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+Project Gutenberg's The Sleuth of St. James's Square, by M. D. Post
+Melville Davisson Post
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+Title:  The Sleuth of St. James's Square
+
+Author:  Melville Davisson Post
+
+Release Date:  October, 2001  [Etext #2861]
+[Date last updated: March 28, 2005]
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+
+The Sleuth of St. James's Square
+
+by Melville Davisson Post
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I.  THE THING ON THE HEARTH
+
+II.  THE REWARD
+
+III.  THE LOST LADY
+
+IV.  THE CAMBERED FOOT
+
+V.  THE MAN IN THE GREEN HAT
+
+VI.  THE WRONG SIGN
+
+VII.  THE FORTUNE TELLER
+
+VIII.  THE HOLE IN THE MAHOGANY PANEL
+
+IX.  THE END OF THE ROAD
+
+X.  THE LAST ADVENTURE
+
+XI.  AMERICAN HORSES
+
+XII.  THE SPREAD RAILS
+
+XIII.  THE PUMPKIN COACH
+
+XIV.  THE YELLOW FLOWER
+
+XV.  A SATIRE OF THE SEA
+
+XVI.  THE HOUSE BY THE LOCH
+
+
+
+
+
+The SLEUTH of St. JAMES'S SQUARE
+
+
+
+I.  The Thing on the Hearth
+
+
+
+"THE first confirmatory evidence of the thing, Excellency, was
+the print of a woman's bare foot."
+
+He was an immense creature.  He sat in an upright chair that
+seemed to have been provided especially for him.  The great bulk
+of him flowed out and filled the chair.  It did not seem to be
+fat that enveloped him.  It seemed rather to be some soft, tough
+fiber, like the pudgy mass making up the body of a deep-sea
+thing.  One got an impression of strength.
+
+The country was before the open window; the clusters of
+cultivated shrub on the sweep of velvet lawn extending to the
+great wall that inclosed the place, then the bend of the river
+and beyond the distant mountains, blue and mysterious, blending
+indiscernibly into the sky.  A soft sun, clouded with the haze of
+autumn, shone over it.
+
+"You know how the faint moisture in the bare foot will make an
+impression."
+
+He paused as though there was some compelling force in the
+reflection.  It was impossible to say, with accuracy, to what
+race the man belonged.  He came from some queer blend of Eastern
+peoples.  His body and the cast of his features were Mongolian.
+But one got always, before him, a feeling of the hot East lying
+low down against the stagnant Suez.  One felt that he had risen
+slowly into our world of hard air and sun out of the vast
+sweltering ooze of it.
+
+He spoke English with a certain care in the selection of the
+words, but with ease and an absence of effort, as though
+languages were instinctive to him - as though he could speak any
+language.  And he impressed one with this same effortless
+facility in all the things he did.
+
+It is necessary to try to understand this, because it explains
+the conception everybody got of the creature, when they saw him
+in charge of Rodman.  I am using precisely the descriptive words;
+he was exclusively in charge of Rodman, as a jinn in an Arabian
+tale might have been in charge of a king's son.
+
+The creature was servile - with almost a groveling servility.
+But one felt that this servility resulted from something potent
+and secret.  One looked to see Rodman take Solomon's ring out of
+his waistcoat pocket.
+
+I suppose there is no longer any doubt about the fact that Rodman
+was one of those gigantic human intelligences who sometimes
+appear in the world, and by their immense conceptions dwarf all
+human knowledge - a sort of mental monster that we feel nature
+has no right to produce.  Lord Bayless Truxley said that Rodman
+was some generations in advance of the time; and Lord Bayless
+Truxley was, beyond question, the greatest authority on synthetic
+chemistry in the world.
+
+Rodman was rich and, everybody supposed, indolent; no one ever
+thought very much about him until he published his brochure on
+the scientific manufacture of precious stones.  Then instantly
+everybody with any pretension to a knowledge of synthetic
+chemistry turned toward him.
+
+The brochure startled the world.
+
+It proposed to adapt the luster and beauty of jewels to commercial
+uses.  We were being content with crude imitation colors in our
+commercial glass, when we could quite as easily have the actual
+structure and the actual luster of the jewel in it.  We were
+painfully hunting over the earth, and in its bowels, for a few
+crystals and prettily colored stones which we hoarded and
+treasured, when in a manufacturing laboratory we could easily
+produce them, more perfect than nature, and in unlimited
+quantity.
+
+Now, if you want to understand what I am printing here about
+Rodman, you must think about this thing as a scientific
+possibility and not as a fantastic notion.  Take, for example,
+Rodman's address before the Sorbonne, or his report to the
+International Congress of Science in Edinburgh, and you will
+begin to see what I mean.  The Marchese Giovanni, who was a
+delegate to that congress, and Pastreaux, said that the something
+in the way of an actual practical realization of what Rodman
+outlined was the formulae.  If Rodman could work out the
+formulae, jewel-stuff could be produced as cheaply as glass, and
+in any quantity - by the carload.  Imagine it; sheet ruby, sheet
+emerald, all the beauty and luster of jewels in the windows of
+the corner drugstore!
+
+And there is another thing that I want you to think about.  Think
+about the immense destruction of value - not to us, so greatly,
+for our stocks of precious stones are not large; but the thing
+meant, practically, wiping out all the assembled wealth of Asia
+except the actual earth and its structures.
+
+The destruction of value was incredible.
+
+Put the thing some other way and consider it.  Suppose we should
+suddenly discover that pure gold could be produced by treating
+common yellow clay with sulphuric acid, or that some genius
+should set up a machine on the border of the Sahara that received
+sand at one end and turned out sacked wheat at the other!  What,
+then, would our hoarded gold be worth, or the wheat-lands of
+Australia, Canada or our Northwest?
+
+The illustrations are fantastic.  But the thing Rodman was after
+was a practical fact.  He had it on the way.  Giovanni and Lord
+Bayless Truxley were convinced that the man would work out the
+formulae.  They tried, over their signatures, to prepare the world
+for it.
+
+The whole of Asia was appalled.  The rajahs of the native states
+in India prepared a memorial and sent it to the British
+Government.
+
+The thing came out after the mysterious, incredible tragedy.  I
+should not have written that final sentence.  I want you to
+think, just now, about the great hulk of a man that sat in his
+big chair beyond me at the window.
+
+It was like Rodman to turn up with an outlandish human creature
+attending him hand and foot.  How the thing came about reads like
+a lie; it reads like a lie; the wildest lie that anybody ever put
+forward to explain a big yellow Oriental following one about.
+
+But it was no lie.  You could not think up a lie to equal the
+actual things that happened to Rodman.  Take the way he died!....
+
+The thing began in India.  Rodman had gone there to consult with
+the Marchese Giovanni concerning some molecular theory that was
+involved in his formulas.  Giovanni was digging up a buried
+temple on the northern border of the Punjab.  One night, in the
+explorer's tent, near the excavations, this inscrutable creature
+walked in on Rodman.  No one knew how he got into the tent or
+where he came from.
+
+Giovanni told about it.  The tent-flap simply opened, and the big
+Oriental appeared.  He had something under his arm rolled up in a
+prayer-carpet.  He gave no attention to Giovanni, but he salaamed
+like a coolie to the little American.
+
+"Master," he said, "you were hard to find.  I have looked over
+the world for you."
+
+And he squatted down on the dirty floor by Rodman's camp stool.
+
+Now, that's precisely the truth.  I suppose any ordinary person
+would have started no end of fuss.  But not Rodman, and not, I
+think, Giovanni.  There's the attitude that we can't understand
+in a genius - did you ever know a man with an inventive mind who
+doubted a miracle?  A thing like that did not seem unreasonable
+to Rodman.
+
+The two men spent the remainder of the night looking at the
+present that the creature brought Rodman in his prayer-carpet.
+They wanted to know where the Oriental got it, and that's how his
+story came out.
+
+He was something - searcher, seems our nearest English word to it
+- in the great Shan Monastery on the southeastern plateau of the
+Gobi.  He was looking for Rodman because he had the light - here
+was another word that the two men could find no term in any
+modern language to translate; a little flame, was the literal
+meaning.
+
+The present was from the treasure-room of the monastery; the very
+carpet around it, Giovanni said, was worth twenty thousand lire.
+There was another thing that came out in the talk that Giovanni
+afterward recalled.  Rodman was to accept the present and the man
+who brought it to him.  The Oriental would protect him, in every
+way, in every direction, from things visible and invisible.  He
+made quite a speech about it.  But, there was one thing from
+which he could not protect him.
+
+The Oriental used a lot of his ancient words to explain, and he
+did not get it very clear.  He seemed to mean that the creative
+Forces of the spirit would not tolerate a division of worship
+with the creative forces of the body - the celibate notion in the
+monastic idea.
+
+Giovanni thought Rodman did not understand it; he thought he
+himself understood it better.  The monk was pledging Rodman to a
+high virtue, in the lapse of which something awful was sure to
+happen.
+
+Giovanni wrote a letter to the State Department when he learned
+what had happened to Rodman.  The State Department turned it over
+to the court at the trial.  I think it was one of the things that
+influenced the judge in his decision.  Still, at the time, there
+seemed no other reasonable decision to make.  The testimony must
+have appeared incredible; it must have appeared fantastic.  No
+man reading the record could have come to any other conclusion
+about it.  Yet it seemed impossible - at least, it seemed
+impossible for me - to consider this great vital bulk of a man as
+a monk of one of the oldest religious orders in the world.  Every
+common, academic conception of such a monk he distinctly
+negatived.  He impressed me, instead, as possessing the ultimate
+qualities of clever diplomacy - the subtle ambassador of some new
+Oriental power, shrewd, suave, accomplished.
+
+When one read the yellow-backed court-record, the sense of old,
+obscure, mysterious agencies moving in sinister menace,
+invisibly, around Rodman could not be escaped from.  You believed
+it.  Against your reason, against all modern experience of life,
+you believed it.
+
+And yet it could not be true!  One had to find that verdict or
+topple over all human knowledge - that is, all human knowledge as
+we understand it.  The judge, cutting short the criminal trial,
+took the only way out of the thing.
+
+There was one man in the world that everybody wished could have
+been present at the time.  That was Sir Henry Marquis.  Marquis
+was chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland
+Yard.  He had been in charge of the English secret service on the
+frontier of the Shan states, and at the time he was in Asia.
+
+As soon as Scotland Yard could release Sir Henry, it sent him.
+Rodman's genius was the common property of the world.  The
+American Government could not, even with the verdict of a trial
+court, let Rodman's death go by under the smoke-screen of such a
+weird, inscrutable mystery.
+
+I was to meet Sir Henry and come here with him.  But my train
+into New England was delayed, and when I arrived at the station,
+I found that Marquis had gone down to have a look at Rodman's
+country-house, where the thing had happened.
+
+It was on an isolated forest ridge of the Berkshires, no human
+soul within a dozen miles of it - a comfortable stone house in
+the English fashion.  There was a big drawing-room across one end
+of it, with an immense fireplace framed in black marble under a
+great white panel to the ceiling.  It had a wide black-marble
+hearth.  There is an excellent photograph of it in the record,
+showing the single andiron, that mysterious andiron upon which
+the whole tragedy seemed to turn as on a hinge.
+
+Rodman used this drawing-room for a workshop.  He kept it
+close-shuttered and locked.  Not even this big, yellow, servile
+creature who took exclusive care of him in the house was allowed
+to enter, except under Rodman's eye.  What he saw in the final
+scenes of the tragedy, he saw looking in through a crack under
+the door.  The earlier things he noticed when he put logs on the
+fire at dark.
+
+Time is hardly a measure for the activities of the mind.  These
+reflections winged by in a scarcely perceptible interval of it.
+They have taken me some time to write out here, but they crowded
+past while the big Oriental was speaking - in the pause between
+his words.
+
+"The print," he continued, "was the first confirmation of
+evidence, but it was not the first indicatory sign.  I doubt if
+the Master himself noticed the thing at the beginning.  The
+seductions of this disaster could not have come quickly; and
+besides that, Excellency, the agencies behind the material world
+get a footing in it only with continuous pressure.  Do not
+receive a wrong impression, Excellency; to the eye a thing will
+suddenly appear, but the invisible pressure will have been for
+some time behind that materialization."
+
+He paused.
+
+"The Master was sunk in his labor, and while that enveloped him,
+the first advances of the lure would have gone by unnoticed - and
+the tension of the pressure.  But the day was at hand when the
+Master was receptive.  He had got his work completed; the
+formula, penciled out, were on his table.  I knew by the
+relaxation.  Of all periods this is the one most dangerous to the
+human spirit."
+
+He sat silent for a moment, his big fingers moving on the arms of
+the chair.
+
+"I knew," he added.  Then he went on: "But it was the one thing
+against which I could not protect him.  The test was to be
+permitted."
+
+He made a vague gesture.
+
+"The Master was indicated - but the peril antecedent to his
+elevation remained . . . .  It was to be permitted, and at its
+leisure and in its choice of time."
+
+He turned sharply toward me, the folds of his face unsteady.
+
+"Excellency!" he cried.  "I would have saved the Master, I would
+have saved him with my soul's damnation, but it was not
+permitted.  On that first night in the Italian's tent I said all
+I could."
+
+His voice went into a higher note.
+
+"Twice, for the Master, I have been checked and reduced in merit.
+For that bias I was myself encircled.  I was in an agony of
+spirit when I knew that the thing was beginning to advance, but
+my very will to aid was at the time environed."
+
+His voice descended.
+
+He sat motionless, as though the whole bulk of him were
+devitalized, and maintained its outline only by the inclosing
+frame of the chair.
+
+"It began, Excellency, on an August night.  There is a chill in
+these mountains at sunset.  I had put wood into the fireplace,
+and lighted it, and was about the house.  The Master, as I have
+said, had worked out his formulae.  He was at leisure.  I could
+not see him, for the door was closed, but the odor of his cigar
+escaped from the room.  It was very silent.  I was placing the
+Master's bed-candle on the table in the hall, when I heard his
+voice. . . . You have read it, Excellency, as the scriveners
+wrote it down before the judge."
+
+He paused.
+
+"It was an exclamation of surprise, of astonishment.  Then I
+heard the Master get up softly and go over to the fireplace. . .
+Presently he returned.  He got a new cigar, Excellency, clipped
+it and lighted it.  I could hear the blade of the knife on the
+fiber of the tobacco, and of course, clearly the rasp of the
+match.  A moment later I knew that he was in the chair again.
+The odor of ignited tobacco returned.  It was some time before
+there was another sound in the room; then suddenly I heard the
+Master swear.  His voice was sharp and astonished.  This time,
+Excellency, he got up swiftly and crossed the room to the
+fireplace. . .  I could hear him distinctly.  There was the sound
+of one tapping on metal, thumping it, as with the fingers."
+
+He stopped again, for a brief moment, as in reflection.
+
+"It was then that the Master unlocked the door and asked for the
+liquor."  He indicated the court record in my pocket.  "I brought
+it, a goblet of brandy, with some carbonated water.  He drank it
+all without putting down the glass . . . .  His face was strange,
+Excellency . . . .  Then he looked at me.
+
+"`Put a log on the fire,' he said.
+
+"I went in and added wood to the fire and came out.
+
+"The Master remained in the doorway; he reentered when I came
+out, and closed the door behind him . . . .  There was a long
+silence after that; them I heard the voice, permitted to the
+devocation thin, metallic, offering the barter to the Master.  It
+began and ceased because the Master was on his feet and before
+the fireplace.  I heard him swear again, and presently return to
+his place by the table."
+
+The big Oriental lifted his face and looked out at the sweep of
+country before the window.
+
+"The thing went on, Excellency, the voice offering its lure, and
+presenting it in brief flashes of materialization, and the Master
+endeavoring to seize and detain the visitations, which ceased
+instantly at his approach to the hearth."
+
+The man paused.
+
+"I knew the Master contended in vain against the thing; if he
+would acquire possession of what it offered, he must destroy what
+the creative forces of the spirit had released to him."
+
+Again he paused.
+
+"Toward morning he went out of the house.  I could hear him
+walking on the gravel before the door.  He would walk the full
+length of the house and return.  The night was clear; there was a
+chill in it, and every sound was audible.
+
+"That was all, Excellency.  The Master returned a little later
+and ascended to his bedroom as usual."
+
+Then he added:
+
+"It was when I went in to put wood on the fire that I saw the
+footprint on the hearth."
+
+There was a force, compelling and vivid, in these meager details,
+the severe suppression of things, big and tragic.  No elaboration
+could have equaled, in effect, the virtue of this restraint.
+
+The man was going on, directly, with the story.
+
+"The following night, Excellency, the thing happened.  The Master
+had passed the day in the open.  He dined with a good appetite,
+like a man in health.  And there was a change in his demeanor.
+He had the aspect of men who are determined to have a thing out
+at any hazard.
+
+"After his dinner the Master went into the drawing-room and
+closed the door behind him.  He had not entered the room on this
+day.  It had stood locked and close-shuttered!"
+
+The big Oriental paused and made a gesture outward with his
+fingers, as of one dismissing an absurdity.
+
+"No living human being could have been concealed in that room.
+There is only the bare floor, the Master's table and the
+fireplace.  The great wood shutters were bolted in, as they had
+stood since the Master took the room for a workshop and removed
+the furniture.  The door was always locked with that special
+thief-proof lock that the American smiths had made for it.  No
+one could have entered."
+
+It was the report of the experts at the trial.  They showed by
+the casing of rust on the bolts that the shutters had not been
+moved; the walls, ceiling and floor were undisturbed; the throat
+of the chimney was coated evenly with old soot.  Only the door
+was possible as an entry, and this was always locked except when
+Rodman was himself in the room.  And at such times the big
+Oriental never left his post in the hall before it.  That seemed
+a condition of his mysterious overcare of Rodman.
+
+Everybody thought the trial court went to an excessive care.  It
+scrutinized in minute detail every avenue that could possibly
+lead to a solution of the mystery.  The whole country and every
+resident was inquisitioned.  The conclusion was inevitable.
+There was no human creature on that forest crest of the
+Berkshires but Rodman and his servant.
+
+But one can see why the trial judge kept at the thing; he was
+seeking an explanation consistent with the common experience of
+mankind.  And when he could not find it, he did the only thing he
+could do.  He was wrong, as we now know.  But he had a hold in
+the dark on the truth - not the whole truth by any means; he
+never had a glimmer of that.  He never had the faintest
+conception of the big, amazing truth.  But as I have said, he had
+his fingers on one essential fact.
+
+The man was going on with a slow, precise articulation as though
+he would thereby make a difficult matter clear.
+
+"The night had fallen swiftly.  It was incredibly silent.  There
+was no sound in the Master's room, and no light except the
+flicker of the logs smoldering in the fireplace.  The thin line
+of it appeared faintly along the sill of the door."
+
+He paused.
+
+"The fireplace, Excellency, is at the end of the great room,
+directly opposite this door into the hall, before which I always
+sat when the Master was within.  The fireplace is of black marble
+with an immense black-marble hearth.  And the gift which I had
+brought the Master stands on one side of the fire, on this marble
+hearth, as though it were a single andiron."
+
+The man turned back into the heart of his story.
+
+"I knew by the vague sense of pressure that the devocations of
+the thing were again on the way.  And I began to suffer in the
+spirit for the Master's safety.  Interference, both by act and by
+the will, were denied me.  But there is an anxiety of spirit,
+Excellency, that the uncertainty of an issue makes intolerable."
+
+The man paused.
+
+"The pressure continued - and the silence.  It was nearly
+midnight.  I could not distinguish any act or motion of the
+Master, and in fear I crept over to the door and looked in
+through the crevice along the threshold.
+
+"The Master sat by his table; he was straining forward, his hands
+gripping the arms of his chair.  His eyes and every tense
+instinct of the man were concentrated on the fireplace.  The red
+light of the embers was in the room.  I could see him clearly,
+and the table beyond him with the calculations; but the fireplace
+seemed strangely out of perspective - it extended above me.
+
+"My gift to the Master, not more than four handbreaths in length,
+including the base, stood now like an immense bronze on an
+extended marble slab beside a gigantic fireplace.  This effect of
+extension put the top of the fireplace and the enlarged andiron,
+above its pedestal, out of my line of vision.  Everything else in
+the chamber, holding its normal dimensions, was visible to me.
+
+"The Master's face was a little lifted.  He was looking at the
+elevated portions of the andiron which were invisible to me.  He
+did not move.  The steady light threw half of his face into
+shadow.  But in the other half every feature stood out sharply as
+in a delicate etching.  It had that refined sharpness and
+distinction which intense moments of stress stamp on the human
+face.  He did not move, and there was no sound.
+
+"I have said, Excellency, that my angle of vision along the
+crevice of the doorsill was sharply cut midway of this now
+enlarged fireplace.  From the direction and lift of the Master's
+face, he was watching something above this line and directly over
+the pedestal of the andiron.  I watched, also, flattening my face
+against the sill, for the thing to appear.
+
+"And it did appear.
+
+"A naked foot became slowly visible, as though some one were
+descending with extreme care from the elevation of the andiron to
+the great marble hearth, under this strange enlargement, now some
+distance below."
+
+The big Oriental paused, and looked down at me.
+
+"I knew then, Excellency, that the Master was lost!  The creative
+energies of the Spirit suffer no division of worship; those of
+the body must be wholly denied.  I had warned the Master.  And in
+travail, Excellency, I turned over with my face to the floor.
+
+"But there is always hope, hope over the certainties of
+experience, over the certainties of knowledge.  Perhaps the
+Master, even now, sustained in the spirit, would put away the
+devocation . . . .  No, Excellency, I was not misled.  I knew the
+Master was beyond hope!  But the will to hope moved me, and I
+turned back to the crevice at the doorsill."
+
+He paused.
+
+"There was now a delicate odor, everywhere, faintly, like the
+blossom of the little bitter apple here in your country.  The red
+embers in the fireplace gave out a steady light; and in the glow
+of it, on the marble hearth, stood the one who had descended from
+the elevation of the andiron."
+
+Again the man hesitated, as for an accurate method of expression.
+
+"In the flesh, Excellency, there was color that would not appear
+in the image.  The hair was yellow, and the eyes were blue; and
+against the black marble of the fireplace the body was
+conspicuously white.  But in every other aspect of her,
+Excellency, the woman was on the hearth in the flesh as she is in
+the clutch of the savage male figure in the image.
+
+"There is no dress or ornament, as you will recall, Excellency.
+Not even an ear-jewel or an anklet, as though the graver of the
+image felt that the inherent beauty of his figure could take
+nothing from these ostentations.  The woman's heavy yellow hair
+was wound around her head, as in the image.  She shivered a
+little, faintly, like a naked child in an unaccustomed draught of
+air, although she stood on the warm marble hearth and within the
+red glow of the fire.
+
+"The voice from the male figure of the image, which I had brought
+the Master, and which stood as the andiron, now so immensely
+enlarged, was beginning again to speak.  The thin metallic sounds
+seemed to splinter against the dense silence, as it went forward
+in the ritual prescribed.
+
+"But the Master had already decided; he stood now on the great
+marble hearth with his papers crushed together.  And as I looked
+on, through the crevice under the doorsill, he put out his free
+hand and with his finger touched the woman gently.  The flesh
+under his finger yielded, and stooping over, he put the formulas
+into the fire."
+
+Like one who has come to the end of his story, the huge Oriental
+stopped.  He remained for some moments silent.  Then he continued
+in an even, monotonous voice
+
+"I got up from the floor then, and purified myself with water.
+And after that I went into an upper chamber, opened the window to
+the east, and sat down to write my report to the brotherhood.
+For the thing which I had been sent to do was finished."
+
+He put his hand somewhere into the loose folds of his Oriental
+garment and brought out a roll of thin vellum like onion-skin,
+painted in Chinese characters.  It was of immense length, but on
+account of the thinness of the vellum, the roll wound on a tiny
+cylinder of wood was not above two inches in thickness.
+
+"Excellency," he said, "I have carefully concealed this report
+through the misfortunes that have attended me.  It is not certain
+that I shall be able to deliver it.  Will you give it for me to
+the jewel merchant Vanderdick, in Amsterdam?  He will send it to
+Mahadal in Bombay, and it will go north with the caravans."
+
+His voice changed into a note of solicitation.
+
+"You will not fail me, Excellency - already for my bias to the
+Master I am reduced in merit."
+
+I put the scroll into my pocket and went out, for a motorcar had
+come into the park, and I knew that Marquis had arrived.
+
+I met Sir Henry and the superintendent in the long corridor; they
+had been looking in at my interview through the elevated grating.
+
+"Marquis," I cried, "the judge was right to cut short the
+criminal trial and issue a lunacy warrant.  This creature is the
+maddest lunatic in this whole asylum.  The human mind is capable
+of any absurdity."
+
+Sir Henry looked at me with a queer ironical smile.
+
+"The judge was wrong," he said.  "The creature, as you call him,
+is as sane as any of us."
+
+"Then you believe this amazing story?" I said.
+
+"I believe Rodman was found at daylight dead on the hearth, with
+practically every bone in his body crushed," he replied.
+
+"Certainly," I said.  "We all know that is true.  But why was he
+killed?'
+
+Again Sir Henry regarded me with his ironical smile.
+
+"Perhaps," he drawled, "there is some explanation in the report
+in your pocket, to the Monastic Head.  It's only a theory, you
+know."
+
+He smiled, showing his white, even teeth.
+
+We went into the superintendent's room, and sat down by a
+smoldering fire of coals in the gate.  I handed Marquis the roll
+of vellum.  It was in one of the Shan dialects.  He read it
+aloud.  With the addition of certain formal expressions, it
+contained precisely the Oriental's testimony before the court,
+and no more.
+
+"Ah!" he said in his curiously inflected Oxford voice.
+
+And he held the scroll out to the heat of the fire.  The vellum
+baked slowly, and as it baked, the black Chinese characters faded
+out and faint blue ones began to appear.
+
+Marquis read the secret message in his emotionless drawl:
+
+"`The American is destroyed, and his accursed work is destroyed
+with him.  Send the news to Bangkok and west to Burma.  The
+treasures of India are saved."'
+
+I cried out in astonishment.
+
+"An assassin!  The creature was an assassin!  He killed Rodman
+simply by crushing him in his arms!"
+
+Sir Henry's drawl lengthened.
+
+"It's Lal Gupta," he said, "the cleverest Oriental in the whole of
+Asia.  The jewel-traders sent him to watch Rodman, and to kill
+him if he was ever able to get his formulae worked out.  They
+must have paid him an incredible sum."
+
+"And that is why the creature attached himself to Rodman!" I
+said.
+
+"Surely," replied Sir Henry.  "He brought that bronze Romulus
+carrying off the Sabine woman and staged the supernatural to work
+out his plan and to save his life.  I knew the bronze as soon as
+I got my eye on it - old Franz Josef gave it as a present to
+Mahadal in Bombay for matching up some rubies."
+
+I swore bitterly.
+
+"And we took him for a lunatic!"
+
+"Ah, yes!" replied Sir Henry.  "What was it you said as I came
+in?  `The human mind is capable of any absurdity!'"
+
+
+
+
+II.  The Reward
+
+
+I was before one of those difficult positions unavoidable to a
+visitor in a foreign country.
+
+I had to meet the obligations of professional courtesy.  Captain
+Walker had asked me to go over the manuscript of his memoirs; and
+now he had called at the house in which I was a guest, for my
+opinion.  We had long been friends; associated in innumerable
+cases, and I wished to suggest the difficulty rather than to
+express it.  It was the twilight of an early Washington winter.
+The lights in the great library, softened with delicate shades,
+had been turned on.  Outside, Sheridan Circle was almost a thing
+of beauty in its vague outlines; even the squat, ridiculous
+bronze horse had a certain dignity in the blue shadow.
+
+If one had been speculating on the man, from his physical aspect
+one would have taken Walker for an engineer of some sort, rather
+than the head of the United States Secret Service.  His lean face
+and his angular manner gaffe that impression.  Even now,
+motionless in the big chair beyond the table, he seemed - how
+shall I say it? - mechanical.
+
+And that was the very defect in his memoir.  He had cut the great
+cases into a dry recital.  There was no longer in them any
+pressure of a human impulse.  The glow of inspired detail had
+been dissected out.  Everything startling and wonderful had been
+devitalized.
+
+The memoir was a report.
+
+The bulky typewritten manuscript lay on the table beside the
+electric lamp, and I stood about uncertain how to tell him.
+
+"Walker," I said, "did nothing wonderful ever happen to you in
+the adventure of these cases?"
+
+"What precisely do you mean, Sir Henry?" he replied.
+
+The practical nature of the man tempted me to extravagance.
+
+"Well," I said, "for example, were you never kissed in a lonely
+street by a mysterious woman and the flash of your dark lantern
+reveal a face of startling beauty?"
+
+"No," he said, as though he were answering a sensible question,
+"that never happened to me."
+
+"Then," I continued, "perhaps you have found a prince of the
+church, pale as alabaster, sitting in his red robe, who put
+together the indicatory evidence of the crime that baffled you
+with such uncanny acumen that you stood aghast at his
+perspicacity?"
+
+"No," he said; and then his face lighted.  "But I'll tell you
+what I did find.  I found a drunken hobo at Atlantic City who was
+the best detective I ever saw."
+
+I sat down and tapped the manuscript with my fingers.
+
+"It's not here," I said.  "Why did you leave it out?"
+
+He took a big gold watch out of his pocket and turned it about in
+his hand.  The case was covered with an inscription.
+
+"Well, Sir Henry," he said, "the boys in the department think a
+good deal of me.  I shouldn't like them to know how a dirty tramp
+faked me at Atlantic City.  I don't mind telling you, but I
+couldn't print it in a memoir."
+
+He went directly ahead with the story and I was careful not to
+interrupt him:
+
+"I was sitting in a rolling chair out there on the Boardwalk
+before the Traymore.  I was nearly all in, and I had taken a run
+to Atlantic for a day or two of the sea air.  The fact is the
+whole department was down and out.  You may remember what we were
+up against; it finally got into the newspapers.
+
+"The government plates of the Third Liberty Bond issue had
+disappeared.  We knew how they had gotten out, and we thought we
+knew the man at the head of the thing.  It was a Mulehaus job, as
+we figured it.
+
+"It was too big a thing for a little crook.  With the government
+plates they could print Liberty Bonds just as the Treasury would.
+And they could sow the world with them."
+
+He paused and moved his gold-rimmed spectacles a little closer in
+on his nose.
+
+"You see these war bonds are scattered all over the country.
+They are held by everybody.  It's not what it used to be, a
+banker's business that we could round up.  Nobody could round up
+the holders of these bonds.
+
+"A big crook like Mulehaus could slip a hundred million of them
+into the country and never raise a ripple."
+
+He paused and drew his fingers across his bony protruding chin.
+
+"I'll say this for Mulehaus: He's the hardest man to identify in
+the whole kingdom of crooks.  Scotland Yard, the Service de la
+Surete, everybody, says that.  I don't mean dime-novel disguises
+- false whiskers and a limp.  I mean the ability to be the
+character he pretends - the thing that used to make Joe
+Jefferson, Rip Van Winkle - and not an actor made up to look like
+him.  That's the reason nobody could keep track of Mulehaus,
+especially in South American cities.  He was a French banker in
+the Egypt business and a Swiss banker in the Argentine."
+
+He turned back from the digression:
+
+"And it was a clean job.  They had got away with the plates.  We
+didn't have a clew.  We thought, naturally, that they'd make for
+Mexico or some South American country to start their printing
+press.  And we had the ports and border netted up.  Nothing could
+have gone out across the border or, through any port.  All the
+customs officers were, working with us, and every agent of the
+Department of Justice."
+
+He looked at me steadily across the table.
+
+"You see the Government had to get those plates back before the
+crook started to print, or else take up every bond of that issue
+over the whole country.  It was a hell of a thing!
+
+"Of course we had gone right after the record of all the big
+crooks to see whose line this sort of job was.  And the thing
+narrowed down to Mulehaus or old Vronsky.  We soon found out it
+wasn't Vronsky.  He was in Joliet.  It was Mulehaus.  But we
+couldn't find him.
+
+"We didn't even know that Mulehaus was in America.  He's a big
+crook with a genius for selecting men.  He might be directing the
+job from Rio or a Mexican port.  But we were sure it was a
+Mulehaus' job.  He sold the French securities in Egypt in '90;
+and he's the man who put the bogus Argentine bonds on our market
+- you'll find the case in the 115th Federal Reporter.
+
+"Well," he went on, "I was sitting out there in the rolling
+chair, looking at the sun on the sea and thinking about the
+thing, when I noticed this hobo that I've been talking about.  He
+was my chair attendant, but I hadn't looked at him before.  He
+had moved round from behind me and was now leaning against the
+galvanized pipe railing.
+
+"He was a big human creature, a little stooped, unshaved and
+dirty; his mouth was slack and loose, and he had a big mobile
+nose that seemed to move about like a piece of soft rubber.  He
+had hardly any clothing; a cap that must have been fished out of
+an ash barrel, no shirt whatever, merely an old ragged coat
+buttoned round him, a pair of canvas breeches and carpet slippers
+tied on to his feet with burlap, and wrapped round his ankles to
+conceal the fact that he wore no socks.
+
+"As I looked at him he darted out, picked up the stump of a
+cigarette that some one had thrown down, and came back to the
+railing to smoke it, his loose mouth and his big soft nose moving
+like kneaded putty.
+
+"Altogether this tramp was the worst human derelict I ever saw.
+And it occurred to me that this was the one place in the whole of
+America where any sort of a creature could get a kind of
+employment and no questions asked.
+
+"Anything that could move and push a chair could get fifteen
+cents an hour from McDuyal.  Wise man, poor man, beggar man,
+thief, it was all one to McDuyal.  And the creatures could sleep
+in the shed behind the rolling chairs.
+
+"I suppose an impulse to offer the man a garment of some sort
+moved me to address him.
+
+"`You're nearly naked,' I said.
+
+"He crossed one leg over the other with the toe of the carpet
+slipper touching the walk, in the manner of a burlesque actor,
+took the cigarette out of his mouth with a little flourish, and
+replied to me:
+
+"'Sure, Governor, I ain't dolled up like John Drew.'
+
+"There was a sort of cocky unconcern about the creature that gave
+his miserable state a kind of beggarly distinction.  He was in
+among the very dregs of life, and he was not depressed about it.
+
+"'But if I had a sawbuck," he continued, "I could bulge your eye
+. . . .  Couldn't point the way to one?'
+
+"He arrested my answer with the little flourish of his fingers
+holding the stump of the cigarette.
+
+"'Not work, Governor,' and he made a little duck of his head,
+'and not murder .  .  .  .  Go as far as you please between 'em.'
+
+"The fantastic manner of the derelict was infectious.
+
+"`O. K.' I said.  `Go out and find me a man who is a deserter
+from the German Army, was a tanner in Bale and began life as a
+sailor, and I'll double your money - I'll give you a
+twenty-dollar bill.'
+
+"The creature whistled softly in two short staccato notes.
+
+"`Some little order,' he said.  And taking a toothpick out of his
+pocket he stuck it into the stump of the cigarette which had
+become too short to hold between his fingers.
+
+"At this moment a boy from the post office came to me with the
+daily report from Washington, and I got out of the chair, tipped
+the creature, and went into the hotel, stopping to pay McDuyal as
+I passed.
+
+"There was nothing new from the department except that our
+organization over the country was in close touch.  We had offered
+five thousand dollars reward for the recovery of the plates, and
+the Post Office Department was now posting the notice all over
+America in every office.  The Secretary thought we had better let
+the public in on it and not keep it an underground offer to the
+service.
+
+"I had forgotten the hobo, when about five o'clock he passed me a
+little below the Steel Pier.  He was in a big stride and he had
+something clutched in his hand.
+
+"He called to me as he hurried along: `I got him, Governor. . . .
+See you later!'
+
+"`See me now,' I said.  `What's the hurry?'
+
+"He flashed his hand open, holding a silver dollar with his thumb
+against the palm.
+
+"`Can't stop now, I'm going to get drunk.  See you later.'
+
+"I smiled at this disingenuous creature.  He was saving me for
+the dry hour.  He could point out Mulehaus in any passing chair,
+and I would give some coin to be rid of his pretension."
+
+Walker paused.  Then he went on:
+
+"I was right.  The hobo was waiting for me when I came out of the
+hotel the following morning.
+
+"`Howdy, Governor,' he said; `I located your man.'
+
+"I was interested to see how he would frame up his case.
+
+"`How did you find him?' I said.
+
+"He grinned, moving his lip and his loose nose.
+
+"`Some luck, Governor, and some sleuthin'.  It was like this: I
+thought you was stringin' me.  But I said to myself I'll keep out
+an eye; maybe it's on the level - any damn thing can happen.'
+
+"He put up his hand as though to hook his thumb into the armhole
+of his vest, remembered that he had only a coat buttoned round
+him and dropped it.
+
+"`And believe me or not, Governor, it's the God's truth.  About
+four o'clock up toward the Inlet I passed a big, well-dressed,
+banker-looking gent walking stiff from the hip and throwing out
+his leg.  "Come eleven!" I said to myself.  "It's the goosestep!"
+I had an empty roller, and I took a turn over to him.'
+
+"`"Chair, Admiral?" I said.
+
+"`He looked at me sort of queer.
+
+"`"What makes you think I'm an admiral, my man?" he answers.
+
+"Well," I says, lounging over on one foot reflective like,
+"nobody could be a-viewin' the sea with that lovin', ownership
+look unless he'd bossed her a bit . . . .  If I'm right, Admiral,
+you takes the chair."
+
+"`He laughed, but he got in.  "I'm not an admiral," he said, "but
+it is true that I've followed the sea.'"
+
+"The hobo paused, and put up his first and second fingers spread
+like a V.
+
+"`Two points, Governor - the gent had been a sailor and a
+soldier; now how about the tanner business?
+
+"He scratched his head, moving his ridiculous cap.
+
+"`That sort of puzzled me, and I pussyfooted along toward the
+Inlet thinkin' about it.  If a man was a tanner, and especially a
+foreign, hand-workin' tanner, what would his markin's be?
+
+"`I tried to remember everybody that I'd ever seen handlin' a
+hide, and all at once I recollected that the first thing a dago
+shoemaker done when he picked up a piece of leather was to smooth
+it out with his thumbs.  An' I said to myself, now that'll be
+what a tanner does, only he does it more. . . . he's always doin'
+it.  Then I asks myself what would be the markin's?'
+
+"The hobo paused, his mouth open, his head twisted to one side.
+Then he jerked up as under a released spring.
+
+"`And right away, Governor, I got the answer to it flat thumbs!'
+
+"The hobo stepped back with an air of victory and flashed his
+hand up.
+
+"`And he had 'em!  I asked him what time it was so I could keep
+the hour straight for McDuyal, I told him, but the real reason
+was so I could see his hands.'"
+
+Walker crossed one leg over the other.
+
+"It was clever," he said, "and I hesitated to shatter it.  But
+the question had to come.
+
+"`Where is your man?' I said.
+
+"The hobo executed a little deprecatory step, with his fingers
+picking at his coat pockets.
+
+"`That's the trouble, Governor,' he answered; `I intended to
+sleuth him for you, but he gave me a dollar and I got drunk . . .
+you saw me.  That man had got out at McDuyal's place not five
+minutes before.  I was flashin' to the booze can when you tried
+to stop me . . . .  Nothin' doin' when I get the price.'"
+
+Walker paused.
+
+"It was a good fairy story and worth something.  I offered him
+half a dollar.  Then I got a surprise.
+
+"The creature looked eagerly at the coin in my fingers, and he
+moved toward it.  He was crazy for the liquor it would buy.  But
+he set his teeth and pulled up.
+
+"`No, Governor,' he said, `I'm in it for the sawbuck.  Where'll I
+find you about noon?'
+
+"I promised to be on the Boardwalk before Heinz's Pier at two
+o'clock, and he turned to shuffle away.  I called an inquiry
+after him . . .  You see there were two things in his story: How
+did he get a dollar tip, and how did he happen to make his
+imaginary man banker-looking?  Mulehaus had been banker-looking
+in both the Egypt and the Argentine affairs.  I left the latter
+point suspended, as we say.  But I asked about the dollar.  He
+came back at once.
+
+"`I forgot about that, Governor,' he said.  `It was like this:
+The admiral kept looking out at the sea where an old freighter
+was going South.  You know, the fruit line from New York.  One of
+them goes by every day or two.  And I kept pushing him along.
+Finally we got up to the Inlet, and I was about to turn when he
+stopped me.  You know the neck of ground out beyond where the
+street cars loop; there's an old board fence by the road, then
+sand to the sea, and about halfway between the fence and the
+water there's a shed with some junk in it.  You've seen it.  They
+made the old America out there and the shed was a tool house.
+
+"`When I stopped the admiral says: "Cut across to the hole in
+that old board fence and see if an automobile has been there, and
+I'll give you a dollar."  An' I done it, an' I got it.'
+
+"Then he shuffled off.
+
+"`Be on the spot, Governor, an' I'll lead him to you.'"
+
+Walker leaned over, rested his elbows on the arms of his chair,
+and linked his fingers together.
+
+"That gave me a new flash on the creature.  He was a slicker
+article than I imagined.  I was not to get off with a tip.  He
+was taking some pains to touch me for a greenback.  I thought I
+saw his line.  It would not account for his hitting the
+description of Mulehaus in the make-up of his straw-man, but it
+would furnish the data for the dollar story.  I had drawn the
+latter a little before he was ready.  It belonged in what he
+planned to give me at two o'clock.  But I thought I saw what the
+creature was about.  And I was right."
+
+Walker put out his hand and moved the pages of his memoir on the
+table.  Then he went on:
+
+"I was smoking a cigar on a bench at the entrance to Heinz's Pier
+when the hobo shuffled up.  He came down one of the streets from
+Pacific Avenue, and the direction confirmed me in my theory.  It
+also confirmed me in the opinion that I was all kinds of a fool
+to let this dirty hobo get a further chance at me.
+
+"I was not in a very good humor.  Everything I had set going
+after Mulehaus was marking time.  The only report was progress in
+linking things up; not only along the Canadian and Mexican
+borders and the customhouses, but we had also done a further
+unusual thing, we had an agent on every ship going out of America
+to follow through to the foreign port and look out for anything
+picked up on the way.
+
+"It was a plan I had set at immediately the robbery was
+discovered.  It would cut out the trick of reshipping at sea from
+some fishing craft or small boat.  The reports were encouraging
+enough in that respect.  We had the whole country as tight as a
+drum.  But it was slender comfort when the Treasury was raising
+the devil for the plates and we hadn't a clew to them."
+
+Walker stopped a moment.  Then he went on:
+
+"I felt like kicking the hobo when he got to me, he was so
+obviously the extreme of all worthless creatures, with that
+apologetic, confidential manner which seems to be an abominable
+attendant on human degeneracy.  One may put up with it for a
+little while, but it presently becomes intolerable.
+
+"`Governor,' he began, when he'd shuffled up, `you won't git mad
+if I say a little somethin'?
+
+"`Go on and say it,' I said.
+
+"The expression on his dirty unshaved face became, if possible,
+more foolish.
+
+"`Well, then, Governor, askin' your pardon, you ain't Mr. Henry
+P. Johnson, from Erie; you're the Chief of the United States
+Secret Service, from Washington.'"
+
+Walker moved in his chair.
+
+"That made me ugly," he went on, "the assurance of the creature
+and my unspeakable carelessness in permitting the official
+letters brought to me on the day before by the post-office
+messenger to be seen.  In my relaxation I had forgotten the eye
+of the chair attendant.  I took the cigar out of my teeth and
+looked at him.
+
+"`And I'll say a little something myself!'  I could hardly keep
+my foot clear of him.  `When you got sober this morning and
+remembered who I was, you took a turn up round the post office to
+make sure of it, and while you were in there you saw the notice
+of the reward for the stolen bond plates.  That gave you the
+notion with which you pieced out your fairy story about how you
+got the dollar tip.  Having discovered my identity through a
+piece of damned carelessness on my part, and having seen the
+postal notice of the reward, you undertook to enlarge your little
+game.  That's the reason you wouldn't take fifty cents.  It was
+your notion in the beginning to make a touch for a tip.  And it
+would have worked.  But now you can't get a damned cent out of
+me.'  Then I threw a little brush into him: `I'd have stood a
+touch for your finding the fake tanner, because there isn't any
+such person.'
+
+"I intended to put the hobo out of business," Walker went on,
+"but the effect of my words on him were even more startling than
+I anticipated.  His jaw dropped and he looked at me in
+astonishment.
+
+"`No such person!' he repeated.  `Why, Governor, before God, I
+found a man like that, an' he was a banker - one of the big ones,
+sure as there's a hell!'"
+
+Walker put out his hands in a puzzled gesture.
+
+"There it was again, the description of Mulehaus!  And it puzzled
+me.  Every motion of this hobo's mind in every direction about
+this affair was perfectly clear to me.  I saw his intention in
+every turn of it and just where he got the material for the
+details of his story.  But this absolutely distinguishing
+description of Mulehaus was beyond me.  Everybody, of course,
+knew that we were looking for the lost plates, for there was the
+reward offered by the Treasury; but no human soul outside of the
+trusted agents of the department knew that we were looking for
+Mulehaus."
+
+Walker did not move, but he stopped in his recital for a moment.
+
+"The tramp shuffled up a step closer to the bench where I sat.
+The anxiety in his big slack face was sincere beyond question.
+
+"`I can't find the banker man, Governor; he's skipped the coop.
+But I believe I can find what he's hid.'
+
+"`Well,' I said, `go and find it.'
+
+"The hobo jerked out his limp hands in a sort of hopeless
+gesture.
+
+"`Now, Governor,' he whimpered, `what good would it do me to find
+them plates?'
+
+"`You'd get five thousand dollars,' I said.
+
+"`I'd git kicked into the discard by the first cop that got to
+me,' he answered, `that's what I'd git.'
+
+"The creature's dirty, unshaved jowls began to shake, and his
+voice became wholly a whimper.
+
+"`I've got a line on this thing, Governor, sure as there's a
+hell.  That banker man was viewin' the layout.  I've thought it
+all over, an' this is the way it would be.  They're afraid of the
+border an' they're afraid of the customhouses, so they runs the
+loot down here in an automobile, hides it up about the Inlet, and
+plans to go out with it to one of them fruit steamers passing on
+the way to Tampico.  They'd have them plates bundled up in a
+sailor's chest most like.
+
+"`Now, Governor, you'd say why ain't they already done it?  An'
+I'd answer, the main guy - this banker man - didn't know the
+automobile had got here until he sent me to look, and there ain't
+been no ship along since then . . . .  I've been special careful
+to find that out.'  And then the creature began to whine.  `Have
+a heart, Governor, come along with me.  Gimme a show!'
+
+"It was not the creature's plea that moved me, nor his pretended
+deductions; I'm a bit old to be soft.  It was the `banker man'
+sticking like a bur in the hobo's talk.  I wanted to keep him in
+sight until I understood where he got it.  No doubt that seems a
+slight reason for going out to the Inlet with the creature; but
+you must remember that slight things are often big signboards in
+our business."
+
+He continued, his voice precise and even
+
+"We went directly from the end of the Boardwalk to the old shed;
+it was open, an unfastened door on a pair of leather hinges.  The
+shed is small, about twenty feet by eleven, with a hard dirt
+floor packed down by the workmen who had used it; a combination
+of clay and sand like the Jersey roads put in to make a floor.
+All round it, from the sea to the board fence, was soft sand.
+There were some pieces of old junk lying about in the shed; but
+nothing of value or it would have been nailed up.
+
+"The hobo led right off with his deductions.  There, was the
+track of a man, clearly outlined in the soft sand, leading from
+the board fence to the shed and returning, and no other track
+anywhere about.
+
+"`Now, Governor,' he began, when he had taken a look at the
+tracks, `the man that made them tracks carried something into
+this shed, and he left it here, and it was something heavy.'
+
+"I was fairly certain that the hobo had salted the place for me,
+made the tracks himself; but I played out a line to him.
+
+"`How do you know that?' I said.
+
+"`Well, Governor,' he answered, `take a look at them two lines of
+tracks.  In the one comin' to the shed the man was walkin' with
+his feet apart and in the one goin' back he was walkin' with his
+feet in front of one another; that's because he was carryin'
+somethin' heavy when he come an' nothin' when he left.'
+
+"It was an observation on footprints," he went on, "that had
+never occurred to me.  The hobo saw my awakened interest, and he
+added:
+
+"`Did you never notice a man carryin' a heavy load?  He kind of
+totters, walkin' with his feet apart to keep his balance.  That
+makes his foot tracks side by side like, instead of one before
+the other as he makes them when he's goin' light."'
+
+Walker interrupted his narrative with a comment:
+
+"It's the truth.  I've verified it a thousand times since that
+hobo put me onto it.  A line running through the center of the
+heel prints of a man carrying a heavy burden will be a zigzag,
+while one through the heel prints of the same man without the
+burden will be almost straight.
+
+"The tramp went right on with his deductions:
+
+"`If it come in and didn't go out, it's here.'
+
+"And he began to go over the inside of the shed.  He searched it
+like a man searching a box for a jewel.  He moved the pieces of
+old castings and he literally fingered the shed from end to end.
+He would have found a bird's egg.
+
+"Finally he stopped and stood with his hand spread out over his
+mouth.  And I selected this critical moment to touch the powder
+off under his game.
+
+"`Suppose,' I said, `that this man with the heavy load wished to
+mislead us; suppose that instead of bringing something here he
+took one of these old castings away?'
+
+"The hobo looked at me without changing his position.
+
+"`How could he, Governor; he was pointin' this way with the
+load?'
+
+"`By walking backward,' I said.  For it occurred to me that
+perhaps the creature had manufactured this evidence for the
+occasion, and I wished to test the theory."
+
+Walker went on in his slow, even voice:
+
+"The test produced more action than I expected.
+
+"The hobo dived out through the door.  I followed to see him
+disappear.  But it was not in flight; he was squatting down over
+the footprints.  And a moment later he rocked back on his
+haunches with a little exultant yelp.
+
+"`Dope's wrong, Governor,' he said; `he was sure comin' this
+way.' Then he explained: `If a man's walkin' forward in sand or
+mud or snow the toe of his shoe flirts out a little of it, an' if
+he's walkin' backward his heel flirts it out.'
+
+"At this point I began to have some respect for the creature's
+ability.  He got up and came back into the shed.  And there he
+stood, in his old position, with his fingers over his mouth,
+looking round at the empty shed, in which, as I have said, one
+could not have concealed a bird's egg.
+
+"I watched him without offering any suggestion, for my interest
+in the thing had awakened and I was curious to see what he would
+do.  He stood perfectly motionless for about a minute; and then
+suddenly he snapped his fingers and the light came into his face.
+
+"`I got it, Governor!'  Then he came over to where I stood.
+`Gimme a quarter to git a bucket.'
+
+"I gave him the coin, for I was now profoundly puzzled, and he
+went out.  He was gone perhaps twenty minutes, and when he came
+in he had a bucket of water.  But he had evidently been thinking
+on the way, for he set the bucket down carefully, wiped his hands
+on his canvas breeches, and began to speak, with a little
+apologetic whimper in his voice.
+
+"`Now look here, Governor,' he said, `I'm a-goin' to talk turkey;
+do I git the five thousand if I find this stuff ?'
+
+"`Surely,' I answered him.
+
+"`An' there'll be no monkeyin', Governor; you'll take me down to
+a bank yourself an' put the money in my hand?'
+
+"`I promise you that,' I assured him.
+
+"But he was not entirely quiet in his mind about it.  He shifted
+uneasily from one foot to the other, and his soft rubber nose
+worked.
+
+"`Now, Governor,' he said, `I'm leery about jokers - I gotta be.
+I don't want any string to this money.  If I git it I want to go
+and blow it in.  I don't want you to hand me a roll an' then
+start any reformin' stunt - a-holdin' of it in trust an' a
+probation officer a-pussyfootin' me, or any funny business.  I
+want the wad an' a clear road to the bright lights, with no word
+passed along to pinch me.  Do I git it?'
+
+"`It's a trade!' I said.
+
+"`O. K.,' he answered, and he took up the bucket.  He began at
+the door and poured the water carefully on the hard tramped
+earth.  When the bucket was empty he brought another and another.
+Finally about midway of the floor space he stopped.
+
+"`Here it is!' he said.
+
+"I was following beside him, but I saw nothing to justify his
+words.
+
+"`Why do you think the plates are buried here?' I said.
+
+"`Look at the air bubbles comin' up, Governor,' he answered."
+
+Walker stopped, then he added:
+
+"It's a thing which I did not know until that moment, but it's
+the truth.  If hard-packed earth is dug up and repacked air gets
+into it, and if one pours water on the place air bubbles will
+come up."
+
+He did not go on, and I flung at him the big query in his story.
+
+"And you found the plates there?"
+
+"Yes, Sir Henry," he replied, "in the false bottom of an old
+steamer trunk."
+
+"And the hobo got the money?"
+
+"Certainly," he answered.  "I put it into his hand, and let him
+go with it, as I promised."
+
+Again he was silent, and I turned toward him in astonishment.
+
+"Then," I said, "why did you begin this story by saying the hobo
+faked you?  I don't see the fake; he found the plates and he was
+entitled to the reward."
+
+Walker put his hand into his pocket, took out a leather case,
+selected a paper from among its contents and handed it to me.
+"I didn't see the fake either," he said, "until I got this
+letter."
+
+I unfolded the letter carefully.  It was neatly written in a hand
+like copper plate and dated Buenos Aires.
+
+DEAR COLONEL WALKER: When I discovered that you were planting an
+agent on every ship I had to abandon the plates and try for the
+reward.  Thank you for the five thousand; it covered expenses.
+
+                                Very sincerely yours,
+
+                                           D. Mulehaus.
+
+
+
+
+III.  The Lost Lady
+
+
+It was a remark of old Major Carrington that incited this
+adventure.
+
+"It is some distance through the wood - is she quite safe?"
+
+It was a mere reflection as he went out.  It was very late.  I do
+not know how the dinner, or rather the after-hours of it, had
+lengthened.  It must have been the incomparable charm of the
+woman.  She had come, this night, luminously, it seemed to us,
+through the haze that had been on her - the smoke haze of a
+strange, blighting fortune.  The three of us had been carried
+along in it with no sense of time; my sister, the ancient Major
+Carrington and I.
+
+He turned back in the road, his decayed voice whipped by the
+stimulus of her into a higher note.
+
+"Suppose the village coachman should think her as lovely as we do
+- what!"
+
+He laughed and turned heavily up the road a hundred yards or so
+to his cottage set in the pine wood.  I stood in the road
+watching the wheels of the absurd village vehicle, the yellow
+cut-under, disappear.  The old Major called back to me; his voice
+seemed detached, eerie with the thin laugh in it.
+
+"I thought him a particularly villainous-looking creature!"
+
+It was an absurd remark.  The man was one of the natives of the
+island, and besides, the innkeeper was a person of sound sense;
+he would know precisely about his driver.
+
+I should not have gone on this adventure but for a further
+incident.
+
+When I entered the house my sister was going up the stair, the
+butler was beyond in the drawing-room, and there was no other
+servant visible.  She was on the first step and the elevation
+gave precisely the height that my sister ought to have received
+in the accident of birth.  She would have been wonderful with
+those four inches added - lacking beauty, she had every other
+grace!
+
+She spoke to me as I approached.
+
+"Winthrop," she said, "what was in the package that Madame Barras
+carried away with her tonight?"
+
+The query very greatly surprised me.  I thought Madame Barras had
+carried this package away with her several evenings before when I
+had put her English bank-notes in my box at the local bank.  My
+sister added the explanation which I should have been embarrassed
+to seek, at the moment.
+
+"She asked me to put it somewhere, on Tuesday afternoon . . . .
+It was forgotten, I suppose . . . . I laid it in a drawer of the
+library table . . . .  What did it contain?"
+
+I managed an evasive reply, for the discovery opened
+possibilities that disturbed me.
+
+"Some certificates, I believe," I said.
+
+My sister made a little pretended gesture of dismay.
+
+"I should have been more careful; such things are of value."
+
+Of value indeed!  The certificates in Madame Barras' package,
+that had lain about on the library table, were gold certificates
+of the United States Treasury - ninety odd of them, each of a
+value of one thousand dollars!  My sister went:
+
+"How oddly life has tossed her about . . . .  She must have been
+a mere infant at Miss Page's.  The attachment of incoming tots to
+the older girls was a custom . . . .  I do not recall her . . . .
+There was always a string of mites with shiny pigtails and
+big-eyed wistful faces.  The older girls never thought very much
+about them.  One has a swarm-memory, but individuals escape one.
+The older girl, in these schools, fancied herself immensely.  The
+little satellite that attached itself, with its adoration, had no
+identity.  It had a nickname, I think, or a number . . . . I have
+forgotten.  We minimized these midges out of everything that
+could distinguish them . . . .  Fancy one of these turning up in
+Madame Barras and coming to me on the memory of it."
+
+"It was extremely lucky for her," I said.  "Imagine arriving from
+the interior of Brazil on the invitation of Mrs. Jordan to find
+that lady dead and buried; with no friend, until, by chance, one
+happened on your name in the social register, and ventured on a
+school attachment of which there might remain, perhaps a memory
+only on the infant's side."
+
+My sister went on up the stair.
+
+"I am glad we happened to be here, and, especially, Winthrop, if
+you have been able to assist her . . . .  She is charming."
+
+Charming was the word descriptive of my sister, for it is a thing
+of manner from a nature elevated and noble, but it was not the
+word for Madame Barras.  The woman was a lure.  I mean the term
+in its large and catholic sense.  I mean the bait of a great
+cosmic impulse - the most subtle and the most persistent of which
+one has any sense.
+
+The cunning intelligences of that impulse had decked her out with
+every attractiveness as though they had taken thought to confound
+all masculine resistance; to sweep into their service those
+refractory units that withheld themselves from the common
+purpose.  She was lovely, as the aged Major Carrington had
+uttered it - great violet eyes in a delicate skin sown with gold
+flecks, a skin so delicate that one felt that a kiss would tear
+it!
+
+I do not know from what source I have that expression but it
+attaches itself, out of my memory of descriptive phrases, to
+Madame Barras.  And it extends itself as wholly descriptive of
+her.  You will say that the long and short of this is that I was
+in love with Madame Barras, but I point you a witness in Major
+Carrington.
+
+He had the same impressions, and he had but one passion in his
+life, a distant worship of my sister that burned steadily even
+here at the end of life.  During the few evenings that Madame
+Barras had been in to dinner with us, he sat in his chair beyond
+my sister in the drawing-room, perfect in his early-Victorian
+manner, while Madame Barras and I walked on the great terrace, or
+sat outside.
+
+One had a magnificent sweep of the world, at night, from that
+terrace.  It looked out over the forest of pines to the open sea.
+
+Madame Barras confessed to the pull of this vista.  She asked me
+at what direction the Atlantic entered, and when she knew, she
+kept it always in her sight.
+
+It had a persisting fascination for her.  At all times and in
+nearly any position, she was somehow sensible of this vista; she
+knew the lights almost immediately, and the common small craft
+blinking about.  To-night she had sat for a long time in nearly
+utter silence here.  There was a faint light on the open sea as
+she got up to take her leave of us; what would it be she
+wondered.
+
+I replied that it was some small craft coming in.
+
+"A fishing-boat?"
+
+"Hardly that," I said, "from its lights and position it will be
+some swifter power-boat and, I should say, not precisely certain
+about the channel."
+
+I have been drawn here into reminiscence that did not, at the
+time, detain me in the hall.  What my sister had discovered to
+me, following Major Carrington's remark, left me distinctly
+uneasy.  It was very nearly two miles to the village, the road
+was wholly forest and there would be no house on the way; for my
+father, with an utter disregard for cost, had sought the
+seclusion of a large acreage when he had built this absurdly
+elaborate villa on Mount Desert Island.
+
+Besides I was in no mood for sleep.
+
+And, over all probability, there might be some not entirely
+imaginary danger to Madame Barras.  Not precisely the danger
+presented in Major Carrington's pleasantry, but the always
+possible danger to one who is carrying a sum of money about.  It
+would be considered, in the world of criminal activities, a very
+large sum of money; and it had been lying here, as of no value,
+in a drawer of the library table since the day on which the gold
+certificates had arrived on my check from the Boston bank.
+
+Madame Barras had not taken the currency away as I imagined.  It
+was extremely careless of her, but was it not an act in
+character?
+
+What would such a woman know of practical concern?
+
+I spoke to the butler.  He should not wait up, I would let myself
+in; and I went out.
+
+I remember that I got a cap and a stick out of the rack; there
+was no element of selection in the cap, but there was a decided
+subconscious direction about the selection of the stick.  It was
+a heavy blackthorn, with an iron ferrule and a silver weight set
+in the head; picked up - by my father at some Irish fair - a
+weapon in fact.
+
+It was not dark.  It was one of those clear hard nights that are
+not uncommon on this island in midsummer; with a full moon, the
+road was visible even in the wood.  I swung along it with no
+particular precaution; I was not expecting anything to happen,
+and in fact, nothing did happen on the way into the village.
+
+But in this attitude of confidence I failed to discover an event
+of this night that might have given the whole adventure a
+different ending.
+
+There is a point near the village where a road enters our private
+one; skirts the border of the mountain, and, making a great turn,
+enters the village from the south.  At this division of the road
+I heard distinctly a sound in the wood.
+
+It was not a sound to incite inquiry.  It was the sound of some
+considerable animal moving in the leaves, a few steps beyond the
+road.  It did not impress me at the time; estrays were constantly
+at large in our forests in summer, and not infrequently a roaming
+buck from the near preserves.  There was also here in addition to
+the other roads, an abandoned winter wood-road that ran westward
+across the island to a small farming settlement.  Doubtless
+I took a slighter notice of the sound because estrays from the
+farmers' fields usually trespassed on us from this road.
+
+At any rate I went on.  I fear that I was very much engrossed
+with the memory of Madame Barras.  Not wholly with the feminine
+lure of her, although as I have written she was the perfection of
+that lure.  One passed women, at all milestones, on the way to
+age, and kept before them one's sound estimates of life, but
+before this woman one lost one's head, as though Nature, evaded
+heretofore, would not be denied.  But the weird fortune that had
+attended her was in my mind.
+
+Married to Senor Barras out of the door of a convent, carried to
+Rio de Janeiro to an unbearable life, escaping with a remnant of
+her inheritance in English bank-notes, she arrives here to visit
+the one, old, persisting friend, Mrs. Jordan, and finds her dead!
+And what seemed strange, incredible beyond belief, was that this
+creature Barras had thought only of her fortune which he had
+depleted in two years to the something less than twenty thousand
+pounds which I had exchanged for her into our money; a mere
+fragment of her great inheritance.
+
+I had listened to the story entranced with the alluring teller of
+it; wondering as I now wondered, on the road to the village, how
+anything pretending to be man could think of money when she was
+before his eye.
+
+What could he buy with money that equaled her!  And yet this
+curious jackal had seen in her only the key to a strong-box.
+There was behind it, in explanation, shadowed out, the glamor of
+an empire that Senor Barras would set up with the millions in his
+country of revolutions, and the enthusiasms of a foolish mother.
+
+And yet the jackal and this wreckage had not touched her.  There
+was no stain, no crumpled leaf.  She was a fresh wonder, even
+after this, out of a chrysalis.  It was this amazing newness,
+this virginity of blossom from which one could not escape.
+
+The word in my reflection brought me up.  How had she escaped
+from Barras?
+
+I had more than once in my reflections pivoted on the word.
+
+The great hotel was very nearly deserted when I entered.
+
+There was the glow of a cigar where some one smoked, at the end
+of the long porch.  Within, there was only a sleepy clerk.
+
+Madame Barras had not arrived . . . he was quite sure; she had
+gone out to dinner somewhere and had not come in!
+
+I was profoundly concerned.  But I took a moment to reflect
+before deciding what to do.
+
+I stepped outside and there, coming up from the shadow of the
+porch, I met Sir Henry Marquis.
+
+It was chance at its extreme of favor.  If I had been given the
+selection, in all the world, I should have asked for Sir Henry
+Marquis at that decisive moment.
+
+The relief I felt made my words extravagant.
+
+"Marquis!" I cried.  "You here!"
+
+"Ah, Winthrop," he said, in his drawling Oxford voice, "what have
+you done with Madame Barras; I was waiting for her?"
+
+I told him, in a word, how she had set out from my house - my
+concern - the walk down here and this result.  I did not ask him
+at the moment how he happened to be here, or with a knowledge of
+our guest. I thought that Marquis was in Canada.  But one does
+not, with success, inquire of a C.I.D. official even in his own
+country.  One met him in the most unexpected places, unconcerned,
+and one would have said at leisure.
+
+But he was concerned to-night.  What I told brought him up.  He
+stood for a moment silent.  Then he said, softly, in order drat
+the clerk behind us might not overhear.
+
+"Don't speak of it.  I will get a light and go with you!"
+
+He returned in a moment and we went out.  He asked me about the
+road, was there only one way down; and I told him precisely.
+There was only the one road into the village and no way to miss
+it unless one turned into the public road at the point where it
+entered our private one along the mountain.
+
+He pitched at once upon this point and we hurried back.
+
+We had hardly a further word on the way.  I was decidedly uneasy
+about Madame Barras by now, and Marquis' concern was hardly less
+evident.  He raced along in his immense stride, and I had all I
+could manage to keep up.
+
+It may seem strange that I should have brought such a man as Sir
+Henry Marquis into the search of this adventure with so little
+explanation of my guest or the affair.  But, one must remember,
+Marquis was an old acquaintance frequently seen about in the
+world.  To thus, on the spot so to speak, draft into my service
+the first gentleman I found, was precisely what any one would
+have done.  It was probable, after all, that there had been some
+reason why the cut-under had taken the other road, and Madame
+Barras was quite all right.
+
+It was better to make sure before one raised the village - and
+Marquis, markedly, was beyond any aid the village could have
+furnished.  This course was strikingly justified by every
+after-event.
+
+I have said that the night was not dark.  The sky was hard with
+stars, like a mosaic.  This white moonlight entered through the
+tree-tops and in a measure illumined the road.  We were easily
+able to see, when we reached the point, that the cut-under had
+turned out into the road circling the mountain to the west of the
+village.  The track was so clearly visible in the light, that I
+must have observed it had I been thinking of the road instead of
+the one who had set out upon it.
+
+I was going on quickly, when Marquis stopped.  He was stooping
+over the track of the vehicle.  He did not come on and I went
+back.
+
+"What is it?" I said.
+
+He answered, still stooping above the track.
+
+"The cut-under stopped here."
+
+"How do you know that?" I asked, for it seemed hardly possible to
+determine where a wheeled vehicle had stopped.
+
+"It's quite clear," he replied.  "The horse has moved about
+without going on."
+
+I now saw it.  The hoof-marks of the horse had displaced the dust
+where it had several times changed position.
+
+"And that's not all," Marquis continued.  "Something has happened
+to the cut-under here!"
+
+I was now closely beside him.
+
+"It was broken down, perhaps, or some accident to the harness?"
+
+"No," he replied.  "The wheel tracks are here broadened, as
+though they had skidded on a turn.  This would mean little if the
+cut-under had been moving at the time.  But it was not moving;
+the horse was standing.  The cut-under had stopped."
+
+He went on as though in a reflection to himself.
+
+"The vehicle must have been violently thrown about here, by
+something."
+
+I had a sudden inspiration.
+
+"I see it!" I cried.  "The horse took fright, stopped, and then
+bolted; there has been a run-away.  That accounts for the turn
+out.  Let's hurry!"
+
+But Marquis detained me with a firm hand on my arm.
+
+"No," he said, "the horse was not running when it turned out and
+it did not stop here in fright.  The horse was entirely quiet
+here.  The hoof marks would show any alarm in the animal, and,
+moreover, if it had stopped in fright there would have been an
+inevitable recoil which would have thrown the wheels of the
+vehicle backward out of their track.  No moving animal, man
+included, stopped by fright fails to register this recoil.  We
+always look for it in evidences of violent assault.  Footprints
+invariably show it, and one learns thereby, unerringly, the
+direction of the attack."
+
+He rose, his hand still extended and upon my arm.
+
+"There is only one possible explanation," he added.  "Something
+happened in the cut-under to throw it violently about in the
+road, and it happened with the horse undisturbed and the vehicle
+standing still.  The wheel tracks are widened only at one point,
+showing a transverse but no lateral movement of the vehicle."
+
+"A struggle?" I cried.  "Major Carrington was right, Madame
+Barras has been attacked by the driver!"
+
+Marquis' hand held me firmly in the excitement of that
+realization.  He was entirely composed.  There was even a drawl
+in his voice as he answered me.
+
+"Major Carrington, whoever he may be," he said, "is wrong; if we
+exclude a third party, it was Madame Barras who attacked the
+driver."
+
+His fingers tightened under my obvious protest.
+
+"It is quite certain," he continued.  "Taking the position of the
+standing horse, it will be the front wheels of the cut-under that
+have made, this widened track; the wheels under the driver's
+seat, and not the wheels under the guest seat, in the rear of the
+vehicle.  There has been a violent struggle in this cut-under,
+but it was a struggle that took place wholly in the front of the
+vehicle."
+
+He went on in his maddeningly imperturbable calm.
+
+"No one attacked our guest, but some one, here at this precise
+point, did attack the driver of this vehicle."
+
+"For God's sake," I cried, "let's hurry!"
+
+He stepped back slowly to the edge of the road and the drawl in
+his voice lengthened.
+
+"We do hurry," he said.  "We hurry to the value of knowing that
+there was no accident here to the harness, no fright to the
+horse, no attack on the lady, and no change in the direction
+which the vehicle afterwards took.  Suppose we had gone on, in a
+different form of hurry, ignorant of these facts?"
+
+At this point I distinctly heard again the sound of a heavy
+animal in the wood.  Marquis also heard it and he plunged into
+the thick bushes.  Almost immediately we were at the spot, and
+before us some heavy object turned in the leaves.
+
+Marquis whipped an electric-flash out of his pocket.  The body of
+a man, tied at the hands and heels behind with a hitching-strap,
+and with a linen carriage lap-cloth wound around his head and
+knotted, lay there endeavoring to ease the rigor of his position
+by some movement.
+
+We should now know, in a moment, what desperate thing had
+happened!
+
+I cut the strap, while Marquis got the lap-cloth unwound from
+about the man's head.  It was the driver of the cut-under.  But
+we got no gain from his discovery.  As soon as his face was
+clear, he tore out of our grasp and began to run.
+
+He took the old road to the westward of the island, where perhaps
+he lived.  We were wholly unable to stop him, and we got no reply
+to our shouted queries except his wild cry for help.  He
+considered us his assailants from whom, by chance, he had
+escaped.  It was folly to think of coming up with the man.  He
+was set desperately for the westward of the island, and he would
+never stop until he reached it.
+
+We turned back into the road:
+
+Marquis' method now changed.  He turned swiftly into the road
+along the mountain which the cut-under had taken after its
+capture.
+
+I was at the extreme of a deadly anxiety about Madame Barras.
+
+It seemed to me, now, certain that some gang of criminals having
+knowledge of the packet of money had waylaid the cut-under.
+Proud of my conclusion, I put the inquiry to Sir Henry as we
+hurried along.  If we weren't too late!
+
+He stopped suddenly like a man brought up at the point of a
+bayonet.
+
+"My word!"  He jerked the expression out through his tightened
+jaws.  "Has she got ninety thousand dollars of your money!"  And
+he set out again in his long stride.  I explained briefly as I
+endeavored to keep his pace.  It was her own money, not mine, but
+she did in fact have that large sum with her in the cut-under on
+this night.  I gave him the story of the matter, briefly, for I
+had no breath to spare over it.  And I asked him what he thought.
+Had a gang of thieves attacked the cut-under?
+
+But he only repeated his expression.
+
+"My word! . . .  You got her ninety thousand dollars and let her
+drive away with no eye on her! . . . .  Such trust in the honesty
+of our fellow creatures! . . .  My word!"
+
+I had to admit the deplorable negligence, but I had not thought
+of any peril, and I did not know that she carried the money with
+her until the conversation with my sister.  There was some excuse
+for me.  I could not remember a robbery on this island.
+
+Marquis snapped his jaws.
+
+"You'll remember this one!" he said.
+
+It was a ridiculous remark.  How could one ever forget if this
+incomparable creature were robbed and perhaps murdered.  But were
+there not some extenuating circumstances in my favor.  I
+presented them as we advanced; my sister and I lived in a rather
+protected atmosphere apart from all criminal activities, we could
+not foresee such a result.  I had no knowledge of criminal
+methods.
+
+"I can well believe it," was the only reply Marquis returned to
+me.
+
+In addition to my extreme anxiety about Madame Barras I began now
+to realize a profound sense of responsibility; every one, it
+seemed, saw what I ought to have done, except myself.  How had I
+managed to overlook it?  It was clear to other men.  Major
+Carrington had pointed it out to me as I was turning away; and
+now here Sir Henry Marquis was expressing in no uncertain words
+how negligent a creature he considered me - to permit my guest, a
+woman, to go alone, at night, with this large sum of money.
+
+It was not a pleasant retrospect.  Other men - the world - would
+scarcely hold me to a lesser negligence than Sir Henry Marquis!
+
+I could not forbear, even in our haste, to seek some consolation.
+
+"Do you think Madame Barras has been hurt?"
+
+"Hurt!" he repeated.  "How should Madame Barras be hurt?"
+
+"In the robbery," I said.
+
+"Robbery!" and he repeated that word.  "There has been no
+robbery!"
+
+I replied in some astonishment.
+
+"Really, Sir Henry!  You but now assured me that I would remember
+this night's robbery."
+
+The drawl got back into his voice.
+
+"Ah, yes," he said, "quite so.  You will remember it."
+
+The man was clearly, it seemed to me, so engrossed with the
+mystery that it was idle to interrogate him.  And he was walking
+with a devil's stride.
+
+Still the pointed query of the affair pressed me, and I made
+another effort.
+
+"Why did these assailants take Madame Barras on with them?"
+
+Marquis regarded me, I thought, with wonder.
+
+"The devil, man!" he said.  "They couldn't leave her behind."
+
+"The danger would be too great to them?"
+
+"No," he said, "the danger would be too great to her."
+
+At this moment an object before us in the road diverted our
+attention.  It was the cut-under and the horse.  They were
+standing by the roadside where it makes a great turn to enter the
+village from the south.  There is a wide border to the road at
+this point, clear of underbrush, where the forest edges it, and
+there are here, at the whim of some one, or by chance, two great
+flat stones, one lying upon the other, but not fitting by a
+hand's thickness by reason of the uneven surfaces.
+
+What had now happened was evident.  The assailants of the
+cut-under had abandoned it here before entering the village.
+They could not, of course, go on with this incriminating vehicle.
+
+The sight of the cut-under here had on Marquis the usual effect
+of any important evidential sign.  He at once ceased to hurry.
+He pulled up; looked over the cut-under and the horse, and began
+to saunter about.
+
+This careless manner was difficult for me at such a time.  But
+for his assurance that Madame Barras, was uninjured it would have
+been impossible.  I had a blind confidence in the man although
+his expressions were so absurdly in conflict.
+
+I started to go on toward the village, but as he did not follow I
+turned back.  Marquis was sitting on the flat stones with a
+cigarette in his fingers:
+
+"Good heavens, man," I cried, "you're not stopping to smoke a
+cigarette?"
+
+"Not this cigarette, at any rate," he replied.  "Madame Barras
+has already smoked it. . . .  I can, perhaps, find you the burnt
+match."
+
+He got the electric-flash out of his pocket, and stooped over.
+Immediately he made an exclamation of surprise.
+
+I leaned down beside him.
+
+There was a little heap of charred paper on the brown bed of
+pine-needles.  Marquis was about to take up this charred paper
+when his eye caught something thrust in between the two stones.
+It was a handful of torn bits of paper.
+
+Marquis got them out and laid them on the top of the flat stones
+under his light.
+
+"Ah," he said, "Madame Barras, while she smoked, got rid of some
+money."
+
+"The package of gold certificates!" I cried.  "She has burned
+them?"
+
+"No," he replied, "Madame Barras has favored your Treasury in her
+destructive process.  These are five-pound notes, of the Bank of
+England."
+
+I was astonished and I expressed it.
+
+"But why should Madame Barras destroy notes of the Bank of
+England?"
+
+"I imagine," he answered, "that they were some which she had, by
+chance, failed to give you for exchange."
+
+"But why should she destroy them?" I went on.
+
+"I conclude," he drawled, "that she was not wholly certain that
+she would escape."
+
+"Escape!" I cried.  "You have been assuring me all along that
+Madame Barras is making no effort to escape."
+
+"Oh, no," he replied, "she is making every effort."
+
+I was annoyed and puzzled.
+
+"What is it," I said, "precisely, that Madame Barras did here;
+can you tell me in plain words?"
+
+"Surely," he replied, "she sat here while something was decided,
+and while she sat here she smoked the cigarette, and while she
+smoked the cigarette, she destroyed the money.  But," he added,
+"before she had quite finished, a decision was made and she
+hastily thrust the remaining bits of the torn notes into the
+crevice between these stones."
+
+"What decision?" I said.
+
+Marquis gathered up the bits of torn paper and put them into his
+pocket with the switched-off flash.
+
+"I wish I knew that," he said.
+
+"Knew what?"
+
+"Which path they have taken," he replied; "there seem to be two
+branching from this point, but they pass over a bed of
+pine-needles and that retains no impression . . . .  Where do
+these paths lead?"
+
+I did not know that any paths came into the road at this point.
+But the island is veined over with old paths.  The lead of paths
+here, however, was fairly evident.
+
+"They must come out somewhere on the sea," I said.
+
+"Right," he cried.  "Take either, and let's be off. . .  Madame's
+cigarette was not quite cold when I picked it up."
+
+I was right about the direction of the paths but, as it happened,
+the one Marquis took was nearly double the distance of the other
+to the sea; and I have wondered always, if it was chance that
+selected the one taken by the assailants of the cut-under as it
+was chance that selected the one taken by us.
+
+Marquis was instantly gone, and I hurried along the path, running
+nearly due east. There was light enough entering from the
+brilliant moon through the tree-tops to make out the abandoned
+trail.
+
+And as I hurried, Marquis' contradicting expressions seemed to
+adjust themselves into a sort of order, and all at once I
+understood what had happened.  The Brazilian adventurer had not
+taken the loss of his wife and the fortune in English pounds
+sterling, lying down.  He had followed to recover them.
+
+I now saw clearly the reason for everything that had happened:
+the attack on the driver, and my guest's concern to get rid of
+the English money which she discovered remaining in her
+possession; this man would have no knowledge of her gold
+certificates but he would be searching for his English pounds.
+And if she came clear of any trace of these five-pound notes, she
+might disclaim all knowledge of them and perhaps send him
+elsewhere on his search, since it was always the money and not
+the woman that he sought.
+
+This explanation was hardly realized before it was confirmed.
+
+I came out abruptly onto a slope of bracken, and before me at a
+few paces on the path were Madame Barras and two men; one at some
+distance in advance of her, disappearing at the moment behind a
+spur of the slope that hid us from the sea, and I got no
+conception of him; but the creature at her heels was a huge
+foreign beast of a man, in the dress of a common sailor.
+
+What happened was over in a moment.
+
+I was nearly on the man when I turned out of the wood, and with a
+shout to Madame Barras I struck at him with the heavy
+walking-stick.  But the creature was not to be taken unaware; he
+darted to one side, wrenched the stick out of my hand, and dashed
+its heavy-weighted head into my face.  I went down in the
+bracken, but I carried with me into unconsciousness a vision of
+Madame Barras that no shadow of the lengthening years can blur.
+
+She had swung round sharply at the attack behind her, and she
+stood bare-haired and bare-shouldered, knee-deep in the golden
+bracken, with the glory of the moon on her; her arms hanging, her
+lips parted, her great eyes wide with terror - as lovely in her
+desperate extremity as a dream, as, a painted picture.  I don't
+know how long I was down there, but when I finally got up, and,
+following along the path behind the spur of rock, came out onto
+the open sea, I found Sir Henry Marquis.  He was standing with
+his hands in the pockets of his loose tweed coat, and he was
+cursing softly:
+
+"The ferry and the mainland are patroled . . .  I didn't think of
+their having an ocean-going yacht . . . ."
+
+A gleam of light was disappearing into the open sea.
+
+He put his hand into his pocket and took out the scraps of torn
+paper.
+
+"These notes," he said, "like the ones which you hold in your
+bank-vault, were never issued by the Bank of England."
+
+I stammered some incoherent sentence; and the great chief of the
+Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard turned toward
+me.
+
+"Do you know who that woman is?"
+
+"Surely," I cried, "she went to school with my sister at Miss
+Page's; she came to visit Mrs. Jordan. . . ."
+
+He looked at me steadily.
+
+"She got the data about your sister out of the Back Bay
+biographies and she used the accident of Mrs. Jordan's death to
+get in with it . . . the rest was all fiction."
+
+"Madame Barras?" I stuttered.  "You mean Madame Barras?"
+
+"Madame the Devil," he said.  "That's Sunny Suzanne.  Used to be
+in the Hungarian Follies until the Soviet government of Austria
+picked her up to place the imitation English money that its
+presses were striking off in Vienna."
+
+
+
+
+IV.  The Cambered Foot
+
+
+I shall not pretend that I knew the man in America or that he was
+a friend of my family or that some one had written to me about
+him.  The plain truth is that I never laid eyes on him until Sir
+Henry Marquis pointed him out to me the day after I went down
+from here to London.  It was in Piccadilly Circus.
+
+"There's your American," said Sir Henry.
+
+The girl paused for a few moments.  There was profound silence.
+
+"And that isn't all of it.  Nobody presented him to me.  I
+deliberately picked him up!"
+
+Three persons were in the drawing-room.  An old woman with high
+cheekbones, a bowed nose and a firm, thin-lipped mouth was the
+central figure.  She sat very straight in her chair, her head up
+and her hands in her lap.  An aged man, in the khaki uniform of a
+major of yeomanry, stood at a window looking out, his hands
+behind his back, his chin lifted as though he were endeavoring to
+see something far away over the English country - something
+beyond the little groups of Highland cattle and the great oak
+trees.
+
+Beside the old woman, on a dark wood frame, there was a fire
+screen made of the pennant of a Highland regiment.  Beyond her
+was a table with a glass top.  Under this cover, in a sort of
+drawer lined with purple velvet, there were medals, trophies and
+decorations visible below the sheet of glass.  And on the table,
+in a heavy metal frame, was the portrait of a young man in the
+uniform of a captain of Highland infantry.
+
+The girl who had been speaking sat in a big armchair by this
+table.  One knew instantly that she was an American.  The liberty
+of manner, the independence of expression, could not be mistaken
+in a country of established forms.  She had abundant brown hair
+skillfully arranged under a smart French hat.  Her eyes were
+blue; not the blue of any painted color; it was the blue of
+remote spaces in the tropic sky.
+
+The old woman spoke without looking at the girl.
+
+"Then," she said, "it's all quite as" - she hesitated for a word
+- "extraordinary as we have been led to believe."
+
+There was the slow accent of Southern blood in the girl's voice
+as she went on.
+
+"Lady Mary," she said, "it's all far more extraordinary than you
+have been led to believe - than any one could ever have led you
+to believe.  I deliberately picked the man up.  I waited for him
+outside the Savoy, and pretended to be uncertain about an
+address.  He volunteered to take me in his motor and I went with
+him.  I told him I was alone in London, at the Ritz.  It was
+Blackwell's bank I pretended to be looking for.  Then we had
+tea."
+
+The girl paused.
+
+Presently she continued: "That's how it began: You're mistaken to
+imagine that Sir Henry Marquis presented me to this American.  It
+was the other way about; I presented Sir Henry.  I had the run of
+the Ritz," she went on.  "We all do if we scatter money.  Sir
+Henry came in to tea the next afternoon.  That's how he met Mr.
+Meadows.  And that's the only place he ever did meet him.  Mr.
+Meadows came every day, and Sir Henry formed the habit of
+dropping in.  We got to be a very friendly party."
+
+The motionless old woman, a figure in plaster until now, kneaded
+her fingers as under some moving pressure.  "At this time," she
+said, "you were engaged to Tony and expected to be his wife!"
+
+The girl's voice did not change.  It was slow and even.  "Yes,"
+she said.
+
+"Tony, of course, knew nothing about this?"
+
+"He knows nothing whatever about it unless you have written him."
+
+Again the old woman moved slightly.  "I have waited," she said,
+"for the benefit of your explanation.  It seems as - as bad as I
+feared."
+
+"Lady Mary," said the girl in her slow voice, "it's worse than
+you feared.  I don't undertake to smooth it over.  Everything
+that you have heard is quite true.  I did go out with the man in
+his motor, in the evening.  Sometimes it was quite dark before we
+returned.  Mr. Meadows preferred to drive at night because he was
+not accustomed to the English rule of taking the left on the
+road, when one always takes the right in America.  He was afraid
+he couldn't remember the rule, so it was safer at night and there
+was less traffic.
+
+"I shall not try to make the thing appear better than it was.  We
+sometimes took long runs.  Mr. Meadows liked the high roads along
+the east coast, where one got a view of the sea and the cold salt
+air.  We ran prodigious distances.  He had the finest motor in
+England, the very latest American model.  I didn't think so much
+about night coming on, the lights on the car were so wonderful.
+Mr. Meadows was an amazing driver.  We made express-train time.
+The roads were usually clear at night and the motor was a perfect
+wonder.  The only trouble we ever had was with the lights.
+Sometimes one, of them would go out.  I think it was bad wiring.
+But there was always the sweep of the sea under the stars to look
+at while Mr. Meadows got the thing adjusted."
+
+This long, detailed, shameless speech affected the aged soldier
+at the window.  It seemed to him immodest bravado.  And he
+suffered in his heart, as a man old and full of memories can
+suffer for the damaged honor of a son he loves.
+
+Continuing, the girl said: "Of course it isn't true that we spent
+the nights touring the east coast of England in a racer.  It was
+dark sometimes when we got in - occasionally after trouble with
+the lights - quite dark.  We did go thundering distances."
+
+"With this person, alone?"  The old woman spoke slowly, like one
+delicately probing at a wound.
+
+"Yes," the girl admitted.  "You see, the car was a roadster; only
+two could go; and, besides, there was no one else.  Mr. Meadows
+said he was alone in London, and of course I was alone.  When Sir
+Henry asked me to go down from here I went straight off to the
+Ritz."
+
+The old woman made a slight, shivering gesture.  "You should have
+gone to my sister in Grosvenor Square.  Monte would have put you
+up - and looked after you."
+
+"The Ritz put me up very well," the girl continued.  "And I am
+accustomed to looking after myself.  Sir Henry thought it was
+quite all right."
+
+The old woman spoke suddenly with energy and directness.  "I
+don't understand Henry in the least," she said.  "I was quite
+willing for you to go to London when he asked me for permission.
+But I thought he would take you to Monte's, and certainly I had
+the right to believe that he would not have lent himself to - to
+this escapade."
+
+"He seemed to be very nice about it," the girl went on.  "He came
+in to tea with us - Mr. Meadows and me - almost every evening.
+And he always had something amusing to relate, some blunder of
+Scotland Yard or some ripping mystery.  I think he found it
+immense fun to be Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department.
+I loved the talk: Mr. Meadows was always interested and Sir Henry
+likes people to be interested."
+
+The old woman continued to regard the girl as one hesitatingly
+touches an exquisite creature frightfully mangled.
+
+"This person - was he a gentleman?" she inquired.  The girl
+answered immediately.  "I thought about that a good deal," she
+said.  "He had perfect manners, quite Continental manners; but,
+as you say over here, Americans are so imitative one never can
+tell.  He was not young - near fifty, I would say; very well
+dressed.  He was from St. Paul; a London agent for some flouring
+mills in the Northwest. I don't know precisely.  He explained it
+all to Sir Henry.  I think he would have been glad of a little
+influence - some way to meet the purchasing agents for the
+government.  He seemed to have the American notion that he could
+come to London and go ahead without knowing anybody.  Anyway, he
+was immensely interesting - and he had a ripping motor."
+
+The old man at the window did not move.  He remained looking out
+over the English country with his big, veined hands clasped
+behind his back.  He had left this interview to Lady Mary, as he
+had left most of the crucial affairs of life to her dominant
+nature.  But the thing touched him far deeper than it touched the
+aged dowager.  He had a man's faith in the fidelity of a loved
+woman.
+
+He knew how his son, somewhere in France, trusted this girl,
+believed in her, as long ago in a like youth he had believed in
+another.  He knew also how the charm of the girl was in the young
+soldier's blood, and how potent were these inscrutable mysteries.
+Every man who loved a woman wished to believe that she came to
+him out of the garden of a convent - out of a roc's egg, like the
+princess in the Arabian story.
+
+All these things he had experienced in himself, in a shattered
+romance, in a disillusioned youth, when he was young like the lad
+somewhere in France.  Lady Mary would see only broken
+conventions; but he saw immortal things, infinitely beyond
+conventions, awfully broken.  He did not move.  He remained like
+a painted picture.
+
+The girl went on in her soft, slow voice.  "You would have
+disliked Mr. Meadows, Lady Mary," she said.  "You would dislike
+any American who came without letters and could not be precisely
+placed."  The girl's voice grew suddenly firmer.  "I don't mean
+to make it appear better," she said.  "The worst would be nearer
+the truth.  He was just an unknown American bagman, with a motor
+car, and a lot of time on his hands - and I picked him up.  But
+Sir Henry Marquis took a fancy to him."
+
+"I cannot understand Henry," the old woman repeated.  "It's
+extraordinary."
+
+"It doesn't seem extraordinary to me," said the girl.  "Mr.
+Meadows was immensely clever, and Sir Henry was like a man with a
+new toy.  The Home Secretary had just put him in as Chief of the
+Criminal Investigation Department.  He was full of a lot of new
+ideas - dactyloscopic bureaus, photographie mitrique, and
+scientific methods of crime detection.  He talked about it all
+the time.  I didn't understand half the talk.  But Mr. Meadows
+was very clever.  Sir Henry said he was a charming person.
+Anybody who could discuss the whorls of the Galton finger-print
+tests was just then a charming person to Sir Henry."
+
+The girl paused a moment, then she went on
+
+"I suppose things had gone so for about a fortnight when your
+sister, Lady Monteith, wrote that she had seen Sir Henry with us
+- Mr. Meadows and me - in the motor.  I have to shatter a
+pleasant fancy about that chaperonage!  That was the only time
+Sir Henry was ever with us.
+
+"It came about like this: It was Thursday morning about nine
+o'clock, I think, when Sir Henry, popped in at the Ritz.  He was
+full of some amazing mystery that had turned up at Benton Court,
+a country house belonging to the Duke of Dorset, up the Thames
+beyond Richmond.  He wanted to go there at once.  He was fuming
+because an under secretary had his motor, and he couldn't catch
+up with him.
+
+"I told him he could have `our' motor.  He laughed.  And I
+telephoned Mr. Meadows to come over and take him up.  Sir Henry
+asked me to go along.  So that's how Lady Monteith happened to
+see the three of us crowded into the seat of the big roadster."
+
+The girl went on in her deliberate, even voice
+
+"Sir Henry was boiling full of the mystery.  He got us all
+excited by the time we arrived at Benton Court.  I think Mr.
+Meadows was as keen about the thing as Sir Henry.  They were both
+immensely worked up.  It was an amazing thing!"
+
+"You see, Benton Court is a little house of the Georgian period.
+It has been closed up for ages, and now, all at once, the most
+mysterious things began to happen in it.
+
+"A local inspector, a very reliable man named Millson, passing
+that way on his bicycle, saw a man lying on the doorstep.  He
+also saw some one running away.  It was early in the morning,
+just before daybreak.
+
+"Millson saw only the man's back, but he could distinguish the
+color of his clothes.  He was wearing a blue coat and
+reddish-brown trousers.  Millson said he could hardly make out
+the blue coat in the darkness, but he could distinctly see the
+reddish brown color of the man's trousers.  He was very positive
+about this.  Mr. Meadows and Sir Henry pressed him pretty hard,
+but he was firm about it.  He could make out that the coat was
+blue, and he could see very distinctly that the trousers were
+reddish-brown.
+
+"But the extraordinary thing came a little later.  Millson
+hurried to a telephone to get Scotland Yard, then he returned to
+Benton Court; but when he got back the dead man had disappeared.
+
+"He insists that he was not away beyond five minutes, but within
+that time the dead man had vanished.  Millson could find no trace
+of him.  That's the mystery that sent us tearing up there with
+Mr. Meadows and Sir Henry transformed into eager sleuths.
+
+"We found the approaches to the house under a patrol from
+Scotland Yard.  But nobody had gone in.  The inspector was
+waiting for Sir Henry."
+
+The old man stood like an image, and the aged woman sat in her
+chair like a figure in basalt.
+
+But the girl ran on with a sort of eager unconcern: "Sir Henry
+and Mr. Meadows took the whole thing in charge.  The door had
+been broken open.  They examined the marks about the fractures
+very carefully; then they went inside.  There were some naked
+footprints.  They were small, as of a little, cramped foot, and
+they seemed to be tracked in blood on the hard oak floor.  There
+was a wax candle partly burned on the table.  And that's all
+there was.
+
+"There were some tracks in the dust of the floor, but they were
+not very clearly outlined, and Sir Henry thought nothing could be
+made of them.
+
+"It was awfully exciting.  I went about behind the two men.  Sir
+Henry talked all the time.  Mr. Meadows was quite as much
+interested, but he didn't say anything.  He seemed to say less as
+the thing went on.
+
+"They went over everything - the ground outside and every inch of
+the house.  Then they put everybody out and sat down by a table
+in the room where the footprints were.
+
+"Sir Henry had been awfully careful.  He had a big lens with
+which to examine the marks of the bloody footprints.  He was like
+a man on the trail of a buried treasure.  He shouted over
+everything, thrust his glass into Mr. Meadows' hand and bade him
+verify what he had seen.  His ardor was infectious.  I caught it
+myself.
+
+"Mr. Meadows, in his quiet manner, was just as much concerned in
+unraveling the thing as Sir Henry.  I never had so wild a time in
+all my life.  Finally, when Sir Henry put everybody else out and
+closed the door, and the three of us sat down at the table to try
+to untangle the thing, I very nearly screamed with excitement.
+Mr. Meadows sat with his arms folded, not saying a word; but Sir
+Henry went ahead with his explanation."
+
+The girl looked like a vivid portrait, the soft colors of her
+gown and all the cool, vivid extravagancies of youth
+distinguished in her.  Her words indicated fervor and excited
+energy; but they were not evidenced in her face or manner.  She
+was cool and lovely.  One would have thought that she recounted
+the inanities of a curate's tea party.
+
+The aged man, in the khaki uniform of a major of yeomanry,
+remained in his position at the window.  The old woman sat with
+her implacable face, unchanging like a thing insensible and
+inorganic.
+
+This unsympathetic aspect about the girl did not seem to disturb
+her.  She went on:
+
+"The thing was thrilling.  It was better than any theater - the
+three of us at the old mahogany table in the room, and the
+Scotland Yard patrol outside.
+
+"Sir Henry was bubbling over with his theory.  `I read this
+riddle like a printed page,' he said.  `It will be the work of a
+little band of expert cracksmen that the Continent has kindly
+sent us.  We have had some samples of their work in Brompton
+Road.  They are professional crooks of a high order - very clever
+at breaking in a door, and, like all the criminal groups that we
+get without an invitation from over the Channel, these crooks
+have absolutely no regard for human life.'
+
+"That's the way Sir Henry led off with his explanation.  Of
+course he had all that Scotland Yard knew about criminal groups
+to start him right.  It was a good deal to have the identity of
+the criminal agents selected out; but I didn't see how he was
+going to manage to explain the mystery from the evidence.  I was
+wild to hear him.  Mr. Meadows was quite as interested, I
+thought, although he didn't say a word.
+
+"Sir Henry nodded, as though he took the American's confirmation
+as a thing that followed.  `We are at the scene,' he said, `of
+one of the most treacherous acts of all criminal drama.  I mean
+the "doing in," as our criminals call it, of the unprofessional
+accomplice.  It's a regulation piece of business with the
+hard-and-fast criminal organizations of the Continent, like the
+Nervi of Marseilles, or the Lecca of Paris.
+
+"`They take in a house servant, a shopkeeper's watchman, or a
+bank guard to help them in some big haul.  Then they lure him
+into some abandoned house, under a pretense of dividing up the
+booty, and there put him out of the way.  That's what's happened
+here.  It's a common plan with these criminal groups, and clever
+of them.  The picked-up accomplice would be sure to let the thing
+out.  For safety the professionals must "do him in" at once,
+straight away after the big job, as a part of what the barrister
+chaps call the res gestae.'
+
+"Sir Henry went on nodding at us and drumming the palm of his
+hand on the edge of the table.
+
+"`This thing happens all the time,' he said, `all about, where
+professional criminals are at work.  It accounts for a lot of
+mysteries that the police cannot make head or tail of, like this
+one, for example.  Without our knowledge of this sinister custom,
+one could not begin or end with an affair like this.
+
+"`But it's simple when one has the cue - it's immensely simple.
+We know exactly what happened and the sort of crooks that were
+about the business.  The barefoot prints show the Continental
+group.  That's the trick of Southern Europe to go in barefoot
+behind a man to kill him.'
+
+"Sir Henry jarred the whole table with his big hand.  The surface
+of the table was covered with powdered chalk that the baronet had
+dusted over it in the hope of developing criminal finger prints.
+Now under the drumming of his palm the particles of white dust
+whirled like microscopic elfin dancers.
+
+"`The thing's clear as daylight,' he went on: `One of the
+professional group brought the accomplice down here to divide the
+booty.  He broke the door in.  They sat down here at this table
+with the lighted candle as you see it.  And while the stuff was
+being sorted out, another of the band slipped in behind the man
+and killed him.
+
+"`They started to carry the body out.  Millson chanced by.  They
+got in a funk and rushed the thing.  Of course they had a motor
+down the road, and equally of course it was no trick to whisk the
+body out of the neighborhood.'
+
+"Sir Henry got half up on his feet with his energy in the
+solution of the thing.  He thrust his spread-out fingers down.
+on the table like a man, by that gesture, pressing in an
+inevitable, conclusive summing up."
+
+The girl paused.  "It was splendid, I thought.  I applauded like
+an entranced pit!
+
+"But Mr. Meadows didn't say a word.  He took up the big glass we
+had used about the inspection of the place, and passed it over
+the prints Sir Henry was unconsciously making in the dust on the
+polished surface of the table.  Then he put the glass down and
+looked the excited baronet calmly in the face.
+
+"`There,' cried Sir Henry, `the thing's no mystery.'
+
+"For the first time Mr. Meadows opened his mouth.  `It's the
+profoundest mystery I ever heard of,' he said.
+
+"Sir Henry was astonished.  He sat down and looked across the
+table at the man.  He wasn't able to speak for a moment, then he
+got it out: `Why exactly do you say that?'
+
+"Mr. Meadows put his elbows on the table.  He twiddled the big
+reading glass in his fingers.  His face got firm and decided.
+
+"`To begin with,' he said, `the door to this house was never
+broken by a professional cracksman.  It's the work of a bungling
+amateur.  A professional never undertakes to break a door at the
+lock.  Naturally that's the firmest place about a door.  The
+implement he intends to use as a lever on the door he puts in at
+the top or bottom.  By that means he has half of the door as a
+lever against the resistance of the lock.  Besides, a
+professional of any criminal group is a skilled workman.  He
+doesn't waste effort.  He doesn't fracture a door around the
+lock.  This door's all mangled, splintered and broken around the
+lock.'"
+
+"He stopped and looked about the room, and out through the window
+at the Scotland Yard patrol.  The features of his face were
+contracted with the problem.  One could imagine one saw the man's
+mind laboring at the mystery.  `And that's not all,' he said.
+`Your man Millson is not telling the truth.  He didn't see a dead
+body lying on the steps of this house; and he didn't see a man
+running away.'
+
+"Sir Henry broke in at that.  `Impossible,' he said; 'Millson's a
+first-class inspector, absolutely reliable.  Why do you say that
+he didn't see the dead man on the steps or the assassin running
+away?'
+
+"Mr. Meadows answered in the same even voice.  `Because there was
+never any dead man here,' he said, `for anybody to see.  And
+because Millson's 'description of the man he saw is
+scientifically an impossible feat of vision.'
+
+"Impossible?' cried Sir Henry.
+
+"`Quite impossible,' Mr. Meadows insisted.  'Millson tells us
+that the man he saw running away in the night wore a blue coat
+and reddish-brown trousers.  He says he was barely able to
+distinguish the blue coat, but that he could see the
+reddish-brown trousers very clearly.  Now, as a matter of fact,
+it has been very accurately determined that red is the hardest
+color to distinguish at night, and blue the very easiest. A blue
+coat would be clearly visible long after reddish-brown trousers
+had become indistinguishable in the darkness.'
+
+"Sir Henry's under jaw sagged a little.  `Why, yes,' he said,
+`that's true; that's precisely true.  Gross, at the University of
+Gratz, determined that by experiment in 1912.  I never thought
+about it!'
+
+"`There are some other things here that you have not, perhaps,
+precisely thought about,' Mr. Meadows went on.
+
+"`For example, the things that happened in this room did not
+happen in the night.  They happened in the day.'
+
+"He pointed to the half-burned wax candle on the table.  `There's
+a headless joiner's nail driven into the table,' he said, `and
+this candle is set down over the nail.  That means that the
+person who placed it there wished it to remain there - to remain
+there firmly.  He didn't put it down there for the brief
+requirements of a passing tragedy, he put it there to remain;
+that's one thing.
+
+"`Another thing is that this candle thus firmly fastened on the
+table was never alight there.  If it had ever been burning in its
+position on the table, some of the drops of melted wax would have
+fallen about it.
+
+"`You will observe that, while the candle is firmly fixed, it
+does not set straight; it is inclined at least ten degrees out of
+perpendicular.  In that position it couldn't have burned for a
+moment without dripping melted wax on the table.  And there's
+none on the table; there has never been any on it.  Your glass
+shows not the slightest evidence of a wax stain.'  He added:
+`Therefore the candle is a blind; false evidence to give us the
+impression of a night affair.'
+
+"Sir Henry's jaw sagged; now his mouth gaped.  `True,' he said.
+`True, true.'  He seemed to get some relief to his damaged
+deductions out of the repeated word.
+
+"The irony in Mr. Meadows' voice increased a little.  `Nor is
+that all,' he said.  `The smear on the floor, and the stains in
+which the naked foot tracked, are not human blood.  They're not
+any sort of blood.  It was clearly evident when you had your lens
+over them.  They show no coagulated fiber.  They show only the
+evidences of dye - weak dye - watered red ink, I'd say.'
+
+"I thought Sir Henry was going to crumple up in his chair.  He
+seemed to get loose and baggy in some extraordinary fashion, and
+his gaping jaw worked.  `But the footprints,' he said, `the naked
+footprints?'  His voice was a sort of stutter-the sort of shaken
+stutter of a man who has come a' tumbling cropper.
+
+"The American actually laughed: he laughed as we sometimes laugh
+at a mental defective.
+
+"`They're not footprints!' he said.  `Nobody ever had a foot
+cambered like that, or with a heel like it, or with toes like it.
+Somebody made those prints with his hand - the edge of his palm
+for the heel and the balls of his fingers for the toes.  The
+wide, unstained distances between these heelprints and the prints
+of the ball of the toes show the impossible arch.'
+
+"Sir Henry was like a man gone to pieces.  `But who - who made
+them?' he faltered.
+
+"The American leaned forward and put the big glass over the
+prints that Sir Henry had made with his fingers in the white dust
+on the mahogany table.  `I think you know the answer to your
+question,' he said.  `The whorls of these prints are identical
+with those of the toe tracks.'
+
+"Then he laid the glass carefully down, sat back in his chair,
+folded his arms and looked at Sir Henry.
+
+"`Now,' he said, `will you kindly tell me why you have gone to
+the trouble of manufacturing all these false evidences of a
+crime?"'
+
+The girl paused.  There was intense silence in the drawing-room.
+The aged man at the window had turned and was looking at her.
+The face of the old woman seemed vague and uncertain.
+
+The girl smiled.
+
+"Then," she said, "the real, amazing miracle happened.  Sir Henry
+got on his feet, his big body tense, his face like iron, his
+voice ringing.
+
+"`I went to that trouble,' he said, `because I wished to
+demonstrate - I wished to demonstrate beyond the possibility of
+any error - that Mr. Arthur Meadows, the pretended American from
+St. Paul, was in fact the celebrated criminologist, Karl Holweg
+Leibnich, of Bonn, giving us the favor of his learned presence
+while he signaled the German submarines off the east coast roads
+with his high-powered motor lights.'"
+
+Now there was utter silence in the drawing-room but for the low
+of the Highland cattle and the singing of the birds outside
+
+For the first time there came a little tremor in the girl's
+voice.
+
+"When Sir Henry doubted this American and asked me to go down and
+make sure before he set a trap for him, I thought - I thought, if
+Tony could risk his life for England, I could do that much."
+
+At this moment a maid appeared in the doorway, the trim,
+immaculate, typical English maid.  "Tea is served, my lady," she
+said.
+
+The tall, fine old man crossed the room and offered his arm to
+the girl with the exquisite, gracious manner with which once upon
+a time he had offered it to a girlish queen at Windsor.
+
+The ancient woman rose as if she would go out before them.  Then
+suddenly, at the door, she stepped aside for the girl to pass,
+making the long, stooping, backward curtsy of the passed
+Victorian era.
+
+"After you, my dear," she said, "always!"
+
+
+
+
+V. The Man in the Green Hat
+
+
+"Alas, monsieur, in spite of our fine courtesies, the conception
+of justice by one race must always seem outlandish to another!"
+
+It was on the terrace of Sir Henry Marquis' villa at Cannes.  The
+members of the little party were in conversation over their
+tobacco - the Englishman, with his brier-root pipe; the American
+Justice, with a Havana cigar; and the aged Italian, with his
+cigarette.  The last was speaking.
+
+He was a very old man, but he gave one the impression of
+incredible, preposterous age.  He was bald; he had neither
+eyebrows nor eyelashes.  A wiry mustache, yellow with nicotine,
+alone remained.  Great wrinkles lay below the eyes and along the
+jaw, under a skin stretched like parchment over the bony
+protuberances of the face.
+
+These things established the aspect of old age; but it was the
+man's expression and manner that gave one the sense of
+incalculable antiquity.  The eyes seemed to look out from a
+window, where the man behind them had sat watching the human race
+from the beginning.  And his manners had the completion of one
+whose experience of life is comprehensive and finished.
+
+"It seems strange to you, monsieur" - he was addressing, in
+French, the American Justice - "that we should put our prisoners
+into an iron cage, as beasts are exhibited in a circus.  You are
+shocked at that.  It strikes you as the crudity of a race not
+quite civilized.
+
+"You inquire about it with perfect courtesy; but, monsieur, you
+inquire as one inquires about a custom that his sense of justice
+rejects."
+
+He paused.
+
+"Your pardon, monsieur; but there are some conceptions of justice
+in the law of your admirable country that seem equally strange to
+me."
+
+The men about the Count on the exquisite terrace, looking down
+over Cannes into the arc of the sea, felt that the great age of
+this man gave him a right of frankness, a privilege of direct
+expression, they could not resent.  Somehow, at the extremity of
+life, he seemed beyond pretenses; and he had the right to omit
+the digressions by which younger men are accustomed to approach
+the truth.
+
+"What is this strange thing in our law, Count?" said the
+American.
+
+The old man made a vague gesture, as one who puts away an
+inquiry until the answer appears.
+
+"Many years ago," he continued, "I read a story about the red
+Indians by your author, Cooper.  It was named `The Oak Openings,'
+and was included, I think, in a volume entitled Stories of the
+Prairie.  I believe I have the names quite right, since the
+author impressed me as an inferior comer with an abundance of
+gold about him.  In the story Corporal Flint was captured by the
+Indians under the leadership of Bough of Oak, a cruel and
+bloodthirsty savage.
+
+"This hideous beast determined to put his prisoner to the torture
+of the saplings, a barbarity rivaling the crucifixion of the
+Romans.  Two small trees standing near each other were selected,
+the tops lopped off and the branches removed; they were bent and
+the tops were lashed together.  One of the victim's wrists was
+bound to the top of each of the young trees; then the saplings
+were released and the victim, his arms wrenched and dislocated,
+hung suspended in excruciating agony, like a man nailed to a
+cross.
+
+"It was fearful torture.  The strain on the limbs was hideous,
+yet the victim might live for days.  Nothing short of crucifixion
+- that beauty of the Roman law - ever equaled it."
+
+He paused and flicked the ashes from his cigarette.
+
+"Corporal Flint, who seemed to have a knowledge of the Indian
+character, had endeavored so to anger the Indians by taunt and
+invective that some brave would put an arrow into his heart, or
+dash his brains out with a stone ax.
+
+"In this he failed.  Bough of Oak controlled his braves and
+Corporal Flint was lashed to the saplings.  But, as the trees
+sprang apart, wrenching the man's arms out of their sockets, a
+friendly  Indian, Pigeonwing, concealed in a neighboring thicket,
+unable to rescue his friend and wishing to save him from the long
+hours of awful torture, shot Corporal Flint through the forehead.
+
+"Now," continued the Count, "if there was no question about these
+facts, and Bough of Oak stood for trial before any civilized
+tribunal on this earth, do you think the laws of any country
+would acquit him of the murder of Corporal Flint?"
+
+The whole company laughed.
+
+"I am entirely serious," continued the Count.  "What do you
+think?  There are three great nations represented here."
+
+"The exigencies of war," said Sir Henry Marquis, "might
+differentiate a barbarity from a crime."
+
+"But let us assume," replied the Count, "that no state of war
+existed; that it was a time of peace; that Corporal Flint was
+innocent of wrong; and that Bough of Oak was acting entirely from
+a depraved instinct bent on murder.  In other words, suppose this
+thing had occurred yesterday in one of the Middle States of the
+American Republic?"
+
+The American felt that this question was directed primarily to
+himself.  He put down his cigar and indicated the Englishman by a
+gesture.
+
+"Your great jurist, Sir James Stephen," he began, "constantly
+reminds us that the criminal law is a machine so rough and
+dangerous that we can use it only with every safety device
+attached.
+
+"And so, Count," he continued, to the Italian, "the
+administration of the criminal law in our country may seem to you
+subject to delays and indirections that are not justified.  These
+abuses could be generally corrected by an intelligent presiding
+judge; but, in part, they are incidental to a fair and full
+investigation of the charge against the prisoner.  I think,
+however, that our conception of justice does not differ from that
+of other nations."
+
+The old Count shrugged his shoulders at the digression.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said.  "I do not refer to the mere
+administration of the criminal law in your country; though,
+monsieur, we have been interested in observing its peculiarities
+in such notable examples as the Thaw trials in New York, and the
+Anarchist cases in Chicago some years ago.  I believe the judge
+in the latter trial gave about one hundred instructions on the
+subject of reasonable doubt - quite intelligible, I dare say, to
+an American jury; but, I must confess, somewhat beyond me in
+their metaphysical refinements.
+
+"I should understand reasonable doubt if I were uninstructed, but
+I do not think I could explain it.  I should be, concerning it,
+somewhat as Saint Augustine was with a certain doctrine of the
+Church when he said: `I do not know if you ask me; but if you do
+not ask me I know very well.'"
+
+He paused and blew a tiny ring or smoke out over the terrace
+toward the sea.
+
+"There was a certain poetic justice finally in that case," he
+added.
+
+"The prisoners were properly convicted of the Haymarket murders,"
+said the American Justice.
+
+"Ah, no doubt," returned the Count; "but I was not thinking of
+that.  Following a custom of your courts, I believe, the judge at
+the end of the trial put the formal inquiry as to whether the
+prisoners had anything to say.  Whereupon they rose and addressed
+him for six days!"
+
+He bowed.
+
+"After that, monsieur, I am glad to add, they were all very
+properly hanged.
+
+"But, monsieur, permit me to return to my question: Do you think
+any intelligent tribunal on this earth would acquit Bough of Oak
+of the murder of Corporal Flint under the conditions I have
+indicated?"
+
+"No," said the American.  "It would be a cold-blooded murder; and
+in the end the creature would be executed."
+
+The old Count turned suddenly in his chair.
+
+"Yes," he said, "in a Continental court, it is certain; but in
+America, monsieur, under your admirable law, founded on the
+common law of England?"
+
+"I am sure we should hang him," replied the American.
+
+"Monsieur," cried the old Count, "you have me profoundly
+puzzled."
+
+It seemed to the little group on the terrace that they, and not
+the Count, were indicated by that remark.  He had stated a case
+about which there could be no two opinions under any civilized
+conception of justice.  Sir Henry Marquis had pointed out the
+only element - a state of war - which could distinguish the case
+from plain premeditated murder in its highest degree.  They
+looked to him for an explanation; but it did not immediately
+arrive.
+
+The Count noticed it and offered a word of apology.
+
+"Presently - presently," he said.  "We have these two words in
+Italian - sparate! and aspetate!  Monsieur."
+
+He turned to the American:
+
+"You do not know our language, I believe.  Suppose I should
+suddenly call out one of these words and afterward it should
+prove that a life hung on your being able to say which word it
+was I uttered.  Do you think, monsieur, you could be certain?
+
+"No, monsieur; and so courts are wise to require a full
+explanation of every extraordinary fact.  George Goykovich, an
+Austrian, having no knowledge of the Italian language, swore in
+the court of an American state that he heard a prisoner use the
+Italian word sparate! and that he could not be mistaken.
+
+"I would not believe him, monsieur, on that statement; but he
+explained that he was a coal miner, that the mines were worked by
+Italians, and that this  word was called out when the coal was
+about to be shot down with powder.
+
+"Ah, monsieur, the explanation is complete.  George Goykovich
+must know this word; it was a danger signal.  I would believe now
+his extraordinary statement."
+
+The Count stopped a moment and lighted another cigarette.
+
+"Pardon me if I seem to proceed obliquely.  The incident is
+related to the case I approach; and it makes clear, monsieur, why
+the courts of France, for example, permit every variety of
+explanation in a criminal trial, while your country and the great
+English nation limit explanations.
+
+"You do not permit hearsay evidence to save a man's life; with a
+fine distinction you permit it to save only his character!"
+
+"The rule," replied the American justice, "everywhere among
+English-speaking people is that the best evidence of which the
+subject is capable shall be produced.  We permit a witness to
+testify only to what he actually knows.  That is the rule.  It is
+true there are exceptions to it.  In some instances he may
+testify as to what he has heard."
+
+"Ah, yes," replied the Count; "you will not permit such evidence
+to take away a man's horse, but you will permit it to take away a
+woman's reputation!  I shall never be able to understand these
+delicate refinements of the English law!"
+
+"But, Count," suggested Sir Henry Marquis, "reputation is
+precisely that what the neighborhood says about one."
+
+"Pardon, monsieur," returned the Count.  "I do not criticize your
+customs.  They are doubtless excellent in every variety of way.
+I deplore only my inability to comprehend them.  For example,
+monsieur, why should you hold a citizen responsible in all other
+cases only for what he does, but in the case of his own character
+turn about and try him for what people say he does?
+
+"Thus, monsieur, as I understand it, the men of an English
+village could not take away my pig by merely proving that
+everybody said it was stolen; but they could brand me as a liar
+by merely proving what the villagers said!  It seems incredible
+that men should put such value on a pig."
+
+Sir Henry Marquis laughed.
+
+"It is not entirely a question of values, Count."
+
+"I beg you to pardon me, monsieur," the Italian went on.
+"Doubtless, on this subject I do nothing more than reveal an
+intelligence lamentably inefficient; but I had the idea that
+English people were accustomed to regard property of greater
+importance than life."
+
+"I have never heard," replied the Englishman, smiling, "that our
+courts gave more attention to pigs than to murder."
+
+"Why, yes, monsieur," said the Count - "that is precisely what
+they have been accustomed to do.  It is only, I believe, within
+recent years that one convicted of murder in England could take
+an appeal to a higher court; though a controversy over pigs - or,
+at any rate, the pasture on which they gathered acorns - could
+always be carried up."
+
+The great age of the Count - he seemed to be the representative
+in the world of some vanished empire - gave his irony a certain
+indirection.  Everybody laughed.  And he added: "Even your word
+`murder,' I believe, was originally the name of a fine imposed by
+the Danes on a village unless it could be proved that the person
+found dead was an Englishman!
+
+"I wonder when, precisely, the world began to regard it as a
+crime to kill an Englishman?"
+
+The parchment on the bones of his face wrinkled into a sort of
+smile.  His greatest friend on the Riviera was this pipe-smoking
+Briton.
+
+Then suddenly, with a nimble gesture that one would not believe
+possible in the aged, he stripped back his sleeve and exhibited a
+long, curiously twisted scar, as though a bullet had plowed along
+the arm.
+
+"Alas, monsieur," he said, "I myself live in the most primitive
+condition of society!  I pay a tribute for life . . . .  Ah!  no,
+monsieur; it is not to the Camorra that I pay.  It is quite
+unromantic.  I think my secretary carries it in his books as a
+pension to an indigent relative."
+
+He turned to the American
+
+"Believe me, monsieur, my estates in Salerno are not what they
+were; the olive trees are old and all drains on my income are a
+burden - even this gratuity.  I thought I should be rid of it;
+but, alas, the extraordinary conception of justice in your
+country!"
+
+He broke the cigarette in his fingers, and flung the pieces over
+the terrace.
+
+"In the great range of mountains," he began, "slashing across the
+American states and beautifully named the Alleghanies, there is a
+vast measure of coal beds.  It is thither that the emigrants from
+Southern Europe journey.  They mine out the coal, sometimes
+descending into the earth through pits, or what in your language
+are called shafts, and sometimes following the stratum of the
+coal bed into the hill.
+
+"This underworld, monsieur - this, sunless world, built
+underneath the mountains, is a section of Europe slipped under
+the American Republic.  The language spoken there is not English.
+The men laboring in those buried communities cry out sparate when
+they are about to shoot down the coal with powder.  It is Italy
+under there.  There is a river called the Monongahela in those
+mountains.  It is an Indian name."
+
+He paused.
+
+"And so, monsieur, what happened along it doubtless reminded me
+of Cooper's story - Bough of Oak and the case of Corporal Flint."
+
+He took another cigarette out of a box on the table, but he did
+not light it.
+
+"In one of the little mining villages along this river with the
+enchanting name there was a man physically like the people of the
+Iliad; and with that, monsieur, he had a certain cast of mind not
+unHellenic.  He was tall, weighed two hundred and forty pounds,
+lean as a gladiator, and in the vigor of golden youth.
+
+"There were no wars to journey after and no adventures; but there
+was danger and adventure here.  This land was full of cockle,
+winnowed out of Italy, Austria and the whole south of Europe.  It
+took courage and the iron hand of the state to keep the peace.
+Here was a life of danger; and this Ionian - big, powerful,
+muscled like the heroes of the Circus Maximus - entered this
+perilous service.
+
+"Monsieur, I have said his mind was Hellenic, like his big,
+wonderful body.  Mark you how of heroic antiquity it was!  It was
+his boast, among the perils that constantly beset him, that no
+criminal should ever take his life; that, if ever he should
+receive a mortal wound from the hand of the assassins about him,
+he would not wait to die in agony by it.  He himself would sever
+the damaged thread of life and go out like a man!
+
+"Observe, monsieur, how like the great heroes of legend - like
+the wounded Saul when he ordered his armor-bearer to kill him;
+like Brutus when he fell on his sword!"
+
+He looked intently at the American.
+
+"Doubtless, monsieur," he went on, "those near this man along the
+Monongahela did not appreciate his attitude of grandeur; but to
+us, in the distance, it seemed great and noble."
+
+He looked out over the Mediterranean, where the great adventurers
+who cherished these lofty pagan ideals once beat along in the
+morning of the world.
+
+"On an afternoon of summer," he continued like one who begins a
+saga, "this man, alone and fearless, followed a violator of the
+law and arrested him in a house of the village.  As he led the
+man away he noticed that an Italian followed.  He was a little
+degenerate, wearing a green hat, and bearing now one name and now
+another.  They traversed the village toward, the municipal
+prison; and this creature, featured like a Parisian Apache,
+skulked behind.
+
+"As they went along, two Austrians seated on the porch of a house
+heard the little man speak to the prisoner.  He used the word
+sparate.  They did not know what he meant, for he spoke in
+Italian; but they recognized the word, for it was the word used
+in the mines before the coal was shot down.  The prisoner made
+his reply in Italian, which the Austrians did not understand.
+
+"It seemed that this man who had made the arrest did not know
+Italian, for he stopped and asked the one behind him whether the
+prisoner was his brother.  The man replied in the negative."
+
+The Count paused, as though for an explanation.  "What the Apache
+said was: `Shall I shoot him here or wait until we reach the
+ravine?'  And the prisoner replied: `Wait until we come to the
+ravine.'
+
+"They went on.  Presently they reached a sort of hollow, where
+the reeds grew along the road densely and to the height of a
+man's head.  Here the Italian Apache, the degenerate with the
+green hat, following some three steps behind, suddenly drew a
+revolver from his pocket and shot the man twice in the back.  It
+was a weapon carrying a lead bullet as large as the tip of one's
+little finger.  The officer fell.  The Apache and the prisoner
+fled.
+
+"The wounded man got up.  He spread out his arms; and he shouted,
+with a great voice, like the heroes of the Iliad.  The two wounds
+were mortal; they were hideous, ghastly wounds, ripping up the
+vital organs in the man's body and severing the great arteries.
+The splendid pagan knew he had received his death wounds; and,
+true to his atavistic ideal, the ideal of the Greek, the Hebrew
+and the Roman, the ideal of the great pagan world to which he in
+spirit belonged, and of which the poets sing, he put his own
+weapon to his head and blew his brains out."
+
+The old Count, his chin up, his withered, yellow face vitalized,
+lifted his hands like one before something elevated and noble.
+After some moments had passed he continued:
+
+"On the following day the assassin was captured in a neighboring
+village.  Feeling ran so high that it was with difficulty that
+the officers of the law saved him from being lynched.  He was
+taken about from one prison to another.  Finally he was put on
+trial for murder.
+
+"There was never a clearer case before any tribunal in this
+world.
+
+"Many witnesses identified the assassin - not merely
+English-speaking men, who might have been mistaken or prejudiced,
+but Austrians, Poles, Italians - the men of the mines who knew
+him; who had heard him cry out the fatal Italian word; who saw
+him following in the road behind his victim on that Sunday
+afternoon of summer; who knew his many names and every feature of
+his cruel, degenerate face.  There was no doubt anywhere in the
+trial.  Learned surgeons showed that the two wounds in the dead
+man's back from the big-calibered weapon were deadly, fatal
+wounds that no man could have survived.
+
+"There was nothing incomplete in that trial.
+
+"Everything was so certain that the assassin did not even
+undertake to contradict; not one statement, not one word of the
+evidence against him did he deny.  It was a plain case of
+willful, deliberate and premeditated murder.  The judge presiding
+at the trial instructed the jury that a man is presumed to intend
+that which he does; that whoever kills a human being with malice
+aforethought is guilty of murder; that murder which is
+perpetrated by any kind of willful, deliberate and premeditated
+killing is murder in the first degree.  The jury found the
+assassin guilty and the judge sentenced him to be hanged."
+
+The Count paused and looked at his companions about him on the
+terrace.
+
+"Messieurs," he said, "do you think that conviction was just?"
+
+There was a common assent.  Some one said: "It was a cruel murder
+if ever there was one."  And another: "It was wholly just; the
+creature deserved to hang."
+
+The old Count bowed, putting out his hands.
+
+"And so I hoped he would."
+
+"What happened?" said the American.
+
+The Count regarded him with a queer, ironical smile.
+
+"Unlike the great British people, monsieur," he replied, "your
+courts have never given the pig, or the pasture on which he
+gathers his acorns, a consideration above the human family.  The
+case was taken to your Court of Appeals of that province."
+
+He stopped and lighted his cigarette deliberately, with a match
+scratched slowly on the table.
+
+"Monsieur," he said, "I do not criticize your elevated court.  It
+is composed of learned men - wise and patriotic, I have no doubt.
+They cannot make the laws, monsieur; they cannot coin a
+conception of justice for your people.  They must enforce the
+precise rules of law that the conception of justice in your
+country has established.
+
+"Nevertheless, monsieur" - and his thin yellow lips curled - "for
+the sake of my depleted revenues I could have wished that the
+decision of this court had been other than it was."
+
+"And what did it decide?" asked the American.
+
+"It decided, monsieur," replied the Count, "that my estates in
+Salerno must continue to be charged with the gratuity to the
+indigent relative.
+
+"That is to say, monsieur, it decided, because the great pagan
+did not wait to die in agony, did not wait for the mortal wounds
+inflicted by the would-be assassin to kill him, that interesting
+person - the man in the green hat - was not guilty of murder in
+the first degree and could not be hanged!"
+
+
+Note - See State versus Angelina; 80 Southeastern Reporter, 141:
+"The intervening responsible agent who wrongfully accelerates
+death is guilty of the murder, and not the one who inflicted the
+first injury, though in itself mortal."
+
+
+
+
+VI.  The Wrong Sign
+
+
+It was an ancient diary in a faded leather cover.  The writing
+was fine and delicate, and the ink yellow with age.  Sir Henry
+Marquis turned the pages slowly and with care for the paper was
+fragile.
+
+We had dined early at the Ritz and come in later to his great
+home in St. James's Square.
+
+He wished to show me this old diary that had come to him from a
+branch of his mother's family in Virginia - a branch that had
+gone out with a King's grant when Virginia was a crown colony.
+The collateral ancestor, Pendleton, had been a justice of the
+peace in Virginia, and a spinster daughter had written down some
+of the strange cases with which her father had been concerned.
+
+Sir Henry Marquis believed that these cases in their tragic
+details, and their inspirational, deductive handling, equaled any
+of our modern time.  The great library overlooking St. James's
+Square, was curtained off from London.  Sir Henry read by the
+fire; and I listened, returned, as by some recession of time to
+the Virginia of a vanished decade.  The narrative of the diary
+follows:
+
+
+My father used to say that the Justice of God was sometimes swift
+and terrible.  He said we thought of it usually as remote and
+deliberate, a sort of calm adjustment in some supernatural Court
+of Equity.  But this idea was far from the truth.  He had seen
+the justice of God move on the heels of a man with appalling
+swiftness; with a crushing force and directness that simply
+staggered the human mind.  I know the case he thought about.
+
+Two men sat over a table when my father entered.  One of them got
+up.  He was a strange human creature, when you stood and looked
+calmly at him.  You thought the Artificer had designed him for a
+priest of the church.  He had the massive features and the fringe
+of hair around his bald head like a tonsure.  At first, to your
+eye, it was the vestments of the church, he lacked; then you saw
+that the lack was something fundamental; something organic in the
+nature of the man.  And as he held and stimulated your attention
+you got a fearful idea, that the purpose for which this human
+creature was shaped had been somehow artfully reversed!
+
+He was big boned and tall when he stood up.
+
+"Pendleton," he said, "I would have come to you, but for my
+guest."
+
+And he indicated the elegant young man at the table.
+
+"But I did not send you word to ride a dozen miles through the
+hills on any trivial business, or out of courtesy to me.  It is a
+matter of some import, so I will pay ten eagles."
+
+My father looked steadily at the man.
+
+"I am not for hire," he said.
+
+My father was a justice of the peace in Virginia, under the
+English system, by the theory of which the most substantial men
+in a county undertook to keep the peace for the welfare of the
+State.  Like Washington in the service of the Colonial army, he
+took no pay.
+
+The big man laughed.
+
+"We are most of us for purchase, and all of us for hire," he
+said.  "I will make it twenty!"
+
+The young man at the table now interrupted.  He was elegant in
+the costume of the time, in imported linen and cloth from an
+English loom.  His hair was thick and black; his eyebrows
+straight, his body and his face rich in the blood and the
+vitalities of youth.  But sensuality was on him like a shadow.
+The man was given over to a life of pleasure.
+
+"Mr. Pendleton," he said, with a patronizing pedantic air, "the
+commonwealth is interested to see that litigation does not arise;
+and to that end, I hope you will not refuse us the benefit of
+your experience.  We are about to draw up a deed of sale running
+into a considerable sum, and we would have it court proof."
+
+He made a graceful gesture with his jeweled hand.
+
+"I would be secure in my purchase, and Zindorf in his eagles, and
+you, Sir, in the knowledge that the State will not be vexed by
+any suit between us.  Every contract, I believe, upon some theory
+of the law, is a triangular affair with the State a party.  Let
+us say then, that you represent Virginia!"
+
+"In the service of the commonwealth," replied my father coldly,
+"I am always to be commanded."
+
+The man flicked a bit of dust from his immaculate coat sleeve.
+
+"It will be a conference of high powers.  I shall represent Eros;
+Mr. Pendleton, Virginia; and Zindorf" and he laughed - "his
+Imperial Master!"
+
+And to the eye the three men fitted to their legend.  The
+Hellenic God of pleasure in his sacred groves might have chosen
+for his disciple one from Athens with a face and figure like this
+youth.  My father bore the severities of the law upon him.  And I
+have written how strange a creature the third party to this
+conference was.
+
+He now answered with an oath.
+
+"You have a very pretty wit, Mr. Lucian Morrow," he said.  "I add
+to my price a dozen eagles for it."
+
+The young man shrugged his shoulders in his English coat.
+
+"Smart money, eh, Zindorf . . .  Well, it does not make me smart.
+It only makes me remember that Count Augsburg educated you in
+Bavaria for the Church and you fled away from it to be a slave
+trader in Virginia."
+
+He got on his feet, and my father saw that the man was in liquor.
+He was not drunken, but the effect was on him with its daring and
+its indiscretions.
+
+It was an April morning, bright with sun.  The world was white
+with apple blossoms, the soft air entered through the great open
+windows.  And my father thought that the liquor in the man had
+come with him out of a night of bargaining or revel.
+
+Morrow put his hands on the table and looked at Zindorf ; then,
+suddenly, the laughter in his face gave way to the comprehension
+of a swift, striking idea.
+
+"Why, man," he cried, "it's the devil's truth!  Everything about
+you is a negation!  You ought to be a priest by all the lines and
+features of you; but you're not. . .  Scorch me, but you're not!"
+
+His voice went up on the final word as though to convey some
+impressive, sinister discovery.
+
+It was true in every aspect of the man.  The very clothes he
+wore, somber, wool-threaded homespun, crudely patched, reminded
+one of the coarse fabrics that monks affect for their abasement.
+But one saw, when one remembered the characteristic of the man,
+that they represented here only an extremity of avarice.
+
+Zindorf looked coldly at his guest.
+
+"Mr. Lucian Morrow," he said, "you will go on, and my price will
+go on!"
+
+But the young blood, on his feet, was not brought up by the
+monetary threat.  He looked about the room, at the ceiling, the
+thick walls.  And, like a man who by a sudden recollection
+confounds his adversary with an overlooked illustrative fact, he
+suddenly cried out:
+
+"By the soul of Satan, you're housed to suit!  Send me to the
+pit!  It's the very place for you!  Eh!  Zindorf, do you know who
+built the house you live in?"
+
+"I do not, Mr. Lucian Morrow," said the man.  "Who built it?"
+
+One could see that he wished to divert the discourses of his
+guest. He failed.
+
+"God built it!" cried Morrow.
+
+He put out his hands as though to include the hose.
+
+"Pendleton," he said, "you will remember.  The people built these
+walls for a church.  It burned, but the stone walls could not
+burn; they remained overgrown with creeper.  Then, finally, old
+Wellington Monroe built a house into the walls for the young wife
+he was about to marry, but he went to the coffin instead of the
+bride-bed, and the house stood empty.  It fell into the courts
+with the whole of Monroe's tangled business and finally Zindorf
+gets it at a sheriff's sale."
+
+The big man now confronted the young blood with decision.
+
+"Mr. Lucian Morrow," he said, "if you are finished with your fool
+talk, I will bid you good morning.  I have decided not to sell
+the girl."
+
+The face of Morrow changed.  His voice wheedled in an anxious
+note.
+
+"Not sell her, Zindorf!" he echoed.  "Why man, you have promised
+her to me all along.  You always said I should have her in spite
+of your cursed partner Ordez.  You said you'd get her some day
+and sell her to me.  Now, curse it, Zindorf, I want her . . .
+I've got the money: ten thousand dollars.  It's a big lot of
+money.  But I've got it.  I've got it in gold."
+
+He went on:
+
+"Besides, Zindorf, you can have the money, it'll mean more to
+you.  But it's the girl I want."
+
+He stood up and in his anxiety the effect of the liquor faded
+out.
+
+"I've waited on your promise, Zindorf.  You said that some day,
+when Ordez was hard-pressed he would sell her for money, even if
+she was his natural daughter.  You were right; you knew Ordez.
+You have got an assignment of all the slaves in possession, in
+the partnership, and Ordez has cleared out of the country.  I
+know what you paid for his half-interest in this business, it's
+set out in the assignment.  It was three thousand dollars.
+
+"Think of it, man, three thousand dollars to Ordez for a
+wholesale, omnibus assignment of everything.  An elastic legal
+note of an assignment that you can stretch to include this girl
+along with the half-dozen other slaves that you have on hand
+here; and I offer you ten thousand dollars for the girl alone!"
+
+One could see how the repetition of the sum in gold affected
+Zindorf.
+
+He had the love of money in that dominating control that the
+Apostle spoke of.  But the elegant young man was moved by a lure
+no less potent.  And his anxiety, for the time, suppressed the
+evidences of liquor.
+
+"I'll take the risk on the title, Zindorf.  You and Ordez were
+partners in this traffic.  Ordez gives you a general assignment
+of all slaves on hand for three thousand dollars and lights out
+of the country.  He leaves his daughter here among the others.
+And this general assignment can be construed to include her.  Her
+mother was a slave and that brings her within the law.  We know
+precisely who her mother was, and all about it.  You looked it up
+and my lawyer, Mr. Cable, looked it up.  Her mother was the
+octoroon woman, Suzanne, owned by old Judge Marquette in New
+Orleans.
+
+"There may have been some sort of church marriage, but there's no
+legal record, Cable says.
+
+"The woman belonged to Marquette, and under the law the girl is a
+slave.  You got a paper title out of Marquette's executors,
+privily, years ago.  Now you have this indefinite assignment by
+Ordez.  He's gone to the Spanish Islands, or the devil, or both.
+And if Mr. Pendleton can draw a deed of sale that will stand in
+the courts between us, I'll take the risk on the validity of my
+title."
+
+He paused.
+
+"The law's sound on slaves, Judge Madison has a dozen himself,
+not all black either; not three-eighths black!" and he laughed.
+
+Then he turned to my father.
+
+"Mr. Pendleton," he said, "I persuaded Zindorf to send for you to
+draw up this deed of sale.  I have no confidence in the little
+practicing tricksters at the county seat.  They take a fee and,
+with premeditation, write a word or phrase into the contract that
+leaves it open for a suit at law."
+
+He made a courteous bow, accompanied by a dancing master's
+gesture.
+
+"I do not offend you with the offer of a fee, but I present my
+gratitude for the conspicuous courtesy, and I indicate the
+service to the commonwealth of legal papers in form and court
+proof.  May I hope, Sir, that you will not deny us the benefit of
+your highly distinguished service."
+
+My father very slowly looked about him in calm reflection.
+
+He had ridden ten miles through the hills on this April morning,
+at Zindorf's message sent the night before.  The clay of the
+roads was still damp and plastic from the recent rain.  There
+were flecks of mud on him and the splashing of the streams.
+
+He was a big, dominating man, in the hardened strength and
+experience of middle life.  He had come, as he believed, upon
+some service of the state.  And here was a thing for the little
+dexterities of a lawyer's clerk.  Everybody in Virginia, who knew
+my father, can realize how he was apt to meet the vague message
+of Zindorf that got him in this house, and the patronizing
+courtesies of Mr. Lucian Morrow.
+
+He was direct and virile, and while he feared God, like the great
+figures in the Pentateuch, as though he were a judge of Israel
+enforcing his decrees with the weapon of iron, I cannot write
+here, that at any period of his life, or for any concern or
+reason, he very greatly regarded man.
+
+He went over to the window and looked out at the hills and the
+road that he had traveled.
+
+The mid-morning sun was on the fields and groves like a
+benediction.  The soft vitalizing air entered and took up the
+stench of liquor, the ash of tobacco and the imported perfumes
+affected by Mr. Lucian Morrow.
+
+The windows in the room were long, gothic like a church, and
+turning on a pivot.  They ran into the ceiling that Monroe had
+built across the gutted walls.  The house stood on the crown of a
+hill, in a cluster of oak trees.  Below was the abandoned
+graveyard, the fence about it rotted down; the stone slabs
+overgrown with moss.  The four roads running into the hills
+joined and crossed below this oak grove that the early people had
+selected for a house of God.
+
+My father looked out on these roads and far back on the one that
+he had traveled.
+
+There was no sound in the world, except the faint tolling of a
+bell in a distant wood on the road.  It was far off on the way to
+my father's house, and the vague sound was to be heard only when
+a breath of wind carried from that way.
+
+My father gathered his big chin, flat like a plowshare, into the
+trough of his bronze hand.  He stood for some moments in
+reflection, then he turned to Mr. Lucian Morrow.
+
+"I think you are right," he said.  "I think this is a triangular
+affair with the state a party.  I am in the service of the state.
+Will you kindly put the table by this window."
+
+They thought he wished the air, and would thus escape the
+closeness of the room.  And while my father stood aside, Zindorf
+and his guest carried the flat writing table to the window and
+placed a chair.
+
+My father sat down behind the table by the great open window, and
+looked at Zindorf.
+
+The man moved and acted like a monk.  He had the figure and the
+tonsured head.  His coarse, patched clothes cut like the homely
+garments of the simple people of the day, were not wholly out of
+keeping to the part.  The idea was visualized about him; the
+simplicity and the poverty of the great monastic orders in their
+vast, noble humility.  All striking and real until one saw his
+face!
+
+My father used to say that the great orders of God were correct
+in this humility; for in its vast, comprehensive action, the
+justice of God moved in a great plain, where every indicatory
+event was precisely equal; a straw was a weaver's beam.
+
+God hailed men to ruin in his court, not with spectacular
+devices, but by means of some homely, common thing, as though to
+abase and overcome our pride.
+
+My father moved the sheets of foolscap, and tested the point of
+the quill pen like one who considers with deliberation.  He
+dipped the point into the inkpot and slowly wrote a dozen formal
+words.
+
+Then he stopped and put down the pen.
+
+"The contests of the courts," he said, "are usually on the
+question of identity.  I ought to see this slave for a correct
+description."
+
+The two men seemed for a moment uncertain what to do.
+
+Then Zindorf addressed my father.
+
+"Pendleton," he said, "the fortunes of life change, and the ideas
+suited to one status are ridiculous in another.  Ordez was a
+fool.  He made believe to this girl a future that he never
+intended, and she is under the glamor of these fancies."
+
+He stood in the posture of a monk, and he spoke each word with a
+clear enunciation.
+
+"It is a very delicate affair, to bring this girl out of the
+extravagances with which Ordez filled her idle head, and not be
+brutal in it.  We must conduct the thing with tact, and we will
+ask you, Pendleton, to observe the courtesies of our pretension."
+
+When he had finished, he flung a door open and went down a
+stairway.  For a time my father heard his footsteps, echoing,
+like those of a priest in the under chambers of a chapel.  Then
+he ascended, and my father was astonished.
+
+He came with a young girl on his arm, as in the ceremony of
+marriage sometimes the priest emerges with the bride.  The girl
+was young and of a Spanish beauty.  She was all in white with
+blossoms in her hair.  And she was radiant, my father said, as in
+the glory of some happy contemplation.  There was no slave like
+this on the block in Virginia.  Young girls like this, my father
+had seen in Havana in the houses of Spanish Grandees.
+
+"This is Mr. Pendleton, our neighbor," Zindorf said.  "He comes
+to offer you his felicitations."
+
+The girl made a little formal curtsy.
+
+"When my father returns," she said in a queer, liquid accent, "he
+will thank you, Meester Pendleton; just now he is on a journey."
+
+And she gave her hand to Lucian Morrow to kiss, like a lady of
+the time.  Then Zindorf, mincing his big step, led her out.
+
+And my father stood behind the table in the enclosure of the
+window, with his arms folded, and his chin lifted above his great
+black stock.  I know how my father looked, for I have seen him
+stand like that before moving factors in great events, when he
+intended, at a certain cue, to enter.
+
+He said that it was at this point that Mr. Lucian Morrow's early
+comment on Zindorf seemed, all at once, to discover the nature of
+this whole affair.  He said that suddenly, with a range of vision
+like the great figures in the Pentateuch, he saw how things right
+and true would work out backward into abominations, if, by any
+chance, the virtue of God in events were displaced!
+
+Zindorf returned, and as he stepped through the door, closing it
+behind him, the far-off tolling of the bell, faint, eerie,
+carried by a stronger breath of April air, entered through the
+window.  My father extended his arm toward the distant wood.
+
+"Zindorf," he said, "do you mark the sign?"  The man listened.
+
+"What sign?" he said.
+
+"The sign of death!" replied my father.
+
+The man made a deprecating gesture with his hands, "I do not
+believe in signs," he said.
+
+My father replied like one corrected by a memory.
+
+"Why, yes," he said, "that is true.  I should have remembered
+that.  You do not believe in signs, Zindorf, since you abandoned
+the sign of the cross, and set these coarse patches on your knees
+to remind you not to bend them in the sign of submission to the
+King of Kings."
+
+The intent in the mended clothing was the economy of avarice, but
+my father turned it to his use.
+
+The man's face clouded with anger.
+
+"What I believe," he said, "is neither the concern of you nor
+another."
+
+He paused with an oath.
+
+"Whatever you may believe, Zindorf," replied my father, "the
+sound of that bell is unquestionably a sign of death."  He
+pointed toward the distant wood.  "In the edge of the forest
+yonder is the ancient church that the people built to replace the
+burned one here.  It has been long abandoned, but in its
+graveyard lie a few old families.  And now and then, when an old
+man dies, they bring him back to put him with his fathers.  This
+morning, as I came along, they were digging the grave for old
+Adam Duncan, and the bell tolls for him.  So you see," and he
+looked Zindorf in the face, "a belief in signs is justified."
+
+Again the big man made his gesture as of one putting something of
+no importance out of the way.
+
+"Believe what you like," he said, "I am not concerned with
+signs."
+
+"Why, yes, Zindorf," replied my father, "of all men you are the
+very one most concerned about them.  You must be careful not to
+use the wrong ones."
+
+It was a moment of peculiar tension.
+
+The room was flooded with sun.  The tiny creatures of the air
+droned outside.  Everywhere was peace and the gentle benevolence
+of peace.  But within this room, split off from the great chamber
+of a church, events covert and sinister seemed preparing to
+assemble.
+
+My father, big and dominant, was behind the table, his great
+shoulders blotting out the window;
+
+Mr. Lucian Morrow sat doubled in a chair, and Zindorf stood with
+the closed door behind him.
+
+"You see, Zindorf," he said, "each master has his set of signs.
+Most of us have learned the signs of one master only.  But you
+have learned the signs of both.  And you must be careful not to
+bring the signs of your first master into the service of your
+last one."
+
+The big man did not move, he stood with the door closed behind
+him, and studied my father's face like one who feels the presence
+of a danger that he cannot locate.
+
+"What do you mean?" he said.
+
+"I mean," replied my father, "I mean, Zindorf, that each master
+has a certain intent in events, and this intent is indicated by
+his set of signs.  Now the great purpose of these two masters, we
+believe, in all the moving of events, is directly opposed.  Thus,
+when we use a sign of one of these masters, we express by the
+symbol of it the hope that events will take the direction of his
+established purpose.
+
+"Don't you see then . . . don't you see, that we dare not use the
+signs of one in the service of the other?"
+
+"Pendleton," said the man, "I do not understand you."
+
+He spoke slowly and precisely, like one moving with an excess of
+care.
+
+My father went on, his voice strong and level, his eyes on
+Zindorf.
+
+"The thing is a great mystery," he said.  "It is not clear to any
+of us in its causes or its relations.  But old legends and old
+beliefs, running down from the very morning of the world, tell us
+- warn us, Zindorf - that the signs of each of these masters are
+abhorrent to the other.  Neither will tolerate the use of his
+adversary's sign.  Moreover, Zindorf, there is a double peril in
+it."
+
+And his voice rose.
+
+"There is the peril that the new master will abandon the
+blunderer for the insult, and there is the peril that the old one
+will destroy him for the sacrilege!"
+
+At this moment the door behind Zindorf opened, and the young girl
+entered.  She was excited and her eyes danced.
+
+"Oh!" she said, "people are coming on every road!"
+
+She looked, my father said, like a painted picture, her dark
+Castilian beauty illumined by the pleasure in her interpretation
+of events.  She thought the countryside assembled after the
+manner of my father to express its felicitations.
+
+Zindorf crossed in great strides to the window: Mr. Lucian
+Morrow, sober and overwhelmed by the mystery of events about him,
+got unsteadily on his feet, holding with both hands to the oak
+back of a chair.
+
+My father said that the tragedy of the thing was on him, and he
+acted under the pressure of it.
+
+"My child," he said, "you are to go to the house of your
+grandfather in Havana.  If Mr. Lucian Morrow wishes to renew his
+suit for your hand in marriage, he will do it there.  Go now and
+make your preparations for the journey."
+
+The girl cried out in pleasure at the words.
+
+"My grandfather is a great person in New Spain.  I have always
+longed to see him . . . father promised . . . and now I am to go
+. . . when do we set out, Meester Pendleton?"
+
+"At once," replied my father, "to-day."  Then he crossed the room
+and opened the door for her to go out.  He held the latch until
+the girl was down the stairway.  Then he closed the door.
+
+The big man, falsely in his aspect, like a monk, looking out at
+the far-off figures on the distant roads, now turned about.
+
+"A clever ruse, Pendleton," he said, "We can send her now, on
+this pretended journey, to Morrow's house, after the sale."
+
+My father went over and sat down at the table.  He took a faded
+silk envelope out of his, coat, and laid it down before him.
+Then he answered Zindorf.
+
+"There will be no sale," he said.
+
+Mr. Lucian Morrow interrupted.
+
+"And why no sale, Sir?"
+
+"Because there is no slave to sell," replied my father.  "This
+girl is not the daughter of the octoroon woman, Suzanne."
+
+Zindorf's big jaws tightened.
+
+"How did you know that?" he said.
+
+My father answered with deliberation.
+
+"I would have known it," he said, "from the wording of the paper
+you exhibit from Marquette's executors.  It is merely a release
+of any claim or color of title; the sort of legal paper one
+executes when one gives up a right or claim that one has no faith
+in.  Marquette's executors were the ablest lawyers in New
+Orleans.  They were not the men to sign away valuable property in
+a conveyance like that; that they did sign such a paper is
+conclusive evidence to me that they had nothing - and knew they
+had nothing - to release by it." He paused.
+
+"I know it also," he said, "because I have before me here the
+girl's certificate of birth and Ordez's certificate of marriage."
+
+He opened the silk envelope and took out some faded papers.  He
+unfolded them and spread them out under his hand.
+
+"I think Ordez feared for his child," he said, "and stored these
+papers against the day of danger to her, because they are copies
+taken from the records in Havana."
+
+He looked up at the astonished Morrow.
+
+"Ordez married the daughter of Pedro de Hernando.  I find, by a
+note to these papers, that she is dead.  I conclude that this
+great Spanish family objected to the adventurer, and he fled with
+his infant daughter to New Orleans." he paused.
+
+"The intrigue with the octoroon woman, Suzanne, came after that."
+
+Then he added:
+
+"You must renew your negotiations, Sir, in, a somewhat different
+manner before a Spanish Grandee in Havana!"
+
+Mr. Lucian Morrow did not reply.  He stood in a sort of wonder.
+But Zindorf, his face like iron, addressed my father:
+
+"Where did you get these papers, Pendleton?" he said.
+
+"I got them from Ordez," replied my father.
+
+"When did you see Ordez?"
+
+"I saw him to-day," replied my father.
+
+Zindorf did not move, but his big jaw worked and a faint spray of
+moisture came out on his face.  Then, finally, with no change or
+quaver in his voice, he put his query.
+
+"Where is Ordez?"
+
+"Where?" echoed my father, and he rose.  "Why, Zindorf, he is on
+his way here."  And he extended his arm toward the open window.
+The big man lifted his head and looked out at the men and horses
+now clearly visible on the distant road.
+
+"Who are these people," he said, "and why do they come?"  He
+spoke as though he addressed some present but invisible
+authority.
+
+My father answered him
+
+"They are the people of Virginia," he said, "and they come,
+Zindorf, in the purpose of events that you have turned terribly
+backward!"
+
+The man was in some desperate perplexity, but he had steel nerves
+and the devil's courage.
+
+He looked my father calmly in the face.
+
+"What does all this mean?" he said.
+
+"It means, Zindorf," cried my father, "it means that the very
+things, the very particular things, that you ought to have used
+for the glory of God, God has used for your damnation!"
+
+And again, in the clear April air, there entered through the open
+window the faint tolling of a bell.
+
+"Listen, Zindorf!  I will tell you.  In the old abandoned church
+yonder, when they came to toll the bell for Duncan, the rope fell
+to pieces; I came along then, and Jacob Lance climbed into the
+steeple to toll the bell by hand.  At the first crash of sound a
+wolf ran out of a thicket in the ravine below him, and fled away
+toward the mountains.  Lance, from his elevated point, could see
+the wolf's muzzle was bloody.  That would mean, that a lost horse
+had been killed or an estray steer.  He called down and we went
+in to see what thing this scavenger had got hold of."
+
+He paused.
+
+"In the cut of an abandoned road we found the body of Ordez
+riddled with buckshot, and his pockets rifled.  But sewed up in
+his coat was the silk envelope with these papers.  I took
+possession of them as a Justice of the Peace, ordered the body
+sent on here, and the people to assemble."
+
+He extended his arm toward the faint, quivering, distant sound.
+
+"Listen, Zindorf," he cried; "the bell began to toll for Duncan,
+but it tolls now for the murderer of Ordez.  It tolls to raise
+the country against the assassin!"
+
+The false monk had the courage of his master.  He stood out and
+faced my father.
+
+"But can you find him, Pendleton," he said.  And his harsh voice
+was firm.  "You find Ordez dead; well, some assassin shot him and
+carried his body into the cut of the abandoned road.  But who was
+that assassin?  Is Virginia scant of murderers?  Do you know the
+right one?"
+
+My father answered in his great dominating voice
+
+"God knows him, Zindorf, and I know him! . . .  The man who
+murdered Ordez made a fatal blunder . . .  He used a sign of God
+in the service of the devil and he is ruined!"
+
+The big man stepped slowly backward into the room, while my
+father's voice, filling the big empty spaces of the house,
+followed after him.
+
+"You are lost, Zindorf!  Satan is insulted, and God is outraged!
+You are lost!"
+
+There was a moment's silence; from outside came the sound of men
+and horses.  The notes of the girl, light, happy, ascended from
+the lower chamber, as she sang about her preparations for the
+journey.  Zindorf continued to step awfully backward.  And
+Lucian Morrow, shaken and sober, cried out in the extremity of
+fear:
+
+"In God's name, Pendleton, what do you mean; Zindorf, using a
+sign of God in the service of the devil."
+
+And my father answered him:
+
+"The corpse of Ordez lay in the bare cut of the abandoned road,
+and beside it, bedded in the damp clay where he had knelt down to
+rifle the pockets of the murdered body, were the patch prints of
+Zindorf's knees!"
+
+
+
+
+
+VII. The Fortune Teller
+
+
+Sir Henry Marquis continued to read; he made no comment; his
+voice clear and even.
+
+
+It was a big sunny room.  The long windows looked out on a formal
+garden, great beech trees and the bow of the river.  Within it
+was a sort of library.  There were bookcases built into the wall,
+to the height of a man's head, and at intervals between them,
+rising from the floor to the cornice of the shelves, were rows of
+mahogany drawers with glass knobs.  There was also a flat writing
+table.
+
+It was the room of a traveler, a man of letters, a dreamer.  On
+the table were an inkpot of carved jade, a paperknife of ivory
+with gold butterflies set in; three bronze storks, with their
+backs together, held an exquisite Japanese crystal.
+
+The room was in disorder - the drawers pulled out and the
+contents ransacked.
+
+My father stood leaning against the casement of the window,
+looking out.  The lawyer, Mr. Lewis, sat in a chair beside the
+table, his eyes on the violated room.
+
+"Pendleton," he said, "I don't like this English man Gosford."
+
+The words seemed to arouse my father out of the depths of some
+reflection, and he turned to the lawyer, Mr. Lewis.
+
+"Gosford!" he echoed.
+
+"He is behind this business, Pendleton," the lawyer, Mr. Lewis,
+went on.  "Mark my word!  He comes here when Marshall is dying;
+he forces his way to the man's bed; he puts the servants out; he
+locks the door.  Now, what business had this Englishman with
+Marshall on his deathbed?  What business of a secrecy so close
+that Marshall's son is barred out by a locked door?"
+
+He paused and twisted the seal ring on his finger.
+
+"When you and I came to visit the sick man, Gosford was always
+here, as though he kept a watch upon us, and when we left, he
+went always to this room to write his letters, as he said.
+
+"And more than this, Pendleton; Marshall is hardly in his grave
+before Gosford writes me to inquire by what legal process the
+dead man's papers may be examined for a will.  And it is Gosford
+who sends a negro riding, as if the devil were on the crupper, to
+summon me in the name of the Commonwealth of Virginia, - to
+appear and examine into the circumstances of this burglary.
+
+"I mistrust the man.  He used to hang about Marshall in his life,
+upon some enterprise of secrecy; and now he takes possession and
+leadership in his affairs, and sets the man's son aside.  In what
+right, Pendleton, does this adventurous Englishman feel himself
+secure?"
+
+My father did not reply to Lewis's discourse.  His comment was in
+another quarter.
+
+"Here is young Marshall and Gaeki," he said.
+
+The lawyer rose and came over to the window.
+
+Two persons were advancing from the direction of the stables - a
+tall, delicate boy, and a strange old man.  The old man walked
+with a quick, jerky, stride.  It was the old country doctor
+Gaeki.  And, unlike any other man of his profession, he would
+work as long and as carefully on the body of a horse as he would
+on the body of a man, snapping out his quaint oaths, and in a
+stress of effort, as though he struggled with some invisible
+creature for its prey.  The negroes used to say that the devil
+was afraid of Gaeki, and he might have been, if to disable a man
+or his horse were the devil's will.  But I think, rather, the
+negroes imagined the devil to fear what they feared themselves.
+
+"Now, what could bring Gaeki here?" said Lewes.
+
+"It was the horse that Gosford overheated in his race to you,"
+replied my father.  "I saw him stop in the road where the negro
+boy was leading the horse about, and then call young Marshall."
+
+"It was no fault of young Marshall, Pendleton," said the lawyer.
+"But, also, he is no match for Gosford.  He is a dilettante.  He
+paints little pictures after the fashion he learned in Paris, and
+he has no force or vigor in him.  His father was a dreamer, a
+wanderer, one who loved the world and its frivolities, and the
+son takes that temperament, softened by his mother.  He ought to
+have a guardian."
+
+"He has one," replied my father.
+
+"A guardian!" repeated Lewis.  "What court has appointed a
+guardian for young Marshall?"
+
+"A court," replied my father, "that does not sit under the
+authority of Virginia.  The helpless, Lewis, in their youth and
+inexperience, are not wholly given over to the spoiler."
+
+The boy they talked about was very young - under twenty, one
+would say.  He was blue-eyed and fair-haired, with thin, delicate
+features, which showed good blood long inbred to the loss of
+vigor.  He had the fine, open, generous face of one who takes the
+world as in a fairy story.  But now there was care and anxiety in
+it, and a furtive shadow, as though the lad's dream of life had
+got some rude awakening.
+
+At this moment the door behind my father and Lewis was thrown
+violently open, and a man entered.  He was a person with the
+manner of a barrister, precise and dapper; he had a long, pink
+face, pale eyes, and a close-cropped beard that brought out the
+hard lines of his mouth.  He bustled to the table, put down a
+sort of portfolio that held an inkpot, a writing-pad and pens,
+and drew up a chair like one about to take the minutes of a
+meeting.  And all the while he apologized for his delay.  He had
+important letters to get off in the post, and to make sure, had
+carried them to the tavern himself.
+
+"And now, sirs, let us get about this business," he finished,
+like one who calls his assistants to a labor:
+
+My father turned about and looked at the man.
+
+"Is your name Gosford?" he said in his cold, level voice.
+
+"It is, sir," replied the Englishman, " - Anthony Gosford."
+
+"Well, Mr. Anthony Gosford," replied my father, "kindly close the
+door that you have opened."
+
+Lewis plucked out his snuffbox and trumpeted in his many-colored
+handkerchief to hide his laughter.
+
+The Englishman, thrown off his patronizing manner, hesitated,
+closed the door as he was bidden - and could not regain his fine
+air.
+
+"Now, Mr. Gosford," my father went on, "why was this room
+violated as we see it?"
+
+"It was searched for Peyton Marshall's will, sir," replied the
+man.
+
+"How did you know that Marshall had a will?" said my father.
+
+"I saw him write it," returned the Englishman, "here in this very
+room, on the eighteenth day of October, 1854."
+
+"That was two years ago," said my father.  "Was the will here at
+Marshall's death?"
+
+"It was.  He told me on his deathbed."
+
+"And it is gone now?"
+
+"It is," replied the Englishman.
+
+"And now, Mr. Gosford," said my father, "how do you know this
+will is gone unless you also know precisely where it was?"
+
+"I do know precisely where it was, sir," returned the man.  "It
+was in the row of drawers on the right of the window where you
+stand - the second drawer from the top.  Mr. Marshall put it
+there when he wrote it, and he told me on his deathbed that it
+remained there.  You can see, sir, that the drawer has been
+rifled."
+
+My father looked casually at the row of mahogany drawers rising
+along the end of the bookcase.  The second one and the one above
+were open; the others below were closed.
+
+"Mr. Gosford," he said, "you would have some interest in this
+will, to know about it so precisely."
+
+"And so I have," replied the man, "it left me a sum of money."
+
+"A large sum?"
+
+"A very large sum, sir."
+
+"Mr. Anthony Gosford," said my father, "for what purpose did
+Peyton Marshall bequeath you a large sum of money?  You are no
+kin; nor was he in your debt."
+
+The Englishman sat down and put his fingers together with a
+judicial air.
+
+"Sir," he began, "I am not advised that the purpose of a bequest
+is relevant, when the bequest is direct and unencumbered by the
+testator with any indicatory words of trust or uses.  This will
+bequeathes me a sum of money.  I am not required by any provision
+of the law to show the reasons moving the testator.  Doubtless,
+Mr. Peyton Marshall had reasons which he deemed excellent for
+this course, but they are, sir, entombed in the grave with him."
+
+My father looked steadily at the man, but he did not seem to
+consider his explanation, nor to go any further on that line.
+
+"Is there another who would know about this will?" he said.
+
+"This effeminate son would know," replied Gosford, a sneer in the
+epithet, "but no other.  Marshall wrote the testament in his own
+hand, without witnesses, as he had the legal right to do under
+the laws of Virginia.  The lawyer," he added, "Mr. Lewis, will
+confirm me in the legality of that."
+
+"It is the law," said Lewis.  "One may draw up a holograph will
+if he likes, in his own hand, and it is valid without a witness
+in this State, although the law does not so run in every
+commonwealth."
+
+"And now, sir," continued the Englishman, turning to my father,
+"we will inquire into the theft of this testament."
+
+But my father did not appear to notice Mr. Gosford.  He seemed
+perplexed and in some concern.
+
+"Lewis," he said, "what is your definition of a crime?"
+
+"It is a violation of the law," replied the lawyer.
+
+"I do not accept your definition," said my father.  "It is,
+rather, I think, a violation of justice - a violation of
+something behind the law that makes an act a crime.  I think," he
+went on, "that God must take a broader view than Mr. Blackstone
+and Lord Coke.  I have seen a murder in the law that was, in
+fact, only a kind of awful accident, and I have seen your
+catalogue of crimes gone about by feeble men with no intent
+except an adjustment of their rights.  Their crimes, Lewis, were
+merely errors of their impractical judgment."
+
+Then he seemed to remember that the Englishman was present.
+
+"And now, Mr. Gosford," he said, "will you kindly ask young
+Marshall to come in here?"
+
+The man would have refused, with some rejoinder, but my father
+was looking at him, and he could not find the courage to resist
+my father's will.  He got up and went out, and presently returned
+followed by the lad and Gaeki.  The old country doctor sat down
+by the door, his leather case of bottles by the chair, his cloak
+still fastened under his chin.  Gosford went back to the table
+and sat down with his writing materials to keep notes.  The boy
+stood.
+
+My father looked a long time at the lad.  His face was grave, but
+when he spoke, his voice was gentle.
+
+"My boy," he said, "I have had a good deal of experience in the
+examination of the devil's work."  He paused and indicated the
+violated room.  "It is often excellently done.  His disciples are
+extremely clever.  One's ingenuity is often taxed to trace out
+the evil design in it, and to stamp it as a false piece set into
+the natural sequence of events."
+
+He paused again, and his big shoulders blotted out the window.
+
+"Every natural event," he continued, "is intimately connected
+with innumerable events that precede and follow.  It has so many
+serrated points of contact with other events that the human mind
+is not able to fit a false event so that no trace of the joinder
+will appear.  The most skilled workmen in the devil's shop are
+only able to give their false piece a blurred joinder."
+
+He stopped and turned to the row of mahogany drawers beside him.
+
+"Now, my boy," he said, "can you tell me why the one who
+ransacked this room, in opening and tumbling the contents of all
+the drawers, about, did not open the two at the bottom of the row
+where I stand?"
+
+"Because there was nothing in them of value, sir," replied the
+lad.
+
+"What is in them?" said my father.
+
+"Only old letters, sir, written to my father, when I was in Paris
+- nothing else."
+
+"And who would know that?" said my father.
+
+The boy went suddenly white.
+
+"Precisely!" said my father.  "You alone knew it, and when you
+undertook to give this library the appearance of a pillaged room,
+you unconsciously endowed your imaginary robber with the thing
+you knew yourself.  Why search for loot in drawers that contained
+only old letters?  So your imaginary robber reasoned, knowing
+what you knew.  But a real robber, having no such knowledge,
+would have ransacked them lest he miss the things of value that
+he searched for."
+
+He paused, his eyes on the lad, his voice deep and gentle.
+
+"Where is the will?" he said.
+
+The white in the boy's face changed to scarlet.  He looked a
+moment about him in a sort of terror; then he lifted his head and
+put back his shoulders.  He crossed the room to a bookcase, took
+down a volume, opened it and brought out a sheet of folded
+foolscap.  He stood up and faced my father and the men about the
+room.
+
+"This man," he said, indicating Gosford, "has no right to take
+all my father had.  He persuaded my father and was trusted by
+him.  But I did not trust him.  My father saw this plan in a
+light that I did not see it, but I did not oppose him.  If he
+wished to use his fortune to help our country in the thing which
+he thought he foresaw, I was willing for him to do it.
+
+"But," he cried, "somebody deceived me, and I will not believe
+that it was my father.  He told me all about this thing.  I had
+not the health to fight for our country, when the time came, he
+said, and as he had no other son, our fortune must go to that
+purpose in our stead.  But my father was just. He said that a
+portion would be set aside for me, and the remainder turned over
+to Mr. Gosford.  But this will gives all to Mr. Gosford and
+leaves me nothing!"
+
+Then he came forward and put the paper in my father's hand.
+There was silence except for the sharp voice of Mr. Gosford.
+
+"I think there will be a criminal proceeding here!"
+
+My father handed the paper to Lewis, who unfolded it and read it
+aloud.  It directed the estate of Peyton Marshall to be sold, the
+sum of fifty thousand dollars paid to Anthony Gosford and the
+remainder to the son.
+
+"But there will be no remainder," cried young Marshall.  "My
+father's estate is worth precisely that sum.  He valued it very
+carefully, item by item, and that is exactly the amount it came
+to."
+
+"Nevertheless," said Lewis, "the will reads that way.  It is in
+legal form, written in Marshall's hand, and signed with his
+signature, and sealed.  Will you examine it, gentlemen?  There
+can be no question of the writing or the signature."
+
+My father took the paper and read it slowly, and old Gaeki nosed
+it over my father's arm, his eyes searching the structure of each
+word, while Mr. Gosford sat back comfortably in his chair like
+one elevated to a victory.
+
+"It is in Marshall's hand and signature," said my father, and old
+Gaeki, nodded, wrinkling his face under his shaggy eyebrows.  He
+went away still wagging his grizzled head, wrote a memorandum on
+an envelope from his pocket, and sat down in, his chair.
+
+My father turned now to young Marshall.
+
+"My boy," he said, "why do you say that some one has deceived
+you?"
+
+"Because, sir," replied the lad, "my father was to leave me
+twenty thousand dollars.  That was his plan.  Thirty thousand
+dollars should be set aside for Mr. Gosford, and the remainder
+turned over to me."
+
+"That would be thirty thousand dollars to Mr. Gosford, instead of
+fifty," said my father.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied the boy; "that is the way my father said he
+would write his will.  But it was not written that way.  It is
+fifty thousand dollars to Mr. Gosford, and the remainder to me.
+If it were thirty thousand dollars to Mr. Gosford, as my father,
+said his will would be, that would have left me twenty thousand
+dollars from the estate; but giving Mr. Gosford fifty thousand
+dollars leaves me nothing."
+
+"And so you adventured on a little larceny," sneered the
+Englishman.
+
+The boy stood very straight and white.
+
+"I do not understand this thing," he said, "but I do not believe
+that my father would deceive me.  He never did deceive me in his
+life.  I may have been a disappointment to him, but my father
+was a gentle man."  His voice went up strong and clear.  "And I
+refuse to believe that he would tell me one thing and do
+another!"
+
+One could not fail to be impressed, or to believe that the boy
+spoke the truth.
+
+"We are sorry," said Lewis, "but the will is valid and we cannot
+go behind it."
+
+My father walked about the room, his face in reflection.  Gosford
+sat at his ease, transcribing a note on his portfolio.  Old Gaeki
+had gone back to his chair and to his little case of bottles; he
+got them up on his knees, as though he would be diverted by
+fingering the tools of his profession.  Lewis was in plain
+distress, for he held the law and its disposition to be
+inviolable; the boy stood with a find defiance, ennobled by the
+trust in his father's honor.  One could not take his stratagem
+for a criminal act; he was only a child, for all his twenty years
+of life.  And yet Lewis saw the elements of crime, and he knew
+that Gosford was writing down the evidence.
+
+It was my father who broke the silence.
+
+"Gosford," he said, "what scheme were you and Marshall about?"
+
+"You may wonder, sir," replied the Englishman, continuing to
+write at his notes; "I shall not tell you."
+
+"But I will tell you," said the boy.  "My father thought that the
+states in this republic could not hold together very much longer.
+He believed that the country would divide, and the South set up a
+separate government.  He hoped this might come about without a
+war.  He was in horror of a war.  He had traveled; he had seen
+nations and read their history, and he knew what civil wars were.
+I have heard him say that men did not realize what they were
+talking when they urged war."
+
+He paused and looked at Gosford.
+
+"My father was convinced that the South would finally set up an
+independent government, but he hoped a war might not follow.  He
+believed that if this new government were immediately recognized
+by Great Britain, the North would accept the inevitable and there
+would be no bloodshed.  My father went to England with this
+scheme.  He met Mr. Gosford somewhere - on the ship, I think.
+And Mr. Gosford succeeded in convincing my father that if he had
+a sum of money he could win over certain powerful persons in the
+English Government, and so pave the way to an immediate
+recognition of the Southern Republic by Great Britain.  He
+followed my father home and hung about him, and so finally got
+his will.  My father was careful; he wrote nothing; Mr. Gosford
+wrote nothing; there is no evidence of this plan; but my father
+told me, and it is true."
+
+My father stopped by the table and lifted his great shoulders.
+
+"And so," he said, "Peyton Marshall imagined a plan like that,
+and left its execution to a Mr. Gosford!"
+
+The Englishman put down his pen and addressed my father.
+
+"I would advise you, sir, to require a little proof for your
+conclusions.  This is a very pretty story, but it is prefaced by
+an admission of no evidence, and it comes as a special pleading
+for a criminal act.  Now, sir, if I chose, if the bequest
+required it, I could give a further explanation, with more
+substance; of moneys borrowed by the decedent in his travels and
+to be returned to me.  But the will, sir, stands for itself, as
+Mr. Lewis will assure you."
+
+Young Marshall looked anxiously at the lawyer.
+
+"Is that the law, sir?"
+
+"It is the law of Virginia," said Lewis, "that a will by a
+competent testator, drawn in form, requires no collateral
+explanation to support it."
+
+My father seemed brought up in a cul-de-sac.  His face was tense
+and disturbed.  He stood by the table; and now, as by accident,
+he put out his hand and took up the Japanese crystal supported by
+the necks of the three bronze storks.  He appeared unconscious of
+the act, for he was in deep reflection.  Then, as though the
+weight in his hand drew his attention, he glanced at the thing.
+Something about it struck him, for his manner changed.  He spread
+the will out on the table and began to move the crystal over it,
+his face close to the glass.  Presently his hand stopped, and he
+stood stooped over, staring into the Oriental crystal, like those
+practicers of black art who predict events from what they pretend
+to see in these spheres of glass.
+
+Mr. Gosford, sitting at his ease, in victory, regarded my father
+with a supercilious, ironical smile.
+
+"Sir," he said, "are you, by chance, a fortuneteller?"
+
+"A misfortune-teller," replied my father, his face still held
+above the crystal.  "I see here a misfortune to Mr. Anthony
+Gosford.  I predict, from what I see, that he will release this
+bequest of moneys to Peyton Marshall's son."
+
+"Your prediction, sir," said Gosford, in a harder note, "is not
+likely to come true."
+
+"Why, yes," replied my father, "it is certain to come true.  I
+see it very clearly.  Mr. Gosford will write out a release, under
+his hand and seal, and go quietly out of Virginia, and Peyton
+Marshall's son will take his entire estate."
+
+"Sir," said the Englishman, now provoked into a temper, "do you
+enjoy this foolery?"
+
+"You are not interested in crystal-gazing, Mr. Gosford," replied
+my father in a tranquil voice.  "Well, I find it most diverting.
+Permit me to piece out your fortune, or rather your misfortune,
+Mr. Gosford!  By chance you fell in with this dreamer Marshall,
+wormed into his confidence, pretended a relation to great men in
+England; followed and persuaded him until, in his ill-health, you
+got this will.  You saw it written two years ago.  When Marshall
+fell ill, you hurried here, learned from the dying man that the
+will remained and where it was.  You made sure by pretending to
+write letters in this room, bringing your portfolio with ink and
+pen and a pad of paper.  Then, at Marshall's death, you inquired
+of Lewis for legal measures to discover the dead man's will.  And
+when you find the room ransacked, you run after the law."
+
+My father paused.
+
+"That is your past, Mr. Gosford.  Now let me tell your future.  I
+see you in joy at the recovered will.  I see you pleased at your
+foresight in getting a direct bequest, and at the care you urged
+on Marshall to leave no evidence of his plan, lest the
+authorities discover it.  For I see, Mr. Gosford, that it was
+your intention all along to keep this sum of money for your own
+use and pleasure.  But alas, Mr. Gosford, it was not to be!  I
+see you writing this release; and Mr. Gosford" - my father's
+voice went up full and strong, - "I see you writing it in
+terror - sweat on your face!"
+
+"The Devil take your nonsense!" cried the Englishman.
+
+My father stood up with a twisted, ironical smile.
+
+"If you doubt my skill, Mr. Gosford, as a fortune, or rather a
+misfortune-teller I will ask Mr. Lewis and Herman Gaeki to tell
+me what they see."
+
+The two men crossed the room and stooped over the paper, while my
+father held the crystal.  The manner and the bearing of the men
+changed.  They grew on the instant tense and fired with interest.
+
+"I see it!" said the old doctor, with a queer foreign expletive.
+
+"And I," cried Lewis, "see something more than Pendleton's
+vision.  I see the penitentiary in the distance."
+
+The Englishman sprang up with an oath and leaned across the
+table.  Then he saw the thing.
+
+"My father's hand held the crystal above the figures of the
+bequest written in the body of the will.  The focused lens of
+glass magnified to a great diameter, and under the vast
+enlargement a thing that would escape the eye stood out.  The top
+curl of a figure 3 had been erased, and the bar of a 5 added.
+One could see the broken fibers of the paper on the outline of
+the curl, and the bar of the five lay across the top of the three
+and the top of the o behind it like a black lath tacked across
+two uprights.
+
+The figure 3 had been changed to 5 so cunningly is to deceive the
+eye, but not to deceive the vast magnification of the crystal.
+The thing stood out big and crude like a carpenter's patch.
+
+Gosford's face became expressionless like wood, his body rigid;
+then he stood up and faced the three men across the table.
+
+"Quite so!" he said in his vacuous English voice.  "Marshall
+wrote a 3 by inadvertence and changed it.  He borrowed my
+penknife to erase the figure."
+
+My father and Lewis gaped like men who see a penned-in beast slip
+out through an unimagined passage.  There was silence.  Then
+suddenly, in the strained stillness of the room, old Doctor Gaeki
+laughed.
+
+Gosford lifted his long pink face, with its cropped beard
+bringing out the ugly mouth.
+
+"Why do you laugh, my good man?" he said.
+
+"I laugh," replied Gaeki, "because a figure 5 can have so many
+colors."
+
+And now my father and Lewis were no less astonished than Mr.
+Gosford.
+
+"Colors!" they said, for the changed figure in the will was
+black.
+
+"Why, yes," replied the old man, "it is very pretty."
+
+He reached across the table and drew over Mr. Gosford's
+memorandum beside the will.
+
+"You are progressive, sir," he went on; "you write in
+iron-nutgall ink, just made, commercially, in this year of
+fifty-six by Mr. Stephens.  But we write here as Marshall wrote
+in 'fifty-four, with logwood."
+
+He turned and fumbled in his little case of bottles.
+
+"I carry a bit of acid for my people's indigestions.  It has
+other uses."  He whipped out the stopper of his vial and dabbed
+Gosford's notes and Marshall's signature.
+
+"See!" he cried.  "Your writing is blue, Mr. Gosford, and
+Marshall's red!"
+
+With an oath the trapped man struck at Gaeki's hand.  The vial
+fell and cracked on the table.  The hydrochloric acid spread out
+over Marshall's will.  And under the chemical reagent the figure
+in the bequest of fifty thousand dollars changed beautifully; the
+bar of the 5 turned blue, and the remainder of it a deep
+purple-red like the body of the will.
+
+"Gaeki," cried my father, "you have trapped a rogue!"
+
+"And I have lost a measure of good acid," replied the old man.
+And he began to gather up the bits of his broken bottle from the
+table.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. The Hole in the Mahogany Panel
+
+
+Sir Henry paused a moment, his finger between the pages of the
+ancient diary.
+
+"It is the inspirational quality in these cases" he said, "that
+impresses me.  It is very nearly absent in our modern methods of
+criminal investigation.  We depend now on a certain formal
+routine.  I rarely find a man in the whole of Scotland Yard with
+a trace of intuitive impulse to lead him . . . .  Observe how
+this old justice in Virginia bridged the gaps between his
+incidents."
+
+He paused.
+
+"We call it the inspirational instinct, in criminal investigation
+. . . genius, is the right word."
+
+He looked up at the clock.
+
+"We have an hour, yet, before the opera will be worth hearing;
+listen to this final case."
+
+The narrative of the diary follows:
+
+The girl was walking in the road.  Her frock was covered with
+dust. Her arms hung limp.  Her face with the great eyes and the
+exquisite mouth was the chalk face of a ghost. She walked with
+the terrible stiffened celerity of a human creature when it is
+trapped and ruined.
+
+Night was coming on.  Behind the girl sat the great old house at
+the end of a long lane of ancient poplars.
+
+This was a strange scene my father came on.  He pulled up his big
+red-roan horse at the crossroads, where the long lane entered the
+turnpike, and looked at the stiff, tragic figure.  He rode home
+from a sitting of the county justices, alone, at peace, on this
+midsummer night, and God sent this tragic thing to meet him.
+
+He got down and stood under the crossroads signboard beside his
+horse.
+
+The earth was dry; in dust. The dead grass and the dead leaves
+made a sere, yellow world.  It looked like a land of unending
+summer, but a breath of chill came out of the hollows with the
+sunset.
+
+The girl would have gone on, oblivious.  But my father went down
+into the road and took her by the arm.  She stopped when she saw
+who it was, and spoke in the dead, uninflected voice of a person
+in extremity.
+
+"Is the thing a lie?" she said.
+
+"What thing, child?" replied my father.
+
+"The thing he told me!"
+
+"Dillworth?" said my father.  "Do you mean Hambleton Dillworth?"
+
+The girl put out her free arm in a stiff, circling gesture.  "In
+all the world," she said, "is there any other man who would have
+told me?"
+
+My father's face hardened as if of metal.  "What did he tell
+you?"
+
+The girl spoke plainly, frankly, in her dead voice, without
+equivocation, with no choice of words to soften what she said:
+
+"He said that my father was not dead; that I was the daughter of
+a thief; that what I believed about my father was all made up to
+save the family name; that the truth was my father robbed him,
+stole his best horse and left the country when I was a baby.  He
+said I was a burden on him, a pensioner, a drone; and to go and
+seek my father."
+
+And suddenly she broke into a flood of tears.  Her face pressed
+against my father's shoulder.  He took her up in his big arms and
+got into his saddle.
+
+"My child," he said, "let us take Hambleton Dillworth at his
+word."
+
+And he turned the horse into the lane toward the ancient house.
+The girl in my father's arms made no resistance.  There was this
+dominating quality in the man that one trusted to him and
+followed behind him.  She lay in his arms, the tears wetting her
+white face and the long lashes.
+
+The moon came up, a great golden moon, shouldered over the rim of
+the world by the backs of the crooked elves.  The horse and the
+two persons made a black, distorted shadow that jerked along as
+though it were a thing evil and persistent.  Far off in the
+thickets of the hills an owl cried, eerie and weird like a
+creature in some bitter sorrow.  The lane was deep with dust. The
+horse traveled with no sound, and the distorted black shadow
+followed, now blotted out by the heavy tree tops, and now only
+partly to be seen, but always there.
+
+My father got down at the door and carried the girl up the steps
+and between the plaster pillars into the house.  There was a hall
+paneled in white wood and with mahogany doors.  He opened one of
+these doors and went in.  The room he entered had been splendid
+in some ancient time.  It was big; the pieces in it were
+exquisite; great mirrors and old portraits were on the wall.
+
+A man sitting behind a table got up when my father entered.  Four
+tallow candles, in ancient silver sticks, were on the table, and
+some sheets with figured accounts.
+
+The man who got up was like some strange old child.  He wore a
+number of little capes to hide his humped back, and his body, one
+thought, under his clothes was strapped together.  He got on his
+feet nimbly like a spider, and they heard the click of a pistol
+lock as he whipped the weapon out of an open drawer, as though it
+were a habit thus always to keep a weapon at his hand to make him
+equal in stature with other men.  Then he saw who it was and the
+double-barreled pistol slipped out of sight.  He was startled and
+apprehensive, but he was not in fear.
+
+He stood motionless behind the table, his head up, his eyes hard,
+his thin mouth closed like a trap and his long, dead black hair
+hanging on each side of his lank face over the huge, malformed
+ears.  The man stood thus, unmoving, silent, with his twisted
+ironical smile, while my father put the girl into a chair and
+stood up behind it.
+
+"Dillworth," said my father, "what do you mean by turning this
+child out of the house?"
+
+The man looked steadily at the two persons before him.
+
+"Pendleton," he said, and he spoke precisely, "I do not recognize
+the right of you, or any other man, to call my acts into account;
+however" - and he made a curious gesture with his extended hands
+"not at your command, but at my pleasure, I will tell you.
+
+"This young woman had some estate from her mother at that lady's
+death.  As her guardian I invested it by permission of the
+court's decree."  He paused.  "When the Maxwell lands were sold
+before the courthouse I bid them in for my ward.  The judge
+confirmed this use of the guardian funds.  It was done upon
+advice of counsel and within the letter of the law.  Now it
+appears that Maxwell had only a life interest in these lands;
+Maxwell is dead, and one who has purchased the interest of his
+heirs sues in the courts for this estate.
+
+"This new claimant will recover; since one who buys at a judicial
+sale, I find, buys under the doctrine of caveat emptor - that is
+to say, at his peril.  He takes his chance upon the title.  The
+court does not insure it.  If it is defective he loses both the
+money and the lands.  And so," he added, "my ward will have no
+income to support her, and I decline to assume that burden."
+
+My father looked the hunchback in the face.  "Who is the man
+bringing this suit at law?"
+
+"A Mr. Henderson, I believe," replied Dillworth, "from Maryland."
+
+"Do you know him?" said my father.
+
+"I never heard of him," replied the hunchback.
+
+The girl, huddled in the chair, interrupted.  "I have seen
+letters," she said, "come in here with this man's return address
+at Baltimore written on the envelope."
+
+The hunchback made an irrelevant gesture.  "The man wrote - to
+inquire if I would buy his title.  I declined."  Then he turned
+to my father.  "Pendleton," he said, "you know about this matter.
+You know that every step I took was legal.  And with pains and
+care how I got an order out of chancery to make this purchase,
+and how careful I was to have this guardianship investment
+confirmed by the court.  No affair was ever done so exactly
+within the law."
+
+"Why were you so extremely careful?" said my father.
+
+"Because I wanted the safeguard of the law about me at every
+step," replied the man.
+
+"But why?"
+
+"You ask me that, Pendleton?"' cried the man.  "Is not the wisdom
+of my precautions evident?  I took them to prevent this very
+thing; to protect myself when this thing should happen!"
+
+"Then," said my father, "you knew it was going to happen."
+
+The man's eyes slipped about a moment in his head.  "I knew it
+was going to happen that I would be charged with all sorts of
+crimes and misdemeanors if there should be any hooks on which to
+hang them.  Because a man locks his door is it proof that he
+knows a robber is on the way?  Human foresight and the experience
+of men move prudent persons to a reasonable precaution in the
+conduct of affairs."
+
+"And what is it," said my father, "that moves them to an
+excessive caution?"
+
+The hunchback snapped his fingers with an exasperated gesture.
+"I will not be annoyed by your big, dominating manner!" he cried.
+
+My father was not concerned by this defiance.  "Dillworth," he
+said, "you sent this child out to seek her father.  Well, she
+took the right road to find him."
+
+The hunchback stepped back quickly, his face changed.  He sat
+down in his chair and looked up at my father.  There was here
+suddenly uncovered something that he had not looked for.  And he
+talked to gain time.
+
+"I have cast up the accounts in proper form," he said while he
+studied my father, his hand moving the figured sheets.  "They are
+correct and settled before two commissioners in chancery.  Taking
+out my commission as guardian, the amounts allowed me for the
+maintenance and education of the ward, and no dollar of this
+personal estate remains."
+
+His long, thin hand with the nimble fingers turned the sheets
+over on the table as though to conclude that phase of the affair.
+
+"The real property," he continued, "will return nothing; the
+purchase money was applied on Maxwell's debts and cannot be
+followed.  This new claimant, Henderson, who has bought up the
+outstanding title, will take the land."
+
+"For some trifling sum," said my father.
+
+The hunchback nodded slowly, his eyes in a study of my father's
+face.
+
+"Doubtless," he said, "it was not known that Maxwell had only a
+life estate in the lands, and the remainder to the heirs was
+likely purchased for some slight amount.  The language of the
+deeds that Henderson exhibits in his suit shows a transfer of all
+claim or title, as though he bought a thing which the grantees
+thought lay with the uncertainties of a decree in chancery."
+
+"I have seen the deeds," said my father.
+
+"Then," said the hunchback, "you know they are valid, and
+transfer the title."  He paused.  "I have no doubt that Mr.
+Henderson assembled these outstanding interests at no great cost,
+but his conveyances are in form and legal."
+
+"Everything connected with this affair," said my father, "is
+strangely legal!"
+
+The hunchback considered my father through his narrow eyelids.
+
+"It is a strange world," he said.
+
+"It is," replied my father.  "It is profoundly, inconceivably
+strange."
+
+There was a moment of silence.  The two men regarded each other
+across the half-length of the room.  The girl sat in the chair.
+She had got back her courage.  The big, forceful presence of my
+father, like the shadow of a great rock, was there behind her.
+She had the fine courage of her blood, and, after the first cruel
+shock of this affair, she faced the tragedies that might lie
+within it calmly.
+
+Shadows lay along the walls of the great room, along the gilt
+frames of the portraits, the empty fireplace, the rosewood
+furniture of ancient make and the oak floor.  Only the hunchback
+was in the light, behind the four candles on the table.
+
+"It was strange," continued my father over the long pause, "that
+your father's will discovered at his death left his lands to you,
+and no acre to your brother David."
+
+"Not strange," replied the hunchback, "when you consider what my
+brother David proved to be.  My father knew him.  What was hidden
+from us, what the world got no hint of, what the man was in the
+deep and secret places of his heart, my father knew.  Was it
+strange, then, that he should leave the lands to me?"
+
+"It was a will drawn by an old man in his senility, and under
+your control."
+
+"Under my care," cried the hunchback.  "I will plead guilty, if
+you like, to that.  I honored my father.  I was beside his bed
+with loving-kindness, while my brother went about the pleasures
+of his life."
+
+"But the testament," said my father, "was in strange terms.  It
+bequeathed the lands to you, with no mention of the personal
+property, as though these lands were all the estate your father
+had."
+
+"And so they were," replied the hunchback calmly.  "The lands had
+been stripped of horse and steer, and every personal item, and
+every dollar in hand or debt owing to my father before his
+death."  The, man paused and put the tips of his fingers
+together.  "My father had given to my brother so much money from
+these sources, from time to time, that he justly left me the
+lands to make us even."
+
+"Your father was senile and for five years in his bed.  It was
+you, Dillworth, who cleaned the estate of everything but land."
+
+"I conducted my father's business," said the hunchback, "for him,
+since he was ill.  But I put the moneys from these sales into his
+hand and he gave them to my brother."
+
+"I have never heard that your brother David got a dollar of this
+money."
+
+The hunchback was undisturbed.
+
+"It was a family matter and not likely to be known."
+
+"I see it," said my father.  "It was managed in your legal manner
+and with cunning foresight.  You took the lands only in the will,
+leaving the impression to go out that your brother had already
+received his share in the personal estate by advancement.  It was
+shrewdly done.  But there remained one peril in it: If any
+personal property should appear under the law you would be
+required to share it equally with your brother David."
+
+"Or rather," replied the hunchback calmly, "to state the thing
+correctly, my brother David would be required to share any
+discovered personal property with me."  Then he added: "I gave my
+brother David a hundred dollars for his share in the folderol
+about the premises, and took possession of the house and lands."
+
+"And after that," said my father, "what happened?"
+
+The hunchback uttered a queerly inflected expletive, like a
+bitter laugh.
+
+"After that," he answered, "we saw the real man in my brother
+David, as my father, old and dying, had so clearly seen it.
+After that he turned thief and fugitive."
+
+At the words the girl in the chair before my father rose.  She
+stood beside him, her lithe figure firm, her chin up, her hair
+spun darkness.  The courage, the fine, open, defiant courage of
+the first women of the world, coming with the patriarchs out of
+Asia, was in her lifted face.  My father moved as though he would
+stop the hunchback's cruel speech.  But she put her fingers
+firmly on his arm.
+
+"He has gone so far," she said, "let him go on to the end.  Let
+him omit no word, let us hear every ugly thing the creature has
+to say."
+
+Dillworth sat back in his chair at ease, with a supercilious
+smile.  He passed the girl and addressed my father.
+
+"You will recall the details of that robbery," he said in his
+complacent, piping voice.  "My brother David had married a wife,
+like the guest invited in the Scriptures.  A child was born.  My
+brother lived with his wife's people in their house.  One night
+he came to me to borrow money."
+
+He paused and pointed his long index finger through the doorway
+and across the hall.
+
+"It was in my father's room that I received him.  It did not
+please me to put money into his hands.  But I admonished him with
+wise counsel.  He did not receive my words with a proper
+brotherly regard.  He flared up in unmanageable anger.  He damned
+me with reproaches, said I had stolen his inheritance, poisoned
+his father's mind against him and slipped into the house and
+lands.  `Pretentious and perfidious' is what he called me.  I was
+firm and gentle.  But he grew violent and a thing happened."
+
+The man put up his hand and moved it along in the air above the
+table.
+
+"There was a secretary beside the hearth in my father's room.
+It was an old piece with drawers below and glass doors above.
+These doors had not been opened for many years, for there was
+nothing on the shelves behind them - one could see that - except
+some rows of the little wooden boxes that indigo used to be sold
+in at the country stores."
+
+The hunchback paused as though to get the details of his story
+precisely in relation.
+
+"I sat at my father's table in the middle of the room.  My
+brother David was a great, tall man, like Saul.  In his anger, as
+he gesticulated by the hearth, his elbow crashed through the
+glass door of this secretary; the indigo boxes fell, burst open
+on the floor, and a hidden store of my father's money was
+revealed.  The wooden boxes were full of gold pieces!"
+
+He stopped and passed his fingers over his projecting chin.
+
+"I was in fear, for I was alone in the house.  Every negro was at
+a distant frolic.  And I was justified in that fear.  My brother
+leaped on me, struck me a stunning blow on the chest over the
+heart, gathered up the gold, took my horse and fled.  At daybreak
+the negroes found me on the floor, unconscious.  Then you came,
+Pendleton.  The negroes had washed up the litter from the hearth
+where the indigo about the coins in the boxes had been shaken
+out."
+
+My father interrupted:
+
+"The negroes said the floor had been scrubbed when they found
+you."
+
+"They were drunk," continued the hunchback with no concern.
+"And, does one hold a drunken negro to his fact?  But you saw for
+yourself the wooden boxes, round, three inches high, with tin
+lids, and of a diameter to hold a stack of golden eagles, and you
+saw the indigo still sticking about the sides of these boxes
+where the coins had lain."
+
+"I did," replied my father.  "I observed it carefully, for I
+thought the gold pieces might turn up sometime, and the blue
+indigo stain might be on them when they first appeared."
+
+Dillworth leaned far back in his chair, his legs tangled under
+him, his eyes on my father, in reflection.  Finally he spoke.
+
+"You are far-sighted," he said.
+
+"Or God is," replied my father, and, stepping over to the table,
+he spun a gold piece on the polished surface of the mahogany
+board.
+
+The hunchback watched the yellow disk turn and flit and wabble on
+its base and flutter down with its tingling reverberations.
+
+"To-day, when I rode into the county seat to a sitting of the
+justices," continued my father, "the sheriff showed me some gold
+eagles that your man from Maryland, Mr. Henderson, had paid in on
+court costs.  Look, Dillworth, there is one of them, and with
+your thumb nail on the milled edge you can scrape off the
+indigo!"
+
+The hunchback looked at the spinning coin, but he did not touch
+it.  His head, with its long, straight hair, swung a moment
+uncertain between his shoulders.  Then, swiftly and with a firm
+grip, he took his resolution.
+
+"The coins appear," he said.  "My brother David must be in
+Baltimore behind this suit."
+
+"He is not in Baltimore," said my father.
+
+"Perhaps you know where he is," cried the hunchback, "since you
+speak with such authority."
+
+"I do know where he is," said my father in his deep, level voice.
+
+The hunchback got on his feet slowly beside his chair.  And the
+girl came into the protection of my father's arm, her features
+white like plaster; but the fiber in her blood was good and she
+stood up to face the thing that might be coming.  After the one
+long abandonment to tears in my father's saddle she had got
+herself in hand.  She had gone, like the princes of the blood,
+through the fire, and the dross of weakness was burned out.
+
+The hunchback got on his feet, in position like a duelist, his
+hard, bitter face turned slantwise toward my father.
+
+"Then," he said, "if you know where David is you will take his
+daughter to him, if you please, and rid my house of the burden of
+her."
+
+"We shall go to him," said my father slowly, "but he shall not
+return to us."
+
+The hunchback's eyes blinked and bated in the candlelight.
+
+"You quote the Scriptures," he said.  "Is David in a grave?"
+
+"He is not," replied my father.
+
+The hunchback seemed to advance like a duelist who parries the
+first thrust of his opponent.  But my father met him with an even
+voice.
+
+"Dillworth," he said, "it was strange that no man ever saw your
+brother or the horse after the night he visited you in this
+house."
+
+"It was dark," replied the man.  "He rode from this door through
+the gap in the mountains into Maryland."
+
+"He rode from this door," said my father slowly, "but not through
+the gap in the mountains into Maryland."
+
+The hunchback began to twist his fingers.
+
+"Where did he ride then?  A man and a horse could not vanish."
+
+"They did vanish," said my father.
+
+"Now you utter fool talk!" cried Dillworth.
+
+"I speak the living truth," replied my father.  "Your brother
+David and your horse disappeared out of sound and hearing -
+disappeared out of the sight and knowledge of men - after he rode
+away from your door on that fatal night."
+
+"Well," said the hunchback, "since my brother David rode away
+from my door - and you know that - I am free of obligation for
+him."
+
+"It is Cain's speech!" replied my father.
+
+The hunchback put back his long hair with a swift brush of the
+fingers across his forehead.
+
+"Dillworth," cried my father, and his voice filled the empty
+places of the room, "is the mark there?"
+
+The hunchback began to curse.  He walked around my father and the
+girl, the hair about his lank jaws, his fingers working, his face
+evil.  In his front and menace he was like a weasel that would
+attack some larger creature.  And while he made the great turn of
+his circle my father, with his arm about the girl, stepped before
+the drawer of the table where the pistol lay.
+
+"Dillworth," he said calmly, "I know where he is.  And the mark
+you felt for just now ought to be there."
+
+"Fool!" cried the hunchback.  "If I killed him how could he ride
+away from the door?"
+
+"It was a thing that puzzled me," replied my father, "when I
+stood in this house on the morning of your pretended robbery.  I
+knew what had happened.  But I thought it wiser to let the evil
+thing remain a mystery, rather than unearth it to foul your
+family name and connect this child in gossip for all her days
+with a crime."
+
+"With a thief," snarled the man.
+
+"With a greater criminal than a thief," replied My father.  "I
+was not certain about this gold on that morning when you showed
+me the empty boxes.  They were too few to hold gold enough for
+such a motive.  I thought a quarrel and violent hot blood were
+behind the thing; and for that reason I have been silent.  But
+now, when the coins turn up, I see that the thing was all
+ruthless, cold-blooded love of money.
+
+"I know what happened in that room.  When your brother David
+struck the old secretary with his elbow, and the dozen indigo
+boxes fell and burst open on the hearth, you thought a great
+hidden treasure was uncovered.  You thought swiftly.  You had got
+the land by undue influence on your senile father, and you did
+not have to share that with your brother David.  But here was a
+treasure you must share; you saw it in a flash.  You sat at your
+father's table in the room.  Your brother stood by the wall
+looking at the hearth.  And you acted then, on the moment, with
+the quickness of the Evil One.  It was cunning in you to select
+the body over the heart as the place to receive the imagined blow
+- the head or face would require some evidential mark to affirm
+your word.  And it was cunning to think of the unconscious, for
+in that part one could get up and scrub the hearth and lie down
+again to play it."
+
+He paused.
+
+"But the other thing you did in that room was not so clever.  A
+picture was newly hung on the wall - I saw the white square on
+the opposite wall from which it had been taken.  It hung at the
+height of a man's shoulders directly behind the spot where your
+brother must have stood after he struck the secretary, and it
+hung in this new spot to cover the crash of a bullet into the
+mahogany panel!"
+
+My father stopped and caught up the hunchback's double-barreled
+pistol out of the empty drawer.
+
+The room was now illumined; the moon had got above the tree tops
+and its light slanted in through the long windows.  The hunchback
+saw the thing and he paused; his face worked in the fantastic
+light.
+
+"Yes," continued my father, in his deep, quiet voice, "this is
+your mistake to-night - to let me get your weapon.  Your mistake
+that other night was to shoot before you counted the money.  It
+was only a few hundred dollars.  The dozen wooden boxes would
+hold no great sum.  But the thing was done, and you must cover
+it."
+
+He paused.
+
+"And you did cover it - with fiendish cunning.  It would not do
+for your brother to vanish from your house, alone and with no
+motive.  But if he disappeared, with the gold to take him and a
+horse to ride, the explanation would have solid feet to go on.  I
+give you credit here for the ingenuity of Satan.  You managed the
+thing.  You caused your brother David and the horse to vanish.  I
+saw, on that morning, the tracks of the horse where you led him
+from the stable to the door, and his tracks where you led him,
+holding the dead man in the saddle, from the door to the ancient
+orchard where the grass grows over the fallen-down chimney of
+your grandsire's house.  And there, at your cunning, they wholly
+vanished."
+
+The mad courage in the hunchback got control, and he began to
+advance on my father with no weapon and with no hope to win.  His
+fingers crooked, his body in a bow, his wizen, cruel face pallid
+in the ghostly light.
+
+"Dillworth," cried my father, in a great voice, like one who
+would startle a creature out of mania, "you will write a deed in
+your legal manner granting these lands to your brother's child.
+And after that" - his words were like the blows of a hammer on an
+anvil - "I will give you until daybreak to vanish out of our
+sight and hearing - through the gap in the mountains into
+Maryland on your horse, as you say your brother David went, or
+into the abandoned cistern in the ancient orchard where he lies
+under the horse that you shot and tumbled in on his murdered
+body!"
+
+The moon was now above the gable of the house.  The candles were
+burned down.  They guttered around the sheet of foolscap wet with
+the scrawls and splashes of Dillworth's quill.  My father stood
+at a window looking out, the girl in a flood of tears, relaxed
+and helpless, in the protection of his arm.
+
+And far down the long turnpike, white like an expanded ribbon,
+the hunchback rode his great horse in a gallop, perched like a
+monkey, his knees doubled, his head bobbing, his loose body
+rolling in the saddle - while the black, distorted shadow that
+had followed my father into this tragic house went on before him
+like some infernal messenger convoying the rider to the Pit.
+
+
+
+
+IX. The End of the Road
+
+
+The man laughed.
+
+It was a faint cynical murmur of a laugh.  Its expression hardly
+disturbed the composition of his features.
+
+"I fear, Lady Muriel," he said, "that your profession is ruined.
+Our friend - `over the water' - is no longer concerned about the
+affairs of England."
+
+The woman fingered at her gloves, turning them back about the
+wrists.  Her face was anxious and drawn.
+
+"I am rather desperately in need of money," she said.
+
+The cynicism deepened in the man's face.
+
+"Unfortunately," he replied, "a supply of money cannot be
+influenced by the intensity of one's necessity for it."
+
+He was a man indefinite in age.  His oily black hair was brushed
+carefully back.  His clothes were excellent, with a precise
+detail.  Everything about him was conspicuously correct in the
+English fashion.  But the man was not English.  One could not say
+from what race he came.  Among the races of Southern Europe he
+could hardly have been distinguished.  There was a chameleon
+quality strongly dominant in the creature.
+
+The woman looked up quickly, as in a strong aversion.
+
+"What shall you do?" she said.
+
+"I?"
+
+The man glanced about the room.  There was a certain display
+within the sweep of his vision.  Some rugs of great value, vases
+and bronzes; genuine and of extreme age.  He made a careless
+gesture with his hands.
+
+"I shall explore some ruins in Syria, and perhaps the aqueduct
+which the French think carried a water supply to the Carthage of
+Hanno.  It will be convenient to be beyond British inquiry for
+some years to come; and after all, I am an antiquarian, like
+Prosper Merimee."
+
+Lady Muriel continued to finger her gloves.  They had been
+cleaned and the cryptic marks of the shopkeeper were visible
+along the inner side of the wrist hem.  This was, to the woman,
+the first subterfuge of decaying smartness.  When a woman began
+to send her gloves to the laundry she was on her way down.  Other
+evidences were not entirely lacking in the woman's dress, but
+they were not patent to the casual eye.  Lady Muriel was still,
+to the observer, of the gay top current in the London world.
+
+The woman followed the man's glance about the room.
+
+"You must be rich, Hecklemeir," she said.  "Lend me a hundred
+pounds."
+
+The man laughed again in his queer chuckle.
+
+"Ah, no, my Lady," he replied, "I do not lend."  Then he added.
+
+"If you have anything of value, bring it to me . . . . not
+information from the ministry, and not war plans; the trade in
+such commodities is ended."
+
+It was the woman's turn to laugh.
+
+"The shopkeepers in Oxford Street have been before you, Baron . .
+. . I've nothing to sell."
+
+Hecklemeir smiled, kneading his pudgy hands.
+
+"It will be hard to borrow," he said.  "Money is very dear to the
+Britisher just now - right against his heart . . . . Still. . . .
+perhaps one's family could be thumb screwed. . . . . .An elderly
+relative with no children would be the most favorable, I think.
+Have you got such a relative concealed somewhere in a nook of
+London?  Think about it.  If you could recall one, he would be
+like a buried nut."
+
+The man paused; then he added, with the offensive chuckling
+laugh:
+
+"Go to such an one, Lady Muriel.  Who shall turn aside from
+virtue in distress?  Perhaps, in the whole of London, I alone
+have the brutality - shall we call it - to resist that
+spectacle."
+
+The woman rose.  Her face was now flushed and angry.
+
+"I do not know of any form of brutality in which you do not
+excel, Hecklemeir," she said.  "I have a notion to, go to
+Scotland Yard with the whole story of your secret traffic."
+
+The man continued to smile.
+
+"Alas, my Lady," he replied, "we are coupled together.  Scotland
+Yard would hardly separate us . . . . you could scarcely manage
+to drown me and, keep afloat yourself.  Dismiss the notion; it is
+from the pit."
+
+There was no virtue in her threat as the woman knew.  Already her
+mind was on the way that Hecklemeir had ironically suggested - an
+elderly relative, with no children, from whom one might borrow, -
+she valued the ramifications of her family, running out to the
+remote, withered branches of that noble tree.  She appraised the
+individuals and rejected them.
+
+Finally her searching paused.
+
+There was her father's brother who had gone in for science -
+deciding against the army and the church - Professor Bramwell
+Winton, the biologist. He lived somewhere toward Covent Garden.
+
+She had not thought of him for years.  Occasionally his name
+appeared in some note issued by the museum, or a college at
+Oxford.
+
+For almost four years she had been relieved of this thought about
+one's family.  The one "over the water" for whom Hecklemeir had
+stolen the Scottish toast to designate, had paid lavishly for
+what she could find out.
+
+She had been richly, for these four years, in funds.
+
+The habit was established of dipping her hand into the dish.  And
+now to find the dish empty appalled her.  She could not believe
+that it was empty.  She had come again, and again to this
+apartment above the shops in Regent Street, selected for its
+safety of ingress; a modiste and a hairdresser on either side of
+a narrow flight of steps.
+
+A carriage could stop here; one could be seen here.
+
+Even on the right, above, at the landing of the flight of steps
+Nance Coleen altered evening gowns with the skill of one altering
+the plumage of the angels.  It must have cost the one "over the
+water" a pretty penny to keep this whole establishment running
+through four years of war.
+
+She spoke finally.
+
+"Have you a directory of London, Hecklemeir?"
+
+The man had been watching her closely.
+
+"If it is Scotland Yard, my Lady," he said, "you will not require
+a direction.  I can give you the address.  It is on the
+Embankment, near . . . "
+
+"Don't be a fool, Hecklemeir," she interrupted, and taking the
+book from his hands, she whipped through the pages, got the
+address she sought, and went out onto the narrow landing and down
+the steps into Regent Street:
+
+She took a hansom.
+
+With some concern she examined the contents of her purse.  There
+was a guinea, a half crown and some shillings in it - the dust of
+the bin.  And her profession, as Hecklemeir had said, was ended.
+
+She leaned over, like a man, resting her arms on the closed
+doors.
+
+The future looked troublous.  Money was the blood current in the
+life she knew.  It was the vital element.  It must be got.
+
+And thus far she had been lucky.
+
+Even in this necessity Bramwell Winton had emerged, when she
+could not think of any one.  He would not have much.  These
+scientific creatures never accumulated money, but he would have a
+hundred pounds.  He had no wife or children to scatter the
+shillings of his income.
+
+True these creatures spent a good deal on the absurd rubbish of
+their hobbies.  But they got money sometimes, not by thrift but
+by a sort of chance.  Had not one of them, Sir Isaac Martin,
+found the lost mines from which the ancient civilization of Syria
+drew its supply of copper.  And Hector Bartlett, little more than
+a mummy in the Museum, had gone one fine day into Asia and dug up
+the gold plates that had roofed a temple of the Sun.
+
+He had been shown in the drawing rooms, on his return, and she
+had stopped a moment to look him over - he was a sort of mummy.
+She was not hoping to find Bramwell Winton one of these elect.
+But he was a hive that had not been plundered.
+
+She reflected, sitting bent forward in the hansom, her face
+determined and unchanging.  She did not undertake to go forward
+beyond the hundred pounds.  Something would turn up.  She was
+lucky . . . others had gone to the tower; gone before the firing
+squad for lesser activities in what Hecklemeir called her
+profession, but she had floated through . . . carrying what she
+gleaned to the paymaster.  Was it skill, or was she a child of
+Fortune?
+
+And like every gambler, like every adventurer in a life of
+hazard, she determined for the favorite of some immense Fatality.
+
+It was an old house she came to, built in the prehistoric age of
+London, with thick, heavy walls, one of a row, deadly in its
+monotony.  The row was only partly tenanted.
+
+She dismissed the hansom and got out.
+
+It was a moment before she found the number.  The houses
+adjoining on either side were empty, the windows were shuttered.
+One might have considered the middle house with the two, for its
+step was unscrubbed, and it presented unwashed windows.
+
+It was a heavy, deep-walled structure like a monument.  Even the
+street in the vicinity was empty.  If the biologist had been
+seeking an undisturbed quarter of London, he had, beyond doubt,
+found it here.
+
+There was a bridged-over court before the house.  Lady Muriel
+crossed.  She paused before the door.  There had been a bell pull
+in the wall, but the brass handle was broken and only the wire
+remained.
+
+She was uncertain whether one was supposed to pull this wire, and
+in the hesitation she took hold of the door latch.  To her
+surprise the door yielded, and following the impulse of her
+extended hand, she went in.
+
+The hall was empty.  There was no servant to be seen.  And
+immediately the domestic arrangement of the biologist were clear
+to her.  They would be that of one who had a cleaning woman in on
+certain days, and so lived alone.  She was not encouraged by this
+economy, and yet such a custom in a man like Bramwell Winton
+might be habit.
+
+The scientist, in the popular conception, was not concerned with
+the luxury of life - they were a rum lot.
+
+But the house was not empty.  A smart hat and stick were in the
+rack and from what should be a drawing room, above, there
+descended faintly the sound of voices.
+
+It seemed ridiculous to Lady Muriel to go out and struggle with
+the broken bell wire.  She would go up, now that she had entered,
+and announce herself, since, in any event, it must come to that.
+
+The heavy oak door closed without a sound, as it had opened.
+Lady Muriel went up the stairway.  She had nothing to put down.
+The only thing she carried was a purse, and lest it should appear
+suggestive - as of one coming with his empty wallet in his hand -
+she tucked the gold mesh into the bosom of her jacket.
+
+The door to the drawing room was partly open, and as Lady Muriel
+approached the top of the stair she heard the voices of two men
+in an eager colloquy; a smart English accent from the world that
+she was so desperately endeavoring to remain in, and a voice that
+paused and was unhurried.  But they were both eager, as I have
+written, as though commonly impulsed by an unusual concern.
+
+And now that she was near, Lady Muriel realized that the
+conversation was not low or under uttered.  The smart voice was,
+in fact, loud and incisive.  It was the heavy house that reduced
+the sounds.  In fact, the conversation was keyed up.  The two men
+were excited about something.
+
+A sentence arrested the woman's advancing feet.
+
+"My word!  Bramwell, if some one should go there and bring the
+things out, he would make a fortune, and would be famous.  Nobody
+ever believed these stories."
+
+"There was Le Petit, Sir Godfrey," replied the deliberate voice.
+"He declared over his signature that he had seen them."
+
+"But who believed Le Petit," continued the other.  "The world
+took him to be a French imaginist like Chateaubriand . . . who
+the devil, Bramwell, supposed there was any truth in this old
+story?  But by gad, sir, it's true!  The water color shows it,
+and if you turn it over you will see that the map on the back of
+it gives the exact location of the spot.  It's all exact work,
+even the fine lines of the map have the bearings indicated.  The
+man who made that water color, and the drawing on the back of it,
+had been on the spot.
+
+"Of course, we don't know conclusively who made it.  Tony had
+gone in from the West coast after big game, and he found the
+thing put up as a sort of fetish in a devil house.  It was one of
+the tribes near the Karamajo range.  As I told you, we have only
+Tony's diary for it.  I found the thing among his effects after
+he was killed in Flanders.  It's pretty certain Tony did not
+understand the water color.  There was only this single entry in
+the diary about how he found it, and a query in pencil.
+
+"My word! if he had understood the water color, he would have
+beaten over every foot of Africa to Lake Leopold.  And it would
+have been the biggest find of his time.  Gad! what a splash he'd
+have made!  But he never had any luck, the beggar . . . stopped a
+German bullet in the first week out.
+
+"Now, how the devil, Bramwell, do you suppose that water color
+got into a native medicine house?"
+
+The reflective voice replied slowly.
+
+"I've thought about the thing, Sir Godfrey.  It must have been
+the work of the Holland explorer, Maartin.  He was all about in
+Africa, and he died in there somewhere, at least he never came
+out . . . that was ten years ago.  I've looked him up, and I find
+that he could do a water color - in fact there's a collection of
+his water colors in, the Dutch museum.  They're very fine work,
+like this one; exquisite, I'd say.  The fellow was born an
+artist.
+
+"How it got into the hands of a native devil doctor is not
+difficult to imagine.  The sleeping sickness may have wiped
+Maartin out, or the natives may have rushed his camp some
+morning, or he may have been mauled by a beast. Any article of a
+white man is medicine stuff you know.  When you first showed me
+the thing I was puzzled.  I knew what it was because I had read
+Le Petit's pretension . . . I can't call it a pretension now; the
+things are there whether he saw them or not.
+
+"I think he did not see them.  But it is certain from this water
+color that some one did; and Maartin is the only explorer that
+could have done such a color.  As soon as I thought of Maartin I
+knew the thing could have been done by no other."
+
+Lady Muriel had remained motionless on the stair.  The door to
+the drawing room, before her, was partly open.  She stepped in to
+the angle of the wall and drew the door slowly back until it
+covered this angle in which she stood.
+
+She was rich in such experiences, for her success had depended,
+not a little, on overhearing what was being said.  Through the
+crack of the door the whole interior of the room was visible.
+
+Sir Godfrey Halleck, a little dapper man, was sitting across the
+table from Bramwell Winton.  His elbows were on the table, and he
+was looking eagerly at the biologist.  Bramwell Winton had in his
+hands the thing under discussion.
+
+It seemed to be a piece of cardboard or heavy paper about six
+inches in length by, perhaps, four in width.  Lady Muriel could
+not see what was drawn or painted on this paper.  But the heart
+in her bosom quickened.  She had chanced on the spoor of
+something worth while.
+
+The little dapper man flung his head up.
+
+"Oh, it's certain, Bramwell; it's beyond any question now.  My
+word!  If Tony were only alive, or I twenty years younger!  It's
+no great undertaking, to go in to the Karamajo Mountains.  One
+could start from the West Coast, unship any place and pick up a
+bunch of natives.  The map on the back of the water color is
+accurate.  The man who made that knew how to travel in an unknown
+country.  He must have had a theodolite and the very best
+equipment.  Anybody could follow that map."
+
+There was a battered old dispatch box on the table beside Sir
+Godfrey's arm - one that had seen rough service.
+
+"Of course," he went on, "we don't know when Tony picked up this
+drawing.  It was in this box here with his diary, an automatic
+pistol and some quinine.  The date of the diary entry is the only
+clue.  That would indicate that he was near the Karamajo range at
+the time, not far from the spot."
+
+He snapped his fingers.
+
+"What damned luck!"
+
+He clinched his hands and brought them down on the table.
+
+"I'm nearly seventy, Bramwell, but you're ten years under that.
+You could go in.  No one need know the object of your expedition.
+Hector Bartlett didn't tell the whole of England when he went out
+to Syria for the gold plates.  A scientist can go anywhere.  No
+one wonders what he is about.  It wouldn't take three months.
+And the climate isn't poisonous.  I think it's mostly high
+ground.  Tony didn't complain about it."
+
+The biologist answered without looking up.
+
+"I haven't got the money, Sir Godfrey."
+
+The dapper little man jerked his head as over a triviality.
+
+"I'll stake you.  It wouldn't cost above five hundred pounds."
+
+The biologist sat back in his chair, at the words, and looked
+over the table at his guest.
+
+"That's awfully decent of you, Godfrey," he said, "and I'd go if
+I saw a way to get your money to you if anything happened."
+
+"Damn the money!" cried the other.
+
+The biologist smiled.
+
+"Well," he said, "let me think about it.  I could probably fix up
+some sort of insurance.  Lloyd's will bet nearly any sane man
+that he won't die for three months.  And besides I should wish to
+look things up a little."
+
+Sir Godfrey rose.
+
+"Oh, to be sure," he said, "you want to make certain about the
+thing.  We might be wrong.  I hadn't an idea what it was until I
+brought it to you, and of course Tony hadn't an idea.  Make
+certain of it by all means."
+
+The biologist extended his long legs under the table.  He
+indicated the water color in his hand.
+
+"This thing's certain," he said.  "I know what this thing is."
+
+He rapped the water color with the fingers of his free hand.
+
+"This thing was painted on the spot.  Maartin was looking at this
+thing when he painted it.  You can see the big shadows
+underneath.  No living creature could have imagined this or
+painted it from hearsay.  He had to see it.  And he did see it.
+I wasn't thinking about this, Godfrey.  I was thinking the Dutch
+government might help a bit in the hope of finding some trace of
+Maartin and I should wish to examine any information they might
+have about him."
+
+"Damn the Dutch government!" cried the little man.  "And damn
+Lloyd's.  We will go it on our own hook."
+
+The biologist smiled.
+
+"Let me think about it, a little," he said.
+
+The dapper man flipped a big watch out of his waistcoat pocket.
+
+"Surely!" he cried, "I must get the next train up.  Have you got
+a place to lock the stuff?  I had to cut this lid open with a
+chisel."
+
+He indicated the tin dispatch box.
+
+"Better keep it all.  You'll want to run through the diary, I
+imagine.  Tony's got down the things explorer chaps are always
+keen about; temperature, water supply, food and all that. . . . .
+Now, I'm off. See you Thursday afternoon at the United Service Club.
+Better lunch with me."
+
+Then he pushed the dispatch box across the table.  The biologist
+rose and turned back the lid of the box.  The contents remained
+as Sir Godfrey's dead son had left them; a limp leather diary, an
+automatic pistol of some American make, a few glass tubes of
+quinine, packed in cotton wool.
+
+He put the water color on the bottom of the box and replaced
+them.
+
+Then he took the dispatch box over to an old iron safe at the
+farther end of the room, opened it, set the box within, locked
+the door, and, returning, thrust the key under a pile of journals
+on the corner of the table.  Then he went out, and down the
+stairway with his guest to the door.
+
+They passed within a finger touch of Lady Muriel.
+
+The woman was quick to act.  There would be no borrowing from
+Bramwell Winton.  He would now, with this expedition on the way,
+have no penny for another.  But here before her, as though
+arranged by favor of Fatality, was something evidently of
+enormous value that she could cash in to Hecklemeir.
+
+There was fame and fortune on the bottom of that dispatch box.
+
+Something that would have been the greatest find of the age to
+Tony Halleck . . . something that the biologist, clearly from his
+words and manner, valued beyond the gold plates of Sir Hector
+Bartlett.
+
+It was a thing that Hecklemeir would buy with money . . . the
+very thing which he would be at this opportune moment interested
+to purchase.  She saw it in the very first comprehensive glance.
+
+Her luck was holding Fortune was more than favorable, merely.  It
+exercised itself actively, with evident concern, in her behalf.
+
+Lady Muriel went swiftly into the room.  She slipped the key from
+under the pile of journals and crossed to the safe sitting
+against the wall.
+
+It was an old safe of some antediluvian manufacture and the lock
+was worn.  The stem of the key was smooth and it slipped in her
+gloved hands.  She could not hold it firm enough to turn the
+lock.  Finally with her bare fingers and with one hand to aid the
+other she was able to move the lock and so open the safe.
+
+She heard the door to the street close below, and the faint sound
+of Bramwell Winton's footsteps as though he went along the hall
+into the service portion of the house.  She was nervous and
+hurried, but this reassured her.
+
+The battered dispatch box sat within on the empty bottom of the a
+safe.
+
+She lifted the lid; an automatic pistol lay on a limp
+leather-backed journal, stained, discolored and worn.  Lady
+Muriel slipped her hand under these articles and lifted out the
+thing she sought.
+
+Even in the pressing haste of her adventure, the woman could not
+forbear to look at the thing upon which these two men set so
+great a value.  She stopped then a moment on her knees beside the
+safe, the prized article in her hands.
+
+A map, evidently drawn with extreme care, was before her.  She
+glanced at it hastily and turned the thing quickly over.  What
+she saw amazed and puzzled her.  Even in this moment of tense
+emotions she was astonished: She saw a pool of water, - not a
+pool of water in the ordinary sense - but a segment of water, as
+one would take a certain limited area of the surface of the sea
+or a lake or river.  It was amber-colored and as smooth as glass,
+and on the surface of this water, as though they floated, were
+what appeared to be three, reddish-purple colored flowers, and
+beneath them on the bottom of the water were huge indistinct
+shadows.
+
+The water was not clear to make out the shadows.  But the
+appearing flowers were delicately painted.  They stood out
+conspicuously on the glassy surface of the water as though they
+were raised above it.
+
+Amazement held the woman longer than she thought, over this
+extraordinary thing.  Then she thrust it into the bosom of her
+jacket, fastening the button securely over it.
+
+The act kept her head down.  When she lifted it Bramwell Winton
+was standing in the door.
+
+In terror her hand caught up the automatic pistol out of the tin
+box.  She acted with no clear, no determined intent.  It was a
+gesture of fear and of indecision; escape through menace was
+perhaps the subconscious motive; the most primitive, the most
+common motive of all creatures in the corner.  It extends
+downward from the human mind through all life.
+
+To spring up, to drag the veil over her face with her free hand,
+and to thrust the weapon at the figure in the doorway was all
+simultaneous and instinctive acts in the expression of this
+primordial impulse of escape through menace.
+
+Then a thing happened.
+
+There was a sharp report and the figure standing in the doorway
+swayed a moment and fell forward into the room.  The unconscious
+gripping of the woman's fingers had fired the pistol.
+
+For a moment Lady Muriel stood unmoving, arrested in every muscle
+by this accident.  But her steady wits - skilled in her
+profession - did not wholly desert her.  She saw that the man was
+dead.  There was peril in that - immense, uncalculated peril, but
+the prior and immediate peril, the peril of discovery in the very
+accomplishment of theft, was by this act averted.
+
+She stooped over, her eyes fixed on the sprawling body and with
+her free hand closed the door of the safe.  Then she crossed the
+room, put the pistol down on the floor near the dead man's hand
+and went out.
+
+She went swiftly down the stairway and paused a moment at the
+door to look out.  The street was empty.  She hurried away.
+
+She met no one.  A cab in the distance was appearing.  She hailed
+it as from a cross street and returned to Regent.  It was
+characteristic of the woman that her mind dwelt upon the spoil
+she carried rather than upon the act she had done.
+
+She puzzled at the water color.  How could these things be
+flowers?
+
+Bramwell Winton was a biologist; he would not be concerned with
+flowers.  And Sir Godfrey Halleck and his son Tony, the big game
+hunter, were not men to bother themselves with blossoms.  Sir
+Godfrey, as she now remembered vaguely, had, like his dead son,
+been a keen sportsman in his youth; his country house was full of
+trophies.
+
+She carried buttoned in the bosom of her jacket something that
+these men valued.  But, what was it?  Well, at any rate it was
+something that would mean fame and fortune to the one who should
+bring it out of Africa.  That one would now be Hecklemeir, and
+she should have her share of the spoil.
+
+Lady Muriel found the drawing-room of her former employer in some
+confusion; rugs were rolled up, bronzes were being packed.  But
+in the disorder of it the proprietor was imperturbable.  He
+merely elevated his eyebrows at her reappearance.  She went
+instantly to the point.
+
+"Hecklemeir," she said, "how would you like to have a definite
+objective in your explorations?"
+
+The man looked at her keenly.
+
+"What do you mean precisely?" he replied.
+
+"I mean," she continued, "something that would bring one fame and
+fortune if one found it."  And she added, as a bit of lure, "You
+remember the gold plates Hector Bartlett dug up in Syria?"
+
+He came over closer to her; his little eyes narrowed.
+
+"What have you got?" he said.
+
+His facetious manner - that vulgar persons imagine to be
+distinguished - was gone out of him.  He was direct and simple.
+
+She replied with no attempt at subterfuge.
+
+"I've got a map of a route to some sort of treasure - I don't
+know what -  It's in the Karamajo Mountains in the French Congo;
+a map to it and a water color of the thing."
+
+Hecklemeir did not ask how Lady Muriel came by the thing she
+claimed; his profession always avoided such detail.  But he knew
+that she had gone to Bramwell Winton; and what she had must have
+come from some scientific source.  The mention of Hector Bartlett
+was not without its virtue.
+
+Lady Muriel marked the man's changed manner, and pushed her
+trade.
+
+"I want a check for a hundred pounds and a third of the thing
+when you bring it out."
+
+Hecklemeir stood for a moment with the tips of his fingers
+pressed against his lips; then replied.
+
+"If you have anything like the thing you describe, I'll give you
+a hundred pounds . . . let me see it."
+
+She took the water color out of the bosom of her jacket and gave
+it to him.
+
+He carried it over to the window and studied it a moment.  Then
+he turned with a sneering oath.
+
+"The devil take your treasure," he said, "these things are
+water-elephants.  I don't care a farthing if they stand on the
+bottom of every lake in Africa!"
+
+And he flung the water color toward her.  Mechanically the
+stunned woman picked it up and smoothed it out in her fingers.
+
+With the key to the picture she saw it clearly, the shadowy
+bodies of the beasts and the tips of their trunks distended on
+the surface like a purple flower.  And vaguely, as though it were
+a memory from a distant life, she recalled hearing the French
+Ambassador and Baron Rudd discussing the report of an explorer
+who pretended to have seen these supposed fabulous elephants come
+out of an African forest and go down under the waters of Lake
+Leopold.
+
+She stood there a moment, breaking the thing into pieces with her
+bare hands.  Then she went out.  At the door on the landing she
+very nearly stepped against a little cockney.
+
+"My Lidy," he whined, "I was bringing your gloves; you dropped
+them on your way up."
+
+She took them mechanically and began to draw them on . . . the
+cryptic sign of the cleaner on the wrist hem was now to her
+indicatory of her submerged estate.  The little cockney hung
+about a moment as for a gratuity delayed, then he disappeared
+down the stair before her.
+
+She went slowly down, fitting the gloves to her fingers.
+
+Midway of the flight she paused.  The voice of the little
+cockney, but without the accent, speaking to a Bobby standing
+beside the entrance reached her.
+
+"It was Sir Henry Marquis who set the Yard to register all
+laundry marks in London.  Great C. I. D. Chief, Sir Henry!"
+
+And Lady Muriel remembered that she had removed these gloves in
+order to turn the slipping key in Bramwell Winton's safe lock.
+
+
+
+
+X.-The Last Adventure
+
+
+The talk had run on treasure.
+
+I could not sleep and my friends had dropped in.  I had the big
+South room on the second floor of the Hotel de Paris.  It looks
+down on the Casino and the Mediterranean.  Perhaps you know it.
+
+Queer friends, you'd say.  Every man-jack of them a gambler.  But
+when one begins to sit about all night with his eyes open, the
+devil's a friend.
+
+Barclay was standing before the fire.  The others had drifted
+out.  He's a big man pitted with the smallpox.  He made a
+gesture, flinging out his hand toward the door.
+
+"That bunch thinks there's a curse on treasure, Sir Henry.
+That's one of the oldest notions in the world . . . it's
+unlucky."
+
+"But I know where there's a treasure that's not unlucky.  At
+least it was not unlucky for poor Charlie Tavor.  He did not get
+it, but there was no curse on it that reached to him.  It helped
+poor Charlie finish in style.  He died like a lord in a big
+country house, with a formal garden and a line of lackeys."
+
+Barclay paused.
+
+"Queer chap, Tavor.  He was the best all round explorer in the
+world.  I bar nobody.  Charlie Tavor could take a nigger and
+cross the poisonous plateau south west of the Libyan desert.
+I've backed him.  I know . . . but he had no business sense,
+anybody could fool him.  He found the stock of bar silver on the
+west face of the Andes that made old Nute Hardman a quarter of a
+million dollars, clear, after the cursed beast had split it a
+half dozen ways with a crooked South American government."
+
+Barclay's teeth set and he jerked up his clinched hand.
+
+"It was a damned steal, Sir Henry.  A piece of low down, dirty
+robbery; and it was like taking candy away from a child . . . .
+`Sign here, Mr. Tavor,' and Charlie would scrawl on his fist . .
+. .  Some people think there's no hell, but what's God Almighty
+going to do with Old Nute?"
+
+He flung out his hand again.
+
+"Still the thing didn't dent Charlie.  He never missed a step.
+`Don't bother, Barclay, old man,' he'd say, `I'll find something
+else,' and then he'd go off into this dream he had of coming back
+when he'd struck it, to the old home county in England and laying
+it over the bunch that had called him `no good.'  He never talked
+much, but I gathered from odds and ends that he was the black
+sheep in a pretty smart flock.
+
+"Then, I'd stake him to a cheap outfit - not much, I've said he
+could push through the Libyan desert with a nigger - and he'd
+drop out of the world.  It wasn't charity.  I got my money's
+worth.  The clay pots he brought me from Yucatan would sell any
+day for more cash than I ever advanced him."
+
+Barclay moved a little before the fire.  I was listening in a big
+chair, my feet extended toward the hearth; a smoking jacket had
+replaced my dinner coat.
+
+"It was five years ago, in London," Barclay went on, "that I
+fitted Charlie out for his last adventure.  He wanted to land in
+the gulf of Pe-chi-li and go into the great desert of the Shamo
+in Central Mongolia.  You'll find the Shamo all dotted out on the
+maps; but it's faked dope.  No white man knows anything about the
+Shamo.
+
+"It's a trick to lay off these great waste areas and call them
+elevated plateaus or sunken plateaus.  You can't go by the atlas.
+Where's Kane's Open Polar Sea and Morris K. Jessup's Land?
+Still, Charlie thought the Shamo might be a low plain, and he
+thought he might find something in it.  You see the great gold
+caravans used to cross it, three thousand years ago . . . and as
+Charlie kept saying, `What's time in the Shamo?'
+
+"Well, I bought him a kit of stuff, and he took a P. and O.
+through the Suez.  I got a long letter from Pekin two months
+later; and then Charlie Tavor dropped out of the world.  I went
+back to America.  No word ever came from Charlie.  I thought he
+was dead.  I suppose a white man's life is about the cheapest
+thing there is northwest of the Yellow River; and Charlie never
+had an escort.  A coolie and an old service pistol would about
+foot up his defenses.
+
+"And there's every ghastly disease in Mongolia . . . .  Still
+some word always came from Tavor inside of a year; a tramp around
+the Horn would bring in a dirty note, written God knows where,
+and carried out to the ship by a naked native swimming with the
+thing in his teeth; or some little embassy would send it to me in
+a big official envelope stamped with enough red wax to make a
+saint's candle.
+
+"But the luck failed this time.  A year ran on, then two, then
+three and I passed Charlie up.  He'd surely `gone west!'"
+
+Barclay paused, thrust his hands into the pockets of his dinner
+jacket and looked down at me.
+
+"One night in New York I got a call from the City Hospital.  The
+telephone message came in about ten o'clock.  I was in Albany; I
+found the message when I got back the following morning and I
+went ever to the hospital.
+
+"The matron said that they had picked up a man on the North River
+docks in an epileptic fit and the only name they could find on
+him was my New York address.  They thought he was going to die,
+he was cold and stiff for hours, and they had undertaken to reach
+me in order to identify him.  But he did not die.  He was up this
+morning and she would bring him in."
+
+Barclay paused again.
+
+"She brought in Charlie Tavor! . . .  And I nearly screamed when
+I saw the man.  He was dressed in one of those cheap
+hand-me-downs that the Germans used to sell in the tropics for a
+pound, three and six, his eyes looked as dead as glass and he was
+as white as plaster.  How the man managed to keep on his feet I
+don't know.
+
+"I didn't stop for any explanation.  I got Tavor into a taxi, and
+over to my apartment."
+
+Barclay moved in his position before the fire.
+
+"But on the way over a thing happened that some little god played
+in for a joke.  There was a block just where Thirty-third crosses
+into Fifth Avenue, and our taxi pulled up by a limousine."
+
+Barclay suddenly thrust out his big pock-marked face.
+
+"The thing couldn't have happened by itself.  Some burlesque
+angel put it over when the Old Man wasn't looking.  Spread out on
+the tapestry cushions of that limousine was Nute Hardman!
+
+"There they were side by side.  Not six feet apart; Old Nute in a
+sable-lined coat and Charlie in his hand-me-down, at a pound,
+three and six."
+
+The muscles in Barclay's big jaw tightened.
+
+"Maybe there is a joker that runs the world, and maybe the devil
+runs it.  Anyhow it's a queer system.  Here was Charlie Tavor,
+straight as a string, down and out.  And here was Nute Hardman,
+so crooked that a fly couldn't light on him and stand level, with
+everything that money could buy.
+
+"I cast it up while the taxi stood there beside the car.  Nute
+was consul in a South American port that you couldn't spell and
+couldn't find on the map.  He didn't have two dollars to rub
+together, until Charlie Tavor turned up.  There he sat, out of
+the world, forgotten, growing moss and getting ready to rot; and
+God Almighty, or the devil, or whatever it is, steered Charlie
+Tavor in to him with the bar silver.
+
+"He picked Charlie to the bone and cut for the States.  And this
+damned crooked luck went right along with him.  He was in a big
+apartment, now, up on Fifth Avenue and four-flushing toward every
+point of the compass.  His last stunt was `patron of science.'
+He'd gotten into the Geographical Society, and he was laying
+lines for the Royal Society in London.  He had a Harvard don
+working over in the Metropolitan library, building him a thesis!
+
+"The thing made me ugly.  I wanted to have a plain talk with the
+devil.  He wasn't playing fair.  Old Nute couldn't have been
+worth the whole run of us; I've legged some myself, and I had a
+right to be heard.  The devil ought to make old Nute split up
+with Charlie.  True, Charlie belonged in the other camp, but I
+didn't.  And if I wanted a little favor I felt that the devil
+ought to come across with it . . .  I put it up to him, or down
+to him, as you'd say, while I sat there in that taxi."
+
+There was a grim energy in Barclay's face.  He was no ordinary
+person.
+
+"I got Tavor up to my apartment, and a goblet of brandy in him.
+I never saw anybody look like Tavor as he sat there propped up in
+the chair with a lot of cushions around him.  It was winter and
+cold.  He had no clothes to speak of, but he did not seem to
+notice either the cold outside or the heat in the apartment, as
+though, somehow, he couldn't tell the difference.
+
+"And he was the strangest color that any human being ever was in
+the world.  I've said that he looked like plaster, and he did
+look like it, but he looked like a plaster man with a thin coat
+of tan colored paint on him."
+
+Barclay paused.
+
+"It's hardly a wonder that no message reached me.  The devil
+couldn't have got word out of the hell land he'd been in.  Lost
+is no name for it.  He'd been all over the Shamo, and the big
+Sahara's a park to it.  He'd been North to the Kangai where they
+used to get the gold that the caravans carried across the Shamo,
+and he'd followed the old trails South to the great wall.
+
+"It's all a Satan's country.  I don't know why God Almighty
+wanted to make a hell hole like the Shamo!"
+
+He paused, then he went on.
+
+"But it wasn't in the Shamo that Tavor got track of the thing he
+was after.  He said that the age he was trying to get back into
+was much more remote than he imagined.  It must have been a good
+many thousands of years ago.  He couldn't tell; long before
+anything like dependable history at any rate . . . .  There must
+have been an immense age of great oriental splendor in the South
+of Asia and along the East African coast, dying out at about the
+time our knowledge of human history begins."
+
+Barclay went on, unmoving before the fire.
+
+"I don't know why we imagine that the legends of a little tribe
+in Syria running back to the fifth or sixth century begins the
+world . . . .  Anyway, Tavor got the notion, as I have said, of
+an age in decay at about the time these legends start in; with a
+trade moving west.
+
+"He nosed it all out!  God knows how.  Of course it was only a
+theory - only a notion in fact.  He hadn't anything to go on that
+I could see.  But after two years' drifting about in the Shamo,
+this is how he finally figured it:
+
+"Northern Asia traded gold in the west; the mined product would
+be molded into bricks in lower Mongolia.  It was then carried
+over land to the southwest coast of Arabia.  There was some great
+center of world commerce low down on the Red Sea about eight
+hundred miles south of Port Said.
+
+"Tavor said that when he began to think about the thing the
+caravan route was pretty clear to him.  Arabia seemed to have
+been connected, in that remote age, with Persia at the Strait of
+Ormus, so there was a direct overland route . . . .  That put
+another notion into Tavor's head; these treasure caravans must
+have crossed the immense Sandy Desert of El-Khali.  And this
+notion developed another; if one were seeking the wreck of any
+one of these treasure caravans he would be more likely to find it
+in the El-Khali than in the Shamo."
+
+Barclay moved away from the fire, got a chair and sat down.  He
+was across the hearth from me.  He looked about the room and at
+the curtained windows that shut out the blue night.
+
+"You can't sleep," he went on, "so I might just as well tell you
+this.  A good deal of it is what the lawyers called dicta . . .
+obiter dicta; when the judge gets to putting in stuff on the side
+. . . but it's a long time 'til daylight."
+
+He had taken a small chair and he sat straight in it after the
+manner of a big man.
+
+"You see the treasure carried south across the Shamo would be
+`gold wheat' (dust, we'd call it), packed in green skins . . .
+you couldn't find that.  But the caravans crossing the El-Khali
+would carry this gold in bricks for the great west trade.  Now a
+gold brick is indestructible; you can't think of anything that
+would last forever like a gold brick.  Nothing would disturb it,
+water and sun are alike without effect on it . . . .
+
+"That was Tavor's notion, and he went right after it.  Most of us
+would have slacked out after two years in the hell hole of
+Central Mongolia.  But not Charlie Tavor.  He got down to Arabia
+somehow; God knows, I never asked him, - and he went right on
+into the Great Sandy Desert of Roba El Khali.  The oldest caravan
+route known runs straight across the desert from Muscat to Mecca.
+It's a thousand miles across - but you can strike the line of it
+nearly four hundred miles west in a hundred miles travel by going
+due South from the coast between fifty and fifty-five degrees.
+
+"You'll find this old caravan route drawn on the map, a dead
+straight line across the thirty-third parallel.  But the man that
+put it on there never traveled over it.  He doesn't know whether
+it is a sunken plateau, or an elevated plateau, or what the devil
+it is that this old route runs across.  And he doesn't know what
+the earth's like in the great basin of the El-Khali; maybe it's
+sand and maybe it's something else."
+
+Barclay stopped and looked queerly at me.
+
+"The Doctor Cooks have put a lot of stuff over on us.  The fact
+is, there's six million square miles of the earth's surface that
+nobody knows anything about."
+
+He got a package of American cigarettes out of his pocket,
+selected one and lighted it with a fragment of the box thrust
+into the fire.
+
+"That's where Tavor was the last year.  When the ambulance picked
+him up, he'd crawled around the Horn in a Siamese tramp."
+
+He paused.
+
+"Great people, the English; no fag-out to them.  Look how Scott
+went on in the Antarctic with his feet frozen . . .  It's in the
+blood; it was in Tavor.
+
+"I sat there that winter night in my room in New York while he
+told me all about it.
+
+"It was morning when he finished - the milk wagons were on the
+street, - and then, he added, quite simply, as though it were a
+matter of no importance
+
+"'But I can't go back, Barclay, old man; my tramping's over.
+That was no fit I had on the dock.'
+
+"He looked at me with his dead eyes in his tan-colored plaster
+face.  You've heard of the hemp-chewers and the betel-chewers;
+well, all that's baby-food to a thing they've got in the Shamo.
+It's a shredded root, bitter like cactus, and when you chew it,
+you don't get tired and you don't get hot . . . you go on and you
+don't know what the temperature is.  Then some day, all at once,
+you go down, cold all over like a dead man . . . that time you
+don't die, but the next time . . . "
+
+Barclay snapped his fingers without adding the word.'
+
+"And you can calculate when the second one will strike you.  It's
+a hundred and eighty-one days to the hour."
+
+Then he added:
+
+"That was the first one on the dock.  Tavor had six months to
+live."
+
+The big man broke the cigarette in his fingers and threw the
+pieces into the fire.  Then he turned abruptly toward me.
+
+"And I know where he wanted to live for those six months.  The
+old dream was still with him.  He wanted that country house in
+his native county in England, with the formal garden and the
+lackeys.  The finish didn't bother him, but he wanted to round
+out his life with the dream that he had carried about with him.
+
+"I put him to bed and went down into Broadway, and walked about
+all night.  Tavor couldn't go back and he had to have a bunch of
+money.
+
+"It was no good.  I couldn't see it.  I went back Tavor was up
+and I sat him down to a cross examination that would have
+delighted the soul of a Philadelphia lawyer."
+
+Barclay paused.
+
+"It was all at once that I saw it - like you'd snap your fingers.
+It was an accident of Charlie's talk . . . one of those obiter
+dicta, that I mentioned a while ago.  But I stopped Charlie and
+went over to the Metropolitan Library; there I got me an expert -
+an astronomer chap, as it happened, reading calculus in French
+for fun - I gave him a twenty and I looked him in the eye.
+
+"Now, Professor,' I said, `this dope's got to be straight stuff,
+I'm risking money on it; every word you write has got to be the
+truth, and every line and figure that you put on your map has got
+to be correct with a capital K.'"
+
+"'Surely,' he said, `I shall follow Huxley for the text and I
+shall check the chart calculations for error.'
+
+"'And there's another thing, professor.  You've got to go dumb on
+this job, for which I double the twenty.'  He looked puzzled, but
+when he finally understood me, he said `Surely' again, and I went
+back to my apartment.
+
+"'Charlie,' I said, `how much money would it take for this
+English country life business?'
+
+"His eyes lighted up a little.
+
+"'Well, Barclay, old man,' he replied, `I've estimated it pretty
+carefully a number of times.  I could take Eldon's place for six
+months with the right to purchase for two thousand dollars paid
+down; and I could manage the servants and the living expenses for
+another four thousand.  I fear I should not be able to get on
+with a less sum than six thousand dollars.'
+
+"Then he added - he was a child to the last - 'perhaps Mr.
+Hardman will now be able to advance it; he promised me "a further
+per cent" those were his words, when the matter was finally
+concluded.'
+
+"Then ten thousand would do?"
+
+"My word,' he said, `I should go it like a lord on ten thousand.
+Do you think Mr. Hardman would consider that sum?'
+
+"`I'm going to try him,' I said, `I've got some influence in a
+quarter that he depends on.'
+
+"And I went out.  I went down to my bank and got twenty U. S.
+bonds of a thousand each.  At five o'clock, the professor had his
+dope ready - the text and the chart, neatly folded in a big
+manilla envelope with a rubber band around it.  And that evening
+I went up to see old Nute."
+
+Barclay got another cigarette.  There was a queer cynicism in his
+big pitted face.
+
+"The church bunch," he said, "have got a strange conception of
+the devil; they think he's always ready to lie down on his
+friends.  That's a fool notion.  The devil couldn't do business
+if he didn't come across when you needed him.
+
+"And there's another thing; the old-timers, when they went after
+their god for a favor, always began by reciting what they'd done
+for him . . . .  That was sound dope!  I tried it myself on the
+way up to old Nute's apartment on Fifth Avenue.
+
+"I went over a lot of things.  And whenever I made a point, I
+rapped it on the pavement with the ferule of my walking stick; as
+one would say, `you owe me for that!'
+
+"You see I was worked up about Tavor.  When a man's carried a
+dream over all the hell he'd pushed through he ought to have it
+in the end."
+
+Barclay paused and flicked the ashes from his cigarette.
+
+"You know the swell apartments on Fifth Avenue; no name, only a
+number; every floor a residence, only the elevators connecting
+them.  I found old Nute in the seventh; and I was bucked the
+moment I got in.
+
+"The door from the drawing room to the library was open.  The
+Harvard don was going out, the one Nute had employed to get up
+his thesis for the Royal Society of London - I mentioned him a
+while ago.  And I heard his final remark, flung back at the door.
+`What you require, Sir, is the example case of some new
+exploration - one that you have yourself conducted.'
+
+"That bucked me; the devil was on the job!"
+
+Barclay stopped again.  He sat for a moment watching the smoke
+from the cigarette climb in a blue mist slowly into the beautiful
+fresco of the ceiling.
+
+"I told old Nute precisely what I've told you.  How I'd backed
+Tavor for his last adventure, and where he'd been; all over
+Central Mongolia and finally across the Great Sandy Desert of
+El-Khali.  And I told him what Charlie was after; the theory he
+started with and his final conclusion when he made his last push
+along the old caravan route west from Muscat.
+
+"I went into the details, and the big notion that Tavor had
+slowly pieced together; how the gold was mined in the ranges
+south of Siberia, carried in green skins to lower Mongolia,
+melted there and taken for trade Southwest across the El-Khali to
+an immense Babylon of Commerce of which the present Mecca is
+perhaps a decadent residuum.
+
+"I put it all in; the accessibility of this desert from the coast
+on three sides, how the old caravan route parallels the
+thirty-third meridian and how Charlie struck it four hundred
+miles out into the desert in a hundred miles travel due south in
+longitude between 50 and 55 degrees; all the details of Tavor's
+hunt for the wreck of one of these treasure caravans.
+
+"Old Nute looked at me with his little hard eyes slipping about.
+
+"'And he didn't find it?' he said.
+
+"I didn't answer that.  I went ahead and told him how I found
+Tavor and the shape he was in, and then I added, `I'm not an
+explorer, and Charlie can't go back.'
+
+"Old Nute's thick neck shot out at that.
+
+"'Then he did find it?' he said.
+
+"'Now look here, Nute,' I said, `you're not trading with Tavor on
+this deal.  You're trading with me and I'm just as slick as you
+are.  You'll get no chance to slip under on this.  You forget all
+I've told you just as though it had nothing to do with what I'm
+going to tell you, and I'll come to the point.'
+
+"`Forget it?' he said.
+
+"'Yes,' I said, `forget it.  I'm not going to put you on to what
+Charlie knows, with any strings to it, or with any pointers that
+you can run down without us.  I've told you all about Tavor's big
+hunt through the Shamo and the El-Khali for a purpose of my own
+and not for the purpose of enabling you to locate the thing that
+Charlie Tavor knows about.'
+
+"Hardman's voice went down into a low note.  `What does he know?'
+he said.
+
+"I looked him squarely in the little reptilian eyes.  `He knows
+where there is a treasure in gold equal in our money to three
+hundred thousand dollars!'
+
+"Old Nute's little eyes focused into his nose an instant.  Then
+he took a chance at me.
+
+"'What's the country like?'
+
+"I went on as though I didn't see the drift.
+
+"'Tavor says this area of the earth's surface is a great plain
+practically level, sloping gradually on one side and rising
+gradually on the other.'
+
+"'Sand?' said Nute.
+
+"'No,' I replied, 'Tavor says that contrary to the common notion,
+this plain is not covered with sand, it's a kind of chalk
+deposit.'
+
+"'Hard to get to?'
+
+"Old Nute shot the query in with a little quick duck of his head.
+
+"I went straight on with the answer.
+
+"'Tavor says it's about a five or six days' journey from a sea
+coast town.'
+
+"'Hard traveling?'
+
+"'No, Tavor says you can get within two miles of the place
+without any difficulty whatever - he says anybody can do it.  The
+only difficulties are on the last two miles.  But up to the last
+two miles, it's a holiday journey for a middle-aged woman.'
+
+"Old Nute grunted.  He put his fat hands together over his
+waistcoat and twiddled his thumbs.
+
+"`Well,'; he said, 'what's in your mind about it?'
+
+"We were now up to the trade and I stated the terms.
+
+"'It's like this,' I said, 'Tavor's down and out.  He's got only
+six months to live.  Fifth Avenue piled full of gold won't do him
+any good if he's got to wait for it.  What he wants is a little
+money quick!'
+
+"Old Nute's eyes squinted.
+
+"'How much money?' he said.
+
+"'Well,' I said, 'Tavor will turn his map over to you for ten
+thousand dollars . . .  Death's crowding him.'
+
+"Old Nute's fat fingers began to drum on his waistcoat.
+
+"`How do I know the gold's there and the map's straight?'
+
+"'Did you ever know Tavor to lie?' I said.
+
+"'No,' he said, 'Tavor's not a liar; but I am a business man, Mr.
+Barclay, and in business we do not go on verbal assurances, no
+matter how unquestioned.'
+
+"'That's right,' I replied, `I'm a business man, too; that's why
+I came instead of sending Tavor . . . . you found out he wasn't a
+business man in the first deal.'
+
+"Then I took my `shooting irons' out of my pocket and laid them
+on the table.
+
+"There,' I said, `are twenty, one-thousand United States bonds,
+not registered,' and I put my hand on one of the big manilla
+envelopes.; `and here,' I said, `is an accurate description of
+the place where this treasure lies and a map of the route to it,'
+and I put my hand on the other.
+
+"'Now,' I went on, `I believe every word of this thing.  Charles
+Tavor is the best all-round explorer in the world.  I've known
+him a lifetime and what he says goes with me.  We'll put up this
+bunch of stuff with a stakeholder for the term of a year, and if
+the gold isn't there and if the map showing the route to it isn't
+correct and if every word I've said about it isn't precisely the
+truth, you take down my bonds and keep them.'
+
+"Old Nute got up and walked about the room.  I knew what he was
+thinking.  `Here's another one of them - there's all kinds.'
+
+"But it hooked him.  We wrote out the terms and put the stuff up
+with old Commodore Harris - the straightest sport in America.
+Nute had the right to copy the map, and the text and a year to
+verify it.  And I took the ten thousand back to Charlie Tavor."
+
+Barclay got up and went over to the window.  He drew back the
+heavy tapestry curtains.  It was morning; the blue dawn was
+beginning to illumine Monaco and the polished arc of the sea.  He
+stood looking down into it, holding the curtain in his hand.
+
+"I give the devil his due for that, Sir Henry," he said.
+"Charlie Tavor got his dream at the end; he died like a gentleman
+in his English country house with the formal garden and the
+lackeys."
+
+"And the other man got the treasure?" I said.  Barclay replied
+without moving.
+
+"No, he didn't get it."
+
+"Then you lost your bonds?"
+
+"No, I didn't lose them; Commodore Harris handed them back to me
+on the last day of the year."
+
+I sat up in my big lounge chair.
+
+"Didn't Hardman make a fight for them; if he didn't find the
+treasure - didn't he squeal?"
+
+Barclay turned about, drawing the curtain close behind him.
+
+"And be laughed out of the high-brow bunch that he was trying to
+get into?  . . .  I said old Nute was a crook, but I didn't say
+he was a fool."
+
+I turned around in the chair.
+
+"I don't understand this thing, Barclay.  If the treasure was
+there, and you gave Hardman a correct map of the route to it, and
+it lay on a practically level plain, and he could get within two
+miles of it without difficulty in four or five days' travel from
+a sea coast town, why couldn't he get it?  Was it all the truth?"
+
+"It was every word precisely the truth," he said.
+
+"Then why couldn't he get it?"
+
+Barclay looked down at me; his big pitted face was illumined with
+a cynical smile.
+
+"Well, Sir Henry," he said, "'the trouble is with those last two
+miles.  They're water . . .  straight down. The level plain is
+the bed of the Atlantic ocean and that gold is in the hold of the
+Titanic."
+
+
+
+
+XI.-American Horses
+
+
+The thing began in the colony room of the Empire Club in London.
+The colony room is on the second floor and looks out over
+Piccadilly Circus.  It was at an hour when nobody is in an English
+club.  There was a drift of dirty fog outside.  Such nights come
+along in October.
+
+Douglas Hargrave did not see the Baronet until he closed the door
+behind him.  Sir Henry was seated at a table, leaning over, his
+face between his hand, and his elbows resting on the polished
+mahogany board.  There was a sheet of paper on the table between
+the Baronet's elbows.  There were a few lines written on the
+paper and the man's faculties were concentrated on them.  He did
+not see the jewel dealer until that person was half across the
+room, then he called to him.
+
+"Hello, Hargrave," he said.  "Do you know anything about
+ciphers?"
+
+"Only the trade one that our firm uses," replied the jewel
+dealer.  "And that's a modification of the A B C code."
+
+"Well," he said, "take a look at this."
+
+The jewel dealer sat down at the other side of the table and the
+Baronet handed him the sheet of paper.  The man expected to see a
+lot of queer signs and figures; but instead he found a simple
+trade's message, as it seemed to him.
+
+P.L.A. shipped nine hundred horses on freight steamer Don Carlow
+from N. Y.
+
+Have the bill of lading handed over to our agent to check up.
+
+"Well," said the jewel dealer, "somebody's going to ship nine
+hundred horses.  Where's the mystery?"
+
+The Baronet shrugged his big shoulders.
+
+"The mystery," he said, "is everywhere.  It's before and after
+and in the body of this message.  There's hardly anything to it
+but mystery."
+
+"Who sent it?" said Hargrave.
+
+"That's one of the mysteries," replied the Baronet.
+
+"Ah!" said the jewel dealer.  "Who received it?"
+
+"That's another," he answered.
+
+"At any rate," continued Hargrave, "you know where you got it."
+
+"Right," replied the Baronet.  "I know where I got it."  He took
+three newspapers out of the pocket of his big tweed coat.  "There
+it is," he said, "in the personal column of three newspapers -
+today's Times printed in London; the Matin printed in Paris; and
+a Dutch daily printed in Amsterdam."
+
+And there was the message set up in English, in two sentences
+precisely word for word, in three newspapers printed on the same
+day in London, Paris and Amsterdam.
+
+"It seems to be a message all right," said Hargrave: "But why do
+you imagine it's a cipher?"
+
+The Baronet looked closely at the American jewel dealer for a
+moment.
+
+"Why should it be printed in English in these foreign papers," he
+said, "if it were not a cipher?"
+
+"Perhaps," said Hargrave, "the person for whom it's intended does
+not know any other language."
+
+The Baronet shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"The persons for whom this message is intended," he said, "do not
+confine themselves to a single language.  It's a pretty
+well-organized international concern."
+
+"Well," said Hargrave, "it doesn't look like a mystery that ought
+to puzzle the ingenuity of the Chief of the Criminal
+Investigation Department of the metropolitan police."  He nodded
+to Sir Henry.  "You have only to look out for the arrival of nine
+hundred horses and when they get in to see who takes them off the
+boat.  The thing looks easy."
+
+"It's not so easy as it looks," replied the Baronet.  "Evidently
+these horses might go to France, Holland or England.  That's the
+secret in this message.  That's where the cipher comes in.  The
+name of the port is in that cipher somewhere."
+
+"But you can, watch the steamer," said Hargrave, "the Don
+Carlos."
+
+The Baronet laughed.
+
+"There's no such steamer!"  He got up and began to walk round the
+table.  "Nine hundred horses," he said.  "This thing has got to
+stop.  They're on the sea now, on the way over from America: We
+have got to find out where they will go ashore."
+
+He stopped, stooped over and studied the message which he had
+written out and which also lay before him in the three
+newspapers.
+
+"It's there," he said, "the name of the port of arrival,
+somewhere in those two sentences.  But I can't get at it.  It's
+no cipher that I have ever heard of.  It's no one of the hundred
+figure or number ciphers that the experts in the department know
+anything about.  If we knew the port of arrival we could pick up
+the clever gentleman who comes to take away the horses.  But
+what's the port - English, French or Dutch?  There are a score of
+ports."  He struck the paper with his hand.  "It's there, my word
+for it, if we could only decode the thing."
+
+Then he stood up, his face lifted, his fingers linked behind his
+back.  He crossed the room and stood looking out at the thin
+yellow fog drifting over Piccadilly Circus.  Finally he came
+back, gathered up his papers and put them in the pocket of his
+big tweed coat.
+
+"There's one man in Europe," he said, "who can read this thing.
+That's the Swiss expert criminologist, old Arnold, of Zurich.
+He's lecturing at the Sorbonne in Paris.  I'm going to see him."
+
+Then he went out.
+
+Now that, as has been said, is how the thing began.  It was the
+first episode in the series of events that began to go forward on
+this extraordinary night.  One will say that the purchasing agent
+for a great New York jewel house ought to be accustomed to
+adventures.  The writers of romance have stimulated that fancy.
+But the fact is that such persons are practical people.  They
+never do any of the things that the story writers tell us.  They
+never carry jewels about with them.  Of course they know the
+police departments of foreign cities.  All jewel dealers make a
+point of that.  Hargrave's father was an old friend of Sir Henry
+Marquis, chief of the C. I. D., and the young man always went to
+see him when he happened in London.  That explains the freedom of
+his talk to Hargrave on this night in the Empire Club in
+Piccadilly.
+
+The young man went over and sat down by the fire.  The big room
+was empty.  The sounds outside seemed muffled and distant.  The
+incident that had just passed impressed him.  He wondered why
+people should imagine that a purchasing agent of a jewel house
+must be a sort of expert in the devices of mystery.  As has been
+said, the thing's a notion.  Everything is shipped through
+reliable transportation companies and insured.  There was much
+more mystery in a shipload of horses - the nine hundred horses
+that were galloping through the head of Sir Henry Marquis - than
+in all the five prosaic years during which young Hargrave had
+succeeded his father as a jewel buyer.  The American was
+impressed by this mystery of the nine hundred horses.  Sir Henry
+had said it was a mystery in every direction.
+
+Now, as he sat alone before the fire in the colony room of the
+Empire Club and thought about it, the thing did seem
+inexplicable.  Why should the metropolitan police care who
+imported horses, or in what port a shipload of them was landed?
+The war was over.  Nobody was concerned about the importation of
+horses.  Why should Sir Henry be so disturbed about it?  But he
+was disturbed; and he had rushed off to Paris to see an expert on
+ciphers.  That seemed a tremendous lot of trouble to take.  The
+Baronet knew the horses were on the sea coming from America, he
+said.  If he knew that much, how could he fail to discover the
+boat on which they were carried and the port at which they would
+arrive?  Nobody could conceal nine hundred horses!
+
+Hargrave was thinking about that, idly, before the glow of the
+coal fire, when the second episode in this extraordinary affair
+arrived.
+
+A steward entered.
+
+"Visitor, please," he said, "to see Mr. Hargrave."
+
+Then he presented his tray with a card.  The jewel dealer took
+the card with some surprise.  Everybody knew that he was at the
+Empire Club.  It is a colony thing with chambers for foreign
+guests.  A list of arrivals is always printed.  He saw at a
+glance that it was not a man's card; the size was too large.
+Then he turned it over before the light of the fire.  The name
+was engraved in script, an American fashion at this time.
+
+The woman's card had surprised him; but the name on it brought
+him up in his chair - "Mrs. A. B. Farmingham."  It was not a name
+that he knew precisely; but he knew its genera, the family or
+group to which it belonged.  Mr. Jefferson removed titles of
+nobility in the American republic, but his efforts did not
+eliminate caste zones.  It only made the lines of cleavage more
+pronounced.  One knew these zones by the name formation.
+Everybody knew "Alfa Baba" Farmingham, as the Sunday Press was
+accustomed to translate his enigmatical initials.  Some wonderful
+Western bonanza was behind the man.  Mrs. "Alfa Baba" Farmingham
+would be, then, one of the persons that Hargrave's house was
+concerned to reach.  He looked again at the card.  In the corner
+the engraved address, "Point View, Newport," was marked out with
+a pencil and "The Ritz" written over it.
+
+He got his coat and hat and followed the steward out of the club.
+There was a carriage at the curb.  A footman was holding the door
+open, and a woman, leaning over in the seat, was looking out.
+She was precisely what Hargrave expected to see, one of those
+dominant, impatient, aggressive women who force their way to the
+head of social affairs in America.  She shot a volley of
+questions at him the moment he was before the door.
+
+"Are you Douglas Hargrave, the purchasing agent for Bartholdi &
+Banks?"
+
+The man said that he was, and at her service, and so forth.  But
+she did not stop to listen to any reply.
+
+"You look mighty young, but perhaps you know your business.  At
+any rate, it's the best I can do.  Get in."
+
+Hargrave got in, the footman closed the door, and the carriage
+turned into Piccadilly Circus.  The woman did not pay very much
+attention to him.  She made a laconic explanation, the sort of
+explanation one would make to a shopkeeper.
+
+"I want your opinion on some jewels," she said.  "I have a lot to
+do - no time to fool away.  When I found that I could see the
+jewels to-night I concluded to pick you up on my way down.  I
+didn't find out about it in time to let you know."
+
+Hargrave told her that he would be very glad to give her the
+benefit of his experience.
+
+"Glad, nonsense!" she said.  "I'll pay your fee.  Do you know a
+jewel when you see it?"
+
+"I think I do, madam," he replied.
+
+She moved with energy.
+
+"It won't do to think," she said.  "I have got to know.  I don't
+buy junk."
+
+He tried to carry himself up to her level with a laugh.
+
+"I assure you, madam," he said, "our house is not accustomed to
+buy junk.  It's a perfectly simple matter to tell a spurious
+jewel."
+
+And he began to explain the simple, decisive tests.  But she did
+not listen to him.
+
+"I don't care how a vet knows that a hunter's sound.  All that I
+want to be certain about is that he does know it.  I don't want
+to buy hunters on my own hook.  Neither do I want to buy jewels
+on what I know about them.  If you know, that's all I care about
+it.  And you must know or old Bartholdi wouldn't trust you.
+That's what I'm going on."
+
+She was a big aggressive woman, full of energy.  Hargrave could
+not see her very well, but that much was abundantly clear.  The
+carriage turned out of Piccadilly Circus, crossed Trafalgar
+Square and stopped before Blackwell's Hotel.  Blackwell's has had
+a distinct clientele since the war; a sort of headquarters for
+Southeastern European visitors to London.
+
+When the carriage stopped Mrs. Farmingham opened the door
+herself, before the footman could get down, and got out.  It was
+the restless American impatience always cropping out in this
+woman.
+
+"Come along, young man," she said, "and tell me whether this
+stuff is O. K. or junk."
+
+They got in a lift and went up to the top floor of the hotel.
+Mrs. Farmingham got out and Hargrave followed her along the hall
+to a door at the end of a corridor.  He could see her now clearly
+in the light.  She had gray eyes, a big determined mouth, and a
+mass of hair dyed as only a Parisian expert, in the Rue de la
+Paix, can do it.  She went directly to a door at the end of the
+corridor, rapped on it with her gloved hand, and turned the latch
+before anybody could possibly have responded.
+
+Hargrave followed her into the room.  It was a tiny sitting room,
+one of the inexpensive rooms in the hotel.  There was a bit of
+fire in the grate, and standing by the mantelpiece was, a big old
+man with close-cropped hair and a pale, unhealthy face.  It was
+the type of face that one associates with tribal races in
+Southeastern Europe.  He was dressed in a uniform that fitted
+closely to his figure.  It was a uniform of some elevated rank,
+from the apparent richness of it.  There were one or two
+decorations on the coat, a star and a heavy bronze medal.  The
+man looked to be of some importance; but this importance did not
+impress Mrs. Farmingham.
+
+"Major," she said in her direct fashion, "I have brought an
+expert to look at the jewels."
+
+She indicated Hargrave, and the foreign officer bowed
+courteously.  Then he took two candles from the mantelpiece and
+placed them on a little table that stood in the center of the
+room.
+
+He put three chairs round this table, sat down in one of them,
+unbuttoned the bosom of his coat and took out a big oblong jewel
+case.  The case was in an Oriental design and of great age.  The
+embroidered silk cover was falling apart.  He opened the case
+carefully, delicately, like one handling fragile treasure.
+Inside, lying each in a little pocket that exactly fitted the
+outlines of the stone, were three rows of sapphires.  He emptied
+the jewels out on the table.
+
+"Sir," he said, speaking with a queer, hesitating accent, "it
+saddens one unspeakably to part with the ancient treasure of
+one's family."
+
+Mrs. Farmingham said nothing whatever.  Hargrave stooped over the
+jewels and spread them out on top of, the table.  There were
+twenty-nine sapphires of the very finest quality.  He had never
+seen better sapphires anywhere.  He remembered seeing stones that
+were matched up better; but he had never seen individual stones
+that were any finer in anybody's collection.  The foreigner was
+composed and silent while the American examined the jewels.  But
+Mrs. Farmingham moved restlessly in her chair.
+
+"Well," she said, "are they O. K.?"
+
+"Yes, madam," said Hargrave; "they are first-class stones."
+
+"Sure?" she asked.
+
+"Quite sure, madam," replied the American.  "There can be no
+question about it."
+
+"Are they worth eighteen thousand dollars?"
+
+She put the question in such a way that Hargrave understood her
+perfectly.
+
+"Well," he said, "that depends upon a good many conditions.  But
+I'm willing to say, quite frankly, that if you don't want the
+jewels I'm ready to take them for our house at eighteen thousand
+dollars."
+
+The big, dominant, aggressive woman made the gesture of one who
+cracks a dog whip.
+
+"That's all right," she said.  Then she turned to the foreigner.
+"Now, major, when do you want this money?"
+
+The big old officer shrugged his shoulders and put out his hands.
+
+"To-morrow, madam; to-morrow as I have said to you; before midday
+I must return.  I can by no means remain an hour longer; my leave
+of absence expires.  I must be in Bucharest at sunrise on the
+morning of the twelfth of October.  I can possibly arrive if I
+leave London to-morrow at midday, but not later."
+
+Mrs. Farmingham began to wag her head in a determined fashion.
+
+"Nonsense," she said, "I can't get the money by noon.  I have
+telegraphed to the Credit Lyonnais in Paris.  I can get it by the
+day after to-morrow, or perhaps to-morrow evening."
+
+The foreigner looked down on the floor.
+
+"It is impossible," he said.
+
+The woman interrupted him.
+
+"Now, major, that's all nonsense!  A day longer can't make any
+difference."
+
+He drew himself up and looked calmly at her.
+
+"Madam," he said, "it would make all the difference in the world.
+If I should remain one day over my time I might just as well
+remain all the other days that are to follow it."
+
+There was finality and conviction in the man's voice.  Mrs.
+Farmingham got up and began to walk about the room.  She seemed
+to speak to Hargrave, although he imagined that she was speaking
+to herself.
+
+"Now this is a pretty how-de-do," she said "Lady Holbert told me
+about this find to-night at dinner.  She said Major Mikos wanted
+the money at once; but I didn't suppose he wanted it cash on the
+hour like that.  She brought me right away after dinner to see
+him.  And then I went for you."  She stopped, and again made the
+gesture as of one who, cracks a dog whip.  "Now what shall I do?"
+she said.
+
+The last remark was evidently not addressed to Hargrave.  It was
+not addressed to anybody.  It was merely the reflection of a
+dominant nature taking counsel with itself.  She took another
+turn about the room.  Then she pulled up short.
+
+"See here," she said, "suppose you take these jewels and give the
+major his money in the morning.  Then I'll buy them of you."
+
+"Very well, madam," said Hargrave; "but in that event we shall
+charge you a ten per cent commission."
+
+She stormed at that.
+
+"Eighteen hundred dollars?" she said.  "That's absurd,
+ridiculous!  I'm willing to pay you five hundred dollars."
+
+The American did not undertake to argue the matter with her.
+
+"We don't handle any sale for a less commission," he said.
+
+Then he explained that he could not act as any sort of agent in
+the matter; that the only thing he could do would be to buy the
+jewels outright and resell them to her.  His house would not make
+any sale for a less profit than ten per cent.  Hargrave did not
+propose to be involved in any but a straight-out transaction.  He
+was quite willing to buy the sapphires for eighteen thousand
+dollars.  There was five thousand dollars' profit in them on any
+market.  He was perfectly safe either way about.  If Mrs.
+Farmingham made the repurchase there was a profit of ten per
+cent.  If not, there was five thousand dollars' profit in the
+bargain under any conditions.
+
+They were Siamese stones, and the cutting was of an old design.
+They were not from any stock in Europe.  Hargrave knew what
+Europe held of sapphires.  These were from some Oriental stock.
+And everybody bought an Oriental stone wherever he could get it.
+How the seller got it did not matter.  Nobody undertook to verify
+the title of a Siamese trader or a Burma agent.
+
+Mrs. Farmingham walked about for several minutes, saying over to
+herself as she had said before:
+
+"Now what shall I do?"
+
+Then like the big, dominant, decisive nature that she was she
+came to a conclusion.
+
+"All right," she said, "bring in the money in the morning and get
+the sapphires.  I'll take them up in a day or two.  Good-by,
+major; come along, Mr. Hargrave."  And she went out of the room.
+
+The American stopped at the door to bow to the old Rumanian
+officer who was standing up beside the table before the heap of
+sapphires.  They got into the carriage at the curb before
+Blackwell's Hotel.  Mrs. Farmingham put Hargrave down at the
+Empire Club, and the carriage passed on, across Piccadilly Circus
+toward the Ritz.
+
+The following morning Hargrave got the sapphires from Major
+Mikos, and paid him eighteen thousand dollars in English
+sovereigns for them.  He wanted gold to carry back with him for
+the jewels that he had brought out of the kingdom of Rumania.  He
+seemed a simple, anxious person.  He wished to carry his
+treasures with him like a peasant.  The sapphires looked better
+in the daylight.  There ought to have been seven thousand
+dollars' profit in them, perhaps more; seven thousand dollars, at
+any rate, that very day in the London market.  Hargrave took them
+to the Empire Club and put them in a sealed envelope in the
+steward's safe.
+
+The thin drift of yellow remained in the city; that sulphurous
+haze that the blanket of sea fog, moving over London, presses
+down into her streets.  It was not heavy yet; it was only a mist
+of saffron; but it threatened to gather volume as the day
+advanced.
+
+At luncheon Hargrave got a note from Mrs. Farmingham, a line
+scrawled on her card to say that she would call for him at three
+o'clock.  Her carriage was before the door on the stroke of the
+hour, and she explained that the money to redeem the jewels had
+arrived.  The Credit Lyonnais had sent it over from Paris.  She
+seemed a bit puzzled about it.  She had telegraphed the Credit
+Lyonnais yesterday to send her eighteen thousand dollars.  And
+she had expected that the French banking house would have
+arranged for the payment of the money through its English
+correspondent.  But its telegram directed her to go to the United
+Atlantic Express Company and receive the money.
+
+A few minutes cleared the puzzle.  The office of the company is
+on the Strand above the Savoy.  Mrs. Farmingham went to the
+manager and showed him a lot of papers she had in an
+official-looking envelope.  After a good bit of official pother
+the porters carried out a big portmanteau, a sort of heavy
+leather traveling case, and put it into the carriage.  Mrs.
+Farmingham came to Hargrave where he stood by the door.
+
+"Now, what do you think!" she said.  "Of all the stupid idiots,
+give me a French idiot to be the stupidest; they have actually
+sent me eighteen thousand dollars in gold!"
+
+"Well," said Hargrave, "perhaps you asked them to send you
+eighteen thousand dollars in gold."
+
+She closed her mouth firmly for a moment and looked him vacantly
+in the face.
+
+"What did I do?" she said, in the old manner of addressing an
+inquiry to herself.  "The major wanted gold and perhaps I said
+gold.  Why, yes, I must have said I wanted eighteen thousand
+dollars in gold.  Well, at any rate, here's the money to pay you
+for the sapphires.  I'll telegraph the Credit Lyonnais to send me
+your eighteen hundred, and you can come around to the Ritz for it
+in the morning."
+
+She wished Hargrave to see that the telegram was properly worded,
+so the stupid French would not undertake to ship another bag of
+coin to her.  He wrote it out, so there could be no mistake, and
+sent it from Charing Cross on the way back to the club.
+
+Hargrave had to get two porters to carry the leather portmanteau
+into his room at the Empire Club.  Mrs. Farmingham did not wait
+to receive the sapphires.  She said he could bring them over to
+the Ritz after he had counted the money.  She wanted a cup of
+tea; he could come along in an hour.
+
+It took Hargrave the whole of the hour to verify the money.  The
+case had been shipped, the straps were knotted tight and the lock
+was sealed.  He had to get a man from the outside to break the
+lock open.  The man said it was an American lock and he hadn't
+any implement to turn it.
+
+There were eighteen thousand dollars in American twenty-dollar
+gold pieces packed in sawdust in the bag.  The Credit Lyonnais
+had followed Mrs. Farmingham's directions to the letter.  Such is
+the custom of the stupid French!  She had asked for eighteen
+thousand dollars in gold, and they had sent her eighteen thousand
+dollars in gold.  Hargrave put one of the pieces into his
+waistcoat pocket.  He wanted to show Mrs. Farmingham how
+strangely the stupid French had made the blunder of doing
+precisely what she asked.  Then he strapped up the portmanteau,
+pushed it under the bed, went out and locked the door.  He asked
+the chief steward to put a man in the corridor to see that no one
+went into his room while he was out.  Then he got the sapphires
+out of the safe and went over to the Ritz.
+
+He met Mrs. Farmingham in the corridor coming out to her
+carriage.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Hargrave," she said, "here you are.  I just told the
+clerk to call you up and tell you to bring the sapphires over in
+the morning when you came for the draft.  I promised Lady Holbert
+last night to come out to tea at five.  Forgot it until a moment
+ago."
+
+She took Hargrave along out to the carriage and he gave her the
+envelope.  She tore off the corner, emptied the sapphires into
+her hand, glanced at them, and dropped them loose into the pocket
+of her coat.
+
+"Was the money all right?" she said.
+
+"Precisely all right," replied the American.  "The Credit
+Lyonnais, with amazing stupidity, sent you precisely what you
+asked for in your telegram."  And he showed her the twenty-dollar
+gold piece.
+
+"Well, well, the stupid darlings!"  Then she laughed in her big,
+energetic manner.  "I'm not always a fool.  Come in the morning
+at nine.  Good-night, Mr. Hargrave."
+
+And the carriage rolled across Piccadilly into Bond Street in the
+direction of Grosvenor Square and Lady Holbert's.
+
+The fog was settling down over London.  Moving objects were
+beginning to take on the loom of gigantic figures.  It was
+getting difficult to see.
+
+It must have taken Hargrave half an hour to reach the club.  The
+first man he saw when he went in was Sir Henry, his hands in the
+pockets of his tweed coat and his figure blocking the passage.
+
+"Hello, Hargrave!" he cried.  "What have you got in your room
+that old Ponsford won't let me go up?"
+
+"Not nine hundred horses!" replied the American.
+
+The Baronet laughed.  Then he spoke in a lower voice:
+
+"It's extraordinary lucky that I ran over to the Sorbonne.  Come
+along up to your room and I'll tell you.  This place is filling
+up with a lot of thirsty swine.  We can't talk in any public room
+of it."
+
+They went up the great stairway, lined with paintings of famous
+colonials celebrated in the English wars, and into the room.
+Hargrave turned on the light and poked up the fire.  Sir Henry
+sat down by the table.  He took out his three newspapers and laid
+them down before him.
+
+"My word, Hargrave," he said, "old Arnold is a clever beggar!  He
+cleared the thing up clean as rain."  The Baronet spread the
+newspapers out before him.
+
+"We knew here at the Criminal Investigation Department that this
+thing was a cipher of some sort, because we knew about these
+horses.  We had caught up with this business of importing horses.
+We knew the shipment was on the way as I explained to you.  But
+we didn't know the port that it would come into."
+
+"Well," said the American, "did you find out?"
+
+"My word," he cried, "old Arnold laughed in my face.  'Ach,
+monsieur,' he cried, mixing up several languages, `it is Heidel's
+cipher!  It is explained in the seventeenth Criminal Archive at
+Gratz.  Attend and I will explain it, monsieur.  It is always
+written in two paragraphs.  The first paragraph contains the
+secret message, and the second paragraph contains the key to it.
+Voila!  This message is in two paragraphs:
+
+"'"P.L.A. shipped nine hundred horses on freight steamer Don
+Carlos from N. Y.
+
+"'"Have the bill of lading handed over to our agent to check up"
+
+"'The hidden message is made up of certain words and capital
+letters contained in the first paragraph, while the presence of
+the letter t in the second paragraph indicates the words or
+capital letters that count in the first. One has only to note the
+numerical position of the letter t in the second paragraph in
+order to know what capital letter or word counts in the first
+paragraph.'"
+
+The Baronet took out a pencil and underscored the words in the
+second paragraph of the printed cipher: "Have the bill of lading
+handed over to our agent to check up."
+
+"You will observe that the second, the eighth and the eleventh
+words in this paragraph begin with the letter t.  Therefore, the
+second, the eighth and the eleventh capital letters or words in
+the first paragraph make up the hidden message."
+
+And again with his pencil he underscored the letters of the first
+paragraph of the cipher: "P.L.A. shipped nine hundred horses on
+freight steamer Don Carlos from N. Y."
+
+"So we get L, on, Don."
+
+"London!" cried Hargrave.  "The nine-hundred horses are to come
+into London!"
+
+And in his excitement he took the gold piece out of his pocket
+and pitched it up.  He had been stooping over the table.  The fog
+was creeping into the room.  And in the uncertain light about the
+ceiling he missed the gold piece and it fell on the table before
+Sir Henry.  The gold piece did not ring, it fell dull and heavy,
+and the big Baronet looked at it openmouthed as though it had
+suddenly materialized out of the yellow fog entering the room.
+
+"My word!" he cried.  "One of the nine hundred horses!"
+
+Hargrave stopped motionless like a man stricken by some sorcery.
+
+"One of the nine hundred horses!" he echoed.
+
+The Baronet was digging at the gold piece with the blade of his
+knife.
+
+"Precisely!  In the criminal argot a counterfeit American
+twenty-dollar gold piece is called a `horse.'
+
+"Look," he said, and he dug into the coin with his knife, "it's
+white inside, made of Babbit metal, milled with a file and
+gold-plated.  Where did you get it?"
+
+The American stammered.
+
+"Where could I have gotten it?" he murmured.
+
+"Well," the Baronet said, "you might have got it from a big, old,
+pasty-faced Alsatian; that would be 'Dago' Mulehaus.  Or you
+might have got it from an energetic, middle-aged, American woman
+posing as a social leader in the States; that would be `Hustling'
+Anne; both bad crooks, at the head of an international gang of
+counterfeiters."
+
+
+
+
+XII.  The Spread Rails
+
+
+It was after dinner, in the great house of Sir Henry Marquis in
+St. James's Square.
+
+The talk had run on the value of women in criminal investigation;
+their skill as detective agents . . . the suitability of the
+feminine intelligence to the hard, accurate labor of concrete
+deductions.
+
+It was the American Ambassadress, Lisa Lewis, who told the story.
+
+
+It was a fairy night, and the thing was a fairy story.
+
+The sun had merely gone behind a colored window.  The whole vault
+of the heaven was white with stars.  The road was like a ribbon
+winding through the hills.  In little whispers, in the dark
+places, Marion told me it.  We sat together in the tonneau of the
+motor.  It was past midnight, of a heavenly September.  We were
+coming in from a stately dinner at the Fanshaws'.
+
+A fairy story is a nice, comfortable human affair.  It's about a
+hero, and a thing no man could do, and a princess and a dragon.
+It tells how the hero found the task that was too big for other
+men, how he accomplished it, circumvented the dragon and won the
+princess.
+
+The Arabian formula fitted snugly to the facts.
+
+The great Dominion railroad, extending from Montreal into New
+York, was having a run of terrible luck; one frightful wreck
+followed another.  Nobody could get the thing straightened out.
+Old Crewe, the railroad commissioner of New York, was relentless
+in pressing hard conditions on the road.  Then out of the West,
+had come young Clinton Howard, big, tawny, virile, like the race
+of heroes.  He had cleaned out the tangles, set the thing going,
+restored order and method; and the confidence of Canada was
+flowing back.  Then Howard had made love to Marion in his
+persistent dominating fashion . . . . and here, with her
+whispered confession, was the fairy story ended.
+
+Marion pointed her finger out north, where, far across the
+valley, a great country-house sat on the summit of a wooded hill.
+
+"Clinton has discovered the Commissioner's secret, Sarah," she
+said.  "The safety of the public isn't the only thing moving old
+Crewe to hammer the railroad.  He pretends it is.  But in fact he
+wishes to get control of the road in a bankrupt court."
+
+She paused.
+
+"Crewe is a Nietzsche creature.  Victory is the only thing with
+him.  Nothing else counts.  The way the road was going he would
+have got it in the bankrupt court by now.  He's howling `safety
+first' all over the country.  `Negligence' is the big word in
+every report he issues.  It won't do for Clinton to have an
+accident now that any degree of human foresight could have
+prevented."
+
+"Well," I said, "the dragon will give the hero no further
+trouble.  Dr. Martin told mother to-day that Mr. Crewe's mind had
+broken down, and they had brought him out from New York.  He got
+up in a directors' meeting and tried to kill the president of the
+Pacific Trust Company, with a chair.  He went suddenly mad, Dr.
+Martin said."
+
+Marion put out her hands in an unconscious gesture.
+
+"I am not surprised," she said.  "That sort of temperament in the
+strain of a great struggle is apt to break down and attempt to
+gain its end by some act of direct violence."
+
+Then she added:
+
+"My grandfather says in his work on evidence that the human mind
+if dominated by a single idea will finally break out in some
+bizarre act.  And he cites the case of the minister who, having
+maneuvered in vain to compass the death of the king by some sort
+of accident, finally undertook to kill him with an andiron."
+
+She reflected a moment.
+
+"I am afraid," she continued, "that the harm is already done.
+Crewe has set the whole country on the watch.  Clinton says there
+simply must not be a slip anywhere now.  The road must be safe;
+he must make it safe."  She repeated her expression.
+
+"An accident now that any sort of human foresight could prevent
+would ruin him."
+
+"Oh, dear, it's an awful strain on us . . . on him," she
+corrected.  "He simply can't be everywhere to see that everything
+is right and everybody careful.  And besides, there's the
+finances of the road to keep in shape.  He had to go to Montreal
+to-day to see about that."
+
+She leaned over toward me in her eager interest.
+
+"I don't see how he can sleep with the thing on him.  The big
+trains must go through on time, and every workman and every piece
+of machinery must be right as a clock.  I get in a panic.  I
+asked him to-day if he thought he could run a railroad like that,
+like a machine, everything in place on the second, and he said,
+`Sure, Mike!'"
+
+I laughed.
+
+"`Sure, Mike,"' I said, "is the spirit in which the world is
+conquered."
+
+And then the strange attraction of these two persons for one
+another arose before me; this big, crude, virile, direct son of
+the hustling West, and this delicate, refined, intellectual
+daughter of New England.  The ancestors of the man had been the
+fighting and the building pioneer.  And those of the girl,
+reflective people, ministers of the gospel and counselors at law.
+Marion's grandfather had been a writer on the law.  Warfield on
+Evidence, had been the leading authority in this country.  And
+this ambitious girl had taken a special course in college to fit
+her to revise her grandfather's great work.  There was no
+grandson to undertake this labor, and she had gone about the task
+herself.  She would not trust the great book to outside hands.  A
+Warfield had written it, and a Warfield should keep the edition
+up.  Her revision was now in the hands of a publisher in Boston,
+and it was sound and comprehensive, the critics said; the ablest
+textbook on circumstantial evidence in America.  I looked in a
+sort of wonder at this girl, carried off her feet by a tawny
+barbarian!
+
+Marion was absorbed in the thing; and I understood her anxiety.
+But the most pressing danger, she did not seem to realize.
+
+It lay, I thought, in the revenge of a discharged workman.
+Clinton Howard had to drop any number of incompetent persons, and
+they wrote him all sorts of threatening letters, I had been told.
+With all the awful things that happen over the country some of
+these angry people might do anything.  There are always some
+half-mad people.
+
+She went on.
+
+"But Clinton says the public is as just as Daniel.  If he has an
+accident in the ordinary course of affairs the public will hold
+him for it.  But if anything should happen that he could not
+help, the public will not hold him responsible."
+
+I realized the force of that.  What reasonable human care could
+prevent he must answer for, but the outrage of a criminal would
+not be taken in the public mind against him.  On the contrary,
+the sympathy of the public would flow in.  When the people feel
+that a man is making every effort for their welfare, the criminal
+act of an outsider brings them over wholly to his support.
+Profound interest carried Marion off her feet.
+
+"I was in a panic the other day, and Clinton said, `Don't let
+rotten luck get your goat.  I'm done if an engineer runs by a
+block, but nothing else can put it over on me'!"
+
+She laughed with me at the direct, virile idiom of young America
+in action.
+
+An event interrupted the discourse.  The motor took a sharp curve
+and a young man running across the road suddenly flung himself
+face down in the grass beyond the curb.
+
+"Is he hurt?" said Marion to the chauffeur.
+
+"No, Miss, he's hiding, Miss," said the man, and we swept out of
+sight.
+
+I thought it more likely that the creature was in liquor.  In
+spite of the great country-houses, it was not good hunting-ground
+for the criminal class, during the season when everybody was
+about.  The very number of servants, when a place is open, in a
+rather effective way, police it.  Besides the young man looked
+like a sort of workman.  One gets such impressions at a glance.
+
+The motor descended the long hill toward the river and the flat
+valley.  It hummed into the curves and hollows, through the
+pockets of chill air, and out again into the soft September
+night.
+
+Then finally it swept out into the flat valley, and stopped with
+a grind of the emergency brake that caused the wheels to skid,
+ripping up the dust and gravel.  For a moment in the jar and
+confusion we did not realize what had happened, then we saw a
+great locomotive lying on its side, and a line of Pullmans, sunk
+to the axles in the soft earth.
+
+The whole "Montreal Express" was derailed, here in the flat land
+at the grade crossing.  The thing had been done some time.  The
+fire had been drawn from the engine; there was only a sputtering
+of steam.  The passengers had been removed.  A wrecking-car had
+come up from down the line.  A telegrapher was setting up a
+little instrument on a box by the roadside.  A lineman was
+climbing a pole to connect his wire.  A track boss with a torch
+and a crew of men were coming up from an examination of the line
+littered with its wreck.
+
+I hardly know what happened in the next few minutes.  We were out
+of the motor and among the men almost before the car stopped.
+
+No one had been hurt.  The passenger-coaches were not turned
+over, and the engineer and fireman had jumped as the cab toppled.
+By the greatest good fortune the train had gone off the track in
+this low flat land almost level with the grade.  Several things
+joined to avoid a terrible disaster; the flat ground that enabled
+the whole train to plow along upright until it stopped, the track
+lying flush with the highway where the engine went off, and the
+fact that trains must slow up for this grade crossing.  Had there
+been an embankment, or a big ditch, or the train under its usual
+headway the wreck would have been a horror, for every wheel, from
+the engine to the last coach, had left the rails.
+
+We were an excited group around the train's crew, when the
+trackman came up with his torch.  Everybody asked the same
+question as the man approached.
+
+"What caused the accident?"
+
+"Spread rails," he said.  "These big brutes," he pointed to the
+mammoth engine sprawling like a child's top on its side, the
+gigantic wheels in the air, "and these new steel coaches, are
+awful heavy.  There's an upgrade here.  When they struck it,
+they just spread out the rails."
+
+And he pushed his closed hands out before him, slowly apart, in
+illustration.
+
+The man knew Marion, for he spoke directly to her in reply to our
+concerted query.  Then he added "If you step down the track, Miss
+Warfield, I'll show you exactly how it happened."
+
+We followed the big workman with his torch.  Marion walked beside
+him, and I a few steps behind.  The girl had been plunged, on the
+instant, headlong into the horror she feared, into the ruin that
+she had lain awake over - and yet she met it with no sign, except
+that grim stiffening of the figure that disaster brings to
+persons of courage.  She gave no attention to her exquisite gown.
+It was torn to pieces that night; my own was a ruin.  The
+crushing effect of this disaster swept out every trivial thing.
+
+In a moment we saw how the accident happened, the workman
+lighting the sweep of track with his torch.  Here were the plow
+marks on the wooden cross ties, where the wheels had run after
+they left the rails.  One saw instantly that the thing happened
+precisely as the workman explained it.  When the heavy engine
+struck the up-grade, the rails had spread, the wheels had gone
+down on the cross-ties, and the whole train was derailed.
+
+I saw it with a sickening realization of the fact.
+
+Marion took the workman's torch and went over the short piece of
+track on which the thing had happened.  All the evidences of the
+accident were within a short distance.  The track was not torn up
+when the thing began.  There was only the displaced rail pushed
+away, and the plow marks of the wheels on the ties.  The spread
+rails had merely switched the train off the track onto the level
+of the highway roadbed into the flat field.
+
+Marion and the workman had gone a little way down the track.  I
+was quite alone at the point of accident, when suddenly some one
+caught my hand.
+
+I was so startled that I very nearly screamed.  The thing
+happened so swiftly, with no word.
+
+There behind me was a woman, an old foreign woman, a peasant from
+some land of southern Europe.  She had my hand huddled up to her
+mouth.
+
+And she began to speak, bending her aged body, and with every
+expression of respect.
+
+"Ah, Contessa, he is not do it, my Umberto.  He is run away in
+fear to hide in the Barrington quarry.  It is accident.  It is
+the doing of the good God.  Ah, Contessa," and her old lips
+dabbed against my hand.  "I beg him to not go, but he is
+discharge; an' he make the threat like the great fool.  Ah,
+Contessa, Contessa," and she went over the words with absurd
+repetition, "believe it is by chance, believe it is the doing of
+the good God, I pray you."  And so she ran on in her quaint
+old-world words.
+
+Instantly I remembered the man lying by the roadside, and the
+threats of discharged workmen.
+
+I told her the thing was a clean accident, and tried to show her
+how it came about.  She was effusive in gratitude for my belief.
+But she seemed concerned about Marion and the others.  She did
+not go away; she went over and sat down beside the track.
+
+Presently the others returned.  They were so engrossed that they
+did not notice my adventure or the aged woman seated on the
+ground.
+
+Marion was putting questions to the workman.
+
+"There was no obstruction on the track?"
+
+"No, Miss."
+
+"The engineer was watching?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Warfield, he had to slow up and be careful about the
+crossing.  There is no curve on this grade, he could see every
+foot of the way.  The track was clear and in place, and he was
+watching it.  There was nothing on it.  - The rails simply spread
+under the weight of the engine."
+
+And he began to comment on the excessive size and weight of the
+huge modern passenger engine.
+
+"The brute drove the rails apart," he said, "that's all there is
+to it."
+
+"Was the track in repair?" said Marion.
+
+"It was patrolled to-day, Miss, and it was all in shape."
+
+Then he repeated:
+
+"The big engine just pushed the rails out."
+
+"But the road is built for this type of engine," said Marion.
+
+"Yes, Miss Warfield," replied the man, "it's supposed to be, but
+every roadbed gets a spread rail sometimes."
+
+Then he added:
+
+"It has to be mighty solid to hold these hundred ton engines on
+the rails at sixty miles an hour."
+
+"It does hold them," said Marion.
+
+"Yes, Miss Warfield, usually," said the man.
+
+"Then why should it fail here?"
+
+The man's big grimy face wrinkled into a sort of smile.
+
+"Now, Miss Warfield," he said, "if we knew why an accident was
+likely to happen at one place more than another we wouldn't have
+any wrecks."
+
+"Precisely," replied Marion, "but isn't it peculiar that the
+track should spread at the synclinal of this grade with the train
+running at a reduced speed, when it holds on the synclinal of
+other grades with the train running at full speed?"
+
+The man's big face continued to smile.
+
+"All accidents are peculiar, Miss Warfield; that's what makes
+them accidents."
+
+"But," said Marion, "is not the aspect of these peculiarities
+indicatory of either a natural event or one designed by a human
+intelligence?"
+
+The man fingered his torch.
+
+"Mighty strange things happen, Miss Warfield.  I've seen a train
+go over into a canal and one coach lodge against a tree that was
+standing exactly in the right place to save it.  And I've seen a
+passenger engine run by a signal and through a block and knock a
+single car out of a passing freight-train, at a crossing, and
+that car be the very one that the freight train's brakeman had
+just reached on his way to the caboose; just like somebody had
+timed it all, to the second, to kill him.  And I've seen a whole
+wreck piled up, as high as a house, on top of a man, and the man
+not scratched."
+
+"I do not mean the coincidence of accident," said Marion, "that
+is a mystery beyond us; what I mean is that there must be an
+organic difference in the indicatory signs of a thing as it
+happens in the course of nature, and as it happens by human
+arrangement."
+
+The trackman was a person accustomed to the reality and not the
+theory of things.
+
+"I don't see how the accident would have been any different," he
+said, "if somebody had put that tree in the right spot to catch
+the coach; or timed the minute with a stop-watch to kill that
+brakeman; or piled that wreck on the man so it wouldn't hurt him.
+The result would have been just the same."
+
+"The result would have been the same," replied Marion, "but the
+arrangement of events would have been different."
+
+"Just what way different, Miss Warfield?" said the man.
+
+"We cannot formulate an iron rule about that," replied Marion,
+"but as a general thing catastrophes in nature seem to lack a
+motive, and their contributing events are not forced."
+
+The big trackman was a person of sound practical sense.  He knew
+what Marion was after, but he was confused by the unfamiliar
+terms in which the idea was stated.
+
+"It's mighty hard to figure out," he said.  "Of course, when you
+find an obstruction on the track or a crowbar under a rail, or
+some plain thing, you know."
+
+Then he added:
+
+"You've got to figure out a wreck from what seems likely."
+
+"There you have it exactly," said Marion.  "You must begin your
+investigation from what your common experience indicates is
+likely to happen.  Now, your experience indicates that the rails
+of a track sometimes spread under these heavy engines."
+
+"Yes, Miss Warfield."
+
+"And your experience indicates that this is more likely to happen
+at the first rise of the synclinal on a grade than anywhere on a
+straight track."
+
+"Yes, Miss Warfield."
+
+"Good!" said Marion, "so far.  But does not your experience also
+indicate that such an accident usually happens when the train is
+running at a high rate of speed?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Warfield," said the man.  "It's far more likely to
+happen then, because the engine strikes the rails at the first
+rise of the grade with more force.  Naturally a thing hits harder
+when it's going . . .  But it might happen with a slow train."
+
+Marion made a gesture as of one rejecting the man's final
+sentence.
+
+"When you turn that way," she said, "you at once leave the lines
+of greatest probability.  Why should you follow the preponderance
+of common experience on two features here, and turn aside from it
+on the third feature?"
+
+"Because the thing happened," replied the man, with the
+directness of those practical persons who drive through to the
+fact.
+
+"That is to say an unlikely thing happened!" Marion made a
+decisive gesture with her clenched fingers.  "Thus, the inquiry,
+beginning with two consistent elements, now comes up against one
+that is inconsistent."
+
+"But not impossible," said the man.
+
+"Possible," said Marion, "but not likely.  Not to be expected,
+not in line with the preponderance of common experience;
+therefore, not to be passed.  We have got to stop here and try to
+find out why this track spread under a slow train."
+
+"But we see it spread, Miss Warfield," said the trackman with a
+conclusive gesture.
+
+"True," replied Marion, "we see that it did spread, under this
+condition, but why?"
+
+The old woman sitting beside the track seemed to realize what was
+under way; for she rose and came over to where I stood.
+"Contessa," she whispered, in those quaint, old world words, "do
+not reveal, what I have tol'.  I pray you!"
+
+And she followed me across the few steps to where the others
+stood.
+
+I did not answer.  I stood like one in some Hellenic drama,
+between two tragic figures.  The love of woman lay in the
+solution of this problem - in the beginning and at the end of
+life.
+
+Marion and the big track boss continued with this woman looking
+on.
+
+I feared to speak or move; the thing was like a sort of trap, set
+with ghastly cunning, by some evil Fate.  The ruin of a woman it
+would have.  And perhaps on the vast level plain where it evilly
+dwelt, through its hard all-seeing eyes, the ruin and the sorrow
+either way would be precisely equal.  How could I, then, lay a
+finger on the scale.
+
+"Now," said Marion, "when the engine reached this point on the
+track, one of the rails gave way first."
+
+The big workman looked steadily at her.
+
+"How do you know that, Miss Warfield?" he said.
+
+"Because," replied Marion, "the marks of the wheels of the
+locomotive on the ties are found, in the beginning, only on one
+side of the track, showing that the rail on that side gave way,
+when the engine struck it, and the other rail for some distance
+bore the weight of the train."
+
+She illustrated with her hands.
+
+"When the one rail was pushed out, the wheels on that side went
+down and continued on the ties, while the wheels on the other
+side went ahead on the firm rail."
+
+The workman saw it.
+
+"That's true, Miss Warfield," he said, "one rail sometimes
+spreads and the other holds solid."
+
+Marion was absorbed in the problem.
+
+"But why should the one rail give way like this and its companion
+hold?"
+
+"One of the rails might not be as solid as the other," said the
+man.
+
+"But it should have been nearly as solid," replied Marion.
+"This piece of track, you tell me, was examined to-day; the ties
+are equally sound on both sides, the rail is the same weight.  We
+have the right to conclude then that each of these rails was
+about in the same condition.  I do not say precisely in the same
+condition.  Now, it is true that under these conditions one of
+the rails might have been pushed out of alignment before the
+other.  We can grant a certain factor of difference, a certain
+reasonable factor of difference.  But not a great factor of
+difference.  We have a right to conclude that one rail would give
+way before the other.  But not that one would very readily give
+way before the other.  For some reason this particular rail did
+give way, much more readily than it ought to have done."
+
+The trackman was listening with the greatest interest.
+
+"Just how do you know that, Miss Warfield?" he said.
+
+"Why," replied Marion, "don't you see, from the mark on the ties,
+that the engine wheels left the rail almost at the moment they
+struck it.  The marks of the wheels commence on the second tie
+ahead of the beginning of the rail.  Therefore, this rail, for
+some reason, was more easily pushed out of alignment than it
+should have been.  What was the reason?"
+
+The track boss reflected.
+
+"You see, Miss Warfield, this place is the beginning of an
+up-grade, the engine was coming down a long grade toward it, so
+when this train struck the first rails of the up-grade it struck
+it just like you'd drive in a wedge, and the hundred-ton brute of
+an engine jammed this rail out of alignment.  That's all there is
+to it.  When the rail sprung the wheels went down on the ties on
+that side and the train was ditched."
+
+"It was a clean accident, then, you think?" said Marion.
+
+"Sure, Miss Warfield," replied the man.  "If anybody had tried to
+move that rail out of alignment, he would have to disconnect it
+at the other end, that is, take off the plate that joins it to
+the next rail.  That would leave the end of the rail clean, with
+no broken plate.  But the end of the rail is bent and the plate
+is twisted off.  We looked at that the first thing.  Nobody could
+twist that plate off.  The engine did it when it left the track.
+
+"You see, Miss Warfield, the weight of the engine, like a wedge,
+simply forced one of these rails out of alignment.  Don't you
+understand how a hundred ton wedge driven against the track, at
+the start of an upgrade, could do it?"
+
+The old peasant woman stood behind the track boss.  The thing was
+a sort of awful game.  She did not speak, but the vicissitudes of
+the inquiry advanced her, or retired her, with the effect of
+points, won or lost.
+
+"I understand perfectly," replied Marion, "how the impact of the
+heavy engine might drive both rails out of alignment, if they
+offered an equal resistance, or one of them out if it offered a
+less resistance.  This is straight track.  The wedge would go in
+even.  It should have spread the rails equally.  That's the
+probable thing.  But instead it did the improbable thing; it
+spread one.  I hold the improbable thing always in question.
+Human knowledge is built up on that postulate.
+
+"True, a certain factor of difference in conditions must be
+allowed, as I have said, but an excessive factor cannot be
+allowed.  We have got to find it, or discard human reason as an
+implement for getting at the truth."
+
+Again the big track boss smashed through the niceties of logic.
+
+"These things happen all the time, Miss Warfield.  You can't
+figure it out."
+
+"One ought to be able to determine it,"' replied the girl.
+
+The track boss shook his head.
+
+"We can't tell what made that rail give."
+
+"Of course, we can tell," said Marion.  "It gave because it was
+weakened."
+
+"But what weakened it?" replied the man.  "You can't tell that?
+The rail's sound."
+
+"There could be only two causes," said Marion.  "It was either
+weakened by a natural agency or a human agency."
+
+The track boss made an annoyed gesture, like a practical person
+vexed with the refinements of a theorist.
+
+"But how are you going to tell?"
+
+"Now," said Marion, "there is always a point as you follow a
+thing down, where the human design in it must appear, if there is
+a human design in it.  The human mind can falsify events within a
+limited area.  But if one keeps moving out, as from a center, he
+will find somewhere this point at which intelligence is no longer
+able to imitate the aspect of the result of natural forces . . .
+I think we have reached it."
+
+She paused and drove her query at the track boss.
+
+"The spikes on the outside of this rail held it in place, did
+they not?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Warfield."
+
+"Did the impact of the engine force these spikes out of the
+ties?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Warfield, it forced them out."
+
+"How do you know it forced them out?"
+
+"Well, Miss Warfield," said the man, pointing to the rail and the
+denuded cross-ties, don't you see they're out?"
+
+"I see that they are out," replied Marion, "but I do not yet see
+that they have been forced out."
+
+She moved a step closer to the track boss and her voice hardened.
+"If these spikes were forced out by the impact of the engine, we
+ought to find torn spike holes inclining toward the end of the
+crossties. . . .  Look!"
+
+The big practical workman suddenly realized what the girl meant.
+
+He stooped over and began to flash his torch along the end of the
+ties.  We crowded against him.  Every one of the spike holes, for
+the entire length of the rail, was straight and clean.  The man
+seized one of the spikes and scrutinized it under his torch.
+
+Then he stood up.  For a moment he did not speak.  He merely
+looked at Marion.  "It's the holy truth!" he said.  "Somebody
+pulled these spikes with a clawbar.  That weakened the rail, and
+she bowed out when the engine struck her."
+
+Then he turned around, and shouted down the track to his crew.
+"Hey, boys!  Spread out along the right of way and see if you
+can't find a claw-bar.  The devils that do these tricks always
+throw away their tools."
+
+We stood together in a little tragic group.  The old peasant
+woman came over to where I stood, she walked with a dead, wooden
+step.  "Contessa," she whispered, her old lips against my hand.
+"You will save him?"
+
+And suddenly with a wild human resentment, I longed to cut a way
+out of the trap of this Fatality; to force its ruthless decree
+into a sort of equity, if I could do it.
+
+"Yes," I said, "I will save him!"
+
+It was an impulse with no plan behind it.  But the dabbing of the
+withered mouth on my fingers was like actual physical contact
+with a human heart.
+
+For a moment she looked at me as one among the damned might look
+at Michael.  Then she went slowly away, down through the wooded
+copse of the meadow.  And I turned about to meet Marion.  I knew
+that she was now after the identity of the wrecker, and I faced
+her to foul her lines.
+
+"This is not the work of one with murder in his heart," she said
+"A criminal agent set on a ruthless destruction of property and
+life would have drawn these spikes on a trestle or an embankment,
+at a point where the train would be running at high speed."
+
+She paused for a moment, then she went on speaking to me as
+though she merely uttered her mental comment to herself.
+
+"These spikes are drawn at a point where the train slows down for
+a crossing and precisely where the engine would go off onto the
+hard road-bed of the highway into a level meadow.  That means
+some one planned this wreck to result in the least destruction of
+life and property possible.  Now, what class of persons could be
+after the effect of a wreck, exclusive of a loss of life?"
+
+I saw where her relentless deductions would presently lead.  This
+was precisely the result that a discharged foreign workman would
+seek in his reprisal.  This man would have hot blood, the
+southern Europe instinct for revenge, but with such a mother, no
+mere lust to kill.  I tried to divert her from the fugitive.
+
+"Train robbers," I said.  "I wonder what was in the express-car?"
+
+She very nearly laughed.  "This is New York," she said, "not
+Arizona.  And besides there was no express-car.  This thing was
+done by somebody who wanted the effect of a wreck, and nothing
+else, and it was done by some one who knew about railroads.
+
+"Now, what class of persons who know about railroads could be
+moved by that motive?"
+
+She was driving straight now at the boy I stood to cover.  At
+another step she would name the class.  Discharged workmen would
+know about railroads; they would be interested to show how less
+efficient the road was without them; and a desperate one might
+plan such a wreck as a demonstration.  If so, he would wish only
+the effect of the wreck, and not loss of life.  Marion was going
+dead ahead on the right line, in another moment she would
+remember the man we passed, and the "black band" letters.  I made
+a final desperate effort to divert her.
+
+"Come along!" I called, "the first thing to do now is to talk
+with Clinton Howard.  The nearest telephone will be at Crewe's
+house on the hill."
+
+And it won.
+
+"Lisa!" she cried, "you're right I We must tell him at once."
+
+We hurried down the track to the motor-car.  I had gained a
+little time.  But how could I keep my promise.  And the next
+moment the problem became more difficult.  The track boss came up
+with a short iron bar that his men had found in the weeds along
+the right of way.
+
+"There's the claw-bar, that the devil done it with," he said.
+
+"You can tell it's just been handled by the way the rust's rubbed
+off."
+
+It was conclusive evidence.  Everybody could see how the
+workman's hands, as he labored with the claw-bar to draw the
+spikes, had cleaned off the rust.
+
+I hurried the motor away.  We raced up the long winding road to
+Crewe's country-house, sitting like a feudal castle on the
+summit.  And I wondered, at every moment, how I could keep my
+promise.  The boy was a criminal, deserving to be hanged, no
+doubt, but the naked mother's heart that had dabbed against my
+fingers overwhelmed me.
+
+Almost in a flash, I thought, we were in the grounds and before
+Crewe's house.  Then I noticed lights and a confusion of voices.
+No one came to meet us.  And we got out of the motor and went in
+through the open door.  We found a group of excited servants.  An
+old butler began to stammer to Marion.
+
+"It was his heart, Miss . . . the doctor warned the attendants.
+But he got away to-night.  It was overexertion, Miss.  He fell
+just now as the attendants brought him in."  And he flung open
+the library door.
+
+On a leather couch illumined by the brilliant light, Crewe lay;
+his massive relentless face with the great bowed nose, like the
+iron cast of what Marion had called a Nietzsche creature,
+motionless in death; his arms straight beside him with the great
+gloved hands open.
+
+And all at once, at the sight, with a heavenly inspiration, I
+kept my promise.
+
+"Look!" I cried.  "Oh, everybody, how the palms of his gloves are
+covered with rust!"
+
+
+
+
+XIII.  The Pumpkin Coach
+
+
+The story of the American Ambassadress was not the only one
+related on this night.
+
+Sir Henry Marquis himself added another, in support of the
+contention of his guest . . .  and from her own country.
+
+
+The lawyer walked about the room.  The restraint which he had
+assumed was now quite abandoned.
+
+"That's all there is to it," he said.  "I'm not trying this case
+for amusement.  You have the money to pay me and you must bring
+it up here now, tonight."
+
+The woman sat in a chair beyond the table.  She was young, but
+she looked worn and faded.  Misery and the long strain of the
+trial had worn her out.  Her hands moved nervously in the frayed
+coat-cuffs.
+
+"But we haven't any more money," she said.  "The hundred dollars
+I paid you in the beginning is all we have."
+
+The man laughed without disturbing the muscles of his face.  "You
+can take your choice," he said.  "Either bring the money up here
+now, to-night, or I withdraw from the case when court opens in
+the morning."
+
+"But where am I to get any more money?" the woman said.
+
+The lawyer was a big man.  His hair, black and thin, was brushed
+close to his head as though wet with oil; his nose was thick and
+flattened at the base.  The office contained only a table, some
+chairs and a file for legal papers.  Night was beginning to
+descend.  Lights were appearing in the city.  The two persons had
+come in from the Criminal Court after the session for the day had
+ended.
+
+The woman seemed bewildered.  She looked at the man with the
+curious expression of a child that does not comprehend and is
+afraid to ask for an explanation.
+
+"If we had any more money," she said, "I would bring it to you,
+but the hundred dollars was all we had."
+
+Then she began to explain, reiterating minute details.  When the
+tragedy occurred and her husband was arrested by the police they
+had a small sum painfully saved up.  It was now wholly gone.
+Like persons in profound misery, she repeated.  The man halted
+the recital with a brutal gesture.
+
+"I'll not discuss it," he said.  "You can bring the money in here
+before the court convenes in the morning, or I withdraw from the
+case."
+
+He went over to the file, took out a packet of legal papers and
+threw them on the table.
+
+"All right, my lady!" he said, "perhaps you think your husband
+can get along without a lawyer.  Perhaps you think the devil will
+save him, or heaven, or Cinderella in a pumpkin coach!"  There
+was biting irony in the bitter words.
+
+A sudden comprehension began to appear in the woman's face.  She
+realized now what the man was driving at.  The expression in her
+face deepened into a sort of wonder, a sort of horror.
+
+"You think he's guilty!" she said.  "You think we got the money
+and we're trying to keep it, to hide it."
+
+The lawyer turned about, put both hands on the table and leaned
+across it.  He looked the woman in the face.
+
+"Never mind what I believe; you heard what I said!"
+
+For a moment the woman did not move.  Then she got up slowly and
+went out.  In the street she seemed lost. She remained for some
+time before the entrance of the building.  Night had now arrived.
+Crowds of people were passing, intent on their affairs,
+unconcerned.  No one seemed to see the figure motionless in the
+shadow of the great doorway.
+
+Presently the woman began to walk along the street in the crowd
+without giving any attention to the people about her or to the
+direction she was taking.  She was in that state of mental coma
+which attends persons in despair.  She neither felt nor
+appreciated anything and she continued to walk in the direction
+in which the crowd was moving.
+
+Some block in the traffic checked the crowd and the woman
+stopped.  The block cleared and the human tide drifted on, but
+the woman remained.  The crowd edged her over to the wall and she
+stood there before the shutter of a shop-window.  After a time
+the crowd passed, thinned and disappeared, but the woman remained
+as though thrown out there by the human eddy.
+
+The woman remained for a long time unmoving against the shutter
+of the shop-window.  Finally she was awakened into life by a
+voice speaking to her.  It was a soft, foreign voice that lisped
+the liquid accents of the occasional English words:
+
+"Ma pauvre femme!" it said; "come with me.  Vous etes malade!"
+
+The woman followed mechanically in a sort of wonder.  The person
+who had spoken to her was young and beautifully dressed in furs
+that covered her to her feet.  She had gotten down from a
+motorcar that stood beside the curb - one of those modern vehicles,
+fitted with splendid trappings.
+
+Beyond the shop-window was a great cafe.  The girl entered and
+the woman followed.  The attendants came forward to welcome the
+splendid visitor as one whose arrival at this precise hour of the
+evening had become a sort of custom.  She gave some directions in
+a language which the woman did not understand, and they were
+seated at a table.
+
+The waiters brought a silver dish filled with a clear, steaming
+soup and served it.  The girl threw back her fur coat and the
+dazed woman realized how beautiful she was.  Her hair was yellow
+like ripe corn and there were masses of it banked and clustered
+about her head; her eyes were blue, and her voice, soft and
+alluring, was like a friendly arm put around the heart.
+
+The miserable woman was so confused by this transformation - by
+the sudden swing of the door in the wall that had admitted her
+into this new, unfamiliar world - that she was never afterward
+able to remember precisely by what introductory words her story
+was drawn out.  She found herself taken up, comforted and made to
+tell it.
+
+Her husband had been a butler in the service of a Mr. Marsh, an
+eccentric man who lived in one of the old downtown houses of the
+city.  He was a retired banker with no family.  The man lived
+alone.  He permitted no servants in the house except the butler.
+Meals were sent in on order from a neighboring hotel and served
+by the butler as the man directed.  He received few visitors in
+the house and no tradespeople were permitted to come in.  There
+seemed no reason for this seclusion except the eccentricities of
+the man that had grown more pronounced with advancing years.
+
+It was the custom of the butler to leave the house at eight
+o'clock in the evening and return in the morning at seven.  On
+the morning of the third of February, when the butler entered the
+house, as he was accustomed to do at eight o'clock in the
+morning, he found his master dead.
+
+The woman continued with her narrative, speaking slowly.  Every
+detail was vividly impressed upon her memory and she gave it
+accurately, precisely.
+
+There was a narrow passage or hall, not more than three feet in
+width, leading from the butler's pantry into a little
+dining-room.  This dining-room the old man had fitted up as a
+sort of library.  It was farther than any other room from the
+noises of the city.  His library table was placed with one end
+against the left wall of the room and he sat with his back toward
+the passage into the butler's pantry.  On the morning of the
+third of February he was found dead in his chair.  He had been
+stabbed in the back, on the left side, where the neck joins to
+the shoulder.  A carving-knife had been used and a single blow
+had accomplished the murder.
+
+It was known that on the evening before the old banker had taken
+from a safety-deposit vault the sum of $20,000, which it was his
+intention to invest in some securities.  This money, in bills of
+very large denominations, was in the top drawer on the right side
+of the desk.  The dead man had apparently not been touched after
+the crime, but the drawer had been pried open and the money
+taken.  An ice-pick from the butler's pantry had been used to
+force it.  The assassin had left no marks, finger-prints or
+tell-tale stains.  The victim had been instantly killed with the
+blow of the knife which lay on the floor beside him.
+
+The butler had been arrested, charged with the crime, and his
+trial was now going on in the Criminal Court.  Circumstantial
+evidence was strong against him.  The woman spoke as though she
+echoed the current comment of the courtroom without realizing how
+it affected her.  She had done what she could.  She had employed
+an attorney at the recommendation of a person who had come to
+interview her.  She did not know who the person was nor why she
+should have employed this attorney at his suggestion, except that
+some one must be had to defend her husband, and uncertain what to
+do, she had gone to the first name suggested.
+
+The girl listened, putting now and then a query.  She spoke
+slowly, careful to use only English words.  And while the woman
+talked she made a little drawing on the blank back of a menu
+card.  Now she began to question the woman minutely about the
+details of the room and the position of the furniture where the
+tragedy had occurred, the desk, the attitude of the dead man, the
+location of the wound, and exact distances.  And as the woman
+repeated the evidence of the police officers and the experts, the
+girl filled out her drawing with nice mathematical exactness like
+one accustomed to such a labor.
+
+This was the whole story, and now the woman added the final
+interview with the attorney.  She made a sort of hopeless
+gesture.
+
+"Nobody believes us," she said.  "My husband did not kill him.
+He was at home with me.  He knew nothing about it until he found
+his master dead at the table in the morning.  But there is only
+our word against all the lawyers and detectives and experts that
+Mr. Thompson has brought against us."
+
+"Who is Mr. Thompson?" said the girl.  She was deep in a study of
+her little drawing.
+
+"He's Mr. Marsh's nephew, Mr. Percy Thompson."
+
+The girl, absorbed in the study of her drawing, now put an
+unexpected question.
+
+"Has your husband lost an arm?"
+
+"No," she said, "he never had any sort of accident."
+
+A great light came into the girl's face.  "Then I believe you,"
+she said.  "I believe every word . . . .  I think your husband is
+innocent."
+
+The girl was aglow with an enthusiastic purpose.  It was all
+there in her fine, expressive face.
+
+"Now," she said, "tell me about this nephew, this Mr. Percy
+Thompson.  Could we by any chance see him?"
+
+"It won't do any good to see him," replied the woman.  "He is
+determined to convict my husband.  Nothing can change him."
+
+The girl went on without paying any attention to the comment.
+"Where does he live - you must have heard?"
+
+"He lives at the Markheim Hotel," she said.
+
+"The Markheim Hotel," repeated the girl.  "Where is it?"
+
+The woman gave the street and number.  The girl rose.  "That's on
+my way; we'll stop."
+
+The two-went out of the cafe to the motor.  The whole thing,
+incredible at any other hour, seemed to the woman like events
+happening in a dream or in some topsy-turvy country which she had
+mysteriously entered.
+
+She sat back in the tonneau of the motor, huddled into the
+corner, a rug around her shoulders.  The flashing lights seemed
+those of some distant, unknown city, as though she were
+transported into the scene of an Arabian tale.
+
+The motor stopped before a little shabby hotel in a neighboring
+cross-street, and the footman, in livery beside the driver, got
+down at a direction of the girl and went up the steps.  In a few
+moments a man came out and descended to the motor standing by the
+curb.  He was about middle age.  He looked as though Nature had
+intended him, in the beginning, for a person of some distinction,
+but he had the dissipated face of one at middle age who had
+devoted his years to a life of pleasure.  There were hard lines
+about his mouth and a purple network of veins showing about the
+base of his nose.
+
+As he approached the girl, leaning out of the open window of the
+tonneau, dropped her glove as by inadvertence.  The man stooped,
+recovered it and returned it to her.  The girl started with a
+perceptible gesture.  Then she cried out in her charming voice
+
+"Merci, monsieur.  I stopped a moment to thank you for the
+flowers you sent me last night.  It was lovely of you!" and she
+indicated the bunch of roses pinned to her corsage.
+
+The man seemed astonished.  For a moment he hesitated as though
+about to make some explanation, but the girl went on without
+regarding his visible embarrassment.
+
+"You shall not escape with a denial," she said.  "There was no
+card and you did not do me the honor to wait at the door, but I
+know you sent them - an usher saw you; you shall not escape my
+appreciation.  You did send them?" she said.
+
+The man laughed.  "Sure," he said, "if you insist."  He was
+willing to profit by this unexpected error, and the girl went on:
+
+"I have worn the roses to-day," she said, "for you.  Will you
+wear one of them to-morrow for me?"
+
+She detached a bud and leaned out of the door of the motor.  She
+pinned the bud to the lapel of the man's coat.  She did it
+slowly, deliberately, like one who makes the touch of the fingers
+do the service of a caress.
+
+Then she spoke to the driver and the motor went on, leaving the
+amazed man on the curb before the shabby Markheim Hotel with the
+rosebud pinned to his coat - astonished at the incredible fortune
+of this favor from an inaccessible idol about whom the city
+raved.
+
+The woman accepted the enigma of this interview as she had
+accepted the wonder of the girl's sudden appearance and the
+other, incidents of this extraordinary night.  She did not
+undertake to imagine what the drawing on the menu meant, the
+words about the one-armed man, the glove dropped for Thompson to
+pick up, the rose pinned on his coat; it was all of a piece with
+the mystery that she had stumbled into.
+
+When the motor stopped and she was taken through a little door by
+an attendant into a theater box, she accepted that as another of
+these things into which she could not inquire; things that
+happened to her outside of her volition and directed by
+authorities which she could not control.
+
+The staging of the opera refined and extended the illusion that
+she had been transported out of the world by some occult agency.
+The wonderful creature that had taken her up out of her abandoned
+misery before the sordid shop-shutter appeared now in a fairy
+costume glittering with jewels.  And the gnomes, the monsters and
+goblins appearing about her were all fabulous creatures, as the
+girl herself seemed a fabulous creature.
+
+She sighed like one who must awaken from the splendor of a dream
+to realities of which the sleeper is vaguely conscious.  Only the
+girl's voice seemed real.  It seemed some great, heavenly reality
+like the sunlight or the sweep of the sea.  It filled the packed
+places of the theater.  She sang and one believed again in the
+benevolence of heaven; in immortal love.  To the distressed woman
+effacing herself in the corner of the empty box it was all a sort
+of inconceivable witch-work.
+
+And it was witch-work, as potent if not as amply fitted with
+dramatic properties as the witchwork of ancient legend.
+
+The daughter of an obscure juge d'instruction of the Canton of
+Vaud, singing in a Swiss meadow, had been taken up by a wealthy
+American, traveling in Switzerland on an April morning-old,
+enervated with the sun of the Riviera, and displeased with life.
+And this rich old woman, her rheumatic fingers loaded with
+jewels, had transformed the daughter of the juge d'instruction of
+the Canton of Vaud into a singing wonder that made every human
+creature see again the dreams of his youth before him leading
+into the Elysian Fields.
+
+And to the girl herself this transformation also seemed the
+wonder of witch-work.  Her early life lay so far below in a world
+remote and detached; a little house in a village of the Canton of
+Vaud with the genteel poverty that attended the slender salary of
+a juge d'instruction, and the weight of duties that accumulated
+on her shoulders.  Her father's life was given over to the labors
+of criminal investigation, but it was a field that returned
+nothing in the way of material gain.  Honorable mention, a medal,
+the distinction of having his reports copied into the official
+archives, were the fruits of the man's life.  She remembered the
+minutely exhaustive details of those reports which she used to
+copy painfully at night by the light of a candle.  The old man,
+absorbed by his deductions, with his trained habits of
+observation and his prodigious memory, never seemed to realize
+the drudgery imposed upon the girl by his endless dictation.
+
+"To-morrow," the heavenly creature had said softly, like a
+caress, in the woman's ear when an attendant had taken her
+through the little door into the empty box.  But the to-morrow
+broke with every illusion vanished.
+
+The woman sat beside her husband in the dismal court-room when
+the court convened.  The judge, old and tired, was on the bench.
+A sulphurous, depressing fog entered from the city.  The
+court-room smelled of a cleaner's mop.  The jury entered; and a
+few spectators, who looked as though they might have spent the
+night on the benches of the park out, side, drifted in.  The
+attorneys and the officials of the court were present and the
+trial resumed.
+
+Every detail of the departed, evening was, to the woman, a mirage
+except the brutal threat of the attorney, uttered before she had
+gone down into the street.  This threat, with that power of
+reality which evil things seem always to possess, now
+materialized.  After the court had opened, but before the trial
+could proceed, the attorney for the defendant rose and addressed
+the court.
+
+He spoke for some moments, handling his innuendoes with skill.
+His intent was to withdraw from the case.  He realized that this
+was an unusual procedure and that the course must be justified
+upon a high ethical plane.  He was a person of acumen and of no
+inconsiderable skill and he succeeded.  Without making any direct
+charge, and disclaiming any intent to prejudice the prisoner and
+his defense, or to deprive him of any safeguard of the law, he
+was able to convey the impression that he had been misled in
+undertaking the defense of the case; that his confidence in the
+innocence of the accused had been removed by unquestionable
+evidence which he had been led to believe did not exist.
+
+He made this explanation with profound regret.  But he felt that,
+having been induced to undertake the defense by representations
+not justified in fact, and by an impression of the nature of the
+case which developments in the court-room had not confirmed, he
+had the right to step aside out of an equivocal position.  He
+wished to do this without injury to the prisoner and while there
+was yet an opportunity for him to obtain other counsel.  The
+whole tenor of the speech was the right to be relieved from the
+obligation of an error; an error that had involved him
+unwittingly by reason of assurances which the developments of the
+case had now set aside.  And through it all there was the
+manifest wish to do the prisoner no vestige of injury.
+
+After this speech of his attorney the conviction of the man was
+inevitable.  He sat stooped over, his back bent, his head down,
+his thin hands aimlessly in his lap like one who has come to the
+end of all things; like one who no longer makes any effort
+against a destiny determined on his ruin.
+
+The thing had the overpowering vitality which evil things seem
+always to possess, and the woman felt helpless against it; so
+utterly, so completely helpless that it was useless to protest by
+any word or gesture.  She could have gotten up and explained the
+true motive behind this man's speech; she could have repeated the
+dialogue in his office; she could have asserted his unspeakable
+treachery; but she saw with an unerring instinct that against the
+skill of the man her effort would be wholly useless.  With his
+resources and his dominating cunning he would not only make her
+words appear obviously false, but he would make them fasten upon
+her a malicious intent to injure the man who had undertaken her
+husband's defense; and somehow he would be able, she felt, to
+divert the obliquity and cause it to react upon herself.
+
+This was all clear to her, and like some little trapped creature
+of the wood that finds escape closed on every side and no longer
+makes any effort, she remained motionless.
+
+The judge was an honorable man, concerned to accomplish justice
+and not always misled by an obvious intent.  The proceeding did
+not please him, but he knew that no benefit, rather a continued
+injury, would result to the prisoner by forcing the attorney to
+go on with a case which it was evident that he no longer cared to
+make any effort to support.  He permitted the man to withdraw.
+Then he spoke to the prisoner.
+
+"Have you any other counsel?" he asked.
+
+The prisoner did not look up.  He replied in a low, almost
+inaudible voice.
+
+"No, Your Honor," he said.
+
+"Then I shall appoint some one to go on with the case," and he
+looked up over the docket before him and out at the few attorneys
+sitting within the rail.
+
+It was at this moment that the woman, crying silently, without a
+sound and without moving in her chair, heard behind her the voice
+which she had heard the evening before, when, as now, at the
+bottom of the pit, she stood before the shutter of the
+shop-window.
+
+"Will it be necessary, monsieur le judge?"
+
+It was the same wonderful, moving, heavenly voice.  Every sound
+in the court-room suddenly ceased.  All eyes were lifted.  And
+Thompson, sitting beside the district-attorney, saw, standing
+before the rail in the court-room, the splendid, alluring
+creature that had called him out of the sordid lobby of the Hotel
+Markheim and entranced him with an evidence of her favor.
+Unconsciously he put up his hand to feel for the bud in the lapel
+of his coat.  It had remained there - not, as it happened, from
+her wish, but because he dare not lay the coat aside.
+
+In the interval of intense interest arising at the withdrawal of
+the attorney from the case the girl had come in unnoticed.  She
+might have appeared out of the floor.  Her voice was the first
+indication of her presence.
+
+The judge turned swiftly.  "What do you mean?" he said.
+
+"I mean, monsieur," she answered, "that if a man is innocent of a
+crime, he cannot require a lawyer to defend him."
+
+The judge was astonished, but he was an old man and had seen many
+strange events happen along the way of a criminal trial.
+
+"But why do you say this man is innocent," he said.
+
+"I will show you, monsieur," and she came around the railing into
+the pit of the, court before his bench.  She carried in her hand
+the menu upon which, at the table in the cafe the night before,
+she had made a drawing of the scene of the homicide.
+
+The extraordinary event had happened so swiftly that the attorney
+for the prosecution had not been able to interpose an objection.
+Now the nephew of the dead man spoke hurriedly, in whispers, and
+the attorney arose.
+
+"I object to this irregular proceeding," he said.  "If this
+person is a witness, let her be sworn in the usual manner and let
+her take her place in the witness-chair where she may be examined
+by the attorney whom the court may see fit to appoint for the
+defense."
+
+It was evident that Mr. Thompson, urging the prosecutor, was
+alarmed.  The folds of his obese neck lying above the collar of
+his coat took on a deeper color, and his mouth visibly sagged as
+with some unexpected emotion.  He felt that he was becoming
+entangled in some vast, invisible net spread about him by this
+girl who had appeared as if by magic before the Hotel Markheim.
+
+The judge looked down at the attorney.  "I will have the witness
+sworn," he said, "but I shall not at present appoint anybody to
+conduct an examination.  When a prisoner before me has no
+counsel, I sometimes look after his case myself."
+
+He spoke to the girl.  "Will you hold up your hand?" he said.
+
+"Why, yes, monsieur," she said, "if you will also ask Mr.
+Thompson to hold up his hand."
+
+"Do you wish him sworn as a witness?" said the judge.
+
+The girl hesitated.  "Yes, monsieur," she said, "if that is the
+way to have him hold up his hand."
+
+Again Thompson was disturbed.  Again he spoke to the prosecutor
+and again that attorney objected.
+
+"We have not asked to have Mr. Thompson testify in this case," he
+said.  "It is true Mr. Thompson is concerned about the result of
+this trial.  He is the nephew of the decedent and his heir.  It
+is only natural that he should properly concern himself to see
+that the assassin is brought to justice."
+
+He spoke to the girl.  "Do you wish to make Mr. Thompson your
+witness?" he said.
+
+And again she replied with the hesitating formula:
+
+"Why, yes, monsieur, if that is the way to cause him to hold up
+his hand."
+
+The judge turned to the clerk.  "Will you administer the oath to
+these two persons?" he said.
+
+Thompson rose.  His face was disconcerted and slack.  He
+hesitated, but the prosecutor spoke to him.  Then he faced the
+judge and put up his hand.  Immediately the girl cried out:
+
+"Look, monsieur," she said.  "It is his left hand he is holding
+up!"
+
+Immediately Thompson raised the other hand.  "I beg your pardon,
+Your Honor," he muttered.  "I am left-handed; I sometimes make
+that mistake."
+
+And again the girl cried out: "You see . . . you notice it . . .
+it is true, then . . . he is left-handed."
+
+"I see he is left-handed," said the judge, "but what has that to
+do with the case?"
+
+"Oh, monsieur," she said, "it has everything to do with it.  I
+will show you."
+
+She moved up on the step before the judge's bench and laid the
+menu before him.  The attorney for the prosecution also arose.
+He wished to prevent this proceeding, to object to it, but he
+feared to disturb the judge and he remained silent.
+
+"Monsieur," she said, "I have made a little drawing . . .  I know
+how such things are done . . . .  My father was juge
+d'instruction of the Canton of Vaud.  He always made little
+drawings of places where crimes were committed. . . .  Here you
+will see," and she put her finger on the card, "the narrow passage
+leading from the butler's pantry into the dining-room used for a
+library.  You will notice, monsieur, that the writing-table stood
+with one end against the wall, the left wall of the room, as one
+enters from the butler's pantry.  It is a queer table.  One side
+of it has a row of drawers coming to the floor and the other side
+is open so one may sit with one's knees under it.  On the night
+of the tragedy this table was sitting at right angles to the left
+wall, that is to say, monsieur, with this end open for the
+writer's knees close up against the left wall of the room.  That
+meant, monsieur, that on this night Mr. Marsh was sitting at the
+table with his back to the passage from the butler's pantry,
+close up against the left wall of the room.
+
+"Therefore, monsieur," the girl went on, "the man who
+assassinated Mr. Marsh entered from the butler's pantry.  He
+slipped into the room along the left wall close up behind his
+victim . . . .  Did it not occur so."
+
+This was the evidence of the police officials and the experts.
+It was clear from the position of the desk in the room and from
+the details of the evidence.
+
+"And, monsieur," she said, "will you tell me, is it true that the
+stab wound which killed Mr. Marsh was in the shoulder on the side
+next to the wall?"
+
+"Yes," said the judge, "that is true."
+
+The prosecutor, urged by Thompson, now made a verbal objection.
+The case was practically completed.  The incident going on in the
+court-room followed no definite legal procedure and could not be
+permitted to proceed.  The judge stopped him.
+
+"Sit down," he said.  He did not offer any explanation or
+comment.  He merely silenced the man and returned to the girl
+standing eagerly on the step before the bench.
+
+"The wound was in the base of the man's neck at the top of the
+left shoulder on the side next to the wall," he said.  "But what
+has this fact to do with the case?"
+
+"Oh, monsieur," she cried, "it has everything to do with it.  If
+the assassin who slipped along the wall had carried the knife in
+his right hand, the wound would have been on the right side of
+the dead man's neck.  But if, monsieur, the assassin carried the
+knife in his left hand, then the wound would be where it is, on
+the left side.  That made me believe, at first, that the assassin
+had only one arm - had lost his right arm - and must use the
+other; then, a little later, I understood . . . .  Oh, monsieur,
+don't you understand; don't you see that the assassin who stabbed
+Mr. Marsh was left-handed?"
+
+In a moment it was all clear to everybody.  Only a left-handed
+man could have committed the crime, for only a left-handed man
+standing close against the left side of a room above one sitting
+at a desk against that wall could have struck straight down into
+the left shoulder of the murdered man.  A right-handed assassin
+would have struck straight down into the right shoulder, he would
+not have risked a doubtful blow, delivered awkwardly across his
+body, into the left shoulder of his victim.
+
+The girl indicated Thompson with her hand.  "He did it; he's
+left-handed.  I found out by dropping my glove."
+
+Panic enveloped the cornered man.  He began to shake as with an
+ague.  Sweat like a thin oil spread over his debauched face and
+the folds of his obese neck.  With his fatal left hand he began
+to finger the lapel of his coat where the faded rosebud hung
+pinned into the buttonhole.  And the girl's voice broke the
+profound silence of the court-room.
+
+"He has the money, too," she said.  "I felt a bulky packet when I
+gave him the flower out of my bouquet last night."
+
+The big, thin-haired lawyer, leaving the courtroom after his
+withdrawal from the case, stopped at a window arrested by the
+amazing scene: The police taking the stolen money out of
+Thompson's pocket; the woman in the girl's arms, and the
+transfigured prisoner standing up as in the presence of a
+heavenly angel.  This before him . . .  and the splendid motor
+below under the sweep of the window, waiting before the
+courthouse door, brought back the memory of his biting, sarcastic
+words:
+
+". . . or Cinderella in a pumpkin coach!"
+
+And there occurred to him a doubt of the exclusive dominance of
+life by the gods he served.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.  The Yellow Flower
+
+
+The girl sat in a great chair before the fire, huddled, staring
+into the glow of the smoldering logs.
+
+Her dark hair clouded her face.  The evening gown was twisted and
+crumpled about her.  There was no ornament on her; her arms, her
+shoulders, the exquisite column of her throat were bare.
+
+She sat with her eyes wide, unmoving, in a profound reflection.
+
+The library was softly lighted; richly furnished, a little beyond
+the permission of good taste.  On a table at the girl's elbow
+were two objects; a ruby necklace, and a dried flower.  The
+flower, fragile with age, seemed a sort of scrub poppy of a
+delicate yellow; the flower of some dwarfed bush, prickly like a
+cactus.
+
+The necklace made a great heap of jewels on the buhl top of the
+table, above the intricate arabesque of silver and
+tortoise-shell.
+
+It was nearly midnight.  Outside, the dull rumble of London
+seemed a sound, continuous, unvarying, as though it were the
+distant roar of a world turning in some stellar space.
+
+It was a great old house in Park Lane, heavy and of that gloomy
+architecture with which the feeling of the English people, at an
+earlier time, had been so strangely in accord.  It stood before
+St. James's Park oppressive and monumental, and now in the midst
+of yellow fog its heavy front was like a mausoleum.
+
+But within, the house had been treated to a modern re-casting,
+not entirely independent of the vanity of wealth.
+
+After the dinner at the Ritz, the girl felt that she could not go
+on; and Lady Mary's party, on its way to the dancing, put her
+down at the door.  She gave the excuse of a crippling headache.
+But it was a deeper, more profound aching that disturbed her.
+She was before the tragic hour, appearing in the lives of many
+women, when suddenly, as by the opening of a door, one realizes
+the irrevocable aspect of a marriage of which the details are
+beginning to be arranged.  That hour in which a woman must
+consider, finally, the clipping of all threads, except the single
+one that shall cord her to a mate for life.
+
+Until to-night, in spite of preparations on the way, the girl had
+not felt this marriage as inevitable.  Her aunt had pressed for
+it, subtly, invisibly, as an older woman is able to do.
+
+Her situation was always, clearly before her.  She was alone in
+the world; with very little, almost nothing.  The estate her
+father inherited he had finally spent in making great
+explorations.  There was no unknown taste of the world that he
+had not undertaken to enter.  The final driblets of his fortune
+had gone into his last adventure in the Great Gobi Desert from
+which he had never returned.
+
+The girl had been taken by this aunt in London, incredibly rich,
+but on the fringes of the fashionable society of England, which
+she longed to enter.  Even to the young girl, her aunt's plan was
+visible.  With a great settlement, such as this ambitious woman
+could manage, the girl could be a duchess.
+
+The marriage to Lord Eckhart in the diplomatic service, who would
+one day be a peer of England, had been a lure dangled
+unavailingly before her, until that night, when, on his return
+from India, he had carried her off her feet with his amazing
+incredible sacrifice.  It was the immense idealism, the immense
+romance of it that had swept her into this irrevocable thing.
+
+She got up now, swiftly, as though she would again realize how
+the thing had happened and stooped over the table above the heap
+of jewels.  They were great pigeon-blood rubies, twenty-seven of
+them, fastened together with ancient crude gold work.  She lifted
+the long necklace until it hung with the last jewel on the table.
+
+The thing was a treasure, an immense, incredible treasure.  And
+it was for this - for the privilege of putting this into her
+hands, that the man had sold everything he had in England - and
+endured what the gossips said - endured it during the five years
+in India - kept silent and was now silent.  She remembered every
+detail the rumor of a wild life, a dissolute reckless life, the
+gradual, piece by piece sale of everything that could be turned
+into money.  London could not think of a ne'er-do-well to equal
+him in the memory of its oldest gossips - and all the time with
+every penny, he was putting together this immense treasure - for
+her.  A dreamer writing a romance might imagine a thing like
+this, but had it any equal in the realities of life?
+
+She looked down at the chain of great jewels, and the fragment of
+prickly shrub with its poppy-shaped yellow flower.  They were
+symbols, each, of an immense idealism, an immense conception of
+sacrifice that lifted the actors in their dramas into gigantic
+figures illumined with the halos of romance.
+
+Until to-night it had been this ideal figure of Lord Eckhart that
+the girl considered in this marriage.  And to-night, suddenly,
+the actual physical man had replaced it.  And, alarmed, she had
+drawn back.  Perhaps it was the Teutonic blood in him - a
+grandmother of a German house.  And, yet, who could say, perhaps
+this piece of consuming idealism was from that ancient extinct
+Germany of Beethoven.
+
+But the man and the ideal seemed distinct things having no
+relation.  She drew back from the one, and she stood on tip-toe,
+with arms extended longingly toward the other.
+
+What should she do?
+
+Had the example of her father thrown on Lord Eckhart a golden
+shadow?  She moved the bit of flower, gently as in a caress.  He
+had given up the income of a leading profession and gone to his
+death.  His fortune and his life had gone in the same high
+careless manner for the thing he sought.  For the treasure that
+he believed lay in the Gobi Desert - not for himself, but for
+every man to be born into the world.  He was the great dreamer,
+the great idealist, a vague shining figure before the girl like
+the cloud in the Hebraic Myth.
+
+The girl stood up and linked her fingers together behind her
+back.  If her father were only here - for an hour, for a moment!
+Or if, in the world beyond sight and hearing, he could somehow
+get a message to her!
+
+At this moment a bell, somewhere in the deeps of the house,
+jangled, and she heard the old butler moving through the hall to
+the door.  The other servants had been dismissed for the night,
+and her aunt on the preliminaries of this marriage was in Paris.
+
+A moment later the butler appeared with a card on his tray.  It
+was a card newly engraved in some English shop and bore the name
+"Dr.  Tsan-Sgam."  The girl stood for a moment puzzled at the
+queer name, and then the memory of the strange outlandish human
+creatures, from the ends of the world, who used sometimes to
+visit her father, in the old time, returned, and with it there
+came a sudden upward sweep of the heart - was there an answer to
+her longing, somehow, incredibly on the way!
+
+She gave a direction for the visitor to be brought in.  He was a
+big old man.  His body looked long and muscular like that of some
+type of Englishmen, but his head and his features were Mongolian.
+He was entirely bald, as bald as the palm of a hand, as though
+bald from his mother he had so remained to this incredible age.
+And age was the impression that he profoundly presented.  But it
+was age that a tough vitality in the man resisted; as though the
+assault of time wore it down slowly and with almost an
+imperceptible detritus.  The great naked head and the wide
+Mongolian face were unshrunken; they presented, rather, the
+aspect of some old child.  He was dressed with extreme care, in
+the very best evening clothes that one could buy in a London
+shop.
+
+He bowed, oddly, with a slow doubling of the body, and when he
+spoke the girl felt that he was translating his words through
+more than one language; as though one were to put one's sentences
+into French or Italian and from that, as a sort of intermediary,
+into English - as though the way were long, and unfamiliar from
+the medium in which the man thought to the one in which he was
+undertaking to express it.  But at the end of this involved
+mental process his English sentences appeared correctly, and with
+an accurate selection in the words.
+
+"You must pardon the hour, Miss Carstair," he said, in his slow,
+precise articulation, "but I am required to see you and it is the
+only time I have."
+
+Then his eyes caught the necklace on the table, and advancing
+with two steps he stooped over it.
+
+For a moment everything else seemed removed, from about the man.
+His angular body, in its unfamiliar dress, was doubled like a
+finger; his great head with its wide Mongolian face was close
+down over the buhl top of the table and his finger moved the heap
+of rubies.
+
+The girl had a sudden inspiration.
+
+"Lord Eckhart got these jewels from you?"
+
+The man paused, he seemed to be moving the girl's words backward
+through the intervening languages.
+
+Then he replied.
+
+"Yes," he said, "from us."
+
+The girl's inspiration was now illumined by a further light.
+
+"And you have not been paid for them?"
+
+The man stood up now.  And again this involved process of moving
+the words back through various translations was visible - and the
+answer up.
+
+"Yes - " he said, "we have been paid."
+
+Then he added, in explanation of his act.
+
+"These rubies have no equal in the world - and the gold-work
+attaching them together is extremely old.  I am always curious to
+admire it."
+
+He looked down at the girl, at the necklace, at the space about
+them, as though he were deeply, profoundly puzzled.
+
+"We had a fear," he said, " - it was wrong!"
+
+Then he put his hand swiftly into the bosom pocket of his evening
+coat, took out a thin packet wrapped in a piece of vellum and
+handed it to the girl.
+
+"It became necessary to treat with the English Government about
+the removal of records from Lhassa and I was sent - I was
+directed to get this packet to you from London.  To-night, at
+dinner with Sir Henry Marquis in St. James's Square, I learned
+that you were here.  I had then only this hour to come, as my
+boat leaves in the morning."  He spoke with the extreme care of
+one putting together a delicate mosaic.
+
+The girl stood staring at the thin packet.  A single thought
+alone consumed her.
+
+"It is a message from - my - father."
+
+She spoke almost in a whisper.
+
+The big Oriental replied immediately.
+
+"No," he said, "your father is beyond sight and hearing."
+
+The girl had no hope; only the will to hope.  The reply was
+confirmation of what she already knew.  She removed the thin
+vellum wrapper from the packet.  Within she found a drawing on a
+plate of ivory.  It represented a shaft of some white stone
+standing on the slight elevation of what seemed to be a barren
+plateau.  And below on the plate, in fine English characters like
+an engraving, was the legend, "Erected to the memory of Major
+Judson Carstair by the monastery at the Head."
+
+The man added a word of explanation.
+
+"The Brotherhood thought that you would wish to know that your
+father's body had been recovered, and that it had received
+Christian burial, as nearly as we were able to interpret the
+forms.  The stone is a sort of granite."
+
+The girl wished to ask a thousand questions: How did her father
+meet his death, and where?  What did they know?  What had they
+recovered with his body?
+
+The girl spoke impulsively, her words crowding one another.  And
+the Oriental seemed able only to disengage the last query from
+the others.
+
+"Unfortunately," he said, "some band of the desert people had
+passed before our expedition arrived, nothing was recovered but
+the body.  It was not mutilated."
+
+They had been standing.  The girl now indicated the big library
+chair in which she had been huddled and got another for herself.
+Then she wished to know what they had learned about her father's
+death.
+
+The Oriental sat down.  He sat awkwardly, his big body, in a kind
+of squat posture, the broad Mongolian face emerging, as in a sort
+of deformity, from the collar of his evening coat.  Then he began
+to speak, with that conscious effect of bringing his words
+through various mediums from a distance.
+
+"We endeavored to discourage Major Carstair from undertaking this
+adventure.  We were greatly concerned about his safety.  The
+sunken plateau of the Gobi Desert, north of the Shan States, is
+exceedingly dangerous for an European, not so much on account of
+murderous attacks from the desert people, for this peril we could
+prevent; but there is a chill in this sunken plain after sunset
+that the native people only can resist.  No white man has ever
+crossed the low land of the Gobi."
+
+He paused.
+
+"And there is in fact no reason why any one should wish to cross
+it.  It is absolutely barren.  We pointed out all this very
+carefully to Major Carstair when we learned what he had in plan,
+for as I have said his welfare was very pressingly on our
+conscience.  We were profoundly puzzled about what he was seeking
+in the Gobi.  He was not, evidently, intending to plot the region
+or to survey any route, or to acquire any scientific data.  His
+equipment lacked all the implements for such work.  It was a long
+time before we understood the impulse that was moving Major
+Carstair to enter this waste region of the Gobi to the north."
+
+The man stopped, and sat for some moments quite motionless.
+
+"Your father," he went on, "was a distinguished man in one of the
+departments of human endeavor which the East has always
+neglected; and in it he had what seemed to us incredible skill -
+with ease he was able to do things which we considered
+impossible.  And for this reason the impulse taking him into the
+Gobi seemed entirely incredible to us; it seemed entirely
+inconsistent with this special ability which we knew the man to
+possess; and for a long time we rejected it, believing ourselves
+to be somehow misled."
+
+The girl sat straight and silent, in her chair near the brass
+fender to the right of the buhl table; the drawing, showing the
+white granite shaft, held idly in her fingers; the illuminated
+vellum wrapper fallen to the floor.
+
+The man continued speaking slowly.
+
+"When, finally, it was borne in upon us that Major Carstair was
+seeking a treasure somewhere on the barren plateau of the Gobi,
+we took every measure, consistent with a proper courtesy, to show
+him how fantastic this notion was.  We had, in fact, to exercise
+a certain care lest the very absurdity of the conception appear
+too conspicuously in our discourse."
+
+He looked across the table at the girl.
+
+The man's great bald head seemed to sink a little into his
+shoulders, as in some relaxation.
+
+"We brought out our maps of the region and showed him the old
+routes and trails veining the whole of it.  We explained the
+topography of this desert plateau; the exact physical character
+of its relief.  There was hardly a square mile of it that we did
+not know in some degree, and of which we did not possess some
+fairly accurate data.  It was entirely inconceivable that any
+object of value could exist in this region without our knowledge
+of it."
+
+The man was speaking like one engaged in some extremely delicate
+mechanical affair, requiring an accuracy almost painful in its
+exactness.
+
+"Then, profoundly puzzled, we endeavored to discover what data
+Major Carstair possessed that could in any way encourage him in
+this fantastic idea.  It was a difficult thing to do, for we held
+him in the highest esteem and, outside of this bizarre notion, we
+had before us, beyond any question, the evidence of his especial
+knowledge; and, as I have said, his, to us, incredible skill."
+
+He paused, as though the careful structure of the long sentence
+had fatigued him.
+
+"Major Carstair's explanations were always in the imagery of
+romance.  He sought `a treasure - a treasure that would destroy a
+Kingdom.'  And his indicatory data seemed to be the dried blossom
+of our desert poppy."
+
+Again the Oriental paused.  He put up his hand and passed his
+fingers over his face.  The gaunt hand contrasted with the full
+contour.
+
+"I confess that we did not know what to do.  We realized that we
+had to deal with a nature possessing in one direction the exact
+accurate knowledge of a man of science, and in another the wonder
+extravagances of a child.  The Dalai Lama was not yet able to be
+consulted, and it seemed to us a better plan to say no more about
+the impossible treasure, and address our endeavors to the
+practical side of Major Carstair's intelligence instead.  We now
+pointed out the physical dangers of the region.  The deadly chill
+in it coming on at sunset could not fail to inflame the lungs of
+a European, accustomed to an equable temperature, fever would
+follow; and within a few days the unfortunate victim would find
+his whole breathing space fatally congested."
+
+The man removed his hand.  The care in his articulation was
+marked.
+
+"Major Carstair was not turned aside by these facts, and we
+permitted him to go on."
+
+Again he paused as though troubled by a memory.
+
+"In this course," he continued, "the Dalai Lama considered us to
+have acted at the extreme of folly.  But it is to be remembered,
+in our behalf, that somewhat of the wonder at Major Carstair's
+knowledge of Western science dealing with the human body was on
+us, and we felt that perhaps the climatic peril of the Gobi might
+present no difficult problem to him.
+
+"We were fatally misled."
+
+Then he added.
+
+"We were careful to direct him along the highest route of the
+plateau, and to have his expedition followed.  But chance
+intervened.  Major Carstair turned out of the route and our
+patrol went on, supposing him to be ahead on the course which we
+had indicated to him.  When the error was at last discovered, our
+patrol was entering the Sirke range.  No one could say at what
+point on the route Major Carstair had turned out, and our search
+of the vast waste of the Gobi desert began.  The high wind on the
+plateau removes every trace of human travel.  The whole of the
+region from the Sirke, south, had to be gone over.  It took a
+long time."
+
+The man stopped like one who has finished a story.  The girl had
+not moved; her face was strained and white.  The fog outside had
+thickened; the sounds of the city seemed distant.  The girl had
+listened without a word, without a gesture.  Now she spoke.
+
+"But why were you so concerned about my father?"
+
+The big Oriental turned about in the chair.  He looked steadily
+at the girl, he seemed to be treating the query to his involved
+method of translation; and Miss Carstair felt that the man,
+because of this tedious mental process, might have difficulty to
+understand precisely what she meant.
+
+What he wished to say, he could control and, therefore, could
+accurately present - but what was said to him began in the
+distant language.
+
+"What Major Carstair did," he said, "it has not been made clear
+to you?"
+
+"No," she replied, "I do not understand."
+
+The man seemed puzzled.
+
+"You have not understood!"
+
+He repeated the sentence; his face reflective, his great bare
+head settling into the collar of his evening coat as though the
+man's neck were removed.
+
+He remained for a moment thus puzzled and reflective.  Then he
+began to speak as one would set in motion some delicate involved
+machinery running away into the hidden spaces of a workshop.
+
+"The Dalai Lama had fallen - he was alone in the Image Room.  His
+head striking the sharp edge of a table was cut.  He had lost a
+great deal of blood when we found him and was close to death.
+Major Carstair was at this time approaching the monastery from
+the south; his description sent to us from Lhassa contained the
+statement that he was an American surgeon.  We sent at once
+asking him to visit the Dalai Lama, for the skill of Western
+people in this department of human knowledge is known to us."
+
+The Oriental went on, slowly, with extreme care.
+
+"Major Carstair did not at once impress us.  `What this man
+needs,' he said, `is blood.'  That was clear to everybody.  One
+of our, how shall I say it in your language, Cardinals, replied
+with some bitterness, that the Dalai Lama could hardly be
+imagined to lack anything else.  Major Carstair paid no attention
+to the irony.  `This man must have a supply of blood,' he added.
+The Cardinal, very old, and given to imagery in his discourse
+answered, that blood could be poured out but it could not be
+gathered up . . . and that man could spill it but only God could
+make.
+
+"We interrupted then, for Major Carstair was our guest and
+entitled to every courtesy, and inquired how it would be possible
+to restore blood to the Dalai Lama; it was not conceivable that
+the lost blood could be gathered up.
+
+"He explained then that he would transfer it from the veins of a
+healthy man into the unconscious body."
+
+The Oriental hesitated; then he went on.
+
+"The thing seemed to us fantastic.  But our text treating the
+life of the Dalai Lama admits of no doubt upon one point - `no
+measure presenting itself in extremity can be withheld.'  He was
+in clear extremity and this measure, even though of foreign
+origin, had presented itself, and we felt after a brief
+reflection that we were bound to permit it."
+
+He added.
+
+"The result was a miracle to us.  In a short time the Dalai Lama
+had recovered.  But in the meantime Major Carstair had gone on
+into the Gobi seeking the fantastic treasure."
+
+The girl turned toward the man, a wide-eyed, eager, lighted face.
+
+"Do you realize," she said, "the sort of treasure that my father
+sacrificed his life to search for?"
+
+The Oriental spoke slowly.
+
+"It was to destroy a Kingdom," he said.
+
+"To destroy the Kingdom of Pain!"  She replied, "My father was
+seeking an anesthetic more powerful than the derivatives of
+domestic opium.  He searched the world for it.  In the little,
+wild desert flower lay, he thought, the essence of this treasure.
+And he would seek it at any cost.  Fortune was nothing; life was
+nothing.  Is it any wonder that you could not stop him?  A
+flaming sword moving at the entrance to the Gobi could not have
+barred him out!"
+
+The big Oriental made a vague gesture as of one removing
+something clinging to his face.
+
+"Wherefore this blindness?" he said.
+
+The girl had turned away in an effort to control the emotion that
+possessed her.  But the task was greater than her strength; when
+she came back to the table tears welled up in her eyes and
+trickled down her face.  Emotion seemed now to overcome her.
+
+"If my father were only here," her voice was broken, "if he were
+only here!"
+
+The big Oriental moved his whole body, as by one motion, toward
+her.  The house was very still; there was only the faint
+crackling of the logs on the fire.
+
+"We had a fear," he said.  "It remains!"
+
+The girl went over and stood before the fire, her foot on the
+brass fender, her fingers linked behind her back.  For sometime
+she was silent.  Finally she spoke, without turning her head, in
+a low voice.
+
+"You know Lord Eckhart?"
+
+A strange expression passed over the Oriental's face.
+
+"Yes, when Lhassa was entered, the Head moved north to our
+monastery on the edge of the Gobi - the English sovereignty
+extends to the Kahn line.  Lord Eckhart was the political agent
+of the English government in the province nearest to us."
+
+When the girl got up, the Oriental also rose.  He stood
+awkwardly, his body stooped; his hand as for support resting on
+the corner of the table.  The girl spoke again, in the same
+posture.  Her face toward the fire.
+
+"How do you feel about Lord Eckhart?"
+
+"Feel!"  The man repeated the word.
+
+He hesitated a little.
+
+"We trusted Lord Eckhart.  We have found all English honorable."
+
+"Lord Eckhart is partly German," the girl went on.
+
+The man's voice in reply was like a foot-note to a discourse.
+
+"Ah!"  He drawled the expletive as though it were some Oriental
+word.
+
+The girl continued.  "You have perhaps heard that a marriage is
+arranged between us."
+
+Her voice was steady, low, without emotion.
+
+For a long time there was utter silence in the room.
+
+Then, finally, when the Oriental spoke his voice had changed.  It
+was gentle, and packed with sympathy.  It was like a voice within
+the gate of a confessional.
+
+"Do you love him?" it said.
+
+"I do not know."
+
+The vast sympathy in the voice continued.  "You do not know? - it
+is impossible!  Love is or it is not.  It is the longing of
+elements torn asunder, at the beginning of things, to be
+rejoined."
+
+The girl turned swiftly, her body erect, her face lifted.
+
+"But this great act," she cried.  "My father, I, all of our
+blood, are moved by romance - by the romance of sacrifice.  Look
+how my father died seeking an antidote for the pain of the world.
+How shall I meet this sacrifice of Lord Eckhart?"
+
+Something strange began to dawn in the wide Mongolian face.
+
+"What sacrifice?"
+
+The girl came over swiftly to the table.  She scattered the mass
+of jewels with a swift gesture.
+
+"Did he not give everything he possessed, everything piece by
+piece, for this?"
+
+She took the necklace up and twisted it around her fingers.  Her
+hands appeared to be a mass of rubies.
+
+A great light came into the Oriental's face.
+
+"The necklace," he said, "is a present to you from the Dalai
+Lama.  It was entrusted to Lord Eckhart to deliver."
+
+
+
+
+XV.  Satire of the Sea
+
+"What was the mystery about St. Alban?" I asked.
+
+The Baronet did not at once reply.  He looked out over the
+English country through the ancient oak-trees, above the sweep of
+meadow across the dark, creeping river, to the white shaft rising
+beyond the wooded hills into the sky.
+
+The war was over.  I was a guest of Sir Henry Marquis for a
+week-end at his country-house.  The man fascinated me.  He seemed
+a sort of bottomless Stygian vat of mysteries.  He had been the
+secret hand of England for many years in India.  Then he was made
+a Baronet and put at the head of England's Secret Service at
+Scotland Yard.
+
+A servant brought out the tea and we were alone on the grass
+terrace before the great oak-trees.  He remained for some moments
+in reflection, then he replied:
+
+"Do you mean the mystery of his death?"
+
+"Was there any other mystery?" I said.
+
+He looked at me narrowly across the table.
+
+"There was hardly any mystery about his death," he said.  "The
+man shot himself with an old dueling pistol that hung above the
+mantel in his library.  The family, when they found him, put the
+pistol back on the nail and fitted the affair with the stock
+properties of a mysterious assassin.
+
+"The explanation was at once accepted.  The man's life, in the
+public mind, called for an end like that.  St. Alban after his
+career, should by every canon of the tragic muse, go that way."
+
+He made a careless gesture with his fingers.
+
+"I saw the disturbed dust on the wall where the pistol had been
+moved, the bits of split cap under the hammer, and the powder
+marks on the muzzle.
+
+"But I let the thing go.  It seemed in keeping with the destiny
+of the man.  And it completed the sardonic picture.  It was all
+fated, as the Gaelic people say . . . .  I saw no reason to
+disturb it."
+
+"Then there was some other mystery?" I ventured.
+
+He nodded his big head slowly.
+
+"There is an ancient belief," he said, "that the hunted thing
+always turns on us.  Well, if there was ever a man in this world
+on whom the hunted thing awfully turned, it was St. Alban."
+
+He put out his hand.
+
+"Look at the shaft yonder," he said, "lifted to his memory,
+towering over the whole of this English country, and cut on its
+base with his services to England and the brave words he said on
+that fatal morning on the Channel boat.  Every schoolboy knows
+the words:
+
+"`Don't threaten, fire if you like!'
+
+"First-class words for the English people to remember.  No
+bravado, just the thing any decent chap would say.  But the words
+are persistent.  They remain in the memory.  And it was a
+thrilling scene they fitted into.  One must never forge that: The
+little hospital transport lying in the Channel in a choppy sea
+that ran streaks of foam; the grim turret and the long whaleback
+of a U-boat in the foam scruff; and the sun lying on the scrubbed
+deck of the jumping transport.
+
+"Everybody was crowded about.  St. Alban was in the center of the
+human pack, in a pace or two of clear deck, his injured arm in a
+sling; his split sleeve open around it; his shoulders thrown
+back; his head lifted; and before him, the Hun commander with his
+big automatic pistol.
+
+"It's a wonderful, spirited picture, and it thrilled England.  It
+was in accord with her legends.  England has little favor of
+either the gods of the hills or the gods of the valleys.  But
+always, in all her wars, the gods of the seas back her."
+
+The big Baronet paused and poured out a cup of tea.  He tasted it
+and set it down on the table.
+
+"That's a fine monument," he said, indicating the white shaft
+that shot up into the cloudless evening sky.  "The road makes a
+sharp turn by it.  You have got to slow up, no matter how you
+travel.  The road rises there.  It's built that way; to make the
+passer go slow enough to read the legends on the base of the
+monument.  It's a clever piece of business.  Everybody is bound
+to give his tribute of attention to the conspicuous memorial.
+
+"There are two faces to the monument that you must look at if you
+go that road.  One recounts the man's services to England, and
+the other face bears his memorable words:
+
+"`Don't threaten, fire if you like!'"
+
+The Baronet fingered the handle of his teacup.
+
+"The words are precisely suited to the English people," he said.
+"No heroics, no pretension, that's the whole spirit of England.
+It's the English policy in a line: We don't threaten, and we
+don't wish to be threatened by another.  Let them fire if they
+like, - that's all in the game.  But don't swing a gun on us with
+a threat.  St. Alban was lucky to say it.  He got the reserve,
+the restraint, the commonplace understatement that England
+affects, into the sentence.  It was a piece of good fortune to
+catch the thing like that.
+
+"The monument is tremendous.  One can't avoid it.  It's always
+before the eye here, like the White Horse of Alfred on the chalk
+hill in Berkshire.  All the roads pass it through this
+countryside.  But every mortal thing that travels, motor and
+cart, must slow up around the monument."
+
+He stopped for a moment and looked at the white needle shimmering
+in the evening sun.
+
+"But St. Alban's greatest monument," he said, "was the lucky
+sentence.  It stuck in the English memory and it will never go
+out of it.  One wouldn't give a half-penny for a monument if one
+could get a phrase fastened in a people's memory like that."
+
+Sir Henry moved in his chair.
+
+"I often wonder," he said, "whether the thing was an inspiration
+of St. Alban's that morning on the deck of the hospital
+transport, or had he thought about it at some other time?  Was
+the sentence stored in the man's memory, or did it come with the
+first gleam of returning consciousness from a soul laid open by
+disaster?  I think racial words, simple and unpretentious, may
+lies in any man close to the bone like that to be rived out with
+a mortal hurt.  That's what keeps me wondering about the words he
+used.  And he did use them.
+
+"I don't doubt that a lot of our hero stuff has been edited after
+the fact.  But this sentence wasn't edited.  That's what he said,
+precisely.  A hundred wounded soldiers on the hospital transport
+heard it.  They were crowding round him.  And they told the story
+when they got ashore.  The story varied in trifling details as
+one would expect among so many witnesses to a tragic event like
+that.  But it didn't vary about what the man said when the Hun
+commander was swinging his automatic pistol on him.
+
+"There was no opportunity to edit a brave sentence to fit the
+affair.  St. Alban said it.  And he didn't think it up as he
+climbed out of the cabin of the transport.  If he had been in a
+condition to think, he had enough of the devil's business to
+think about just then; a brave sentence would hardly have
+concerned him, as I said awhile ago.
+
+"Besides, we have his word that, after what happened in the
+cabin, everything else that occurred that morning on the
+transport was a blank to the man; was walled off from his
+consciousness, and these words were the first impulse of one
+returning to a realization of events."
+
+Sir Henry Marquis reflected.
+
+"I think they were," he continued.  "They have the mark of
+spontaneity; of the first disgust of one grasping the fact that
+he was being threatened."
+
+The Baronet paused.
+
+"The event had a great effect on England," he said.  "And it
+helped to restore our shattered respect for a desperate enemy.
+The Hun commander didn't sink the transport, and he didn't shoot
+St. Alban.  It's true there was a sort of gentleman's agreement
+among the enemies that hospital transports should not be sunk.
+
+"But anything was likely to happen just then.  The Hun had failed
+to subjugate the world, and he was a barbarous, mad creature.
+England believed that something noble in St. Alban worked the
+miracle.
+
+"`You're a brave man!'
+
+"Some persons on the transport testified to such a comment from
+the submarine commander.  At any rate, he went back to his U-boat
+and the undersea.
+
+"That's the last they saw of him.  The transport came on into
+Dover.
+
+"England thought the affair was one of the adventures of the sea.
+A chance thing, that happened by accident.  But there was one man
+in England who knew better."
+
+"You?" I said.
+
+The Baronet shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"St. Alban," he answered.
+
+He got up and began to walk about the terrace.  I sat with the
+cup of tea cooling before me.  The big man walked slowly with his
+fingers linked behind him.  Finally he stopped.  His voice was
+deep and reflective.
+
+"`Man is altogether the sport of fortune!' . . .  I read that in
+Herodotus, in a form at Rugby.  I never thought about it again.
+But it's God's truth.  St. Alban was at Rugby.  I often wonder if
+he remembered it.  My word, he lived to verify it!  Herodotus
+couldn't cite a case to equal him.  And the old Greek wasn't
+hemmed in by the truth.  I maintain that the man's case has no
+parallel.
+
+"To have all the painstaking labor of years negatived by one
+enveloping, vicious misfortune; to be beaten out of life by it,
+and at the same time to gain that monument out yonder and one's
+niche as hero by the grim device of an enemy's satire; by the
+acting of a scene that one would never have taken part in if one
+had realized it, is beyond any complication of tragedy known to
+the Greek.
+
+"Look at the three strange phases of it: To be a mediocre
+Englishman with no special talent; to die in horrible despair;
+and to leave behind a glorious legend.  And for all these three
+things to contradict one another in the same life is unequaled in
+the legends of any people."
+
+The Baronet went on in a deep level voice.
+
+"There was a vicious vitality behind the whole desperate
+business.  Every visible impression of the thing was wrong.
+Every conception of it held today by the English people is wrong!
+
+"The German submarine didn't overhaul the hospital transport in
+the Channel by accident.  The Hun commander didn't fail to sink
+the transport out of any humane motives.  He didn't fail to shoot
+St. Alban because he was moved by the heroism of the man.  It was
+all grim calculation!
+
+"He thought it was safe to let St. Alban go ahead.  And he would
+have been right if St. Alban had been the great egotist that he
+was.
+
+"The commander of that submarine was Plutonburg of Prussia.  He
+was the right-hand man of old Von Tirpitz.  He was the one man in
+the German navy who never ceased to urge its Admiralty to sink
+everything.  He loathed every fiber of the English people.  We
+had all sorts of testimony to that.  The trawlers and freightboat
+captains brought it in.  He staged his piracies to a theatrical
+frightfulness.  `Old England!' he would say, when he climbed up
+out of the sea onto the deck of a British ship and looked about
+him at the sailors, `Old, is right, old and rotten!'  Then he
+would smite his big chest and quote the diatribes of Treitschke.
+`But in a world that the Prussian inhabits a nation, old and
+rotten, may endure for a time, but it shall not endure forever!'
+
+"Plutonburg didn't let St. Alban and the transport go ahead out
+of the promptings of a noble nature.  He did it because he hated
+England, and he wanted St. Alban to live on in the hell he had
+trapped him into.  He counted on his keeping silent.  But the Hun
+made a mistake.
+
+"St. Alban didn't measure up to the standard of Prussian egoism
+by which Plutonburg estimated him."
+
+Sir Henry continued in the same even voice.  The levels of
+emotion in his narrative did not move him.
+
+"Did you ever see the picture of Plutonburg, in Munich?  He had a
+face like Chemosh.  And he dressed the part.  Other under-boat
+commanders wore the conventional naval cap, but Plutonburg always
+wore a steel helmet with a corrugated earpiece.  Some artist
+under the frightfulness dogma must have designed it for him.  It
+framed his face down to the jaw.  The face looked like it was set
+in iron, and it was a thick-lidded, heavy, menacing face; the
+sort of face that a broad-line cartoonist gives to a threatening
+war-joss.  At any rate, that's how the picture presents him.  One
+thinks of Attila under his ox head.  You can hardly imagine
+anything human in it, except a cruel satanic humor.
+
+"He must have looked like Beelzebub that morning, on the
+transport, when he let St. Alban go on."
+
+The Baronet looked down at me.
+
+"Now, that's the truth about the fine conduct of Plutonburg that
+England applauded as an act of chivalry.  It was a piece of
+sheer, hellish malignity, if there ever was an instance."
+
+Sir Henry took a turn across the terrace, for a moment silent.
+Then he went on:
+
+"And in fact, everything in the heroic event on the deck of the
+transport was a pretense.  The Hun didn't intend to shoot St.
+Alban.  As I have said, Plutonburg had him in just the sort of
+hell he wanted him in, and he didn't propose to let him out with
+a bullet.  And St. Alban ought to have known it, unless, as he
+afterwards said, the whole thing from the first awful moment in
+the cabin was simply walled out of his consciousness, until he
+began dimly to realize up there in the sun, in the crowd, that he
+was being threatened and blurted out his words from a sort of
+awful disgust."
+
+Again he paused.
+
+"Plutonburg was right about having St. Alban in the crater of the
+pit.  But he was wrong to measure him by his Prussian standard.
+St. Alban came on to London.  He got the heads of the War Office
+together and told them.  I was there.  It was the devil's own
+muddle of a contrast. Outside, London was ringing with the man's
+striking act of personal heroism.  And inside of the Foreign
+Office three or, four amazed persons were listening to the bitter
+truth."
+
+The Baronet spread out his hands with a sudden gesture.
+
+"I shall always remember the man's strange, livid face; his
+fingers that jumped about the cuff of his coat sleeve; and his
+shaking jaw."
+
+Sir Henry went over and sat down at the table.  For a good while
+he was silent.  The sun filtering through the limbs of the great
+oak-trees made mottled spots on his face.  He seemed to turn away
+from the thing he had been concerned with, and to see something
+else, something wholly apart and at a distance from St. Alban's
+affairs.
+
+"You must have wondered like everybody else," he said, "why the
+Allied drive on the Somme accomplished so little at first. Both
+England and France had made elaborate preparations for it over a
+long period of time.  Every detail had been carefully, worked
+out.  Every move had been estimated with mathematical exactness.
+
+"The French divisions had been equipped and strategically
+grouped.  England had put a million of fresh troops into France.
+And the line of the drive had been mapped.  The advance, when it
+was opened on the first day of July, ought to have gone forward
+irresistibly from cog to cog like a wheel of a machine on the
+indentations of a track.  But the thing didn't happen that way.
+The drive sagged and stuck."
+
+The big Englishman pressed the table with his clinched hand.
+
+"My word!" he said, "is it any wonder that the devil, Plutonburg,
+grinned when he put up his automatic pistol?  Why shoot the
+Englishman?  He would do it himself soon enough.  He was right
+about that.  If he had only been right about his measure of St.
+Alban, the drive on the Somme would have been a ghastly
+catastrophe for the Allied armies."
+
+I hesitated to interrupt Sir Henry.  But he had got my interest
+desperately worked up about what seemed to me great unjointed
+segments of this affair, that one couldn't understand till they
+were put together.  I ventured a query.
+
+"How did St. Alban come to be on the hospital transport?" I said.
+"Was he in the English army in France?"
+
+"Oh, no," he said.  "When the war opened St. Alban was in the
+Home Office, and, he set out to make England spy-proof.  He
+organized the Confidential Department, and he went to work to
+take every precaution.  He wasn't a great man in any direction,
+but he was a careful, thorough man.  And with tireless,
+never-ceasing, persistent effort, he very nearly swept England
+clean of German espionage."
+
+Sir Henry spoke with vigor and decision.
+
+"Now, that's what St. Alban did in England - not because he was a
+man of any marked ability, but because he was a persistent person
+dominated by a single consuming idea.  He started out to rid
+England of every form of espionage.  And when he had accomplished
+that, as the cases of Ernest, Lody, and Schultz eloquently
+attest, he determined to see that every move of the English
+expeditionary force on the Continent should be guarded from
+German espionage."
+
+Sir Henry paused and poured out a cup of tea.  He tasted it.  It
+was cold, and he put the cup down on the table.
+
+"That's how St. Alban came to be in France," he said.  "The great
+drive on the Somme had been planned at a meeting of military
+leaders in Paris.  The French were confident that they could keep
+their plans secret from German espionage.  They admitted frankly
+that signals were wirelessed out of France.  But they had taken
+such precautions that only the briefest signals could go out.
+
+"The Government radio stations were always alert.  And they at
+once negatived any unauthorized wireless so that German spies
+could only snap out a signal or two at any time.  They could do
+this, however.
+
+"They had a wireless apparatus inside a factory chimney at
+Auteuil.  It wasn't located until the war was nearly over.
+
+"The French didn't undertake to say that they could make their
+country spy-proof.  They knew that there were German agents in
+France that nobody could tell from innocent French people.  But
+they did undertake to say that nothing could be carried over into
+the German lines.  And they justified that promise.  They did see
+that nothing was carried out of France."  The Baronet looked at
+me across the table.
+
+"Now, that's what took St. Alban across the Channel," he said.
+"The English authorities wanted to be certain that there was no
+German espionage.  And there was no man in England able to be
+certain of that except St. Alban.  He went over to make sure.  If
+the plans for the Somme drive should get out of France, they
+should not get out through any English avenue."
+
+The Baronet paused.
+
+"St. Alban went about the thing in his thorough, persistent
+manner.  He didn't trust to subordinates.  He went himself.
+That's what took him out on the English line.  And that's how he
+came to be wounded in the elbow.
+
+"It wasn't very much of a wound - a piece of shrapnel nearly
+spent when it hit him.  But the French hospital service was very
+much concerned.  It gave him every attention.
+
+"The man came into Paris when he had finished.  The French
+authorities put him up at the Hotel Meurice.  You know the Hotel
+Meurice.  It's on the Rue de la Rivoli.  It looks out over the
+garden of the Tuileries.  St. Alban was satisfied with the
+condition of affairs in France, and he was anxious to go back to
+London.  Arrangements had been made for him to go on the hospital
+transport.
+
+"He was in his room at the Meurice waiting for the train to
+Calais.  He was, in fact, fatigued with the attention the French
+authorities had given him.  Everything that one could think of
+had been anticipated, he said.  He thought there could be nothing
+more.  Then there was a timid knock, and a nurse came in to say
+that she had been sent to see that the dressing on his arm was
+all right.  He said that he had found it easier to submit to the
+French attentions than to undertake to explain that he didn't
+need them.
+
+"He was busy with some final orders, so he put out his arm and
+allowed the nurse to take the pins out of the split sleeve and
+adjust the dressing.  She put on some bandages, made a little
+timid curtsey and went out.
+
+"St. Alban didn't think of it again until the German U-boat
+stopped the transport the next morning in the Channel.  He wasn't
+disturbed when the submarine commander came into his cabin.  He
+knew enough not to carry any papers about with him.  But
+Plutonburg didn't bother himself about luggage.  He'd had his
+signal from the factory chimney at Auteuil.  He stood there
+grinning in the cabin before St. Alban; that Satanic, Chemosh
+grin that the artist got in the Munich picture.
+
+"`I used to be something of a surgeon,' he said, `Doctor Ulrich
+von Plutonburg, if you will remember.  I'll take a look at your
+arm.'
+
+"tit, Alban said he thought the man might be moved by some humane
+consideration, so he put out his arm.
+
+"Plutonburg took the pins out of the sleeve and removed the
+bandage that the nurse had put on in the Hotel Meurice.  Then he
+held it up.  The long, cotton bandage was lined with glazed
+cambric, and on it, in minute detail, was the exact position of
+all the Allied forces along the whole front in the region of the
+Somme, precisely as they had been massed for the drive on July
+first!"
+
+I cried out in astonishment.  "So that's what you meant," I said,
+"by the trailed thing turning on him!"
+
+"Precisely," replied the Baronet.  "The very thing that St. Alban
+labored to prevent another from doing, he did awfully himself!"
+
+The big Englishman's fingers drummed on the table.
+
+"It was a great moment for Plutonburg," he said.  "No living man
+but that Prussian could have put the Satanic humor into the rest
+of the affair."
+
+He paused as under the pressure of the memory.
+
+"St. Alban always maintained that from the moment he saw the long
+map on the bandage everything blurred around him, and began to
+clear only when he spoke on the deck.  He used to curse this
+blur.  It made him a national figure and immortal, but it
+prevented him, he said, from striking the Prussian in the face."
+
+
+
+
+XVI.  The House by the Loch
+
+
+There was a snapping fire in the chimney.  I was cold through and
+I was glad to stand close beside it on the stone hearth.  My
+greatcoat had kept out the rain, but it had not kept out the
+chill of the West Highland night.  I shivered before the fire, my
+hands held out to the flame.
+
+It was a long, low room.  There was an ancient guncase on one
+side, but the racks were empty except for a service pistol
+hanging by its trigger-guard from the hook.  There were some
+shelves of books on the other side.  But the conspicuous thing in
+the room was an image of Buddha in a glass box on the
+mantelpiece.
+
+It was about four inches high, cast in silver and, I thought, of
+immense age.
+
+I had to wait for my uncle to come in.  But I had enough to think
+about.  Every event connected with this visit seemed to touch on
+some mystery.  There was his strange letter to me in reply to my
+note that I was in England and coming up to Scotland.  Surely no
+man ever wrote a queerer letter to a nephew coming on a visit to
+him.
+
+It dwelt on the length of the journey and the remoteness of the
+place.  I was to be discouraged in every sentence.  I was to
+carry his affectionate regards to the family in America and say
+that he was in health.
+
+It stood out plainly that I was not wanted.
+
+This was strange in itself, but it was not the strangest thing
+about this letter.  The strangest thing was a word written in a
+shaky cramped hand on the back of the sheet: the letters huddled
+together: "Come!"
+
+I would have believed my uncle justified in his note.  It was a
+long journey.  I had great difficulty to find anyone to take me
+out from the railway station.  There were idle men enough, but
+they shook their heads when I named the house.  Finally, for a
+double wage, I got an old gillie with a cart to bring me as far
+on the way as the highroad ran.  But he would not turn into the
+unkept road that led over the moor to the house.  I could neither
+bribe nor persuade him.  There was no alternative but to set out
+through the mist with my bag on my shoulder.
+
+Night was coming on.  The moor was a vast wilderness of gorse.
+The house loomed at the foot of it and beyond the loch that made
+a sort of estuary for the open sea.  Nor was this the only thing.
+I got the impression as I tramped along that I was not alone on
+the moor.  I don't know out of what evidences the impression was
+built up.  I felt that someone was in the gorse beyond the road.
+
+The house was closed up like a sleeping eye when I got before it.
+It was a big, old, rambling stone house with a tangle of vines
+half torn away by the winds: I hammered on the door and finally
+an aged man-servant holding a candle high above his head let me
+in.
+
+This was the manner of my coming to Saint Conan's Landing.
+
+I had some supper of cold meat brought in by this aged servant.
+He was a shrunken derelict of a human figure.  He was disturbed
+at my arrival and ill at ease.  But I thought there was relief
+and welcome in his expression.  The master would be in directly;
+he would light a fire in the drawing-room and prepare a
+bedchamber for me.
+
+One would hardly find outside of England such faithful creatures
+clinging to the fortunes of descending men.  He was at the end of
+life and in some fearful perplexity, but one felt there was
+something stanch and sound in him.
+
+I had no doubt that there, under my eye, was the hand that had
+added the cramped word to my uncle's letter.
+
+I stood now before the fire in the long, low room.  The flames
+and a tall candle at either end of the mantelpiece lit it up.  I
+was looking at the Buddha in the glass box.  I could not imagine
+a thing more out of note.  Surely of all corners of the world
+this wild moor of the West Highlands was the least suited to an
+Oriental cult.  The elements seemed under no control of Nature.
+The land was windswept, and the sea came crying into the loch.
+
+I suppose it was the mood of my queer experiences that set me at
+this speculation.
+
+One would expect to find some evidences of India in my uncle's
+house.  He had been a long time in Asia, on the fringes of the
+English service.  Toward the end he had been the Resident at the
+court of an obscure Rajah in one of the Northwest Provinces.  It
+was on the edge of the Empire where it touches the little-known
+Mongolian states south of the Gobi.
+
+The Home Office was only intermittently in touch with him.  But
+something, never explained, finally drew its attention and he was
+put out of India.  No one knew anything about it; "permitted to
+retire," was the text of the brief official notice.
+
+And he had retired to the most remote place he could find in the
+British islands.  There was no other house on that corner of the
+coast. The man was as alone as he would have been in the Gobi.
+
+If he had planned to be alone one would have believed he had
+succeeded in that intention.  And yet from the moment I got down
+from the gillie's cart I seemed drawn under a persisting
+surveillance.  I felt now that some one was looking at me.  I
+turned quickly.  There was a door at the end of the room opening
+onto a bit of garden facing the sea.  A man stood, now, just
+inside this door, his hand on the latch.  His head and shoulders
+were stooped as though he had been there some moments, as though
+he had let himself noiselessly in, and remained there watching me
+before the fire.
+
+But if so, he was prepared against my turning.  He snapped the
+latch and came down the room to where I stood.
+
+He was a big stoop-shouldered Englishman with a pale, pasty face
+beginning to sag at the jowls.  There was a queer immobility
+about the features as though the man were always in some fear.
+His eyes were a pale tallow color and seemed too small for their
+immense sockets.  One could see that the man had been a
+gentleman.  I write it in the past, because at the moment I felt
+it as in the past. I felt that something had dispossessed him.
+
+"This will be Robin," he said.  "My dear fellow, it was fine of
+you to travel all this way to see me."
+
+He had a nervous cold hand with hardly any pressure in the grasp
+of it.  His thin black hair was brushed across the top of his
+bald head, and the distended, apprehensive expression on his face
+did not change.
+
+He made me sit down by the fire and asked me about the family in
+America.  But there was, I thought, no real interest in this
+interrogation until he came to a reflective comment.
+
+"I should like to go to America," he said; "there must be great
+wastes of country where one would be out of the world."
+
+The sincerity of this expression stood out in the trivial talk.
+It indicated something that disturbed the man.  He was as
+isolated as he could get in England, but that was not enough.
+
+He sat for a moment silent, the fingers of his nervous hand
+moving on his knee.  When he glanced up, with a sudden jerk of
+his head, he caught me looking at the little image of Buddha in
+its glass box on the mantelpiece.
+
+Was this longing for solitude the influence of this mysterious
+religion?
+
+Remote, lonely isolation was a cult of Buddha.  The devotees of
+that cult sought the waste places of the earth for their
+meditations.  To be out of the world, in its physical contact,
+was a prime postulate in the practice of this creed.
+
+"Ah, Robin," he cried, as though he were in a jovial mood and
+careless of the subject, "do you have a hobby?"
+
+I answered that I had not felt the need of one.  The inquiry was
+a surprise and I could think of nothing better to reply with.
+
+"Then, my boy," he went on, "what will you do when you are old?
+One must have something to occupy the mind."
+
+He got up and turned the glass box a little on the mantelpiece.
+
+"This is a very rare image," he said; "one does not find this
+image anywhere in India.  It came from Tibet.  The expression and
+the pose of the figure differ from the conventional Buddha.  You
+might not see that, but to any one familiar with this religion
+these differences are marked.  This is a monastery image, and you
+will see that it is cast, not graven."
+
+He beckoned me to come closer, and I rose and stood beside him.
+He went on as with a lecture:
+
+"The reason given by the natives why this image is not found in
+Southern Asia is that it cannot be cast anywhere but in the
+Tibetan monasteries.  A certain ritual at the time of casting is
+necessary to produce a perfect figure.  This ritual is a secret
+of the Khan monasteries.  Castings of this form of image made
+without the ritual are always defective; so I was told in India."
+
+He moved the glass box a little closer to the edge of the
+mantelpiece.
+
+"Naturally," he went on, "I considered this story, to be a mere
+piece of religious pretension.  It amused me to make some
+experiments, and to my surprise the castings were always
+defective.  I brought the image to England."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders as with a careless gesture.
+
+"In my idle time here I tried it again.  And incredibly the
+result was always the same; some portion of the figure showed a
+flaw.  My interest in the thing was permanently aroused.  I
+continued to experiment."
+
+He laughed in a queer high cackle.
+
+"And presently I found myself desperately astride a hobby.  I got
+all the Babbitt metal that I could buy up in England and put in
+the days and not a few of the nights in trying to cast a perfect
+figure of this confounded Buddha.  But I have never been able to
+do it."
+
+He opened a drawer of the gun-case and brought over to the fire
+half a dozen castings of the Buddha in various sizes.
+
+Not one among the number was perfect.  Some portion of the figure
+was in every case wanting.  A hand would be missing, a portion of
+a shoulder, a bit of the squat body or there would be a flaw
+where the running metal had not filled the mold.
+
+"I'm hanged," he cried, "if the beggars are not right about it.
+The thing can't be done!  I've tried it in all sorts of
+dimensions.  You will see some of the big figures in the garden.
+I've used a ton of metal and every sort of mold."
+
+Then he flung his hand out toward the bookcase.
+
+"I've studied the art of molding in soft metal.  I have all the
+books on it, and I've turned the boathouse into a sort of shop.
+I've spent a hundred pounds - and I can't do it!"
+
+He paused, his big face relaxed.
+
+"The country thinks I'm mad, working with such outlandish
+deviltry.  But, curse the thing, I have set out to do it and I am
+not going to throw it up."
+
+And suddenly with an unexpected heat he damned the Buddha,
+shaking his clenched hand before the box.
+
+"Your pardon, Robin," he cried, the moment after.  "But the
+thing's ridiculous, you know.  The ritual story would be sheer
+rubbish.  The beggars could not affect a metal casting with a
+form of words."
+
+I have tried to set down here precisely what my uncle said.  It
+was the last talk I ever had with the man in this world, and it
+profoundly impressed me.  He was in fear, and his jovial manner
+was a ghastly pretence.  I left him sitting by the fire drinking
+neat whisky from a tumbler.
+
+The old man-servant took me up to my room.  It was a big room in
+a wing of the house looking out on the garden and the sea.  I saw
+that it had been cleaned and made ready against my coming;
+clearly the old man expected me.
+
+He put the candle on the table and laid back the covers of the
+bed.  And suddenly I determined to have the matter out with him.
+
+"Andrew," I said, "why did you add that significant word to my
+uncle's letter?"
+
+He turned sharply with a little whimpering cry.
+
+"The master, sir!" he said, and then he stopped as though
+uncertain in what manner to go on.  He made a hopeless sort of
+gesture with his extended hands.
+
+"I thought your coming might interrupt the thing . . . .  You are
+of his family and would be silent."
+
+"What threatens my uncle?" I cried, "What is the thing?"
+
+He hesitated, his eyes moving about the floor.
+
+"Oh, sir," he said, "the master is in some wicked and dangerous
+business.  You heard his talk, sir; that would not be the talk of
+a man at peace . . . .  He has strange visitors, sir, and the
+place is watched.  I cannot tell you any more than that, except
+that something is going to happen and I am shaken with the fear
+of it."
+
+I looked out through the musty curtains before I went to bed.
+But the whole world was dark, packed down in the thick mist.
+Once, in the direction of the open sea, I thought I saw the
+flicker of a light.
+
+I was tired and I slept profoundly, but somewhere in the sleep I
+saw my uncle and a priest of Tibet gibbering over a ladle of
+molten silver.
+
+It was nearly midday when I awoke.  The whole world had changed
+as under some enchantment; there was brilliant sun and afresh
+stimulating air with the salt breath of the sea in it.  Old
+Andrew gave me some breakfast and a message.
+
+His manner like everything else seemed to have undergone some
+transformation.  He was silent and, I thought, evasive.  He
+repeated the message without comment, as though he had committed
+it to memory from an unfamiliar language:
+
+"The master directed me to say that he must make a journey to
+Oban.  It is urgent business and will not be laid over."
+
+"When does my uncle return," I said.
+
+The old man shifted his weight from one foot to the other; he
+looked out through the open window onto the strip of meadow
+extending into the loch.  Finally he replied:
+
+"The master did not name the hour of his return."
+
+I did not press the interrogation.  I felt that there was
+something here that the old man was keeping back; but I had an
+impression of equal force that he ought to be allowed the run of
+his discretion with it.  Besides, the brilliant morning had swept
+out my sinister impressions.
+
+I got my cap and stick from the rack by the door and went out.
+The house was within a hundred paces of the loch, in a place of
+wild beauty on a bit of moor, yellow with gorse, extending from
+the great barren mountains behind it right down into the water.
+Immense banners of mist lay along the tops of these mountain
+peaks, and streams of water like skeins of silk marked the deep
+gorges in dazzling whiteness.
+
+The loch was a crooked finger of the sea hooked into the land.
+It was clear as glass in the bright morning.  The open sea was
+directly beyond the crook of the finger, barred out by a nest of
+needlepointed rocks.  On this morning, with the sea motionless,
+they stood up like the teeth of a harrow, but in heavy weather I
+imagined that the waves covered them.  To the eye they were not
+the height of a man above the level water; they glistened in the
+brilliant sun like a sheaf of black pikes.
+
+This was Saint Conan's Landing, and it occurred to me that if the
+holy man came in rough weather from the Irish coast he required,
+in truth, all the perspicacity of a saint to get his boat in
+without having it impaled on these devil's needles.
+
+There was no garden to speak of about the house.  It was grown up
+like the moor.  Two or three images of Buddhas stood about in it;
+one of them was quite large - three feet in height I should say
+at a guess.  They were on rough stone pedestals.  I examined them
+carefully.  They were all defective; the large one had an immense
+flaw in the shoulder.  The gorse nearly covered them; the unkept
+hedge let the moor in and there were no longer any paths, except
+one running to the boathouse.
+
+I did not follow the path.  But I looked down at the boathouse
+with some interest. This was the building that my uncle had
+turned into a sort of foundry for his weird experiments.  There
+was a big lock on the door and a coal-blacked chimney standing
+above the roof.
+
+It was afternoon.  The whole coast about me was like an
+undiscovered country.  I hardly knew in what direction to set out
+on my exploration.  I stood in the path digging my stick into the
+gravel and undecided.  Finally I determined to cross the bit of
+moor to the high ground overlooking the loch.  It was the sloping
+base of one of the great peaks and purple with heather.  It
+looked the best point for a full sweep of the sea and the coast.
+
+I jumped the hedge and set out across the moor to the high
+ground.
+
+There was no path through the gorse, but when I reached the
+heather where the foot of the mountain peak descended into the
+loch there was a sort of newly broken trail.  The heather was
+high and dense and I followed the trail onto the high ground
+overlooking the sweep of the coast.
+
+The loch was dappled with sun.  The air was like wine.  The
+mountains above the moor and the heather were colored like an
+Oriental carpet.  I was full of the joy of life and swung into an
+immense stride, when suddenly a voice stopped me.
+
+"My lad," it said, "which one of the Ten Commandments is it the
+most dangerous to break?"
+
+Before me, at the end of the trail, seated on the ground, was a
+big Highlander.  He was knitting a woolen stocking and his
+needles were clicking like an instrument.  I was taken off my
+feet, but I tried to meet him on his ground.
+
+"Well," I answered, "I suppose it would be the one against
+murder, the sixth."
+
+"You suppose wrong," he replied.  "It will be the first. You will
+read in the Book how Jehovah set aside the sixth.  Aye, my lad,
+He ordered it broken when it pleased Him.  But did you ever read
+that He set aside the first or that any man escaped who broke
+it?"
+
+He spoke with the deep rich burr of his race and with a structure
+of speech that I cannot reproduce here.
+
+"Did you observe," he added, "the graven images that your uncle
+has set up?  . . .  Where is the man the noo?"
+
+"He is gone to Oban," I said.
+
+He sprang up and thrust the stocking and needles into his
+sporran.
+
+"To Oban!"  He stood a moment in some deep reflection.  "There
+will be ships out of Oban."  Then he put another question to me:
+
+"What did auld Andrew say about it?"
+
+"That my uncle was gone to Oban," I answered, "and had set no
+time for his return."
+
+He looked at me queerly for a moment, towering above me in the
+deep heather.
+
+"Do you think, my lad, that your uncle could be setting out for
+heathen parts to learn the witch words for his hell business in
+the boathouse?"
+
+The suggestion startled me.  The thing was not beyond all
+possibility.
+
+But I felt that I had come to the end of this examination.  I was
+not going to be questioned further like a small boy overtaken on
+the road I had answered a good many questions and I determined to
+ask one.
+
+"Who are you?" I said.  "And what have you got to do with my
+uncle's affairs?"
+
+He cocked his eye at me, looking down as one looks down at a
+child.
+
+"The first of your questions," he said, "you will find out if you
+can, and the second you cannot find out if you will."  And he was
+gone, striding past me in the deep heather.
+
+"I have some business with your uncle, of a pressing nature," he
+called back.  "I will just take a look through Oban, the night
+and the morn's morn."
+
+I was utterly at sea about the big Highlander.  He might be a
+friend or an enemy of my uncle.  But clearly he knew all about
+the man and the mysterious experiment in which he was engaged.
+He was keeping the place well within his eye; that was also
+evident.  From his seat in the heather the whole place was spread
+out below him.
+
+And his queer speech fitted with old Andrew's fear.  Surely the
+Buddha was a heathen image and my uncle had set it up.  The stern
+Scotch conscience would be outraged and see the Decalogue
+violated in its injunctions.  This would explain the dread with
+which my uncle's house was regarded and the reason I could find
+no man to help me on the way to it.  But it would not explain my
+uncle's apprehension.
+
+But my adventure on this afternoon did not end with the big
+Highlander.  I found out something more.
+
+I returned along the edge of the loch and approached the
+boathouse from the waterside.
+
+Here the path passed directly along the whole wall of the
+building.  The path was padded with damp sod, and as it happened
+I made no sound on it.  It was late afternoon, the shadows were
+beginning to extend, there was no wind and the whole world was
+intensely quiet.  Midway of the wall I stopped to listen.
+
+The house was not empty.  There was some one in it.  I could hear
+him moving about.
+
+It was of no use to try to look in through the wall; every joint
+and crack of the stones was plastered.  I went on.
+
+Old Andrew was about setting me some supper.  He came over and
+stood a moment by the window looking at the shadows on the loch.
+And I tried to take him unaware with a sudden question:
+
+"Has my uncle returned from Oban?"
+
+But I had no profit of the venture.
+
+"The master," he said, "is where he went this morning."
+
+The strange elements in this affair seemed on the point of
+converging upon some common center.  The thing was in the air.
+Old Andrew voiced it when he went out with his candle.
+
+"Ah, sir," he said, "it was the fool work of an old man to bring
+you into this affair.  The master will have his way and he must
+meet what waits for him at the end of it."
+
+I saw how he hoped that my visit might interrupt some plan that
+my uncle was about to put into effect, but realized that it was
+useless.
+
+Clearly my uncle had not left the place; he had been at work all
+day in the boathouse.  The journey was to account to me for his
+disappearance.  I had passed the lie along to the queer sentinel
+that sat watching in the heather and I wondered whether I had
+sent a friend or an enemy into Oban on an empty mission, and
+whether I had fouled or forwarded my uncle's enterprise.
+
+I put out the candle and sat down by the window to keep watch,
+for the boathouse, the loch and the open sea were under the sweep
+of it.  But, alas, Nature overreaches our resolves when we are
+young.  It was far into the night when I awoke.
+
+A wind was coming up and I think it was the rattle of the window
+that aroused me.  There was no moon, but under the open stars the
+world was filled with a thin, ghostly light, and the scene below
+the window was blurred a little like an impalpable picture.
+
+A low-masted sailing ship lay in the open sea; there was a boat
+at the edge of the loch, and human figures were coming out of the
+boathouse with burdens which they were loading into the boat.
+Almost immediately the boat, manned with rowers, turned about and
+silently traversed the crook of the loch on its way to the ship.
+But certain of the human figures remained.  They continued
+between the boathouse and the beach.
+
+And I realized that I had opened my eyes on the loading of a
+ship.  The boat was taking off a cargo.
+
+Something stored in the boathouse was being transferred to the
+hold of the sailing ship.  The scene was inconceivably unreal.
+There was no sound but the intermittent puffs of the wind, and
+the figures were like phantoms in a sort of lighted mist.
+Directly as I looked two figures came out of the boathouse and
+along the path to the drawing-room door under my window.  I took
+off my shoes and crept carefully out of the room and down the
+stairway.  The door from the hall into the long, low room was
+ajar.  I stood behind it, and looked in through the crack.
+
+My uncle was burning letters and papers in the fireplace with a
+candle, and in the chair beyond him sat the strangest human
+creature that I had ever seen in the world.
+
+He was a big Oriental with a sodden, brutal face fixed as by some
+sorcery into an expression of eternal calm.  He wore the uniform
+of an English skipper.  It was dirty and sea-stained as though
+picked up at some sailor's auction.  He was speaking to my uncle
+and his careful precise sentences in the English tongue, coming
+from the creature, seemed thereby to take on added menace.
+
+"Is it wise, Sahib," he said, "to leave any man behind us in this
+house?"
+
+"We can do nothing else," replied my uncle.
+
+The Oriental continued with the same carefully selected words:
+
+"Easily we can do something else, Sahib," he said, "with a bar of
+pig securely lashed to the ankles, the sea would receive them."
+
+"No, no," replied my uncle, busy with his letters and the candle.
+The big Oriental did not move.
+
+"Reflect, Sahib," he went on.  "We are entering an immense peril.
+The thing that will be hunting us has innumerable agencies
+everywhere in its service.  If it shall discover that we have
+falsified its symbols, it will search the earth for us.  And what
+are we, Sahib, against this thing?  It does not die, nor wax old,
+nor grow weary."
+
+"The lad knows nothing," replied my uncle, "and old Andrew will
+keep silent."
+
+"Without trouble, Sahib," the creature continued, "I can put the
+young one beyond all knowledge and the old one beyond all speech.
+Is it permitted?"
+
+My uncle got up from the fireplace, for he had finished with his
+work.
+
+"No," he said, "let there be an end of it."
+
+He turned about, and under the glimmer of the candle I could see
+that the man had changed; his big pale face was grim with some
+determined purpose, and there was about him the courage and the
+authority of one who, after long wavering, at last hazards a
+desperate venture.  He broke the glass box and put the Buddha
+into his pocket.
+
+"It is good silver," he said, "and it has served its purpose."
+
+The Oriental got softly onto his feet like a great toy of cotton
+wood.  His face remained in its expression of equanimity, and he
+added no further word of gesture to his argument.
+
+My uncle held the door open for him to pass out, and after that
+he extinguished the candle and followed, closing the door
+noiselessly behind him.
+
+The thing was like a scene acted in a playhouse.  But it
+accomplished what the playhouse fails in.  It put the fear of
+death into one who watched it.  To me in the dark hall, looking
+through the crack of the door, the placid Oriental in his English
+uniform, and with his precise words like an Oxford don, was
+surely the most devilish agency that ever urged the murder of
+innocent men on an accomplice.
+
+The wind was continuing to rise and the mist now covered the loch
+and the open sea.  It was of no use to stand before the window,
+for the world was blotted out.  I was cold and I lay down on the
+bed and wrapped the covers around me.  It seemed only a moment
+later when old Andrew's hand was on me, and his thin voice crying
+in the room.
+
+"Will you sleep, sir, and God's creatures going to their death!"
+
+He ran, whimpering in his thin old voice, down the stair, and I
+followed him out of the house into the garden.
+
+It was midmorning.  A man was standing before the door, his hands
+behind him, looking out at the sea.  In his long trousers and
+bowler hat I did not at once recognize him for the Highlander of
+my yesterday's adventure.
+
+The coast was in the tail of a storm.  The wind boomed, as though
+puffed by a bellows, driving in gusts of mist.
+
+The ship I had seen in the night was hanging in the sea just
+beyond the crook of the loch.  It fluttered like a snared bird.
+One could see the crew trying every device of sail and tacking,
+but with all their desperate ingenuities the ship merely hung
+there shivering like a stricken creature.
+
+It was a fearful thing to look at.  Now the mist covered
+everything and then for a moment the wind swept it out, and all
+the time, the silent, deadly struggle went on between the trapped
+ship and the sea running in among the needles of the loch.  I
+don't think any of us spoke except the Highlander once in comment
+to himself.
+
+"It's Ram Chad's tramp . . . .  So that's the craft the man was
+depending on!"
+
+Then the mist shut down.  When it lifted, the doom of the ship
+was written.  It was moving slowly into the deadly maw of the
+loch.
+
+Again the mist shut down and, when again the wind swept it out,
+the ship had vanished.
+
+There was the open sea and the long swells and the murderous
+current boiling around the sharp points of the needles; but there
+was no ship nor any human soul of the crew.  Old Andrew screamed
+like a woman at the sight.
+
+"The ship!" he cried.  "Where is the ship and the master?"
+
+The thing was so swift and awful that I spoke myself.
+
+"My God!" I said.  "How quickly the thing they feared destroyed
+them!"
+
+The big Highlander came over where I stood.  The burr of his
+speech and its sacred imagery were gone with his change of dress.
+
+"No," he said, "they escaped the thing they feared . . . .  What
+do you think it was?"
+
+"I don't know," I answered.  "The creature in the English uniform
+said that it did not die, nor wax old, nor grow weary."
+
+"Ram Chad was right," replied the Highlander.  "The British
+government neither dies, ages, nor tires out.  Do you realize
+what your uncle was doing here?"
+
+"Molding images of Buddha," I said.
+
+"Molding Indian rupees," he retorted.
+
+"The Buddha business was a blind . . . .  I'm Sir Henry Marquis,
+Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard .
+. . .  We got track of him in India."
+
+Then he added:
+
+"There's a hundred thousand sterling in false coin at the bottom
+of the loch yonder!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Sleuth of St. James's Square, by M. D. Post
+
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