditions of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
+life? And it is equally true that houses draw
+to themselves certain contents and certain
+kinds of inhabitants. If a house is particularly
+adapted to contain a secret, in the course
+of time will certainly contain one. By a few
+strokes of his pencil an architect can condemn
+a house to become the scene of a murder, as
+surely as he can make it a convenient or inconvenient
+dwelling. Your house was constructed
+to hide a secret. And I was not only sure that
+it did hide one, but that it hid one which was
+in some way connected with the crime in the
+garden."</p>
+
+<p>"I have had some experience of that instinct
+of yours," the inspector remarked, with a
+somewhat rueful smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Copplestone, "instinct or no
+instinct, it certainly did hide a secret, and that
+secret was that Oscar Winslowe lived in it&mdash;if
+his condition could be called living. For the
+last five years he had been practically a helpless
+imbecile. He seldom uttered a sound beyond
+a gibber, and hardly seemed to be conscious.
+He was suffering the natural consequences of
+his vices. He had been gradually reaching
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
+that condition since nature had dealt him her
+first stroke of vengeance more than thirty
+years ago. One by one his faculties had rotted.
+He was a living mass of decay."</p>
+
+<p>"It was a sure thing," the doctor said.
+"Such a condition was bound to come. I
+prophesied it to his face when I first knew him."</p>
+
+<p>"That was the secret of my house," Copplestone
+proceeded. "My own secret was that I
+believed myself to be his son&mdash;the inheritor of
+the curse that really belonged to Tranter.
+And the horror of it, the helplessness, the constant
+contemplation of the awful state of the
+man I knew as my father, and the morbid
+certainty that sooner or later I must come to
+the same state, actually drove me to the madness
+that was not really in me at all."</p>
+
+<p>"But how had you come to believe yourself
+to be his son?" the inspector asked.</p>
+
+<p>"That was the last of Winslowe's diabolical
+acts. He inherited a large fortune on condition
+that a child of his, to whom it could
+succeed, was alive at the time of the testator's
+death. He did not know anything of his own
+child, and did not want to. He was afraid
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
+that if he made public inquiries for it, he
+might learn publicly that it was dead, and lose
+his claim. Also, he was afraid of other complications
+and exposures."</p>
+
+<p>"And with good reason," said the doctor
+grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"He wanted a child of five to produce as
+his son, George Copplestone Winslowe&mdash;and
+possibly make away with in due course after
+the business was settled. I am quite sure that
+would have been my fate if nature had not
+come to my rescue by striking him. He knew,
+from his knowledge of the underworld of London,
+how such things could be arranged without
+risk. No doubt he bought me for a few
+pounds. I am not the first heir to an estate
+who has been produced by such means."</p>
+
+<p>"True enough," agreed the inspector. "The
+heir to a million has been bought for a fiver."</p>
+
+<p>"But a few years after taking possession of
+the fortune, he was struck down, as I have said,
+by the first instalment of nature's retribution,
+and was incapable of carrying out his plans.
+No one cared for me. No one thought of removing
+me from the sight and influence of his
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>
+growing imbecility. I was brought up under
+the shadow of it. And so the horror was born
+in me&mdash;the belief that I was mad. What
+chance had I to resist it, in those surroundings?
+When I came to an age to do so, I
+searched out the story of my birth, of my
+father's excesses and my mother's madness,
+and my doom crashed upon me. Can you wonder
+that I became what I was?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed," said Monsieur Dupont.</p>
+
+<p>"I dropped the name of Winslowe. It was
+loathsome to me. I used my other two names,
+George Copplestone. They, at least, had come
+from my mother's side. My old manservant
+and his wife stuck to me, and kept my secrets.
+The income devolved on me in consequence of
+Winslowe's incapability. And so things went
+on. In my morbid demoralization I saw myself
+growing nearer and nearer to that wretched
+creature day by day."</p>
+
+<p>"Dreadful!" shuddered the doctor. "It
+must have been a living hell."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, last night, Tranter came. He
+climbed up on the ivy, and tried to spy into
+Winslowe's room. But I was there, and heard
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>
+him. I dragged him in through the window.
+I suppose it was some look, some likeness to
+his mother, that stirred Winslowe's memory.
+He recognized him, and a flash of sanity came
+back to him. Under that sudden mental
+stimulation he recovered his power of movement,
+and was able to confess at least a part
+of the truth. Tranter was taken off his guard,
+and I forced him to admit his madness. I compelled
+him to take Winslowe and myself to Miss
+Masters, and she, in her turn, brought us here."</p>
+
+<p>"I imagined she would," Monsieur Dupont
+remarked.</p>
+
+<p>Copplestone drew a deep breath, and laughed
+aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"And I am like other men! I can live as
+other men live. I can do what other men do.
+I can&mdash;&mdash;" His eyes rested on the woman
+beside him, and his face grew tender. "Yes,"
+he repeated slowly, "I can ... I can...."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"And it was Tranter who killed Christine
+Manderson...." the inspector said, almost to
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>"It was," said Monsieur Dupont. "He admitted
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
+to you on the night of the crime that
+he had known her in America years ago. And
+here we have a curious study in conflicting
+emotions. When he first met her, he had
+already killed two beautiful women. She was
+certainly more beautiful than either&mdash;yet he
+was able to associate with her on intimate
+terms for a considerable time, and even to tear
+himself away from her at last, without adding
+her to the victims of his madness. How was
+he able to do that? It was undoubtedly
+because he loved her. He had not loved either
+of the other two, so there had been no opposing
+emotion to his mania. But he loved Christine
+Manderson, and love was capable of holding
+the madness in check, because love, in its full
+strength, is the strongest of all human emotions.
+Love is stronger than madness, and
+ten times stronger than sanity. But after he
+left her the love faded to a certain extent,
+while the madness increased. Therefore,
+when he was suddenly confronted with her
+extraordinary beauty a few nights ago, the
+love that had faded was unable to restrain the
+madness that had not. And he killed her."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>
+"My God!" exclaimed Copplestone, "to think
+that he stood there with us over the body he
+had torn&mdash;and even lifted it into my arms&mdash;without
+so much as a quiver."</p>
+
+<p>"He was not capable of remorse or regret,"
+Monsieur Dupont returned. "If he had been,
+he would have killed himself long ago." He
+paused. "There remain now a few points of
+my own part in this affair to tell you, and we
+will then ask the doctor for his statement."</p>
+
+<p>"Before you do that," said Doctor Lessing,
+bluntly, "I, for one, am curious to know who
+you really are, and how you came to take such
+a large hand in the whole business."</p>
+
+<p>"My connection with the whole business,"
+replied Monsieur Dupont, "is a long story.
+I have already told it to Inspector Fay, and
+I will tell it again with pleasure when all the
+more important statements have been made.
+As regards myself&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Inspector Fay took upon himself the continuation
+of the sentence.</p>
+
+<p>"Up to a few years ago," he said, "Monsieur
+Dupont was, under a certain pseudonym, the
+most brilliant member of the French Secret
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
+Service&mdash;and was, in fact, admitted to have no
+equal in the whole of Europe."</p>
+
+<p>"A gross exaggeration, my friends," protested
+Monsieur Dupont. He waved the inspector
+to silence. "When I came to London
+last week," he told them, "I came knowing
+that John Tranter had killed two women. I
+had known that when I returned from America
+six months before. You can imagine the difficulties
+in front of me then. I was to prove
+that an English Privy Councillor, a well-known
+and highly respected man, was in reality a
+madman who was responsible for two of the
+most dreadful crimes that had ever been committed.
+I had never seen him, but fortunately
+he was in Paris at that time, and I had no
+difficulty in making his acquaintance. By
+extreme good fortune, I was able to render
+him a service in the streets which placed him
+under an obligation to me. I observed him
+carefully, only to find him to all appearances
+the sanest and most level-headed man I had
+ever met. But there was one thing&mdash;he shut
+himself away completely from the society of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>
+women, and he avoided all places where beauty
+was to be found in any form. But I was so far
+from any proof. My next step was to test my
+own belief that his madness was an inherent
+disease, and to do that I employed inquiry
+agents in this country to discover whether there
+were any records of such a case in existence.
+It is only two weeks since I received information
+from them that a woman named Mary
+Winslowe had died in an asylum from that
+very kind of madness, forty years ago."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true," corroborated the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"I came to London immediately. While
+following up my clues, I renewed my acquaintance
+with Tranter, and pressed him to act as
+my cicerone in London society, hoping to be
+able to entrap him into a situation that would
+lead him to betray himself. And he took me to
+Richmond. What happened there, you know.
+Though he knew when Christine Manderson
+first came into the room what the outcome
+would be, he was unable to tear himself away.
+And in the garden she forced herself upon him.
+He tried to resist her, but his madness overcame
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>
+him. That is the explanation of the
+absence of a cry for help, which once I stated
+to be the key to the mystery. If she had been
+walking along that path to the house, she
+would have had time to cry out, no matter
+how quickly the assailant had sprung out at
+her. But she did not utter a cry because she
+was already in the arms of the assailant, compelling
+him to a passionate embrace, and without
+doubt it was a simple thing to strangle her
+silently in that very position."</p>
+
+<p>"Good God!" Copplestone shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"His account of how she had asked him to
+find Mr. Copplestone, and tell him she was not
+well, and of how he had left her on her way to
+the house, was a succession of ingenious lies
+which could not be disproved. That is my
+story," concluded Monsieur Dupont. "The
+next most important point at the moment is
+that James Layton is cleared of a charge from
+which he could not possibly have saved himself."</p>
+
+<p>"Layton will be released with full honors
+to-morrow," the inspector said.</p>
+
+<p>"And I think," added Monsieur Dupont,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>
+"that there will be another matter&mdash;not unconnected
+with a young lady named Jenny
+West&mdash;upon which we shall have to congratulate
+him&mdash;and with very good reason."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Conclusion</span></p>
+
+
+<p>Half-an-hour later, when the
+doctor's statement had been made,
+Copplestone and Mrs. Astley-Rolfe
+stood together in the flower-laden
+garden.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear," said the new man, "I brought
+you here to witness my deliverance. Yesterday,
+when you had left me, I made up my mind
+to put an end to my life. To-day I am free.
+The cloud has rolled away. I am fit to keep
+my promise&mdash;if you wish it kept."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled up at him through happy tears.</p>
+
+<p>"If I wish it kept!" she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove!" Copplestone exclaimed, "I believe
+in every miracle that has ever been reported,
+suggested, or hinted at, from the first
+hour of the world!"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Crooked House, by Brandon Fleming
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Crooked House
+
+
+Author: Brandon Fleming
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 30, 2007  [eBook #22820]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CROOKED HOUSE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by D. Alexander and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from digital material
+generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/americana)
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/crookedhouse00flemiala
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CROOKED HOUSE
+
+by
+
+BRANDON FLEMING
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Edward J. Clode
+
+Copyright, 1921, by
+Edward J. Clode
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                      PAGE
+
+     I A STRANGE RIDDLE                        9
+
+    II THE CROOKED HOUSE                      19
+
+   III THE ENDLESS GARDEN                     33
+
+    IV DESTRUCTION                            45
+
+     V COPPLESTONE                            53
+
+    VI THE TRAIL OF CORPSES                   65
+
+   VII TRANTER                                71
+
+  VIII MRS. ASTLEY-ROLFE                      80
+
+    IX THE DANSEUSE                           83
+
+     X MR. GLUCKSTEIN                         85
+
+    XI THE CLERGYMAN                          87
+
+   XII MR. BOLSOVER                           89
+
+  XIII THE TRINITY OF DEATH                   92
+
+   XIV WITHOUT TRACE                         105
+
+    XV A BUILDER OF MEN                      117
+
+   XVI A TRIPLE ALLIANCE                     133
+
+  XVII MR. GLUCKSTEIN IN CONFIDENCE          142
+
+ XVIII THE WIT OF THE PINK LADY              151
+
+   XIX DETAINED ON SUSPICION                 159
+
+    XX THE BIRTH OF THE KILLER               176
+
+   XXI A HASTY FLIGHT                        187
+
+  XXII TRANTER ATTACKS THE CROOKED HOUSE     195
+
+ XXIII A DUEL                                203
+
+  XXIV THE SECRET OF THE HOUSE               220
+
+   XXV TRUER COLORS                          233
+
+  XXVI PROVIDING FOR THE WORST               241
+
+ XXVII THE DISAPPEARANCE OF TRANTER      250
+
+XXVIII IN PURSUIT                            259
+
+  XXIX ETHICS OF KILLING                     262
+
+   XXX MONSIEUR DUPONT'S TASK                273
+
+  XXXI WHAT THEY HEARD                       279
+
+ XXXII THE BEAUTY-KILLER                     288
+
+XXXIII LAST TRUTHS                           291
+
+ XXXIV CONCLUSION                            312
+
+
+
+
+THE CROOKED HOUSE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A STRANGE RIDDLE
+
+
+"Monsieur Tranter! A moment!"
+
+The Right-Honorable John Tranter swung round, latch-key in hand. Behind
+him, an enormous figure emerged, with surprisingly agile and noiseless
+steps, from the shadow of the adjoining house--a figure almost grotesque
+and monstrous in the dim light of the street lamp. The very hugeness of
+the apparition was so disconcerting that John Tranter drew back with a
+startled exclamation.
+
+"Good Lord! Monsieur Dupont? You in London?"
+
+Monsieur Dupont described circles with his country's largest silk hat.
+
+"I in London! An event, my friend, in the history of your city!"
+
+He laughed softly, and replaced the hat on his head. They shook hands
+warmly.
+
+"This is a delightful surprise," Tranter said, turning back to the door.
+"Come in."
+
+"It is late," Monsieur Dupont apologized--"but I entreat a moment. It is
+three hours only since I arrived, and I have passed one of them on your
+doorstep."
+
+"An hour?" Tranter exclaimed. "But surely----"
+
+Monsieur Dupont squeezed himself into the narrow hall with difficulty.
+
+"I possess the gift of patience," he claimed modestly. "In London it is
+of great value."
+
+In the small library he looked about him with surprise. The plain,
+almost scanty furniture of Tranter's house evidently did not accord with
+his expectations of the residence of an English Privy Councillor.
+Monsieur Dupont sat down on a well-worn leather couch, and stared,
+somewhat blankly, at the rows of dull, monotonous bindings in the simple
+mahogany bookcases.
+
+He placed the drink Tranter mixed for him on a small table by his side,
+accepted a cigar, and puffed at it serenely. And in that position,
+Monsieur Victorien Dupont presented a pleasing picture of elephantine
+geniality. He was so large that his presence seemed to fill half the
+room. His great face was one tremendous smile. His eyes, though capable
+of a disconcertingly direct gaze, were clear and even childlike. His
+English was perfect, his evening-dress faultless, and, though obviously
+a _bon-viveur_, he was also unmistakably a man with a purpose.
+
+"And what has brought you to London?" Tranter asked, sitting opposite to
+him.
+
+"My friend," said Monsieur Dupont, "I am here with a remarkable object.
+I have come to use the eyes the good God has given me. And to do so I
+beg the assistance of the great position the good God has given you."
+
+"I hope," Tranter returned, "that what you require will enable me to
+make some sort of return to the man who saved my life."
+
+Monsieur Dupont waved his hands in a gigantic gesture.
+
+"To restore to the world one of its great men--it was a privilege for
+which I, myself, should pay! The service I ask of you is small."
+
+"You have but to name it," said the Privy Councillor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Suddenly there was no smile on Monsieur Dupont's face. Without the smile
+it was a very much less pleasant face.
+
+"Two years ago, in my own country," his voice acquired a new snap, "some
+one asked me a riddle."
+
+"A riddle?" Tranter echoed, surprised at the change.
+
+"A very strange riddle. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you what it was. I
+cannot tell any one what it was. I undertook to find the answer. From
+France the riddle took me far away to another country--and there, after
+a year's work, I found half the answer. The other half is in London. And
+I am in London to find it."
+
+"This is interesting," said Tranter, smiling slightly at the huge
+Frenchman's intense seriousness.
+
+"You, my friend, can help me."
+
+"I am at your service," the other promised.
+
+Monsieur Dupont half-emptied his glass, and the smile began to reappear
+on his face in gradual creases. In a moment the shadow had vanished. He
+laughed like a jolly giant.
+
+"Ah, forgive me! I had almost committed the crime to be serious. It is a
+fault that is easy in your London."
+
+"What do you want me to do for you?" Tranter asked.
+
+"I want," said Monsieur Dupont, "to be taken with you, as your friend
+from Paris, to one or two society functions--where I may be likely to
+meet ... what I seek."
+
+Tranter was somewhat taken aback.
+
+"Unconsciously," he returned--"though of course, I will make it my
+business to fulfill your wishes--you have really asked me a difficult
+thing. No man goes less into society than I do. Most people have given
+up inviting me."
+
+"Forgive me," said Monsieur Dupont again. "I had imagined I should be
+asking a thing the most simple."
+
+"So you are," Tranter assured him. "The fault is with me. Where women
+are concerned I am utterly hopeless. I fly from a pretty woman as you
+might fly from a crocodile."
+
+"An ugly woman," said Monsieur Dupont, "is the real friend of man--if he
+would but know it."
+
+"The dull family dinners of dull family people are the only 'functions'
+I ever attend. However, let me see what can be done for you." Tranter
+rose, and with an amused expression began to sort out a small pile of
+cards on the mantel-piece.
+
+Monsieur Dupont smiled on. He emptied his glass, and inhaled the smoke
+of his excellent cigar with all the enjoyment of a satisfied
+connoisseur. His glance played from one article of furniture to another,
+from the floor to the ceiling, from bookcase to bookcase, from picture
+to picture. The very plainness of the room seemed to fascinate him. His
+gaze sought out the ugliest picture, and became fixed on it. Tranter
+turned over all the cards, and shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
+
+"In a couple of days I shall be able to fix you up a dozen times over,"
+he said. "But I am afraid I have scarcely anything to offer you for
+to-morrow night. Why didn't you drop me a line in advance?"
+
+"Let us dispense with to-morrow night, then," said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+Tranter ran through the cards again.
+
+"There is a dinner at Lord Crumbleton's--which I have too much regard
+for you to suggest. The Countess is a most estimable lady, who has spent
+the last fifteen years in vain attempts to become unfaithful to her
+husband, and now reads the Apocrypha all day for stimulation. You could
+dine with a high-church clergyman who absolves sins, or an actor-manager
+who commits them. But stay----" he paused quickly. "I forgot. There is
+something else." He sorted out a card. "Here is a possibility of
+amusement that had escaped me."
+
+"Ah!" said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"George Copplestone has favored me with an invitation to a select
+gathering at his house at Richmond, which would be very much more likely
+to provide answers to riddles. I never accept Copplestone's invitations
+on principle--although he goes on sending them. But, if you like, I will
+break my rule, and take you. It is sure to be entertaining, if nothing
+more."
+
+Monsieur Dupont bowed his gratitude. Tranter replaced the cards, and
+returned to his seat.
+
+"Copplestone is a remarkable individual, who has learnt what a multitude
+of sins even a slight financial connection with the Theater will cover.
+He puts various sums of money into the front of the house to gain
+unquestioned admission to the back. He has an extraordinary taste for
+fantasy, and is always startling his friends with some new eccentricity.
+He is not generally considered to be a desirable acquaintance--and
+certainly no man in London has less regard for the conventions."
+
+"To confine myself to desirable acquaintances," said Monsieur Dupont,
+"would be my last wish."
+
+"Then we will go to Richmond to-morrow night. He lives in a very strange
+house, in a stranger garden--the sort of place that no ordinary normal
+person could possibly live in. And I warn you that you will find nothing
+ordinary or normal in it. If you are interested in some of the
+unaccountable vagaries of human nature, you will enjoy yourself."
+
+"The unaccountable vagaries of human nature," said Monsieur Dupont, "are
+the foundation of my riddle."
+
+"Then," Tranter returned, "I could give you no better chance to solve
+it. In addition, you will probably make the acquaintance of a certain
+pretty society widow, who wants to marry him because of his vices, and
+one or two other well-known people who owe him money and can't afford to
+refuse to dine with him. Also, as the invitation is an unusually
+pressing one, we can rely on the introduction of some unexpected freaks
+for our entertainment."
+
+"It is arranged," Monsieur Dupont declared, "I go with you to Richmond."
+
+"Very well," Tranter agreed. "Call for me here at eight o'clock, and we
+will go. Help yourself to another drink."
+
+Monsieur Dupont helped himself to another drink.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE CROOKED HOUSE
+
+
+It was no unusual thing for George Copplestone to spring surprises on
+his guests. He had a twisted sense of the dramatic, and twisted things
+were expected from him. On some occasions he perpetrated the wildest and
+most extravagant eccentricities, without the slightest regard for the
+moral or artistic sensibilities of those on whom he imposed them--on
+others he contented himself with less harrowing minor freaks--but the
+object of thoroughly upsetting and confounding the mental balances of
+his victims was invariably achieved. He delighted, and displayed
+remarkable ingenuity, in providing orgies of the abnormal. He reveled in
+producing an atmosphere of brain-storm, and in dealing sledge-hammer
+blows at the intellects of his better balanced acquaintances. Often he
+was in uncontrollable spirits--on fire with mental and physical
+exuberance--sometimes he was morose and silent, and apparently weak.
+Frequently he disappeared for considerable periods, and his house
+appeared to be closed. But none saw his coming or going.
+
+Strange rumors circulated about him from time to time. Certain social
+circles, to which his wealth and position entitled him to the entree,
+were closed to him. Over and above his wild extravagancies, he was
+credited with vices that remained unnamed. It was said that things took
+place in his house that sealed the lips of men and women. When his name
+was mentioned in the clubs, some men shrugged their shoulders. When it
+was spoken in the drawing-rooms, some women remained silent. There had
+been an attempt to stab him, and twice he had been shot at. After the
+second attempt, a woman had been heard to say bitterly that he must bear
+a charmed life. He continued to pursue his strange ways with supreme
+indifference to the opinions of his fellow-creatures.
+
+The house he lived in was the only sort of house he could have lived
+in. From the foundations to the topmost brick it was a mass of
+bewildering crookedness. Nothing was straight. Not a single passage led
+where it would have been expected to lead--not a staircase fulfilled
+normal anticipations. Scarcely two windows in the whole building were
+the same size--scarcely two rooms were the same shape--and not even two
+contortions corresponded. There must have been a mile of unnecessary
+corridors, dozens of incomprehensible corners and turnings, and at least
+a score of unwanted entrances and exits. If the aim and object of the
+architect, whoever he was, had been to reduce the unfortunate occupants
+of his handiwork to a condition of hopeless mental entanglement, he
+could not have created a more effective instrument for the purpose.
+George Copplestone found it a residence after his own heart, and
+delighted in the means it provided for gratifying his feverish
+inspirations.
+
+The room into which John Tranter and Monsieur Victorien Dupont were
+ushered at eight-thirty on the following night presented an
+extraordinary spectacle of lavish and indiscriminate decoration,
+arriving at a general suggestion of something between a Royal visit and
+preparations for a wildly enthusiastic Christmas. Flags and festoons,
+flowers, real and imitation, fairy-candles and colored lamps, burning
+with strange heavy scents, quaint fantastic shapes of paper, startlingly
+illuminated--all massed into an indescribable disorder of light and
+color. Five amazed people were awaiting further developments.
+
+Mrs. Astley-Rolfe was a charming widow of twenty-seven, who had
+successfully gambled on her late husband's probable lease of life, and
+was now in the throes of a wild attachment to George Copplestone, to
+which he had shown himself by no means averse. She was somewhat languid
+from an excess of luxury, unable to brook opposition even to a whim, and
+as yet undefeated in the attainment of her desires, which were not,
+perhaps, always to the credit of her sex. She had an insufficient
+income, and a weakness for inscribing her signature on stamped slips of
+paper, several of which, it was rumored, were in Copplestone's
+possession. Her house in Grosvenor Gardens was an artistic paradise, and
+was frequently visited by gentlemen from Jermyn Street, who seemed fond
+of assuring themselves that its treasures remained intact.
+
+A West-End clergyman, of Evangelical appearance, who translated French
+farces under a _nom-de-plume_, was advocating, in confidence, the
+abolition of the Censor to a well-known theatrical manager, whose assets
+were all in the name of his wife. A bejeweled Russian danseuse, who
+spoke broken English with a Highland accent, extolled the attractions of
+theatrical investment to a Hebrew financier, who was feasting his eyes
+on the curves of her figure, and hoping that she was sufficiently
+hard-up. The entrance of Tranter and his huge companion created general
+surprise. Mrs. Astley-Rolfe held up her hands prettily.
+
+"You?" she exclaimed, to Tranter. "You--of all people--condescending to
+visit our plane? The mystery is explained at once. The decorations are
+for you--the Pillar of the State!"
+
+"Indeed they are not," he assured her. He stood aside. "Permit me to
+introduce my friend, Monsieur Dupont."
+
+"This is delightful!" she smiled.
+
+Monsieur Dupont bent over her hand.
+
+"Madame," he declared, "I change completely my opinion of London."
+
+"Where is Copplestone?" Tranter inquired, gazing with amazement round
+the festooned room.
+
+A frown passed over Mrs. Astley-Rolfe's face.
+
+"He has not yet appeared. He sent in a message asking us to wait for him
+here. He is up to some freak obviously."
+
+"It is certainly a strange medley of color," Tranter admitted.
+"Fortunately, I am not particularly susceptible--but to an artistic
+temperament I can understand that the effect would be acute. What
+extraordinary event can such a blaze be intended to celebrate?"
+
+"I don't know," she returned, a little shortly. "He has told us
+nothing."
+
+Her eyes strayed anxiously to the door. The movements of her hands were
+nervous.
+
+"I wish he would come," she muttered--and stood away from them.
+
+Tranter drew his companion across the room.
+
+"Well?" he asked, smiling. "How do you like this somewhat showy
+welcome?"
+
+"My friend," said Monsieur Dupont slowly--"into what manner of house
+have you brought me?"
+
+"Copplestone is a curious fellow," Tranter replied. "I warned you to be
+prepared for something unusual."
+
+"It is a crooked house," said Monsieur Dupont. "It stands on a crooked
+road, and there are crooked paths all round it. And everything is
+crooked inside it."
+
+"These decorations are crooked enough, at any rate," Tranter laughed.
+
+"These decorations," said Monsieur Dupont, "are not only crooked--they
+are bad. Very bad."
+
+He lowered his voice. There was a gleam of excitement in his eyes.
+
+"Don't you see," he whispered, "that decorations can be good or bad,
+just as men and women can be good or bad? These decorations are bad.
+They are a mockery of all decorations--a travesty the most heartless of
+the motives for which good and pure people decorate. There is nothing
+honest or straightforward about them. They are a mean confusion of all
+the symbols of joy. They are put up for some cruel and detestable
+purpose----"
+
+The door flew open with a snap, and a young man of dishevelled
+appearance burst into the room. His eyes were wild, and his face was
+working with the intensity of his passion.
+
+"Christine," he panted. "Christine...."
+
+He stopped, and gazed round in a dazed fashion, clenching and
+unclenching his hands.
+
+Mrs. Astley-Rolfe sprang forward with a suppressed cry, and confronted
+him tensely.
+
+"Well?" she cried sharply--"what about Christine?"
+
+He did not seem to be aware of her. He was staring at the flags, the
+lights, the flowers, and the colored paper.
+
+"It is true then," he muttered. "These things...."
+
+The woman was as white as death. Her hands were locked together. She
+swayed.
+
+"What is true?" she gasped.
+
+The young man took no notice of her. Copplestone's elderly manservant
+appeared in the doorway, and approached him.
+
+"Mr. Copplestone declines to see you, sir--and requests that you will
+leave his house. I have orders, otherwise, to send for the police."
+
+The young man drew himself up. He was suddenly quite composed and
+dignified. The passion died out of his face, leaving an expression
+almost of contentment in its place.
+
+"I wish it to be understood," he said, addressing himself to the room
+generally with perfect evenness, "that, rather than allow Christine
+Manderson to become engaged to George Copplestone, I will tear her to
+pieces with my own hands, and utterly destroy her." And he turned, and
+walked quietly out of the room.
+
+In the silence that followed all eyes were fixed on the white, rigid
+woman. Her face was drawn and haggard. She seemed to have grown old and
+weak. Her whole frame appeared to have shrunk under an overwhelming
+blow. For some moments she stood motionless. Then, with a supreme effort
+of self-control, she turned, and faced them steadily.
+
+"I think," she said calmly, "that if Miss Manderson is in the house she
+should be warned."
+
+"Fellow was mad," said the theatrical manager.
+
+"_Tout-a-fait_ daft," agreed the Russian danseuse.
+
+"It would have been safer," Tranter remarked, "if he had been given in
+charge."
+
+There was something very like contempt in Mrs. Astley-Rolfe's glance.
+
+"Do you know," she said quietly, "that that young man is a millionaire
+who lives on a pound a week, and spends the remaining nine hundred and
+ninety-nine pounds a week on saving lives and souls in places in London
+that people like us try to avoid even hearing about? If it is madness to
+devote your life and money to lifting some of the world's shadows--then
+he is very mad."
+
+"Mosth creditable," said the Hebrew financier.
+
+She turned her back on them, and stood apart.
+
+Monsieur Dupont laid a hand on Tranter's arm.
+
+"My friend," he said--and there was the faintest tremor in his voice, "I
+ask you again--into what manner of house have you brought me?"
+
+"I am beginning to wish that I had _not_ brought you," Tranter returned.
+"I don't like the atmosphere."
+
+"That," said Monsieur Dupont, drawing him aside, "is where we differ. To
+me the atmosphere is extremely interesting. If I were a sportsman, I
+would make you a bet that this will be an eventful evening."
+
+"I feel strongly," said Tranter seriously, "that we should be wise to
+leave. We don't want to be mixed up in an affair with a madman."
+
+Monsieur Dupont shook his head.
+
+"The millionaire was not mad, my friend. He may have been mad yesterday.
+He may be mad to-morrow. But he is very sane to-night."
+
+"I don't like it," Tranter maintained. "I would much rather go. Events
+under this roof have a trick of being a little too dramatic."
+
+Laughter from the clergyman, the financier, and the danseuse, greeted
+the conclusion of a story with which the theatrical manager had
+attempted to relieve the strain. Monsieur Dupont drew Tranter still
+further back.
+
+"This Mademoiselle Manderson--do you know her?"
+
+"No," Tranter replied. "I've never heard of her. I suppose she is some
+new friend of Copplestone's. If she is really engaged to him, I don't
+think she is altogether to be envied."
+
+Monsieur Dupont's glance found Mrs. Astley-Rolfe.
+
+"No," he remarked softly--"I do not think she is."
+
+Two heavy curtains at the extreme end of the room were drawn apart, and
+the figure of a man appeared between them--a tall, thick-set man, in
+full evening-dress, with a large white flower in his button-hole. For a
+moment he stood still, looking intently down the room.
+
+"Copplestone," Tranter whispered to his companion.
+
+"_Mon Dieu_," muttered Monsieur Dupont.
+
+It was the face of a fanatic--wonderful, fascinating, cruel--a fanatic
+who neither feared God nor regarded man--an infinite egotist. The fires
+of a great distorted soul smoldered in his eyes. The broad, lofty
+forehead proclaimed a mind that might have placed him among the rulers
+of men--but instead he was little above the level of a clown. The
+destinies of a nation might have rested in the hands that he turned only
+to selfish fantasy. The whole appearance of him, arresting and almost
+awe-inspiring as it undoubtedly was, had in it the repulsiveness of the
+unnatural--and, with that, all the tragedy of pitiful waste.
+
+To-night, he confronted his guests in an attitude, and with an air, of
+triumph. But as Mrs. Astley-Rolfe turned quickly to him with something
+of a challenge in her bearing, a faint mocking smile appeared and
+lingered for a moment on his face. Then he moved aside, his hand on the
+curtains.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," he said deliberately, "permit me to present you
+to my fiancee--Miss Christine Manderson."
+
+He drew the curtains apart.
+
+"_Mon Dieu_," said Monsieur Dupont again.
+
+A half-strangled sob came from the lips of Mrs. Astley-Rolfe. Tranter
+uttered an exclamation. The danseuse, the clergyman, and the theatrical
+manager burst into vigorous applause.
+
+Framed in the darkness behind him was the white form of a woman, of
+transcendent loveliness. In the soft light it seemed almost a celestial
+figure. She smiled with entrancing sweetness, and held out her hands.
+
+But as her gaze swept over the occupants of the room, the smile
+vanished. Her eyes became fixed and staring; her face set. She uttered a
+sharp cry--and fell forward in a dead faint.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE ENDLESS GARDEN
+
+
+Confusion followed. Copplestone knelt beside her, calling her by name in
+a strange excess of fear. The theatrical manager tore a flask from his
+pocket, and administered its contents freely. The spirit revived her.
+She opened her eyes. They lifted her gently, and laid her on a couch.
+
+"It was that madman rushing in unnerved her," Copplestone cried
+fiercely. "Wish I'd called in the police. Curse him!"
+
+Her hand closed on his. "No, no," she whispered. "He must not be
+touched. He didn't mean it."
+
+"Mean it be damned!" said Copplestone savagely. "If I see any more of
+him, he'll find himself in jail in less time than it takes to say it."
+
+The manager proffered further stimulant. The color began to return to
+her face, but her eyes were wide and strained. Copplestone watched her
+closely.
+
+"Look here," said the manager, re-corking his empty flask, "she'd better
+rest. Let's all clear off, and go on with this another night."
+
+"Thertainly," agreed the financier.
+
+But Christine Manderson rose, and leant on Copplestone's arm. Her
+self-control was exerted to the utmost, but she trembled.
+
+"Forgive me," she said softly. "I am all right now. Please don't go."
+
+"Good!" Copplestone exclaimed, recovering his equanimity. "It would be a
+pity to break up. We'll have a jolly night." He laughed loudly.
+"Tranter, of all people!" he cried boisterously. "And----" he looked
+towards Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"I was sure you wouldn't mind my bringing a friend with me," Tranter
+said. "Monsieur Dupont has just arrived from Paris."
+
+"Delighted," said Copplestone, shaking hands with great heartiness.
+"Forgive this unhappy beginning. We'll make up for it now. Come along to
+dinner. It's all ready."
+
+In the dining-room they sat down to a table that glittered and gleamed
+with a hundred lights, concealed under strands of white crystallized
+leaves, springing from a frosted tree. Such a table might have been set
+in Fairyland, for the betrothal feast of Oberon.
+
+"Glad we didn't miss this," said the theatrical manager.
+
+He regaled the company with a selection of his less offensive stories,
+and found ready applause. The gayety was loud and forced. Every one
+attempted to keep it at fever-heat. Jest followed jest with increasing
+rapidity. Laughter rang out on the smallest provocation. It was a
+competition in hilarity. And the gayest of all were Christine Manderson,
+and Mrs. Astley-Rolfe.
+
+The night was hot and sultry. The distant roll of thunder added to the
+tenseness of the atmosphere. And hearing it, Christine Manderson
+shuddered.
+
+"Storms are unlucky to me," she said, listening until the sullen roll
+died away. "Why should we have one to-night--of all nights?"
+
+The clergyman adroitly twisted the subject of lightning into a
+compliment. As the dinner drew to a somewhat loud conclusion,
+Copplestone's face grew flushed, and his hands unsteady. The manager's
+voice and stories thickened, and the thoughts of the Russian danseuse
+became fixed on Aberdeen. Tranter and Monsieur Dupont were abstemious
+guests. But the Frenchman seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.
+
+They rose from the fairy table, and strolled out through the open
+windows into the garden. The air had grown hotter and more oppressive,
+the thunder louder. Frequent flashes lit up the darkness.
+
+The glowing tips of cigars and cigarettes disappeared in various
+directions across the lawns.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Monsieur Dupont discovered, to his cost, the truth of his remark that
+the house was surrounded by crooked paths. The grounds were a veritable
+maze. He had purposely slipped away alone, and in five minutes was
+involved in a network of twisting, thickly-hedged paths, all of which
+seemed only to lead still further into the darkness.
+
+He stopped, and listened. He could hear no voices. Not a sound, except
+the gathering thunder, disturbed the silence. He was completely cut off.
+Even the lights of the house were hidden from him. He had turned about
+so many times that he did not even know in which direction it lay.
+Coupled with the effect of what had happened in the house, the influence
+of this tortuous garden was sinister and unnerving. In the lightning
+flashes, now more vivid and frequent, he tried in vain to determine his
+position. He wandered about, trying path after path, doubling back on
+his own tracks--only to find himself more and more helplessly lost.
+
+"_Nom de Dieu_," said Monsieur Dupont, in despair.
+
+He halted suddenly, standing as still as a figure of stone. On his right
+the hedge was thick and high. He could see nothing. But the whisper of a
+voice had reached him.
+
+The path took a sharp turn. He stepped noiselessly on to the grass
+border, and crept round, with wonderful agility for a man of his size.
+The foliage gradually thinned, and kneeling down he was able to listen
+and peer through until the next flash should reveal what lay beyond.
+
+The whisper thrilled with indescribable passion.
+
+"I love you. You are my body, my soul, my god, my all. I love you--I
+love you--I love you."
+
+It was the voice of Christine Manderson.
+
+Not a tremor escaped the listener. Parting the leaves with a hand as
+steady as the ground itself, he waited for the light.
+
+"I have no world but you--no thought but you. I want nothing but you ...
+you ... you." A sob broke her voice.
+
+"Go," the answer was almost inaudible in its tenseness. "Go--and forget.
+I have nothing for you."
+
+The lightning came. In a small open space on the other side of the hedge
+it illuminated the wild tortured face of Christine Manderson. And
+standing before her, gripping both her hands and holding her away from
+him--John Tranter.
+
+She struggled to bring herself closer to him.
+
+"I thought you were dead," she gasped.
+
+"I _am_ dead," he answered. "I am dead to you. Let me go."
+
+The listener could almost hear the effort of her breathing.
+
+"I waited for you," she panted. "I was broken. I had to seem happy--but
+my heart was a tomb. You were all my life--all my hope. I know I wasn't
+what I might have been. I was what people call an adventuress. But my
+love for you was the one great, true thing of my life. Oh, why did you
+leave me?"
+
+"For your own sake," he said slowly. "I am no mate for such a woman as
+you."
+
+"My own sake?" she repeated. "My own sake--to take from me the only
+thing I had--my only chance?--to throw my life into the shadows? My own
+sake ... to have made me what I am?"
+
+"I would have spared you this meeting," he returned, "if I had known.
+But the name Christine Manderson was strange to me. I had never heard
+it before."
+
+"I changed my name," she said sadly. "I couldn't bear that any one
+should use the name that you had used. I called myself Christine
+Manderson, and went on the stage in New York. Oh, it was dreadful. All
+those long years since you left me I have lived under a mask--as you
+have seen me to-night. You thought I was smiling--but I didn't smile.
+You thought I was laughing--but I didn't laugh. It was all ... only
+disguised tears ... to hide myself."
+
+"Go," his voice was torn. "For God's sake go ... Thea."
+
+A second flash showed them again to the listener. Tranter was still
+holding her away from him. In that vivid fraction of a second the agony
+of her face was terrible.
+
+"Thea!" she echoed pitifully. "Ah, yes--call me Thea! Poor Thea! Oh,
+doesn't that name awaken ... something? Hasn't it still some charm? Once
+you said it was the only name in all the world. Is it nothing to you
+now?"
+
+"Nothing," he answered.
+
+In spite of his resistance she was forcing herself nearer to him. The
+magic of her presence was binding him.
+
+"Am I less beautiful?" she whispered. "Have I lost anything that used to
+draw you? Is not my hair as golden? Are not my eyes as bright--my lips
+as red? Am I not as soft to touch? Where could you find anything better
+than me?"
+
+"Keep back!" he muttered.
+
+Her hands were about him. In the darkness he could feel the deadly
+loveliness of her face almost touching his own. He was yielding, inch by
+inch. The warmth of her breath ... the perfume of her body.... Her
+closeness was intoxicating--maddening.
+
+"Oh, let me come to you," she prayed. "I will follow you barefooted to
+the end of the world. I will live for you--slave for you--die for you.
+Only let me come. Let me leave all this--and come to you ...
+to-morrow...."
+
+A groan was wrung from him. He crushed her to him.
+
+"Come then!" he cried desperately. "Come, if you will!..."
+
+A vivid flash, which seemed to burst almost over their heads, showed
+them locked in each other's arms, their lips pressed together.
+
+Monsieur Dupont raised himself quickly. There was the sound of running
+footsteps on the path behind him. Monsieur Dupont had just time to turn
+the corner before the disordered figure of the theatrical manager loomed
+up before him.
+
+"The madman is in the garden! He ran this way."
+
+"_Diable!_" said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"I found him sneaking towards the house. He bolted out here."
+
+Unaccustomed to physical exertion, the manager laid a heavy hand on
+Monsieur Dupont's shoulder, and mopped his forehead breathlessly.
+
+"The scoundrel means mischief," he declared. "He must be found."
+
+"Where is Mr. Copplestone?"
+
+"I called him, but couldn't get an answer. He must be away at the other
+end of the garden."
+
+"No one has passed this way," Monsieur Dupont assured him. "For a
+half-hour I have been wandering about these horrible paths."
+
+"It's a devil of a garden," the manager admitted. "The fellow won't get
+very far. Let's look about here."
+
+Fortified with a fresh supply of breath, he released Monsieur Dupont's
+shoulder, and made a brisk movement towards the direction from which the
+Frenchman had come.
+
+Monsieur Dupont blocked the way.
+
+"No, no--it would be a waste of time. I have come from there."
+
+"To the river, then," the manager cried, bearing him round. "He may be
+trying to get across."
+
+He was evidently familiar with the intricacies of the garden. In a few
+minutes, after a dozen turnings, they reached the gleam of water.
+
+"Keep your eyes open for the next flash," the manager directed.
+
+He peered about. A moment later the lightning lit up the calm stretch of
+the river and the broad lawns sloping down to it. Monsieur Dupont
+detected no form or movement--but with a startling shout, the manager
+bounded away from him across the lawns.
+
+Monsieur Dupont blinked after him in astonishment.
+
+He was alone again--in a new and even darker part of the endless
+garden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+DESTRUCTION
+
+
+A deep-toned clock in the house struck twelve.
+
+Rain began to fall. A few moments later the financier hurried across the
+lawns with his collar turned up. The danseuse followed him. She seemed a
+disappointed and indignant woman.
+
+"It's almost an insult," she complained overtaking him.
+
+"Noth a penny more," said the financier firmly.
+
+They both turned quickly. Her hand gripped his arm convulsively. Wild
+shouting arose in the darkness, and the sound of someone forcing a
+headlong way through hedge and bush.
+
+The Reverend Percival Delamere was rushing towards the house as if the
+entire penalties of sin were at his heels.
+
+"A corpse! A corpse by the river! Miss Manderson has been murdered!"
+
+The danseuse uttered a terrified cry. The financier shook.
+
+"Murderedth?" he gasped, shrinking back.
+
+The clergyman was shattered by horror.
+
+"By the river ... almost torn to pieces...."
+
+The danseuse screamed loudly. A figure bounded up behind them, and a
+hand seized the clergyman's throat in a savage grip. The furious,
+distorted face of George Copplestone glared down at him. He struggled,
+freeing himself with all his strength.
+
+"Copplestone," he choked, "something dreadful has happened to Miss
+Manderson. I found her by the river ... horribly torn...."
+
+From another direction, Tranter reached them, breathless.
+
+"What is the matter? What has happened?"
+
+The financier clung to him.
+
+"Mith Manderthon ... murderedth."
+
+Tranter shook him off, and stood very still. The agony on his face
+passed unnoticed. As the theatrical manager and Mrs. Astley-Rolfe
+arrived at a run, Copplestone, with a sound like the cry of a raging
+animal, grasped the unhappy clergyman by the arm, and dashed off towards
+the river.
+
+The others followed. They found her lying a few yards from the water's
+edge. The manager struck a match, and they looked down.
+
+The danseuse shrieked, and fainted. Mrs. Astley-Rolfe sank on her knees,
+sobbing, and covered her face with her hands. The financier sickened,
+and turned away, trembling violently.
+
+"God!" Tranter cried--"some one must have stamped on her!"
+
+He bent down. "Thea...." he whispered.
+
+Something like a sob shook him. But the others did not see.
+
+"It must have been a wild beast," shuddered the clergyman.
+
+"It is the work of a madman," said the manager hoarsely. "He has utterly
+destroyed her--as he threatened."
+
+George Copplestone stood without a tremor. As he looked down at the
+broken form all his frenzy disappeared. The distortion of his first fury
+faded from his face, leaving it set in a pallid, lifeless mask. He
+contemplated the dreadful destruction at his feet without a sign of
+horror, or even of pity. He was perfectly steady. Not a quiver escaped
+him. Stooping down, he asked quietly for assistance to carry the body to
+the house.
+
+"Wait a bit," said the manager, looking at him curiously. "She ought not
+to be moved before the police come."
+
+Copplestone straightened himself, and remained silent.
+
+"Let Gluckstein take the women in, and telephone to the Police Station,"
+the manager suggested.
+
+Mrs. Astley-Rolfe raised her bloodless face.
+
+"Yes, yes," she sobbed. "Let me go. It's too horrible. I can't bear it."
+
+Tranter raised her up. The danseuse had recovered consciousness, and was
+crying hysterically. Suddenly the financier startled them in a thin high
+voice, pointing a shaking finger into the darkness.
+
+"Someone ith moving! Out there behind uth! Whoth there? Whoth there?"
+
+They swung round, straining their eyes into the blackness.
+
+"Who's there?" the manager called.
+
+An answering voice reached them. The manager struck another match. On
+the edge of the darkness they saw an enormous figure.
+
+"It's Monsieur Dupont!" Tranter cried.
+
+"My friends," exclaimed Monsieur Dupont, "at last I find you! What is
+the matter?"
+
+Copplestone looked at him steadily.
+
+"The matter," he said evenly, "is that Miss Manderson has been
+murdered."
+
+Monsieur Dupont uttered an extraordinary exclamation. He was instantly
+galvanized into a condition of seething energy. With what was almost a
+snarl, he brushed the financier aside, and reached the white mangled
+form on the ground.
+
+For a tense minute he knelt beside it. The others waited.
+
+"Destroyed," they heard him mutter--"utterly destroyed...."
+
+When he rose, his eyes were full of tears.
+
+"It is terrible. Who was with her last?"
+
+"I was with her less than a quarter of an hour ago," Tranter replied.
+"She said she was going back to the house, and asked me to find Mr.
+Copplestone, and tell him that she was not feeling well."
+
+"Where are your police?" asked Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"Gluckstein is going to take the ladies back to the house, and telephone
+for them," the manager returned.
+
+The financier departed with his charges. The four men remained, facing
+each other over the dead body. Rain was falling heavily.
+
+"Poor girl," said the clergyman huskily.
+
+"That such a brute should be at large," the manager added.
+
+Copplestone's gaze again became rivetted to the ground. He seemed
+unconscious of their presence. He was like a man alone and dazed in a
+strange world.
+
+Then the storm burst over them with all its fury. The rain poured down
+in torrents, the lightning was incessant. It was as if the elements
+themselves, in their rage, were seeking to complete the work of
+destruction.
+
+"We can't leave her out in this--police or no police," the clergyman
+shivered.
+
+Copplestone bent down again. The manager moved to assist, but Tranter
+put him aside, and assisted Copplestone to lift the ghastly burden in
+his arms. Then they picked their way slowly along the winding paths to
+the house.
+
+When they entered the decorated room, Copplestone's strange immobility
+flashed upon him with startling suddenness. Uttering a oath, he placed
+what he had previously been carrying with dull indifference roughly on a
+couch, and hurled himself furiously upon the confusion of decorations,
+tearing and crushing everything into a smashed heap on the floor. So
+overwhelming was his violence that no one dared attempt to stop him. He
+dashed the lights to the ground, and rent the flags with appalling
+ferocity. In a few moments a shattered pile was all that remained of the
+medley of illumination. He stood on the pile and ground his heels into
+it.
+
+Then all the energy was snuffed out of him like the switching off of an
+electric current. The dull heavy cloud descended on him again. He stared
+vacantly at the others, shrugged his shoulders slightly, and turned his
+back on them.
+
+The silence remained unbroken until a loud ringing at the front door
+bell announced the arrival of the police.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+COPPLESTONE
+
+
+Detective-Inspector Fay was an able and successful officer, of
+international reputation, whose achievements had placed a substantial
+price on his head in most countries sufficiently civilized to possess
+their criminal organizations. His bag had included many famous
+law-breakers, and, though now employed in less strenuous directions, he
+was admitted to be one of the most skilful and reliable of Scotland
+Yard's unravelers of mystery. But, experienced as he was, the inspector
+could not suppress his horror and indignation when the mutilated body of
+Christine Manderson was uncovered to him.
+
+"What, in God's name, was there in this garden to-night?" he demanded,
+shuddering.
+
+"A madman," the theatrical manager muttered.
+
+The inspector's glance rested on him for an instant, but passed on. He
+made no further remarks during his examination--but when, concluding it,
+he carefully replaced the covering and turned again to the others, there
+was a concentrated gleam in his eyes and a certain set to his face that
+were known to bode ill to the perpetrators of the deeds that inspired
+them.
+
+"There can scarcely be a whole bone in her body," he declared, regarding
+them all intently. "Her face is smashed to pulp; some of the hair has
+been wrenched from her head; and even the bones of her fingers are
+broken. It is the most brutal and disgusting crime I have had the
+misfortune to meet with in the whole of my thirty years experience."
+
+He gave a brief order to an attendant constable, who moved to the door.
+
+"If you will kindly retire with the constable to the next room," he
+requested, "I will take a separate account from every one. Perhaps Mr.
+Copplestone will give me his information first."
+
+The constable marshalled them into an adjoining room, which the
+danseuse filled with complaints at this prolonged detention. Copplestone
+remained behind. His dullness and immobility had increased almost to a
+stupor.
+
+"She was engaged to marry me," he said, in a slow lifeless tone, "since
+yesterday."
+
+Inspector Fay seated himself at a table, and opened his note-book.
+
+"We fully sympathize with you, Mr. Copplestone," he said quietly, "and I
+am afraid it is poor consolation to promise you that justice shall be
+done on the inhuman criminal, whoever it may be."
+
+"Justice?" Copplestone returned, in the same weary, monotonous voice.
+"Of what use is Justice? Can it call her back--or mend her broken body?"
+
+"Unfortunately, it cannot," the inspector admitted. "But it is all
+humanity can do. Will you answer a few questions, as clearly and briefly
+as possible? The great thing in a case like this is to lose no time at
+the beginning."
+
+Copplestone sat down, and passed an unsteady hand across his forehead.
+
+"Go on," he said dully.
+
+"Where and when did you first meet Miss Manderson?"
+
+"She came over from New York two months ago, to play in a new piece at
+the Imperial. I have an interest in the theater, and saw her there for
+the first time about a week after her arrival."
+
+"Do you know anything of her life and associations in America?"
+
+"Very little. She was not communicative. She only told me a few of her
+theatrical experiences."
+
+"So far as you know," the inspector proceeded, "had she an enemy in this
+country--or was there any one who could have wished to harm her?"
+
+"Apparently there was," Copplestone returned. "I did not know it until
+to-night."
+
+Mechanically, in the manner of one repeating a lesson, he described the
+visit of the young millionaire, and his threat against Christine
+Manderson.
+
+"And the name of this young man?" the inspector asked, bending over his
+note-book.
+
+"James Layton."
+
+Inspector Fay looked up sharply.
+
+"Layton? The man they call the Mad Philanthropist?"
+
+"I don't know," Copplestone replied wearily. "He may be."
+
+"James Layton is very well known to us," the inspector said slowly. "He
+is a charitable fanatic, who does more good in the East End than all the
+Royally Patronized Associations put together. But how in the world did
+he come to know Miss Manderson?"
+
+"She never mentioned him to me," Copplestone stated. "I had not heard of
+him until he burst into this house to-night."
+
+The inspector made several notes.
+
+"He has educated and trained as his assistant a particularly wild
+specimen of a coster girl, who is madly in love with him...." He closed
+his note-book with a snap. "You say the words he used were that rather
+than allow Miss Manderson to become engaged to you, he would tear her to
+pieces with his own hands, and utterly destroy her?"
+
+"So they told me," Copplestone answered heavily. "I was not in the
+room. I refused to see him."
+
+"And he left quite quietly?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did Miss Manderson show any particular fear of the threat?"
+
+"She was very much upset, and fainted when she came into the room. I
+should have sent for the police at once, but she begged me not to, and
+insisted that he didn't mean what he said. I wish to God I hadn't
+listened."
+
+"So there was no doubt that she knew him?"
+
+"No. She certainly knew him."
+
+"Afterwards, you say, he was seen in the garden when you were all out
+after dinner?" the inspector continued.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Who saw him?"
+
+"Mr. Bolsover, the theatrical manager, found him sneaking about the
+house, and chased him out in the direction of the crime."
+
+"Did any one see him, besides Mr. Bolsover?"
+
+"Apparently not. He says he called to me--but I had gone into the house
+to fill my cigarette-case, and did not hear him."
+
+"He escaped from Mr. Bolsover, and was not seen again?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Was there any one else," the inspector asked slowly, "who might, for
+any reason, have entertained unfriendly feelings towards Miss
+Manderson?"
+
+Copplestone's glance sharpened a little under the question.
+
+"I suppose there was," he admitted, with some reluctance.
+
+"Who was it?"
+
+Copplestone paused, frowning.
+
+"Please do not hesitate," the inspector pressed firmly. "We must know
+everything."
+
+"Perhaps," the tired voice confessed, "it wasn't altogether playing the
+game to announce my engagement so unexpectedly to--to----"
+
+"Well?" the inspector insisted--"to whom?"
+
+"To Phyllis Astley-Rolfe."
+
+There was silence for a moment. The inspector waited quietly. With an
+effort, Copplestone continued.
+
+"I am afraid it was rather cruel. She'd annoyed me lately, and I put up
+some decorations, and announced the news in a dramatic way ... to mock
+her." He broke off, staring at the remains of the decorations on the
+floor. "But I tore them down. I shall never decorate again...."
+
+The inspector watched him closely. He seemed to be on the verge of
+sleep.
+
+"Then Mrs. Astley-Rolfe had reason to be jealous of Miss Manderson?" the
+inspector demanded briskly.
+
+"I suppose ... she had."
+
+"Good reason?"
+
+"Possibly."
+
+"Had you given her definite cause to believe that you intended to ask
+her to marry you?"
+
+"Perhaps so. At any rate ... I had not given her definite cause to
+believe that I didn't."
+
+His voice sank to a whisper. He leant back limply in his chair.
+
+"There is only one more question I need trouble you with at present,"
+the inspector said. "Who was the last person to be with Miss Manderson
+before the crime was discovered?"
+
+Copplestone scarcely opened his eyes.
+
+"Mr. Tranter was with her near the river. She left him to go back to the
+house, and asked him to find me, and tell me she was not well."
+
+"Did he find you?"
+
+"Yes. And I at once went into the house."
+
+"Where were you when Mr. Tranter found you?"
+
+"I was crossing the second lawn--towards the tennis courts."
+
+The inspector was busy with his note-book.
+
+"Were you alone?"
+
+"Yes. I had just come out of the house after filling my cigarette-case,
+as I told you. I was looking for Miss Manderson, and wondering where she
+had got to. If only I had gone in the right direction ... I might have
+been in time...."
+
+"After Mr. Tranter had spoken to you, you say you went into the house at
+once?"
+
+"At once. I waited nearly ten minutes for her, and came out again just
+as Mr. Delamere gave the alarm. I'm afraid I handled him roughly...."
+
+The words trailed off into silence. A convulsive shudder passed through
+him.
+
+"Then we all ran off ... to where she lay," his voice shook. "Something
+seemed to give way ... here...." he pressed his hands to his head. "Is
+there ... anything more ... you want to know?"
+
+The inspector rose.
+
+"Only one thing. Will you kindly give me the names of your guests in the
+other room?"
+
+Copplestone complied slowly. Inspector Fay wrote the names down.
+
+"Thank you," he said, laying down his book. "I am sorry to have had to
+give you the pain of answering so many questions. I am afraid you are
+quite overwrought. I should advise you to try to get some sleep."
+
+"Sleep," Copplestone murmured, rising weakly from his chair. "Sleep....
+Good God."
+
+The inspector himself made a gesture of fatigue.
+
+"I only got back from another heavy case as your message came in," he
+apologized, stifling a yawn. "Tobacco is the only thing that keeps me
+going. Could you give me a cigarette?"
+
+Without answering, Copplestone languidly produced an elaborately jeweled
+gold cigarette-case, and handed it to the inspector.
+
+There were two cigarettes in it.
+
+Inspector Fay took one, with a perfectly impassive countenance, and
+returned the case. Copplestone replaced it in his pocket.
+
+"Please give whatever instructions you like to my man," he said
+dully--"and let me know if you want me. I shall be in my room."
+
+He turned, and moved away with slow heavy steps, disappearing between
+the same curtains through which, a few hours before, he had presented
+Christine Manderson to his guests.
+
+The inspector stood looking after him, fingering the cigarette
+thoughtfully, a very curious expression on his face. He showed no
+further signs of fatigue.
+
+"I wonder why you lied to me," he muttered--and laid the cigarette on
+the table.
+
+He glanced down the list of names, and went to the door. The constable
+had mounted guard over his prisoners with extraordinary dignity. The
+voice of the danseuse was still raised in lamentation.
+
+"Monsieur Dupont," the inspector called.
+
+The constable passed on the summons--and Monsieur Dupont instantly
+obeyed it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE TRAIL OF CORPSES
+
+
+The inspector closed the door behind him. "What has brought you back
+into the arena?" he asked quietly.
+
+"A riddle," the Frenchman answered, in an equally low tone.
+
+"It must have been something pretty big to have tempted _you_," the
+inspector remarked, coming closer to him.
+
+"It was," Monsieur Dupont admitted.
+
+The other glanced cautiously towards the curtains at the far end of the
+room.
+
+"Why are you here--in this house?" he demanded softly.
+
+"By chance," Monsieur Dupont replied.
+
+"Did you know Copplestone before?"
+
+"I did not. I had never seen him. I came with my friend, Tranter."
+
+"You were here all the evening?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Anything to tell me?" the inspector asked, looking at him intently.
+
+Monsieur Dupont smiled.
+
+"Only, my friend, that I imagine you will find it an interesting and
+somewhat unusual case."
+
+"That's not enough--from you," the inspector retorted.
+
+"If I may be permitted to advise--it is a case in which you would do
+well to ignore the obvious."
+
+"I want more than that," insisted the inspector.
+
+The huge Frenchman remained silent.
+
+"You are not a man to waste your time on this kind of entertainment,"
+said the inspector slowly. "Is there any connection between the crime
+to-night, and your so-called 'riddle'?"
+
+"The connection of death," said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+There was something of awe in his voice and manner.
+
+"For two years," he said, "I have been following in the track of
+something, which, in the words of our great Dumas--'must have passed
+this way, for I see a corpse.'"
+
+"That quotation referred to a woman," said the inspector quickly.
+
+"From me," returned Monsieur Dupont evenly, "it is sexless--at present."
+
+The inspector frowned.
+
+"Come," he said impatiently--"in what way are you mixed up in this?"
+
+"In the way of my quotation--a corpse. I started my quest two years
+ago--over a dead body, torn and mutilated. At the end of the first year
+I found another dead body, torn and mutilated. I follow on and on--from
+one point to the next point--often with no more than the instinct of the
+hunter to guide me. And here, at the end of the second year, there is
+yet another dead body, torn and mutilated. It is horrible. I sicken. I
+wish I had remained in my retirement."
+
+"What were the two previous crimes?" the inspector asked.
+
+"Two women--two very beautiful women."
+
+Inspector Fay started, staring at him.
+
+"Miss Manderson was a beautiful woman," he said slowly.
+
+Monsieur Dupont's enormous head nodded several times.
+
+"She was," he agreed deliberately. "The most beautiful of the three."
+
+There was silence for a moment. Then the inspector laid a hand on the
+Frenchman's shoulder.
+
+"We have worked together a good many times in the past," he said, with
+more cordiality than before.
+
+"We have, indeed," Monsieur Dupont responded pleasantly.
+
+"And though your methods were always fanciful compared with our's, I
+know enough of your powers to ask you a simple, straight question."
+
+"I am at your service," said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"You were here on the spot when this crime was committed. Who, or what,
+smashed the body of that unfortunate woman to pulp in this garden
+to-night?"
+
+Monsieur Dupont's gigantic form seemed to acquire a new, strange
+dignity--a solemnity--as though he were in the presence, or speaking, of
+something before which humanity must bow its head.
+
+"A Destroyer," he whispered. "A Destroyer who strikes with neither fear
+nor compunction--and passes on without pity or remorse. A Destroyer who
+is as old as the sins of men, and as young as the futures of their
+children."
+
+"You always spoke in parables," the inspector exclaimed irritably. "What
+do you mean?"
+
+"I mean," said Monsieur Dupont, "that I believe the thing which passed
+through this crooked garden to-night, leaving death so horribly behind
+it, is the same thing that has already passed on twice before me, and
+left the same death in its wake. I cannot tell you any more. Let us both
+go our own ways, as we have done so many times before. I do not wish to
+take any credit in this affair. If I am able to prove its connection
+with my own case, and to solve it, I shall hand the whole matter over to
+you."
+
+The inspector appeared somewhat relieved.
+
+Monsieur Dupont's eyes were fixed on an unframed photograph of Christine
+Manderson, which stood on a small cabinet in front of him.
+
+"Please compound a felony," he said softly--and slipped it into his
+pocket.
+
+"Where are you to be found?" the inspector asked.
+
+"At the Hotel Savoy." He yawned. "I am very sleepy," he complained. "If
+you will finish with Mr. Tranter as soon as possible, he will take me
+back in his car."
+
+He turned to the door.
+
+"Stay," said the inspector.
+
+He stopped.
+
+"You have not lost your old fantastic kink," said the inspector, with a
+faint smile. "The last time we ran together you were five minutes ahead
+of me at the finish. This time--we will see who is the first to pass the
+post."
+
+"My friend," said Monsieur Dupont, "I will do my best to give you a good
+race."
+
+He passed out of the room. The inspector followed him to the door, and
+called for Mr. Tranter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+TRANTER
+
+
+"Mr. Tranter," said the inspector, "I understand that you were the last
+person to see Miss Manderson alive."
+
+"I believe I was," Tranter replied.
+
+The inspector sat down again at the table, and re-opened his note-book.
+
+"Will you kindly tell me exactly what happened from the time you went
+out into the garden after dinner, and the time you left Miss Manderson?"
+
+"We strolled away from the house together, in the direction of the
+river. The events of the evening seemed to have upset her very much, and
+she was nervous of the storm. We walked about, I should think, for
+nearly half an hour, until the lightning became very vivid----"
+
+"Did you see or hear any one in that part of the garden?" the inspector
+interrupted.
+
+"No. Most of the others went to the lawns, in the opposite direction.
+When the lightning became very vivid, Miss Manderson said she would
+return to the house, and asked me to go down to the lawns to find Mr.
+Copplestone, and send him in to her. She was obviously unwell."
+
+"You will be able to show me the place where you left her?"
+
+"I think so. It was very dark--but I remember that we had just passed
+under a number of rose-arches across the path."
+
+"It was, I presume, further away from the house than the spot where the
+body was found?"
+
+"The body was found close to the river, about half-way between the house
+and the place where I left her," Tranter replied.
+
+"So we may surmise that she had got about half-way to the house before
+the attack was made. How far would that actually be?"
+
+"Along those winding paths," Tranter calculated, "I should say roughly
+about a hundred and fifty yards."
+
+"Did she start to walk to the house immediately you left her?"
+
+"Yes. She started in that direction as I started in the other."
+
+"Then," mused the inspector, "she must have met the criminal, whoever it
+was, at the most within three minutes of leaving you?"
+
+"Presumably she must," Tranter agreed.
+
+"And was that," pursued the inspector, "about the spot where she might
+have met the young man, Layton, who was, it appears, being chased out
+towards the river by Mr. Bolsover?"
+
+"It might be. But I do not know anything about the chase. If I had known
+that Layton was in the garden, I should not have left her."
+
+"Where did you find Mr. Copplestone?"
+
+"On the lawns."
+
+"How long after you parted from her?"
+
+"Only a few minutes. Four or five."
+
+"Was he alone?"
+
+"Yes. He was looking for Miss Manderson himself. He went into the house
+at once."
+
+Silence followed while the inspector added to his notes.
+
+"Mr. Tranter," he said quietly--and his eyes rested for a moment on the
+cigarette on the table, "I have only one suggestion to make. You will
+understand that it is only a suggestion, but I want to be perfectly
+clear. Considering that this was the evening of Miss Manderson's
+engagement to Mr. Copplestone, might she not have been expected to have
+strolled away from the house, and to have spent that following
+half-hour, with him rather than with you?"
+
+Tranter hesitated.
+
+"I suppose she might," he admitted.
+
+The inspector was looking at him sharply.
+
+"It is a small point," he said smoothly. "Perhaps you can clear it up."
+
+There was another pause. Tranter was plainly embarrassed.
+
+"Inspector," he said at last, "I must, of course, tell you
+everything--but I should be obliged if for obvious reasons, you will
+keep as much as possible to yourself."
+
+"That, sir," returned the inspector firmly, "you must leave to my
+discretion."
+
+"I am content to do so," Tranter said. "The truth is--I had met Miss
+Manderson before."
+
+"Ah!" said the inspector softly.
+
+"I knew her first nearly six years ago, in Chicago. Her real name was
+not Christine Manderson."
+
+The inspector's eyes began to brighten. He turned to a fresh page in his
+note-book.
+
+"She took that name, she told me to-night, when she went on the stage in
+New York. She was really Thea Colville."
+
+Inspector Fay started.
+
+"Thea Colville? The Chicago adventuress?"
+
+"I believe some people called her that," Tranter returned shortly.
+
+"The woman who ruined Michael Cranbourne, son of Joshua Cranbourne, the
+Nitrate King?"
+
+"She had finished with Cranbourne before I knew her," Tranter replied.
+"He was a scoundrel. Whatever happened, she certainly could not be
+blamed."
+
+The inspector was making rapid notes.
+
+"She was not so wild as she was painted," Tranter continued. "Women with
+such beauty as hers have a thousand temptations. The sins of a
+beautiful woman are always many degrees blacker than the sins of a plain
+one. We became very intimate--and I am afraid I allowed her to expect
+more from me than I actually intended. I was called back to England
+unexpectedly, and heard nothing more of her until Mr. Copplestone
+brought her into this room to-night."
+
+He stopped. Emotion had crept into his voice.
+
+"During the most part of your conversation with her, were you walking
+about, or standing still?"
+
+"Standing still."
+
+"You have said that you did not hear any one moving about near you while
+you were speaking to her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Were there trees or hedges about, where some one might have hidden to
+overhear you?"
+
+"There was a hedge," Tranter replied. "But I did not notice the spot
+particularly."
+
+"You will be able to point it out to me to-morrow."
+
+"I think so. As I say, I did not particularly notice it--and the
+possibility of being overheard certainly did not occur to me. I am
+afraid at that moment caution was hardly a consideration with either of
+us."
+
+The inspector closed his note-book.
+
+"Unless circumstances compel me to do otherwise," he promised, "I will
+keep your story to myself. Will you tell me whether the announcement of
+Mr. Copplestone's engagement to Miss Manderson produced a noticeable
+effect on any particular person in the room? Please do not hesitate to
+answer."
+
+"It certainly appeared to be unwelcome news to Mrs. Astley-Rolfe,"
+Tranter replied, "but she very quickly recovered herself."
+
+"It seemed, in fact, to be a considerable shock to her?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Were you in the room when this young man, James Layton, burst in?"
+
+"I was. Monsieur Dupont and I had just arrived."
+
+"It is true that he said that rather than allow Miss Manderson to
+become engaged to Mr. Copplestone, he would tear her to pieces with his
+own hands?"
+
+"Those were his exact words."
+
+The inspector rose.
+
+"I understand that you brought Monsieur Dupont here with you as your
+friend?" he remarked casually.
+
+"Yes. He only arrived in London last night."
+
+"Do you know him well?"
+
+"Fairly," Tranter replied. "I am under a great obligation to him. He
+saved my life in Paris, a year ago."
+
+"Has he mentioned anything of the business that has brought him to this
+country?" the inspector asked, moving to the door.
+
+"Only that he had come to solve a strange riddle."
+
+A faint, rather grim smile passed over the inspector's face.
+
+"I am obliged to you, sir," he said, opening the door. "If you will
+kindly return here at ten o'clock in the morning--and bring Monsieur
+Dupont with you--I shall ask you to show me the various places you have
+referred to in the garden."
+
+When Tranter returned to the waiting-room, he found Monsieur Dupont
+asleep in an armchair. The room was very quiet. The danseuse had
+subsided into an interim condition of mute tension. Mrs. Astley-Rolfe
+was deathly white, but perfectly composed. The men made occasional
+remarks to each other.
+
+"Mrs. Astley-Rolfe," the inspector called.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+MRS. ASTLEY-ROLFE
+
+
+"Madam," said the inspector, placing a chair for her, "I need only
+trouble you with one or two questions. You will understand that it is
+necessary for me to account for each member of this party, so that I may
+know which of them can, or cannot, assist me in my investigations."
+
+She sat down with a weary movement. Her hands trembled slightly.
+
+"It is very dreadful," she shuddered. "Such a frightful crime is
+inconceivable. Who could have hated the poor girl so dreadfully?"
+
+"That remains to be discovered," the inspector returned quietly. "I have
+no doubt we shall succeed in clearing it up."
+
+"I hope you will," she said fervently. "Please ask me any questions you
+like."
+
+The inspector kept his eyes fixed on his note-book.
+
+"You went into the garden with the others after dinner?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Will you please tell me with whom, and in what part of the garden, you
+passed the time before the crime was discovered?"
+
+"I was alone," she said slowly.
+
+"The whole time?"
+
+"Yes. I was not feeling very well, and did not want the trouble of
+talking. I walked away by myself."
+
+"You know the way about the garden quite well?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"In what direction did you walk?"
+
+"To the croquet lawn."
+
+"Did you see anything of the others?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Or hear any voices?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nothing until the alarm was given?"
+
+"Nothing. It was an isolated part of the garden. When I heard Mr.
+Delamere shouting, I ran back to the house, and found them on the
+lawn."
+
+The inspector shot a keen glance at her.
+
+"Did you know Miss Manderson well?"
+
+"I had only met her three or four times."
+
+"I suppose--being one of the most beautiful women on the American stage,
+and about to appear for the first time in London--you heard her a good
+deal talked about?"
+
+"Yes." Her voice was just perceptibly harder. "People were taking great
+interest in her."
+
+"Did you hear her private affairs, and mode of life, discussed at any
+time?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Or the name of James Layton, the millionaire philanthropist, mentioned
+in conjunction with her's?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Thank you, madam. I need not trouble you any further. Will you kindly
+leave me your address, in case I should have to ask you for any more
+information?"
+
+He wrote the address down, and bowed her out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE DANSEUSE
+
+
+"Madame Krashoff," summoned the inspector.
+
+The danseuse was in a condition of the utmost distress.
+
+"_Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!_" she wept.
+
+"Please calm yourself, madame," the inspector requested patiently.
+
+"I ken nothin' o' the creeme!" she sobbed thoughtlessly.
+
+"I am sure of that," he declared gravely. "I merely wish to establish
+the movements of every one here. With whom did you pass the time after
+you went out into the garden until the alarm was given?"
+
+"Wi' M'soo Gluckstein," she whimpered.
+
+"All the time?"
+
+"N-no."
+
+"How much of the time?"
+
+She became more collected.
+
+"He said to me something that made me angry," she replied, with a touch
+of viciousness. "I walk away from him. Then it rain, and I overtook him
+as I go back to the house."
+
+"How long were you away from him?" the inspector asked.
+
+"_Ma foi_, I cannot tell. Maybe ten minutes."
+
+"Did you see any one else?"
+
+"No."
+
+"In what part of the garden were you when you left him?"
+
+"Behind the tennis courts."
+
+"That is some way from the river?"
+
+"Yes, yes--ver' far away."
+
+"Thank you, madame."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+MR. GLUCKSTEIN
+
+
+The financier was extremely agitated, and tried to shake hands with the
+inspector.
+
+"Mr. Gluckstein, I understand from Madame Krashoff that you were with
+her in the garden for the greater part of the time before the crime was
+discovered."
+
+"I wath," the financier quivered--"indeed I wath, inthpector."
+
+"Then she left you for about ten minutes?"
+
+"Not tho much ath ten minutes," corrected the financier hastily.
+
+"What did you do after she left you?"
+
+"I stayed vere I vath--until the rain commenthed."
+
+"Did you see any one else?"
+
+"No one at allth."
+
+"Thank you," said the inspector. "Please leave me your address, in case
+I should want to ask you any further questions."
+
+The financier produced a card with trembling fingers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE CLERGYMAN
+
+
+"Mr. Delamere," said the inspector, "you discovered the body?"
+
+"I did," replied the clergyman, with a shiver.
+
+"Were you alone when you found it?"
+
+"Yes. I had been walking with Mr. Bolsover for about quarter of an hour.
+Then he turned back to find some of the others, and I strolled on to the
+river."
+
+"Did you meet any one else?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You saw nothing of this young man, Layton, who was chased towards the
+river by Mr. Bolsover?"
+
+"Nothing whatever."
+
+"No sounds of a struggle?"
+
+"No. I heard nothing."
+
+"Was the body lying in your path?"
+
+"No. Some distance aside. I saw something white on the ground in one of
+the lightning flashes, and went to see what it was."
+
+"I shall have to ask you to return here at ten o'clock, to show me the
+exact spot."
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Delamere."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+MR. BOLSOVER
+
+
+"My God!" exclaimed the manager, "what an appalling business!"
+
+"It is," the inspector agreed shortly.
+
+"She was to have appeared at my theater, too," said the manager
+ruefully.
+
+"I understand that you found Layton sneaking about the house?"
+
+"Yes. I first strolled out with Mr. Delamere. Then I left him, and went
+back to see where the others had got to, and saw Layton creeping round
+the side of the house towards the open drawing-room windows. He heard my
+footsteps on the path, and bolted."
+
+"To the river?"
+
+"Yes. I shouted for Mr. Copplestone, but there was no answer--so I
+followed him."
+
+"You are quite certain it was Layton?"
+
+"Perfectly. I saw his face in the light of the windows, and he was
+wearing the peculiar kind of slouch hat he had carried when he came into
+the room."
+
+"Apparently no one saw him in the garden except yourself."
+
+"Unfortunately not. I met the Frenchman, Monsieur Dupont, a little way
+from the river--but he had not seen him."
+
+"It was a pity you did not manage to catch him," the inspector remarked.
+
+"Confound it, yes! But it was easy to get away in such a garden as this.
+There wasn't a chance of finding him."
+
+"What did you do, after meeting Monsieur Dupont?"
+
+"We went on to the river together. I thought I saw a movement among the
+trees when the lightning lit them up--but there was nothing. I walked
+round about there for a few minutes, and then went back to warn
+Copplestone."
+
+"Leaving Monsieur Dupont by the river?"
+
+"Yes. Before I reached the house, I heard Mr. Delamere shouting the
+alarm."
+
+"Thank you," said the inspector, closing his note-book. "I am afraid I
+shall have to trouble you to come here at ten o'clock and show me
+certain places in the garden."
+
+"I am entirely at your disposal," said the manager.
+
+He went out. The inspector sat down at the table, and remained perfectly
+still for half an hour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE TRINITY OF DEATH
+
+
+In Tranter's car, its owner and Monsieur Dupont started, at half-past
+one, on their return from the crooked house.
+
+The storm had passed, and the air was fresh and cool. It was possibly
+the atmospheric clearance which accounted for the fact, that, however,
+fatigued he had been, or appeared to be, at the end of his conversation
+with the inspector, Monsieur Dupont was now particularly wide-awake and
+alert.
+
+"_Dieu!_" he cried, "what a terrible crime! Almost to tear that woman to
+pieces--to crush her--to rend her! And what a woman! _Ma foi_, what a
+woman!"
+
+There was a pause. Monsieur Dupont accepted and lit a cigar from
+Tranter's case.
+
+"My friend," he said quietly, "I wish to be quite fair to you."
+
+"Fair to me?" Tranter echoed, surprised.
+
+"Something happened to-night which you doubtless believe to be unknown
+to every one except yourself."
+
+Tranter turned to him quickly.
+
+"I have not the habit," Monsieur Dupont continued, "of listening to
+private conversations between other people. It is only on very rare
+occasions that I have done so. I did so to-night."
+
+"What do you mean?" Tranter exclaimed.
+
+"In that horrible garden, before the crime was committed," pursued
+Monsieur Dupont evenly, "I lost my way. Such a garden must have been
+especially designed to cause innocent people to lose their way. I
+wandered about. How I wandered!"
+
+"What did you overhear?" asked Tranter, in a strained voice.
+
+"A conversation--between that unfortunate Mademoiselle Manderson, and
+yourself."
+
+"You heard it?" Tranter cried sharply.
+
+"I heard it," admitted Monsieur Dupont. "I heard a great part of it. I
+believe nearly all. I should not have done so. Understand, I make you
+all my apologies. It was improper to listen. But the storm, the
+surroundings, the scene itself, excited me. I listened."
+
+Tranter remained silent.
+
+"I continued to listen, until Mr. Bolsover found me. He was following
+that young man, Layton. I went with him to the river."
+
+Tranter was still silent--staring straight in front of him with fixed
+eyes.
+
+"You saw a picture of weakness," he said, at last. "I am not proud of
+it. I should much prefer to be able to think that no one had seen it. I
+gave Inspector Fay an account of the whole scene, and of my previous
+acquaintance with Christine Manderson. He promised to keep it to
+himself. I hope you will do the same."
+
+"I shall indeed," the other assured him.
+
+"I am only human," Tranter went on, with an effort--"more human than I
+thought. I resisted her once by taking flight. I couldn't resist her
+to-night."
+
+He mastered his emotion.
+
+"From the moment she first came into the room I was helpless. I knew
+what would come of it--but I couldn't tear myself away. It was the
+whole spell--with all the new strength of memories. I knew she intended
+to find me alone in the garden." He paused. "I had to let her."
+
+"Human nature," said Monsieur Dupont consolingly, "is human nature."
+
+Silence followed. Monsieur Dupont thoughtfully puffed at his cigar.
+
+"A crooked house in a crooked garden," he said, at length, "is a
+combination from which all honest people should shrink. Those who
+frequent it must be, for the most part, crooked people. They were, for
+the most part, crooked people to-night."
+
+"It was a crooked evening from beginning to end," Tranter said wearily.
+
+"It was a wicked evening," Monsieur Dupont declared--"full of wicked
+thoughts. A crime was the natural and logical end to such an evening. It
+would have been surprising if there had not been one."
+
+He smoked vigorously for some moments--then made an expansive gesture.
+
+"Are there not," he demanded, "houses and gardens and thunder-storms
+that awaken cruel and shameful impulses that would never be aroused in
+other houses and other gardens and other storms? Does not the influence
+of good and noble decorations uplift us to joy and patriotism? Why
+should not the influence of mean and sinful decorations degrade us to
+murder and destruction? The flags that fly over the innocent revels of
+children are innocent flags, and inspire kind feelings and happiness.
+But remove the same flags to a Bull-ring, and they become evil flags,
+inspiring lust for the blood and slaughter of helpless creatures--the
+basest of human instincts."
+
+"You are fantastic," said Tranter, with a gloomy smile.
+
+"In fantasy," returned Monsieur Dupont, "are the world's greatest
+truths."
+
+He carefully deposed the ash from his cigar.
+
+"Will you please tell me," he went on, "something more about our strange
+host to-night--the man who chooses so much crookedness to live in, when
+there is straightness to be had for the same price?"
+
+"I know very little more about him than I told you last night," Tranter
+replied. "He is wealthy, and very eccentric. He seems to pass his life
+in a perpetual effort to be different from other people."
+
+"He is more than eccentric," Monsieur Dupont stated. "He is mad. In a
+few years he will be a dangerous lunatic. And the Good God only knows
+what he may make of himself in the meantime."
+
+"There are plenty of strange stories about him," Tranter said. "But I
+have always looked on them as greatly exaggerated."
+
+"Probably," Monsieur Dupont remarked, "they were true."
+
+"Whatever his reputation may be, women seem very ready to put up with
+his eccentricities, or pander to them, in return, no doubt, for big
+inroads into his banking account. He is very free with his money where
+the opposite sex is concerned."
+
+"It is always so," said Monsieur Dupont, "with such men."
+
+"He mixes chiefly in theatrical and bohemian circles--and often by no
+means the most desirable of those. The better people look askance on
+him--but he is supremely indifferent to the opinions of others, and to
+all the conventions. Whatever he takes it into his head to do he does,
+quite regardless of the approval or disapproval of other people. He is
+certainly not a man I would introduce to any woman who possessed even
+the smallest degree of physical attraction. He is supposed to be quite
+unscrupulous in the attainment of his objects."
+
+"Most of us are," said Monsieur Dupont. "But we dislike to admit it."
+
+He looked steadily out of the window for a moment.
+
+"I wonder," he said, turning back, "what he does with the rest of that
+house."
+
+"The rest of the house?" Tranter repeated.
+
+"It is very large," said Monsieur Dupont. "It is large enough for twenty
+men."
+
+"In this country," Tranter smiled, "there is no law against one man
+living in a house large enough for twenty, if he chooses."
+
+"When only a small part of a house is used for ordinary purposes,"
+remarked Monsieur Dupont, "the remainder is often used for extraordinary
+ones."
+
+"You know as much of the house as I do," Tranter returned.
+
+"As a practical man," Monsieur Dupont continued, "you may smile when I
+speak of such a thing as 'psychic intuition.' But you may smile, and
+again you may smile. I possess that intuition strongly. It has been of
+great use to me. The moment I entered that house to-night, I knew it was
+a house of sin. I knew there were hidden things in it--things that were
+not for honest eyes to see. I do not say--at present--that they have any
+connection with the crime. But they are there."
+
+"I do not smile at such instincts," Tranter said. "I quite admit that
+there is a strange, uncanny atmosphere about the place. And if there are
+secrets in it, I am equally ready to admit that they are probably bad
+ones."
+
+"They are bad ones," declared Monsieur Dupont. "They could not be
+anything but bad ones. When that excellent Inspector Fay has solved the
+mystery of the garden, he would be wise to turn his attention to the
+secrets of the house."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Did Layton kill her?" Tranter asked suddenly.
+
+Monsieur Dupont shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"The evidence is against him," he replied judicially. "Your Coroner's
+jury will find him guilty, and the police will not look further. They
+will build up a strong case. They will doubtless find that he was
+cruelly treated by that poor girl, and was furious to know that she was
+engaged to another man. He threatened, in the presence of many
+witnesses, to kill her in a horrible way. He was seen later in the
+garden, and afterwards she was found--killed in exactly that horrible
+way. Who would not say that in his rage and jealousy he had fulfilled
+his threat? Every one will be perfectly satisfied. It is enough for
+justice if the most likely person is hanged. And, so far, he is not only
+the most likely, but the only, person."
+
+"Perhaps so," Tranter acknowledged. "But--he didn't look like a
+murderer. He looked a good fellow. Is there no other alternative?"
+
+"There _is_ an alternative," said Monsieur Dupont steadily.
+
+"There is?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Monsieur Dupont smoked composedly for a minute.
+
+"My friend," he said--"are you inclined for an adventure?"
+
+"I am rather busy," Tranter replied. "What is it?"
+
+"Suppose ... I were to declare to you positively that James Layton is
+innocent--that he did not commit that crime in the crooked garden
+to-night--and that I do not intend to allow him to be hanged for a crime
+that he did not commit--would you give a certain amount of your time to
+help me to save him?"
+
+"Certainly. I will do anything I can."
+
+"Then," said Monsieur Dupont, "I answer the question you asked a moment
+ago. He did _not_ kill her."
+
+"Who did?" Tranter demanded, looking at him in astonishment.
+
+"That is another matter. It is one thing to say who did not--but quite
+another to say who did. That is for us to discover. There will be very
+little time. I think I can promise you excitement. Possibly there will
+be danger. You do not object to that?"
+
+"I have faced a certain amount of danger in my time," Tranter replied.
+
+"Good," said Monsieur Dupont. "Then we will set ourselves--quite apart
+from the efforts of our friend, Inspector Fay--to solve the mystery of
+the crooked garden. And we will not speak a word to any one of our
+intention."
+
+"You seem to have some very definite ideas on the subject already,"
+Tranter observed.
+
+"Ah, no," demurred Monsieur Dupont--"do not credit me with the
+superhuman. We have a very difficult task before us."
+
+"But what of your other object," Tranter inquired--"the 'riddle' that
+you came over to solve?"
+
+"It may be," Monsieur Dupont replied carefully, "that there is some
+connection between my riddle and this dreadful affair to-night. At
+present I cannot say. Only events themselves can prove that.
+But that very possibility compels me to take up a peculiar
+attitude--unfortunately a most necessary one. If you will assist me--as
+I beg you to do--you must be content to follow my guidance and
+instructions without question, and remain, as you call it, in the dark,
+until the time comes for all to be told."
+
+"You are certainly the most mysterious person I have ever met!" Tranter
+exclaimed.
+
+"It is not that I have the smallest doubt of yourself or your
+discretion," Monsieur Dupont hastened to explain. "On the contrary. It
+is simply that my position at this moment is an extraordinary one, and I
+cannot do what would seem to be the natural and ordinary thing. Will you
+help me on that understanding?"
+
+"I will help you in any case," Tranter agreed, smiling slightly at his
+companion's intense seriousness. "What is to be my first task?"
+
+"Your first task," said Monsieur Dupont gravely, "is to deposit me at
+the Hotel Savoy, and call for me later on your way back to Richmond."
+
+Tranter spoke some instructions through the speaking-tube to the
+chauffeur. When he turned again, Monsieur Dupont was asleep. He did not
+open his eyes again until the car stopped at the Savoy.
+
+Entering the hotel, he ascended to his room. In it, he mixed himself a
+whisky-and-soda, sat down at the writing-table, and unlocked a
+despatch-box.
+
+He took out two photographs--each of a remarkably beautiful woman.
+
+Under one was neatly written--
+
+_Colette d'Orsel. Nice. August 1900._
+
+And under the other--
+
+_Margaret McCall. Boston. Dec. 1910._
+
+From his pocket he took the photograph which the inspector had allowed
+him to appropriate, and laid it beside the others. The face that smiled
+up at him was the most beautiful of the three.
+
+He dipped a pen in the ink, and wrote under it, in the same neat
+handwriting--
+
+_Christine Manderson. London. July 1919._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+WITHOUT TRACE
+
+
+At ten o'clock, Tranter and Monsieur Dupont stood with Inspector Fay in
+the garden. The Rev. Percival Delamere joined them a few minutes later,
+and the theatrical manager arrived shortly afterwards. Finally, still in
+the same half-dazed condition, George Copplestone emerged from the
+house.
+
+"_Mon Dieu_," Monsieur Dupont whispered quickly. "Look at that man!"
+
+His face was white, with a sickly pasty whiteness. In the few hours that
+had passed he seemed to have wasted to a startling gauntness. His cheeks
+were drawn, his sunken eyes dull and filmy. He moved slowly and heavily,
+as if compelling himself under an utter weariness.
+
+"What do you want first?" he asked the inspector curtly.
+
+"First," replied Inspector Fay, "I want to be shown the spot where the
+body was found."
+
+Copplestone led the way across the lawns. In the daylight Monsieur
+Dupont eagerly followed the maze of winding paths and hedges that had
+imprisoned him so helplessly in the darkness. It was a veritable
+looking-glass garden. The end of every path mocked its beginning. To
+reach an object it was necessary to walk away from it. To arrive at the
+bank of the river, Copplestone conducted his followers in the opposite
+direction.
+
+"This garden might have been designed for a crime," the inspector
+remarked, as they turned yet another corner.
+
+"It was," Monsieur Dupont agreed from the rear. "It was designed for the
+most abominable crime of making men and women go backwards instead of
+forwards. And last night it attained the height of its purpose."
+
+For an instant Copplestone glanced back at him, a quickening in his dull
+eyes. A moment afterwards they turned a final corner, and emerged on to
+the broad lawns, sloping down to the edge of the river.
+
+Copplestone halted, and looked round, measuring distances. Then he moved
+on, keeping close to the trees.
+
+"About here, I think," said the clergyman, pausing.
+
+Copplestone stopped a few paces ahead.
+
+"It was very dark," he said, looking at the ground. "I don't think I
+knew exactly where we were. As near as I can judge, it was just here."
+
+"There ought to have been some sign left to mark the place when the body
+was taken away," the inspector said sharply.
+
+"You will find," said the quiet voice of Monsieur Dupont, "a pencil in
+the ground at the exact spot. It is a useful pencil, and I should be
+obliged if you would kindly return it to me."
+
+The inspector shot him a rather grim smile. All, except Copplestone,
+bent down to look for the sign.
+
+"Here it is," Tranter exclaimed, pulling a pencil out of the ground.
+They stood aside to give the inspector room.
+
+"The rain has washed away any traces that might have helped us," that
+official grumbled, after a fruitless search.
+
+"And even if it had not," the manager observed, "you would only have
+found traces of all of us, as we were all here."
+
+The inspector continued his examination. Copplestone stood apart, his
+eyes fixed on the river. He did not appear to be taking the slightest
+interest in the proceedings.
+
+"In what position was the body lying?" the inspector asked, looking up
+at the clergyman.
+
+"It was so horribly contorted that it is difficult to say in what
+position it _was_ lying," the latter replied, bending down beside him.
+"The head, I think, lay towards the river, and the feet towards the
+trees."
+
+"It was so when we came," Copplestone corroborated, without turning his
+head.
+
+"There are no signs of a struggle here," said the inspector,
+straightening himself after another pause. "If there had been one, some
+of the heavier indications might have remained in spite of the rain."
+
+"It is possible," Monsieur Dupont suggested, "that the body was carried
+here from the place where the struggle did take place."
+
+"Quite possible," the inspector agreed. He turned to Tranter. "Will you
+show us now, Mr. Tranter, where you parted from Miss Manderson?"
+
+"I am not familiar with the garden," Tranter replied. "I only know, as I
+told you last night, that we had just passed under some arches across
+the path. I do not know where they are."
+
+"Mr. Copplestone will show us," said the inspector.
+
+Copplestone started at the sound of his own name, and turned to them.
+
+"What next?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"The rose arches," returned the inspector.
+
+Copplestone indicated an opening in the trees, some distance ahead of
+them.
+
+"Over here," he directed, moving towards it.
+
+There were twelve ornamental arches, overgrown with roses. Monsieur
+Dupont looked at the wealth of flowers almost with reverence.
+
+"So far," he muttered, "the only innocent things I have seen in this
+garden."
+
+Tranter stopped at a point where several paths intersected.
+
+"I left her here," he said. "I went down that path to the right, which
+she told me would lead to the main lawns where I should be most likely
+to Mr. Copplestone. She said she was going straight back to the house."
+
+"She should have taken that path," Copplestone said, turning to one in
+another direction. "That is the way to the house."
+
+"Did she know the garden well?" asked the inspector.
+
+"Perfectly well."
+
+"Still, she might easily have taken a wrong turning in the darkness."
+
+"She might. But it is about the straightest path in the garden. I don't
+think she would have made a mistake."
+
+Slowly and carefully Inspector Fay followed the path to the house, under
+the guidance of Copplestone. Every yard of the way was examined, but
+yielded nothing. The inspector's face became darker and darker. He
+stopped when they turned a corner and found themselves at the house.
+
+"She could not possibly have got so far as this before the attack was
+made," he said discontentedly.
+
+"Impossible," agreed the manager. "If the murderer had killed her here,
+he would have left her here. He would not have taken the risk of
+dragging her all the way to the river."
+
+"It seems a curious thing," the clergyman remarked, "that apparently she
+did not utter any cry for help."
+
+"Ah!" said Monsieur Dupont quietly.
+
+He looked at the clergyman with a new interest. Copplestone also glanced
+at him quickly.
+
+"Even the thunder would hardly have drowned a sharp cry, and some one
+would surely have heard it."
+
+"Probably she hadn't time," suggested the manager. "No doubt he sprang
+out and attacked her from the back. He must have been as quick as the
+lightning itself."
+
+Monsieur Dupont drew Tranter aside.
+
+"Our clerical friend does not realize the importance of his own point,"
+he said softly. "But he has put his finger on the key to the whole
+mystery."
+
+"The key?" Tranter repeated.
+
+"If Christine Manderson had uttered a cry for help, this would have been
+a simple, straightforward case," said Monsieur Dupont. "In the fact that
+she did not lies the whole secret of the crime."
+
+"Bolsover's reason would seem to be the obvious one," Tranter returned.
+"The assault must have been made so quickly that she had no time."
+
+"Mr. Bolsover's reason is, as you say, the obvious one," admitted
+Monsieur Dupont. "But it is not the correct one. I have already warned
+Inspector Fay to disregard the obvious. If he will not take my advice,
+that is his affair."
+
+"But what do you mean?" asked Tranter.
+
+Monsieur Dupont's voice sank lower.
+
+"Don't you see that a cry for help would have completely transformed the
+whole case? It would have brought it down in one crash to a human
+level. It is the silence--the utter, horrible silence--that makes it
+what it is. It is the silence----"
+
+The inspector's voice recalled them.
+
+"Now, Mr. Bolsover, just whereabouts was Layton when you disturbed him?"
+
+"He was sneaking round there," the manager replied, pointing to a corner
+of the house, "towards the drawing-room windows."
+
+"Which path did he run to when he saw you?"
+
+"That one--to the river."
+
+"Does that path communicate anywhere with the one which we presume Miss
+Manderson was following to the house?"
+
+"Yes," said Copplestone.
+
+They moved along the path indicated by the manager. It twisted about
+unproductively for some distance.
+
+"How far was he in front of you?" asked the inspector.
+
+"I don't know," confessed the manager. "I should say about ten yards
+when we started--but I am not much of a runner. I had lost him
+altogether before I got here."
+
+They went on.
+
+"That cursed rain," the inspector muttered.
+
+"This is the branch that leads to the other path," said Copplestone,
+halting.
+
+"And it was further along there, by that fir tree that I met Monsieur
+Dupont," added the manager.
+
+"That is so," agreed Monsieur Dupont. "Layton certainly did not come
+beyond this point in my direction."
+
+"By taking that branch," the inspector calculated, "he would have met
+Miss Manderson just at the time that the crime was committed."
+
+"He would," said the manager.
+
+Monsieur Dupont turned again to Tranter.
+
+"We must be quick," he whispered, "Layton is already hanged."
+
+"There doesn't seem to be much chance for him," returned Tranter. "It
+will be a very strong case. No criminal could complain at being hanged
+on such evidence."
+
+"And yet," said Monsieur Dupont slowly, "so far as the actual crime is
+concerned, there is not a single trace. Not one single trace. Is it not
+extraordinary?"
+
+He doubled his fists.
+
+"That luck!" he ground out angrily. "Again that luck!"
+
+"What luck?" Tranter exclaimed.
+
+"If that most unfortunate young man had not come here and made a fool of
+himself last night, the police might have searched forever without
+finding a clue. There is no clue here. And there was the rain. The very
+elements sweep up after the passing of the Destroyer."
+
+"What on earth do you mean?" Tranter cried.
+
+"Hush!" said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"I am obliged to you, gentlemen," said the inspector. "Your evidence
+will of course be required at the inquest, of which you will receive
+notice. I need not detain you any longer."
+
+The clergyman and the manager hurried away. Monsieur Dupont lingered at
+the inspector's side, and Tranter strolled back with Copplestone.
+
+"Well?" queried the inspector. "Not much doubt about it, is there?"
+
+"You have a strong case," said Monsieur Dupont. "Very strong."
+
+"You agree with it?"
+
+Monsieur Dupont shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"At all events, I am not in position, at present, to contradict it."
+
+"You will have your work cut out to build up another one," said the
+inspector complacently. "There isn't a trace."
+
+"That is it," said the other sharply. "There is no trace. There is never
+a trace." He lowered his voice cautiously. "One point I recommend to
+you, as I have just recommended it to Tranter--that remark of Mr.
+Delamere that there was no cry for help."
+
+"What of it?" returned the inspector.
+
+"It is the key," said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+He moved on abruptly, and overtook Tranter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+A BUILDER OF MEN
+
+
+James Layton occupied two dingy rooms, in a dilapidated house, situated
+between a church and a public-house, in as squalid and unwholesome a
+street as any in the East End of London. In them he spent such time as
+was left to him--and it was not much--after his active ministrations
+among the denizens of the miserable neighborhood. They were scantily
+furnished, and of comforts there were none. He denied himself anything
+beyond the barest necessities of existence, with the exception of a few
+books and pipes, which were the companions of his odd moments of
+leisure, and he read and smoked in a hard wicker chair, destitute even
+of a cushion. He ate sparingly, of food scarcely better than that on
+which his neighbors subsisted, and drank little. His clothes were poor,
+his shirts frayed, and his boots patched--and his income was a thousand
+pounds a week.
+
+In his work he was unusually broad-minded and unprejudiced. He spent
+none of his time in efforts to lure the occupants of the public-house on
+his left into the church on his right. Indeed, he was an excellent
+customer of the former institution, and was on the best of terms with
+its landlord, who was an ex-pugilist after his kind. He made no
+discrimination in the dispensation of his charity. He worked on the
+principle that before he reformed a man he must feed him--so before he
+attempted to deal with the mind he relieved the body. He was open-handed
+and unsuspicious--and wonderfully beloved. There were hundreds of people
+in that street, and many other streets, who would gladly have laid down
+their lives for him--and who imposed on him shockingly day after day in
+the minor matters of life. The Mad Philanthropist never turned
+away--never refused. He was a builder of Men. No one knew, or cared, who
+he was or whence he came. He never gave account of himself, or spoke of
+his own affairs. Curiosity was the one thing he resented. He enclosed
+himself, so far as private matters were concerned, within the
+fortifications of a reserve which no one had succeeded in penetrating.
+Though he held a thousand confidences, he made none. In listening to the
+experiences of others he never referred to his own, or even hinted
+whether they had been sweet or bitter. He went on his silent way--and
+the world was the better for him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In his bare sitting-room he sat with his face between his hands. A girl
+knelt on the floor beside him.
+
+She was a remarkable girl. Wild, wayward, with all the passions--brimful
+with untamed vitality--incapable of the common restraints. Her face was
+neither beautiful, nor, perhaps, even pretty--but Diana herself might
+have envied the full, lithe figure, the free grace of her movements. She
+was the creature of her desires--knowing no laws that opposed them. A
+Primitive Woman, from the dawn of the world.
+
+"Jim," she pleaded. "Jim...."
+
+He made no movement.
+
+"Be a man," she whispered. "Pull yourself together."
+
+He put her away from him roughly.
+
+"I wish you'd go," he said dully. "I don't want you here."
+
+Her face grew whiter. Her hands crept to him again. The light of a great
+love was in her eyes.
+
+"Oh, Jim," she whispered, "I know I'm not like she was. I'm not
+beautiful. I'm not wonderful. I haven't anything that she had. Oh, I
+know all that ... so well."
+
+He uncovered his face--it was haggard and bloodless, the face of a man
+in the throes of a mental hell--and looked at her, almost with
+revulsion.
+
+"You?" he cried harshly. "You...? You dare to name yourself to me in
+the same breath with her? Get up, and look at yourself!" He pointed to a
+cracked mirror on the mantel-piece. "Look!" he said hoarsely, thrusting
+her away from him again. "Do you see how coarse and heavy and rough you
+are? She was light and delicate--like a snowflake. She never seemed to
+touch the ground. Your hair is like string--your hands are large--your
+voice is harsh. Her hair was like silk--gold silk in the sunshine. I
+could see through her hands. Her voice was music. I want you to go. You
+are in my way."
+
+She sprang up, raging.
+
+"She never loved you!" she cried. "She never cared for you--or even
+thought of you! She wasn't fit to touch you--to look at you!"
+
+His face was aflame.
+
+"Stop!" he shouted.
+
+"I hate her!" she declared fiercely. "I hate her memory! I'm glad she's
+dead!"
+
+He lunged forward from his chair, and seized her. In his fury he nearly
+struck her.
+
+"As God's above us," he panted, "one more word...." His rage choked him.
+The words jammed in his throat.
+
+She wrenched herself free. His arms dropped to his sides. He reeled
+dizzily.
+
+"You may do what you like to me," she cried passionately. "I tell
+you--I'm glad she's dead! She deserved to die. She was wicked and cruel.
+I think God Himself destroyed her."
+
+He sank back into his chair weakly. A sob shook him.
+
+"God did not destroy her," he said slowly. "God never destroys. He only
+builds. It is men and women who destroy."
+
+There was a long silence. She came close to him again, all her anger
+swallowed up in a great sympathy.
+
+"Jim," she asked softly ... "was she so much to you?"
+
+He became suddenly rigid.
+
+"How did you come to know her? She wasn't your sort. She couldn't have
+had anything in common with you. What have you to do with women like
+that?"
+
+His eyes narrowed threateningly. Her questions had struck him into a new
+alertness. She noticed that his knees were pressed together.
+
+"The papers said she only came to England two months ago--for the first
+time. It hasn't all happened since then. I know it hasn't. There must
+have been something else. Something before. What was it?"
+
+He sat glaring at her--locking and unlocking his hands.
+
+"It all happened since then," he said jerkily. "I had never seen her
+before. There was nothing else."
+
+"I don't believe it, Jim," she declared. "You are hiding something."
+
+He avoided her steady gaze.
+
+"Believe it or not, as you like," he retorted.
+
+"People say there is some secret in your life," she said. "I believe
+there is. And I believe it was her secret too."
+
+He lunged forward again, in a fresh paroxysm of fury.
+
+"What is it to you?" he cried shrilly--"or to any one? Why do you pry?
+Suppose I have my secrets. They are no concern of yours. I give away my
+money--my life. Isn't it enough? What would you be--what would any of
+them be now--but for me? I work day and night for others. Can't I keep
+my soul to myself?"
+
+"Jim," she said gently, "I'm not prying. I don't want to know your
+secrets. I only wanted to make it lighter for you, if you'd let me."
+
+"You can't make it lighter for me," he returned. "No one can make it
+lighter. I don't want to be interfered with. I want to be left alone.
+What right have you to try to judge me?"
+
+"Judge you?" she echoed. "Who could want to judge you? Why, you are the
+noblest man in all the world. No one could do more good than you do.
+Every man, woman, and child here worships you, and would die for you."
+
+His anger instantly subsided.
+
+"Ah, yes!" he said greedily--"tell me that. That's what I want to hear.
+Tell me they worship me--that no one could do more good than I do--that
+men and women would die for me. Go on telling me that!"
+
+Her voice thrilled with her love for him.
+
+"You brought us light and life. You have raised hundreds--as you raised
+me--out of misery and filth. Think of all the children you have sent
+away from this poison into the green fields and the sunshine--who would
+have died."
+
+"Yes! yes!" he cried. "Go on! Go on! All the children...."
+
+"You are building them," she said--her whole being transformed with
+tenderness. "You are making them fit to be men and women. They wouldn't
+have been fit without you. You are teaching them how to be clean and
+happy. You are showing them that they needn't be the dregs of
+humanity--that these hovels needn't be their world. You are giving them
+new interests, new thoughts, new hopes. Oh, what could be more
+wonderful--more splendid? It is God's own work."
+
+"Yes! yes!" he cried again. "God's work! I am doing God's work!"
+
+He paced up and down the room eagerly--feasting on her words--drinking
+her praises as an exhausted man might drink an invigorating draught. He
+was in the grip of a feverish energy. His blood was racing.
+
+His quick steps shook the wretched room. The floor creaked under his
+tread. A lamp on the table rattled. The girl watched him nervously. She
+put out a hand to check him, but he brushed it aside. His looks, his
+movements, frightened her. He seemed to be gazing out beyond the narrow
+walls into a space of surging memories, that sported with his reason. He
+muttered incoherently, oblivious of her presence. She grew frightened.
+
+"Jim!" she cried sharply.
+
+He started, and stopped, looking at her vacantly.
+
+"My work," he said restlessly. "I must get on with my work. I haven't
+done enough ... nearly enough. I must go on building ... go on giving
+light."
+
+He let her put a hand on his arm and move him gently back to his chair.
+He sat down, and stared at her in a dazed fashion, as one returning to
+consciousness.
+
+"Why haven't you gone?" he said heavily. "I asked you to go."
+
+"I'm not going, Jim," she returned. "I can't leave you like this. You're
+not fit to be left."
+
+His face darkened again.
+
+"I am perfectly fit to be left," he said hardly. "And I wish to be
+alone."
+
+"When you are better, I'll go," she said quietly--"if you want me to."
+
+He made a gesture of impatience.
+
+"I am better now," he said wearily. "I am quite well. I want you to go.
+Why do you persist in staying when I want you to go?"
+
+The girl's self-control deserted her. She burst into a storm of weeping.
+
+"I won't go," she sobbed. "I won't go--because you are in trouble--and I
+love you. I don't care whether you want me or not. I love you."
+
+He heard her indifferently. Neither her tears nor her passion moved him.
+
+"Don't talk nonsense," he snapped. "Love is nothing to me. I hate the
+word. You might as well talk of loving the Monument as me."
+
+"You lifted me up," she cried. "You saved my soul and body. I was lower
+than any of the others before you came. You taught me--and I've tried to
+learn your lessons. But, oh, if you didn't mean me to love you, you
+should have left me where I was."
+
+"You were a good girl," he said, with tired tolerance. "You learnt
+well. But I didn't mean you to love me. I don't want you to love me.
+What I have done for you was only part of my work--like the others. I
+don't want any woman to love me. I tell you, I hate the word. It means
+nothing to me. I only want to go on...."
+
+Her sobs ceased. She stood very still. Her face was torn, but he was not
+looking at her. She turned, and went slowly towards the door, her head
+bowed. She seemed to be shrunken and small. All her vitality had gone.
+She moved like an old woman, weakly.
+
+The door opened before she reached it. Two men stood in the passage. She
+started back. One of them came a few paces into the room, looking at the
+man in the chair.
+
+"Mr. James Layton?"
+
+He rose unsteadily.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I am James Layton. What do you want?"
+
+"We are police officers, investigating the murder of Miss Christine
+Manderson."
+
+The girl uttered a cry, and sprang between them.
+
+"What do you want with him?" she demanded fiercely. "He knows nothing
+about it. How should he? What is it to do with him?"
+
+The men looked at her with quick interest. But Layton silenced her with
+an imperative gesture.
+
+"I am at your service," he said quietly. "What can I do for you?"
+
+"We are instructed to ask you to be kind enough to return with us to
+Scotland Yard to answer a few questions that may assist the
+investigation of the crime."
+
+"Certainly," Layton returned, without hesitation.
+
+His face was perfectly calm. He showed no fear or agitation.
+
+"We have a taxi waiting," the man said. He spoke to Layton--but he was
+looking at the girl.
+
+"I will come with you at once," Layton replied.
+
+He took up his hat and stick. The girl leant against the wall panting, a
+hand pressed to her heart.
+
+"Jim," she gasped faintly. "Jim...."
+
+He turned, with the first sign of kindness he had yet shown to her.
+
+"Don't be frightened," he said gently. "I shall be back in an hour or
+so."
+
+She clutched him desperately.
+
+"You sha'n't go!" she cried wildly. "You sha'n't go!"
+
+He put her aside firmly.
+
+"Why shouldn't I go? There is nothing to be afraid of. I must help if I
+can."
+
+The door closed behind them. The girl moved from the wall, and staggered
+to the table, leaning on it heavily. She was ashen. Her lips were gray.
+She heard them leave the house--heard the car start, and listened until
+the sound of it died away in the length of the street. Her strength
+failed. She sank to her knees. A moan of agony escaped her.
+
+"For nothing...." she whispered. "Oh, God ... for nothing...."
+
+She heard a quiet tap at the door, but could not answer. She saw the
+door open slowly. An enormous figure stood on the threshold.
+
+She struggled to her feet.
+
+"What do you want?" she murmured fearfully. "Have you come ... for me?"
+
+The figure squeezed its way through the narrow doorway, and closed the
+door.
+
+"Mademoiselle, you are a friend of Mr. James Layton, who was taken, a
+few minutes ago, to Scotland Yard?"
+
+"Yes," she cried, "yes. I am his friend. What is it?"
+
+"Before the end of the day, Mr. Layton will be detained on the charge of
+murder."
+
+She screamed.
+
+"He didn't do it! He didn't do it!"
+
+"The evidence is strong," said the stranger. "He threatened her. He was
+in the garden when the crime was committed----"
+
+She raised her hand, as if to ward off a blow.
+
+"In the garden?" she shivered. "He was in the garden ... then?"
+
+"He will require much assistance," continued the huge unknown--"and
+there is no time to lose. Will you help him?"
+
+"I would die for him," she choked. "What can I do?"
+
+The stranger re-opened the door.
+
+"Come with me, mademoiselle," he said softly--"and I will tell you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+A TRIPLE ALLIANCE
+
+
+He led the girl out of the house. At the corner of the street a taxi was
+waiting. He opened the door.
+
+"Where are we going?" she demanded suspiciously.
+
+"To the Hotel Savoy, mademoiselle," he answered.
+
+She hung back.
+
+"Why should I go with you?" she asked defiantly. "I have never seen you
+before. I don't know who you are."
+
+"Mademoiselle," he replied, "your friend is in great danger. He will not
+be able to help himself. If you do not come with me, you will not be
+able to help him. And I assure you that he needs your help."
+
+She got in without another word. He placed himself beside her, and the
+car started.
+
+"Who are you?" she asked.
+
+"My name," he told her, "is Dupont--Victorien Dupont. I arrived in
+London from Paris a few days ago."
+
+"What have you to do with this?" she said doubtfully.
+
+"That," he replied, "I cannot at the moment explain to you. I am
+concerned in this case for reasons of my own, which must remain my own
+for the present. I was in the garden when Christine Manderson was
+killed."
+
+She started, staring at him.
+
+"You were in the garden too?" she cried.
+
+"I was," he affirmed. "And I know that Monsieur Layton did not kill
+her."
+
+"He didn't!" she declared. "He couldn't kill anything. He spends his
+time giving life--not taking it."
+
+"The police will be satisfied that he did, and they will have a strong
+case. Unless we can help him by discovering the truth in time, he will
+not be able to clear himself. Are you prepared to work for him?"
+
+"I told you," she repeated passionately, "I would die for him."
+
+"It is well," he said. "There will be three people on his side. You--my
+friend, Mr. Tranter, who was also in the garden--and myself. Together we
+will save him. There will be separate tasks for us all. Mr. Tranter will
+be waiting at the hotel when we arrive, and we will settle our plan of
+campaign. Until then, mademoiselle, let us not refer to the subject
+again. Do me the favor thoroughly to compose yourself. In these matters
+coolness is of the utmost importance."
+
+He compressed himself further into his corner, and closed his eyes. The
+girl said nothing more. The rapidity of the whole catastrophe, and the
+sudden appearance of this new adventure bewildered her. The huge
+mysterious stranger almost frightened her. Though his eyes were shut and
+he made neither sound nor movement, she felt that he was searching her,
+that he was straining all his mental forces to steal the thoughts that
+were throbbing through her mind. As they drew near to their destination,
+she fiercely exerted the self-control that was one of her least
+developed virtues, and by the time they reached the Savoy, and Monsieur
+Dupont opened his eyes, she was steady and watchful.
+
+"Mademoiselle," said Monsieur Dupont softly, "you will be of the
+greatest assistance. Already you know the value of silence."
+
+In his private sitting-room they found Tranter awaiting them.
+
+"My friend," said Monsieur Dupont, "this lady will work with us. She is
+much attached to James Layton, and her assistance will be most
+valuable." He turned to her. "Mademoiselle, I have not the honor...."
+
+"My name's Jenny West," she said, comprehending the request.
+
+"Where is Layton?" Tranter asked, as Monsieur Dupont placed a chair for
+the girl, and sat down himself.
+
+"By this time," Monsieur Dupont replied, "he will have arrived at
+Scotland Yard. Our friend Inspector Fay will question him, and he will
+certainly be detained. As I have just explained to mademoiselle, he is
+in great danger. Unless we succeed in our object, his position is
+without hope."
+
+Tears welled up in the girl's eyes, but she checked them with an effort.
+
+"I wish," Monsieur Dupont continued, with careful emphasis, "that my own
+position also should be clearly understood, in so far as I am at liberty
+to explain it. I cannot yet tell you how I come to be interested in this
+affair. Soon I may do so--but until then you must be content to take me
+on trust, and to accept my assurance that I am fully qualified to direct
+you. Are you willing to follow my instructions without question--to save
+this innocent man, who will be accused of a horrible crime which he did
+not commit?"
+
+"Yes, yes," the girl cried. "I am ready. I will do anything."
+
+"And I," said Tranter.
+
+"The directions I give may seem to be strange," Monsieur Dupont went on
+impressively--"but they must be followed. The errands on which I send
+you may seem to be unimportant and even foolish--but they must be
+carried out. Do not look for explanations, until I make them. I give
+account to no one. Those who work with me work much in the dark--but
+they reach the light. There must be no hesitation. Is that understood?"
+
+Again the others agreed.
+
+"Then," said Monsieur Dupont confidently, "we shall succeed. Layton will
+be saved--but it will be a hard and difficult task. The first law I have
+to impose on you is--silence. Complete silence, to every one except
+myself."
+
+He turned to the girl.
+
+"At three o'clock this afternoon, mademoiselle, unless you hear from me
+to the contrary, you will go to Scotland Yard, where Mr. Layton will be
+detained. That I shall verify by telephone. You will see him, and you
+will tell him this: You will say that I, Dupont, know how and why
+Christine Manderson died--that I, and those with me, will not allow the
+innocent to suffer--and that he shall be delivered from this charge. And
+say to him, also, anything from yourself that you may wish to say."
+
+They were both gazing at him blankly.
+
+"You know?" the girl gasped. "You know who killed her?"
+
+The great Frenchman seemed to develop before their eyes into a figure
+of tremendous menace, every inch of him alive with implacable,
+relentless purpose.
+
+"I know," he declared slowly, "just what I have told you--how and why
+she died. Ask me no more. Remember our conditions. There must be no
+questions until the time comes."
+
+He rose, and took an envelope from his pocket.
+
+"Certain things that I shall ask you to do, mademoiselle, may involve
+expense. In this envelope you will find a sufficient sum. Do not
+hesitate to accept it. Ample funds are at our command. When you return
+from Scotland Yard, report to me here. If I am not in, wait for me. And,
+above all, remember--silence."
+
+He opened the door, and bowed her out. Then he turned to Tranter with a
+faint smile.
+
+"Well, my friend?" he asked quietly.
+
+"Do you really mean," Tranter exclaimed, "that you know the truth of the
+crime?"
+
+Monsieur Dupont offered him a cigar, and lit one himself with great
+composure.
+
+"I know just as much about the crime, my friend, as I have said. I
+repeat--I know how and why that unfortunate woman died. Who, or what,
+caused her to die is another matter, which we are setting ourselves to
+solve."
+
+"You are certain that Layton is innocent?"
+
+"James Layton did not commit the crime," Monsieur Dupont returned
+firmly. "But he will be hanged for it--if we are not in time."
+
+"Well," said Tranter, "what is there for me to do?"
+
+"For you," replied Monsieur Dupont, "there is the most important task in
+the case, so far. And the most dangerous. Within twenty-four hours you
+must discover, and bring to me here, the secret of the Crooked House."
+
+"Good Lord!" Tranter exclaimed, taken aback, "how on earth am I to do
+that?"
+
+"I do not know," Monsieur Dupont admitted. "Nor have I any helpful
+suggestions to make. The method of procedure I leave to you."
+
+"Housebreaking is entirely out of my province," Tranter objected. "And
+the secret of that house, if there is one, is likely to be very well
+guarded."
+
+"Probably," agreed Monsieur Dupont. "But the fact remains that before
+the end of the next twenty-four hours I must have that secret--and you
+are the person who must bring it to me."
+
+Tranter took up his hat and stick, without further protest.
+
+"Very well," he said stoutly. "I will do my best."
+
+Monsieur Dupont looked at his watch.
+
+"It is one o'clock," he said, opening the door. "At one o'clock
+to-morrow I shall be waiting for you in this room."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+MR. GLUCKSTEIN IN CONFIDENCE
+
+
+Mrs. Astley-Rolfe invariably received her creditors in pink deshabille.
+
+The financier, Mr. Solomon Gluckstein, original and senior
+representative of John Brown & Co., Jermyn Street, was particularly fond
+of pink, and extremely susceptible to deshabille. Whiskey-and-soda,
+personally prepared for him in sufficient strength by his charming
+debtor, increased the fondness and the susceptibility.
+
+"Ma tear lady," said Mr. Gluckstein, with desperate firmness, "I have
+come on an unplethant errand."
+
+Mrs. Astley-Rolfe pouted petulantly.
+
+"Am I to have no peace?" she complained, from an alluring attitude on a
+couch. "Isn't it enough to have gone through the last two days? Look at
+me. I am a nervous wreck."
+
+"Then all women wouldth with to be nervouth wrecks," said Mr. Gluckstein
+gallantly.
+
+"I believe that odious detective actually imagined at the beginning that
+I might have murdered the poor girl."
+
+"Nonthenth," the financier assured her.
+
+"I have scarcely had any sleep," she went on reproachfully. "It is a
+wonder I am not thoroughly ill. And now you--from whom I should have
+expected consideration--come here with a face like a rock, and announce
+your intention to be unpleasant. If I didn't know you so well, I might
+have believed you."
+
+Mr. Gluckstein glanced towards the door, and drew his chair closer to
+her.
+
+"Let us understand each other," he said deliberately. "At the present
+time you owe me a large thum of money."
+
+"Gospel truth," she admitted.
+
+"Very much more than you could pothibly pay, if I came down on you."
+
+She uttered a sigh of relief.
+
+"At last you realize that!" she exclaimed thankfully.
+
+"Also," continued Mr. Gluckstein, "you owe money to various other
+people."
+
+"Your veracity," she confessed, "is beyond question."
+
+"Almosth ath much ath you owe to me."
+
+"Quite as much," she said cheerfully.
+
+"And you owe me," he continued--"twelve thousand poundth."
+
+"The first time I have looked the evil fully in the face," she
+shuddered.
+
+His small eyes regarded her intently.
+
+"The last half of that--I lent to you on a certain understanding."
+
+"Understanding?" she echoed languidly.
+
+"Yeth."
+
+"What did you understand?"
+
+"That you intended to become engaged to George Copplesthone, who would
+pay your debths when you married him."
+
+A quick change swept over her. She became hard and calculating.
+
+"Well?" she returned.
+
+"You have not become engaged to him."
+
+"No."
+
+"Some one elth became engaged to him."
+
+"Yes," she said calmly.
+
+"That doth not look," he concluded, "like fulfillment of the
+understanding."
+
+"Doesn't it?" she retorted.
+
+He glanced again at the door, and came still closer.
+
+"Lithen," he said slowly. "I have been your friendth. I have done for
+you what I would not have done for any one elth. I have treated you
+fairly, and I have never prethed you."
+
+She softened immediately.
+
+"You have been very kind to me," she said gratefully.
+
+"You muth be my friendth too. I muth tell you my thecret. Promith me
+faithfully that you will keep it."
+
+She looked at him in astonishment.
+
+"Certainly I will keep it," she agreed.
+
+"Five days ago," Mr. Gluckstein informed her painfully, "my partner
+abthconded, and left me almosth a ruined man."
+
+Her face expressed genuine sympathy.
+
+"I am very sorry," she said feelingly. "What a dreadful blow for you."
+
+"It ith unnethecessary to explain bithness details to you," the
+financier proceeded. "My working capital hath gone, and the fact thimply
+is that I cannot carry on--unleth----" he paused to give his words
+additional emphasis, "unleth you repay me my twelve thousand poundth in
+full within two months."
+
+"Two months?" she exclaimed blankly.
+
+"Two months," he repeatedly firmly. "That ith the utmost time I can give
+you. Have you any other means of raithing the money?"
+
+"Not a ghost of one," she replied frankly. "I might as well try to push
+over the Marble Arch as raise a single thousand."
+
+"Then," he said steadily, "if you do not marry Copplesthone I am a
+bankrupt--and a bankrupt I will not be."
+
+"I shall marry him," she said. "I told you I should--and I shall. You
+will have your money."
+
+"I believed you," he returned. "But another woman beat you."
+
+She looked away from him.
+
+"Did she?" she replied evenly.
+
+There was silence for a moment.
+
+"When Copplesthone announthed his engagement to Mith Manderthon," the
+financier went on, "I stood ruined. I admit it. I stood ruined by your
+defeat. That ith the thecret that you muth keep. I was sure that you had
+no other means of paying me back. Nothing could save me but a
+miraculouth removal of the obstacle."
+
+"The obstacle was removed," she said, in the same even tone.
+
+He shuddered.
+
+"It wath. The obstacle that stood between you and Copplesthone, and me
+and ruination, wath removed. It was a ghastly thing, and we are very
+thorry. But let uth be candid. It wath to our advantage."
+
+"Yes," she agreed slowly--"it was to our advantage."
+
+"There must not be another obstacle," he said.
+
+"There will not be another," she replied. "George Copplestone will marry
+me--and you shall have your twelve thousand pounds, as I promised. You
+need not be anxious."
+
+He looked round the luxurious room, and sighed deeply. It surprised her
+that she had not noticed before how much he had aged.
+
+"I must begin again," he said. "I am getting old--but I will rebuild my
+fortune. I will not be the only poor Jew in London."
+
+"You have been a good friend to me," she said gently. "I am very sorry."
+
+He paused to finish his drink, but his crafty eyes never left her face.
+She did not meet them.
+
+"I wonder," he said, in a slightly lower tone, replacing his empty glass
+on the table, "what the police will discover."
+
+"I should imagine that there is very little to be discovered," she
+returned. "There seems no doubt that it was James Layton, the Mad
+Millionaire, as he is called. He will probably be arrested within the
+next twenty-four hours. It appears to be a clear case. He threatened
+her--in front of us all. And he was in the garden."
+
+"It ought to be enough," he admitted, more easily. "What more could they
+want?"
+
+"The evidence is very strong," she said, lazily settling her deshabille.
+"Many people have been hanged on less. Apparently the police are
+satisfied. At least, they have not arrested either of us."
+
+The financier started violently.
+
+"Either of uth?" he cried, aghast. "What do you mean, either of uth?"
+
+Her smile was enigmatical.
+
+"As you said just now--the removal of the obstacle was to the advantage
+of both of us."
+
+"But they don't know," he shivered. "They can't know."
+
+"I hope not," she said shortly.
+
+Perspiration began to stand out on his forehead. He had lost color
+considerably.
+
+"You promised to keep my thecret," he exclaimed nervously. "Noth a word
+to any one."
+
+"I shall keep my promise," she replied.
+
+"There is no cause for alarm. I don't think Inspector Fay will trouble
+us."
+
+There was a tap at the door. They turned as the butler entered.
+
+"Inspector Fay would like to see you for a few minutes, madam."
+
+They looked at each other. The financier was agitated. The woman was
+perfectly calm.
+
+"Talk of the devil!" she smiled.
+
+Mr. Gluckstein gripped his hat, stick, and gloves, and rose hurriedly.
+
+"He must not see me here," he said jerkily. "Let me out another way."
+
+"Go through there," she said, pointing to a door at the opposite end of
+the room, "and when he has come in, Parker will let you out. Bring the
+inspector in, Parker."
+
+The financier did not wait to shake hands.
+
+"Remember," he whispered passing her--"both your promises."
+
+"They will be kept," she said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE WIT OF THE PINK LADY
+
+
+Inspector Fay entered the room at one end a few seconds after Mr.
+Gluckstein left it at the other.
+
+Mrs. Astley-Rolfe greeted him in a friendly fashion. She showed
+considerable strain--but, otherwise, was looking her best. And her best
+was delightful.
+
+"Good morning, inspector," she said languidly.
+
+"Good morning, madam." He glanced back to make certain that the door was
+closed. "I trust you have recovered from the shock of the crime."
+
+"I still feel it very much," she replied, shuddering. "It was the most
+horrible experience I have ever had. To think of seeing that poor girl
+alive and well one minute, and the next--like that. It's too dreadful to
+think of."
+
+"It was certainly a most disgusting crime," the inspector agreed.
+
+"I suppose it was James Layton?"
+
+"I am afraid I cannot make any statement at present," he replied. "Our
+investigations are proceeding as quickly as possible. I hope we shall
+clear it up in a few days."
+
+"I hope you will," she declared fervently. "Such a brutal criminal can
+expect no mercy."
+
+"In the meantime," continued the inspector, "I should be much obliged if
+you would kindly give me a little information."
+
+"Certainly," she said readily. "Sit down."
+
+He sat down, facing her. She made a charming picture. But Inspector Fay
+had been taken in by charming women several times during the early part
+of his career, and at this stage of it was as impervious as an oyster.
+
+"Please understand," he began, "that in asking these questions I am
+making no insinuations or suggestions of any kind. It is necessary to
+establish certain facts."
+
+"I quite understand," she assured him. "What do you want to know?"
+
+"I want to know what you were saying to Mr. Copplestone in the garden,
+before Mr. Tranter came to tell him that Miss Manderson had gone into
+the house."
+
+She started.
+
+"I?" she exclaimed. "I was not with Mr. Copplestone."
+
+He remained silent.
+
+"I told you, I was not with any one. I did not feel quite myself, and
+strolled about alone."
+
+The inspector's face was quite impassive.
+
+"You wish me to accept that answer?" he asked quietly.
+
+She stiffened haughtily.
+
+"What do you mean?" she said sharply.
+
+"I mean that you wish that answer to be accepted as the truth?"
+
+"Of course. Are you suggesting that it is not?"
+
+"I am suggesting nothing," he returned, with unruffled composure. "But I
+must tell you that if I am to accept that answer, it may have serious
+consequences."
+
+"Serious consequences?" she echoed, startled.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"For whom?"
+
+"Possibly for Mr. Copplestone himself."
+
+Signs of uneasiness began to appear, in spite of her wonderful
+self-control.
+
+"For Mr. Copplestone...?"
+
+"For Mr. Copplestone," the inspector affirmed steadily.
+
+"I don't understand," she said. "Will you kindly explain?"
+
+"Certainly." His voice dropped slightly. "Mr. Copplestone lied to me."
+
+"Lied to you?"
+
+"Lied to me," he repeated. "In accounting for himself, from the time he
+came out into the garden after dinner until Mr. Tranter found him to
+deliver Miss Manderson's message, he lied to me deliberately. I want to
+know why."
+
+"You had better ask him," she retorted. "I do not know."
+
+"Mr. Bolsover, the theatrical manager, told me that he found James
+Layton lurking by the house, and called to Mr. Copplestone before
+following him. Mr. Copplestone stated that the reason he did not hear
+that call was that he had gone into the house to refill his
+cigarette-case, and did not come out again until just before Mr. Tranter
+found him after leaving Miss Manderson. That statement was false."
+
+"How do you know?" she asked quickly.
+
+"He did not go into the house to refill his cigarette-case. He had had
+no opportunity to smoke afterwards, and when I questioned him his case
+was almost empty. He may have gone in for another reason----or he may
+not have gone in at all."
+
+"Is it not very trivial?" she said.
+
+"If you had been dealing with crimes and criminals as long as I have,"
+the inspector returned, "you would know that nothing is trivial. At
+present, Mr. Copplestone's time while the crime was being committed is
+unaccounted for--and he is detected in a lie. It is not a pleasant
+position to be in."
+
+She was silent. Her hands moved nervously.
+
+"What is the use of telling me this?" she asked.
+
+"It occurred to me," he replied, "that you might be able to extricate
+him from that position."
+
+"Why?" she demanded resentfully.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Can you?" he insisted, watching her closely.
+
+For a moment she paused. There was malevolence in her gaze.
+
+"I do not know what he was doing," she said obstinately.
+
+"Madam," said the inspector impressively, "if George Copplestone stood
+in the dock in front of you, and his life depended on the truth of your
+answer--would it still be the same answer?"
+
+She turned on him.
+
+"In the dock? What do you mean?"
+
+"Would it still be the same answer?" he repeated sternly.
+
+"Do you suggest that he may have committed the crime?" she exclaimed
+contemptuously. "Its absurd!"
+
+"I told you," he said, "I suggest nothing. My case must be complete. I
+want to know the truth."
+
+Silence followed. She plucked angrily at the lace edge of her gown.
+Inspector Fay waited imperturbably.
+
+"He was with me," she said, at last, sullenly.
+
+"Thank you," said the inspector.
+
+There was another pause.
+
+"Please go on," he pressed her.
+
+She did not attempt to conceal her resentment at his insistence. But the
+inspector's attitude was compelling.
+
+"We had a private conversation," she said viciously. "What passed
+between us concerned only ourselves."
+
+"I have no wish to pry into that," he told her. "But I should like to
+know why both you and Mr. Copplestone preferred to tell me a falsehood
+rather than admit that you were talking together in the garden."
+
+"We had our reasons," she snapped, "for not wishing it to be known that
+we had been together. We had no time to speak privately after the crime
+was discovered, and it evidently seemed best to both of us, rather than
+risk conflicting statements, not to admit that we had spoken to each
+other at all. I hope you have nothing more to ask me."
+
+The inspector rose.
+
+"I have nothing more to ask you, madam," he said politely. "I trust it
+will not be necessary for me to trouble you again in this case. But if
+it should be--you will find that in such serious matters it is always
+better to speak the truth. Good morning."
+
+He walked quickly out of the room, leaving a lady in pink deshabille
+quivering with an emotion that was not anger, but a new triumph.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+DETAINED ON SUSPICION
+
+
+Inspector Fay left the house of the lady in pink with a satisfied
+expression on his face. At the corner of the street he hailed a taxi,
+and drove to Scotland Yard.
+
+Under the watchful eyes of his escort, James Layton awaited him. The
+millionaire was perfectly composed, and appeared to be under no
+apprehension as to the outcome of his visit. He accompanied the
+inspector to a private room, and sat down in a comfortable chair without
+the smallest sign of alarm.
+
+"Mr. James Layton?" the inspector began, seating himself at a table.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Mr. Layton, I am Inspector Fay--in charge of the investigations of the
+death of Miss Christine Manderson, at Richmond, on Tuesday night. I want
+you to be good enough to answer the questions I have to ask you as
+clearly as possible."
+
+"Certainly," the young man replied, unhesitatingly.
+
+"To begin with--did you go to Richmond on that night?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"Were you alone?"
+
+"I was."
+
+"Did you call at Mr. Copplestone's house at half-past eight?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You asked to see Mr. Copplestone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And he refused to see you?"
+
+"He did."
+
+"What was your object in calling on him, in that manner, at such an
+inconvenient time?"
+
+"I had just ascertained that Miss Manderson had, or was about to, become
+engaged to marry him. My object was to tell him that he was not a fit
+person to be her husband, and that I would prevent the marriage at all
+costs."
+
+"That you would prevent the marriage?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Because, in your opinion, he was unworthy of her?"
+
+"Totally."
+
+"Had you any right to take upon yourself the control of Miss Manderson's
+choice of a husband?"
+
+"No right, perhaps--as you use the term."
+
+"As any one would use it?"
+
+"To my mind, yes."
+
+"To your mind you had a right to interfere in that engagement?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"We will come back to that presently," the inspector proceeded. "What
+did you do when Mr. Copplestone refused to see you?"
+
+"I am afraid my excitement got the better of me. I forced my way past
+the servant, and went into a room from which I heard voices, thinking
+that he was there with her."
+
+"You knew, then, that she was in the house at the time?"
+
+"Yes. I had previously telephoned to her hotel, and her maid had told me
+that she was spending the evening at Copplestone's house."
+
+"I am told you burst into the room uttering her name."
+
+"Possibly."
+
+"But you found only some guests of Mr. Copplestone's, who had been
+invited to dinner?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Was there anything strange about the room?"
+
+"It was decorated in an extraordinary manner."
+
+"I think you made some remark about the decorations?"
+
+"Perhaps I did. I had been told something of Mr. Copplestone's
+eccentricities, and I inferred that the engagement was an accomplished
+fact, and that the decorations had been put up in celebration of it."
+
+"Do you remember saying anything else in the room?"
+
+"I said that rather than allow Miss Manderson to be engaged to George
+Copplestone, I would tear her to pieces with my own hands."
+
+"And utterly destroy her?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"A somewhat violent announcement," the inspector observed.
+
+"I am afraid it was."
+
+"You were in a state of great excitement, were you not?"
+
+"I was very excited."
+
+"Almost beside yourself?"
+
+"I cannot say that."
+
+"Were you responsible for your words and actions at the time?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"You really meant what you said?"
+
+"I meant what I said," the young man declared calmly.
+
+The inspector was writing rapidly.
+
+"You were then requested to leave the house, and I think you left quite
+quietly?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What did you do then?"
+
+"I climbed over the wall into the garden and waited for an opportunity
+to get into the house again and speak to Copplestone or Miss Manderson."
+
+"You were behaving rather strangely, were you not, Mr. Layton?" the
+inspector asked.
+
+"I suppose I was."
+
+"If you had heard of any one else acting in the same way, you would have
+thought that he could hardly have been in a normal state of mind?"
+
+"I expect I should."
+
+"Yet you say you were quite yourself?"
+
+"I was quite myself."
+
+"And prepared to carry out your threat?"
+
+"I do not know what I was prepared to do. I did not carry it out."
+
+"Later on, one of the guests, Mr. Bolsover, found you creeping round the
+house towards an open window?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Before he ran after you, do you remember hearing him call to Mr.
+Copplestone?"
+
+"Yes, he did."
+
+"Was there any answer?"
+
+"I did not hear one."
+
+"Mr. Bolsover then followed you out in the direction in which the crime
+was committed?"
+
+"I do not know where the crime was committed," Layton replied firmly.
+"I know nothing of the crime."
+
+"Whoever committed it managed to fulfill your own threat fairly fully."
+
+"Unfortunately, yes."
+
+"Have you any suggestion to make as to who that person may have been?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What, then, did you do when Mr. Bolsover ran after you?"
+
+"I eluded him in the darkness, climbed over the wall again, and went
+away."
+
+"Without having fulfilled your object?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Had you seen anything at all of Miss Manderson, or Mr. Copplestone?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+There was a pause. James Layton waited quietly while the inspector
+finished off his notes. His face was a trifle paler than before, but he
+betrayed no sign of agitation.
+
+"Now," resumed the inspector, "let us go back. You said that to your
+mind you had a right to interfere in Miss Manderson's engagement?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"What had given you that right?"
+
+"I am sorry," the young man returned courteously--"but I decline to
+answer that question."
+
+"When and where did you first meet her?"
+
+"I cannot tell you."
+
+"You would be wiser to do so."
+
+"Possibly."
+
+The inspector's face darkened.
+
+"Mr. Layton," he said, with unmistakable emphasis, "you had better not
+decline to answer any question. I must warn you that your position may
+become extremely serious."
+
+"I am afraid," Layton remarked quietly, "that you have already made up
+your mind that I am guilty of the crime."
+
+"That is as it may be," replied the inspector. "I am advising you for
+your own good. To refuse to answer questions is not the way to allay
+suspicion--but to increase it."
+
+"I realize that," the young man said. "But I still refuse."
+
+Inspector Fay leant back in his chair patiently.
+
+"Come, Mr. Layton, you will only put us to the trouble and delay of
+proving what you might as well tell us at once. And it will do you no
+good."
+
+"I should be sorry to cause you any additional trouble," Layton replied.
+"But I have my reasons."
+
+"Let me help you," continued the inspector. "I have had inquiries made
+at Miss Manderson's hotel, at the theater at which she was to have
+appeared, of her maid, and various other sources. We have got her time
+pretty well accounted for. It seems that you have not seen her at all
+since she arrived in this country two months ago. Is that so?"
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"Anyway, if you did see her once or twice, there were certainly no
+opportunities for anything to develop between you to account for your
+behavior, or justify to the right to which you considered yourself
+entitled. You must have known her before."
+
+Layton was still silent. The inspector continued easily.
+
+"I am wondering whether a cable across the Atlantic would bring me a
+description of a certain Michael Cranbourne, once well known in the
+United States--particularly in Chicago--son of a multi-millionaire."
+
+James Layton stiffened in his chair. He had become white and tense.
+
+"A large part in the career of Michael Cranbourne was played by an
+adventuress named Thea Colville--said, at one time, to have been the
+most beautiful woman in America--and known later, on the stage in New
+York, as Christine Manderson."
+
+The young man rose. On his face there was a wonderful new dignity and
+calm--a relief, as if some heavy burden had dropped from him and left
+him free.
+
+"Yes," he said quietly, "I am Michael Cranbourne. I might have admitted
+it at first. What do you want now?"
+
+"The whole story," the inspector replied, motioning him back to his
+chair.
+
+"I will tell you," he said.
+
+He sat down again. A great contentment seemed to rest upon him, as on
+one who reaches the end of a difficult and tiring journey. There was a
+long pause.
+
+"I first met Thea Colville," he began, at last, "in Chicago, when I was
+twenty-five--seven years ago. She was twenty. It would be no use
+attempting to give you an idea of what she was like. You never saw her
+alive. No description could convey an impression of her beauty--of her
+awful fascination. From the moment I first saw her there was no other
+woman in my world. I was engaged to be married, but I put an end to it.
+People said I behaved badly, but I didn't care. I couldn't look at, or
+think of, another woman after I had seen her. She enslaved me. I was
+hers, body and soul. She held me helpless. I was only one of many, but I
+was a favored one--at least, I thought so."
+
+He told his story slowly, in a low voice, without emotion. He was
+staring out straight in front of him, forgetful of his surroundings and
+his listener. The past held him.
+
+"My family warned me, and threatened me. I knew they were telling me the
+truth--but I wouldn't listen. I hadn't been brought up to care what
+results my actions brought on other people. I thought only of myself--of
+the indulgence of my own desires. I lived a useless, contemptible
+life--entirely without scruples or restraints. There was scarcely a vice
+that I was not steeped in--hardly a sin that I had not explored. I had
+enough money to gratify all my senses. Nothing was beneath me. I plunged
+into every depravity. I made new depths for myself." He clenched his
+hands. "And I led others after me."
+
+There was another pause. He sat rigid. The inspector waited patiently.
+
+"I need not trouble you with unnecessary details," the low voice went
+on. "It is enough that for her sake I sacrificed all my prospects--I
+threw away my heritage. To keep her for myself I squandered every cent I
+could lay my hands on. I robbed my own brother. I forged my father's
+name. I did ... other things. It was only the generosity of my family
+that kept me from gaol. And Thea threw me over."
+
+"Apparently," the inspector remarked, not unsympathetically, "her
+standard of morality was on a somewhat similar level."
+
+"She is dead," said the young man gently. "'_De mortuis nil nisi
+bonum._'"
+
+The inspector shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"As you please," he said. "Go on."
+
+"She refused to see me--to have anything more to do with me. She cut me
+out of her life with one stroke. For the first time I knew she hadn't
+cared. That broke me. I was very ill. For a year I knew no one. I
+couldn't hear or speak. They fed me like a child. They thought I was
+mad"--his eyes began to gleam unnaturally, his words quickened--"but in
+reality I was in the presence of God. I was in the image I had brought
+upon my soul--black, hideous, distorted, reeking with the filth of my
+sins. I saw myself--in all the degradation I had brought upon the Shape
+of God. I saw my own page in the Book of Life. All the entries were on
+the debit side. The credit side was bare. I waited for damnation--but
+there is no damnation. There is only Building. I went out from the
+presence of God--a Builder."
+
+His face was transformed. His voice rang with triumph--with the pride of
+victory.
+
+"I came to myself. It was like waking from the dead. It was a long time
+before I recovered even a little of my strength. Every hand was against
+me--except my mother's. She stood by me. When she died, a year later, I
+inherited the whole of her fortune. The others tried to take it away
+from me, but I fought them. I had new uses for the money. I came over to
+this country, and began my work. For four years I have given myself and
+all I have. Go and see for yourself what I have done. Go and see the
+men, women, and children who would die for me. Go and hear them bless my
+name. Hear of the lives I have built--the light I have brought. I have
+filled up my credit side. I have a balance in hand in the Book of Life."
+
+Inspector Fay remained silent. He was a severely practical man. Before
+his mind there was only the outcome of the interview. The young man
+controlled himself with an effort. His excitement passed. He was again
+quiet and composed.
+
+"None of my old passions or inclinations remained--except my love for
+Thea. I couldn't crush it. I fought against it with all my strength. I
+struggled to stamp it out, but it was unconquerable. Her face was always
+in front of me, day and night. Her voice was always in my ears. I
+couldn't escape. I heard nothing more of her until about six weeks ago,
+when I saw a photograph of her in one of the papers under the name of
+Christine Manderson, with a statement that she had arrived in London to
+play at the Imperial Theater. The longing to see her again was too
+strong for me. Day after day I waited outside the stage-door of the
+theater--until she came, in all her fatal, maddening beauty. We stood
+facing each other ... and she passed me by without a word."
+
+His voice broke. He pressed his thin hands together.
+
+"The madness came over me again. The sight of her fanned all the old
+flames. I was on fire. I tried to follow her, but they kept me out. I
+wrote to her that night, telling her what I had done, how I had
+suffered, and begging, imploring her to let me see her. The answer was
+a curt note, in the third person, saying that she declined to receive
+any communication from me whatsoever."
+
+Again he paused. The inspector made no comment.
+
+"I found out where she was staying, what her plans were, and who were
+her friends. I discovered that she had come under the influence of
+George Copplestone, who is little better than I was once. The thought
+that she was to be the sport of his depravity drove me to frenzy. I
+neglected my work. I could do nothing. Then I heard that they were on
+the point of becoming engaged. The rest you know. I followed her to
+Copplestone's house. She had evidently warned him against me. I forced
+my way into the room, calling her by the name of Christine----"
+
+"Why?" the inspector asked
+
+"Because it was obvious that she would not wish the name of Thea
+Colville to be known to London. That is all I have to tell you."
+
+The inspector rose.
+
+"Mr. Cranbourne," he said formally, "after hearing your story, I am
+afraid I have no option but to detain you on suspicion of having caused
+the death of Christine Manderson, otherwise Thea Colville, and to warn
+you that anything you say may be used in evidence against you."
+
+The young man heard him without a tremor.
+
+"I did not kill her," he said firmly. "God's will be done."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE BIRTH OF THE KILLER
+
+
+Monsieur Dupont was one of those fortunate individuals who can sleep in
+a train.
+
+He left Paddington at one o'clock, and slept for an hour, a sleep of
+childlike ease and innocence. When he woke the train was within five
+minutes of his destination. He alighted at a small country station, and
+instituted inquiries for a conveyance.
+
+Twenty minutes later, an unimpressionable horse, attached to a hybrid
+vehicle, was jogging him along country lanes which would have delighted
+a man with less serious purposes. But Monsieur Dupont was too much
+occupied with the uglinesses of humanity to heed the beauties of nature.
+It was not until they arrived at the outskirts of a small village that
+he began to look about him with interest.
+
+It was a lovely spot, nestling in primeval innocence under the shelter
+of protecting hills. Monsieur Dupont uttered a heavy sigh, and spoke,
+for the first time during the drive, to the stout, sunburnt lad who
+conducted the equipage.
+
+"My friend," he said sorrowfully, "who could imagine that such a corner
+of heaven could have been the cradle of one of the most terrible
+tragedies of the world? I feel like a purveyor of sins, creeping into
+the preserves of God."
+
+The startled stare that confronted him was not helpful to further
+conversation. The disconcerted youth vigorously obtained fresh impetus
+from their source of progress, and drew up at length, with obvious
+relief, before a low, creeper-covered house, lying in a nest of flowers.
+
+Monsieur Dupont's gentle knock produced a rubicund housekeeper, of about
+eighty, who blended in perfect harmony with the house, the creeper, and
+the flowers.
+
+"Doctor Lessing, if you please, madame," said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+He was shown into a small library, opening on to the garden. The room
+was flooded with sunshine. There were flowers everywhere.
+
+"_Mon Dieu_," said Monsieur Dupont, aloud, "that I should come to ask
+such questions here."
+
+He turned as the door opened, and bowed before a sturdy, white-haired
+old man, bronzed with the health of the country.
+
+"Monsieur Dupont?" said the doctor. "What can I do for you?"
+
+Monsieur Dupont took a letter from his pocket, and unfolded it.
+
+"Monsieur, I beg you to read this letter. It is from the French Embassy,
+and begs assistance to me in an investigation that I am making."
+
+Doctor Lessing read the letter, and returned it.
+
+"I shall be happy to assist you in any way I can," he said, courteously.
+"Please sit down."
+
+Monsieur Dupont sat down by the open windows and drank in the fragrance
+of the garden.
+
+"Doctor Lessing," he began, "I believe it is for a long time that you
+have lived in this beautiful place?"
+
+"For forty-five years," the old doctor smiled contentedly. "But I am by
+no means one of its oldest inhabitants. Lives are long in the country.
+To what period do you wish to refer?"
+
+"A period," Monsieur Dupont replied, "nearly forty years ago. I do not
+know exactly."
+
+"A long stretch," said Doctor Lessing ruefully. "But my memory shall do
+its best for you. That is all I can promise."
+
+"I am engaged," said Monsieur Dupont, "on an extraordinary quest. I do
+not think that any human being has ever been engaged on a more
+extraordinary quest."
+
+"A pleasant one, I trust," said the doctor.
+
+"As much to the contrary as it is possible to imagine."
+
+The doctor murmured a regret and waited for his huge visitor to
+continue.
+
+"Do you," Monsieur Dupont inquired, "recollect the name of Winslowe?"
+
+Doctor Lessing started slightly.
+
+"Winslowe?"
+
+"Oscar Winslowe."
+
+A keen glance flashed from the doctor's eyes.
+
+"Yes," he said quickly, "I recollect the name."
+
+"He lived, I think in this village at the time I have said?"
+
+"Yes." The reply was a trifle curt.
+
+"Perhaps," Monsieur Dupont proceeded evenly, "there were circumstances
+in connection with that name which helped to fix it in your memory?"
+
+"There were certain circumstances," the doctor admitted, "which made it
+a name that I am unlikely to forget."
+
+"Unpleasant circumstances?" queried Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"The most unpleasant that have ever occurred to me in the whole length
+of my practice."
+
+"It is for that story," said Monsieur Dupont, "that I have come to ask.
+May I beg all the details that you can recall?"
+
+"Perhaps you will first tell me," the doctor returned, "for what purpose
+you require this information?"
+
+"I require it," Monsieur Dupont replied impressively, "to save the life
+of an innocent man, who is wrongly accused of the crime of murder. I
+require it also prove three deaths, and possibly to prevent another
+three."
+
+Again the doctor started. His hands gripped the arms of his chair.
+
+"Three deaths?" he exclaimed sharply. "What do you mean?"
+
+"Three deaths," repeated Monsieur Dupont. "Of three very beautiful
+women."
+
+The doctor sprang to his feet.
+
+"My God!" he cried hoarsely.
+
+"Will you tell me the story?" said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+Doctor Lessing sat down again in his chair. He was considerably shaken.
+He leant back and closed his eyes, remaining silent for a few moments.
+
+"I think," he began at last, "that I can, at all events, remember the
+chief facts of the case. It was such a remarkable and distressing one
+that it stands out in the annals of such a peaceful spot as this, and it
+has therefore remained in my memory, though so much else has faded. But
+you must make allowances for the flight of time. Look out of the window
+to the left, and you will see a large red house, on the slope of the
+hill."
+
+"I see it," said Monsieur Dupont, following the direction.
+
+"That was Oscar Winslowe's house, forty years ago. Winslowe was an
+unprincipled and dissolute man. He was only about twenty-five or six at
+that time, but already he was sodden with drink, drugs, and vice of
+every description. He was the worst kind of blackguard. But his wife was
+the exact opposite to him, a gentle, delicate girl. She was not
+beautiful, but her nature more than compensated for lack of beauty. He
+had married her for her money, and treated her abominably. I became
+friendly with her, partly because of the pity I felt for her on account
+of his treatment, and partly because I sincerely admired the beauty of
+her character. In consequence of that friendship, I undertook to watch
+over her entry into motherhood."
+
+"That is what I want," said Monsieur Dupont. "Her entry into
+motherhood."
+
+"The more I saw of her," continued the doctor, "the greater grew my
+pity. There have been wonderful women in the world who have made history
+by their patience and endurance--but this woman was one of those,
+equally brave and equally patient, of whom history knows nothing. She
+worshipped her husband, blindly, dumbly--as an animal will still love
+the man or woman who ill-treats it. She never uttered a word of
+complaint or blame. Her greatest hope was that the advent of the child
+would induce from him something of the consideration and tenderness that
+he had never given her. She believed it was some fault, some
+shortcoming, of hers that had kept it from her. It didn't occur to her
+that it might be the beauty of another woman."
+
+"Ah!" said Monsieur Dupont eagerly.
+
+"She discovered that about three months before the child was born. I
+can't remember how the discovery came about. She followed him to
+London--and found him, even that short time before the birth of his
+child, lavishing on a beautiful society woman all that should have been
+hers."
+
+In spite of the years that had passed the doctor's voice still rose in
+anger. He paused, checking himself.
+
+"Before that supreme insult, that shattering of her hopes, the poor girl
+lost her reason. In the state of her health, it was not surprising. She,
+who would never have harmed a fly, who had never wished ill to any one
+in her life, became possessed with an awful fury to stamp out the beauty
+that had robbed her--to destroy the face and body that were more to the
+man she loved than her own. The other woman, undeserving of
+consideration as she was, narrowly escaped a horrible punishment. The
+unfortunate girl was brought back here, and I was sent for to attend
+her. She grew worse hour after hour. Her mind was completely unhinged.
+From a furious hatred of the beauty of the woman who had wronged her,
+the mania increased into a furious hatred of beauty in any shape or
+form, and a savage lust to destroy it. In the house there were many
+portraits of the beautiful women of the Winslowe family. She tore the
+pictures to shreds. There were statues and valuable works of art. She
+smashed them all to pulp. Her madness was the most terrible thing I
+have ever seen. She had to be forcibly restrained."
+
+Monsieur Dupont listened intently. There was an expression of triumph on
+his face.
+
+"A pitiful story," he said softly.
+
+"She partially recovered in a few weeks," the doctor went on, "and
+before the three months were up her reason, if not actually sound again,
+was at least restored. But she was a wreck of a woman. There was
+darkness all round her. She heard nothing more of Winslowe. He never
+came back to the house. The madness returned when she gave birth to her
+child, and she died in an asylum a fortnight afterwards."
+
+A longer pause followed. The recitation of his memories moved the good
+old doctor as the actual experience must have moved the young man of
+forty years before. He rose, and walked to the window, sniffing the
+scent of the flowers with relief.
+
+"She left the care of the child to the nurse who was devoted to her,
+with ample funds for its future. When the affairs were settled up, the
+nurse took the child away with her, and I have not seen her since."
+
+He made a relieved gesture.
+
+"That is the whole story," he said.
+
+"The nurse," inquired Monsieur Dupont, "what was her name?"
+
+"Masters. Miss Elizabeth Masters."
+
+"Is she still alive?"
+
+"So far as I know she is," the doctor replied. "But I should not have
+been likely to have heard of her death, if it had taken place."
+
+"Can you assist me to discover her address?"
+
+"She wrote to me periodically," Doctor Lessing returned. "She was an
+excellent nurse, and I got her some cases in town. But it is a long time
+since I last heard from her. There may be one or two old letters of hers
+in my desk. If you will excuse me for a moment, I will see if I can find
+them for you."
+
+He left the room. Monsieur Dupont turned to the window, and gazed
+dreamily out into the sunshine.
+
+"And so," he muttered--"in this corner of paradise the Destroyer was
+born."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+A HASTY FLIGHT
+
+
+Doctor Lessing re-entered the room with a letter in his hand.
+
+"The last address I can find," he said, "is 35, De Vere Terrace,
+Streatham. That is sixteen years old, but as it tells me that she had
+only just moved in, you might find her still there."
+
+Monsieur Dupont made a note of the address.
+
+"There remains only one question," he said, replacing his pocket-book.
+"Can you tell me the name of the child?"
+
+The doctor shook his head.
+
+"I'm afraid I can't. The child was christened in the church here, but I
+was away at the time, and when I returned Miss Masters had gone to
+London."
+
+"It is very important," said Monsieur Dupont. "Perhaps I can discover
+it at the church?"
+
+"You will not find any one to tell you at this time," the doctor
+replied. "But, if you will leave me your address, I will send over to
+the parsonage this evening and ask Mr. Wickham to turn it up in the
+register, and let you know."
+
+Monsieur Dupont delivered himself of profuse thanks. Five minutes later
+he had taken leave of the old doctor, and was returning to the station
+under the guidance of the sunburnt youth, who was obviously relieved
+when the expedition terminated.
+
+He slept peacefully until the train reached Paddington.
+
+It was five o'clock when he returned to the Savoy. The girl, Jenny West,
+was waiting for him. She was as white as death.
+
+"They have charged him," she sobbed. "He is remanded for a week."
+
+He laid a hand gently on her shoulder.
+
+"Do not be afraid," he said. "He will be saved. I have given my
+word--the word of Dupont--that he will be saved."
+
+He sat down at his writing table, and wrote rapidly for several minutes.
+He covered four or five sheets of paper, and placed them in an envelope.
+
+"Here, mademoiselle," he said, rising, "are your instructions for
+to-morrow morning. Do not read them until you are alone. A car will be
+waiting for you here at ten o'clock in the morning. In the afternoon you
+will be at liberty to visit Monsieur Layton. I shall expect to see you
+here at one o'clock."
+
+He bowed her out of the room. Half an hour later, he was on his way to
+Streatham.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A grim expression settled on his face as the journey proceeded, yet it
+was not altogether unmixed with pity. He was a man of ready sympathy.
+The doctor's story had evidently moved him to view his task with a new
+compassion.
+
+As his car turned into De Vere Terrace, he became alert, and scrutinized
+the houses closely. They were small semi-detached villas. He alighted in
+front of number 35, passed up the carefully kept front garden, and
+knocked at the door.
+
+There was no response. He knocked again, several times, but the silence
+of the house remained undisturbed. He left the door, and glanced in at
+the front windows, but the room was so dark that he could discern
+nothing. He walked round to the back. Through the uncurtained kitchen
+windows he saw a fire in the range. It had almost burnt itself out.
+There were cooking utensils on the table. Some pastry was rolled out on
+a board. Apparently the household operations had been somewhat rudely
+interrupted, and very hastily abandoned. The back door and windows were
+securely fastened. Returning to the front, he carefully closed the gate,
+and knocked at the door of the adjoining house.
+
+The name of the house was "Sans Souci," and the door was opened by a
+lady in rich purple, with a string of pearls.
+
+Monsieur Dupont swept off his hat.
+
+"Madame, I make a thousand apologies! Can you tell me when I shall find
+Miss Masters at home."
+
+His extreme bulk and the fact that he was not an Englishman seemed to
+cause the lady considerable amusement.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," she said engagingly. "I think she's gone away."
+
+"Away?" Monsieur Dupont echoed.
+
+"She left in a great hurry two hours ago," the lady informed him. "In a
+motor."
+
+Monsieur Dupont appeared somewhat staggered.
+
+"Two hours ago...." he muttered.
+
+"I heard a noise going on in the house," continued the lady, "as if she
+was packing quickly. She went off with a couple of boxes, and seemed
+very impatient."
+
+"It is most unfortunate," said Monsieur Dupont mildly. "I have come all
+the way from the Strand to see her."
+
+The lady laughed freely.
+
+"I'm very sorry," she said good-naturedly. "Won't you come in and rest a
+bit?"
+
+"Madame," he said, "you are very good, but I must return to the Strand.
+Would you allow me to ask you some questions, without finding me
+impertinent?"
+
+"What are they?" she asked.
+
+"Will you tell me if any particular person was in the habit of visiting
+Miss Masters?"
+
+The lady stiffened slightly.
+
+"Are you a friend of Miss Masters?" she inquired, shortly.
+
+"I am not," Monsieur Dupont admitted frankly. "I have never seen her. It
+is a few hours ago that I heard her name for the first time."
+
+"I really cannot answer any questions to a stranger," said the lady
+stiffly. "I don't know you."
+
+Monsieur Dupont bowed.
+
+"If you did, madame," he said, "I should be the proudest of men. Do me
+the favor to read this letter."
+
+He produced the letter from the French Embassy, and handed it to her.
+She read it, and was duly impressed.
+
+"Of course I'll do anything for the French Embassy," she said, returning
+the letter with dignity. "Miss Masters wasn't what you might call a
+friend of mine. I used to speak to her because she lived in the next
+house, but it didn't go beyond that. She kept very much to herself. I
+don't want to say anything at all unkind, but very few ladies in our set
+knew her. Of course it wasn't her fault, but she was not exactly classy.
+And when one lives in a neighborhood like this, it's class that tells."
+
+Monsieur Dupont bowed again.
+
+"Obviously, madame," he said.
+
+"The only person that used to visit her," continued the gratified lady,
+"was a man who often used to arrive in the evening and stay the night.
+We understood she was an old nurse of his, or something of the kind, and
+that he more or less provided for her."
+
+"And this man, madame--what was he like?"
+
+"He was rather tall," she said, "and had a dark moustache. He was always
+well dressed, and looked quite a gentleman."
+
+"You heard his name?"
+
+"No--we never heard his name. I did tell my house-parlor-maid to try to
+find out once, but she couldn't. Miss Masters actually accused me of
+prying."
+
+"_Mon Dieu_," said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"We had a bit of a row," said the lady candidly.
+
+"Does she live alone, madame?"
+
+"Yes, quite alone. She does everything for herself."
+
+"My last question," said Monsieur Dupont, "may seem remarkable. It is
+this. Have strange things appeared to be happening in the house during
+the visits of the tall gentleman with the dark moustache?"
+
+She started, looking at him curiously.
+
+"Strange things?" she repeated slowly.
+
+"Perhaps--violent things."
+
+"Well, that's queer," she exclaimed. "As a matter of fact, we once heard
+the most extraordinary noises going on when he was there. My husband
+thought of sending in to ask if anything was the matter."
+
+"What kind of noises, madame?"
+
+"Like as it might be heavy things being thrown about and smashed," said
+the lady elegantly.
+
+Monsieur Dupont swept off his hat again.
+
+"Thank you, madame," he said--and went back to his car.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+TRANTER ATTACKS THE CROOKED HOUSE
+
+
+In the evening, Tranter set off to the Crooked House.
+
+It was dark when he reached it, and the roads were empty. Through the
+open lodge gates he slipped into the garden unseen. The place seemed
+deserted. The front of the house showed not a glimmer of light. The
+whole ugly shape of it stood out gauntly against the sky of the summer
+night. In the shadow of the trees, he stood watching it, alert to detect
+a sign of life. But no such sign appeared. The Crooked House was as dark
+and silent as a tomb.
+
+He crept nearer, keeping under cover of the trees, and skirted the lawns
+to the back of the house. There, also, darkness reigned. No sound
+disturbed the stillness. Facing him were the dark shapes of the trees
+surrounding the wing of the house which extended from the opposite
+corner. The foliage was so dense that no part of the wing itself was
+visible. He moved quickly across the back of the house, and reached the
+trees. As he passed under them, it seemed that he was feeling his way
+among monstrous sentinels of a dark mystery.
+
+A thick hedge loomed up in front of him. It appeared to surround the
+entire wing. He walked round, trying to find a place thin enough to
+allow him to push his way through--but the hedge was evidently there for
+the express purpose of defeating such an intention. It was impossible to
+penetrate it, to creep under it, or to climb over it. At the extremity
+of the wing, about which the trees were thickest, he saw a faint light,
+escaping round the edge of a blind.
+
+He stopped beneath it. It was a meager, unpleasant light, too dim to be
+of any greater use in the room than to afford the barest relief from
+complete darkness. The window was half overgrown with ivy, and he could
+see that it was filthily dirty. The light continually flickered, and
+once or twice it seemed to have died out altogether. An eerie sensation
+began to possess him. He felt very strongly the evil influence of the
+house. Curiosity to discover what sinister secret it really harbored
+increased and nerved him.
+
+Again he tried to force a way through the hedge, but everywhere it was
+an impassable barrier. Slowly and noiselessly he worked his way round
+the wing, only to find it completely enclosed on all sides. He returned,
+and stood looking up at the window. Either the light was brighter, or
+the gap at the edge of the blind had widened. He thought he saw a faint
+shadow pass and re-pass.
+
+It was not until, in moving to one side, he struck his head against a
+massive bough of one of the great trees that the possibility of
+utilizing them as a means of access to the forbidden enclosure occurred
+to him. He examined the bough. It extended well over the hedge, and
+would form a perfectly secure bridge. By creeping a few feet along it,
+he would be able to drop down on the other side of the hedge. Finding
+the main trunk, he tested his weight on a smaller bough, and swung
+himself up into the tree.
+
+A few minutes later he stood within the barrier. The window was some
+twelve or fifteen feet above him. But the walls were thickly clad with
+ivy, and ivy is an excellent ladder. Carefully he began to climb.
+
+He reached the window, found himself a secure footing, and peered round
+the edge of the blind. But the light was so poor, and the panes were so
+dirty, on both sides, that had there been anything to see he could have
+been very little the wiser. As it was, the small area of the room into
+which he could dimly peer seemed to be carpetless and unfurnished. There
+was no movement, no sound. The light itself apparently came from the
+further end of the room, from the level of a table. He clung on,
+undecided how to proceed. It appeared that the only thing to do was to
+wait and listen for some indication of the purpose of the dismal
+illumination.
+
+He looked at his watch. It was ten-thirty. After a wait of what seemed
+at least half an hour, he looked again. Ten minutes only had passed. No
+discernible movement had taken place in the room. Yet he felt perfectly,
+and very unpleasantly, certain that it was occupied--that something was
+proceeding within it which, had the blind not intervened, would have
+revealed the secret of the house. Of what it might be he could form no
+idea--but, for the first time in his life, he was experiencing, in his
+mental tenseness and the sinister silence of the surroundings, that
+sensation which attests a proximity to evil. He was daunted. Fear was a
+condition to which he was a stranger, but a vivid nervousness was
+beginning to seize upon him. A sense of personal danger, an element
+which, so far, he had scarcely considered, was attacking him, and
+gaining ground. The perspiration was standing out on his face. He found
+that his hands were cold and wet. The pulses of his body were throbbing;
+he felt his strength growing less. Muttering a curse, he braced himself
+with a strong effort. He was accustomed to consider his nerves
+impregnable. Many times in his life he had known himself to be in far
+greater danger than he could attribute to the present situation, and
+such weakness had never assailed him. On four occasions he had been
+aware that his life was hanging by a thread, and had gloried in his own
+coolness. And now ... without a doubt the Crooked House was evil.
+
+Still he waited. Another twenty minutes slowly passed.
+
+He started. His hands closed tightly on the trunk of the ivy to which he
+was clinging. The door of the room had been closed with a slam. He could
+hear heavy footsteps on the uncarpeted floor. A shadow blotted out the
+light.
+
+A moment later, a voice--a man's voice, horribly strained and
+unnatural--rose in a shout of fury.
+
+"Damn you!" it screamed. "Look at your work! Look at it again! Open your
+rotten eyes and look! Look! Look!"
+
+Tranter was so startled that he almost lost his footing on the ivy.
+There was no mistaking the voice--it was the scream of madness. He
+listened for an answer, but there was no sound in response. Then the
+same voice laughed--a laugh of awful bitterness.
+
+"Are you satisfied? The thing is creeping on. I am getting nearer to
+you hour by hour. I am more like you to-night. One more grain went
+yesterday--another to-day. Another will go to-morrow...." Again the
+voice rose to a shriek of rage and hatred. "Oh, God! There is no hope!
+No hope! Only on--and on--to that!"
+
+The words trailed off into a sob of agony. Still Tranter could hear no
+reply.
+
+Silence followed. The shadow again blotted out the light; then sprang
+aside, and the voice burst out into a fresh paroxysm of madness, yelling
+a stream of curses at the object of its fury. The madman's frenzy was
+utterly revolting to listen to, but Tranter searched it closely for some
+clue to the identity of the person, or thing, to whom it was addressed.
+The voice rose again to a shriek; then subsided as before into a feeble
+wail of misery.
+
+"Oh God!" it moaned--"is there no way ... no way? No road but that road?
+No end but that end? Oh God, have mercy ... have mercy...."
+
+It was a cry of unspeakable anguish--the prayer of a soul in torment. It
+seemed to Tranter that the speaker had thrown himself down, and was
+beating the floor with his hands.
+
+There was silence again. Then, for the first time, Tranter became aware
+of another presence in the room. Though he could neither see nor hear
+anything, he was conscious of a new, indefinable movement. For a moment
+horror almost overcame him. He trembled. His nerves failed. The support
+of the ivy seemed to be giving way under him. He clutched at the
+framework of the window itself.
+
+The shadow of a figure leapt up from the floor and bounded to the
+window. The blind was wrenched aside, the window thrown open, and before
+Tranter had time to recover himself or attempt to escape, the livid,
+distorted face of George Copplestone was almost touching his own.
+
+A hand closed on his throat in a murderous grip, another seized his
+wrist. In spite of his frantic struggles, he was dragged with superhuman
+strength through the window into the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+A DUEL
+
+
+On the afternoon of the same day, an hour after the departure of
+Inspector Fay, Mrs. Astley-Rolfe had sped herself to Richmond, in a
+luxurious motor car, which was her's through the instrumentality of Mr.
+Gluckstein.
+
+She had found the house of George Copplestone plunged into the darkness
+of a house of mourning. Every blind was drawn. Every particle of color
+had been removed or draped. Black reigned supreme.
+
+Copplestone was not pleased to see her, and made no attempt to assume
+the contrary. He was sitting in his library, moody and melancholy, still
+in the half-dazed condition into which the death of Christine Manderson
+had cast him. His face was drawn, haggard, and sickly; his eyes were
+bloodshot. He looked up at her with a forbidding frown, and did not
+move from his chair.
+
+"Well?" he said curtly.
+
+She waved a hand round the black room.
+
+"Isn't this ... a trifle theatrical?" she asked coolly.
+
+He said nothing. She sat down opposite to him uninvited. She was
+perfectly self-possessed.
+
+"Inspector Fay was kind enough to call on me this morning," she remarked
+pleasantly.
+
+Again there was no reply.
+
+"He may not be an example of dagger-like intelligence," she continued,
+looking at him steadily--"but he is just a little too sharp to play
+with."
+
+He scowled at her.
+
+"Have you come to tell me that?" he asked rudely.
+
+"That--and other things," she returned unruffled.
+
+"I don't want to hear them," he retorted.
+
+"They concern you," she said--"rather closely."
+
+"I don't want to hear them," he repeated.
+
+Her lips tightened.
+
+"It is scarcely pleasant to be such an obviously unwelcome visitor," she
+said evenly. "But I am afraid you must listen."
+
+"I am not in the humor to talk to you," he declared roughly. "I don't
+want to talk to any one. I want to be left alone. Isn't it enough to be
+pestered by the police and the papers, and all the damnable business for
+the inquest? Don't you see that my house is in mourning? Can't you let
+me be--even for a few days?"
+
+"If I had let you be," she replied easily, "Inspector Fay would probably
+be here in my place--with much less pleasant intentions."
+
+His glance sharpened.
+
+"What do you mean?" he growled.
+
+"You were not wise," she proceeded tranquilly, "to treat his mental
+capabilities with quite so much contempt. They are possibly not
+startlingly brilliant, and he is perfectly easy to deceive. But even an
+official detective can see through a clumsy lie."
+
+Uneasiness flashed across his face. She smiled slightly.
+
+"And I am afraid, my friend, that you are a clumsy liar."
+
+"I don't know what you are talking about," he snapped.
+
+"Come," she said quietly--"however freely we may trifle with the very
+much overrated Arm of the Law, at least let us be honest with each
+other. For some reason or other, you did not tell Inspector Fay the
+truth."
+
+He sat upright with a jerk, flamed with passion.
+
+"What the devil is it to do with you?" he demanded fiercely.
+
+"I will tell you in a moment," she returned smoothly. "When you
+accounted for your time to the inspector, you told him that you went
+into the house to refill your cigarette case?"
+
+His lethargy had disappeared. He leant forward, staring at her, his
+hands clutching the arms of his chair.
+
+"But, unfortunately, you did not take the elementary precaution of
+having a full case to support the story. In nine times out of ten you
+would have got away with it. This was the tenth."
+
+There was silence for a moment. She sat in an easy attitude, meeting his
+gaze with complete confidence. No trace of his previous dullness
+remained. He was alert and taut.
+
+She went on, with delightful smoothness.
+
+"With an unpardonable lack of respect for the statement of a gentleman,
+it occurred to the inspector to test the truth of that account. He did
+not want to smoke--but he asked you for a cigarette. It was a gentle
+trap. There were only two in your case."
+
+He ground out an oath under his breath.
+
+"Obviously you had not gone into the house to refill your case. Perhaps
+you went in for some other reason. Perhaps you didn't go in at all.
+Anyway, you lied--and when people deliberately lie in such serious cases
+as these, it may safely be imagined that they have some object to serve
+in doing so. The inspector was concerned to discover what your object
+was. So he came to me."
+
+"To you...." he muttered.
+
+"I told you," she returned, "that he is a little too sharp to play
+with--clumsily. He suspected, from what had been told him, that we might
+have had a stormy scene together, and had wished to keep it to
+ourselves. He was quite ready to believe that the time you had failed so
+lamentably to account for had really been passed with me in '_une petite
+scene de jalousie_.' Fortunately, I had given him a true account of
+myself, which was that I had been alone. So after the necessary
+hesitation, and with just the right amount of annoyance, I was able to
+confess that we had both lied, and that we had in fact been
+together--and he went away satisfied. I am a better liar than you."
+
+She regarded him serenely. His expression was ugly. There was that in
+the look of him that might have daunted any woman, but Phyllis
+Astley-Rolfe had lived chiefly by her wits for a sufficient time to be
+quite impervious where another would have been silenced. She was as
+completely without fear as she was without scruple. Her objects were
+objects to be gained, by the most convenient and speedy means, and
+quite irrespective of considerations which might have withheld another
+from attempting to fulfill them. In furtherance of her present object,
+she gave Copplestone look for look.
+
+"I return good for evil," she said. "It is not a habit of mine. It is
+really quite contrary to my usual practice. I told a lie to save you
+from further suspicion. Considering the circumstances, you must admit
+that it was exceedingly generous of me. And I expect you to be
+grateful."
+
+Anything but an expression of gratitude confronted her. He remained
+silent, making a strong effort to mask his agitation. But his fingers
+twitched spasmodically, and there was unmistakable fear in his eyes. She
+watched him intently, losing no point of the effect she had created.
+
+"Well...?" she said steadily.
+
+There was no answer. She bent towards him.
+
+"I said you were with me. You were not with me. Where were you?"
+
+The man breathed heavily, his baleful gaze fixed on her. She met it
+with unassailable composure.
+
+"Listen," she said slowly--"there are strange things in this house. I
+know it. I've known it for some time. Things that the light of day never
+shines on. What are they?"
+
+He sprang up, and stood over her with clenched hands, his face torn with
+fury.
+
+"Damn you!" he cried hoarsely. "What is my house, or what happens in it,
+to you?"
+
+"Sit down," she said firmly. "You are not frightening me. To threaten a
+woman is merely to increase her tenacity, and mine requires no
+fortification. Please move away from me."
+
+He obeyed, muttering. Her calmness disarmed him.
+
+"I am not sure," she continued, "that I wanted you to answer my
+question--anyway at present. Perhaps your secrets might be too much,
+even for my conscience--and that is saying a great deal."
+
+He had resumed his chair. There was a moment's pause.
+
+"You were foolish to mock me," she went on.
+
+"Mockery is the one thing a woman cannot accept, or forgive. She can
+stand any amount of ill-treatment and cruelty, in a sufficient cause.
+But she cannot be mocked in any cause whatever. You made me certain
+promises, which honor bound you to fulfil--and then flung your
+renunciation of them in my face, before strangers who understood. It was
+a very mean and low-down thing to do."
+
+A faint, sneering smile passed over his face. Her voice hardened.
+
+"I am not a woman to defy--and I am still less a woman to mock. You are
+going to keep your promises."
+
+"I'll see you in hell first!" he retorted brutally.
+
+She laughed. "You will not see me in hell first," she said calmly. "You
+may quite possibly see me in hell after--because if there is a hell we
+shall certainly meet there. But in the meantime--you are going to redeem
+your word."
+
+He made a slow gesture round the black room.
+
+"You come to me now ... within a few hours...."
+
+"Why not?" she returned hardly.
+
+"Almost before her body is cold...."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Christine Manderson was an incident," she said indifferently. "A
+disagreeable episode. She merely infatuated you, as she might have
+infatuated any man. She has passed."
+
+"Passed," he muttered. "Passed...."
+
+"I do not profess to equal her in appearance," she admitted. "But I am
+not repulsive. I am considered to be extremely good-looking, and I am
+much more interesting to talk to than she was. Also, I am well-bred.
+Most people would find the balance in my favor. But, even if you do not,
+the difference can only be very small. You will have to make the best of
+it."
+
+"Or else?" he snarled.
+
+"Or else, if you prefer it, I will exchange your promises for the
+secrets of this house--with no undertaking to keep them."
+
+He sat biting his nails in the suppression of his rage. She languidly
+corrected the folds of her dress, leant back in a charming attitude,
+and waited with unassailable self-possession. The silence was long.
+
+"How much do you want?" he demanded, at last.
+
+"I am not asking you for money," she replied coldly.
+
+"I am offering it unasked," he retorted. "How much do you want?"
+
+"If you had offered to buy back your promises a week ago," she said, "I
+might have sold them to you. I do not know that I particularly looked
+forward to their fulfilment. But you flaunted another woman in my face."
+
+"Put it all in the bill," he said coarsely.
+
+"Therefore I will give you nothing back. You shall have only your bond."
+
+"Why waste your breath on heroics to me?" he sneered. "You would sell
+your soul for money. You have often boasted it."
+
+"I would sell my soul for money any day," she agreed frankly--"but not
+my pride. I am too much of a sinner already to scruple over the disposal
+of my soul. But it would not profit me to gain the whole world, and lose
+my pride."
+
+"Bosh!" he said contemptuously. "Pride pays no bills--and you owe too
+many to let it deprive you of the pleasure of getting rid of a few."
+
+"That is as it may be," she returned. "I have told you the only exchange
+I will make."
+
+He sprang up again. This time his anger was scornful.
+
+"Fool!" he cried harshly. "Take your warning! Do you think my
+secrets--if I have any--are for you? Or that I, myself, am for you? Why
+do you try to force yourself on to dangerous ground? There are things in
+the world into which it is not good to pry."
+
+"Plenty," she said, unmoved.
+
+"I may have made you careless promises," he admitted. "I have made many
+women promises. It is a bad habit. I cannot keep them. I cannot, and
+will not, marry you, or any other woman. The only one I might have
+married ... is dead."
+
+"Again you throw her in my face," she murmured, through closed teeth.
+
+"I daresay I used you meanly," he acknowledged. "I _did_ use you meanly.
+It was not the game to do what I did that night. I freely admit it. And
+I offer you reparation--the only reparation I can make. It would be the
+wisest act of your life to take it."
+
+"You have heard my conditions," she replied. "I shall not change them.
+Unlike most women, I have been gifted with the faculty of being able to
+make up my mind. The time for compromise has passed."
+
+"You don't care for me," he persisted. "You couldn't care for any man.
+You're not capable of it. It's not in you."
+
+"Whether or not I care for you does not enter into the matter at all,"
+she rejoined calmly. "My capability for affection has no bearing on the
+present question."
+
+"You were relying on marrying me to pay your debts," he declared. "You
+could not have built a more forlorn hope. I should not pay your debts if
+I did marry you. I will give you five thousand pounds for your lie this
+morning."
+
+She was very angry. The insult dashed all the color from her face,
+leaving it white and set in lines that made her look almost old. Her
+eyes glittered menacingly.
+
+"You dare," she said slowly, "to offer _me_ five thousand pounds?"
+
+"And consider yourself damned lucky!" he retorted.
+
+He took out his case, and lit a cigarette with a show of indifference.
+
+"I am not bound to offer you anything," he said carelessly. "That small
+point seems to have escaped you. You have no claim on me. I consider my
+suggestion an exceedingly generous one. You can take it or leave it.
+It's all you'll get."
+
+She rose.
+
+"You insult me again," she said, in measured tones. "You are not wise."
+
+He laughed easily.
+
+"My dear Phyllis," he said, "you are adorable in a rage--but I am afraid
+I must steel myself against your gentle exactions. Let me convince you
+that I am really treating you in a highly preferential manner. During my
+career three women have attempted to blackmail me. They were all
+ugly--so they got nothing. You are charming--so you get five thousand
+pounds. That is the most I have ever paid for my smaller indiscretions.
+And I take the liberty of thinking it more than sufficient compensation
+for the few erroneous impressions I may have allowed you to contract."
+
+"You are making the mistake," she said, in the same controlled tones,
+"of imagining that you are buying back your promises to me, which I can
+quite understand that you value lightly. But I have told you that those
+promises are not for sale. You have wandered from the real issue. You
+are not buying the promises of your heart--you are buying the secrets of
+your house. Are they not on a different scale of values?"
+
+"You know nothing of my house," he returned. "You do not know whether
+there are secrets in it or not."
+
+"I don't know," she confessed candidly. "Possibly there are not. But I
+am prepared to take a sporting chance that there are. And if I am
+wrong--so much the better for you."
+
+He was silent, looking at her thoughtfully, as if carefully weighing his
+course of action.
+
+"You were under the suspicion of Scotland Yard," she reminded him,
+"until I told my lie. You will be under it again if I admit my lie.
+Inspector Fay would certainly not rest until he had thoroughly
+investigated your reasons for giving a false account of yourself. He is
+by no means a fool--and I very much doubt that he is to be bought,
+anyway so reasonably as I am."
+
+Copplestone's face wore a strange expression. There was now no animosity
+in it, but rather a mild resignation, in strange contrast to his
+previous anger.
+
+"So," he said, after a pause, "you would put them on to me again...?"
+
+"I need not have taken them off you," she replied.
+
+"I have offered you five thousand pounds for that," he said slowly.
+
+"I have refused them."
+
+"Think over it well," he advised her impressively.
+
+"I do not need to," she returned.
+
+For a moment they faced each other steadily.
+
+"You mean that--finally?" he asked.
+
+"Finally," she answered.
+
+He moved to a door at the further end of the room, and opened it.
+
+"Come," he said quietly. "You have gone too far to draw back. You shall
+see the secrets of my house. Follow me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE SECRET OF THE HOUSE
+
+
+She followed him out of the black room into a dark, narrow passage.
+
+Her calmness and self-possession remained undisturbed. Without a tremor
+she accepted this unexpected invitation to the secrets of the Crooked
+House--quite ignorant of, and indifferent to, the danger to which she
+might be committing herself. That there were hidden things in the house
+she had for a long time been convinced, but of their nature she had been
+unable to form even a conjecture, in spite of many attempts to creep
+into the mystery. Copplestone's sudden decision to reveal them to her
+was a surprise, and an unpleasant check to the development of her
+schemes. Either he placed a much lower value on his secrets than she had
+expected, or her participation in them was by no means to be dreaded to
+the extent that she had relied upon. In any case her position was
+considerably weakened, and the success of her plans was no longer the
+assured thing she had believed it to be.
+
+In silence they ascended a flight of stairs, and reached a door which
+appeared to be the entrance into a separate part of the building. It was
+a massive oak door, fitted with double locks of remarkable strength for
+a private house. Copplestone held it open, motioning her to pass before
+him, and relocked it on the other side. She was still without any
+nervousness, but her curiosity increased with every step. He led the way
+on, and she followed him unhesitatingly. They traversed several
+corridors, and turned many corners. Her sense of direction told her that
+they had entered an extreme wing of the house, hidden away among the
+thickest trees of the garden, and to all appearances unused. The place
+was damp, dusty, and silent, with the intense silence of emptiness. Some
+of the doors were open, showing unfurnished, neglected rooms. The papers
+were peeling off the walls; the fittings were covered with the rust and
+dirt of years; the soiled blinds half covered the closed, uncleaned
+windows. The atmosphere was close and unhealthy.
+
+"What a parable of waste!" she said.
+
+He did not reply. They came to a square landing, and another heavy door
+faced them. Copplestone stopped, and for a moment stood looking at her
+intently. She did not flinch. He shrugged his shoulders, and took a key
+from his pocket. It was a peculiar key, and was attached to a strong
+chain. He fitted it into the lock, and opened the door. Then he turned
+to her again, and she saw a change coming over his face.
+
+"Go in," he said curtly.
+
+She hesitated, for the first time. He withdrew the key, and returned it
+to his pocket.
+
+"You need not be afraid," he said.
+
+"I will follow you," she returned, watching him carefully.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders again, and went into the room. She entered
+after him.
+
+It was a long, low room. There was a window at the far end, but it was
+so dirty, and the curtains in front of it were so thick and discolored,
+that the place was in semi-darkness, and the air overwhelmingly heavy
+and unwholesome. There was a little rough furniture, a strip of worn
+carpet on the floor, and some untasted food on the table--but it was not
+any of those dismal objects that attached the woman's gaze. It was
+rather a white, pasty face that seemed to gleam at her from the darkest
+corner of the room--the drawn pallid face, and dull lifeless eyes, of a
+white-haired man, who was sitting in a huddled, contorted attitude on a
+bare wooden chair.
+
+She shrank back with a startled exclamation, and turned to Copplestone.
+His face was convulsed with fury, his eyes aflame with hatred.
+
+"Well?" he said harshly.
+
+She drew away from him fearfully.
+
+"What wickedness is this?" she shuddered.
+
+"None of mine," he answered.
+
+The vacant eyes rested on them with a fixed stare, completely devoid of
+intelligence. The huddled figure evinced no sign of life. It appeared
+to be unconscious of their presence. Copplestone advanced a few paces;
+but the woman hung back, horrified.
+
+"Is that ... a living thing?" she whispered.
+
+He laughed--an unnatural, metallic laugh.
+
+"Yes," he said--"it's living ... with as much life as its sins have left
+it, and its rotten body can hold."
+
+He turned back to her.
+
+"Come nearer," he said. "There is nothing to be afraid of."
+
+But the glassy stare of the motionless figure had unnerved her. She was
+white, and shaking.
+
+"No, no," she muttered, shrinking further back.
+
+He seized her arm.
+
+"I warned you," he cried roughly, "but you wouldn't listen. You were
+brave enough then--when you thought I daren't stand up to you. You shall
+learn your lesson--you who talked so glibly of my secrets. Come closer."
+
+He dragged her with him towards the corner.
+
+"Look!" he commanded. "Look at that thing in front of you--that thing
+crouching there like an ape. It was once a man. It was once an active,
+intelligent, healthy human being--a strong handsome member of a strong
+handsome family. Everything was in its favor. There were no obstacles in
+its path. It had many more natural gifts than the average man is endowed
+with. It might have ruled an empire. It might have loaded its name with
+honor, and left it to its children. It had the capability, the power,
+and the opportunity to leave the world a better place than it found it.
+Look at it now."
+
+She stood silent, her head turned away. He went on, with increasing
+rage.
+
+"Look at that man now! He has brought himself to a state of gibbering
+insanity by a life of indulgence in every form of vice and depravity
+known to humanity. He knowingly and deliberately drained his mental and
+physical resources by every insult to nature that depraved men and
+women--the lowest creatures of the earth--have devised for the
+satisfaction of their diseased senses. He was a drunkard and drug-fiend
+before he was twenty. Every effort was made to check and reclaim him,
+but he defied them all. He was fully warned. He knew what the
+consequences would be. He knew that nature cannot be violated
+continuously without exacting her penalty, sooner or later. But he
+plunged on. Step by step he brought himself to this. His brain and his
+body are decaying from the unnameable excesses he has committed with
+both. He is literally rotting in front of us at this moment."
+
+She put her hands up to her face.
+
+"Can he hear you?" she gasped.
+
+"I don't know," he replied savagely. "Perhaps he can. I hope he can. I
+hope he can hear every word. It wouldn't be the first time he had heard
+the story of his shame. And it won't be the last. Curse him!"
+
+She tried to draw him back.
+
+"Come away," she cried. "How can you stand in front of the poor
+creature, and talk like that before his face?"
+
+His iron grip closed on her wrist, and held her helpless.
+
+"Why not?" he demanded, with dreadful bitterness. "Why should he be
+spared because he is suffering a fraction of the just and natural
+consequences of his own deliberate acts? What is there to pity in that?
+It is a merciful retribution. If you have any sympathy to show--show it
+to me."
+
+"To you?" she echoed.
+
+"To me," he repeated.
+
+She screamed, and tried to wrench herself from his grasp. The horrible
+head had begun to move slowly from side to side. A faint, ghastly smile
+appeared round the twisted lips.
+
+"Let me go," she cried. "It's too dreadful."
+
+He dragged her round again.
+
+"You forced yourself into my secrets," he said hardly. "It is too late
+to shrink back now. You shall know them to the full--and then you may
+go."
+
+He paused, still holding her. In her horror, and under the sickly,
+stifling atmosphere of the room, she was almost fainting. But he paid no
+heed to her condition. His eyes were fixed malignantly on the grinning
+object of his hatred.
+
+"That man," he said slowly, "was free from any hereditary weakness. His
+viciousness was not inherent. He came of a good, clean stock. When he
+was thirty--although the inevitable results of his violations had
+already seized upon him--he committed the crime of marrying. It was the
+foulest sin of his life. He knew what the result would be--what it was
+bound by every natural law to be. He knew that the sins of the fathers
+must be visited on the children"--he clenched his hands, and she winced
+as her wrist was crushed in his grip--"and knowing that, he dared to
+marry."
+
+His voice rose. His face began to work with passion.
+
+"He married a good woman--who bore all the cruelties he heaped upon her
+because she loved him. Her money had been his only consideration--and
+when he had got all that he treated her like dirt. But there are limits
+even to what a woman can bear. He broke her heart, and she died ...
+mad. If only she had died a little sooner...."
+
+She steadied herself with an effort.
+
+"Who is he?" she asked. "Why is he here, in your house?"
+
+A flood of fury shook him.
+
+"His name is Oscar Winslowe," he said fiercely. "He is my father."
+
+She uttered a sharp cry, and wrenched her hand away from him.
+
+"Your father? That creature ... your father...."
+
+"Yes," he cried wildly--"he is my father. I am George Copplestone
+Winslowe. Do you wonder that I hate him? I am the victim of his
+vices--the heir to his sins. He has left me the legacy of outraged
+nature. I am mad."
+
+She recoiled from him, panting. He was beside himself. His face was
+distorted; madness glared in his eyes. Then, suddenly, the paroxysm left
+him. He turned to her weakly, with the appeal of his utter despair.
+
+"Pity me," he said. "Oh, if you are capable of pitying anything in this
+dreadful world, pity me! My awful inheritance is closing in on me.
+Every day one more grain of reason leaves me. Like him, I might have
+been a leader of men. Like him, I have power and capability. I have a
+brain that could have raised me to the greatest heights. I have a body
+that can bear any strain. But I am mad."
+
+His agony was pitiful. He sobbed, wringing his hands.
+
+"I can feel the hideous thing growing in me, hour by hour--a little
+more--a little more. I can feel its clutch tightening on me. And I can't
+resist. I can't escape. The little mental balance I have is being
+dragged away from me. In a few years--if I let myself live to it--I
+shall be a babbling maniac. Nothing can save me. I knew it when I was a
+boy--before that thing there completely lost its reason. I knew I was
+born a madman for my father's sins. It crept on me gradually--one sign
+after another--one horrible secret impulse after another. The slow, sure
+growth of madness." He buried his face in his hands. "Oh, God! Oh,
+God!"
+
+In the silence that followed the figure on the chair straightened itself
+with a jerk, and gibbered at him, twitching spasmodically. The woman
+turned away, shaking.
+
+"I live in hell," he moaned--"in all the torment of the uttermost hell.
+I fly from one thing to another for respite, for relief--but there is no
+relief. I can only make madness of them all. Everything twists and turns
+in my hands. I can keep nothing straight." Then another gust of passion
+seized him. He shouted, beating his hands together. "What right," he
+cried furiously, "have men and women to marry and bequeath disease and
+madness to their children? What right have they to propagate the
+rottenness of their minds and bodies? It's worse than murder. It's the
+cruelest, the most wicked, of all crimes. What are the feelings of a
+child to such parents? Is it not to hate them--as I hate that foul thing
+there?--to curse them, as I curse him, with every breath?" His arms
+dropped limply to his sides. "What is the use of hating?" he said dully.
+"It can't cure me. It can't cure me."
+
+He looked at her fixedly.
+
+"Well?" he asked bitterly. "You know the secrets of my house. Are you
+satisfied?"
+
+She laid a hand on his arm, and turned him gently towards the door.
+There were tears in her eyes.
+
+"Come away," she said weakly. "Let us speak somewhere else."
+
+He followed her. They went out, without another look at the figure
+behind them, and returned in silence to the black room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+TRUER COLORS
+
+
+A great change had come over her. All the hardness had disappeared from
+her face. It was transformed by a wonderful new pity--a latent
+compassion, stirred for the first time by this miserable man's utter
+tragedy. And so transformed she was very lovely--with a loveliness that
+all the arts of an accomplished society woman had never bestowed upon
+her.
+
+"Forgive me," she said gently. "I would not have said what I did if I
+had even thought ... of that."
+
+He looked down at her, a world of agony in his tortured eyes.
+
+"Well," he asked--"do you still want to marry me ... now?"
+
+For an instant the old hardness flashed back.
+
+"You would have married _her_," she returned.
+
+"I wonder," he said slowly. "I wonder ... if I should."
+
+His gaze wandered vacantly round the room.
+
+"She intoxicated me," he said. "Her memory intoxicates me still. She set
+fire to all my passions. She made me forget the barrier. But I think I
+really hated her. Perhaps ... if she hadn't died in the garden ... I
+might have killed her...."
+
+The madness was leaving him, and the weakness of reaction taking its
+place. He put a hand on her shoulder, and leant heavily on her. His face
+was mild and kind--the face of the normal man.
+
+"Phyllis," he said softly, "I mocked you, and treated you badly. But it
+wasn't really I. Forgive a poor madman the sins of his madness."
+
+She made no attempt to check her tears. He took her hand, as gently as a
+child.
+
+"Don't cry," he begged. "See--I am all right now. Sit down, and let us
+talk."
+
+Still leaning on her, he moved to a couch, and drew her down beside him.
+
+"First," he said, "I will tell you why I lied to Inspector Fay. I did
+not go into the house to fill my cigarette case. I was mad. It came on
+me--as it often does--when I see sane people about me--a rush of hatred
+and despair."
+
+He spoke dispassionately, without a trace of the terrible disorder that
+had possessed him a few minutes before. Only the gloom remained--the
+shadow that never left him.
+
+"You can understand," he went on, "what my life has been since this
+cloud first settled on me. I tried to fight against it--but how could I
+fight against a thing that I knew to be there, creeping on me day after
+day--when I knew that in the end I must give way? Every hour seemed to
+bring some fresh proof of the madness that was in me--some proof that
+made resistance more and more futile and hopeless. A thousand times I
+have been tempted to kill myself--but always there was the dim,
+desperate hope that some miraculous twist of sanity might yet deliver
+me. I can't convey to you a tenth--a hundredth--part of the agony of
+that struggle. There were times when I shrank into the farthest corner
+of my darkest cellar, and prayed, as only a madman could pray, to be
+spared from the unjust curse. There were times when I stood out on the
+roof of my house, and defied the God I had prayed to...."
+
+He stared straight out in front of him, a figure of unutterable
+pathos--a helpless accuser of Eternal Laws.
+
+"If I were suffering for a fault of my own, I would bear my punishment
+uncomplaining. But I am innocent. I have done nothing to deserve this
+torture. And there is always the thought of what I might have been--of
+what I know I could have been. That is the cruelest torment of all. I
+have to see sane men and women wasting every minute of their
+lives--without the slightest appreciation of the value, or the
+responsibilities, of reason--who might as well be mad, for all the use
+they are to their fellow-creatures. And I...." He broke off. "That is
+enough about myself," he said. "I want to talk about you."
+
+He looked at her in surprise, as if noticing the alteration in her for
+the first time.
+
+"How changed you are," he said. "You have never looked like that before.
+You have always been so hard. Why have you never looked like that
+before?"
+
+She was silent. She bent her head, as if ashamed of betraying herself.
+
+"Was all that hardness ... only a cloak ... to hide yourself?"
+
+He seized her hand tightly.
+
+"You fool! You fool!" he cried--"to make yourself hard and unfeeling and
+unnatural--to try to stamp all the heart out of your life--to blaspheme
+your sex. Don't you know that a hard woman is the most terrible thing in
+the world? Don't you know that while men dare to think that they have
+the image of God, it is women who can really have the heart of God? And
+to think that all the time you have disguised yourself, you have been
+capable of looking like that."
+
+"I have been up against the world," she said. "I have never had enough
+money to be soft-hearted. No woman with feeling can get five hundred
+per cent. out of her income."
+
+"What does it matter," he returned, "if she can get five hundred per
+cent. out of life?"
+
+He still held her hand, his eyes fixed longingly on her face.
+
+"If only I were not mad," he said, with all his sadness--"now I know
+that you are really a woman...."
+
+"Let me go," she said brokenly, withdrawing her hand from his.
+
+"Not yet," he returned, detaining her. "There is something more I want
+to do." He paused. "My dear," he said softly, "an hour ago I would not
+have married you even if I had been sane. Now I want to marry you
+although I am mad. But, since that cannot be, there is something else."
+He released her, and stood up. "I want you always to look like that," he
+said. "I want you to forget that you have ever tried to disguise
+yourself. I want to make it possible for you to go through the rest of
+your life with your heart in its proper place."
+
+He took his check book from his pocket.
+
+"No, no," she said quickly--"not that."
+
+"Please," he insisted.
+
+"I would have taken it before," she said, forcing back her tears. "But
+not now."
+
+"You must," he declared. "My money is no use to me. I can't do anything
+worth doing with it. With all my fantastic extravagancies, I only spend
+a small part of my income. The rest has been accumulating for years. I
+shall never use it, and when I die it will pass to some one I have never
+seen. It is doing no good--and I want it to do some good. What better
+thing could I do with it than give it ... to the woman I would marry if
+I could?"
+
+She sprang up.
+
+"For God's sake," she cried, "don't say that! I can't bear it!"
+
+He laid a hand again on her shoulder.
+
+"Do you care?" he asked slowly. "I don't think you cared before. I
+thought you were only sorry for me now. Do you really care?"
+
+"I do care!" she cried recklessly. "I care--and care--and care. My God,
+how I care!"
+
+He turned his face upwards, and over it passed a dreadful, mocking
+smile.
+
+"O God of Mercy!" he muttered--"another torment!"
+
+He drew away from her.
+
+"I shall do this for you," he said firmly. "I intend to do this. And
+then we must not see each other again. I hope that when you marry, as
+you must, you will marry a good, clean man--a man who can stand out
+among his fellow-creatures, and need not shrink away from them, as I
+must. I want you to be very happy and bring happy children to the
+world...." His voice shook. "And forget there are unfortunate people in
+it ... who may only gaze hungrily over the gulf that they can never
+cross."
+
+He left her sobbing, and went to his writing table.
+
+"No one will know," he said. "I will draw it to myself. The bank is
+quite close here. I will walk there and cash it at once."
+
+He wrote the check, and rose.
+
+"Wait for me here," he said. "I shall only be a few minutes." And he
+went out with the face of a stricken man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+PROVIDING FOR THE WORST
+
+
+Though Inspector Fay had disclosed no more than was necessary for the
+purpose of the initial charge, the arrest of James Layton was popularly
+considered to have solved the mystery of the murder of Christine
+Manderson.
+
+No one realized more fully than Layton himself the overwhelming strength
+of the case against him. He was as good as condemned already. Beyond his
+own assertion of innocence, he was utterly defenseless against a
+sequence of evidence that might well have shattered the strongest reply.
+And he was without any reply at all, except his own denial. He could
+only admit the truth of the damning train of circumstances, in face of
+which his mere word was hopelessly--and, he was compelled to
+acknowledge, justly--inadequate. The secret of his identity--most
+crushing fact of all--was lost. He was the Michael Cranbourne whom
+Christine Manderson, then Thea Colville, had drawn on to ruin and
+disgrace. He had threatened her, in the presence of witness, with just
+such an end as she had met with. He had been seen lurking in the garden
+at the time of the crime. He had been beside himself. And to all that he
+had no more convincing answer than the plea of not guilty. He placed
+himself, quite dispassionately, in the position of his own judge and
+jury. There could be only one result.
+
+The strange message of hope, brought to him by Jenny West, from a
+mysterious foreigner who had declared knowledge of his innocence and of
+half the truth, aroused his curiosity, if no more. That one person, at
+all events, had discovered, and was apparently pursuing, an alternative
+to his own guilt was interesting, if a slender encouragement to build
+on. He was not disposed to cling to flimsy hopes. He accepted his
+position with perfect calmness. Since the confession of his identity to
+Inspector Fay a load seemed to have been lifted from his mind, and with
+it had passed the revival of mad passion which the sight of Christine
+Manderson's fatal beauty had aroused. He found himself able to dwell on
+her memory--even to contemplate her death--with a cold detachment which
+surprised himself. He no longer shrank from conjuring up her image--but
+now it was a dead image from a dead world. And--not without surprise
+also, and perhaps a certain satisfaction--he found himself looking
+forward to a visit from Jenny West.
+
+She came to him at the appointed time. She was very white. The deep
+shadows of sleepless grief and anxiety were round her eyes--but in them
+shone the fire of a dogged, dauntless courage. Her great untamed soul
+was aflame with revolt against the implacable circumstances that had
+placed the man whose name a thousand had blessed on the highroad to the
+gallows. She threw herself against the wall of facts with all the force
+of her primitive love. She was one of those whose trust rises to its
+greatest heights when opposed to reason.
+
+He greeted her kindly. He was cheerful and composed. He showed that he
+was glad to see her.
+
+"We shall save you, Jim!" she declared, straining back the tears that
+sprang to her eyes at his kindness. "I know we shall! I know it!"
+
+"God will save His workman," he returned quietly--"if it is His will."
+
+He looked at her closely. And something very like affection came into
+his face.
+
+"You are pale," he said. "You are over strained. You haven't slept."
+
+She bent her head, to hide her brimming eyes.
+
+"My child...." he said gently.
+
+"What does it matter," she sobbed, "if I haven't slept? How can I
+sleep--when you are ... here?"
+
+"Listen, my dear," he said--"we must face this thing squarely. It's no
+use trying to shut our eyes to the truth, however unpleasant it may be.
+As the case stands at present, no jury in the world could acquit me. I
+have no reply to the charge, except to declare that I did not kill
+Christine Manderson--and that will not help me. The evidence is more
+than enough to satisfy any impartial, clear-thinking man or woman. It
+would satisfy me. That I know myself to be innocent will not assist me
+to establish my innocence. Thousands of things may happen in the
+meantime--but I must prepare to suffer the penalty for a crime that I
+did not commit."
+
+"You shall not!" she cried passionately. "If there is justice in heaven
+or earth, you shall not!"
+
+"I do not cling to life," he returned. "It has very little to give me,
+or to take away. Men may find me guilty--but I shall stand before God
+innocent. It will not be the first time I have stood before God."
+
+A spark of his old fanaticism flashed into his eyes for a moment, then
+faded.
+
+"I shall be ready," he said steadily, "for whatever He sends."
+
+"Men shall not find you guilty," she declared. "There are three people
+working for you. The truth will be discovered."
+
+"Your mysterious Frenchman?" he smiled. "What has he done?"
+
+"I don't know," she confessed. "He tells me nothing--except to keep on
+promising that you will be saved. And that is enough for me."
+
+A frown darkened Layton's face.
+
+"I wish you would not put yourself so completely into the hands of a
+stranger," he said doubtfully. "Who and what, is this man? And how does
+he come to be mixed up in this affair?"
+
+"I know nothing whatever about him," she replied. "But there is
+something that makes me trust him. I believe he will keep his promise."
+
+"I don't like it," he insisted.
+
+"If I didn't help him," she said, "I could do nothing. And I should go
+mad."
+
+"What has he given you to do?" he asked.
+
+"I promised not to tell any one," she hesitated.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"You had better tell me. You have no one else to protect you."
+
+"It is something I can't understand," she said slowly. "This morning I
+had to write out the names and addresses of all the Art and Picture
+Dealers from the _Directory_, and this afternoon I am to go round in a
+car to as many of them as I can, with a letter from the French Embassy,
+to ask if any articles have ever been supplied to, or orders taken from,
+a Miss Masters, of 35, De Vere Terrace, Streatham, and if so, what."
+
+Layton stared at her in astonishment.
+
+"What possible connection can that have with the case?" he exclaimed.
+
+"I don't know," she said again. "I've tried to think."
+
+"The French Embassy," he mused. "That is strange...."
+
+He checked himself, and looked at his watch.
+
+"You time is nearly up," he said. "Listen to me carefully. There is one
+very important thing that I want you to understand. Whatever may develop
+in the meantime, I intend to prepare for the worst."
+
+He kept her silent with a firm gesture.
+
+"My work must go on. No matter what happens to me, my work must go on.
+And it must be carried on as I have begun it, by some one who has worked
+with me, and understands my objects--by some one who is human, and
+unlimited by sect or creed. I don't want to make people religious--it
+would spoil most of them. I want to make them healthy and happy. I would
+rather they were clean pagans than unclean Christians. No soul is saved
+or lost because it happens to take a certain view of the Mysteries of
+God. It is the bodies I care for--the bodies I want to build. Humanity
+should be a song of thanksgiving, not a prayer for alleviation."
+
+The fires kindled again. His face was lit up.
+
+"You must continue my work. If I should have to leave it ... you will
+find everything yours. There is over a million. Use it as I have taught
+you. Use it to help children to grow into men and women, and men and
+women to grow into old men and women. Use it to help human beings
+against the cruelties they inflict on each other--and animals against
+the cruelties inflicted on them. Promise me that if the worst happens,
+you will go on where I leave off."
+
+Tears blinded her. She could not speak.
+
+"Promise," he insisted.
+
+"I will," she sobbed. "I will go on--as long as I can live after you."
+
+He stood still, looking at her fixedly. There was the dawn of an
+awakening on his face.
+
+"My God!" he whispered, "I was wrong. I do cling to life. I want to
+live. O God, save me!"
+
+And the girl uttered a great sigh of thankfulness, and fell fainting
+against the wire partition that stood between them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE DISAPPEARANCE OF TRANTER
+
+
+At one o'clock on the following day, Monsieur Dupont sat in his room
+waiting for Tranter. At half-past one he had become impatient. At two he
+seized the telephone directory, and, a minute later, the instrument. At
+two-thirty he obtained his number.
+
+The answer to his first question stiffened him into an attitude of rigid
+tensity.
+
+"Mr. Tranter is not in, sir," a voice told him. "He has disappeared."
+
+"Disappeared?" Monsieur Dupont echoed sharply.
+
+"We do not know what has happened to him. He went out last night at nine
+o'clock, and has not returned."
+
+"Not returned...." the listener muttered.
+
+"We are getting anxious," the voice went on. "He left orders for his
+supper, and there is no doubt that he intended to return. We have
+telephoned to the hospitals and the police stations, but nothing has
+been heard of him. Do you happen to know where he was going?"
+
+There was a moment's pause. Monsieur Dupont's hands were clenched so
+tightly round the instrument that the veins stood out on them like
+cords.
+
+"Yes," he said slowly, "I know where he was going."
+
+He rose quickly.
+
+"I will find him," he promised and rang off.
+
+He replaced the instrument, and stood still. For the first time since
+his arrival in London fear found a place in the expression of his face.
+
+"_Dieu_," he whispered--"that Crooked House...."
+
+He seized his hat and stick, and hurried out to his car.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Remarkable changes were in progress when he arrived at the Crooked
+House. A small army of workmen swarmed over the whole place in a
+condition of feverish energy. There were stacks of tools, dozens of
+machines, and cartloads of material. At first sight it might have
+appeared as if nothing less than the effects of an earthquake could have
+been in process of repair--but, as Monsieur Dupont stood staring about
+him in amazement, it became apparent that the men were engaged in
+eliminating the crookedness of the garden, and must have been so engaged
+from a very early hour. Many of the twisting paths had been shorn of
+their high maze-like walls of hedge, and the paths themselves were in
+varying stages of conversion or disappearance. Under rapid and ruthless
+hands straightness was already appearing out of the confusion. Monsieur
+Dupont looked positively frightened.
+
+"_Mon Dieu_," he exclaimed aloud, "they are making it a human garden!"
+
+The house itself presented a no less startling aspect. It was no longer
+gloomy, deserted, and silent. It was teeming with life. Every window was
+open, and from within came sounds of rapacious cleaning. A hundred
+painters had commenced a vigorous assault upon the exterior, and
+representatives of every branch of house decoration were attacking the
+interior. It was a scene of resurrection.
+
+Monsieur Dupont almost ran to the open front door. Copplestone's
+manservant was at work in the hall, and came forward with a sphinx-like
+expression.
+
+"Mr. Copplestone?" said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"Mr. Copplestone is away, sir."
+
+"Away...?"
+
+"He left in the car early this morning, sir, without saying where he was
+going or when he would be back."
+
+Monsieur Dupont was plainly staggered.
+
+"Was he alone?"
+
+"I do not know, sir."
+
+"You do not know?"
+
+"I did not see him leave, sir. He gave me my instructions in the
+library, and ordered me to remain there until he had gone."
+
+Monsieur Dupont took a threatening step towards him.
+
+"Where is Mr. Tranter?" he demanded, with sudden fierceness.
+
+The man met his challenging gaze steadily.
+
+"Mr. Tranter, sir?"
+
+"Mr. Tranter came here last night--between ten and eleven o'clock."
+
+"I think you must be mistaken, sir. If he had come here, I should have
+seen him."
+
+Monsieur Dupont clenched his fists.
+
+"I am not mistaken! I say that he came here last night!"
+
+"I did not see him, sir."
+
+"Since then he has disappeared. He has not returned to his house, and
+nothing has been heard of him. Where is he?"
+
+"I know nothing of Mr. Tranter, sir."
+
+"That is not true!" Monsieur Dupont almost shouted.
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"I say that is not true!"
+
+The man drew himself up.
+
+"It certainly is true, sir."
+
+"It is not! Will you tell the truth to me--or to the police?"
+
+"I have nothing to tell," the man insisted doggedly.
+
+Monsieur Dupont appeared to be beside himself.
+
+"_Dieu!_" he cried, "if any harm has come to Mr. Tranter, you shall pay
+for it--all of you!"
+
+The man shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I can only repeat, sir, that I have not seen Mr. Tranter, and that, so
+far as I know, he has not been to this house. He is certainly not here
+now. You are welcome to search every room for him if you like. Mr.
+Copplestone left word that the house was to be open to any one who might
+wish to go over it."
+
+"He said that?" Monsieur Dupont exclaimed, his anger giving place to
+astonishment.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Monsieur Dupont turned away without another word, and walked slowly to
+the gates. Reaching them, he stopped, and looked back.
+
+"In the name of heaven," he muttered, "what happened in that house last
+night?"
+
+He went back to his car. Amazement and anxiety were blended on his face.
+It was plain that his calculations had received an unexpected check, the
+meaning of which he could not at present grasp. The sudden
+transformation of the house and garden was a development that had not
+entered into his scheme of procedure. It presented him with an entirely
+new and unlooked-for problem. After a moment's indecision, he took out
+his pocket-book, referred to an address, and gave it to his chauffeur.
+
+During the return journey he sat with his face between his hands, buried
+in thought. When the car stopped before a house in Grosvenor Gardens, he
+lifted his head slowly and heavily, as if rousing himself from a stupor.
+
+"Mrs. Astley-Rolfe, if you please," he said to the footman who answered
+his summons.
+
+"Mrs. Astley-Rolfe is not at home, sir."
+
+"It is most important," said Monsieur Dupont. "I wished to speak to her
+of a matter connected with Mr. George Copplestone."
+
+"She went away early this morning, sir."
+
+"Away?" Monsieur Dupont repeated.
+
+"With Mr. Copplestone."
+
+Monsieur Dupont started back.
+
+"With Mr. Copplestone?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Just before eight o'clock."
+
+"With Mr. Copplestone...."
+
+"He came in his car, sir, and insisted on Mrs. Astley-Rolfe getting up
+to see him. She went away with him ten minutes afterwards, without
+telling us where she was going or when to expect her back."
+
+Monsieur Dupont's face had become blanker and blanker. He stared at the
+man speechlessly then turned from the door, and gazed in a helpless
+fashion up and down the street.
+
+"_Mille diables!_" he murmured, "what does it mean...."
+
+He got into his car again. He looked about him like a man dazed by a
+heavy blow. Returning to the Savoy, he went up to his room.
+
+There was a telegram on the table. He opened it, and read:
+
+     "The name was George Copplestone Winslowe,
+                                  LESSING."
+
+Monsieur Dupont uttered an extraordinary sound. In a flash the gloom and
+uncertainty that had held him gave place to a seething excitement.
+Crushing the telegram into his pocket, he rushed from the room. Two
+minutes later he was on his way to Scotland Yard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+IN PURSUIT
+
+
+Inspector Fay was occupied with the arrangement of the evidence to be
+presented at the inquest on the body of Christine Manderson. He disliked
+interruptions when at work, but the appearance of Monsieur Dupont
+banished his annoyance, and called forth a smile of complacent triumph.
+
+"My friend," said Monsieur Dupont, "you know me well enough to be sure
+that I would not mislead you?"
+
+There was that in the look of him that caused the smile to fade from the
+inspector's face.
+
+"Of course," he replied, laying down his papers.
+
+"There is not a moment to lose. You must come with me."
+
+"Come with you?"
+
+"Now--immediately."
+
+"But where?"
+
+"Wherever it may be necessary to go. I do not yet know myself. I only
+know that we must go."
+
+"Impossible," the inspector declared. "I must be ready for the inquest."
+
+"If you do not come with me," Monsieur Dupont retorted, "you will not be
+ready for the inquest." He allowed his excitement to overflow. "Why do
+you stand there?" he cried. "I tell you, there is not a moment to lose.
+Cannot you see that I am serious? In all the years that you have known
+me I have never been more serious. Come!"
+
+"What for?" demanded the inspector sharply.
+
+"To discover the truth of the death of Christine Manderson."
+
+"The truth is discovered," returned the inspector, looking down at his
+papers.
+
+"The truth is _not_ discovered," said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"It is a perfectly clear case," the inspector retorted. "There cannot be
+the smallest doubt that Layton killed her."
+
+"Layton did not kill her. At the beginning I warned you to ignore the
+obvious. But you did not. Layton is no more guilty of the crime than you
+are."
+
+"I am satisfied," the inspector said shortly.
+
+"You must please yourself," said Monsieur Dupont. "I cannot wait. There
+are two lives to save--his and another. I came here to keep my word to
+you. I promised that if I succeeded in solving the mystery, I would hand
+the rest to you. I do not want credit from this affair. There is another
+meaning in it for me. I am ready to hand the rest to you, if you will
+come and take it. If you will not come--I must go on to the end myself.
+The choice is to you."
+
+Inspector Fay looked at him steadily for a moment. Then he turned back
+to his desk, and locked up his papers.
+
+"I will come," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+ETHICS OF KILLING
+
+
+They swung out from Scotland Yard into Whitehall.
+
+"What has happened?" the inspector asked.
+
+Monsieur Dupont leant forward, controlling his excitement with an
+effort.
+
+"_Mon Dieu_," he said, "I wish I knew!"
+
+He took the telegram from his pocket.
+
+"It is an hour only that I have returned from Richmond. I found the
+house of George Copplestone in course of transformation. I found all the
+windows open. I found men and women cleaning--painting--making new. I
+found a hundred men ... making the crooked garden straight."
+
+"Well?" said the inspector--"why not?"
+
+Monsieur Dupont brought his hands together impatiently.
+
+"Why not? There are a thousand reasons why not. But the reason why...."
+
+"Is it an extraordinary thing for a man to open his windows, paint his
+house, and straighten his garden?"
+
+"It is!" exclaimed Monsieur Dupont. "It is more than an extraordinary
+thing--it is a gigantic, a brain-splitting thing--if he has kept his
+windows closed, his house unpainted, and his garden crooked for twenty
+years. The house of a man is the reflection of his soul. It was the
+reflection of George Copplestone's soul yesterday. But ... something
+happened in it last night. And to-day...."
+
+He broke off, and began to smooth out the telegram on his knee.
+
+"The moment I entered that house," he continued, "I knew it was a wicked
+house. And when that dreadful thing happened, I felt positively that the
+wickedness of the house had some direct connection with the crime in the
+garden. I felt that it would be impossible to solve one without solving
+the other. I knew, also, that you would certainly be satisfied with the
+evidence against James Layton, and would consider no other possibility.
+That evidence, I admit, was unanswerable--but I, with some previous
+knowledge to help me, knew that Layton was innocent. The difficulty in
+front of me was to prove the guilt of the real criminal in time. My
+friend Tranter, and that remarkable young protegee of Layton, Jenny
+West, agreed to help me. Together we began to draw the nets, and the
+criminal was aware of our movements. In the country yesterday I
+discovered the identity of the most important witness in the case--but
+when I went to find her in the evening, she had been snatched away. I
+instructed Tranter to discover and bring to me the secret of the Crooked
+House, whatever it might be. He set out to do so at nine o'clock last
+night. And he has disappeared."
+
+"Disappeared?" the inspector exclaimed.
+
+"Without a trace. I, only, knew where he was going. And not only has he
+disappeared--but Copplestone and Mrs. Astley-Rolfe have disappeared with
+him."
+
+Inspector Fay began to show more interest.
+
+"They will be wanted for the inquest," he said sharply.
+
+"If we do not find them in time for the inquest," Monsieur Dupont
+returned, "there will be two inquests to hold."
+
+"Two inquests?" the inspector echoed.
+
+"I could not understand it," continued Monsieur Dupont. "It was contrary
+to all my calculations. I was bewildered--and you may recollect that I
+am not often bewildered. But when I returned to my hotel, I found this."
+He held out the telegram. "It is the answer to a certain inquiry I have
+made."
+
+"What does it mean?" the inspector asked, handing it back.
+
+"It means," said Monsieur Dupont slowly, "that we shall be lucky if we
+find Tranter alive."
+
+"Where can they have gone?"
+
+"I do not know. I can only guess--and if I have not guessed rightly, we
+shall not see him again."
+
+"Are you telling me," the inspector demanded, "that Copplestone killed
+the woman he had just become engaged to?"
+
+"I shall tell you who killed her within twelve hours," Monsieur Dupont
+replied. "I will tell you why she was killed now."
+
+He paused.
+
+"Why," he asked, "did the murderer, whoever it was, kill her so
+horribly? Why was it not enough to deprive her of life? Could one have
+desired more? Why was she stamped on, and torn, and crushed?"
+
+"It was obviously done in the madness of jealousy and revenge," replied
+the inspector.
+
+"It was done in madness," said Monsieur Dupont--"but it was not the
+madness of jealousy or revenge. It was the madness of a strange and
+terrible hatred. It was done--because the killer hated her beauty and
+not her."
+
+The inspector stared at him blankly.
+
+"Hated her beauty, and not her...?"
+
+"Twenty years ago," said Monsieur Dupont, "there was in France a very
+beautiful woman. She was named Colette d'Orsel. It was said that she was
+the most beautiful woman in the country. She was also very rich, very
+generous, and very kind. She was always doing good actions. She had not
+an enemy in the world. There was no one who could have wished her a
+moment's pain. She was only twenty-five. With several of her friends she
+went to stay at Nice. One night she was found in the gardens of her
+hotel--almost torn to pieces."
+
+"I remember the case," said the inspector. "It was a ghastly affair."
+
+"There appeared no motive. She was wearing some splendid jewels. They
+had been crushed with her, but nothing was missing--not a stone. She had
+just returned from the tables, and had not troubled to deposit her
+winnings of the evening with the cashier of the hotel. Forty thousand
+francs were found on the body. Not a note had been touched. The greatest
+detectives of France were called in to solve the mystery--but they
+solved nothing. They made the mistake of trying to find a motive. They
+looked for a person who could have had a reason to kill her. But it was
+time lost. They should have looked among the people who had no reason to
+kill her. The weeks became months, and still they discovered nothing.
+That crime is a mystery to-day."
+
+The inspector's attention was rivetted. He remained silent.
+
+"Ten years ago," Monsieur Dupont proceeded, "there was in Boston a young
+girl named Margaret McCall. She was wonderfully beautiful. Her parents
+were poor people, and she worked for her living. She was quiet and
+reserved by nature. She made few friends, and cared little for the
+society of men. Naturally there were hundreds who regretted, and
+attempted to overcome, that characteristic; but she went her own way
+quietly and firmly. One evening her body was found in a lonely part of
+one of the public parks torn and crushed in the most terrible manner.
+The police were helpless. The thing that baffled them completely was the
+absence of any motive for the crime. They tried to find one--but all
+that they found was what I have said, that she had been a good, honest
+girl--that she had had no enemies--that she had not jilted a man, or
+wronged a woman--that she had never flirted, or encouraged men to pay
+attentions to her. Yet there she had been found--broken and mutilated.
+The small sum of money she carried had remained untouched. The crime
+was never solved."
+
+His voice had sunk lower. He had dwelt on each detail with impassive
+deliberation.
+
+"This week, Christine Manderson--without doubt the most beautiful woman
+of the three--was found in that crooked garden at Richmond, if possible
+in a more horrible condition than either of the others."
+
+"You mean," exploded the inspector, "that the murderer of Colette
+d'Orsel at Nice twenty years ago also killed Margaret McCall in Boston
+ten years after?"
+
+"I do," replied the low voice.
+
+"And Christine Manderson here three days ago?"
+
+"And Christine Manderson here three days ago. But this time there was a
+difference. An unfortunate chain of circumstances provided clear
+evidence against an innocent man--James Layton. I admit that as the case
+stood you had no option but to arrest him. But in doing so you committed
+the same mistake that your French and American brothers had committed
+before you. They had looked for a motive, and could not find one. You
+found a motive, and devoted yourself to the man with the motive. You
+should have looked for the Destroyer."
+
+There was something of awe in the silence that followed, like the hush
+that succeeds the passing of a storm.
+
+"My friend," said the inspector slowly, "what utterly monstrous thing
+are you telling me?"
+
+Monsieur Dupont turned to him a face of massive innocence.
+
+"Is it monstrous?" he said mildly. "If a man is born with a longing to
+kill elephants, he is a daring sportsman. If the longing is to kill
+beetles, he is a scientist. But if the inclination is to kill men--or
+women--he is a criminal lunatic. Why? If the desire to kill is not in
+itself monstrous, the desire to kill a particular thing, whatever it may
+be, cannot be monstrous. It can only be illegal. If it is dreadful to
+kill a young child, it must be dreadful to kill anything young. If it is
+cowardly for a man to kill a woman, it is cowardly for a man to kill the
+female sex in any shape or form. Yet, what scientist allows the matter
+of sex to interfere with the impalement of his beetle? Nor would he do
+so if his hobby were to impale human beings. If he searches for a
+beautiful beetle to kill, it only requires a broadening of his
+particular outlook for him to search for a beautiful woman to kill.
+There may be a perfectly sane and moral country in the world (although I
+have never heard of it) in which it would be criminal to kill the
+beetle, and scientific to kill the woman. I confess that a well-mounted
+collection of beautiful women would be very much more interesting to me
+than the finest collection of beautiful beetles. But if I have the one,
+I am made a member of a Royal Society--and if I have the other, I am
+executed. And the only reason for that is that the human beings make the
+laws, and not the beetles."
+
+The car swung round a sharp corner, and the inspector's amazement was
+interrupted by the sudden necessity of keeping his position. Monsieur
+Dupont continued slowly.
+
+"But the monstrousness of this case is not that three people have been
+killed--but that three people have been more than killed. It is
+monstrous because we have none of the simple dignity of the primitive
+slayer, and all the morbid excesses of the modern despoiler. While it
+might be an entirely respectable thing to kill a woman to preserve her
+beauty, it is an entirely monstrous thing to kill her to destroy it.
+That is the only reason why the collector of beetles and butterflies is
+not the most cold-blooded of murderers. That is the only----"
+
+"What in the name of all that's unholy," gasped the inspector, "are you
+going to say next?"
+
+Monsieur Dupont leant forward as the car stopped, and opened the door.
+
+"Next," he replied gravely, "I am going to inform you that we have
+arrived at Paddington, and request you to get out."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+MONSIEUR DUPONT'S TASK
+
+
+He bought the tickets, and conducted the inspector to a train.
+
+"Where are we going?" demanded the bewildered officer, as Monsieur
+Dupont settled himself in a corner, and produced his cigar case.
+
+"We are going," said Monsieur Dupont, "to a delightful little village,
+hidden away in the hills of the country--far from the sins of
+cities--where they do not even know that Paris is the center of the
+world."
+
+Fortunately they had the carriage to themselves. Monsieur Dupont smoked
+in silence for some minutes.
+
+"I will explain to you," he began, at last, "how I came to be concerned
+in this affair. The reason was that, after my retirement, I had the
+honor to marry a cousin of Colette d'Orsel. The brother of my wife had
+been one of the party at Nice at the time of the crime, and, though
+there was not the least evidence against him, the police had allowed it
+to be known that they looked upon him as the guilty person. You know how
+ready certain people are to discuss and even to credit the wildest
+theories--and you know also that after sufficient discussion the wildest
+theories become not only possibilities, but probabilities. The cloud of
+suspicion hung over him, ruining his health and his life, and casting a
+shadow over the whole family. When I married my wife, I determined that
+the shadow should be removed. And for the past two years I have devoted
+myself to that object.
+
+"You can imagine," he went on, after a pause, "the difficulties that
+confronted me. Eighteen years had elapsed since the crime had been
+committed. Men, women, and even buildings, had passed, and been
+replaced--records had been lost--memories failed. But money,
+perseverance, and imagination slowly conquered. Step by step the years
+were overcome. With the aid of a small army of assistants, I succeeded
+in isolating a certain person. I placed that person beside the dead body
+of Colette d'Orsel, and began my pursuit. _Mon Dieu_, how I worked!
+After the hardest year of my life, I at last established a link between
+the death of Colette d'Orsel and the death of Margaret McCall--and that
+link was the personality I had isolated in the first place at Nice. But
+it had changed itself. I followed scent after scent--trail after trail.
+When I came to London a few days ago, I had sufficient information to
+allow me to commence the final stage of the adventure. I had solved the
+most difficult question of all--the present identity of my quarry. The
+second most difficult question remained to be solved--proofs of guilt.
+How could I obtain them? How could I prove that this person--living here
+in all the security of time--was the person who had torn those two women
+to pieces in America and France ten and twenty years ago? I had certain
+clues to follow up, but the results could not possibly have been
+sufficient to prove such an accusation. What was I to do? To rely upon
+observation? To search for--and wait for--a proof in this person's
+daily intercourse with the world? To place a beautiful woman within
+reach, and watch for a betrayal? That was actually the object in my mind
+when I called on my friend Tranter, and requested him to open to me the
+doors of London society. Sooner or later, I should have found, or
+brought about, the situation I was looking for. It might have been
+years--doubtless it would have been years--if he had not, by the most
+remarkable chance, taken me direct to that house at Richmond. Then came
+the death of Christine Manderson. It was horrible--appalling! And to
+think that I, who had detected and tracked the Destroyer, had been there
+in the same garden, within a few yards of the third death, and yet was
+no nearer my proofs! And to add to my difficulties, there was the
+certainty that an innocent man would suffer unjustly if I could not
+succeed in time."
+
+He paused, looking grimly out at the passing scenery.
+
+"And if I had not sent Tranter to the Crooked House yesterday, I do not
+know how I could have succeeded in time."
+
+He turned abruptly from the window, put his feet up on the seat, and
+closed his eyes.
+
+"I am a little tired," he said. "If you will excuse me, I will take a
+nap."
+
+He slept for an hour.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They got out at a small country station. The shadows of the hot twilight
+were merging into darkness. A few minutes walking brought them to an
+inn, at which Monsieur Dupont demanded, and obtained, a conveyance.
+
+For half an hour they drove through the heavily scented air of the
+country. Scarcely a word was spoken until they reached another village.
+There, Monsieur Dupont requested the inspector to alight and they
+proceeded on foot.
+
+The red rear-light of a motor-car appeared at the turn of a corner.
+Monsieur Dupont drew a deep breath.
+
+"_Le bon Dieu_ be thanked!" he muttered.
+
+The car was stationary and empty. Monsieur Dupont laid a hand on the
+radiator.
+
+"It is hot," he said. "They have only been here a few minutes. Do not
+make a sound."
+
+He opened a gate. The long low shape of a house was in front of them.
+They stood still, listening. There was no sound, no light.
+
+"To the back," Monsieur Dupont whispered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+WHAT THEY HEARD
+
+
+They crept round the house. At the back a pair of French windows were
+open, but heavy curtains were drawn across them. No light was visible.
+They listened. A voice was speaking--slowly, scarcely above a whisper,
+but a whisper of contemptuous pride.
+
+"Yes," it said, "I am the Destroyer! I was born to kill. It was the
+curse of my birth."
+
+The silence of the room was broken only by the faint sound of a woman
+sobbing. Monsieur Dupont and the inspector drew nearer to the window.
+
+"You fools!" said the arrogant voice. "What are your laws of Right and
+Wrong to me? I _am_ Right and Wrong. What are your Codes of Sin? I _am_
+Sin. Who are you to judge me? Who are you to set your little laws
+against My Madness?"
+
+There was a long pause. Then the voice continued, in a tone of dull
+bitterness.
+
+"Ever since I had strength to break, I have broken--to tear, I have
+torn. The disease took command of me long before I knew its meaning.
+When I was a child the sight of pretty things frightened me. I used to
+shrink from them, and hide my face. I was only quiet and normal when
+there were plain, colorless things about me. As I grew older the fear
+developed into hatred--and with hatred grew, slowly and subtly, the
+inclination to destroy. At first the opposition of all that was normal
+in me sufficed to keep the desire in check, but day by day it grew
+stronger and stronger, and day by day the power to resist became less
+and less. The increase of the hatred into madness followed the growth of
+the impulse towards the first surrender. It came upon me for the first
+time when I was twelve. How well I remember that day! My sanity had
+fought its strongest battle, and my head was still throbbing and
+swimming with the strain of it. I was taken to a strange house, and left
+alone in a bright room. On the wall there was a picture of a very
+beautiful woman. I couldn't take my eyes off it. I couldn't move from in
+front of it. New passions, that I had never felt before, were tearing
+me. The picture seemed to be alive, to be mocking me. I hated it. I felt
+that it was cruel and loathsome--that it had wronged me. My whole body
+was on fire--my brain was flaming. Then something seemed to snap in my
+head. I lost myself. Irresistible forces took possession of me, and used
+me. When I came to myself ... the picture was lying at my feet ... in
+fragments."
+
+The voice settled down into an expressionless monotone, pursuing its
+story without emotion.
+
+"From that moment my doom lay on me. I had made the initial submission.
+Any attempt at resistance after that was futile. I was helpless. Out of
+my hatred of beauty in any shape or form came the desire to obtain the
+most beautiful things I could find to enjoy the mad ecstasy of
+shattering them. I had all the morbid secret longing to induce attacks
+of my own madness--to enjoy the awful exaltation, the triumph of
+destruction. I was not ashamed. I found myself entirely without
+scruple, without conscience, incapable of remorse. When the periods of
+desire were upon me, I hesitated at nothing to gratify them. At first
+they were frequent--sometimes there were only a few days between--but as
+I grew older the intervals lengthened, until sometimes I dared to think
+myself free. But, sooner or later, it came again. I knew all the warning
+signals--the creeping in of uncontrollable thoughts--the brain
+pictures--the quickening of mind and body--then the grip of the madness.
+All I could do at such times was to collect a number of things
+sufficiently beautiful to satisfy my lust, and lock myself in to an orgy
+of destruction. Then I was normal again for another period. So I grew
+up. When I was twenty, I learnt the truth."
+
+"I told him," a woman's broken voice said. "I hadn't the heart to tell
+him before. I was hoping against hope that the curse would pass away as
+he grew into manhood. But when I saw that it would not ... I told him."
+
+"Then I knew there was no escape," the dull voice went on. "The results
+of my father's vices and my mother's madness were my inheritance.
+God! ... what a legacy!"
+
+The voice flamed for an instant--then subsided again into its previous
+monotony.
+
+"The intervals became longer and longer, but each time the madness
+recurred it tightened its clutches. Each time it made me more and more
+its own property. Whenever the warnings showed themselves I fled to the
+refuge of Miss Masters's house. She bought and kept there things on
+which, when the mania was at its height, it satisfied me to expend my
+lust. But those inanimate things, though sufficient for that purpose,
+had no power in themselves to produce an attack of the madness. The
+capability to do that was reserved to a woman's beauty--the effect of
+which, so far, I had had no opportunity to experience. That opportunity
+came to me for the first time at Nice--twenty years ago. I had never
+seen a really beautiful woman before I saw Colette d'Orsel."
+
+Another pause followed the name. The room behind the curtains remained
+in tense silence until the voice resumed.
+
+"I can remember it now--as if it were yesterday. How she stood
+there--in the soft shaded light--terribly beautiful. And I--the
+Destroyer--watched her paralyzed--knowing for the first time the
+pinnacle of my madness. The sight of her numbed all my sanity. I could
+no more have torn myself away from that place than I could have resisted
+the new flood of my disease that broke over me like a nightmare wave. I
+was introduced to her. As I bent over her hand I almost laughed at the
+thought of what her horror would have been if she had known the impulses
+that surged through me. Her voice--the touch of her--burnt into me like
+flames. I knew what the end would be, but I was powerless in the grip of
+my inheritance. And she--in the pitiless irony of it--liked me! Three
+evenings later I met her in the gardens of the hotel. We sat together
+... alone for the first time. I struggled. My God, I struggled! But it
+was useless. The white shape of her next to me--the dim outline of her
+features--the whole nearness of her beauty.... Then it came on me, as I
+knew it would--the final rush of irresistible hatred. When I knew myself
+again ... she was lying on the ground ... smashed ... my first living
+victim."
+
+The woman sobbed.
+
+"God forgive him!" she cried. "He was innocent himself. It wasn't really
+him...."
+
+Light footsteps moved across the floor.
+
+"Let me be," said the voice hardly. "What God does with me is for God to
+do. Sit down again."
+
+The footsteps returned.
+
+"I left her there, and went back to the hotel. I sat down in my room,
+and analyzed my feelings. The madness had left me. My mind was perfectly
+clear and steady. I felt no horror at what I had done--no remorse--only
+a sense of impersonal regret at the death of an innocent woman, and a
+faint detached pity for her misfortune in crossing my path. I carefully
+considered my position, and certainty that there could be no evidence
+against me dispelled any fears for myself--but my cold-blooded sanity
+realized that the odds were tremendously against a recurrence of the
+same good fortune, and that the avoidance of the opposite sex must
+become the chief care of my life. Then I went to bed, and slept
+soundly. The discovery of Colette d'Orsel's body early the next morning
+provided the sensation of the year at Nice. The police were confounded.
+There was no motive--no clue. It is an unsolved mystery to-day."
+
+The callousness of the story was so revolting that even the inspector,
+seasoned as he was, allowed a muttered expression of disgust to escape
+him. But Monsieur Dupont remained as silent and still as the house
+itself.
+
+"Ten years later," continued the voice, "I went to America. For five
+years I had been free from any return of the madness. You can imagine
+the longing to be like other men--to presume on the years of immunity. I
+felt unshakably sane. I even felt that I had never been mad. I gloried
+in the keenness of my intellect, the absolute order and control of my
+thoughts. What had I to do with madness? But in Boston ... I saw
+Margaret McCall. In an instant I was mad. In an instant----"
+
+A cry tore the air--a cry so awful in its inhuman fury that the two
+listeners shrank back horrified. For a moment the room seethed with
+confusion. The voices of men and women were blended in rage, terror, and
+command. Then the curtains were wrenched aside, and two figures rushed
+out shrieking into the darkness of the garden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+THE BEAUTY-KILLER
+
+
+Four more figures dashed out through the curtains--two women and two
+men. The inspector and Monsieur Dupont joined them. Guided by the sounds
+in front of them, they dashed across the garden at the top of their
+speed.
+
+A black wall of earth loomed up before them, like the rising of a
+gigantic wave. It was strongly rivetted, and must have been at least ten
+feet high. It was quite inaccessible from where the pursuers stopped
+beneath it.
+
+"Look! Look!" a woman screamed.
+
+They looked up.
+
+"My God!" the inspector exclaimed.
+
+On the height above them, silhouetted against the pale sky of the summer
+night, they saw a figure--its arms uplifted in an attitude of majesty,
+of triumphant defiance. The white light of the moon lit up a face
+terrible beyond words in its pride, its sin, and its utter madness.
+
+"I am the Beauty-Killer! I killed Colette d'Orsel! I killed Margaret
+McCall. I killed Christine Manderson...."
+
+Another figure scrambled up out of the darkness on to the height, and
+the silver head of Oscar Winslowe gleamed in the light. For a moment he
+crouched--then sprang forward with a yell. The two figures swayed
+backwards in a fierce struggle.
+
+"They will go down!" a man's voice cried. "It is the edge of a gravel
+pit. The fence will not bear. There is a sheer drop of fifty feet."
+
+"Let them go," another woman sobbed. "It is the best way."
+
+And, even as she spoke, there was the sound of tearing woodwork. The
+struggling figures stood out for an instant with startling
+clearness--then disappeared like the sudden shutting off of a moving
+picture. And the whole night seemed to wince at the thud that followed.
+
+"We must go down," the man's voice said, breaking the silence in an
+awestruck whisper. "There is a way round the other side."
+
+They followed him round the edge of the pit. It seemed like walking
+round the world. They descended a steep slope--and then, in the vast
+gray silence, a circle of pale faces surrounded the dead bodies of Oscar
+Winslowe, and John Tranter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+LAST TRUTHS
+
+
+"My friends," said Monsieur Dupont, "you have already heard a great part
+of the story. John Tranter was the son of Oscar Winslowe. He was mad. He
+was, as he called himself truly, a Beauty-Killer. That strange lust he
+inherited from his mother, who had been robbed of all she cared for, and
+hoped for, in life by a beautiful woman, and rendered insane three
+months before his birth. It was a most pathetic tragedy. We shall now
+hear----"
+
+"One moment," Inspector Fay interrupted. "As I represent the police
+here, I should be glad to know, before we go any further, whose house I
+am in."
+
+"Pardon me," Monsieur Dupont apologized. "I had forgotten. You are in
+the house of Doctor Lessing," he inclined himself towards the doctor,
+"who will in due course repeat to you a statement which he made to me
+yesterday. This lady is Miss Masters, who was Tranter's nurse. Mrs.
+Astley-Rolfe and Mr. Copplestone--which, I fancy, is not his correct
+name--you know already."
+
+He added a high compliment to the inspector's present position and past
+achievements, and then turned to Copplestone.
+
+"Mr. Copplestone, when Tranter did not return to me at the appointed
+time this afternoon, I went to your house. I found great changes. I
+found it, as you say, upside down."
+
+Copplestone was radiant with happiness. Every trace of the old gloom had
+left him. He was a new man.
+
+"I should think you did!" he retorted. "And you'd have found the earth
+upside down as well, if I'd been able to turn it."
+
+"I was puzzled," Monsieur Dupont admitted. "I could not understand it.
+But I knew this--that when the shadows roll away from a man's house,
+they roll away from his life. When he draws the blinds and throws open
+the windows of his house to the light and the air, he draws the blinds
+and throws open the windows of his soul. When he straightens his garden,
+he straightens himself. I knew that before you would lift the cloud from
+your house something must have lifted the cloud from you. You had been
+delivered----"
+
+"There was a fellow in the Bible," said Copplestone--"I think he was a
+king--who was cured of leprosy by taking a dip in a river. I don't know
+what happened afterwards, but I am quite sure that he turned his palace
+upside down when he got back."
+
+He sprang up, his face illuminated with all the wonder of his new birth.
+
+"I am free!" he cried. "Free! That's what my house told you. I had been
+brought out into the light after half a life of darkness. I had been
+released after forty years of prison, of torment that all the tortures
+of the Inquisition at once couldn't have equalled!"
+
+He stared about him, like an intoxicated man.
+
+"This room is too small!" he almost shouted. "Everything is too small. I
+want to dance on the Universe. I want the world to be a football. I want
+to play enormous games with giants--" He checked himself abruptly, and
+sat down. "Forgive me," he said. "You would understand, if you knew what
+I have suffered."
+
+"I can, for one," agreed the doctor heartily.
+
+"And I, indeed," said Monsieur Dupont. "But to proceed with the story--I
+think it would be better to commence with what Miss Masters has to tell
+us."
+
+He bowed to a gray-haired, grief-stricken woman. There was a pause
+before she overcame her emotion sufficiently to speak.
+
+"I took charge of Mary Winslowe's child from its birth," she began, at
+last. "She entrusted it to me in her sane moments, and I kept my trust
+faithfully. Perhaps it would have been better if I had not."
+
+"You did your duty," the doctor said.
+
+"It was a condition that he should never come under his father's
+influence, or even know his real name. He was to be kept in complete
+ignorance of the tragedy of his birth. It was necessary for him to be
+christened in his proper name to legalize the inheritance of his
+mother's fortune, but after that I took him away, and brought him up in
+strict accordance with my promises. He was told that both his parents
+had been drowned at sea. I gave him the name of John Tranter--Tranter
+was an old family name of mine. He was a bonny little fellow. I never
+thought that he might have inherited his mother's madness."
+
+"The Laws of Nature are inexorable," said the doctor. "If only the
+Second Commandment were given to people as the Law of Nature instead of
+the threat of God, it would be of some value."
+
+"I hardly realized it," she went on, "even when the symptoms had
+unmistakably developed. But it increased too plainly to be denied. I
+hoped and prayed that the horrible disease would pass away from him as
+he grew up--but it grew stronger and stronger with him. At last he made
+me tell him what it really was. It was against my promise, but he had to
+know. I pledged my word that I would keep his secret, and it was
+arranged that whenever he felt the approach of an attack he would come
+to me. I kept things for him. At first smaller things satisfied him. He
+was content to destroy flowers, pictures, prettily colored china,
+anything that was beautiful. But after that visit to France, when he was
+twenty, there was a change. He never told me what had happened--that he
+had killed a woman--but from that time only a woman's beauty would
+satisfy him. The attacks became few and far between, but when they came
+he would have died with the very force of his madness if he had not had
+some representation of a beautiful woman to expend it on."
+
+"It's frightful--incredible," the inspector exclaimed.
+
+"It was all the more pitiful," she said, "because his sanity was so
+wonderful. He had a towering intellect. He succeeded in anything he put
+his hand to."
+
+"He was looked upon as one of the greatest authorities on finance in the
+country," said the inspector.
+
+"He could have been a Member of Parliament before he was thirty if he
+had cared for politics. He refused a title. To be a Privy Councillor was
+the only honor he accepted. And he--one of England's great men--came to
+my little house at Streatham to gratify his madness to destroy."
+
+She looked round at them defiantly, anger displacing the sorrow on her
+face.
+
+"But he was not guilty," she declared. "His hands may have killed those
+three women--but he was not guilty. Nor was that poor innocent woman,
+his mother, who died in the madhouse. They were both clean of sin. It
+was on his wicked father that the guilt lay. It was Oscar Winslowe who
+was responsible for the lives that have fallen to his sins. Oscar
+Winslowe, and no one else."
+
+"I bear witness to that," agreed Doctor Lessing. "Mary Winslowe was the
+gentlest, the sweetest, and the most patient woman that ever walked this
+earth, as you will see when I tell you my story. And he was the biggest
+blackguard that ever blasphemed the likeness of his Maker."
+
+"It is true," said the woman.
+
+She drew back in her chair, and pressed a hand to her forehead.
+
+"That is all I have to tell you," she concluded.
+
+"Last night," said Monsieur Dupont, "I called at your house, and was
+told by the lady who lives next door that you had left in a hurry two
+hours before."
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+"I presume that you did so on instructions from Tranter?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Evidently he shadowed me to Paddington Station, as I expected he would,
+and decided to remove you in case I should get on the right track."
+
+"He sent me an urgent message," she said, "saying that a great disaster
+hung over his head, and that I must go away without leaving any trace.
+He told me where to go, and promised to come to me and explain."
+
+"He knew that it was only you who could give any proof against him?"
+
+"After forty years," she returned, with a touch of bitterness, "he ought
+to have known that I should not betray him."
+
+"Even if one had told you of those three dreadful crimes that he had
+committed, and that an innocent man was accused of the last one?"
+
+She locked her hands together.
+
+"Don't ask me," she cried. "I don't know what I should have done."
+
+"He foresaw that problem," said Monsieur Dupont. "His sanity was, as you
+have said, wonderful. But the sanity of madness is always
+wonderful--that is why madmen are such superb criminals. It is only a
+madman who can be really sane. Although I allowed him to see that I knew
+already something of the truth, he never betrayed himself by even a
+tremor. He had all the grand egotism of the born criminal. His disguise
+was impenetrable. He was never sure how far my knowledge went, but not a
+sign of anxiety did he ever show. We played a game of cross purposes. I
+used him, under the pretense of requiring his assistance, to keep him by
+my side, and in the hope that as he saw me draw nearer to him step by
+step, he would break down. He, on his side, allowed himself to be used
+in order to keep watch on my moves, and safeguard himself against them,
+as he did in the case of Miss Masters. He dared not leave me. In all my
+conversations with him, I placed him more and more at his wit's end to
+know how much I really knew. As much from curiosity as from anything, I
+instructed him to discover the secret of Mr. Copplestone's house, for I
+was convinced that it did contain an interesting secret. He was quite
+willing to make the attempt. It did not promise to lead me any nearer to
+him. He little thought when he went--and I had little thought when I
+sent him--that he was going to his own undoing."
+
+"And my salvation," Copplestone added.
+
+"There," said Monsieur Dupont, "it passes to you to enlighten me."
+
+"First," returned Copplestone, "I should like to know what caused you to
+be so positive, after being in my house only two or three hours, that
+there was a secret in it."
+
+"My instinct for the mysterious is seldom at fault," said Monsieur
+Dupont. "Have you not observed how, by their characters, their habits,
+and their desires, human beings draw to themselves certain events and
+conditions of life? And it is equally true that houses draw to
+themselves certain contents and certain kinds of inhabitants. If a house
+is particularly adapted to contain a secret, in the course of time will
+certainly contain one. By a few strokes of his pencil an architect can
+condemn a house to become the scene of a murder, as surely as he can
+make it a convenient or inconvenient dwelling. Your house was
+constructed to hide a secret. And I was not only sure that it did hide
+one, but that it hid one which was in some way connected with the crime
+in the garden."
+
+"I have had some experience of that instinct of yours," the inspector
+remarked, with a somewhat rueful smile.
+
+"Well," said Copplestone, "instinct or no instinct, it certainly did
+hide a secret, and that secret was that Oscar Winslowe lived in it--if
+his condition could be called living. For the last five years he had
+been practically a helpless imbecile. He seldom uttered a sound beyond a
+gibber, and hardly seemed to be conscious. He was suffering the natural
+consequences of his vices. He had been gradually reaching that
+condition since nature had dealt him her first stroke of vengeance more
+than thirty years ago. One by one his faculties had rotted. He was a
+living mass of decay."
+
+"It was a sure thing," the doctor said. "Such a condition was bound to
+come. I prophesied it to his face when I first knew him."
+
+"That was the secret of my house," Copplestone proceeded. "My own secret
+was that I believed myself to be his son--the inheritor of the curse
+that really belonged to Tranter. And the horror of it, the helplessness,
+the constant contemplation of the awful state of the man I knew as my
+father, and the morbid certainty that sooner or later I must come to the
+same state, actually drove me to the madness that was not really in me
+at all."
+
+"But how had you come to believe yourself to be his son?" the inspector
+asked.
+
+"That was the last of Winslowe's diabolical acts. He inherited a large
+fortune on condition that a child of his, to whom it could succeed, was
+alive at the time of the testator's death. He did not know anything of
+his own child, and did not want to. He was afraid that if he made
+public inquiries for it, he might learn publicly that it was dead, and
+lose his claim. Also, he was afraid of other complications and
+exposures."
+
+"And with good reason," said the doctor grimly.
+
+"He wanted a child of five to produce as his son, George Copplestone
+Winslowe--and possibly make away with in due course after the business
+was settled. I am quite sure that would have been my fate if nature had
+not come to my rescue by striking him. He knew, from his knowledge of
+the underworld of London, how such things could be arranged without
+risk. No doubt he bought me for a few pounds. I am not the first heir to
+an estate who has been produced by such means."
+
+"True enough," agreed the inspector. "The heir to a million has been
+bought for a fiver."
+
+"But a few years after taking possession of the fortune, he was struck
+down, as I have said, by the first instalment of nature's retribution,
+and was incapable of carrying out his plans. No one cared for me. No one
+thought of removing me from the sight and influence of his growing
+imbecility. I was brought up under the shadow of it. And so the horror
+was born in me--the belief that I was mad. What chance had I to resist
+it, in those surroundings? When I came to an age to do so, I searched
+out the story of my birth, of my father's excesses and my mother's
+madness, and my doom crashed upon me. Can you wonder that I became what
+I was?"
+
+"No, indeed," said Monsieur Dupont.
+
+"I dropped the name of Winslowe. It was loathsome to me. I used my other
+two names, George Copplestone. They, at least, had come from my mother's
+side. My old manservant and his wife stuck to me, and kept my secrets.
+The income devolved on me in consequence of Winslowe's incapability. And
+so things went on. In my morbid demoralization I saw myself growing
+nearer and nearer to that wretched creature day by day."
+
+"Dreadful!" shuddered the doctor. "It must have been a living hell."
+
+"Then, last night, Tranter came. He climbed up on the ivy, and tried to
+spy into Winslowe's room. But I was there, and heard him. I dragged him
+in through the window. I suppose it was some look, some likeness to his
+mother, that stirred Winslowe's memory. He recognized him, and a flash
+of sanity came back to him. Under that sudden mental stimulation he
+recovered his power of movement, and was able to confess at least a part
+of the truth. Tranter was taken off his guard, and I forced him to admit
+his madness. I compelled him to take Winslowe and myself to Miss
+Masters, and she, in her turn, brought us here."
+
+"I imagined she would," Monsieur Dupont remarked.
+
+Copplestone drew a deep breath, and laughed aloud.
+
+"And I am like other men! I can live as other men live. I can do what
+other men do. I can----" His eyes rested on the woman beside him, and
+his face grew tender. "Yes," he repeated slowly, "I can ... I can...."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"And it was Tranter who killed Christine Manderson...." the inspector
+said, almost to himself.
+
+"It was," said Monsieur Dupont. "He admitted to you on the night of the
+crime that he had known her in America years ago. And here we have a
+curious study in conflicting emotions. When he first met her, he had
+already killed two beautiful women. She was certainly more beautiful
+than either--yet he was able to associate with her on intimate terms for
+a considerable time, and even to tear himself away from her at last,
+without adding her to the victims of his madness. How was he able to do
+that? It was undoubtedly because he loved her. He had not loved either
+of the other two, so there had been no opposing emotion to his mania.
+But he loved Christine Manderson, and love was capable of holding the
+madness in check, because love, in its full strength, is the strongest
+of all human emotions. Love is stronger than madness, and ten times
+stronger than sanity. But after he left her the love faded to a certain
+extent, while the madness increased. Therefore, when he was suddenly
+confronted with her extraordinary beauty a few nights ago, the love that
+had faded was unable to restrain the madness that had not. And he killed
+her."
+
+"My God!" exclaimed Copplestone, "to think that he stood there with us
+over the body he had torn--and even lifted it into my arms--without so
+much as a quiver."
+
+"He was not capable of remorse or regret," Monsieur Dupont returned. "If
+he had been, he would have killed himself long ago." He paused. "There
+remain now a few points of my own part in this affair to tell you, and
+we will then ask the doctor for his statement."
+
+"Before you do that," said Doctor Lessing, bluntly, "I, for one, am
+curious to know who you really are, and how you came to take such a
+large hand in the whole business."
+
+"My connection with the whole business," replied Monsieur Dupont, "is a
+long story. I have already told it to Inspector Fay, and I will tell it
+again with pleasure when all the more important statements have been
+made. As regards myself----"
+
+Inspector Fay took upon himself the continuation of the sentence.
+
+"Up to a few years ago," he said, "Monsieur Dupont was, under a certain
+pseudonym, the most brilliant member of the French Secret Service--and
+was, in fact, admitted to have no equal in the whole of Europe."
+
+"A gross exaggeration, my friends," protested Monsieur Dupont. He waved
+the inspector to silence. "When I came to London last week," he told
+them, "I came knowing that John Tranter had killed two women. I had
+known that when I returned from America six months before. You can
+imagine the difficulties in front of me then. I was to prove that an
+English Privy Councillor, a well-known and highly respected man, was in
+reality a madman who was responsible for two of the most dreadful crimes
+that had ever been committed. I had never seen him, but fortunately he
+was in Paris at that time, and I had no difficulty in making his
+acquaintance. By extreme good fortune, I was able to render him a
+service in the streets which placed him under an obligation to me. I
+observed him carefully, only to find him to all appearances the sanest
+and most level-headed man I had ever met. But there was one thing--he
+shut himself away completely from the society of women, and he avoided
+all places where beauty was to be found in any form. But I was so far
+from any proof. My next step was to test my own belief that his madness
+was an inherent disease, and to do that I employed inquiry agents in
+this country to discover whether there were any records of such a case
+in existence. It is only two weeks since I received information from
+them that a woman named Mary Winslowe had died in an asylum from that
+very kind of madness, forty years ago."
+
+"That is true," corroborated the doctor.
+
+"I came to London immediately. While following up my clues, I renewed my
+acquaintance with Tranter, and pressed him to act as my cicerone in
+London society, hoping to be able to entrap him into a situation that
+would lead him to betray himself. And he took me to Richmond. What
+happened there, you know. Though he knew when Christine Manderson first
+came into the room what the outcome would be, he was unable to tear
+himself away. And in the garden she forced herself upon him. He tried to
+resist her, but his madness overcame him. That is the explanation of
+the absence of a cry for help, which once I stated to be the key to the
+mystery. If she had been walking along that path to the house, she would
+have had time to cry out, no matter how quickly the assailant had sprung
+out at her. But she did not utter a cry because she was already in the
+arms of the assailant, compelling him to a passionate embrace, and
+without doubt it was a simple thing to strangle her silently in that
+very position."
+
+"Good God!" Copplestone shuddered.
+
+"His account of how she had asked him to find Mr. Copplestone, and tell
+him she was not well, and of how he had left her on her way to the
+house, was a succession of ingenious lies which could not be disproved.
+That is my story," concluded Monsieur Dupont. "The next most important
+point at the moment is that James Layton is cleared of a charge from
+which he could not possibly have saved himself."
+
+"Layton will be released with full honors to-morrow," the inspector
+said.
+
+"And I think," added Monsieur Dupont, "that there will be another
+matter--not unconnected with a young lady named Jenny West--upon which
+we shall have to congratulate him--and with very good reason."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+Half-an-hour later, when the doctor's statement had been made,
+Copplestone and Mrs. Astley-Rolfe stood together in the flower-laden
+garden.
+
+"My dear," said the new man, "I brought you here to witness my
+deliverance. Yesterday, when you had left me, I made up my mind to put
+an end to my life. To-day I am free. The cloud has rolled away. I am fit
+to keep my promise--if you wish it kept."
+
+She smiled up at him through happy tears.
+
+"If I wish it kept!" she whispered.
+
+"By Jove!" Copplestone exclaimed, "I believe in every miracle that has
+ever been reported, suggested, or hinted at, from the first hour of the
+world!"
+
+
+
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