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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Four Corners of the World, by
+A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Four Corners of the World
+
+Author: A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason
+
+Release Date: January 25, 2012 [EBook #38664]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE WORLD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
+
+
+
+
+no gutcheck/jeebies/gutspell
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+   1. Page scan source:
+      http://www.archive.org/details/fourcornersof00masoiala
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                       BOOKS BY A. E. W. MASON
+
+                Published By CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+                          *   *   *   *   *
+
+THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE WORLD.    _net_ $1.50
+THE BROKEN ROAD.                  _net_ $1.35
+AT THE VILLA ROSE. Illustrated.   _net_ $1.35
+THE TURNSTILE.                    _net_ $1.35
+THE WITNESS FOR THE DEFENCE.      _net_ $1.35
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           THE FOUR CORNERS
+
+                             OF THE WORLD
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           THE FOUR CORNERS
+
+                             OF THE WORLD
+
+
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+                            A. E. W. MASON
+
+
+
+
+
+                        CHARLES SCRIBNERS SONS
+                        NEW YORK :: :: :: 1917
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Copyright, 1917, by
+                       CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+                              *   *   *
+
+                       Published October, 1917
+
+            Copyright, 1909, by THE CURTIS PUBLISHING CO.
+         Copyright, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1917, By A. E. W. MASON
+    Copyright, 1914, 1915, 1917, By THE METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE CO.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS
+
+
+The Clock.
+
+Green Paint.
+
+North of the Tropic of Capricorn.
+
+One of Them.
+
+Raymond Byatt.
+
+The Crystal Trench.
+
+The House of Terror.
+
+The Brown Book.
+
+The Refuge.
+
+Peiffer.
+
+The Ebony Box.
+
+The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel.
+
+Under Bignor Hill.
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE CLOCK
+
+
+
+
+                              THE CLOCK
+
+
+                                  I
+
+Mr. Twiss was a great walker, and it was his habit, after his day's
+work was done, to walk from his pleasant office in the Adelphi to his
+home at Hampstead. On an afternoon he was detained to a later hour
+than usual by one of his clients, a Captain Brayton, over some matter
+of a mortgage. Mr. Twiss looked at his office clock.
+
+"You are going west, I suppose?" he said. "I wonder if you would walk
+with me as far as Piccadilly? It will not be very much out of your
+way, and I have a reason for wishing your company."
+
+"By all means," replied Captain Brayton, and the two men set forth.
+
+Mr. Twiss, however, seemed in a difficulty as to how he should broach
+his subject, and for a while the pair walked in silence. They, indeed,
+reached Pall Mall, and were walking down that broad thoroughfare,
+before a word of any importance was uttered. And even then it was
+chance which furnished the occasion. A young man of Captain Brayton's
+age came down from the steps of a club and walked towards them. As he
+passed beneath a street lamp, Mr. Twiss noticed his face, and ever so
+slightly started with surprise. At almost the same moment, the young
+man swerved across the road at a run, as though suddenly he remembered
+a very pressing appointment. The two men walked on again for a few
+paces, and then Captain Brayton observed: "There is a screw loose
+there, I am afraid."
+
+Mr. Twiss shook his head.
+
+"I am sorry to hear you say so," he replied. "It was, indeed, about
+Archie Cranfield that I was anxious to speak to you. I promised his
+father that I would be something more than Archie's mere man of
+affairs, if I were allowed, and I confess that I am troubled by him.
+You know him well?"
+
+Captain Brayton nodded his head.
+
+"Perhaps I should say that I did know him well," he returned. "We were
+at the same school, we passed through Chatham together, but since he
+has relinquished actual service we have seen very little of one
+another." Here he hesitated, but eventually made up his mind to
+continue in a guarded fashion. "Also, I am bound to admit that there
+has been cause for disagreement. We quarrelled."
+
+Mr. Twiss was disappointed. "Then you can tell me nothing of him
+recently?" he asked, and Captain Brayton shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Nothing but what all the little world of his acquaintances already
+knows. He has grown solitary, forbidding in his manner, and, what is
+most noticeable, sly--extraordinarily sly. While he is speaking with
+you, he will smile at some secret thought of his; the affairs of the
+world have lost their interest for him; he hardly listens and seldom
+speaks. He is concerned with some private matter, and he hides it
+cunningly. That is the character, at all events, which his friends
+give of him."
+
+They had now reached the corner of St. James's Street, and as they
+turned up the hill, Mr. Twiss took up the tale.
+
+"I am not surprised at what you tell me. It is a great pity, for we
+both remember him ambitious and a good soldier. I am inclined to blame
+the house in the country for the change in him."
+
+Captain Brayton, however, did not agree.
+
+"It goes deeper than that," he said. "Men who live alone in the
+country may show furtive ways in towns, no doubt. But why does he live
+alone in the country? No, that will not do"; and at the top of St.
+James's Street the two men parted.
+
+Mr. Twiss walked up Bond Street, and the memory of that house in the
+country in which Archie Cranfield chose to bury himself kept him
+company. Mr. Twiss had travelled down into the eastern counties to see
+it for himself one Saturday afternoon when Cranfield was away from
+home, and a walk of six miles from the station had taken him to its
+door. It stood upon the borders of Essex and Suffolk, a small
+Elizabethan house backed upon the Stour, a place of black beams and
+low ceilings and great fireplaces. It had been buttressed behind,
+where the ground ran down to the river-bank, and hardly a window was
+on a level with its neighbour. A picturesque place enough, but Mr.
+Twiss was a lover of towns and of paved footways and illuminated
+streets. He imagined it on such an evening as this, dark, and the rain
+dripping cheerlessly from the trees. He imagined its inmate crouching
+over the fire with his sly smile upon his face, and of a sudden the
+picture took on a sinister look, and a strong sense of discomfort made
+Mr. Twiss cast an uneasy glance behind him. He had in his pocket a
+letter of instructions from Archie Cranfield, bidding him buy the
+house outright with its furniture, since it had now all come into the
+market.
+
+It was a week after this when next Captain Brayton came to Mr. Twiss's
+office, and, their business done, he spoke of his own accord of Archie
+Cranfield.
+
+"I am going to stay with him," he said. "He wrote to me on the night
+of the day when we passed him in Pall Mall. He told me that he would
+make up a small bachelor party. I am very glad, for, to tell the
+truth, our quarrel was a sufficiently serious one, and here, it seems,
+is the end to it."
+
+Mr. Twiss was delighted, and shook his client warmly by the hand.
+
+"You shall bring me news of Archie Cranfield," he said--"better news
+than I have," he added, with a sudden gravity upon his face. For in
+making the arrangements for the purchase of the house, he had come
+into contact with various neighbours of Archie Cranfield, and from all
+of them he had had but one report. Cranfield had a bad name in those
+parts. There were no particular facts given to account for his
+reputation. It was all elusive and vague, an impression conveyed by
+Archie Cranfield himself, by something strange and sly in his
+demeanour. He would sit chuckling in a sort of triumph, to which no
+one had the clue, or, on the other hand, he fell into deep silences
+like a man with a trouble on his mind.
+
+"Be sure you come to see me when you return," said Mr. Twiss, and
+Captain Brayton replied heartily: "Surely I will." But he never did.
+For in a few days the newspapers were busy with the strange enigma of
+his death.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+The first hint of this enigma was conveyed to Mr. Twiss late one night
+at his private address. It came in the shape of a telegram from Archie
+Cranfield, which seemed to the agitated solicitor rather a cry of
+distress than a message sent across the wires.
+
+"Come at once. I am in terrible need.--Cranfield."
+
+There were no trains at so late an hour by which Mr. Twiss could reach
+his client; he must needs wait until the morning. He travelled,
+however, by the first train from Liverpool Street. Although the
+newspapers were set out upon the bookstall, not one of them contained
+a word of anything amiss at Archie Cranfield's house, and Mr. Twiss
+began to breathe more freely. It was too early for a cab to be in
+waiting at the station, and Mr. Twiss set out to walk the six miles.
+It was a fine, clear morning of November; but for the want of leaves
+and birds, and the dull look of the countryside, Mr. Twiss might have
+believed the season to be June. His spirits rose as he walked, his
+blood warmed to a comfortable glow, and by the time he came to the
+gates of the house, Cranfield's summons had become a trifling thing.
+As he walked up to the door, however, his mood changed, for every
+blind in the house was drawn. The door was opened before he could
+touch the bell, and it was opened by Cranfield himself. His face was
+pale and disordered, his manner that of a man at his wits' end.
+
+"What has happened?" asked Mr. Twiss as he entered the hall.
+
+"A terrible thing!" replied Cranfield. "It's Brayton. Have you
+breakfasted? I suppose not. Come, and I will tell you while you eat."
+
+He walked up and down the room while Mr. Twiss ate his breakfast, and
+gradually, by question and by answer, the story took shape.
+Corroboration was easy and was secured. There was no real dispute
+about the facts; they were simple and clear.
+
+There were two other visitors in the house besides Captain Brayton,
+one a barrister named Henry Chalmers, and the second, William
+Linfield, a man about town as the phrase goes. Both men stood in much
+the same relationship to Archie Cranfield as Captain Brayton did--that
+is to say, they were old friends who had seen little of their host of
+late, and were somewhat surprised to receive his invitation after so
+long an interval. They had accepted it in the same spirit as Brayton,
+and the three men arrived together on Wednesday evening. On Thursday
+the party of four shot over some turnip fields and a few clumps of
+wood which belonged to the house, and played a game of bridge in the
+evening. In the opinion of all, Brayton was never in better spirits.
+On Friday the four men shot again and returned to the house as
+darkness was coming on. They took tea in the smoking-room, and after
+tea Brayton declared his intention to write some letters before
+dinner. He went upstairs to his room for that purpose.
+
+The other three men remained in the smoking-room. Of that there was no
+doubt. Both Chalmers and Linfield were emphatic upon the point.
+Chalmers, in particular, said:
+
+"We sat talking on a well-worn theme, I in a chair on one side of the
+fireplace, Archie Cranfield in another opposite to me, and Linfield
+sitting on the edge of the billiard-table between us. How the subject
+cropped up I cannot remember, but I found myself arguing that most men
+hid their real selves all their lives even from their most intimate
+friends, that there were secret chambers in a man's consciousness
+wherein he lived a different life from that which the world saw and
+knew, and that it was only by some rare mistake the portals of that
+chamber were ever passed by any other man. Linfield would not hear of
+it. If this hidden man were the real man, he held, in some way or
+another the reality would triumph, and some vague suspicion of the
+truth would in the end be felt by all his intimates. I upheld my view
+by instances from the courts of law, Linfield his by the aid of a
+generous imagination, while Cranfield looked from one to the other of
+us with his sly, mocking smile. I turned to him, indeed, in some heat.
+
+"'Well, since you appear to know, Cranfield, tell me which of us is
+right,' and his pipe fell from his fingers and broke upon the hearth.
+He stood up, with his face grown white and his lips drawn back from
+his teeth in a kind of snarl.
+
+"'What do you mean by that?' he asked; and before I could answer, the
+door was thrown violently open, and Cranfield's man-servant burst into
+the room. He mastered himself enough to say:
+
+"'May I speak to you, sir?'
+
+"Cranfield went outside the door with him. He could not have moved six
+paces from the door, for though he closed it behind him, we heard the
+sound of his voice and of his servant's speaking in low tones.
+Moreover, there was no appreciable moment of time between the
+cessation of the voices and Cranfield's reappearance in the room. He
+came back to the fireplace and said very quietly:
+
+"'I have something terrible to tell you. Brayton has shot himself.'
+
+"He then glanced from Linfield's face to mine, and sat down in a chair
+heavily. Then he crouched over the fire shivering. Both Linfield and
+myself were too shocked by the news to say a word for a moment or two.
+Then Linfield asked:
+
+"'But is he dead?'
+
+"'Humphreys says so,' Cranfield returned. 'I have telephoned to the
+police and to the doctor.'
+
+"'But we had better go upstairs ourselves and see,' said I. And we
+did."
+
+Thus Chalmers. Humphreys, the man-servant, gave the following account:
+
+"The bell rang from Captain Brayton's room at half-past five. I
+answered it at once myself, and Captain Brayton asked me at what hour
+the post left. I replied that we sent the letters from the house to
+the post-office in the village at six. He then asked me to return at
+that hour and fetch those of his which would be ready. I returned
+precisely at six, and I saw Captain Brayton lying in a heap upon the
+rug in front of the fire. He was dead, and he held a revolver tightly
+clenched in his hand. As I stepped over him, I smelt that something
+was burning. He had shot himself through the heart, and his clothes
+were singed, as if he had held the revolver close to his side."
+
+These stories were repeated at the inquest, and at this particular
+point in Humphreys' evidence the coroner asked a question:
+
+"Did you recognise the revolver?"
+
+"Not until Captain Brayton's hand was unclenched."
+
+"But then you did?"
+
+"Yes," said Humphreys.
+
+The coroner pointed to the table on which a revolver lay.
+
+"Is that the weapon?"
+
+Humphreys took it up and looked at the handle, on which two initials
+were engraved--"A. C."
+
+"Yes," said the man. "I recognised it as Mr. Cranfield's. He kept it
+in a drawer by his bedside."
+
+No revolver was found amongst Captain Brayton's possessions.
+
+It became clear that, while the three men were talking in the
+billiard-room, Captain Brayton had gone to Cranfield's room, taken his
+revolver, and killed himself with it. No evidence, however, was
+produced which supplied a reason for Brayton's suicide. His affairs
+were in good order, his means sufficient, his prospects of advancement
+in his career sound. Nor was there a suggestion of any private
+unhappiness. The tragedy, therefore, was entered in that list of
+mysteries which are held insoluble.
+
+"I might," said Chalmers, "perhaps resume the argument which Humphreys
+interrupted in the billiard-room, with a better instance than any
+which I induced--the instance of Captain Brayton."
+
+
+                                 III
+
+"You won't go?" Archie Cranfield pleaded with Mr. Twiss. "Linfield and
+Chalmers leave to-day. If you go too, I shall be entirely alone."
+
+"But why should you stay?" the lawyer returned.
+
+"Surely you hardly propose to remain through the winter in this
+house?"
+
+"No, but I must stay on for a few days; I have to make arrangements
+before I can go," said Cranfield; and seeing that he was in earnest in
+his intention to go, Mr. Twiss was persuaded. He stayed on, and
+recognised, in consequence, that the death of Captain Brayton had
+amongst its consequences one which he had not expected. The feeling in
+the neighbourhood changed towards Archie Cranfield. It cannot be said
+that he became popular--he wore too sad and joyless an air--but
+sympathy was shown to him in many acts of courtesy and in a greater
+charity of language.
+
+A retired admiral, of a strong political complexion, who had been one
+of the foremost to dislike Archie Cranfield, called, indeed, to offer
+his condolences. Archie Cranfield did not see him, but Mr. Twiss
+walked down the drive with him to the gate.
+
+"It's hard on Cranfield," said the admiral. "We all admit it. It
+wasn't fair of Brayton to take his host's revolver. But for the
+accident that Cranfield was in the billiard-room with Linfield and
+Chalmers, the affair might have taken on quite an ugly look. We all
+feel that in the neighbourhood, and we shall make it up to Cranfield.
+Just tell him that, Mr. Twiss, if you will."
+
+"It is very kind of you all, I am sure," replied Mr. Twiss, "but I
+think Cranfield will not continue to live here. The death of Captain
+Brayton has been too much of a shock for him."
+
+Mr. Twiss said "Good-bye" to the admiral at the gate, and returned to
+the house. He was not easy in his mind, and as he walked round the
+lawn under the great trees, he cried to himself:
+
+"It is lucky, indeed, that Archie Cranfield was in the billiard-room
+with Linfield and Chalmers; otherwise, Heaven knows what I might have
+been brought to believe myself."
+
+The two men had quarrelled; Brayton himself had imparted that piece of
+knowledge to Mr. Twiss. Then there was the queer change in Archie
+Cranfield's character, which had made for him enemies of strangers,
+and strangers of his friends--the slyness, the love of solitude, the
+indifference to the world, the furtive smile as of a man conscious of
+secret powers, the whole indescribable uncanniness of him. Mr. Twiss
+marshalled his impressions and stopped in the avenue.
+
+"I should have had no just grounds for any suspicion," he concluded,
+"but I cannot say that I should not have suspected," and slowly he
+went on to the door.
+
+He walked through the house into the billiard-room, and so became the
+witness of an incident which caused him an extraordinary disquiet. The
+room was empty. Mr. Twiss lit his pipe and took down a book from one,
+of the shelves. A bright fire glowed upon the hearth, and drawing up a
+chair to the fender, he settled down to read. But the day was dull,
+and the fireplace stood at the dark end of the room. Mr. Twiss carried
+his book over to the window, which was a bay window with a broad seat.
+Now, the curtains were hung at the embrasure of the window, so that,
+when they were drawn, they shut the bay off altogether from the room,
+and when they were open, as now, they still concealed the corners of
+the window-seats. It was in one of these corners that Mr. Twiss took
+his seat, and there he read quietly for the space of five minutes.
+
+At the end of that time he heard the latch of the door click, and
+looking out from his position behind the curtain, he saw the door
+slowly open. Archie Cranfield came through the doorway into the room,
+and shut the door behind him. Then he stood for a while by the door,
+very still, but breathing heavily. Mr. Twiss was on the point of
+coming forward and announcing his presence, but there was something so
+strange and secret in Cranfield's behaviour that, in spite of certain
+twinges of conscience, he remained hidden in his seat. He did more
+than remain hidden. He made a chink between the curtain and the wall,
+and watched. He saw Cranfield move swiftly over to the fireplace,
+seize a little old-fashioned clock in a case of satinwood which stood
+upon the mantelshelf, raise it in the air, and dash it with an
+ungovernable fury on to the stone hearth. Having done this
+unaccountable thing, Cranfield dropped into the chair which Mr. Twiss
+had drawn up. He covered his face with his hands and suddenly began to
+sob and wail in the most dreadful fashion, rocking his body from side
+to side in a very paroxysm of grief. Mr. Twiss was at his wits' end to
+know what to do. He felt that to catch a man sobbing would be to earn
+his undying resentment. Yet the sound was so horrible, and produced in
+him so sharp a discomfort and distress, that, on the other hand, he
+could hardly keep still. The paroxysm passed, however, almost as
+quickly as it had come, and Cranfield, springing to his feet, rang the
+bell. Humphreys answered it.
+
+"I have knocked the clock off the mantelshelf with my elbow,
+Humphreys," he said. "I am afraid that it is broken, and the glass
+might cut somebody's hand. Would you mind clearing the pieces away?"
+
+He went out of the room, and Humphreys went off for a dustpan. Mr.
+Twiss was able to escape from the billiard-room unnoticed. But it was
+a long time before he recovered from the uneasiness which the incident
+aroused in him.
+
+Four days later the two men left the house together. The servants had
+been paid off. Humphreys had gone with the luggage to London by an
+earlier train. Mr. Twiss and Archie Cranfield were the last to go.
+Cranfield turned the key in the lock of the front door as they stood
+upon the steps.
+
+"I shall never see the inside of that house again," he said with a
+gusty violence.
+
+"Will you allow me to get rid of it for you?" asked Mr. Twiss; and for
+a moment Cranfield looked at him with knotted brows, blowing the while
+into the wards of the key.
+
+"No," he said at length, and, running down to the stream at the back
+of the house, he tossed the key into the water. "No," he repeated
+sharply; "let the house rot empty as it stands. The rats shall have
+their will of it, and the sooner the better."
+
+He walked quickly to the gate, with Mr. Twiss at his heels, and as
+they covered the six miles to the railway station, very little was
+said between them.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+Time ran on, and Mr. Twiss was a busy man. The old house by the Stour
+began to vanish from his memory amongst the mists and the veils of
+rain which so often enshrouded it. Even the enigma of Captain
+Brayton's death was ceasing to perplex him, when the whole affair was
+revived in the most startling fashion. A labourer, making a short cut
+to his work one summer morning, passed through the grounds of
+Cranfield's closed and shuttered house. His way led him round the back
+of the building, and as he came to that corner where the great brick
+buttresses kept the house from slipping down into the river, he saw
+below him, at the edge of the water, a man sleeping. The man's back
+was turned towards him; he was lying half upon his side, half upon his
+face. The labourer, wondering who it was, went down to the river-bank,
+and the first thing he noticed was a revolver lying upon the grass,
+its black barrel and handle shining in the morning sunlight. The
+labourer turned the sleeper over on his back. There was some blood
+upon the left breast of his waistcoat. The sleeper was dead, and from
+the rigidity of the body had been dead for some hours. The labourer
+ran back to the village with the astounding news that he had found Mr.
+Cranfield shot through the heart at the back of his own empty house.
+People at first jumped naturally to the belief that murder had been
+done. The more judicious, however, shook their heads. Not a door nor a
+window was open in the house. When the locks were forced, it was seen
+that the dust lay deep on floor and chair and table, and nowhere was
+there any mark of a hand or a foot. Outside the house, too, in the
+long neglected grass, there were but two sets of footsteps visible,
+one set leading round the house--the marks made by the labourer on his
+way to his work--the other set leading directly to the spot where
+Archie Cranfield's body was found lying. Rumours, each contradicting
+the other, flew from cottage to cottage, and the men gathered about
+the police-station and in the street waiting for the next. In an hour
+or two, however, the mystery was at an end. It leaked out that upon
+Archie Cranfield's body a paper had been discovered, signed in his
+hand and by his name, with these words:
+
+"I have shot myself with the same revolver with which I murdered
+Captain Brayton."
+
+The statement created some stir when it was read out in the
+billiard-room, where the coroner held his inquest. But the coroner who
+presided now was the man who had held the court when Captain Brayton
+had been shot. He was quite clear in his recollection of that case.
+
+"Mr. Cranfield's alibi on that occasion," he said, "was
+incontrovertible. Mr. Cranfield was with two friends in this very room
+when Captain Brayton shot himself in his bedroom. There can be no
+doubt of that." And under his direction the jury returned a verdict of
+"Suicide while of unsound mind."
+
+Mr. Twiss attended the inquest and the funeral. But though he welcomed
+the verdict, at the bottom of his mind he was uneasy. He remembered
+vividly that extraordinary moment when he had seen Cranfield creep
+into the billiard-room, lift the little clock in its case of satinwood
+high above his head, and dash it down upon the hearth in a wild gust
+of fury. He recollected how the fury had given way to despair--if it
+were despair and not remorse. He saw again Archie Cranfield dropping
+into the chair, holding his head and rocking his body in a paroxysm of
+sobs. The sound of his wailing rang horribly once more in the ears of
+Mr. Twiss. He was not satisfied.
+
+"What should take Cranfield back to that deserted house, there to end
+his life, if not remorse," he asked himself--"remorse for some evil
+done there"?
+
+Over that question for some days he shook his head, finding it waiting
+for him at his fireside and lurking for him at the corner of the
+roads, as he took his daily walk between Hampstead and his office. It
+began to poison his life, a life of sane and customary ways, with
+eerie suggestions. There was an oppression upon his heart of which he
+could not rid it. On the outskirts of his pleasant world dim horrors
+loomed; he seemed to walk upon a frail crust, fearful of what lay
+beneath. The sly smile, the furtive triumph, the apparent
+consciousness of secret power--did they point to some corruption of
+the soul in Cranfield, of which none knew but he himself?
+
+"At all events, he paid for it," Mr. Twiss would insist, and from that
+reflection drew, after all, but little comfort. The riddle began even
+to invade his business hours, and take a seat within his private
+office, silently clamouring for his attention. So that it was with a
+veritable relief that he heard one morning from his clerk that a man
+called Humphreys wished particularly to see him.
+
+"Show him in," cried Mr. Twiss, and for his own ear he added: "Now I
+shall know."
+
+Humphreys entered the room with a letter in his hand. He laid the
+letter on the office table. Mr. Twiss saw at a glance that it was
+addressed in Archie Cranfield's hand. He flung himself upon it and
+snatched it up. It was sealed by Cranfield's seal. It was addressed to
+himself, with a note upon the left-hand corner of the envelope:
+
+"To be delivered after my death."
+
+Mr. Twiss turned sternly to the man.
+
+"Why did you not bring it before?"
+
+"Mr. Cranfield told me to wait a month," Humphreys replied.
+
+Mr. Twiss took a turn across the room with the letter in his hand.
+
+"Then you knew," he cried, "that your master meant to kill himself?
+You knew, and remained silent?"
+
+"No, sir, I did not know," Humphreys replied firmly. "Mr. Cranfield
+gave me the letter, saying that he had a long railway journey in front
+of him. He was smiling when he gave it me. I can remember the words
+with which he gave it: 'They offer you an insurance ticket at the
+booking-office, when they sell you your travelling ticket, so there is
+always, I suppose, a little risk. And it is of the utmost importance
+to me that, in the event of my death, this should reach Mr. Twiss.' He
+spoke so lightly that I could not have guessed what was on his mind,
+nor, do I think, sir, could you."
+
+Mr. Twiss dismissed the man and summoned his clerk. "I shall not be in
+to anyone this afternoon," he said. He broke the seal and drew some
+closely written sheets of note-paper from the envelope. He spread the
+sheets in front of him with a trembling hand.
+
+"Heaven knows in what spirit and with what knowledge I shall rise from
+my reading," he thought; and looking out of his pleasant window upon
+the barges swinging down the river on the tide, he was in half a mind
+to fling the sheets of paper into the fire. "But I shall be plagued
+with that question all my life," he added, and he bent his head over
+his desk and read.
+
+
+                                  V
+
+"My dear Friend,--I am writing down for you the facts. I am not
+offering any explanation, for I have none to give. You will probably
+rise up, after reading this letter, quite incredulous, and with the
+conviction in your mind that you have been reading the extravagancies
+of a madman. And I wish with all my heart that you could be right. But
+you are not. I have come to the end to-day. I am writing the last
+words I ever shall write, and therefore I am not likely to write a
+lie.
+
+"You will remember the little manor-house on the borders of Essex, for
+you were always opposed to my purchase of it. You were like the
+British jury, my friend. Your conclusion was sound, but your reason
+for it very far from the mark. You disliked it for its isolation and
+the melancholy of its dripping trees, and I know not what other
+town-bred reasonings. I will give you a more solid cause. Picture to
+yourself the billiard-room and how it was furnished when I first took
+the house--the raised settee against the wall, the deep leather chairs
+by the fire, the high fender, and on the mantelshelf--what?--a little
+old-fashioned clock in a case of satinwood. You probably never noticed
+it. I did from the first evenings which I passed in the house. For I
+spent those evenings alone, smoking my pipe by the fire. It had a
+queer trick. For a while it would tick almost imperceptibly, and then,
+without reason, quite suddenly, the noise would become loud and
+hollow, as though the pendulum in its swing struck against the wooden
+case. To anyone sitting alone for hours in the room, as I did, this
+tick had the queerest effect. The clock almost became endowed with
+human qualities. At one time it seemed to wish to attract one's
+attention, at another time to avoid it. For more than once, disturbed
+by the louder knocking, I rose and moved the clock. At once the
+knocking would cease, to begin again when I had settled afresh to my
+book, in a kind of tentative, secret way, as though it would accustom
+my ears to the sound, and so pass unnoticed. And often it did so pass,
+until one knock louder and more insistent than the rest would drag me
+in annoyance on to my feet once more. In a week, however, I got used
+to it, and then followed the strange incident which set in motion that
+chain of events of which tomorrow will see the end.
+
+"It happened that a couple of my neighbours were calling on me. One of
+them you have met--Admiral Palkin, a prolix old gentleman, with a
+habit of saying nothing at remarkable length. The other was a Mr.
+Stiles, a country gentleman who had a thought of putting up for
+that division of the county. I led these two gentlemen into the
+billiard-room, and composed myself to listen while the admiral
+monologued. But the clock seemed to me to tick louder than ever,
+until, with one sharp and almost metallic thump, the sound ceased
+altogether. At exactly the same moment. Admiral Palkin stopped dead in
+the middle of a sentence. It was nothing of any consequence that he
+was saying, but I remember the words at which he stopped. 'I have
+often----' he said, and then he broke off, not with any abrupt start,
+or for any lack of words, but just as if he had completed all that he
+had meant to say. I looked at him across the fireplace, but his face
+wore its usual expression of complacent calm. He was in no way put
+out. Nor did it seem that any new train of thought had flashed into
+his mind and diverted it. I turned my eyes from him to Mr. Stiles. Mr.
+Stiles seemed actually to be unaware that the admiral had stopped
+talking at all. Admiral Palkin, you will remember, was a person of
+consequence in the district, and Mr. Stiles, who would subsequently
+need his vote and influence and motorcar, had thought fit to assume an
+air of great deference. From the beginning he had leaned towards the
+admiral, his elbow upon his knee, his chin propped upon his hand, and
+his head now and again nodding a thoughtful assent to the admiral's
+nothings. In this attitude he still remained, not surprised, not even
+patiently waiting for the renewal of wisdom, but simply attentive.
+
+"Nor did I move, for I was amused. The two men looked just like a
+couple of wax figures in Madame Tussaud's, fixed in a stiff attitude
+and condemned so to remain until the building should take fire and the
+wax run. I sat watching them for minutes, and still neither moved nor
+spoke. I never saw in my life a couple of people so entirely
+ridiculous. I tried hard to keep my countenance--for to laugh at these
+great little men in my own house would not only be bad manners, but
+would certainly do for me in the neighbourhood--but I could not help
+it. I began to smile, and the smile became a laugh. Yet not a muscle
+on the faces of my visitors changed. Not a frown overshadowed the
+admiral's complacency; not a glance diverted the admiring eyes of Mr.
+Stiles. And then the clock began to tick again, and, to my infinite
+astonishment, at the very same moment the admiral continued.
+
+"'--said to myself in my lighter moments---- And pray, sir, at what
+are you laughing?'
+
+"Mr. Stiles turned with an angry glance towards me. Admiral Palkin had
+resumed his conversation, apparently unaware that there had been any
+interval at all. My laughter, on the other hand, had extended beyond
+the interval, had played an accompaniment to the words just spoken. I
+made my excuses as well as I could, but I recognised that they were
+deemed insufficient. The two gentlemen left my house with the coldest
+farewells you can imagine.
+
+"The same extraordinary incident was repeated with other visitors, but
+I was on my guard against any injudicious merriment. Moreover, I had
+no longer any desire to laugh. I was too perplexed. My visitors never
+seemed to notice that there had been a lengthy interval or indeed any
+interval at all, while I, for my part, hesitated to ask them what had
+so completely hypnotised them.
+
+"The next development took place when I was alone in the room. It was
+five o'clock in the afternoon. I had been out shooting a covert close
+to the house, and a few minutes after I had rung the bell, I
+remembered that I had forgotten some instructions which I had meant to
+give to the keeper. So I got up at once, thinking to catch him in the
+gun-room before he went home. As I rose from my chair, the clock,
+which had been ticking loudly--though, as I have said, it was rather a
+hollow, booming sound, as though the pendulum struck the wood of the
+case, than a mere ticking of the clock-work--ceased its noise with the
+abruptness to which I was growing used. I went out of the room into
+the hall, and I saw Humphreys with the tea-tray in his hands in the
+hall. He was turned towards the billiard-room door, but to my
+astonishment he was not moving. He was poised with one foot in the
+air, as though he had been struck, as the saying is, with a step half
+taken. You have seen, no doubt, instantaneous photographs of people in
+the act of walking. Well, Humphreys was exactly like one of those
+photographs. He had just the same stiff, ungainly look. I should have
+spoken to him, but I was anxious to catch my keeper before he went
+away. So I took no notice of him. I crossed the hall quickly and went
+out by the front door, leaving it open. The gun-room was really a
+small building of corrugated iron, standing apart at the back of the
+house. I went to it and tried the door. It was locked. I called aloud:
+'Martin! Martin!'
+
+"But I received no answer. I ran round the house again, thinking that
+he might just have started home, but I saw no signs of him. There were
+some outhouses which it was his business to look after, and I visited
+them, opening the door of each of them and calling him by name. Then I
+went down the drive to the gate, thinking that I might perhaps catch a
+glimpse of him upon the road, but again I was disappointed. I then
+returned to the house, shut the front door, and there in the hall
+still stood Humphreys in his ridiculous attitude with the tea-tray in
+his hands. I passed him and went back into the billiard-room. He took
+no notice of me whatever. I looked at the clock upon the mantelshelf,
+and I saw that I had been away just fourteen minutes. For fourteen
+minutes Humphreys had been standing on one leg in the hall. It seemed
+as incredible as it was ludicrous. Yet there was the clock to bear me
+out. I sat down on my chair with my hands trembling, my mind in a
+maze. The strangest thought had come to me, and while I revolved it in
+my mind, the clock resumed its ticking, the door opened, and Humphreys
+appeared with the tea-tray in his hand.
+
+"'You have been a long time, Humphreys,' I said, and the man looked at
+me quickly. My voice was shaking with excitement, my face, no doubt,
+had a disordered look.
+
+"'I prepared the tea at once, sir,' he answered.
+
+"'It is twenty minutes by the clock since I rang the bell,' I said.
+
+"Humphreys placed the tea on a small table at my side and then looked
+at the clock. An expression of surprise came over his face. He
+compared it with the dial of his own watch.
+
+"'The clock wants regulating, sir,' he said. 'I set it by the kitchen
+clock this morning, and it has gained fourteen minutes.'
+
+"I whipped my own watch out of my pocket and stared at it. Humphreys
+was quite right; the clock upon the mantelshelf had gained fourteen
+minutes upon all our watches. Yes, but it had gained those fourteen
+minutes in a second, and that was the least part of the marvel. I
+myself had had the benefit of those fourteen minutes. I had snatched
+them, as it were, from Time itself. I had looked at my watch when I
+rang the bell. It had marked five minutes to five. I had remained yet
+another four minutes in the room before I had remembered my forgotten
+instructions to the keeper. I had then gone out. I had visited the
+gun-room and the outhouses, I had walked to the front gate, I had
+returned. I had taken fourteen minutes over my search--I could not
+have taken less--and here were the hands of my watch now still
+pointing towards five, still short of the hour. Indeed, as I replaced
+my watch in my pocket, the clock in the hall outside struck five.
+
+"'As you passed through the hall, Humphreys, you saw no one, I
+suppose?' I said.
+
+"Humphreys raised his eyebrows with a look of perplexity. 'No, sir, I
+saw no one,' he returned, 'but it seemed to me that the front door
+banged. I think it must have been left open.'
+
+"'Very likely,' said I. 'That will do,' and Humphreys went out of the
+room.
+
+"Imagine my feelings. Time is relative, it is a condition of our
+senses, it is nothing more--that we know. But its relation to me was
+different from its relation to others. The clock had given me fourteen
+minutes, which it denied to all the world besides. Fourteen full
+minutes for me, yet they passed for others in less than the fraction
+of a second. And not once only had it made me this gift, but many
+times. The admiral's pause, unnoticed by Mr. Stiles, was now explained
+to me. He had not paused; he had gone straight on with his flow of
+talk, and Mr. Stiles had gone straight on listening. But between two
+of Admiral Palkin's words. Time had stood still for me. Similarly,
+Humphreys had not poised himself upon one ridiculous leg in the hall.
+He had taken a step in the usual way, but while his leg was raised,
+fourteen minutes were given to me. I had walked through the hall, I
+had walked back through the hall, yet Humphreys had not seen me. He
+could not have seen me, for there had been no interval of time for him
+to use his eyes. I had gone and come quicker than any flash, for even
+a flash is appreciable as some fraction of a second.
+
+"I asked you to imagine my feelings. Only with those which I first
+experienced would you, from your sane and comfortable outlook upon
+life, have any sympathy, for at the beginning I was shocked. I had
+more than an inclination then to dash that clock upon the hearth and
+deny myself its bizarre and unnatural gift. Would that I had done so!
+But the inclination was passed, and was succeeded by an incredible
+lightness of spirit. I had a gift which raised me above kings, which
+fanned into a flame every spark of vanity within me. I had so much
+more of time than any other man. I amused myself by making plans to
+use it, and thereupon I suffered a disappointment. For there was so
+little one could do in fourteen minutes, and the more I realised how
+little there was which I could do in my own private special stretch of
+time, the more I wanted to do, the more completely I wished to live in
+it, the more I wished to pluck power and advantage from it. Thus I
+began to look forward to the sudden cessation of the ticking of the
+clock; I began to wait for it, to live for it, and when it came, I
+could make no use of it. I gained fourteen minutes now and then, but I
+lost more and more of the hours which I shared with other men. They
+lost their salt for me. I became tortured with the waste of those
+minutes of my own. I had the power; what I wanted now was to employ
+it. The desire became an obsession occupying my thoughts, harassing my
+dreams.
+
+"I was in this mood when I passed Brayton and yourself one evening in
+Pall Mall. I wrote to him that night, and I swear to you upon my
+conscience that I had no thought in writing but to put an end to an
+old disagreement, and re-establish, if possible, an old friendship. I
+wrote in a sudden revulsion of feeling. The waste of my days was
+brought home to me. I recognised that the great gift was no more than
+a perpetual injury. I proposed to gather my acquaintances about me,
+discard my ambition for some striking illustration of my power, and
+take up once more the threads of customary life. Yet my determination
+lasted no longer than the time it took me to write the letter and run
+out with it to the post. I regretted its despatch even as I heard it
+fall to the bottom of the pillar-box.
+
+"Of my quarrel with Brayton I need not write at length. It sprang from
+a rancorous jealousy. We had been friends and class-mates in the
+beginning. But as step by step he rose just a little above me, the
+friendship I had turned to gall and anger. I was never more than the
+second, he always the first. Had I been fourth or fifth, I think I
+should not have minded; but there was so little to separate us in
+merit or advancement. Yet there was always that little, and I dreaded
+the moment when he should take a bound and leave me far behind. The
+jealousy grew to a real hatred, made still more bitter to me by the
+knowledge that Brayton himself was unaware of it, and need not have
+been troubled had he been aware.
+
+"After I left the Army and lost sight of him, the flame burnt low. I
+believed it was extinguished when I invited him to stay with me; but
+he had not been an hour in the house when it blazed up within me. His
+success, the confidence which it had given him, his easy friendliness
+with strangers, the talk of him as a coming man, bit into my soul. The
+very sound of his footstep sickened me. I was in this mood when the
+clock began to boom louder and louder in the billiard-room. Chalmers
+and Linfield were talking. I did not listen to them. My heart beat
+louder and louder within my breast, keeping pace with the clock. I
+knew that in a moment or two the sound would cease, and the doors of
+my private kingdom would be open for me to pass through. I sat back in
+my chair waiting while the devilish inspiration had birth and grew
+strong. Here was the great chance to use the power I had--the only
+chance which had ever come to me. Brayton was writing letters in his
+room. The room was in a wing of the house. The sound of a shot would
+not be heard. There would be an end of his success; there would be for
+me such a triumphant use of my great privilege as I had never dreamed
+of. The clock suddenly ceased. I slipped from the room and went
+upstairs. I was quite leisurely. I had time. I was back in my chair
+again before seven minutes had passed.
+
+                                         "Archie Cranfield."
+
+
+
+
+
+                             GREEN PAINT
+
+
+
+
+                             GREEN PAINT
+
+
+                                  I
+
+I came up by the lift from the lower town, Harry Vandeleur strolled
+from his more respectable lodging in the upper quarter, and we met
+unexpectedly in Government Square. It was ten o'clock in the morning,
+and the Square, a floor of white within a ragged border of trees,
+glared blindingly under the tropical sun. On each side of the
+President's door a diminutive soldier rattled a rifle from time to
+time.
+
+"What? Has he sent for you too?" said Harry, pointing to the
+President's house.
+
+"Juan Ballester. Yes," said I, and Harry Vandeleur stopped with a
+sudden suspicion on his face.
+
+"What does he want with us?" he asked.
+
+"We volunteered in the war," said I. "We were both useful to him."
+
+Harry Vandeleur shook his head.
+
+"He is at the top of his power. He has won his three-weeks war. The
+Army has made him President for the second time. He has so skilfully
+organised his elections that he has a Parliament, not merely without
+an Opposition, but without a single man of any note in it except
+Santiago Calavera. It is not from such that humble people like us can
+expect gratitude."
+
+Juan Ballester was, in fact, a very remarkable person. Very few people
+who had dealings with him ever forgot him. There was the affair of the
+Opera House, for instance, and a hundred instances. Who he really was
+I should think no one knew. He used to say that he was born in Mexico
+City, and when he wished to get the better of anyone with a
+sentimental turn, he would speak of his old mother in a broken voice.
+But since he never wrote to his old mother, nor she to him, I doubt
+very much whether she existed. The only certain fact known about him
+was that some thirteen years before, when he was crossing on foot a
+high pass of the Cordilleras without a dollar in his pocket, he met a
+stranger--but no! I have heard him attribute so many different
+nationalities to that stranger that I wouldn't kiss the Bible even on
+that story. Probably he _was_ a Mexican and of a good stock. Certainly
+no Indian blood made a flaw in him. For though his hair was black and
+a pencil-line of black moustache decorated his lip, his skin was fair
+like any Englishman's. He was thirty-eight years old, five feet eleven
+in height, strongly but not thickly built, and he had a pleasant,
+good-humoured face which attracted and deceived by its look of
+frankness. For the rest of him the story must speak.
+
+He received us in a great room on the first floor overlooking the
+Square; and at once he advanced and laid a hand impressively upon my
+shoulder. He looked into my face silently. Then he said:
+
+"Carlyon, I want you."
+
+I did not believe him for a moment. But from time to time Juan
+Ballester did magnanimous things; not from magnanimity, of which
+quality he was entirely devoid, but from a passion for the _bran
+geste_. He would see himself a shining figure before men's eyes, the
+perfect cavalier; and the illusion would dazzle him into generosity.
+Accordingly, my hopes rose. I was living on credit in a very inferior
+hotel. "I had thought my work was done," he continued. "I had hoped to
+retire, like Cincinnatus, to my plough," and he gazed sentimentally
+out of the window across the city to the wooded hills of Santa Paula.
+"But since my country calls me, I must have someone about me whom I
+can trust." He broke off to ask: "I suppose your police are no longer
+searching for you?"
+
+"They never were, your Excellency," I protested hotly.
+
+"Well, perhaps not," he said indulgently. "No doubt the natural
+attractions of Maldivia brought you here. You did me some service in
+the war. I am not ungrateful. I appoint you my private secretary."
+
+"Your Excellency!" I cried.
+
+He shook hands with me and added carelessly:
+
+"There is no salary attached to the post, but there are
+opportunities."
+
+And there were. That is why I now live in a neat little villa at
+Sorrento.
+
+Ballester turned to Harry Vandeleur and took him by the arm. He looked
+from one to the other of us.
+
+"Ever since the day when I walked over a high pass of the Cordilleras
+with nothing but the clothes I stood up in, and an unknown Englishman
+gave me the railway fare to this city, I have made what return I could
+to your nation. You, too, have served me, Seńor Vandeleur. I pay some
+small portion of my debt. Money! I have none to give you"; and he
+uttered the words without a blush, although the half a million pounds
+sterling received as war indemnity had already been paid into his
+private account.
+
+"Nor would you take it if I had," Juan resumed. "But I will give you
+something of equal value."
+
+He led Vandeleur to the window, and waving his hand impressively over
+the city, he said:
+
+"I will give you the monopoly of green paint in the city of Santa
+Paula."
+
+I stifled a laugh. Harry Vandeleur got red in the face. For, after
+all, no man likes to look a greater fool than he naturally is. He had,
+moreover, a special reason for disappointment.
+
+"I don't suppose that there are twenty bucketsful used in Santa Paula
+in the year," he exclaimed bitterly.
+
+"Wait, my friend," said Ballester; "there will be."
+
+And a week afterwards the following proclamation appeared upon the
+walls of the public buildings:
+
+"Owing to the numerous complaints which have been received of the
+discomfort produced by the glare of a tropical sun, the Government of
+the day, ever solicitous to further the wishes of its citizens, now
+orders that every house in Santa Paula, with the exception of the
+Government buildings, be painted in green paint within two months of
+the issue of this proclamation, and any resident who fails to obey
+this enactment shall be liable to a fine of fifty dollars for every
+day after the two months have elapsed until the order is carried out."
+
+Juan Ballester was, no doubt, a very great man, but I cannot deny that
+he strained the loyalty of his friends by this proclamation.
+Grumblings were loud. No one could discover who had complained of the
+glare of the streets--for the simple reason that no one had complained
+at all. However, the order was carried out. Daily the streets of Santa
+Paula grew greener and greener, until the town had quite a restful
+look, and sank into its background and became a piece with its
+surroundings. Meanwhile, Harry Vandeleur sat in an office, rubbed his
+hands, and put up the price of green paint. But, like most men upon
+whom good fortune has suddenly shone, he was not quite contented. He
+found his crumpled rose-leaf in the dingy aspect of the Government
+buildings and the President's house. They alone now reared fronts of
+dirty plaster and cracked stucco. I remember him leaning out of Juan
+Ballester's window and looking up and down with a discontented eye.
+
+"Wants a coat of green paint, doesn't it?" he said with a sort of
+jocular eagerness.
+
+Juan never even winked.
+
+"There ought to be a distinction between this house and all the
+others," he said gravely. "The President is merely the butler of the
+citizens. They ought to know at a glance where they can find him."
+
+Harry Vandeleur burst suddenly into a laugh. He was an impulsive
+youth, a regular bubble of high spirits.
+
+"I am an ungrateful beast, and that's the truth," he said. "You have
+done a great deal for me, more than you know."
+
+"Have I?" asked Juan Ballester drily.
+
+"Yes," cried Harry Vandeleur, and out the story tumbled.
+
+He was very anxious to marry Olivia Calavera--daughter, by the way, of
+Santiago Calavera, Ballester's Minister of the Interior--and Olivia
+Calavera was very anxious to marry him. Olivia was a dream. He, Harry
+Vandeleur, was a planter in a small way in Trinidad. Olivia and her
+father came from Trinidad. He had followed her from Trinidad, but Don
+Santiago, with a father's eye for worldly goods, had been obdurate. It
+was all very foolish and very young, and rather pleasant to listen to.
+
+"Now, thanks to your Excellency," cried Harry, "I am an eligible
+suitor. I shall marry the Seńorita Olivia."
+
+"Is that so?" said Juan Ballester, with a polite congratulation. But
+there was just a suspicion of a note in his voice which made me lift
+my head sharply from the papers over which I was bending. It was
+impossible, of course--and yet he had drawled the words out in a slow,
+hard, quiet way which had startled me. I waited for developments, and
+they were not slow in coming.
+
+"But before you marry," said Juan Ballester, "I want you to do me a
+service. I want you to go to London and negotiate a loan. I can trust
+you. Moreover, you will do the work more speedily than another, for
+you will be anxious to return."
+
+With a friendly smile he took Harry Vandeleur by the arm and led him
+into his private study. Harry could not refuse. The mission was one of
+honour, and would heighten his importance in Don Santiago's eyes. He
+was, besides, under a considerable obligation to Ballester. He
+embarked accordingly at Las Cuevas, the port of call half an hour away
+from the city.
+
+"Look after Olivia for me," he said, as we shook hands upon the deck
+of the steamer.
+
+"I will do the best I can," I said, and I went down the gangway.
+
+Harry Vandeleur travelled off to England. He was out of the way.
+Meanwhile, I stayed in Maldivia and waited for more developments. But
+this time they were not so quick in coming.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+Ballester, like greater and lesser men, had his inconsistencies.
+Although he paid his private secretary with "opportunities" and bribed
+his friends with monopolies; although he had shamelessly rigged the
+elections, and paid as much of the country's finances as he dared into
+his private banking account; and although there was that little affair
+of the Opera House, he was genuinely and sincerely determined to give
+to the Republic a cast-iron Constitution. He had an overpowering faith
+in law and order--for other people.
+
+We hammered out the Constitution day and night for another fortnight,
+and then Ballester gabbled it over to a Council of his Ministers. Not
+one of them could make head or tail of what he was reading, with the
+exception of Santiago Calavera, a foxy-faced old rascal with a white
+moustache, who sat with a hand curved about his ear and listened to
+every word. I had always wondered why Ballester had given him office
+at all. At one point he interrupted in a smooth, smiling voice:
+
+"But, your Excellency, that is not legal."
+
+"Legal or not legal," said the President with a snap, "it is going
+through, Seńor Santiago"; and the Constitution was duly passed by a
+unanimous vote, and became the law of Maldivia.
+
+That event took place a couple of months after Harry Vandeleur had
+sailed for England. I stretched my arms and looked about for
+relaxation. The Constitution was passed at six o'clock in the evening.
+There was to be a ball that night at the house of the British
+Minister. I made up my mind to go. For a certainty I should find
+Olivia there; and I was seized with remorse. For, in spite of my
+promise to Harry Vandeleur, I had hardly set eyes upon her during the
+last two months.
+
+I saw her at ten o'clock. She was dancing--a thing she loved. She was
+dressed in a white frock of satin and lace, with a single rope of
+pearls about her throat, and she looked divinely happy. She was a girl
+of nineteen years, fairly tall, with black hair, a beautiful white
+face, and big, dark eyes which shone with kindness. She had the hand
+and foot of her race, and her dancing was rather a liquid movement of
+her whole supple body than a matter of her limbs. I watched her for a
+few moments from a corner. She had brains as well as beauty, and
+though she spoke with a pleading graciousness, at the back of it one
+was aware of a pride which would crack the moon. She worked, too, as
+few girls of her station work in the Republics of South America. For
+her father, from what I then thought to be no better than parsimony,
+used her as his secretary. As she swung by my corner for the second
+time she saw me and stopped.
+
+"Seńor Carlyon, it is two months since I have seen you," she said
+reproachfully.
+
+"Seńorita, it is only four hours since our brand new Constitution was
+passed into law, and already I am looking for you."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"You have neglected me."
+
+"I regret to notice," said I, "that my neglect has in no way impaired
+your health."
+
+Olivia laughed. She had a taking laugh, and the blood mounted very
+prettily into her cheeks.
+
+"I could hardly be ill," she said. "I had a letter to-day."
+
+"Lucky man to write you letters," said I. "Let me read it, Seńorita."
+
+She drew back swiftly and her hand went to her bosom.
+
+"Oh, it is there!" said I.
+
+Again she laughed, but this time with a certain shyness, and the
+colour deepened on her cheeks.
+
+"He sails to-day," said she.
+
+"Then I have still three weeks," said I lightly. "Will you dance with
+me for the rest of the evening?"
+
+"Certainly not," she answered with decision. "But after the fifth
+dance from now, you will find me, Seńor Carlyon, here"; and turning
+again to her partner, she was caught up into the whirl of dancers.
+
+After the fifth dance I returned to that corner of the ballroom. I
+found Olivia waiting. But it was an Olivia whom I did not know. The
+sparkle and the freshness had gone out of her; fear and not kindness
+shone in her eyes.
+
+Her face lit up for a moment when she saw me, and she stepped eagerly
+forward.
+
+"Quick!" she said. "Somewhere where we shall be alone!"
+
+Her hand trembled upon my arm. She walked quickly from the room,
+smiling as she went. She led me along a corridor into the garden of
+the house, a place of palms and white magnolias on the very edge of
+the upper town. She went without a word to the railings at the end of
+the garden, whence one looks straight down upon the lights of the
+lower town along the river bank. Then she turned. A beam of light from
+the windows shone upon her face. The smile had gone from it. Her lips
+shook.
+
+"What has happened?" I asked.
+
+She spoke in jerks.
+
+"He came to me to-night.... He danced with me...."
+
+"Who?" I asked.
+
+"Juan Ballester," said she.
+
+I had half expected the name.
+
+"He spoke of himself," she resumed. "Sometimes it is not easy to tell
+whether he is acting or whether he is serious. It was easy to-night.
+He was serious."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"That up till to-night all had been work with him.... That to-night
+had set the crown upon his work.... That now for the first time he
+could let other hopes, other thoughts, have play...."
+
+"Yes, I see," I replied slowly. "Having done his work, he wants his
+prize. He would."
+
+Ballester had toiled untiringly for thirteen years in both open and
+devious ways, and, as the consequence of his toil, he had lifted his
+Republic into an importance which it had never possessed before. He
+had succeeded because what he wanted, he wanted very much. It
+certainly looked as if there were considerable trouble in front of
+Olivia and Harry Vandeleur--especially Harry Vandeleur.
+
+"So he wants you to marry him," I said; and Olivia gave me one swift
+look and turned her head away.
+
+"No," she answered in a whisper. "He wants his revenge, too."
+
+"Revenge?" I exclaimed.
+
+Olivia nodded her head.
+
+"He told me that I must go up to Benandalla"; and the remark took my
+breath away. Benandalla was the name of a farm which Ballester owned,
+up in the hills two hours away from Santa Paula; and the less said
+about it the better. Ballester was accustomed to retreat thither after
+any spell of unusually arduous work; and the great feastings which
+went on, the babel of laughter, the noise of music and castanets and
+the bright lights blazing upon the quiet night till dawn had made the
+farm notorious. Even at this moment, I knew, it was not nearly
+uninhabited.
+
+"At Benandalla ... you?" I cried; and, indeed, it seemed to me that
+the mere presence of Olivia must have brought discomfort into those
+coarse orgies, so set apart was she by her distinction. "And he tells
+you to go," I continued, "as if you were his maidservant!"
+
+Olivia clenched her small hands together and leaned upon the railings.
+Her eyes travelled along the river below and sought a brightness in
+the distant sky--the loom of the lights of Las Cuevas. For a little
+while, she was strengthened by thoughts of escape, and then once more
+she drooped.
+
+"I am frightened," she said, and coming from her, the whispered and
+childish cry filled me with consternation. It was her manner and what
+she left unsaid rather than her words, which alarmed me. Where I
+should have expected pride and a flame of high anger, I found sheer
+terror, and the reason of that terror she had not yet given me.
+
+"He spoke of Harry," she resumed. "He said that Harry must not
+interfere.... He used threats."
+
+Yes, I thought, Juan Ballester would do that. It was not the usual way
+of conducting a courtship; but Juan Ballester's way was not the usual
+way of governing a country.
+
+"What kind of threats?"
+
+"Prisons," she answered with a break in her voice.
+
+"What?" I exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," she said. "Prisons--especially in the Northern Republics
+of South America.... He explained that, though you have more liberty
+here than anywhere else so long as you are free, you are more
+completely--destroyed--here than anywhere else if you once get into
+prison." From her hesitation I could guess that "destroyed" was a
+milder word than Juan Ballester had used.
+
+"He described them to me," she went on. "Hovels where you sleep in the
+mud at night, and whence you are leased out by day to work in the
+fields without a hat--until, in a month or so, the sun puts an end to
+your misery."
+
+I knew there was truth in that description. But it was not possible
+that Ballester could put his threat into force. It was anger now, not
+consternation, which filled me.
+
+"Seńorita, reflect!" I cried. "In whose garden are you standing now?
+The British Minister's--and Harry Vandeleur is an Englishman. It was
+no more than a brutal piece of bullying by Ballester. See! I am his
+secretary"--and she suddenly turned round towards me with a gleam in
+her eyes.
+
+"Yes," she interrupted. "You are his secretary and Harry's friend.
+Will you help us, I wonder?"
+
+"Show me how!" said I.
+
+"It is not Harry whom he threatens, but my father"; and she lowered
+her eyes from mine and was silent.
+
+"My father"; and her answer made my protestations mere vapourings and
+foolishness.
+
+The danger was real. The British Minister could hold no shield in
+front of Santiago Calavera, even if there were no guilt upon him for
+which he could be properly imprisoned. But Olivia's extremity of
+terror and my knowledge of Santiago warned me that this condition was
+little likely to exist. I took Olivia's hands. They clung to mine in a
+desperate appeal for help.
+
+"Come, Seńorita," I said gravely. "If I am to help you, I must have
+the truth. What grounds had Ballester for his threat?"
+
+She raised her head suddenly with a spurt of her old pride.
+
+"My father is a good man," she said, challenging me to deny it. "What
+he did, he thought right to do. I am not ashamed of him. No!"--and
+then she would have stopped. But I would not let her. I dared not let
+her.
+
+"Go on, please!" I insisted, and the pride died out of her face, and
+she turned in a second to pleading.
+
+"But perhaps he was indiscreet--in what he wrote. He thought, perhaps,
+too much of his country, too little of those who governed it."
+
+I dropped her hands. I had enough of the truth now. Rumour had always
+spoken of Santiago Calavera as an intriguer. His daughter was now
+telling me he was a traitor, too.
+
+"We must find your father," I cried. "He brought you to the ball."
+
+"Yes," said she. "He will be waiting to take me home."
+
+We hurried back to the house and searched the rooms. Calavera was
+nowhere to be found.
+
+"He cannot have gone!" cried Olivia, wringing her hands. In both of
+our minds the same question was urgent.
+
+"Has he been taken away?"
+
+I questioned the servants, and the door-keeper replied. A messenger
+had come for Don Santiago early in the evening. I found the British
+Minister at Olivia's side when I returned, and a smile of relief upon
+her face.
+
+"My father made his excuses and went home," she said. "Important
+business came. He has sent the carriage back."
+
+"May I take you home?" I asked.
+
+"Thank you," said she.
+
+It was getting near to dawn when we drove away. The streets were
+empty, the houses dark. Olivia kept her face close to the window, and
+never stirred until we turned the corner into the Calle Madrid. Then
+she drew back with a low cry of joy. The windows of the great house
+were ablaze with light. I helped her out of the carriage and rang the
+bell. We stood in front of the door talking while the coachman drove
+away to his stables.
+
+"Say nothing to my father," Olivia pleaded. "Promise me, Seńor."
+
+I promised readily enough.
+
+"I will come in with you, Seńorita," I said. "I must talk with your
+father"; and I turned impatiently to the door and rang the bell again.
+
+"To-night?" said she.
+
+"Yes," said I. "I promised Harry Vandeleur to look after you."
+
+"Did you?" said she, and though her anxieties were heavy upon her, a
+tender smile parted her lips.
+
+Still no one came to the door.
+
+"They must have gone to bed," I said, pushing against the panels. To
+my surprise the door yielded and quietly swung wide. We looked into a
+hall silent and empty and brightly lit. We were both in a mood to
+count each new phenomenon a disaster. To both of us there was
+something eerie in the silent swinging-in of the door, in the
+emptiness and bright illumination of the hall. We looked at one
+another in dismay. Then Olivia swept in, and I followed. She walked
+straight to a door at the back of the hall, hesitated with her hand
+upon the knob for just the fraction of a second, and flung it open. We
+went into a room furnished as a study. But the study, too, was empty
+and brightly lit. There was a green-shaded reading-lamp beside an
+armchair, as though but now the occupant had sat there and read.
+Olivia stood in the centre of the room and in a clear and ringing
+voice she cried:
+
+"Father!"
+
+Her voice echoed along the passages and up the stairs. And no answer
+came. She turned abruptly, and, moving with a swift step, she opened
+door after door. Each door opened upon a brightly lit and empty room.
+She ran a few steps up the stairs and stood poised, holding up in her
+white gloved hand the glistening skirt of her white frock. One by one
+she called upon the servants by name, looking upwards. Not a door was
+opened above our heads. Not a sound of any movement reached our ears.
+
+Olivia ran lightly up the stairs. I heard the swift rustle of her gown
+as she moved from room to room; and suddenly she was upon the stairs
+again looking down at me, with her hand like a flake of snow upon the
+bannister. She gleamed against the background of dark wood, a thing of
+silver.
+
+"There is no one in the house," she said simply, in a strange and
+quiet voice. She moved down the stairs and held out her hand to me.
+
+"Good night," she said.
+
+Though her voice never shook, her eyes shone with tears. She was but
+waiting until I went, to shed them.
+
+"I will come to-morrow," I stammered; "in the morning. I may have news
+for you," and I bent over her hand and kissed it.
+
+"Good night," she said again, and she stood with her hand upon the
+latch of the door. I went out. She closed the door behind me. I heard
+the key turn in the lock, the bolt shoot into its socket. There was a
+freshness in the air, a paling of the stars above my head. I waited
+for a while in the street, but no figure appeared at any window, nor
+was any light put out. I left her alone in that empty and illumined
+house, its windows blazing on the dawn.
+
+
+                                 III
+
+I walked back to the President's house and sat comfortably down in my
+office to think the position over with the help of a pipe. But I had
+hardly struck the match when the President himself came in. He had
+changed his dress-coat for a smoking-jacket, and carried a few papers
+in his hand.
+
+"I am glad to see that you are not tired," he said, "for I have still
+some work for you to do. I have been looking through some letters, and
+there are half-a-dozen of so much importance that I should like copies
+made of them before you go to bed."
+
+He laid them on my writing-table with an intimation that he would
+return for them in an hour. I rose up with alacrity. I was in no mood
+for bed, and the mechanical work of copying a few letters appealed to
+me at the moment. A glance at them, however, startled me into an even
+greater wakefulness. They were letters, typewritten for the most part,
+but undoubtedly signed by Santiago Calavera, and all of them dated
+just before the outbreak of the war. They were addressed to the War
+Minister of Esmeralda, and they gave details as to where Maldivia was
+weak, where strong, what roads to the capital were unguarded, and for
+how many troops provisions could be requisitioned on the way. There
+was, besides, a memorandum, written, I rejoiced to see, from beginning
+to end in Santiago's own hand--a deadly document naming some twenty
+people in Santa Paula who would need attention when Juan Ballester had
+been overthrown. It was impossible to misunderstand the phrase. Those
+twenty citizens of Santa Paula were to be shot out of hand against the
+nearest wall. I was appalled as I copied it out. There was enough
+treachery here to convict a regiment. No wonder the great house in the
+Calle Madrid stood empty! No wonder that Calavera---- But while I
+argued, the picture of the daughter in her shining frock, alone amidst
+the glitter and the silence, smote upon me as pitiful, and struck the
+heart out of all my argument.
+
+Juan Ballester was at my elbow the moment after I had finished.
+
+"It is five o'clock," he said, as he gathered the letters and copies
+together, "and no doubt you will want to be on foot early. You can
+tell her that I sent her father in a special train last night to the
+frontier. He is no doubt already with his friends in Esmeralda."
+
+"Then the prisons----" I exclaimed.
+
+"A lover's embroideries--nothing more," said Ballester, with a smile.
+"But it is interesting to know that you are so thoroughly acquainted
+with the position of affairs." And he took himself off to bed.
+
+His last remark, however, forced me to consider my own position, and
+reflection showed it to be delicate. On the one hand I was Ballester's
+servant, on the other I was Harry Vandeleur's friend. I could not side
+with both, and I must side with one. If I threw in my lot with Juan
+Ballester, I became a scoundrel. If I helped Olivia, I might lose my
+bread and butter. I hope that in any case I should have decided as I
+did, but there was a good deal of virtue in the "might." For, after
+all, Juan seemed to recognise that I should be against him and to bear
+no malice. He had even bidden me relieve Olivia of her fears
+concerning her father's disappearance. He was a brute, but a brute on
+rather a grand scale, who took what he wanted but, in spite of Olivia,
+disdained revenge. I decided to help Olivia, and before nine the next
+morning I knocked upon her house-door. She opened it herself.
+
+"You have news?" she asked, watching me with anxious eyes, and she
+stood aside in the shadow of the door while I went in.
+
+"Your father is safe. He was sent to the frontier last night on a
+special train. He is free."
+
+She had been steel to meet a blow. Now that it did not fall, her
+strength for a moment failed her. She leaned against a table with her
+hand to her heart; and her face suddenly told me that she had not
+slept.
+
+"I will follow him," she said, and she hurried up the stairs. I looked
+out a train. One left Santa Paula in an hour's time. I went out,
+leaving the door ajar, and fetched a carriage. Then I shouted up the
+stairs to Olivia, and she came down in a travelling dress of light
+grey and a big black hat. Excitement had kindled her. I could no
+longer have guessed that she had not slept.
+
+"You will see me off?" she said, as she handed me her bag; and she
+stepped gaily into the carriage.
+
+"I will," I answered, and I jumped in behind her.
+
+The die was cast now.
+
+"Drive down to the station!" I cried.
+
+It was an open carriage. There were people in the street. Juan
+Ballester would soon learn that he had played the grand gentleman to
+his discomfiture.
+
+"Yes, I will see you off, Seńorita," I said. "But I shall have a bad
+half-hour with Ballester afterwards."
+
+"Oh!" cried Olivia, with a start. She looked at me as though for the
+first time my existence had come within her field of vision.
+
+"I am quite aware that you have never given a thought to me," I said
+sulkily, "but you need hardly make the fact so painfully obvious."
+
+Olivia's hand fell lightly upon mine and pressed.
+
+"My friend!" she said, and her eyes dwelt softly upon mine. Oh, she
+knew her business as a woman! Then she looked heavenwards.
+
+"A man who helps a woman in trouble----" she began.
+
+"Yes," I interrupted. "He must look up there for his reward.
+Meanwhile, Seńorita, I am envying Harry Vandeleur," and I waved my
+hand to the green houses. "For he has not only got you, but he has
+realised his nice little fortune out of green paint." And all Olivia
+did was to smile divinely; and all she said was "Harry." But there!
+She said it adorably, and I shook her by the hand.
+
+"I forgive you," she said sweetly. Yes, she had nerve enough for that!
+
+We were driving down to the lower town. I began to consider how much
+of the events of the early morning I should tell her. Something of
+them she must know, but it was not easy for the informant. I told her
+how Juan Ballester had come to me with letters signed by her father
+and a memorandum in his handwriting.
+
+"The President gave them to me to copy out," I continued; and Olivia
+broke in, rather quickly:
+
+"What did you do with them?"
+
+I stared at her.
+
+"I copied them out, of course."
+
+Olivia stared now. Her brows puckered in a frown.
+
+"You--didn't--destroy them when you had the chance?" she asked
+incredulously.
+
+I jumped in my seat.
+
+"Destroy them?" I cried indignantly. "Really, Seńorita!"
+
+"You are Harry's friend," she said. "I thought men did little things
+like that for one another."
+
+"Little things!" I gasped. But I recognised that it would be waste of
+breath to argue against a morality so crude.
+
+"You shall take Harry's opinion upon that point," said I.
+
+"Or perhaps Harry will take mine," she said softly, with a far-away
+gaze; and the fly stopped at the station. I bought Olivia's ticket, I
+placed her bag in the carriage, I stepped aside to let her mount the
+step; and I knocked against a brilliant creature with a sword at his
+side--he was merely a railway official. I begged his pardon, but he
+held his ground.
+
+"Seńor, you have, no doubt, his Excellency's permit for the Seńorita
+to travel," he said, holding out his hand.
+
+I was fairly staggered, but I did not misunderstand the man. Ballester
+had foreseen that Olivia would follow her father, and he meant to keep
+her in Santa Paula. I fumbled in my pocket to cover my confusion.
+
+"I must have left it behind," I said lamely. "But of course you know
+me--his Excellency's secretary."
+
+"Who does not?" said the official, bowing politely. "And there is
+another train in the afternoon, so that the Seńorita will, I hope, not
+be greatly inconvenienced."
+
+We got out of the station somehow. I was mad with myself. I had let
+myself be misled by the belief that Ballester was indulging in one of
+his exhibitions as a great gentleman. Whereas he was carefully
+isolating Olivia so that she might be the more helplessly at his
+disposition. We stumbled back again into a carriage. I dared not look
+at Olivia.
+
+"The Calle Madrid!" I called to the driver, and Olivia cried "No!" She
+turned to me, with a spot of colour burning in each cheek, and her
+eyes very steady and ominous.
+
+"Will you tell him to drive to the President's?" she said calmly.
+
+The conventions are fairly strict in Maldivia. Young ladies do not as
+a rule drop in casually upon men in the morning, and certainly not
+upon Presidents. However, conventions are for the unharassed. We drove
+to the President's. A startled messenger took in Olivia's name, and
+she was instantly admitted. I went to my office, but I left the door
+ajar. For down the passage outside of it Olivia would come when she
+had done with Juan Ballester. I waited anxiously for a quarter of an
+hour. Would she succeed with him? I had no great hopes. Anger so well
+became her. But as the second quarter drew on, my hopes rose; and when
+I heard the rustle of her dress, I flung open the door. A messenger
+was escorting her, and she just shook her head at me.
+
+"What did he say?" I asked in English, and she replied in the same
+language.
+
+"He will not let me go. He was--passionate. Underneath the passion he
+was hard. He is the cruellest of men."
+
+"I will see you this afternoon," said I; and she passed on. I
+determined to have it out with Ballester at the earliest possible
+moment. And within the hour he gave me the opportunity. For he came
+into the room and said:
+
+"Carlyon, I have not had my letters this morning.
+
+"No, your Excellency," I replied. I admit that my heart began to beat
+more quickly than usual. "I took the Seńorita Olivia to the station,
+where we were stopped."
+
+"I thought you would," he said, with a grin. "But it is impossible
+that the Seńorita should leave Santa Paula."
+
+"But you can't keep her here!" I cried. "It's--it's----" "Tyrannical"
+would not do, nor would "autocratic." Neither epithet would sting him.
+At last I got the right one.
+
+"Your Excellency, it's barbaric!"
+
+Juan Ballester flushed red. I had touched him on the raw. To be a
+thoroughly civilised person conducting a thoroughly civilised
+Government over a thoroughly civilised community--that was his wild,
+ambitious dream, and in rosy moments he would even flatter himself
+that his dream was realised.
+
+"It's nothing of the kind," he exclaimed. "Don Santiago is a dangerous
+person. I was moved by chivalry, the most cultured of virtues, to let
+him go unpunished. But I am bound, from the necessities of the State,
+to retain some pledge for his decent behaviour."
+
+The words sounded very fine and politic, but they could not obscure
+the springs of his conduct. He had first got Harry Vandeleur out of
+the way; then, and not till then, he had pounced upon Don Santiago.
+His aim had been to isolate Olivia. There was very little chivalry
+about the matter.
+
+"Besides," he argued, "if there were any barbarism--and there
+isn't--the Seńorita can put an end to it by a word."
+
+"But she won't say it!" I cried triumphantly. "No, she is already
+pledged. She won't say it."
+
+Juan Ballester looked at me swiftly with a set and lowering face. No
+doubt I had gone a step too far with him. But I would not have taken
+back a word at that moment--no, not for the monopoly of green paint. I
+awaited my instant dismissal, but he suddenly tilted back his chair
+and grinned at me like a schoolboy.
+
+"I like a good spirit," he said, "whether it be in the Seńorita or in
+my private secretary."
+
+It was apparent that he did not think much of me as an antagonist.
+
+"Well," I grumbled, "Harry Vandeleur will be back in three weeks, and
+your Excellency must make your account with him."
+
+"Yes, that's true," said Ballester, and--I don't know what it was in
+him. It was not a gesture, for he did not move; it was not a smile,
+for his face did not change. But I was immediately and absolutely
+certain that it was not true at all. Reflection confirmed me. He had
+taken so much pains to isolate Olivia that he would not have
+overlooked Harry Vandeleur's return. Somewhere, on some pretext, at
+Trinidad, or at our own port here, Las Cuevas, Harry Vandeleur would
+be stopped. I was sure of it. The net was closing tightly round
+Olivia. This morning the affair had seemed so simple--a mere matter of
+a six hours' journey in a train. Now it began to look rather grim. I
+stole a glance at Juan. He was still sitting with his chair tilted
+back and his hands in his pockets, but he was gazing out of the
+window, and his face was in repose. I recalled Olivia's phrase: "He is
+the cruellest of men." Was she right? I wondered. In any case, yes,
+the affair certainly began to look rather grim.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+I was not free until five that afternoon. But I was in the Calle
+Madrid before the quarter after five had struck. Again Olivia herself
+admitted me. She led the way to her father's study at the back of the
+house. Though I had hurried to the house, I followed her slowly into
+the study.
+
+"You are still alone?" I asked.
+
+"An old woman--we once befriended her--will come in secretly for an
+hour in the morning."
+
+"Secretly?"
+
+"She dare not do otherwise."
+
+I was silent. There was a refinement about Juan Ballester's
+persecution which was simply devilish. He would not molest her, he
+left her apparently free. But he kept her in a great, empty house in
+the middle of the town, without servants, without power to leave,
+without--oh, much more than I had any idea of at the time. He marooned
+her in the midst of a great town even as Richard the Third did with
+Jane Shore in the old play. But, though I did not know, I noticed that
+she had changed since the morning. She had come out from her interview
+with Juan Ballester holding her head high. Now she stood in front of
+me twisting her hands, a creature of fear.
+
+"You must escape," I said.
+
+Her great eyes looked anxiously at me from a wan face.
+
+"I must," she said. "Yes, I must." Then came a pause, and with a break
+in her voice she continued. "He warned me not to try. He said that it
+would not be pleasant for me if I were caught trying."
+
+"A mere threat," I said contemptuously, "like the prisons." But I did
+not believe my own words, and my blood ran cold. It would be easy to
+implicate Olivia in the treachery of her father. And the police in
+Maldivia are not very gentle in their handling of their prisoners,
+women or men. Still, that risk must be run.
+
+"The _Ariadne_--an English mail-steamer--calls at Las Cuevas in a
+fortnight," I said. "We must smuggle you out on her."
+
+Olivia stared at me in consternation. She stood like one transfixed.
+
+"A fortnight!" she said. Then she sat down in a chair clasping her
+hands together. "A fortnight!" she whispered to herself, and as I
+listened to her, and watched her eyes glancing this way and that like
+an animal trapped in a cage, it was borne in on me that since this
+morning some new thing had happened to frighten the very soul of her.
+I begged her to tell it me.
+
+"No," she said, rising to her feet. "No doubt I can wait for a
+fortnight."
+
+"That's right, Olivia," I said. "I will arrange a plan. Meanwhile,
+where can I hear from you and you from me? It will not do for us to
+meet too often. Have you friends who will be staunch?"
+
+"I wonder," she said slowly. "Enrique Gimeno and his wife, perhaps."
+
+"We will not strain their friendship very much. But we can meet at
+their house. You can leave a letter for me there, perhaps, and I one
+for you."
+
+Enrique Gimeno was a Spanish merchant and a gentleman. So far, I felt
+sure, we could trust him. There was one other man in Santa Paula on
+whom I could rely, the agent of the steamship company to which the
+_Ariadne_ belonged. I rang him up on the telephone that afternoon and
+arranged a meeting after dark in a back room of that very inferior
+hotel in the lower town where for some weeks I had lived upon credit.
+The agent, a solid man with business interests of his own in Maldivia,
+listened to my story without a word of interruption. Then he said:
+
+"There are four things I can do for you, and no more. In the first
+place, I can receive here the lady's luggage in small parcels and put
+it together for her. In the second, I can guarantee that the _Ariadne_
+shall not put into Las Cuevas until dusk, and shall leave the same
+night. In the third, I will have every bale of cargo already loaded
+into her before the passenger train comes alongside from Santa Paula.
+And in the fourth, I will arrange that the _Ariadne_ shall put to sea
+the moment the last of her passengers has crossed the gangway. The
+rest you must do for yourself."
+
+"Thank you," said I. "That's a great deal."
+
+But the confidence was all in my voice and none of it at all in my
+heart. I went back to Juan Ballester and tried persuasion with him.
+
+"I have seen Olivia Calavera this afternoon," I said to him.
+
+"I know," said he calmly.
+
+I had personally no longer any fear that he might dismiss me. I would,
+I think, have thrown up my job myself, but that I seemed to have a
+better chance of helping the girl by staying on.
+
+"You will never win her," I continued, "your Excellency, by your way
+of wooing."
+
+"Oh, and why not?" he asked.
+
+"She thinks you a brute," I said frankly.
+
+Juan Ballester reflected.
+
+"I don't much mind her thinking that," he answered slowly.
+
+"She hates you," I went on.
+
+"And I don't seriously object to her thinking that," he replied.
+
+"She despises you," I said in despair.
+
+"Ah!" said Ballester, with a change of voice. "I should object to her
+doing that. But then it isn't true."
+
+I gave up efforts to persuade him. After all, the brute knew something
+about women.
+
+I was thrown back upon the first plan. Olivia must escape from the
+country on the _Ariadne_. How to smuggle her unnoticed out of her
+empty house, down to Las Cuevas, and on board the steamer? That was
+the problem; but though I lay awake over it o' nights, and pondered it
+as I sat at my writing-table, the days crept on and brought me no
+nearer to a solution.
+
+Meanwhile, the world was going very ill with Olivia. Santa Paula,
+fresh from its war, was aflame with patriotism. The story of Santiago
+Calavera's treachery had gone abroad--Juan Ballester had seen to
+that--and since his daughter had been his secretary, she too was
+tarnished. Her friends, with the exception of Enrique Gimeno, closed
+their doors upon her. If she ventured abroad, she was insulted in the
+street, and at night a lamp in a window of her house would bring a
+stone crashing through the pane. Whenever I saw her, I noticed with an
+aching heart the tension under which she laboured. Her face grew thin,
+the tone had gone from her voice, the lustre from her eyes, the very
+gloss from her hair. Sometimes it seemed to me that she must drop into
+Ballester's net. I raged vainly over the problem, and the more because
+I knew that Ballester would reap prestige instead of shame if she did.
+The conventions were heavy on women in Maldivia, but they were not the
+outward signs of any spiritual grace in the population. On the
+contrary, they were evidence that the spiritual grace was lacking. If
+Olivia found her way in the end to the Benandalla farm, Ballester
+would be thought to have combined pleasure with the business of
+revenge in a subtle and enviable way. The thought made me mad. I could
+have knocked the heads together of the diminutive soldiers at the
+sides of the President's doorway whenever I went in and out. And then,
+when I was at my wits' end, a trivial incident suddenly showed me a
+way out.
+
+I passed down the Calle Madrid one night, and the sight of the big,
+dark house, with here and there a broken window, brought before my
+mind so poignant a picture of the girl sitting in some back room alone
+and in misery, and contrasted that picture so vividly with another
+made familiar to me by many an evening in Santa Paula--that of a girl
+shining exquisite beyond her peers in the radiance and the clean
+strength of her youth--that upon returning to my room I took the
+receiver from the telephone with no other thought than to talk to her
+for a few moments and encourage her to keep a good heart. I gave the
+number of her house to the Exchange, and the answer came promptly
+back:
+
+"The line is out of order."
+
+I might have known that it would be. Olivia was to be marooned in her
+great town-house as effectively as though she had been set down in a
+lone island of the coral seas. I hung up the receiver again, and as I
+hung it up suddenly I saw part of the way clear. I suppose that I had
+used that telephone a hundred times during the past week. It had stood
+all day at my elbow. Yet not until to-night had it reminded me of that
+little matter of the Opera House--one of those matters in which
+dealings with Ballester had left their mark. I had the answer to a
+part of the problem which troubled me. I saw a way to smuggle Olivia
+from Santa Paula on board the _Ariadne_. The more I thought upon it,
+the clearer grew that possibility. There still remained the question:
+How to get Olivia unnoticed from her house in the middle of a busy,
+narrow street on the night when the _Ariadne_ was to sail. The
+difficulties there brought me to a stop. And I was still revolving the
+problem in my mind when the private bell rang from Ballester's room. I
+went to see what he wanted; and I had not been five minutes in his
+presence before, with a leaping heart, I realised that this question
+was being answered too.
+
+Juan had of late been troubled. But not at all about Olivia. As far as
+she was concerned, he ate his meals, went about his business, and
+slept o' nights like any good man who has not a girl in torment upon
+his conscience. But he was troubled about a rumour which was spreading
+through the town.
+
+"You have heard of it?" he asked of me. "It is said that I am
+proposing to run away secretly from Maldivia."
+
+I nodded.
+
+"I have laughed at it, of course."
+
+"Yes," said he, with his face in a frown. "But the rumour grows. I
+doubt if laughter is enough"; and then he banged his fist violently
+upon the table and cried: "I suppose Santiago Calavera is at the
+bottom of it!"
+
+Santiago had become something of an obsession to the President. I
+think he excused to himself his brutality towards Olivia by imagining
+everywhere Don Santiago's machinations. As a fact, the rumour was
+spontaneous in Santa Paula. It was generally suspected that the
+President had annexed the war indemnity and any other portions of the
+revenue which he could without too open a scandal. He was a bachelor.
+The whole of Santa Paula put itself in his place. What else should he
+do but retire secretly and expeditiously to some country where he
+could enjoy the fruits of his industry in peace and security? Calavera
+had nothing whatever to do with the story. But I did not contradict
+Ballester, and he continued:
+
+"It is said that I have taken my passage in the _Ariadne_."
+
+I started, but he was not looking at me.
+
+"I must lay hold upon this rumour," he said, "and strangle it. I have
+thought of a way. I will give a party here on the evening of the day
+the _Ariadne_ calls at Las Cuevas. I will spend a great deal of money
+on that party. It will be plain that I have no thought of sailing on
+the _Ariadne_. I hope it will be plain that I have no thought of
+sailing at all. For I think everyone in Santa Paula," he added with a
+grim laugh, "knows me well enough to feel sure that I should not spend
+a great deal of money on a party if I meant to run away from the place
+afterwards."
+
+Considering Santa Paula impartially, I found the reasoning to be
+sound. Juan Ballester was not a generous man. He took, but he did not
+give.
+
+"This is what I propose," he said, and he handed me a paper on which
+he had jotted down his arrangements. He had his heart set on his
+Republic, that I knew. But I knew too that it must have been a fearful
+wrench for him to decide upon the lavish expenditure of this
+entertainment. There was to be dancing in the ballroom, a conjuror
+where the Cabinet met--that seemed to be a happy touch--supper in a
+marquee, fairy lights and fireworks in the garden, and buffets
+everywhere.
+
+"You yourself will see after the invitations," he said, with a grin.
+
+"Certainly, your Excellency," I answered. They would come within the
+definition of opportunities.
+
+"But here," he continued, "is a list of those who must be asked"; and
+it was not until I had the list in my hand that I began to see that
+here I might find an answer to my question. I looked quickly down the
+names.
+
+"Yes, she's there," said Juan Ballester; and there she was, as plain
+as a pikestaff--Olivia Calavera. I was not surprised. Ballester never
+troubled about such trifles as consistency. He wanted her, so he
+invited her. Nevertheless, I could have danced a _pas seul_. For
+though Olivia could hardly slip out of her own house in any guise
+without detection since she had no visitors, she would have a good
+chance of escaping from the throng of guests at the President's party.
+I left Juan Ballester with a greatly lightened heart. I looked at my
+watch. It was not yet eleven. Full of my idea, nothing would serve me
+but I must this moment set it in motion. I went downstairs into the
+Square. Though the night was hot, I had slipped on an overcoat to
+conceal the noticeable breastplate of a white shirt, and I walked
+quickly for half a mile until I came opposite to a high and neglected
+building, a place of darkness and rough shutters. This was the Opera
+House. Beside the Opera House was a little dwelling. I rang the bell,
+and the door was opened by a tall, lean gentleman in a frock-coat. For
+the third time that night good luck had stood my friend.
+
+"Mr. Henry P. Crowninshield," I said, "the world-famous _impresario_,
+I believe?"
+
+"And you, Mr. Carlyon, are the President's private secretary?" he said
+coldly.
+
+"Not to-night," said I.
+
+With a grunt Mr. Crowninshield led the way into his parlour and stood
+with his finger-tips resting on the table and his long body bent over
+it. Mr. Crowninshield came from New York City, and I did not beat
+about the bush with him. I told him exactly the story of Olivia and
+Juan Ballester.
+
+"She is in great trouble," I concluded. "There is something which I do
+not understand. But it comes to this. She must escape. The railways
+are watched, so is her house. There is only one way of escape--and
+that is on the seventeenth, the night when the _Ariadne_ calls at Las
+Cuevas and the President gives his party."
+
+Mr. Crowninshield nodded, and his long body slid with a sort of fluid
+motion into a chair.
+
+"Go on, sir," he said; "I am interested."
+
+"And I encouraged," said I. "Let us follow the Seńorita's proceedings
+on the night of the seventeenth. She goes dressed in her best to the
+President's party. She is on view to the last possible moment. She
+then slips quietly out into the garden. In the garden wall there is a
+private door, of which I have a key. I let her out by that door.
+Outside that door there is a closed, inconspicuous carriage waiting
+for her. She slips into that carriage--and that is where you come in."
+
+"How?" asked Mr. Crowninshield.
+
+"Inside the carriage she finds a disguise--dress, wig, everything
+complete--a disguise easy to slip on over her ball-gown and sufficient
+to baffle a detective half a yard away."
+
+"You shall have it, sir! My heart bleeds for that young lady!" cried
+Mr. Crowninshield, and he grasped my hand in the noblest fashion. He
+had been a baritone in his day. "Besides," and he descended swiftly to
+the mere level of a human being, "I have a score against Master Juan,
+and I should like to get a little of my own back."
+
+That was precisely the point of view upon which I had counted.
+Throughout his first term of office Juan Ballester had hired a box at
+the Opera. Needless to say, he had never paid for it, and Mr.
+Crowninshield unwisely pressed for payment. When requests failed, Mr.
+Crowninshield went to threats. He threatened the Law, the American
+Eagle, and the whole of the United States Navy. Ballester's reply had
+been short, sharp, and decisive. The State telephone system was being
+overhauled. Juan Ballester moved the Exchange to a building on the
+other side of the Opera House, and then summarily closed the Opera
+House on the ground that the music prevented the operators from
+hearing the calls. It was not astonishing that Mr. Crowninshield was
+eager to help Olivia Calavera. He lit a candle and led me through his
+private door across the empty theatre, ghostly with its sheeted
+benches, to the wardrobe-room. We chose a nun's dress, long enough to
+hide Olivia's gown, and a coif which would conceal her hair and
+overshadow her face.
+
+"In that her own father wouldn't know her. It will be dark; the Quay
+is ill-lighted, she has only to shuffle like an old woman; she will go
+third-class, of course, in the train. Who is to see her off?"
+
+"No one," I answered. "I dread that half-hour in the train for her
+without a friend at her side. The Quay will be watched, too. She must
+run the gauntlet alone. Luckily there will be a crowd of harvesters
+returning to Spain. Luckily, also, she has courage. But it will be the
+worst of her trials. My absence would be noticed. I can't go."
+
+"No, but I can!" cried Mr. Crowninshield. "An old padre seeing off an
+old nun to her new mission--eh? Juan will be gritting his teeth in the
+morning because I am an American citizen."
+
+Mr. Crowninshield was aflame with his project. He took a stick and
+tottered about the room in the most comical fashion. "I will bring the
+carriage myself to the garden door," said he. "I will be inside of it.
+My property man--he comes from Poughkeepsie--shall be the driver. I
+will dress the young lady as we drive slowly to the station, and
+Sister Pepita and the Padre Antonio will direct their feeble steps to
+the darkest corner of the worst-lit carriage in the train."
+
+I thanked him with all my heart. It had seemed to me terrible that
+Olivia should have to make her way alone on board the steamer. Now she
+would have someone to enhearten and befriend her. I met Olivia once at
+the house of Enrique Gimeno, and made her acquainted with the scheme,
+and on the night of the sixteenth the steamship agent rang me up on
+the telephone.
+
+"The _Ariadne_ will arrive at nine to-morrow night. The passengers
+will leave Santa Paula at half-past ten. Good luck!"
+
+I went to the window and looked out over the garden. The marquee was
+erected, the fairy lights strung upon the trees, a set piece with the
+portrait of Juan Ballester and a Latin motto--_semper fidelis_--raised
+its monstrous joinery against the moon. Twenty-four hours more and, if
+all went well, Olivia would be out upon the high seas, on her way to
+Trinidad. Surely all must go well. I went over in my mind every detail
+of our preparations. I recognised only one chance of failure--the
+chance that Mr. Crowninshield in his exuberance might over-act his
+part. But I was wrong. It was, after all, Olivia who brought our fine
+scheme to grief.
+
+
+                                  V
+
+There is no doubt about it. Women are not reasonable beings. Otherwise
+Olivia would never have come to the President's party in a white lace
+coat over a clinging gown of white satin. She looked beautiful, but I
+was dismayed when I saw her. She had come with the Gimenos, and I took
+her aside, and I am afraid that I scolded her.
+
+"But you told me," she expostulated, "I was to spare no pains. There
+must be nothing of the traveller about me"; and there was not. From
+the heels of her satin slippers to the topmost tress of her hair she
+was dressed as she alone could dress in Santa Paula.
+
+"But of course I meant you to wear black," I whispered.
+
+"Oh, I didn't think of it," Olivia exclaimed wearily. "Please don't
+lecture"; and she dropped into a chair with such a lassitude upon her
+face that I thought she was going to faint.
+
+"It doesn't matter," I said hastily. "No doubt the disguise will cover
+it. At ten o'clock, slip down into the garden. Until then, dance!"
+
+"Dance!" she exclaimed, looking piteously up into my face.
+
+"Yes," I insisted impatiently, and taking her hand, I raised her from
+her chair.
+
+She had no lack of partners, for the President himself singled her out
+and danced in a quadrille with her. Others timorously followed his
+example. But though she did dance, I was grievously disappointed--for
+a time. It seemed that her soul was flickering out in her. Just when
+she most needed her courage and her splendid spirit, she failed of
+them.
+
+There were only two more hours after a long fortnight of endurance.
+Yet those two last hours, it seemed, she could not face. I know now
+that I never acted with greater cruelty than on that night when I kept
+her dancing. But even while she danced, there came to me some fear
+that I had misjudged her. I watched her from a corner of the ballroom.
+There was a great change in her. Her face seemed to me smaller, her
+eyes bigger, darker even, and luminous with some haunting look. But
+there was more. I could not define the change--at first. Then the word
+came to me. There was a spirituality in her aspect which was new to
+her, an unearthliness. Surely, I thought, the fruit of great
+suffering; and blundering, with the truth under my very nose, I began
+to ask myself a foolish question. Had Harry Vandeleur played her
+false?
+
+A movement of the company awakened me. A premonitory sputter of
+rockets drew the guests to the cloak-room, from the cloak-room to the
+garden. I saw Olivia fetch her lace coat and slip it over her
+shoulders like the rest. It was close upon ten. The Fates were
+favouring us, or perhaps I was favouring the Fates. For I had arranged
+that the fireworks should begin just a few minutes before the hour
+struck. In the darkness of the garden Olivia could slip away, and her
+absence would not afterwards be noticed.
+
+I waited at the garden door. I heard the clock strike. I saw Juan
+Ballester's profile in fire against a dark blue sky of velvet and
+stars. I shook hands with myself in that the moon would not rise till
+one. And then a whiteness gleamed between the bushes, and Olivia was
+at my side. Her hand sought mine and clung to it. I opened the postern
+and looked out into a little street. The lamps of a closed carriage
+shone twenty yards away, and but for the carriage the street was
+empty.
+
+"Now!" I whispered.
+
+We ran out. I opened the carriage door. I caught a glimpse of horn
+spectacles, a lantern-jawed, unshaven face, a shovel hat; and I heard
+a stifled oath. Mr. Crowninshield, too, had noticed Olivia's white
+gown. She jumped in, I shut the door, and the carriage rolled away. I
+went back into the garden, where Juan Ballester's profile was growing
+ragged.
+
+Of the next hour or two I have only confused memories. I counted
+stages in Olivia's progress as I passed from room to room among the
+guests. Now she would have reached the station; now the train had
+stopped on the Quay at Las Cuevas; now, perhaps, the gangway had been
+withdrawn and the great ship was warping out into the river. At one
+o'clock I smoked a cigarette in the garden. From the marquee came the
+clatter of supper. In the sky the moon was rising. And somewhere
+outside the three-mile limit a rippling path of silver struck across
+the _Ariadne's_ dark bows. I was conscious of a swift exultation. I
+heard the throb of the screw and saw the water flashing from the
+ship's sides.
+
+Then I remembered that I had left the garden door unlocked. I went to
+it and by chance looked out into the street. I received a shock. For,
+twenty yards away, the lights of a closed carriage shone quietly
+beside the kerb. I wondered whether the last few hours had been really
+the dream of a second. I even looked back into the garden, to make
+sure that the profile of Juan Ballester was not still sputtering in
+fire. Then a detail or two brought me relief. The carriage was clearly
+a private carriage; the driver on the box wore livery--at all events,
+I saw a flash of bright buttons on his coat. In my relief I walked
+from the garden towards the carriage. The driver recognised me most
+likely--recognised, at all events, that I came from the private door
+of the President's garden. For he made some kind of salute.
+
+I supposed that he had been told to wait at this spot, away from the
+park of carriages, and I should have turned back but for a
+circumstance which struck me as singular. It was a very hot night, and
+yet not only were the windows of the carriage shut, but the blinds
+were drawn close besides. I could not see into the carriage, but there
+was light at the edges of the blinds. A lamp was burning inside. I
+stood on the pavement, and a chill struck into my blood and made me
+shiver. I listened. There was no sound of any movement within the
+carriage. It must be empty. I assured myself and again doubted. The
+little empty street, the closed carriage with the light upon the edges
+of the blinds, the absolute quiet, daunted me. I stepped forward and
+gently opened the door. I saw Olivia. There was no trace of the nun's
+gown, nor the coif. But that her hair was ruffled she might this
+moment have left Juan Ballester's drawing-room.
+
+She turned her face to me, shook her head, and smiled.
+
+"It was of no use, my friend," she said gently. "They were on the
+watch at Las Cuevas. An officer brought me back. He has gone in to ask
+Juan what he shall do with me."
+
+Olivia had given up the struggle--that was clear.
+
+"It was Crowninshield's fault!" I cried.
+
+"No, it was mine," she answered.
+
+And here is what had happened, as I learnt it afterwards. All had gone
+well until the train reached Las Cuevas. There the police were on the
+look-out for her. The Padre Antonio, however, excited no suspicion,
+and very likely Sister Pepita would have passed unnoticed too. But as
+she stepped down from the carriage on to the step, and from the step
+to the ground, an officer was startled by the unexpected appearance of
+a small foot in a white silk stocking and a white satin slipper. Now,
+the officer had seen nuns before, old and young, but never had he seen
+one in white satin shoes, to say nothing of the silk stockings. He
+became more than curious. He pointed her out to his companions. Sister
+Pepita was deftly separated in the crowd from the Padre Antonio--cut
+out, to borrow the old nautical phrase--and arrested. She was
+conducted towards a room in the station, but the steamer's siren
+hooted its warning to the passengers, and despair seized upon Olivia.
+She made a rush for the gangway, she was seized, she was carried
+forcibly into the room and stripped of her nun's disguise and coif.
+She was kept a prisoner in the room until the _Ariadne_ had left the
+Quay. Then she was placed in a carriage and driven back, with an
+officer of the police at her side, to the garden door of the
+President's house.
+
+Something of this Olivia told me at the time, but she was interrupted
+by the return of the officer and a couple of Juan Ballester's
+messengers.
+
+"His Excellency will see you," said the officer to her. He conducted
+her through the garden and by the private doorway into Ballester's
+study. I had followed behind the servants and I remained in the room.
+We waited for a few minutes, and Juan himself came in. He went quickly
+over to Olivia's side. His voice was all gentleness. But that was his
+way with her, and I set no hopes on it.
+
+"I am grieved, Seńorita, if you have suffered rougher treatment than
+befits you. But you should not have tried to escape."
+
+Olivia looked at him with a piteous helplessness in her eyes. "What am
+I to do, then?" she seemed to ask, and, with the question, to lose the
+last clutch upon her spirit. For her features quivered, she dropped
+into a chair, laid her arms upon the table, and, burying her face in
+them, burst into tears.
+
+It was uncomfortable--even for Juan Ballester. There came a look of
+trouble in his face, a shadow of compunction. For myself, the heaving
+of her young shoulders hurt my eyes, the sound of her young voice
+breaking in sobs tortured my ears. But this was not the worst of it,
+for she suddenly threw herself back in her chair with the tears wet
+upon her cheeks, and, beating the table piteously with the palms of
+her hands, she cried:
+
+"I am hungry--oh, so hungry!"
+
+"Good Heavens!" cried Ballester. He started forward, staring into her
+face.
+
+"But you knew," said Olivia, and he turned away to one of the
+messengers, and bade him bring some supper into the room.
+
+"And be quick," said I.
+
+"Yes, yes, be quick," said Juan.
+
+At last I had the key to her. She had been starving, in that great,
+empty house in the Calle Madrid. "A fortnight!" she had cried in
+dismay. I understood now the reason of her terror. She had known that
+she would have to starve. And she had held her head high, making no
+complaint, patiently enduring. It was not her spirit which had failed
+her. I cursed myself for a fool as once more I enthroned her. Her face
+had grown smaller, her eyes bigger. There was a look of spirituality
+which I had not seen before. I had noticed the signs, and I had
+misread them. Her lassitude this evening, her vain struggle with the
+police, her apathy under their treatment of her, were all explained.
+Not her courage, but her body had failed her. She was starving.
+
+A tray was brought in and placed before her. She dried her eyes and
+with a sigh she drew her chair in to the table and ate, indifferent to
+the presence of Ballester, of the officer who remained at the door,
+and of myself. Ballester stood and watched her. "Good Heavens!" he
+said again softly, and going to her side he filled her glass with
+champagne.
+
+She nodded her thanks and raised it to her lips almost before he had
+finished pouring. A little colour came into her cheeks and she turned
+again to her supper. She was a healthy girl. There never had been
+anything of the drooping lily about Olivia. She had always taken an
+interest in her meals, however dainty she might look. The knowledge of
+that made her starvation doubly cruel--not only to her. Juan sat down
+opposite to her. There was no doubt now about the remorse in his face.
+He never took his eyes from her as she ate. Once she looked up and saw
+him watching her.
+
+"But you knew," she said. "I was alone in the house. How much money
+did you leave there for me when you took my father away? A few dollars
+which your men had not discovered."
+
+"But you yourself----" he stammered.
+
+"I was at a ball," said Olivia scornfully. "How much money does a girl
+take with her to a ball? Where would she put it?"
+
+There was no answer to that question.
+
+"The next day I went to the bank," she continued. "My father's money
+was impounded. You had seen to that. All the unpaid bills came in in a
+stream. I couldn't pay them. I could get no credit. You had seen to
+that. My friends left me alone. Of course I starved; you knew that I
+should. You meant me to," and, with the air of one who has been
+wasting time, she turned again to her supper.
+
+"I never thought that you would hold out," stammered Ballester. I had
+never seen him in an apologetic mood before, and he looked miserable.
+"I hadn't _seen_ that you were starving."
+
+Olivia looked up at him. It was not so much that her face relented, as
+that it showed an interest in something beyond her supper.
+
+"Yes," she said, nodding at him. "I think that's true. You hadn't seen
+with your own eyes that I was starving. So my starving wasn't very
+real to you."
+
+Ballester changed her plate and filled her glass again.
+
+"Ah!" said Olivia with satisfaction, hitching up her chair still
+closer. She was really having a good square meal.
+
+"But why didn't you tell me?" I asked.
+
+"I told no one," said Olivia, shaking her head. "I thought that I
+could manage till to-night. Once or twice I called on the Gimenos at
+luncheon-time, and I had one or two dollars. No; I would tell no one."
+
+"Yes," said Juan, "I understand that. It's the reason why I wanted
+you." And at this sign of his comprehension of her, Olivia again
+looked at him, and again the interest in her eyes was evident.
+
+At last she pushed back her chair. The tray was removed. Ballester
+offered her a cigarette. She smiled faintly as she took it. Certainly
+her supper had done her a world of good. She lit her cigarette and
+leaned her elbows on the table.
+
+"And now," she said, "what do you mean to do with me?"
+
+Ballester went to his bureau, wrote on a sheet of paper and brought
+the paper to Olivia.
+
+"You can show this at the railway-station to-morrow," he said, and he
+laid the permit on the table and turned away.
+
+Women are not reasonable people. For the second time that night Olivia
+forced me to contemplate that trite reflection. For now that she had
+got what she had suffered hunger and indignities to get, she merely
+played with it with the tips of her fingers, looking now upon the
+table, now at Juan Ballester's back, and now upon the table again.
+
+"And you?" she said gently. "What will become of you?"
+
+I suppose Ballester was the only one in the room who did not notice
+the softness of her voice. To me it was extraordinary. He had tortured
+her with hunger, exposed her to the gentle methods of his police, yet
+the fact that he did these things because he wanted her seemed to make
+him suddenly valuable to her now that she was free of him.
+
+Ballester turned round and leaned against the wall with his hands in
+his pockets.
+
+"I?" he said. "I shall just stay on alone here until some day someone
+gets stronger than I am, perhaps, and puts me up against the wall
+outside----"
+
+"Oh, no!" cried Olivia, interrupting him.
+
+"Well, one never knows," said his Excellency, shrugging his shoulders.
+He turned to the window and drew aside the curtains. The morning had
+come. It was broad daylight outside.
+
+"Unless, Olivia," he added, turning again towards her, "you will
+reconsider your refusal to marry me. Together we could do great
+things."
+
+It was the most splendid performance of the grand gentleman which
+Ballester ever gave. And he knew it. You could see him preening
+himself as he spoke. His gesture was as noble as his words. From head
+to foot he was the perfect cavalier, and consciousness of the
+perfection of his chivalry shone out from him like a nimbus. I looked
+quickly towards Olivia--in some alarm for Harry Vandeleur. She had
+lowered her head, so that it was impossible to see how she had taken
+Ballester's honourable amendment. But when she raised her head again a
+smile of satisfaction was just disappearing from her face; and the
+smile betrayed her. She had been playing for this revenge from the
+moment when she had finished her supper.
+
+"I am honoured, Seńor Juan," she said sedately, "but I am already
+promised."
+
+Ballester turned abruptly away. Whether he had seen the smile,
+whether, if he had seen it, he understood it, I never knew.
+
+"You had better get the Seńorita a carriage," he said to the officer
+at the door. As the man went out, the music from the ballroom floated
+in. Juan Ballester hesitated, and no shock which Olivia had given to
+me came near the shock which his next words produced.
+
+"Don Santiago shall have his money. You can draw on it, Seńorita,
+to-morrow, before you go."
+
+"Thank you," she said.
+
+The messenger reappeared. A carriage was waiting. Olivia rose and
+looked at Juan timidly. He walked ceremoniously to the door and held
+it open.
+
+"Good night," she said.
+
+He bowed and smiled in a friendly fashion enough, but he did not
+answer. It seemed that he had spoken his last word to her. She
+hesitated and went out. At once the President took a quick step
+towards me.
+
+"Do you know what is said to-night?" he said violently.
+
+I drew back. I could not think what he meant. To tell the truth, I
+found him rather alarming.
+
+"No," I answered.
+
+"Why, that I have given this party as a farewell; that I am still
+going to bolt from Maldivia. Do you see? I have spent all this money
+for nothing."
+
+I drew a breath of relief. His violence was not aimed against me.
+
+"That's a pity," I said. "But the rumour can still be killed. I
+thought of a way yesterday."
+
+"Will it cost much?" he asked.
+
+"Very little."
+
+"What am I to do?"
+
+"Paint the Presidential House," said I. "It wants it badly, and all
+Santa Paula will be very sure that you wouldn't spend money in paint
+if you meant to run away."
+
+"That's a good idea," said he, and he sat down at once and began to
+figure out the expense. "A couple of hundred dollars will do it."
+
+"Not well," said I.
+
+"We don't want it done well," said Juan. "Two men on a plank will, be
+enough. A couple of hundred dollars is too much. Half that will be
+quite sufficient. By the way"--and he sat with his pen poised--"just
+run after--her--and tell her that Vandeleur is landing to-morrow at
+Trinidad. I invented some business for him there."
+
+He bent down over the desk. His back was towards the door. As I turned
+the handle, someone was opening it from the other side. It was Olivia
+Calavera.
+
+"I came back," she said, with the colour mantling in her face. "You
+see, I am going away to-morrow--and I hadn't said 'Good-bye.'"
+
+Juan must have heard her voice.
+
+"Please go and give that message," he said sharply. "And shut the
+door! I don't want to be disturbed."
+
+Olivia drew back quickly. I was amazed to see that she was hurt.
+
+"His message is for you," I said severely. "Harry Vandeleur lands at
+Trinidad to-morrow."
+
+"Thank you," she said slowly; she turned away and walked as slowly
+down the passage. "Goodbye," she said, with her back towards me.
+
+"I will see you off to-morrow, Seńorita," I said; and she turned back
+to me.
+
+"No," she said gently. "Don't do that! We will say 'Good-bye' here."
+
+She gave me her hand--she had been on the point of going without even
+doing that. "Thank you very much," she added, and she walked rather
+listlessly away. She left me with an uneasy impression that her thanks
+were not very sincere. I am bound to admit that Olivia puzzled me that
+night. To extract the proposal of marriage from Ballester was within
+the rules of the game and good play into the bargain. But to come back
+again as she had done, was not quite fair. However, as I watched her
+go, I thought that I would keep my bewilderment to myself. I have
+never asked Harry Vandeleur, for instance, whether he could explain
+it. I went back to the study.
+
+"I think fifty dollars will be ample," said Ballester, still figuring
+on his paper. "Has she gone?"
+
+"She is going," said I. He rose from his chair, broke off a rose from
+a bowl of flowers which, on this night only, decorated the room. Then
+he opened the window and leaned out. Olivia, I reckoned, would be just
+at this moment stepping into the carriage. He tossed the rose down and
+drew back quickly out of sight.
+
+"Shall it be green paint, your Excellency?" I asked.
+
+His Excellency, I regret to say, swore loudly.
+
+"Never in this world!" said he.
+
+I had left the door open. The music of a languorous and melting waltz
+filled the room.
+
+"I do loathe music!" cried Juan Ballester violently. It was the
+nearest approach to a sentimental remark that I had ever heard him
+make.
+
+
+
+
+
+                        NORTH OF THE TROPIC OF
+                              CAPRICORN
+
+
+
+
+                        NORTH OF THE TROPIC OF
+                              CAPRICORN
+
+
+The strong civic spirit of the Midlands makes them fertile in
+reformers; and Mr. Endicott even in his early youth was plagued by the
+divine discontent with things as they are. Neither a happy marriage,
+nor a prosperous business, nor an engaging daughter appeased him. But
+he was slow in discovering a remedy. The absence of any sense of
+humour blunted his wits and he lived in a vague distress, out of which
+it needed the death of his wife to quicken him. "Some result must come
+out of all these years of pondering and discomfort, if only as a
+memorial to her," he reflected, and he burrowed again amongst the
+innumerable panaceas. Then at last he found it--on an afternoon walk
+in June when the sharp contrast between the grime of the town and the
+loveliness of green and leaf which embowered it so closely, smote upon
+him almost with pain. The Minimum Wage. Like Childe Roland's Dark
+Tower, it had lain within his vision for many a long mile of his
+pilgrimage. His eyes had rested on it and had never taken it in; so
+simple and clear it was to the view.
+
+Thereafter he was quick to act. Time was running on. He was forty-two.
+He disposed of his business, and a year later was elected to
+Parliament. Once in the House he walked warily. He had no personal
+ambition, but he was always afraid lest some indiscretion should set
+the House against him and delay his cause. Mr. Endicott had his plan
+quite clear in his mind. Samuel Plimsoll was his model. The great Bill
+for the establishment of the Minimum Wage should be a private member's
+Bill moved from the back benches session after session if need be, and
+driven through Parliament into Law at last by the sheer weight of its
+public value.
+
+Accordingly for a year he felt his way, learning the rules and orders,
+speaking now and then without subservience and without impertinence;
+and after the prorogation of the House for the summer, he took his
+daughter with him to a farm-house set apart in a dale of Cumberland.
+In that solitary place, inspired by the brown fells and the tumbling
+streams, and with the one person he loved as his companion, he
+proposed finally to smooth and round his Bill.
+
+Accident or destiny, however--whichever you like to call the beginning
+of tragic things--put an Australian in the same compartment of the
+railway-carriage; and the Australian was led to converse by the sight
+of various cameras on the luggage rack.
+
+"My father is very fond of photography," said Elsie Endicott. "It
+amuses him, and the pictures which he takes if the day is clear, are
+sometimes quite recognisable."
+
+"My dear!" said Mr. Endicott.
+
+Elsie turned to the window and shook hands with two young men who had
+come to see her off. One of them, whom Mr. Endicott vaguely remembered
+to have seen at meals in his house, climbed on the footboard.
+
+"You will take care of Miss Endicott, sir," he said firmly. "She has
+been overdoin' it a bit, dancin', you know, and that sort of thing,
+while you were at the House of Commons."
+
+Mr. Endicott chuckled.
+
+"I'll tell you something about my daughter," he replied. "She may look
+like china, but she is pretty solid earthenware really. And if there
+are any others as anxious about her as you are you might spread the
+good news."
+
+The train moved off. "So you are in the House of Commons," said the
+Australian, and he began to talk. "Our great trouble--yours and
+mine--is----"
+
+"I know it," Mr. Endicott interrupted with a smile of confidence.
+
+"Of course you do," replied the Australian. "It's the overcrowding of
+the East under the protective rule of the British."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Endicott blankly.
+
+"We could help a good deal," the Australian continued, "if only our
+Government had got a ha'porth of common sense. North of the Tropic of
+Capricorn, there's land and to spare which coloured labour could
+cultivate and white labour can't."
+
+This was strange talk to Mr. Endicott. He was aware, but not conscious
+of great dominions and possessions outside the British Islands. He had
+indeed avoided the whole subject. He was shy of the phrase which
+described them, as a horse is shy of a newspaper blown about the
+street. The British Empire! The very words had a post-prandial sound.
+Instead of suggesting to him vast territories with myriads of men and
+women groping amongst enormous problems, they evoked a picture of a
+flamboyant gentleman in evening dress standing at the head of a table,
+his face congested with too much dinner, a glass of wine in his one
+hand, a fat cigar in the other, and talking vauntingly. This
+particular sentence of the Australian stuck inconveniently in his mind
+and smouldered there.
+
+For instance. On the afternoon of their arrival Elsie was arranging
+his developing dishes and his chemicals on a small rough table in a
+corner of their one living-room. She put an old basket-chair by the
+table and set around it a screen which she had discovered in one of
+the bedrooms upstairs.
+
+"There!" she said. "You can make all your messes here, father, and we
+can keep the room looking habitable, and I shan't get all my frocks
+stained."
+
+"Very well, Elsie," said her father absently, and he spoke his own
+thoughts. "That was a curious fear of the man in the train, Elsie. I
+think there's no truth in it. No, the danger's here in this country;
+here's what's to be done to avert it," and he slapped his hand down
+upon his pile of statistics.
+
+"No doubt, father," said Elsie, and she went on with her work.
+
+The very next evening he returned again to the subject. It was after
+dinner and about half-past nine o'clock. The blinds had not been
+lowered and Endicott looked out through the open windows on to a great
+flank of Scawfell which lay drenched in white moonlight a couple of
+fields away.
+
+"North of the Tropic of Capricorn," he said, "I wish we had an atlas,
+Elsie."
+
+"I'll write to London and buy one," said the girl. "We haven't got
+more than a 'Handy Gazetteer' even at home. It'll be amusing to plan
+out some long journeys which we can take together when you have passed
+your Bill into law."
+
+Endicott smiled grimly at his daughter.
+
+"I reckon we won't take many journeys together, Elsie. Oh, you needn't
+look surprised and hurt! I am not taken in by you a bit, my dear. That
+young spark on the footboard who told me I didn't take enough care of
+you"--and Elsie gurgled with laughter at the recollection--"threw a
+dreadful light upon your character and gave me a clue besides to the
+riddle of your vast correspondence. I hope you are telling them all
+that my persistent unkindness is not driving you into a decline."
+
+Elsie paused in the act of addressing an envelope--there was a
+growing pile of letters in front of her--to reassure her father.
+
+"I tell them all," she replied, "that you neither beat me nor starve
+me, and that if you weren't so very messy with your chemicals in the
+corner over there, I should have very little reason to change my
+home."
+
+"Thank you, my dear," said Mr. Endicott. He was very proud of his
+daughter and especially of her health. With her dark rebellious hair,
+the delicate colour in her cheeks, and her starry eyes, she had a
+quite delusive look of fragility. But she could dance any youth of her
+acquaintance to a standstill without ruffling her curls, as he very
+well knew. He gazed at her lowered head with a smile.
+
+"However, all this doesn't help me with the Minimum Wage," he
+continued, and he turned again to the papers on his desk by the
+window, while Elsie at the table in the middle of the big low-roofed
+room, continued to write her letters.
+
+They were still engaged in these pursuits when Mrs. Tyson, their
+landlady, came into the room to lower the blinds.
+
+"No, please leave them up," said Endicott, in an irritable voice.
+"I'll draw them down myself before we go to bed."
+
+Mrs. Tyson accordingly left the blinds alone.
+
+"And you'll be careful of the Crown Derby," she said imperturbably,
+nodding towards a china tea-set ranged in an open cabinet near to the
+door. "Gentlemen from London have asked me to sell it over and over.
+For it's of great value. But I won't, as I promised my mother. She,
+poor woman----"
+
+"Yes, yes," interposed Mr. Endicott, "we'll be very careful. You may
+remember you told us all about it yesterday."
+
+Mrs. Tyson turned down a little lower the one oil lamp which, with the
+candles upon Endicott's desk, lighted the room, and went back to the
+inner door.
+
+"Will you be wanting anything more for a little while?" she asked.
+"For my girl's away, and I must go down the valley. I am sending some
+sheep away to market to-morrow morning."
+
+"No, we want nothing at all," said Elsie, without paying much
+attention to what the woman was saying. Mrs. Tyson was obviously
+inclined to fuss, and would have to be suppressed. But she went out
+now without another word. There were two doors to the room at opposite
+ends, the inner one leading to a small hall, the kitchen and the
+staircase, the other, and outer door, opening directly close by the
+window on to a tiny garden with a flagged pathway. At the end of the
+path there was a gate, and a low garden wall. Beyond the gate a narrow
+lane and a brook separated the house from the fields and the great
+flank of fell.
+
+The night was hot, and Endicott, unable to concentrate his attention
+upon his chosen theme, had the despairing sensation that he had lost
+grip of it altogether: his eyes wandered from his papers so
+continually to the hillside asleep in the bright moonlight. Here a
+great boulder threw a long motionless shadow down the slope, like a
+house; there a sharp rock-ridge cropping out of the hill, raised
+against the sky a line of black pinnacles like a file of soldiers.
+
+"I can't work to-night, Elsie, and that's the truth," cried Endicott
+passionately, "though this is just the night when one ought to be most
+alive to the millions of men cooped in hot cities and living
+wretchedly. I'll go out of doors. Will you come?"
+
+Elsie hesitated. Mr. Endicott was to carry that poignant recollection
+to his death. One word of persuasion and she would have come with him.
+But he did not speak it, and Elsie bent her head again to her work.
+
+"No, thanks, father," she said. "I'll finish these letters. They must
+go off to-morrow morning."
+
+Endicott blew out his candles, lit his pipe, and took up his cap. He
+was still smiling over her important air as of someone with great and
+urgent business. He went out into the garden. Elsie heard the latch of
+the gate click. He walked across the little bridge over the brook and
+at once his mood changed. He wandered across the fields and up the
+hillside, sorely discontented with himself. He had lost interest in
+the Minimum Wage. So much he admitted. The surroundings which were to
+inspire him had, on the contrary, merely provoked a disinclination to
+do any work whatever. The reaction after the strain of the Session was
+making itself felt. The question in his mind was "Why bother?" High up
+the hill he sat down upon a boulder to have it out with himself.
+
+The sound of the stream dropping from pool to pool of rock on its way
+down the valley rose in a continuous thunder to his ears. He looked
+down at the little farm-house beneath him, and the golden light of the
+lamp within the windows of the sitting-room.
+
+As he looked the light moved. Then it diminished; then it vanished
+altogether. Endicott chuckled and lit a second pipe, holding the
+lighted match in the hollow of his hands and bending his head close
+over it, because of a whisper of air. Elsie had finished her letters
+to the youths who besieged her and was off to bed. Only the moonlight
+blazed upon the windows now and turned them into mirrors of burnished
+silver.
+
+Endicott smoked a third pipe whilst he wrestled with himself upon the
+hillside. To-morrow he would get up very early, bathe in the big deep
+pool, transparent to the lowest of its thirty feet of water, and then
+spend a long morning with the wage-lists of the chain-making industry.
+That was settled. Nothing should change his plan. Meanwhile it was
+very pleasant up here under the cool sky of moonlight and faint stars.
+
+He dragged himself up reluctantly from his seat, and went down towards
+the farm. There was a little stone bridge to cross over one of the
+many mountain streams which went to the making of the small river on
+the other side of the house. Then came the lane and the garden-gate.
+He closed the door behind him when he had gone in. Although there was
+no lamp burning, the room was not dark. A twilight, vaporous and
+silvery, crept into it, darkening towards the inner part and filling
+the corners with mystery; while the floor by the window was chequered
+with great panels of light precise and bright as day.
+
+On the hillside Endicott had seen the light go out in the room, and he
+crossed over to the big table for the lamp. But it was no longer
+there. Elsie had taken it, no doubt, into the hall with her letters
+for the morning post and had not brought it back. He moved to his own
+table where the candles stood; and with a shock he perceived that he
+was not alone in that unlighted room. A movement amongst the shadows
+by the inner door caught and held his eyes.
+
+He swung round and faced the spot. He saw against the wall near the
+screen which hid his photographic paraphernalia, a man standing,
+straight, upright and very still. The figure was vague and blurred,
+but Endicott could see that his legs were clothed in white, and that
+he wore some bulky and outlandish gear upon his head. Endicott quickly
+struck a match. At the scratch and spurt of flame, the man in the
+shadow ran forward towards the door with extraordinary swiftness. But
+his shoulder caught the case in which Mrs. Tyson's Crown Derby china
+was standing, and brought it with a crash of broken crockery to the
+floor. Before the intruder could recover, Endicott set his back
+against the door and held the burning match above his head. He was
+amazed by what he saw.
+
+The intruder was an Asiatic with the conventional hawk-nose of the Jew
+in the shape of his face; a brown man wearing a coloured turban upon
+his head, an old tweed jacket on his shoulders, and a pair of dirty
+white linen trousers on his legs, narrowing until they fitted closely
+round his ankles. He wore neither shoes nor stockings. And he stood
+very still watching Endicott with alert, bright eyes. Endicott,
+without moving from the door, reached out and lit the candles upon the
+table.
+
+"What are you doing here?" he demanded curiously. He had no personal
+fear, and he was not much troubled by the man's hiding in the room.
+Elsie, whom the fellow might have frightened, had long since gone to
+bed, and there was nothing of value, except the Crown Derby, which he
+could have stolen. On the other hand Endicott was immensely puzzled by
+the presence of an Asiastic at all in this inland and lonely valley
+far from railways and towns, at half-past ten of the night.
+
+"I pass the house," the man answered in English which was
+astonishingly good. "I think you give me one piece opium to go on
+with."
+
+"Opium!" cried Mr. Endicott, as if he had been stung. How many times
+had he voted for the suppression of everything to do with opium.
+"You'll find none of that abominable drug here!"
+
+He surveyed the Asiatic, outraged in every feeling. He lifted the
+latch. He was on the point of flinging open the door. He had actually
+begun to open it, when his mood changed. North of the Tropic of
+Capricorn. The lilt of the words was in his ears. He remembered the
+talk of the Australian in the railway-carriage about the overcrowding
+of the East. The coming of this strange brown man seemed to him of a
+sudden curiously relevant. He closed the door again.
+
+"You passed the house? Where do you come from? Who are you? How do you
+come here?"
+
+The Asiatic, who had stood gathered like a runner at the
+starting-point while the door was being opened, now cringed and
+smiled.
+
+"Protector of the poor, I tell you my story"; and Mr. Endicott found
+himself listening in that quiet farm-house of the Cumberland dales to
+a most enlightening Odyssey.
+
+The man's name was Ahmed Ali, and he was a Pathan of the hills. His
+home was in the middle country between Peshawur and the borders of
+Afghanistan, and he belonged to a tribe of seven hundred men, every
+one of whom had left his home and his wife and his children behind
+him, and had gone down to Bombay to seek his livelihood in the
+stokeholds of ships. Ahmed had been taken on a steamer of the
+Peninsula and Oriental Line bound for Australia, where he hoped to
+make his fortune. But neither at Sydney nor at Melbourne had he been
+allowed to land.
+
+"But I am a British citizen," he said, having acquired some English.
+
+"Well, and what of it?" said the Port authorities.
+
+Nevertheless the night before the boat sailed he slipped overboard and
+swam ashore, to be caught when the smoke of that steamer was no more
+than a stain on the horizon. He was held in custody and would have
+been returned by the next steamer to India. But there was already in
+the harbour a cargo boat of the Clan Line bound for Quebec round the
+Cape; and the boat was short of its complement in the stokehold.
+
+Ahmed Ali, accordingly, signed on, and sailed in her and acquired more
+English to help him on in the comfortable life he now proposed to make
+for himself in Canada.
+
+"But again they would not let me go away into the country," he
+continued. "I told them I was British citizen, but it did not help me;
+no, not any more than in Australia. They put me on a ship for England,
+and I came to Liverpool steerage like a genelman. And at Liverpool I
+landed boldly. For I was a British citizen."
+
+"Ah!" interjected Mr. Endicott proudly. "Here, in England, you see the
+value of being a British citizen."
+
+"But, no, my genelman. For here there's no work for British citizen. I
+land and I walk about and I ask for work. But everyone says, 'Why
+don't you stay in your own country?' So I come away across the fields,
+and no man give me one piece opium."
+
+Mr. Endicott nodded his head when the story was ended.
+
+"Well, after all, why don't you stay in your own country?" he asked.
+
+Mr. Endicott had already had his answer from the Australian, but he
+was now thirsty for details, and his ears in consequence were
+afflicted with a brief description of British rule from the Pathan's
+point of view.
+
+"The all-wise one will pardon me. You keep the peace. Therefore we
+cannot stay in our own country. For we grow crowded and there is no
+food. In old times, when we were crowded and hungry, we went down into
+the plains and took the land and the wives of the people of the plains
+and killed the men. But the raj does not allow it. It holds a sword
+between us and the plains, a sword with the edge towards us. Neither,
+on the other hand, does it feed us."
+
+Mr. Endicott was aghast at the perverted views thus calmly announced
+to him.
+
+"But we can't allow you to come down into India murdering and robbing
+and taking the wives."
+
+The Asiatic shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"It is the law."
+
+Mr. Endicott was silent. If it were not the law, there were certainly
+a great many precedents. The men of the hills and the people of the
+plains--yes, history would say it _was_ the law. Mr. Endicott's eyes
+were opening upon unknown worlds. The British Power stood in India
+then cleaving a law of nature?
+
+"Also, you send your doctors and make cures when the plague and the
+cholera come, so that fewer people die. Also, when the crops fail and
+there is famine, you distribute food, so that again fewer people die.
+No, there is no room now for us in our own country because of you, and
+you will not let us into yours."
+
+"But we can't do anything else," cried Mr. Endicott. "We keep the
+peace, we feed when there is famine, we send our doctors when there is
+plague, because that is the law, also--the law of our race."
+
+Ahmed Ali did not move. He had placed the dilemma before Endicott. He
+neither solved nor accepted it. Nor Was Endicott able to find any
+answer. There must be one, since his whole race was arraigned just for
+what it most prided itself upon--oh, no doubt there was an answer. But
+Mr. Endicott could not find it. His imagination, however, grasped the
+problem. He saw those seven hundred tribesmen travelling down the
+passes to the rail head, loading the Bombay train and dispersing upon
+the steamers. But he had no answer, and because he had no answer he
+was extremely uncomfortable. He had lived for a year in the world of
+politicians where, as a rule, there are answers all ready-made for any
+question, answers neatly framed in aphorisms and propositions and
+provided for our acceptance by thoughtful organisations. But he
+could not remember one to suit this occasion. He was at a loss, and he
+took the easy way to rid himself of discomfort. He dived into his
+trouser-pocket and fished out a handful of silver.
+
+"Here!" he said. "This'll help you on a bit. Now go!"
+
+He stood aside from the door and the Asiatic darted to it with an
+extraordinary eagerness. But once he had unlatched it, once it stood
+open to the hillside and the sky, and he free in the embrasure, he
+lost all his cringing aspect. He turned round upon Mr. Endicott.
+
+"I go now," he cried in a high arrogant voice. "But I shall come back
+very soon, and all our peoples will come with me, all our hungry
+peoples from the East. Remember that, you genelman!" And then he ran
+noiselessly out of the house and down the pathway to the gate.
+
+He ran with extraordinary swiftness; so that Endicott followed him to
+the gate and watched him go. He flew down the road, his shadow
+flitting in the moonlight like a bird. Once he looked over his
+shoulder, and seeing Endicott at the gate he leapt into the air. A few
+yards farther he doubled on his steps, climbed down into the little
+stream beside the lane and took to the hills. And in another moment he
+was not. The broad and kindly fell took him to its bosom. He was too
+tiny an atom to stand out against that great towering slope of grass
+and stones. Indeed, he vanished so instantly that it seemed he must
+have dived into a cave. The next moment Endicott almost doubted
+whether he had ever been at all, whether he was not some apparition
+born of his own troubled brain and the Australian's talk. But, as he
+turned back into the house, he saw upon the flags of the garden path
+the marks of the man's wet, bare feet. Not only had Ahmed Ali been to
+the farm-house, but he had crossed the stream to get there.
+
+Mr. Endicott went back to his table in the window and seated himself
+in front of his lighted candles, more from habit than with any thought
+of work. He felt suddenly rather tired. He had not been conscious of
+any fear while Ahmed Ali was in the room, or indeed of any strain. But
+strain, and perhaps fear, there had been. Certainly a vague fear began
+to get hold of him now. He had a picture before his eyes of the
+Asiatic leaping into the air upon the road, and then doubling for the
+hills. Why had he fled so fast?
+
+"North of the Tropic of Capricorn!"
+
+He repeated the words to himself aloud. Was the Australian right after
+all? And would they come from the East--those hungry people? Mr.
+Endicott seemed to feel the earth tremble beneath the feet of the
+myriads of Asia. He bent his ear and seemed to hear the distant
+confusion of their approach. He looked down at his papers and
+flicked them contemptuously. Of what use would be his fine Bill
+for the establishment of a Minimum Wage? Why, everything would go
+down--civilisation, the treasures of art, twenty centuries of man's
+painful growth--just as that Derby China teapot with its wonderful
+colour of dark blue and red and gold. The broken fragments of the
+teapot became a symbol to Endicott.
+
+"And the women would go down too," he thought with a shiver. "They
+would take the wives."
+
+He had come to this point in his speculations when the inner door
+opened, and the light broadened in the room. He heard Mrs. Tyson
+shuffle in, but he did not turn towards her. He sat looking out upon
+the fell.
+
+"I found the lamp burning on the hall table by the letters, sir," she
+said, "and I thought you might want it."
+
+"Thank you," said Endicott vaguely, and he was roused by a little
+gasping cry which she uttered.
+
+"Oh, yes! I am very sorry, Mrs. Tyson. Your teapot has been knocked
+down. I went out. There was a man in the room when I came back. He
+knocked it down. Of course I'll make its value good, though I doubt if
+I can replace it."
+
+Mrs. Tyson made no answer. She placed the lamp on the table. Endicott
+was still seated at his table in the window with his back to the room.
+But he had thrown back his head, and he saw the circle of reflected
+light upon the ceiling shake and quiver as Mrs. Tyson put the lamp
+down. The glass chimney, too, rattled as though her hands were
+shaking.
+
+"I am very sorry indeed," he continued.
+
+Mrs. Tyson dropped upon her knees and began to pick up the broken
+pieces from the floor.
+
+"It doesn't matter at all, sir," she said, and Endicott was surprised
+by the utter tonelessness of her voice. He knew that she set great
+store upon this set of china; she had boasted of it. Yet now that it
+was spoilt she spoke of it with complete indifference. He turned round
+in his chair and watched her picking up the fragments--watched her
+idly until she sobbed.
+
+"Good heavens," he cried, "I knew that you valued it, Mrs. Tyson,
+but--" and then he stopped. For she turned to him and he knew that
+there was more than the china teapot at the bottom of her trouble. Her
+face, white and shaking and wet with tears, was terrible to see. There
+was a horror upon it as though she had beheld things not allowed, and
+a hopeless pain in her eyes as though she was sure that the appalling
+vision would never pass. But all she did was to repeat her phrase.
+
+"It doesn't matter at all, sir."
+
+Endicott started up and laid his hand upon her shoulder.
+
+"What has happened, Mrs. Tyson?"
+
+"Oh, I can't tell you, sir." She knelt upon the floor and covered her
+face with her hands and wept as Endicott had never dreamed that a
+human being could weep. Fear seized upon him and held him till he
+shivered with the chill of it. The woman had come in by the inner
+door. In the hall, then, was to be found the cause of her horror. He
+lifted the lamp and hurried towards it, but to reach the door he had
+to pass the screen which Elsie had arranged on the day of their
+coming. And at the screen he stopped. The terror which may come to a
+man once in his life clutched his heart so that he choked. For behind
+the screen he saw the gleam of a girl's white frock.
+
+"Elsie," he cried, "you have been all this while here--asleep." For he
+would not believe the thing he knew.
+
+She was lying rather than sitting in the low basket chair in front of
+the little table on which the chemicals were ranged, with her back
+towards him, and her face buried in the padding of the chair. Endicott
+stretched his arm over her and set down the lamp upon the table. Then
+he spoke to her again chidingly and shaking her arm.
+
+"Elsie, wake up! Don't be ridiculous!"
+
+He slipped an arm under her waist, and lifting her, turned her towards
+him. The girl's head rolled upon her shoulders, and there was a look
+of such deadly horror upon her face that no pen could begin to
+describe it. Endicott caught her to his breast.
+
+"Oh, my God," he cried hoarsely. "My poor girl! My poor girl!"
+
+Mrs. Tyson had come up behind him.
+
+"It was he," she whispered, "the man who was here. He killed her!" And
+as Endicott turned his head towards the woman, some little thing
+slipped from the chair on to the floor with a tiny rattle. Endicott
+laid her down and picked up a small, yellow, round tablet.
+
+"No, he didn't," he said with a queer eagerness in his voice. The
+tablet came from a small bottle on the table at the end of his row of
+chemicals. It was labelled, "Intensifier" and "Poison," and the cork
+was out of the bottle. The bottle had been full that afternoon. There
+was more than one tablet missing now.
+
+"No, she killed herself. Those tablets are cyanide of potassium. He
+never touched her. Look!"
+
+Upon the boards of the floor the wet and muddy feet of the Asiatic had
+written the history of his movements beyond the possibility of
+mistake. Here he had stood in front of her--not a step nearer. Mrs.
+Tyson heard him whisper in her daughter's ear. "Oh, my dear, I thank
+God!" He sank upon his knees beside her. Mrs. Tyson went out, and,
+closing the door gently, left him with his dead.
+
+She sat and waited in the kitchen, and after a while she heard him
+moving. He opened the door into the hall and came out and went slowly
+and heavily up the stairs into Elsie's room. In a little while he came
+down again and pushed open the kitchen door. He had aged by twenty
+years, but his face and his voice were calm.
+
+"You found the lamp in the hall?" he said, in a low voice. "Beside the
+letters? Come! We must understand this. My mind will go unless I am
+quite sure."
+
+She followed him into the living-room and saw that his dead daughter
+was no longer there. She stood aside whilst, with a patience which
+wrung her heart, Endicott worked out by the footprints of the intruder
+and this and that sure sign the events of those tragic minutes, until
+there was no doubt left.
+
+"Elsie wrote eight letters," he said. "Seven are in the hall. Here is
+the eighth, addressed and stamped upon the table where she wrote."
+
+The letters had to be sent down the valley to the inn early in the
+morning. So when she had finished, she had carried them into the
+hall--all of them, she thought--and she had taken the lamp to light
+her steps. Whilst she was in the hall, and whilst all this side of the
+house was in darkness Ahmed Ali had slipped into the room from the
+lane by the brook. There were the marks of his feet coming from the
+door.
+
+"But was that possible?" Endicott argued. "I was on the hillside, the
+moon shining from behind my shoulders on to the house. There were no
+shadows. It was all as clear as day. I must have seen the man come
+along the little footpath to the door, for I was watching the house. I
+saw the light in this room disappear. Wait a moment! Yes. Just after
+the light went out I struck a match and lit my pipe."
+
+He had held the match close to his face in the hollow of his hands,
+and had carefully lit the pipe; and after the match had burned out,
+the glare had remained for a few seconds in his eyes. It was during
+those seconds that the Asiatic had crossed the lane and darted in by
+the door.
+
+The next step then became clear. Elsie, counting her letters in the
+hall, had discovered that she had left one behind, she knew where she
+had left it. She knew that the moonlight was pouring into the room;
+and, leaving the lamp in the hall, she had returned to fetch it. In
+the moonlit room she had come face to face with the Asiatic.
+
+He had been close to the screen when she met him, and there he had
+stood. No doubt he had begun by asking her for opium. No doubt,
+too--perhaps through some unanswered cry of hers, perhaps because
+she never cried out at all, perhaps on account of a tense attitude
+of terror not to be mistaken even in that vaporous silvery
+light--somehow, at all events, he had become aware that she was alone
+in the house; and his words and his demands had changed. She had
+backed away from him against the wall, moving the screen and the
+chair, and upsetting a book upon the table there. That was evident
+from the disorder in this corner. Upon the table stood Endicott's
+chemicals for developing his photographs. Endicott saw the picture
+with a ghastly distinctness--her hand dropping for support upon the
+table and touching the bottles which she had arranged herself.
+
+"Yes, she knew that that one nearest, the first she touched was the
+poison, and meant--what? Safety! It's awful, but it's the truth. Very
+probably she screamed, poor girl. But there was no one to hear her."
+
+The noise of the river leaping from rock pool to rock pool had drowned
+any sound of it which might else have reached to Endicott's ears. The
+scream had failed. In front of her was a wild and desperate Pathan
+from the stokehold of a liner. Under her hand was the cyanide of
+potassium. Endicott could see her furtively moving the cork from the
+mouth of the bottle with the fingers of one hand, whilst she stood
+watching in horror the man smiling at her in silence.
+
+"Don't you feel that that is just how everything happened? Aren't you
+sure of it?" he asked, turning to Mrs. Tyson with a dreadful appeal in
+his eyes. But she could answer it honestly.
+
+"Yes, sir, that is how it all happened," and for a moment Mr. Endicott
+was comforted. But immediately afterwards he sat down on a chair like
+a tired man and his fingers played upon the table.
+
+"It would all be over in a few seconds," he said lamentably
+to Mrs. Tyson. "But, oh, those seconds! They would have been
+terrible--terrible with pain." His voice trailed away into silence. He
+sat still staring at the table. Then he raised his head towards Mrs.
+Tyson, and his face was disfigured by a smile of torment. "Hard luck
+on a young girl, eh, Mrs. Tyson?" and the very banality of the
+sentence made it poignant. "Everything just beginning for her--the
+sheer fun of life. Her beauty, and young men, and friends and dancing,
+the whole day a burst of music--and then suddenly--quite alone--that's
+so horrible--quite alone, in a minute she had to----" His voice choked
+and the tears began to run down his face.
+
+"But the man?" Mrs. Tyson ventured.
+
+"Oh, the man!" cried Endicott. "I will think of him to-morrow."
+
+He went up the stairs walking as heavily as when he had carried his
+daughter in his arms; and he went again into Elsie's room. Mrs. Tyson
+blew out the candles upon his writing-table and arranged automatically
+some disordered sheets of foolscap. They were notes on the great
+principle of the Minimum Wage.
+
+
+
+
+
+                             ONE OF THEM
+
+
+
+
+                             ONE OF THEM
+
+
+At midnight on August 4th, Poldhu flung the news out to all ships, and
+Anthony Strange, on the _Boulotte_, took the message in the middle of
+the West Bay. He carried on accordingly past Weymouth, and in the
+morning was confronted with the wall of great breakers off St. Alban's
+Head. The little boat ran towards that barrier with extraordinary
+swiftness. Strange put her at a gap close into the shore where the
+waves broke lower, and with a lurch and a shudder she scooped the
+water in over her bows and clothed herself to her brass gunwale-top in
+a stinging veil of salt. Never had the _Boulotte_ behaved better than
+she did that morning in the welter of the Race, and Strange, rejoicing
+to his very finger-tips, forgot the news which was bringing all the
+pleasure-boats, great and small, into the harbours of the south,
+forgot even that sinking of the heart which had troubled him
+throughout the night. But it was only in the Race that he knew any
+comfort. He dropped his anchor in Poole Harbour by mid-day, and fled
+through London to a house he owned on the Berkshire Downs.
+
+There for a few days he found life possible. It was true there were
+sentries under the railway bridges, but the sun rose each day over a
+country ripe for the harvest, and the smoke curled from the chimneys
+of pleasant villages; and there was no sign of war. But soon the
+nights became a torture. For from midnight on, at intervals of five to
+ten minutes, the troop-trains roared along the Thames Valley towards
+Avonmouth, and the reproach of each of them ceased only with the
+morning. Strange leaned out of his window looking down the slopes
+where the corn in the moonlight was like a mist. Not a light showed in
+the railway carriages, but the sparks danced above the funnel of the
+engine, and the glare of the furnace burnished the leaves of the
+trees. Soldiers, soldiers, soldiers on the road to France. Then
+there came a morning when, not a hundred yards from his house, he saw
+a string of horses in the road and others being taken from the
+reaping-machines in a field. Strange returned to town and dined with a
+Mrs. Kenway, his best friend, and to her he unburdened his soul.
+
+"I am ashamed ... don't know how to look people in the face.... I
+never thought to be so utterly unhappy. I am thirty and useless. I
+cumber the ground."
+
+The look of surprise with which his friend turned to him hurt him like
+the cut of a whip. "Of course you can't help," it seemed to say. "The
+world is for the strong, this year and the next, and for how many
+more?"
+
+Strange had to lie on his back for some hours each day, and he
+suffered off and on always. But that had been his lot since boyhood,
+and he had made light of his infirmity and grown used to it until this
+4th of August. He had consoled himself with the knowledge that to the
+world he looked only rather delicate. He was tall, and not set apart
+from his fellows.
+
+"Now," he said. "I wish that everybody knew. Yes, I wish that I showed
+that service was impossible. To think of us sitting here round a
+dinner-table--as we used to! Oh, I know what you'll think! I have the
+morbid sensitiveness of sick men. Perhaps you are right."
+
+"I don't think it at all," she said, and she set herself to comfort
+him.
+
+Strange went from the dinner-party to his club. There was the
+inevitable crowd, fighting the campaign differently, cutting up the
+conquered countries, or crying all was lost. Some of them had written
+to the papers, all were somehow swollen with importance as though the
+war was their private property. Strange began to take heart.
+
+"They are not ashamed," he thought. "They speak to me as if they
+expected I should be here. Perhaps I am a fool."
+
+A friend sat down by his side.
+
+"Cross went yesterday," he said. "George Crawley was killed at Mons.
+Of course you have heard."
+
+Strange had not heard, and there rose before his eyes suddenly a
+picture of George Crawley, the youngest colonel in the army, standing
+on the kerb in St. James's Street and with uplifted face blaspheming
+to the skies at one o'clock in the morning because of a whiskered
+degenerate dandy with a frilled shirt to whom he had just before been
+introduced. But his friend was continuing his catalogue.
+
+"Chalmers is training at Grantham. He's with the new army. Linton has
+joined the Flying Corps. Every day someone slips quietly away. God
+knows how many of them will come back."
+
+Strange got up and walked out of the club.
+
+"I shall see you to-morrow," his friend cried after him.
+
+"No, I am going back to my boat."
+
+"For how long?"
+
+"Till the war's over."
+
+The resolution had been taken that instant. He loved the _Boulotte_
+better than anything else in the world. For on board of her he was
+altogether a man. She was fifty-five feet long over all, fourteen
+feet in beam, twenty-five tons by Thames measurement, and his debt to
+her was enormous. He had found her in a shed in the Isle of Wight,
+re-coppered her, given her a new boiler, fixed her up with forced
+draught, and taken out for himself after a year's hard work a master's
+certificate. He took her over to Holland, and since her bows worked
+like a concertina in the heavy seaway between Dover and Dieppe he
+strengthened them with cross-pieces. He never ceased to tinker with
+her, he groused at her, and complained of her, and sneered at her, and
+doted on her in the true sailor's fashion. For some years past life
+had begun for him in the spring, when he passed Portland Bill bound
+westward for Fowey and Falmouth and the Scillies, and had ended in the
+late autumn, when he pulled the _Boulotte_ up on the mud of Wootton
+Creek. Now he turned to her in his distress, and made a most miserable
+Odyssey. He spent a month in the estuary above Salcombe, steamed
+across to Havre, went down through the canals to Marseilles in the
+autumn of 1914, and sought one of the neutral coasts of the
+Mediterranean. Here, where men wore buttons in their coats inscribed,
+"Don't speak to me of the war," he fancied that he might escape from
+the shame of his insufficiency. He came to a pleasant harbour, with a
+broad avenue of trees behind the quay, and a little ancient town
+behind the trees.
+
+"I will drop my anchor here," he said, "until the war ends"; and he
+remained, speaking to no one but his crew, sleeping in his little
+cabin, and only going on shore to buy his newspapers and take his
+coffee. And after five weeks the miracle began to happen. He was
+sitting on his deck one morning reading a local newspaper. At right
+angles to him half a dozen steamers, moored in a line, with their
+sterns to the quay and their anchors out forward, were loading with
+fruit. He looked up from his paper, and his eyes fell upon the nearest
+ship, which was showing him her starboard broadside. He looked first
+of all carelessly, then with interest, finally he laid his paper down
+and walked forward. The boat had received on the lower part of her
+hull, up to the Plimsoll line, a brilliant fresh coat of red paint. So
+far, of course, there was nothing unusual, but forward, halfway
+between her bows and her midships, and again aft on her quarter, she
+had a broad perpendicular line of the same red paint standing out
+vividly from the black of her upper plates. Strange called to his
+engineer, John Shawe, and pointed to the streaks.
+
+"What do you make of them?" he asked.
+
+Shawe shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Very wasteful it do seem, sir," he said; and to a casual glance it
+did indeed appear as if the paint had been allowed, through some
+carelessness on deck, to drip down the side at those two points.
+Strange, however, was not satisfied. The bands of scarlet were too
+regular, too broad. He had himself rowed out in his dinghy past the
+steamer's bows.
+
+"That will do, Harry," he said. "We can go back."
+
+On the port bows and quarter of the steamer he had seen the same vivid
+streaks. Strange spoke again to John Shawe.
+
+"Waste isn't the explanation, that's sure. You go about the town a
+bit, don't you? You know some of the men about the port. You might
+find out for me--quietly, you know--what you can about that boat"; and
+the phrase "quietly, you know," made all at once a different man of
+John Shawe. Strange at this time was really more moved by curiosity
+than suspicion, but he did use the phrase, and John Shawe, a big,
+simple, south countryman, who knew his engine and very little else,
+swelled at once into a being of mystery, full of brow-twisting wisdom
+and portentously sly.
+
+"I understand, sir," he said in a knowing whisper. "I know my dooty.
+It shall be done." He put on his best brass-buttoned coat that
+evening, and went down the three steps of the gangway ladder with a
+secret air, a sleuth; but he brought back his news nevertheless.
+
+"All those boats, sir, are chartered by a German here named Rehnke."
+
+"But some of them are English. They are flying the red flag," cried
+Strange in revolt.
+
+"It's God's truth, sir, and here's more of it. Every one of them's
+bound for England, consigned to English firms. One's for Manchester,
+two for Cardiff, one for Liverpool."
+
+"But it's impossible. It's trading with the enemy," Strange exclaimed.
+
+"That don't apply to the enemy in neutral countries, they say. Oh,
+there's a deal of dirty work going on in England. Will you come on
+deck?"
+
+Strange nodded. The saloon door opened into the cockpit, and the cabin
+roof was the deck of the after-part of the _Boulotte_. They climbed by
+a little ladder out of the cockpit. It was twelve o'clock on a night
+of full moon.
+
+"Look, sir," said Shawe.
+
+The English boat had sailed that afternoon. The starboard side of its
+neighbour was now revealed. Strange looked through his glasses and he
+saw. Over the bows of that tramp steamer at midnight a man was
+suspended on a plank, and he was painting a broad, perpendicular, red
+streak.
+
+Strange thought over his discovery lying on his back in the saloon.
+Distinguishing marks on a row of ships chartered by a German--there
+was just one explanation for them! Strange did not even whisper it to
+John Shawe, but he went ashore the next morning and called upon the
+British Consul.
+
+His card was taken into a room where two men were speaking. At once
+the conversation stopped, and it was not resumed. There was not a
+whisper, nor the sound of any movement. Strange had a picture in his
+mind of two men with their heads together staring at his card and
+exchanging an unspoken question. Then the clerk appeared again.
+
+"Mr. Taylor will see you with pleasure," he said.
+
+As Strange entered the room a slim, elderly, indifferent gentleman,
+seated at a knee-hole table, gazed vaguely at him through his
+spectacles and offered him a chair.
+
+"What can I do for you, Mr. Strange?" he asked, and since Strange
+hesitated, he turned towards his companion.
+
+"This is Major Slingsby," said the Consul. "He will not be in your
+way."
+
+Major Slingsby, a square, short, rubicund man of forty, with the face
+of a faun, bowed, and, without moving from his chair, seemed,
+nevertheless, to remove himself completely from the room.
+
+"Not at all," said Strange. He had not an idea that he was in the
+presence of the two shrewdest men in those parts. To him they were
+just a couple of languid people whom it was his duty to arouse, and he
+told his story as vividly as he could.
+
+"And what do you deduce from these mysterious signs?" asked the
+Consul.
+
+Strange's answer was prompt.
+
+"German submarines in the Mediterranean."
+
+"Oh! And why not the Channel?" asked Mr. Taylor. "These steamers are
+on their way there."
+
+To that question there was no reply. Strange rose. "I thought that I
+ought to tell you what I had noticed," he said stiffly.
+
+"Thank you, yes. And I am very grateful," replied Taylor.
+
+Major Slingsby, however, followed Strange out of the room.
+
+"Will you lunch with me?" he asked, and the question sent the blood
+rushing into Strange's face. He swung between his instinct to hide his
+head from any man who was doing service and his craving to converse
+with a fellow-countryman. The craving won.
+
+"I shall be very pleased," he stammered.
+
+"Right. It is half-past twelve now. Shall we say one at the Café de
+Rome?"
+
+As they sat against the wall by the window of the café Slingsby talked
+of ordinary matters, which any one of those in the chairs outside upon
+the pavement might overhear and be none the wiser. But he talked
+sagely, neither parading mysteries nor pretending disclosures. He let
+the mere facts of companionship and nationality work, and before
+luncheon was over Strange was won by them. He longed to confide, to
+justify himself before a fellow-citizen of his miserable inertness.
+Over the coffee, indeed, he would have begun, but Slingsby saw the
+torrent of confession coming.
+
+"Do you often lunch here?" he said quickly. "I do whenever I happen to
+be in the town. Sit in this window for an hour and you will see all
+the town paraded before you like a show, its big men and little men,
+its plots and its intrigues. There, for instance," and he nodded
+towards a large, stout person with a blonde moustache, "is
+Rehnke--yes, that's your man. Take a good look at him."
+
+Strange looked at the German hard. He looked also towards a youth who
+had been sitting for the last hour over a cup of coffee and a
+newspaper outside the window. Slingsby interpreted the look.
+
+"He's all right. He's trying to listen, of course. Most foreigners do,
+whether they understand your language or not. And he doesn't--not a
+word of it. I have been watching him. However, we may as well go, for
+I would very much like you to show me your little boat."
+
+Strange, eager and enthusiastic, jumped up from the table.
+
+"Rather," he cried. "She's not big, of course, but she can keep the
+sea, especially since I strengthened her bows."
+
+"Oh, you have done that, have you?" said Slingsby, as he paid the
+bill. "That's interesting."
+
+They crossed the boulevard to the quay and went on board the
+_Boulotte_. Every inch of brass on her, from the stanchions round the
+deck to the engine-room telegraph, flashed, and she was varnished and
+white and trim like a lady fresh from her maid.
+
+"What can you do with your forced draught?" asked Slingsby.
+
+"Thirteen," replied Strange proudly. "With a good wind astern
+fourteen. Once I went out past the Needles buoy----" and off he went
+in a glowing account of a passage to Cherbourg at the end of a stormy
+September. Slingsby never once interrupted him. He followed meekly
+from the rudder to the bow, where he examined with some attention the
+famous struts and cross-pieces.
+
+"You have got a wireless, I see," he said, looking up to the aerial,
+which, slackened and disconnected, dangled from the masthead.
+
+"Yes. But it's a small affair. However, I can hear four hundred miles
+if the night's still. I can only send seventy."
+
+Slingsby nodded, and the two men returned to the saloon. There, at
+last, over a whisky and soda. Strange was encouraged to unload his
+soul. The torture of the August nights on the Berkshire Downs above
+the Thames Valley, the intolerable sense of uselessness; the feeling
+that he wore a brand of shame upon his forehead for all men to see,
+and the poignancy of the remorse which had shrivelled him when a
+wounded soldier from Ypres or Le Cateau limped past him in the street;
+all tumbled from his lips in abrupt, half-finished sentences.
+
+"Therefore I ran away," he said.
+
+Slingsby sat back in his chair.
+
+"So that's it," he said, and he laughed in a friendly fashion. "Do you
+know that we have all been greatly worried about you? Oh, you have
+caused a deuce of a fluttering I can tell you."
+
+Strange flushed scarlet.
+
+"I was suspected!" he cried. "Good God!" It just wanted that to
+complete his utter shame. He had been worse than useless; he had given
+trouble. He sat with his eyes fixed, in the depths of abasement. Then
+other words were spoken to him:
+
+"How long will it take you to bring your boat to Marseilles?"
+
+"You want it, then?" said Strange.
+
+"I can use you," said Slingsby. "What's more, you are necessary."
+
+Strange, with a buzzing head, got out his chart from a locker and
+spread it on the table. He took paper and a lead pencil and his
+compasses. He marked his course and measured it.
+
+"Forty-seven hours' steaming and six hours to get up steam. It's four
+o'clock now, and the day's Tuesday. I can be at Marseilles on Thursday
+afternoon at four."
+
+"I have done a good day's work," said Major Slingsby, as he rose to
+his feet, and he meant it. Slingsby was an intelligence officer as
+well as an officer of intelligence, and since he had neither boats to
+dispose of nor money to buy them with, Anthony Strange was a Godsend
+to him. "But I don't want you until to-day week. I shall want a little
+time to make arrangements with the French."
+
+The _Bulotte_ steamed round the point at three o'clock on the
+appointed afternoon. The pilot took her through the Naval Harbour into
+the small basin where the destroyers lie, and by half-past she was
+berthed against the quay. Strange had been for the best part of two
+days on his bridge, but at eleven he was knocking at a certain door
+without any inscription upon it in the Port office, and he was
+admitted to a new Major Slingsby in a khaki uniform, with red tabs on
+the collar, and clerks typewriting for dear life in a tiny room.
+
+"Hallo," said Slingsby. He looked into a letter-tray on the edge of
+his desk and took a long envelope from it and handed it to Strange.
+"You might have a look at this. I'll come on board to-morrow morning.
+Meanwhile, if I were you I should go to bed, though I doubt if you'll
+get much sleep."
+
+The reason for that doubt became more and more apparent as the evening
+wore on. In the first place, when Strange returned, he found workmen
+with drills and hammers and rivets spoiling the white foredeck of his
+adored _Boulotte_. For a moment he was inclined, like Captain Hatteras
+when his crew cut down his bulwarks for firewood, to stand aside and
+weep, but he went forward, and when he saw the work which was going on
+his heart exulted. Then he went back to the saloon, but as he
+stretched himself out upon the cushions he remembered the envelope in
+his pocket. It was stamped "On His Majesty's Service," and it
+contained the announcement that one Anthony Strange had been granted a
+commission as sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.
+After that sleep was altogether out of the question. There was the
+paper to be re-read at regular intervals lest its meaning should have
+been misunderstood. And when its meaning was at last firmly and
+joyfully fixed in Strange's mind there was the paper itself to be
+guarded and continually felt, lest it should lose itself, be stolen,
+or evaporate into air. Towards midnight, indeed, he did begin to doze
+off, but then a lighter came alongside and dumped ten tons of Welsh
+steam coal on board, all that he could hold, it's true, but that gave
+him ten days' steaming at ordinary draught. And at eight o'clock to
+the minute Slingsby hailed him from the quay.
+
+"You will go back now to your old harbour," he said. "You have been a
+little cruise down the coast, that's all. Just look out for a sailing
+schooner called the _Santa Maria del Pilar_. She ought to turn up in
+seven days from now to take on board a good many barrels of carbonate
+of soda. I'll come by train at the same time. If she arrives before
+and takes her cargo on board, you can wire to me through the Consul
+and then--act on your own discretion."
+
+Strange drew a long breath, and his eyes shone.
+
+"But she won't, I think," said Slingsby. "By the way, you were at
+Rugby with Russell of my regiment, weren't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you know Cowper, who was admiral out here?"
+
+"Yes, he's my uncle."
+
+"Exactly."
+
+Strange smiled. It was clear that a good many inquiries must have been
+made about him over the telegraph wires during the last week.
+
+"Well, that's all, I think," said Slingsby. "You'll push off as soon
+as you can, and good luck."
+
+But there was one further ceremony before the _Boulotte_ was ready for
+sea. The small crew was signed on under the Naval Discipline Act. Then
+she put out, rounded the point, and headed for her destination over a
+smooth sunlit sea, with, by the way, an extra hand on board and a fine
+new capstan on her foredeck. Two days later she was moored in her old
+position, and Strange went to bed. The excitement was over, a black
+depression bore him down; he was deadly tired, and his back hurt him
+exceedingly. What was he doing at all with work of this kind? If he
+had to "act on his own discretion," could he do it with any sort of
+profit? Such questions plagued him for two days more, whilst he lay
+and suffered. But then relief came. He slept soundly and without pain,
+and rose the next morning in a terror lest the _Santa Maria del Pilar_
+should have come and gone. He went up on to the deck and searched the
+harbour with his glasses. There was but one sailing boat taking in
+cargo, and she a brigantine named the _Richard_, with the Norwegian
+flag painted on her sides. Strange hurried to the Consul, and returned
+with a mind at ease. The _Santa Maria del Pilar_ had not yet sailed in
+between the moles. Nor did she come until the next afternoon, by which
+time Slingsby was on board the _Boulotte_.
+
+"There she is," said Strange in a whisper of excitement, looking
+seawards. She sailed in with the sunset and a fair wind, a white
+schooner like a great golden bird of the sea, and she was nursed by a
+tug into a berth on the opposite side of the harbour. Slingsby and
+Strange dined at the Café de Rome and came on board again at nine. The
+great globes of electric light on their high pillars about the quays
+shone down upon the still, black water of the harbour. It was very
+quiet. From the cockpit of the _Boulotte_ the two men looked across to
+the schooner.
+
+"I think there's a lighter alongside of her, isn't there?" said
+Slingsby.
+
+Strange, whose eyesight was remarkable, answered:
+
+"Yes, a lighter loaded with barrels."
+
+"Some carbonate of soda," said Slingsby, with a grin. They went into
+the cockpit, leaving the door open.
+
+It was a hot night, and in a café beyond the trees a band was playing
+the compelling music of _Louise_. Strange listened to it, deeply
+stirred. Life had so changed for him that he had risen from the depths
+during the last weeks. Then Slingsby raised his hand.
+
+"Listen!"
+
+With the distant music there mingled now the creaking of a winch.
+Strange extinguished the light, and both men crept out from the
+cockpit. The sound came from the _Santa Maria del Pilar_, and they
+could see the spar of her hoisting tackle swing out over the lighter
+and inboard over the ship's deck.
+
+"She's loading," said Strange, in a low voice.
+
+"Yes," answered Slingsby; "she's loading." And his voice purred like a
+contented cat.
+
+He slept on a bed made up in the saloon that night. Strange in his
+tiny cabin, and at nine o'clock the next morning, as they sat at
+breakfast, they saw the _Santa Maria del Pilar_ make for the sea.
+
+"We ought to follow, oughtn't we?" said Strange anxiously.
+
+"There's no hurry."
+
+"But she'll do nine knots in this breeze." Strange watched her with
+the eye of knowledge as she leaned over ever so slightly from the
+wind. "She might give us the slip."
+
+Slingsby went on eating unconcernedly.
+
+"She will," he answered. "We are not after her, my friend. Got your
+chart?"
+
+Strange fetched it from the locker and spread it out on the table.
+
+"Do you see a small island with a lighthouse?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Four miles west-south-west of the lighthouse. Got it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How long will it take you to get to that point?"
+
+Strange measured his course.
+
+"Five to five and a half hours forced draught."
+
+"Good. Suppose we start at six this evening."
+
+The _Boulotte_ went away to the minute. At eight it began to grow
+dark, but no steaming light was hoisted on the mast, and no sidelamps
+betrayed her presence. In the failing light she became one with the
+sea but for the tiniest wisp of smoke from her chimney, and soon the
+night hid that. A lantern flashed for a while here and there on the
+forward deck in the centre of a little group, and then Slingsby came
+back to Strange at the wheel.
+
+"It's all right," he whispered softly.
+
+Nights at sea! The cool, dark tent of stars, the hiss and tinkle of
+waves against the boat's side, the dinghy, slung out upon the davits,
+progressing above the surface of the water, the lamp light from the
+compass striking up on the brasswork of the wheel and the face of the
+steersman; to nights at sea Strange owed all the spacious moments of
+his crippled life. But this night was a sacred thing. He was admitted
+to the band of the young strong men who serve, like a novice into the
+communion of a church; and his heart sang within his breast as he kept
+the _Boulotte_ to her course. At a quarter past eleven he rang the
+telegraph and put the indicator to "slow." Five minutes later he
+stopped the engine altogether. Four miles away to the north-eastward a
+light brightened and faded.
+
+"We are there," he said, and he looked out over an empty sea.
+
+Under Slingsby's orders he steamed slowly round in a circle, ever
+increasing the circumference, for an hour, and then the new hand--who,
+by the way, was a master gunner--crept aft.
+
+"There it is, sir."
+
+A hundred yards from the port bow a dark mass floated on the sea. The
+_Boulotte_ slid gently alongside of it. It was a raft made of barrels
+lashed together.
+
+"We have seen those barrels before, my friend," said Slingsby, his
+nose wrinkling up in a grin of delight. Before daybreak the work was
+done. Fifty empty barrels floated loose; there was a layer of heavy
+oil over the sea and a rank smell in the air.
+
+"Now," said Slingsby, In a whisper, "shall we have any luck, I
+wonder?"
+
+He went forward. The capstan head had been removed, and in its place
+sat a neat little automatic gun, which could fling two hundred and
+seventy three-pound shells six thousand yards in a minute. For the
+rest of that night the _Boulotte_ lay motionless without a light
+showing or a word spoken. And just as the morning came, in the very
+first unearthly grey of it, a wave broke--a long, placid roller which
+had no right to break in that smooth, deep sea. Slingsby dipped his
+hand into the cartridge box and made sure that the band ran free; the
+gunner stood with one hand on the elevating wheel, the other on the
+trigger; eight hundred yards away from the _Boulotte_ there was
+suddenly a wild commotion of the water, and black against the misty
+grey a conning tower and a long, low body of steel rose into view.
+U-whatever-its-number was taken by surprise. The whole affair lasted a
+few seconds. With his third shot the gunner found the range, and then,
+planting his shells with precision in a level line like the
+perforations of a postage stamp, he ripped the submarine from
+amidships to its nose. Strange had a vision for a second of a couple
+of men trying to climb out from the conning tower, and then the nose
+went up in the air like the snout of some monstrous fish, and the sea
+gulped it down.
+
+"One of 'em," said Slingsby. "But we won't mention it. Lucky you saw
+those red streaks, my friend. If a destroyer had come prowling up this
+coast instead of the harmless little _Boulotte_ there wouldn't have
+been any raft on the sea or any submarine just here under the sea.
+What about breakfast?"
+
+Strange set the boat's course for Marseilles, and the rest of that
+voyage was remarkable only for a clear illustration of the difference
+between the amateur and the professional. For whereas Strange could
+not for the life of him keep still during one minute, Slingsby,
+stretched at his ease on the saloon sofa, beguiled the time with
+quotations from the "Bab Ballads" and "Departmental Ditties."
+
+
+
+
+
+                            RAYMOND BYATT
+
+
+
+
+                            RAYMOND BYATT
+
+
+Dorman Royle was the oddest hero for such an adventure. He followed
+the profession of a solicitor, and the business he did was like
+himself, responsible and a trifle heavy. No piratical dashes into the
+Law Courts in the hope of a great haul were encouraged in his office.
+Clients as regular in their morals as in their payments alone sought
+his trustworthy and prosaic advice. Dorman Royle, in a word, was the
+last man you would think ever to feel the hair lifting upon his scalp
+or his heart sinking down into a fathomless pit of terror. Yet to him,
+nevertheless, these sensations happened. It may be that he was
+specially chosen just because of his unflighty qualities; that, at all
+events, became his own conviction. Certainly those qualities stood him
+in good stead. This, however, is surmise. The facts are beyond all
+dispute.
+
+In June, Royle called upon his friend Henry Groome, and explained that
+he wanted Groome's country house for the summer.
+
+"But it's very lonely," said Groome.
+
+"I don't mind that," replied Dorman Royle, and his face beamed with
+the smile at once proud and sheepish and a little fatuous which has
+only meant one thing since the beginning of the world.
+
+"You are going to be married!" said Groome.
+
+"How in the world did you guess?" asked Royle; but it must be supposed
+that there had been some little note of regret or jealousy in his
+friend's voice, for the smile died away, and he nodded his head in
+comprehension.
+
+"Yes, old man. That's the way of it. It's the snapping of the old
+ties--not a doubt. I shall meet you from time to time at the club in
+the afternoon, and you will dine with us whenever you care to. But we
+shall not talk very intimately any more of matters which concern us.
+We shall be just a trifle on our guard against each other. A woman
+means that--yes. However, I do what I can. I borrow your house for my
+honeymoon."
+
+Groome heard the speech with surprise. He had not expected to be
+understood with so much accuracy. He seemed to be looking at a new
+man--a stranger, almost certainly no longer his friend, but a man who
+had put friendship behind him and had reached out and grasped a
+treasure which had transfigured all his world.
+
+"And whom are you going to marry?" Groome asked; and the answer
+surprised him still more.
+
+"Ina Fayle."
+
+"Ina--you don't mean----?"
+
+"Yes, I do," said Royle, and the note of his voice was a challenge.
+But Groome did not take it up. Ina Fayle, of course, he knew by sight
+and by reputation, as who in London at that time did not? She was a
+young actress who had not been content to be beautiful.
+
+"Yes, she's a worker," suddenly said Royle. "She has had to work since
+she was sixteen, and what she is, sheer industry has made her. Now she
+is going to give up all her success."
+
+Groome wondered for a moment how in the world she could bring herself
+to do it. A girl of twenty-three, she had gained already so much
+success that she must find the world a very pleasant place. She had
+the joy of doing superbly the work she loved, and a reward besides,
+tremendous because so immediate, in the adoration of the public, in
+the great salary after she had been poor, and while she was young
+enough to enjoy every penny of it. Groome was still wondering when
+once more Royle broke in upon him.
+
+"Yes. It's the sort of renunciation which is much more surprising in a
+girl than it would be in a man. For the art of the stage is of much
+the same stuff as a woman's natural life, isn't it? I mean that
+beauty, grace, the trick of wearing clothes, the power of swift
+response to another's moods, play the same large part in both. But,
+you see, she has character, as well as gifts--that's the explanation."
+
+Royle looked at his watch.
+
+"Come and see her, will you?"
+
+"Now?"
+
+"Yes. I promised that I would bring you round," and as he got up from
+his chair he added: "Oh, by the way, as to your house, I ought to have
+told you. Ina has a dog--a black spaniel--do you mind?"
+
+"Not a bit," said Groome, and he put on his hat.
+
+The two men walked northwards, Royle at once extremely shy and
+inordinately proud. They crossed the Marylebone Road into Regent's
+Park.
+
+"That's her house," said Royle, "the one at the end of the terrace."
+
+Ina Fayle lived with a companion; she was not quite so tall as Groome,
+who had only seen her upon the stage, expected her to be. He had
+thought to find a woman a trifle cadaverous and sallow. But she had
+the clear eyes and complexion of a child, and her wealth of fair,
+shining hair spoke of a resplendent health. She came across the room
+and took Groome into a window.
+
+"You know Dorman very well, don't you? I want to show you something I
+have bought for him. Oh, it's nothing--but do you think he will like
+it?"
+
+She was simple and direct in her manner, with more of the comrade than
+the woman. She showed Groome a gold cigarette-case.
+
+"Of course it will do. But you have already made him a better
+wedding-gift than that," said Groome.
+
+"I?" Her forehead puckered in a frown. "What gift?"
+
+"A very remarkable gift of insight, which he never had before."
+
+She coloured a little with pleasure, and her eyes and her voice
+softened together.
+
+"I am very glad," she answered. "One takes a great deal. It is
+pleasant to give something in return."
+
+Dorman Royle and Ina Fayle were duly married towards the end of the
+month, and began their life together in the house which Groome had
+lent them.
+
+It stood on the top of a hill amongst bare uplands above the valley of
+the Thames, in a garden of roses and green lawns. But the house was
+new, and the trees about it small and of Groome's own planting, so
+that every whisper of wind became a breeze up there, and whistled
+about the windows. On the other hand, if the wind was still there was
+nowhere a place more quiet, and the slightest sound which would never
+have been heard in a street rang out loud with the presumption of a
+boast. Especially this was so at night. The roar of the great trains
+racing down to the west cleft the air like thunder; yet your eyes
+could only see far away down in the river-valley, a tiny line of
+bright lights winking amongst the trees. In this spot they stayed for
+a week, and then Ina showed her husband a telegram summoning her to
+the bedside of her mother.
+
+"It's not very serious, as you see," she said. "But she wants me, and
+I think that for a day or two I must go."
+
+She went the next morning. Dorman Royle was left alone, and was
+thoroughly bored until late on the night before Ina's return. It was,
+in fact, not far from twelve o'clock when Royle began to be
+interested. He was sitting in the library when he heard very
+distinctly through the open window a metallic click. The sound was
+unmistakable. Somewhere in the garden a gate had been opened and
+allowed to swing back. What he had heard was the latch catching in the
+socket. He was interested in his book, and for a moment paid no heed
+to the sound. But after a second or two he began to wonder who at this
+hour in that lonely garden had opened a gate. He sat up and listened
+but the sound was not repeated. He was inclined to think, clear and
+distinct though the sound had been, that he had imagined it, when his
+eyes fell upon Ina's black spaniel. He could no longer believe in any
+delusion of his senses. For the dog had heard the sound too. He had
+been lying curled up on the varnished boards at the edge of the room,
+his black, shining coat making him invisible to a careless glance. Now
+he was sitting up, his ears cocked and his eyes upon the window with
+the extraordinary intentness which dogs display.
+
+Dorman Royle rose from his chair.
+
+"Come," he said, in a whisper, but the spaniel did not move. He sat
+with his nose raised and the lip of the lower jaw trembling, and his
+eyes still fixed upon the window. Royle walked softly to the door of
+the room. It opened on to a hall paved with black and white stone
+which took up the middle part of the house. Upon his right a door
+opened on to the drive, on his left another led out to a loggia and a
+terrace. Royle opened this second door and called again in a whisper
+to the spaniel:
+
+"Come, Duke! Seek him out!"
+
+This time the dog obeyed, running swiftly past his legs into the open
+air. Royle followed. It was a bright, moonlit night, the stars hardly
+visible in the clear sky. Royle looked out across the broad valley to
+the forest-covered Chilterus, misty in the distance. Not a breath of
+wind was stirring; the trees stood as though they had been metal.
+Three brick steps led from the terrace to the tennis-lawn. On the
+opposite side of the tennis-lawn a small gate opened on to a paddock
+It was this gate which had opened and swung to. But there was no one
+now on the lawn or in the paddock, and no tree stood near which could
+shade an intruder. Royle looked at the dog. He stood upon the edge of
+the terrace staring out over the lawn; Royle knew him to be a good
+house-dog, yet now not a growl escaped him. He stood waiting to leap
+forward--yes, but waiting also for a friendly call from a familiar
+voice before he leapt forward; and as Royle realised that a strange
+thought came to him. He had been lonely these last days; hardly a
+moment had passed but he had been conscious of the absence of Ina;
+hardly a moment when his heart had not ached for her and called her
+back. What if he had succeeded? He played with the question as he
+stood there in the quiet moonlight upon the paved terrace. It was she
+who had sped across the paddock twelve hours before her time and
+opened the gate. She had come so eagerly that she had not troubled to
+close it. She had let it swing sharply to behind her. She was here
+now, at his side. He reached out a hand to touch her, and take hers;
+and suddenly he became aware that he was no longer playing with a
+fancy--that he believed it. She was really here, close to him. He
+could not see her--no. But that was his fault. There was too much
+dross in Dorman Royle as yet for so supreme a gift. But that would
+follow--follow with the greater knowledge of her which their life
+together would bring.
+
+"Come, Duke," he said, and he went back into the house and sat late in
+the smoking-room, filled with the wonder of this new, strange life
+that was to be his. A month ago and now! He measured the difference of
+stature between the Dorman Royle of those days and the Dorman Royle of
+to-day, and he was sunk in humility and gratitude. But a few hours
+later that night his mood changed. He waked up in the dark, and,
+between sleep and consciousness, was aware of some regular, measured
+movement in the room. In a moment he became wide awake, and understood
+what had aroused him. The spaniel, lying on the coverlet at the foot
+of the bed, was thumping with his tail--just as if someone he loved
+was by him, fondling him. Royle sat up; the bed shook and creaked
+under him, but the dog paid no heed at all. He went on wagging his
+tail in the silence and darkness of the room. Someone must be there,
+and suddenly Royle cried aloud, impetuously, so that he was surprised
+to hear his own voice:
+
+"Ina! Ina!" and he listened, with his arms outstretched.
+
+But no answer came at all. It seemed that he had rashly broken a
+spell. For the dog became still. Royle struck a match and lighted the
+candle by his bed, straining his eyes to the corners of the room. But
+there was no one visible.
+
+He blew out the candle and lay down again, and the darkness blotted
+out all the room. But he could not sleep; and--and--he was very
+careful not to move. It was not fear which kept him still--though fear
+came later---but a thrilling expectation. He was on the threshold of a
+new world. He had been made conscious of it already; now he was to
+enter it--to see. But he saw nothing. Only in a little while the
+spaniel's tail began once more to thump gently and regularly upon the
+bed. It was just as if the dog had waited for him to go to sleep
+before it once more resumed its invisible communion. This time he
+spoke to the dog.
+
+"Duke!" he whispered, and he struck a match. The spaniel was lying
+upon his belly, his neck stretched out, his jaws resting upon his
+paws. "Duke, what is it?"
+
+The animal raised its head and turned a little to one side. The human
+voice could not have said more clearly:
+
+"What's the matter? You are interrupting us."
+
+The match burned out between his forefinger and thumb. Royle did not
+light another. He laid himself down again. But the pleasant fancy born
+in him upon the moonlit terrace had gone altogether from his thoughts.
+There was something to him rather sinister in the notion of the dog
+waiting for him to go to sleep and then, without moving from its
+place--so certain it was of the neighbourhood of some unseen being to
+whom it gave allegiance--resuming a strange companionship. He no
+longer thought of Ina--Ina as the visitor. He began to wonder how the
+dog had come to her, who had owned it before her. He plunged into
+vague and uncomfortable surmises. No doubt the darkness, the silence
+of the night, and his own sleeplessness had their effects. He lay in a
+strange exaltation of spirit, which deepened slowly and gradually into
+fear. Yes, he was afraid now. He had a sense of danger, all the more
+alarming because it was reasonless. There were low breathings about
+his bed; now some one bent over him, now a hand lightly touched the
+coverlet. He, the most unimpressionable of men, rejoiced when a grey
+beam of light shot through a chink of the curtain and spread like a
+fan into the room. He turned over on his side and slept until the sun
+was high.
+
+In the clear light of a July morning Royle's thoughts took on a more
+sober colour. None the less, he made a cautious inquiry or two that
+day from the gardener, and from the shops in the village. The answer
+in each case was the same.
+
+"The house had no history, no traditions. It had only been built ten
+years back. There was nothing but a field then where the house now
+stood. Even the trees had been planted at the time the house was
+built."
+
+Indeed, the assurance was hardly needed; for the house was new and
+bright as a hospital. There was hardly a dark corner anywhere,
+certainly nowhere a harbour for dark thoughts. Royle began to revert
+to his original fancy; and when that evening his wife returned, he
+asked her:
+
+"Last night, just before midnight--what were you doing?"
+
+They were together in a small library upon the first floor, a room
+with big windows opening upon the side of the house. The night was hot
+and the windows stood open, and close to one of them at a little table
+Ina was writing a letter. She looked up with a smile.
+
+"Last night--just before midnight? I was asleep."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+Some note of urgency in his voice made her smile waver. It disappeared
+altogether as she gazed at him.
+
+"Of course," she answered, slowly, "I am sure;" and then, after a
+little pause and with a slight but a noticeable hesitation, she added:
+"Why do you ask?"
+
+Dorman Royle crossed over to her side and most unwisely told her:
+
+"Because at midnight the gate into the paddock was opened and swung to
+without any hand to touch it. I had been thinking of you, Ina--wanting
+you--and I wondered."
+
+He spoke half in jest, but there was no jesting reply. For a little
+while, indeed, Ina did not answer him at all. He was standing just a
+step behind her as she sat at the table in the window, so that he
+could not see her face. But her body stiffened.
+
+"It must have been a delusion," she said, and he walked forward and
+sat down in a chair by the table facing her.
+
+"If so, it was a delusion which the dog shared."
+
+She did not change her attitude; she did not stir. From head to foot
+she sat as though carved in stone. Nor did her face tell him anything.
+It became a mask; it seemed to him that she forced all expression out
+of it, by some miracle of self-command. But her eyes shone more than
+usually big, more than usually luminous; and they held their secret
+too, if they had a secret to hold. Then she leaned forward and touched
+his sleeve.
+
+"Tell me!" she said, and she had trouble to find her voice; and,
+having found it, she could not keep it steady.
+
+"I am sorry, Ina," he said. "You are frightened. I should not have
+said a word."
+
+"But you have," she replied. "Now I must know the rest."
+
+He told her all that there was to tell. Reduced to the simple terms of
+narrative, the story sounded, even to him, thin and unconvincing.
+There was so little of fact and event, so much of suggestion and vague
+emotion. But his recollection was still vivid, and something of the
+queer terror which he had felt as he had lain in the darkness was
+expressed in his aspect and in the vibrations of his voice. So, at all
+events, he judged. For he had almost expected her to laugh at the
+solemnity of his manner, and yet Ina did not so much as smile. She
+listened without even astonishment, paying close heed to every word,
+now and then nodding her head in assent, but never interrupting. He
+was vaguely reminded of clients listening to his advice in some grave
+crisis of their affairs. But when he had finished she made no comment.
+She just sat still and rigid, gazing at him with baffling and
+inscrutable eyes.
+
+Dorman Royle rose. "So it wasn't you, Ina, who returned last night?"
+he said.
+
+"No," she answered, in a voice which was low, but now quite clear and
+steady. "I slept soundly last night--much more soundly than I usually
+do."
+
+"That's strange," said Royle.
+
+"I don't think so," Ina answered. "I think it follows. _I was let
+alone_. Yes, that's all of a piece with your story, don't you see?"
+
+Dorman Royle sprang up, and at his abrupt movement his wife's face
+flashed into life and fear.
+
+"What are you saying?" he cried, and she shrank as if she realised now
+what a dangerous phrase she had allowed her lips to utter.
+
+"Nothing, nothing!" she exclaimed, and she set herself obstinately to
+her letter.
+
+Royle looked at the clock.
+
+"It's late," he said. "I'll take the dog out for a run."
+
+He went downstairs and out at the front of the house. To-night the air
+was mistier, and the moon sailed through a fleece of clouds. Royle
+walked to a gate on the edge of the hill. It may have been a quarter
+of an hour before he whistled to the dog and turned back to the house.
+From the gate to the house was perhaps a hundred yards, and as he
+walked back first one, then another, of the windows of the library
+upon the first floor came within his view. These windows stood wide
+open to the night, and showed him, as in a miniature, this and that
+corner of the room, the bookcases, the lamps upon the tables, and the
+top-rails of the chair-backs, small but very clear. The one window
+which he could not as yet see at all was that in which his wife sat.
+For it was at the far end of the room and almost over the front door.
+Royle came within view of it at last, and stopped dead. He gazed at
+the window with amazement. Ina was still sitting at the writing-table
+in the window, but she was no longer alone. Just where he himself had
+stood a few minutes before, a step behind her shoulder, another man
+was now standing--a man with a strong, rather square, dark face, under
+a mane of black hair. He wore a dinner-jacket and a black tie, and he
+was bending forward and talking to Ina very earnestly. Ina herself sat
+with her hands pressed upon her face and her body huddled in her
+chair, not answering, but beaten down by the earnestness of the
+stranger's pleading. Thus they appeared within the frame of the
+window, both extraordinarily distinct to Royle watching outside there
+in the darkness. He could see the muscles working in the stranger's
+face and the twitching of Ina's hands, but he could hear nothing. The
+man was speaking in too low a voice.
+
+Royle did not move.
+
+"But I know the man," he was saying to himself. "I have seen him, at
+all events. Where? Where?" And suddenly he remembered. It was at the
+time of a General Election. He had arrived at King's Cross Station
+from Scotland late one night, and, walking along the Marylebone
+Road, he had been attracted by a throng of people standing about a
+lamp-post, and above the throng the head and shoulders of a man
+addressing it had been thrown into a clear light. He had stopped for a
+moment to listen; He had asked a question of his neighbour. Yes, the
+speaker was one of the candidates, and he was the man who now stood by
+Ina's side.
+
+Royle tried to remember the name, but he could not. Then he began to
+wonder whence the stranger had come. It was a good two miles to the
+village. How, too, had he managed to get into the house? The servants
+had gone to bed an hour before Royle had come out. The hall-door stood
+open now. He had left it open. The man must have been waiting some
+such opportunity--as he had done no doubt last night. Such a passion
+of anger and jealousy flamed up in Royle as he had never known. He ran
+into the hall and shot the bolts. He hurried up the stairs and flung
+open the door. Ina was still sitting at the table, but she had
+withdrawn her hands from her face, and, but for her, the room was
+empty.
+
+"Ina!" he cried, and she turned to him. Her face was quiet, her eyes
+steady; there was a smile upon her lips.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+She sat just as he had left her. Looking at her in his bewilderment,
+he almost came to believe that his eyes had tricked him, that thus she
+had sat all this while. Almost! For the violence of his cry had been
+unmistakable, and she did not ask for the reason of it. He was out of
+breath, too, his face no doubt disordered; yet she put no question;
+she sat and smiled--tenderly. Yes, that was the word. Dorman Royle
+stood in front of her. It seemed to him that his happiness was
+crumbling down in ruins about him.
+
+"Ina!" he repeated, and the dog barked for admission underneath the
+window. The current of his thoughts was altered by the sound. His
+passion fell away from him. It seemed to him that he dived under ice.
+
+"Ina!"
+
+He sat quietly down in the chair on the other side of that table.
+
+"You have had that dog some time?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How did you get it?"
+
+The answer came quite steadily but slowly, and after a long silence.
+
+"A friend gave it to me."
+
+"Who?"
+
+There was no longer any smile upon the girl's face. Nor, on the other
+hand, was there any fear. Her eyes never for a second wavered from
+his.
+
+"Why do you ask?"
+
+"I am curious," replied Royle. "Who?"
+
+"Raymond Byatt."
+
+The name conveyed nothing to Royle. He did not even recollect it. But
+he spoke as if it were quite familiar to him.
+
+"Raymond Byatt? Didn't he stand for Parliament once in Marylebone?"
+
+"Yes. He was defeated."
+
+Royle rose from his chair.
+
+"Well, I had better go down and let the dog in," he said, and he went
+to the door, where he turned to her again.
+
+"But if he's a friend of yours, you should ask him down," he remarked.
+Ina drew herself up in her chair, her hands clinging to the arms of
+it.
+
+"He killed himself a fortnight ago."
+
+The answer turned Royle into a figure of stone. The two people stared
+at one another across the room in a dreadful silence; and it seemed as
+if, having once spoken, Ina was forced by some terrible burden of
+anguish to speak yet more.
+
+"Yes," she continued in a whisper, "a week before we married."
+
+"Did you care for him?"
+
+Ina shook her head.
+
+"Never."
+
+There were words upon the tip of Royle's tongue--words of bitterness:
+
+"It was he who came back last night. He came back for you. He was with
+you to-night--the moment after I left you. I saw him." But he knew
+they would be irrevocable words, and with an effort he held his
+tongue. He went downstairs and let the dog in. When he returned to the
+library Ina was standing up.
+
+"I'll go to bed," she said, and her voice pleaded for silence. "I am
+tired. I have had a long journey;" and he let her go without a word.
+
+He sat late himself, wondering what in the morning he should do. The
+house had become horrible to him. And unless Ina told him all there
+was to tell, how could they go on side by side anywhere? When he went
+upstairs Ina was in bed and asleep. He left the door wide open between
+her room and his and turned in himself. But he slept lightly, and at
+some time that night, whilst it was still dark, he was roused to
+wakefulness. A light was burning in his wife's room, and through the
+doorway he could see her. She had in her hand the glass of water which
+usually stood on a little table beside her bed, and she was measuring
+out into it from a bottle some crystals. He knew that they were
+chloral crystals, for, since she slept badly, she always kept them by
+her. He watched her shaking out the dose, and as he watched such a
+fear clutched at his heart as made all the other terrors of that night
+pale and of no account. Ina was measuring out deliberately enough
+chloral into that tumbler of water to kill a company. Very cautiously
+he drew himself up in his bed. He heard the girl stifle a sob, and as
+she waited for the crystals to dissolve her face took on a look of
+grief and despair which he had never in his life seen before. He
+sprang out of bed, and in an instant was at her side. With a cry Ina
+raised the glass to her lips, but his hand was already upon her wrist.
+
+"Let me go!" she cried, and she struggled to free herself. But he took
+the glass from her, and suddenly all her self-command gave way in a
+passion of tears. She became a frightened child. Her hands sought him,
+she hid her face from him, and she would not let him go.
+
+"Ina," he whispered, "what were you doing?"
+
+"I was following," she said. "I had to. He stands by me, always,
+commanding me." And she shook like one in a fever.
+
+"Good God!" he cried.
+
+"Oh, I have fought," she sobbed, "but he's winning. Yes, that's the
+truth. Sooner or later I shall have to follow."
+
+"Tell me everything," said Royle.
+
+"No."
+
+But he held her close within the comfort of his arms and wrestled for
+her and for himself. Gradually the story was told to him in broken
+sentences and with long silences between them, during which she lay in
+his clasp and shivered.
+
+"He wanted me to marry him. But I wouldn't. He had a sort of power
+over me--the power of a bully who cares very much," she said; and a
+little later she gave the strangest glimpse of the man. He would
+hardly have believed it; but he had seen the man, and the story fitted
+him.
+
+"I was in Paris for a few days--alone with my maid. I went to see a
+play which was to be translated for me. He was in the same hotel,
+quite alone as I was. It was after I had kept on refusing him. He
+seemed horribly lonely--that was part of his power. I never saw anyone
+who lived so completely in loneliness. He was shut away in it as if in
+some prison of glass through which you could see but not hear. It made
+him tragic--pitiful. I went up to him in the lounge and asked if we
+couldn't be just friends, since we were both there alone. You'll never
+imagine what he did. He stared at me without answering at all. He just
+walked away and went to the hotel manager. He asked him how it was
+that he allowed women in his hotel who came up and spoke to
+strangers."
+
+"Ina--he didn't!" cried Royle.
+
+"He did. Luckily the manager knew me. And that night, though he
+wouldn't speak to me in the lounge, he wrote me a terrible letter.
+Then, when you and I were engaged, he killed himself--just a week
+before we married. He tried to do it twice. He went down to an hotel
+at Aylesbury and sat up all night, trying to do it. But the morning
+came and he had failed. The servant who called him found him sitting
+in his bedroom at the writing-table at which he had left him the night
+before; and all night he had written not one word. Next day he went to
+another hotel on the South Coast, and all that night he waited. But in
+the morning--after he had been called--quite suddenly he found the
+courage--yes----" and Ina's voice trailed away into silence. In a
+little while she began again.
+
+"Ever since he has been at my side, saying 'I did it because of you.
+You must follow.' There was the chloral always ready. I found myself
+night after night, when you were asleep, reaching out my hand
+obediently towards it--towards it----"
+
+"Except last night," Royle interrupted, suddenly finding at last the
+explanation of some words of hers which had puzzled him, "when he came
+here, and you were away."
+
+"And I slept soundly in consequence," she agreed. "Yes. But
+to-night--if you hadn't been here--I should have obeyed altogether."
+
+"But I am here," said Royle, gently; and, looking up, he saw that the
+morning had come. He rose and pulled aside the curtains so that the
+clear light flooded the room.
+
+"Ina, do something for me," he pleaded, and she understood. She took
+the bottle of crystals, poured them into the basin, and set the tap
+running.
+
+"Stay with me," she said. "Now that I have told you, I believe that I
+shall sleep, and sleep without fear. When you came into the room
+before I was only pretending."
+
+She nestled down, and this time she did sleep. It seemed to Royle that
+the victory was won.
+
+Some months later, however, a client talking over his affairs with
+Royle in his private office mentioned Raymond Byatt's name. Royle
+leaned forward with a start.
+
+"You knew that man?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," replied the client with a laugh. "He forged my name for a
+thousand pounds--and not mine alone. He was clever with his pen. But
+he came to the end of his tether at last. He saved himself from penal
+servitude by blowing his brains out."
+
+Royle jumped out of his chair.
+
+"Is that true?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+And Royle sat down suddenly.
+
+"That's the best piece of news I have ever had in my life," he cried.
+Now for a sure thing the victory was his. He went home that evening in
+the highest spirits.
+
+"What do you think, Ina, I discovered to-day?" he blurted out. "You'll
+be as glad to hear as I was. Raymond Byatt didn't kill himself for
+you, after all. He did it to save himself from a prosecution for
+forgery."
+
+There was a moment's silence, and then Ina replied:
+
+"Indeed!" and that was all. But Dorman Royle, to his perplexity,
+detected a certain unexpected iciness in her voice. Somehow that new
+insight which Groome had discovered in him had on this evening failed
+him altogether.
+
+
+
+
+
+                          THE CRYSTAL TRENCH
+
+
+
+
+                          THE CRYSTAL TRENCH
+
+
+                                  I
+
+It was late in the season, and for the best part of a week the weather
+had been disheartening. Even to-day, though there had been no rain
+since last night, the mists swirled in masses over a sunless valley
+green as spring, and the hill-sides ran with water. It pleased Dennis
+Challoner, however, to believe that better times were coming. He stood
+at a window of the Riffelalp Hotel, and imagined breaches in the dark
+canopy of cloud.
+
+"Yes," he said, hopefully, "the weather is taking up."
+
+He was speaking to a young girl whose name he did not know, a
+desultory acquaintance made during the twelve hours which he had
+passed at the hotel.
+
+"I believe it is," she answered. She looked out of the window at two
+men who were sitting disconsolately on a bench. "Those are your men,
+aren't they? So you climb with guides!"
+
+There was, a note of deprecation in her voice quite unmistakable. She
+was trying not to show scorn, but the scorn was a little too strong
+for her. Challoner laughed.
+
+"I do. With guides I can go where I like, when I like. I don't have to
+hunt for companions or make arrangements beforehand. I have climbed
+with the Blauers for five years now, and we know each other's ways."
+
+He broke off, conscious that in her eyes he was making rather feeble
+excuses to cover his timidity and incompetence.
+
+"I have no doubt you are quite right," she replied. There was a gentle
+indulgence in her voice, and a smile upon her lips which cried as
+plainly as words, "I could tell you something if I chose." But she was
+content to keep her triumphant secret to herself. She laid her hand
+upon the ledge of the window, and beat a little tattoo with her
+finger-tips, so that Challoner could not but look at them. When he
+looked he understood why she thus called his attention. She wore a
+wedding-ring.
+
+Challoner was surprised. For she was just a tall slip of a girl. He
+put her age at nineteen or less. She was clear-eyed and pretty, with
+the tremendous confidence of one who looks out at life from the secure
+shelter of a school-room. Then, with too conscious an unconsciousness,
+she turned away, and Challoner saw no more of her that day.
+
+But the hotel was still full, though most of the climbers had gone,
+and in the garden looking over the valley of Zermatt, at six o'clock
+that evening, a commotion broke out about the big telescope. Challoner
+was discussing plans for the morrow with his guides by the parapet at
+the time, and the three men turned as one towards the centre of the
+clamour. A German tourist was gesticulating excitedly amidst a group
+of his compatriots. He broke through the group and came towards
+Challoner, beaming like a man with good news.
+
+"You should see--through the telescope--since you climb. It is very
+interesting. But you must be quick, or the clouds will close in
+again."
+
+"What do you mean?" Challoner asked.
+
+"There, on the top of the Weisshorn, I saw two men."
+
+"Now? At six o'clock in the evening--on a day of storm?" Challoner
+cried. "It's impossible."
+
+"But I have seen them, I tell you."
+
+Challoner turned and looked down and across the valley. The great
+curtain of cloud hung down in front of the hills like wool. The lower
+slopes of dark green met it, and on them the black pines marched up
+into the mist. Of rock and glacier and soaring snow not an inch was
+visible. But the tourist clung to his story.
+
+"It is my first visit to the mountains. I was never free before, and I
+must go down to-morrow morning. I thought that even now I should never
+see them--all the time I have been here the weather has been terrible.
+But at the last moment I have had the good fortune. Oh, I am very
+pleased."
+
+The enthusiasm of this middle-aged German business man, an enthusiasm
+childlike as it was sincere, did not surprise Challoner. He looked
+upon that as natural. But he doubted the truth of the man's vision. He
+wanted so much to see what he saw.
+
+"Tell me exactly what you saw," Challoner asked, and this was the
+story which the tourist told.
+
+He was looking through the telescope when suddenly the clouds thinned,
+and through a film of vapour he saw, very far away and dimly, a
+soaring line of black like a jagged reef, and a great white slope more
+solid than the clouds, and holding light. He kept his eye to the lens,
+hoping with all his soul that the wonderful vision might be vouchsafed
+to him, and as he looked, the screen of vapour vanished, and he saw
+quite clearly the exquisite silver pyramid of the Weisshorn soaring up
+alone in the depths of a great cavern of grey cloud. For a little
+while he continued to watch, hoping for a ray of sunlight to complete
+a picture which he was never to forget, and then, to his amazement and
+delight, two men climbed suddenly into his vision on to the top of the
+peak. They came from the south or the south-west.
+
+"By the Schalligrat!" exclaimed Challoner. "It's not possible!"
+
+"Yes," the tourist protested. He was sure. There was no illusion at
+all. The two men did not halt for a second on the top. They crossed
+it, and began to descend the long ridge towards the St. Nicholas
+valley.
+
+"I am sure," he continued. "One of the climbers, the one in front, was
+moving very slowly and uncertainly like a man in an extremity of
+weakness. The last was strong. I saw him lift the rope between them,
+which was slack, and shake the snow off it----"
+
+"You saw that?" exclaimed Challoner. "What then?"
+
+"Nothing. The clouds closed again over the peak, and I saw no more."
+
+Challoner had listened to the story with a growing anxiety. He took
+the chair behind the telescope, and sat with his eye to the lens for a
+long while. But he saw only writhing mists in a failing light. He rose
+and moved away. There was no mountaineer that day in the hotel except
+himself. Not one of the group about the telescope quite understood the
+gravity of the story which had been told them--if it were true. But it
+could not be true, Challoner assured himself.
+
+It was just possible, of course, that on a fine day some party which
+had adventured upon a new ascent might find itself on the top of the
+Weisshorn at six o'clock in the evening. But on a day like this no man
+in his senses would be on any ridge or face of that mountain at all,
+even in the morning. Yet the tourist's story was circumstantial. That
+was the fact which troubled Challoner. The traverse of the Weisshorn
+from the Schallijoch, for instance, was one of the known difficult
+climbs of the Pennine Alps. There was that little detail, too, of the
+last man shaking the snow from the slack of the rope. But no doubt the
+tourist had read the year-books of the Austrian Alpine Club. Certainly
+he must have been mistaken. He wanted to see; therefore he saw. It was
+inconceivable that the story should be true.
+
+Thus Challoner thought all through that evening and the next day. But
+as he left the dining-room the manageress met him with a grave face,
+and asked him into her office. She closed the door when he had entered
+the room, and said:
+
+"There has been an accident."
+
+Challoner's thoughts flew back to the story of the tourist.
+
+"On the Weisshorn?"
+
+"Yes. It is terrible!" And the woman sat down, while the tears came
+into her eyes and ran down her cheeks.
+
+Two young Englishmen, it appeared, Mark Frobisher and George Liston,
+had come up from the valley a week ago. They would not hear of guides.
+They had climbed from Wasdale Head and in the Snowdon range. The
+Alpine Club was a body of old fogies. They did not think much of the
+Alps.
+
+"They were so young--boys! Mr. Frobisher brought a wife with him."
+
+"A wife?" exclaimed Challoner.
+
+"Yes. She was still younger than he was, and she spoke as he
+did--knowing nothing, but full of pride in her husband, and quite
+confident in his judgment. They were children--that is the truth--and
+very likely we might have persuaded them that they were wrong--if only
+Herr Ranks had not come, too, from Vienna about the same time."
+
+Challoner began dimly to understand the tragedy which had happened.
+Ranks was well known amongst mountaineers. Forty years old, the right
+age for endurance, he was known for a passion for long expeditions
+undertaken with very small equipment; and for a rather dangerous
+indifference as to the companions he climbed with. He had at once
+proposed the Schalligrat ascent to the two Englishmen. They had gone
+down to Randa, slept the night there, and in bad weather had walked up
+to the Weisshorn hut, with provisions for three days. Nothing more had
+been heard of the party until this very afternoon, when Ranks and
+George Listen, both exhausted and the latter terribly frost-bitten,
+staggered into the Randa hotel.
+
+"That's terrible," said Challoner. But still more terrible was the
+story which the Austrian had to tell. He had written it out at once
+very briefly, and sent it up to the Riffelalp. The manageress handed
+the letter to Challoner.
+
+"We stayed in the hut two days," it ran, "hoping that the weather
+would lift. The next morning there were promising signs, and taking
+our blankets we crossed the Schalliberg glacier, and camped on the
+usual spur of the Schallihorn. We had very little food left, and I
+know now that we ought to have returned to Randa. But I did not think
+of the youth of my companions. It was very cold during the night, but
+no snow fell, and in the morning there was a gleam of sunshine.
+Accordingly we started, and reached the Schallijoch in four hours and
+a half. Under the top of the col we breakfasted, and then attacked the
+ridge. The going was very difficult; there was often a glaze of black
+ice upon the rocks, and as not one of us knew the ridge at all, we
+wasted much time in trying to traverse some of the bigger gendarmes on
+the western side, whereas they were only possible on the east.
+Moreover, the sunlight did not keep its promise: it went out
+altogether at half-past ten; the ridge became bitterly and dangerously
+cold, and soon after midday the wind rose. We dared not stop anywhere,
+and our food was now altogether exhausted. At two o'clock we found a
+shelter under a huge tower of red rock, and there we rested. Frobisher
+complained of exhaustion, and was clearly very weak. Liston was
+stronger, but not in a condition for a climb which I think must always
+be difficult and was now hazardous in the extreme. The cold had made
+him very sleepy. We called a council of war. But it was quite evident
+to me that we could not get down in the state in which we were, and
+that a night upon the ridge without food or drink was not to be
+thought of. I was certain that we were not very far from the top, and
+I persuaded my friends to go forward. I climbed up and over the red
+tower by a small winding crack in its face, and with great difficulty
+managed, by the help of the rope, to draw my friends up after me. But
+this one tower took more than an hour to cross, and on a little
+snow-col like a knife-edge on the farther side of it, Frobisher
+collapsed altogether. What with the cold and his exhaustion his heart
+gave out. I swear that we stayed with him until he died--yes, I swear
+it--although the wind was very dangerous to the rest of us, and he was
+evidently dying. We stayed with him--yes. When all was over, I tied
+him by the waist with a piece of spare rope we carried to a splinter
+of rock which cropped out of the col, and went on with Liston. I did
+not think that we should either of us now escape, but the rock-towers
+upon the aręte came to an end at last, and at six o'clock we stood on
+the mountain-top. Then we changed the order, Liston going now first
+down the easy eastern ridge. The snow was granulated and did not bind,
+and we made very slow progress. We stopped for the night at a height,
+I should think, of thirteen thousand feet, with very little protection
+from the wind. The cold was terrible, and I did not think that Liston
+would live through the night. But he did, and today there was
+sunlight, and warmth in the sunlight, so that moving very carefully we
+got down to the hut by midday. There, by a happy chance, we found some
+crusts and odds and ends of food which we had left behind; and after a
+rest were able to come on to Randa, getting some milk at the half-way
+chalet on the way down. Liston is frost-bitten in the feet and hands,
+but I think will be able to be moved down to the clinic at Lucerne in
+a couple of days. It is all my fault. Yes. I say that frankly. I alone
+am to blame. I take it all upon my shoulders. You can say so freely at
+the Riffelalp. 'Ranks takes all the blame.' I shall indeed write
+to-morrow to the Zurich papers to say that the fault is mine."
+
+Challoner read the message through again. The assumption of
+magnanimity in the last few lines was singularly displeasing, and the
+eager assertion that the party had not left Frobisher until he was
+actually dead seemed to protest overmuch.
+
+"That's a bad letter," said Challoner. "He left Frobisher still alive
+upon the ridge," and the desolation of that death in the cold and the
+darkness and the utter loneliness of those storm-riven pinnacles
+soaring above the world seemed to him appalling. But the manageress
+had no thoughts to spare for the letter.
+
+"Who will tell her?" she asked, rocking her body to and fro, and
+fixing her troubled eyes on Challoner. "It is you. You are her
+countryman."
+
+Challoner was startled.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I told you. Mr. Frobisher brought a wife with him. Yes. They had only
+been married a couple of months. She is a year or two younger than he
+is--a child. Oh, and she was so proud of him. For my part I did not
+like him very much. I would not have trusted him with the happiness of
+anyone I cared for. But she had given him all her heart. And now she
+must be told!"
+
+"She is in the hotel now?" Challoner asked.
+
+"Yes. You were talking to her yesterday."
+
+Challoner did not need the answer.
+
+"Very well. I will tell her." And he turned away, his heart sick at
+the task which lay before him. But before he had reached the door the
+woman called him back.
+
+"Could we not give her just one more night of confidence and
+contentment? Nothing can be done until to-morrow. No one in the hotel
+knows but you and I. She will have sorrow enough. She need not begin
+to suffer before she must. Just one more night of quiet sleep."
+
+So she pleaded, and Challoner clutched at the plea. He was twenty-six,
+and up to the moment life had hidden from him her stern ordeals. How
+should he break the news? He needed time carefully to prepare the way.
+He shrank from the vision of the pain which he must inflict.
+
+"Yes, it can all wait until to-morrow," he said, and he went out of
+the office into the hall. There was a sound of music in the big
+drawing-room--a waltz, and the visitors were dancing to it. The noise
+jarred upon his ears, and he crossed towards the garden door in order
+to escape from it. But to reach the garden he had to pass the
+ballroom, and as he passed it he looked in, and the irony of the world
+shocked him so that he stood staring upon the company with a white
+face and open-mouthed. Frobisher's widow was dancing. She was dancing
+with all the supple grace of her nineteen years, her face flushed
+and smiling, whilst up there, fourteen thousand feet high on the
+storm-swept ridge of the Weisshorn, throughout that bitter night her
+dead husband bestrode the snow, and nodded and swayed to the gale. As
+she whirled past the door she saw him. She smiled with the pleasant
+friendliness of a girl who is perfectly happy, and with just a hint of
+condescension for the weaker vessel who found it necessary to climb
+with guides. Challoner hurried out into the garden.
+
+He went up to her room the next morning and broke the news to her as
+gently as he could. He was prepared for tears, for an overwhelming
+grief. But she showed him neither. She caught at an arm of a chair,
+and leaning upon it, seated herself when he began to speak. But after
+that she listened, frowning at him in a perplexity like a child over
+some difficult problem of her books. And when he had finished she drew
+a long breath.
+
+"I don't know why you should try to frighten me," she said. "Of
+course, it is not true."
+
+She would not believe--no, not even with Ranks's letter in her hand,
+at which she stared and stared as though it needed decoding.
+
+"Perhaps I could read it if I were alone," she said at last, and
+Challoner left her to herself.
+
+In an hour she sent for him again. Now indeed she knew, but she had no
+tears wherewith to ease her knowledge. Challoner saw upon her face
+such an expression of misery and torture as he hoped never to see
+again. She spoke with a submission which was very strange. It was only
+the fact of her youth, not her consciousness of it, which seemed to
+protest against her anguish as against an injustice.
+
+"I was abrupt to you," she said. "I am sorry. You were kind to me. I
+did not understand. But I understand now, and there is something which
+I should like to ask you. You see, I do not know."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Would it be possible that he should be brought back to me?"
+
+She had turned to the window, and she spoke low, and with a world of
+yearning in her voice.
+
+"We will try."
+
+"I should be so very grateful."
+
+She had so desolate a look that Challoner made a promise of it, even
+though he knew well the rashness of the promise.
+
+"You will go yourself?" she asked, turning her face to him.
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Thank you. I have no friends here, you see, but you."
+
+Eight guides were collected that afternoon in the valley. Challoner
+brought down his two, and the whole party, under the guide-chief,
+moved up to the Weisshorn hut. Starting the next morning with a clear
+sky of starlight above their heads, they crossed the mountain by the
+eastern aręte, and descending the Schalligrat, found young Frobisher
+tied by the waist and shoulders to a splinter of rock as Ranks had
+described. He was astride a narrow edge of snow, a leg dangling down
+each precipice. His eyes stared at them, his mouth hung open, and when
+any stray gust of wind struck the ridge, he nodded at them with a
+dreadful pleasantry. He had the air, to Challoner's eyes, of a live
+paralytic rather than of a man frozen and dead. His face was the
+colour of cheese.
+
+With infinite trouble they lifted him back on to the mountain summit,
+and roped him round in a piece of stout sacking. Then they dragged him
+down the snow of the upper part of the ridge, carried him over the
+lower section of rock, and, turning off the ridge to the right,
+brought him down to the glacier.
+
+It was then three o'clock in the afternoon, and half an hour later the
+grimmest episode of all that terrible day occurred. The lashing of the
+rope got loose as they dragged the body down the glacier, and suddenly
+it worked out of the sacking and slid swiftly past them down a steep
+slope of ice. A cry of horror broke from the rescue party. For a
+moment or two they watched it helplessly as it gathered speed and
+leapt into the air from one little hummock to another, the arms
+tossing and whirling like the arms of a man taken off his guard. Then
+it disappeared with a crash into a crevasse, and the glacier was
+empty.
+
+The party stood for a little while aghast, and the illusion which had
+seized upon Challoner when he had first come in sight of the red
+rock-tower on the other ridge attacked him again. He could not get it
+out of his thoughts that this was a living man who had disappeared
+from their gaze, so natural had all his movements been.
+
+The party descended to the lip of the crevasse, and a guide was
+lowered into it. But he could not reach the bottom, and they drew him
+up again.
+
+"That is his grave," said Joseph Blauer, solemnly; and they turned
+away again and descended to Randa.
+
+"How shall I meet that girl?" Challoner asked himself, in a passion of
+remorse. It seemed to him that he had betrayed a trust, and the sum of
+treachery deepened in him when he did tell it that night at the
+Riffelalp. For tears had their way with her at last. She buried her
+face in her arms upon the table, and sobbed as though her heart would
+burst.
+
+"I had so hoped that you would bring him back to me," she said. "I
+cannot bear to think of him lying for ever in that loneliness of ice."
+
+"I am very sorry," Challoner stammered, and she was silent. "You have
+friends coming out to you?" he asked.
+
+He went down into the hall, and a man whose face he remembered came
+eagerly towards him. Challoner was able to identify him the next
+moment. For the man cried out:
+
+"It is done. Yes, it is in all the Zurich papers. I have said that I
+alone am to blame. I have taken the whole responsibility upon my
+shoulders." Herr Ranks brimmed with magnanimity.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+Towards Christmas of that year Challoner, at his chambers in the
+Temple, received a letter in an unfamiliar hand. It came from Mrs.
+Frobisher. It was a letter of apology. She had run away into hiding
+with her sorrow, and only during the last weeks had she grown
+conscious of the trouble which Challoner had taken for her. She had
+quite forgotten to thank him, but she did so now, though the thanks
+were overlate. Challoner was very glad to receive the letter. From the
+day when he had seen her off from the new station in the valley, he
+had lost sight of her altogether, but the recollection of her pale and
+wistful face at the carriage window had haunted him. With just that
+look, he had thought, might some exile leave behind every treasured
+thing and depart upon a long journey into perpetual banishment. This
+letter, however, had a hint, a perfume of spring-time. Stella
+Frobisher--by that name she signed--was beginning to recreate her
+life.
+
+Challoner took a note of her address, and travelled into Dorsetshire
+on the Saturday. Stella Frobisher lived in a long and ancient house,
+half farm, half mansion, set apart in a rich country close to
+Arishmell Cove. Through a doorway one looked into a garden behind the
+house which even at that season was bright with flowers. She lived
+with the roar of the waves upon the shingle in her ears and the
+gorse-strewn downs before her eyes. Challoner had found a warm and
+cheerful welcome at that house, and came back again to it. Stella
+Frobisher neither played the hermit nor made a luxury out of her
+calamitous loss. She rebuilt her little world as well as she could,
+bearing herself with pride and courage. Challoner could not but admire
+her; he began to be troubled by what seemed to him the sterility of a
+valuable life. He could not but see that she looked forward to his
+visits. Other emotions were roused in him, and on one morning of
+summer, with the sea blue at her feet and the gorse a golden flame
+about her, he asked her to marry him.
+
+Stella Frobisher's face grew very grave.
+
+"I am afraid that's impossible," she said, slowly, a little to his
+surprise and a great deal to his chagrin. Perhaps she noticed the
+chagrin, for she continued quickly, "I shall tell you why. Do you know
+Professor Kersley?"
+
+Challoner looked at her with astonishment.
+
+"I have met him in the Alps."
+
+Stella Frobisher nodded. "He is supposed to know more than anyone else
+about the movements of glaciers."
+
+Dimly Challoner began to understand, and he was startled.
+
+"Yes," he answered.
+
+"I went to call on him at Cambridge. He was very civil. I told him
+about the accident on the Weisshorn. He promised to make a
+calculation. He took a great deal of trouble. He sent for me again and
+told me the month and the year. He even named a week, and a day in the
+week." So far she had spoken quite slowly and calmly. Now, however,
+her voice broke, and she looked away. "On July 21st, twenty-four years
+from now, Mark will come out of the ice at the snout of the Hohlicht
+glacier."
+
+Challoner did not dispute the prophecy. Computations of the kind had
+been made before with extraordinary truth.
+
+"But you won't wait till then?" he cried, in protest.
+
+For a little while she found it difficult to speak. Her thoughts were
+very far away from that shining sea and homely turf.
+
+"Yes," she said at last, in a whisper; "I am dedicated to that as a
+nun to her service." And against that dead man wrapped in ice, his
+unconquerable rival, Challoner strove in vain.
+
+"So you must look elsewhere," Stella said. "You must not waste your
+life. I am not wasting mine. I live for an hour which will come."
+
+"I am in too deep, I am afraid, to look elsewhere," said Challoner,
+gloomily. Stella Frobisher looked at him with a smile of humour
+playing about her mouth.
+
+"I should like to feel sorry about that," she said. "But I am not
+noble, and I can't."
+
+They went together down to the house, and she said: "However, you are
+young. Many things will happen to you. You will change."
+
+But as a matter of fact he did not. He wanted this particular woman,
+and not another. He cursed himself considerably for his folly in not
+making sure, when the rescue party got down from the rocks on to the
+glacier, that the rope about the sacking was not working loose. But
+such reproaches did not help forward his suit. And the years slipped
+away, each one a trifle more swiftly than that which had gone before.
+But in the press of a rising practice he hardly noticed their passage.
+From time to time Stella Frobisher came to town, sat in the Law Courts
+while he argued, was taken to shop in Bond Street, and entertained at
+theatres. Upon one such visit they motored--for motors had come
+now--on an evening in June down the Portsmouth road, and dined at the
+inn at Ockham. On their way she said, simply:
+
+"It is the year."
+
+"I know," replied Challoner. "Shall I come with you?"
+
+She caught his hand tightly for a moment.
+
+"Oh, if you could! I am a little afraid--now."
+
+He took her out to Randa. There were many changes in the valley. New
+hotels had sprung up; a railway climbed nowadays to the Riffelalp; the
+tourists came in hundreds instead of tens; the mountains were overrun.
+But Challoner's eyes were closed to the changes. He went up through
+the cleft of the hills to where the glaciers come down from the
+Weisshorn and the Schallijoch and the Moming Pass; and as July drew
+on, he pitched a camp there, and stood on guard like a sentinel.
+
+There came a morning when, coming out of his tent on to a knoll of
+grass, he saw below him on the white surface of the glacier, and not
+very far away, something small and black.
+
+"It's a pebble, no doubt," he thought, but he took his axe and climbed
+down on to the ice. As he approached the object the surer he became.
+It was a round pebble, polished black and smooth by the friction of
+the ice. He almost turned back. But it was near, and he went on. Then
+a ray of sunlight shot down the valley, and the thing flickered.
+Challoner stooped over it curiously and picked it up. It was a gold
+watch, lying with its dial against the ice, and its case blackened
+save for a spot or two where it shone. The glass was missing and the
+hands broken, and it had stopped. Challoner opened it at the back; the
+tiny wheels, the coil of the mainspring, were as bright as on the day
+when the watch was sold. It might have been dropped there out of a
+pocket a day or two ago. But ice has its whims and vagaries. Here it
+will grind to powder, there it will encase and preserve. The watch
+might have come out of the ice during this past night. Was the glacier
+indeed giving up its secrets?
+
+Challoner held the watch in his hand, gazing out with blind eyes over
+the empty, silent world of rock and ice. The feel of it was magical.
+It was as though he gazed into the sorcerer's pot of ink, so vivid and
+near were those vanished days at the Riffelalp and the dreadful quest
+on the silver peak now soaring high above his head. He continued his
+search that morning. Late in the afternoon he burst into the hotel at
+Randa. Stella Frobisher drew him away into the garden, where they were
+alone. He gave the watch into her hands, and she clasped it swiftly
+against her heart with an unearthly look of exaltation upon her face.
+
+"It is his?" asked Challoner.
+
+"Yes. I will go up."
+
+Challoner looked at her doubtfully. He had been prepared to refuse her
+plea, but he had seen, and having seen, he consented.
+
+"To-morrow--early. Trust me. That will be time enough."
+
+He collected porters that evening, and at daybreak they walked out
+from the chalets and up the bank of the glacier, left the porters by
+his tent, and he led her alone across the glacier and stopped.
+
+"Here," he said. In front of her the glacier spread out like a vast
+fan within the cup of the hills, but it was empty.
+
+"Where?" she asked, in a whisper, and Challoner looked at her out of
+troubled eyes, and did not answer. Then she looked down, and at her
+feet just below the surface of the glacier, as under a thick sheet of
+crystal, she saw after all these years Mark Frobisher. She dropped on
+her knees with a loud cry, and to Challoner the truth about all these
+years came home with a dreadful shock.
+
+Under the ice Mark Frobisher lay quietly, like a youth asleep. The
+twenty-four years had cut not a line about his mouth, not a wrinkle
+about his eyes. The glacier had used him even more tenderly than it
+had used his watch. The years had taken no toll of him. He was as
+young, his features were as clear and handsome, as on the day when he
+had set out upon his tragic expedition. And over him bent his wife, a
+woman worn, lined, old. For the first time Challoner realised that all
+her youth had long since gone, and he understood for the first time
+that, as it was with her, so, too, it was with him. Often enough he
+had said, "Oh, yes, I am getting on. The years are passing." But he
+had used the words with a laugh, deferring to convention by the
+utterance of the proper meaningless thing. Now he understood the
+meaningless thing meant the best part of everything. Stella Frobisher
+and he were just a couple of old people, and their good years had all
+been wasted.
+
+He gently raised Stella Frobisher to her feet.
+
+"Will you stand aside for a little?" he said. "I will call you."
+
+She moved obediently a few yards away, and Challoner summoned the
+porters. Very carefully they cut the ice away. Then he called aloud:
+
+"Stella!" And she returned.
+
+There was no sheet of ice between them now; the young man and the worn
+woman who had spent a couple of months of their youth together met
+thus at last. But the meeting was as brief as a spark.
+
+The airs, of heaven beat upon Mark Frobisher, and suddenly his face
+seemed to quiver and his features to be obscured. Stella uttered a
+scream of terror, and covered her face with her hands. For from head
+to foot the youth crumbled into dust and was not. And some small
+trifle tinkled on the ice with a metallic sound.
+
+Challoner saw it shining at the bottom of the shallow trench of ice.
+It was a gold locket on a thin chain. It was still quite bright, for
+it had been worn round the neck and under the clothes. Challoner
+stooped and picked it up and opened it. A face stared boldly out at
+him, the face of a girl, pretty and quite vulgar, and quite strange to
+him. A forgotten saying took shape slowly in his memory. What was it
+that the woman who had managed the hotel at the Riffelalp had said to
+him of Frobisher?
+
+"I did not like him. I should not trust him."
+
+He looked up to see Stella Frobisher watching him with a white face
+and brooding eyes.
+
+"What is that?" she asked.
+
+Challoner shut the locket.
+
+"A portrait of you," he said, hastily.
+
+"He had no locket with a portrait of me," said Stella Frobisher.
+
+Over the shoulder of a hill the sun leapt into the sky and flooded the
+world with gold.
+
+
+
+
+
+                         THE HOUSE OF TERROR
+
+
+
+
+                         THE HOUSE OF TERROR
+
+
+There are eager spirits who enter upon each morning like adventurers
+upon an unknown sea. Mr. Rupert Glynn, however, was not of that
+company. He had been christened "Rupert" in an ironical moment, for he
+preferred the day to be humdrum. Possessed of an easy independence,
+which he had never done a stroke of work to enlarge, he remained a
+bachelor, not from lack of opportunity to become a husband, but in
+order that his comfort might not be disarranged.
+
+"A hunting-box in the Midlands," he used to say, "a set of chambers in
+the Albany, the season in town, a cure in the autumn at some French
+spa where a modest game of baccarat can be enjoyed, and a five-pound
+note in my pocket at the service of a friend--these conditions satisfy
+my simple wants, and I can rub along."
+
+Contentment had rounded his figure, and he was a little thicker in the
+jaw and redder in the face than he used to be. But his eye was clear,
+and he had many friends, a fact for which it was easy to account. For
+there was a pleasant earthliness about him which made him restful
+company. It seemed impossible that strange startling things could
+happen in his presence; he had so stolid and comfortable a look, his
+life was so customary and sane. "When I am frightened by queer
+shuffling sounds in the dead of night," said a nervous friend of his,
+"I think of Rupert Glynn and I am comforted." Yet just because of this
+atmosphere of security which he diffused about him, Mr. Glynn was
+dragged into mysteries, and made acquainted with terrors.
+
+In the first days of February Mr. Glynn found upon his breakfast-table
+at Melton a letter which he read through with an increasing gravity.
+Mr. Glynn being a man of method, kept a file of the _Morning Post_. He
+rang the bell for his servant, and fetched to the table his pocket
+diary. He turned back the pages until he read in the space reserved
+for November 15th, "My first run of the year."
+
+Then he spoke to his servant, who was now waiting in the room:
+
+"Thompson, bring me the _Morning Post_ of November 16th."
+
+Mr. Glynn remembered that he had read a particular announcement in the
+paper on the morning after his first run, when he was very stiff.
+Thompson brought him the copy for which he had asked, and, turning
+over the pages, he soon lighted upon the paragraph.
+
+"Mr. James Thresk has recovered from his recent breakdown, and left
+London yesterday with Mrs. Thresk for North Uist."
+
+Glynn laid down his newspaper and contemplated the immediate future
+with gloom. It was a very long way to the Outer Hebrides, and,
+moreover, he had eight horses in his stable. Yet he could hardly
+refuse to take the journey in the face of that paragraph. It was not,
+indeed, in his nature to refuse. For the letter written by Linda
+Thresk claimed his presence urgently. He took it up again. There was
+no reason expressed as to why he was needed. And there were
+instructions, besides, which puzzled him, very explicit instructions.
+He was to bring his guns, he was to send a telegram from Loch
+Boisdale, the last harbour into which the steamer from Oban put before
+it reached North Uist, and from no other place. He was, in a word, to
+pretend that he had been shooting in a neighbouring island to North
+Uist, and that, since he was so near, he ventured to trespass for a
+night or two on Mrs. Thresk's hospitality. All these precautions
+seemed to Glynn ominous, but still more ominous was the style of the
+letter. A word here, a sentence there--nay, the very agitation of the
+handwriting, filled Glynn with uneasiness. The appeal was almost
+pitiful. He seemed to see Linda Thresk bending over the pages of the
+letter which he now held in his hand, writing hurriedly, with a
+twitching, terrified face, and every now and then looking up, and to
+this side and to that, with the eyes of a hunted animal. He remembered
+Linda's appearance very well as he held her letter in his hand,
+although three years had passed since he had seen her--a fragile,
+slender woman with a pale, delicate face, big dark eyes, and masses of
+dark hair--a woman with the look of a girl and an almost hot-house air
+of refinement.
+
+Mr. Glynn laid the letter down again, and again rang for his servant.
+
+"Pack for a fortnight," he said. "And get my guns out. I am going
+away."
+
+Thompson was as surprised as his self-respect allowed him to be.
+
+"Your guns, sir?" he asked. "I think they are in town, but we have not
+used them for so long."
+
+"I know," said Mr. Glynn impatiently, "But we are going to use them
+now."
+
+Thompson knew very well that Mr. Glynn could not hit a haystack twenty
+yards away, and had altogether abandoned a sport in which he was so
+lamentably deficient. But a still greater shock was to be inflicted
+upon him.
+
+"Thompson," said Mr. Glynn, "I shall not take you with me. I shall go
+alone."
+
+And go alone he did. Here was the five-pound note, in a word, at the
+service of a friend. But he was not without perplexities, to keep his
+thoughts busy upon his journey.
+
+Why had Linda Thresk sent for him out of all her friends?
+
+For since her marriage three years before, he had clean lost sight of
+her, and even before her marriage he had, after all, been only one of
+many. He found no answer to that question. On the other hand, he
+faithfully fulfilled Mrs. Thresk's instructions. He took his guns with
+him, and when the steamer stopped beside the little quay at Loch
+Boisdale he went ashore and sent off his telegram. Two hours later he
+disembarked at Lochmaddy in North Uist, and, hiring a trap at the inn,
+set off on his long drive across that flat and melancholy island. The
+sun set, the swift darkness followed, and the moon had risen before he
+heard the murmurous thunder of the sea upon the western shore. It was
+about ten minutes later when, beyond a turn of the road, he saw the
+house and lights shining brightly in its windows. It was a small white
+house with a few out-buildings at the back, set in a flat peat country
+on the edge of a great marsh. Ten yards from the house a great brake
+of reeds marked the beginning of the marsh, and beyond the reeds the
+bog stretched away glistening with pools to the low sand-hills. Beyond
+the sand-hills the Atlantic ran out to meet the darkness, a shimmering
+plain of silver. One sapling stood up from the middle of the marsh,
+and laid a finger across the moon. But except that sapling, there were
+not any trees.
+
+To Glynn, fresh from the meadowlands of Leicestershire with their neat
+patterns of hedges, white gates and trees, this corner of the Outer
+Hebrides upon the edge of the Atlantic had the wildest and most
+desolate look. The seagulls and curlews cried perpetually above the
+marsh, and the quiet sea broke upon the sand with a haunting and
+mournful sound. Glynn looked at the little house set so far away in
+solitude, and was glad that he had come. To his southern way of
+thinking, trouble was best met and terrors most easily endured in the
+lighted ways of cities, where companionship was to be had by the mere
+stepping across the threshold.
+
+When the trap drove up to the door, there was some delay in answering
+Glynn's summons. A middle-aged man-servant came at last to the door,
+and peered out from the doorway in surprise.
+
+"I sent a telegram," said Glynn, "from Loch Boisdale. I am Mr. Glynn."
+
+"A telegram?" said the man. "It will not come up until the morning,
+sir."
+
+Then the voice of the driver broke in.
+
+"I brought up a telegram from Lochmaddy. It's from a gentleman who is
+coming to visit Mrs. Thresk from South Uist."
+
+In the outer islands, where all are curious, news is not always to be
+had, and the privacy of the telegraph system is not recognised. Glynn
+laughed, and the same moment the man-servant opened an inner door of
+the tiny hall. Glynn stepped into a low-roofed parlour which was
+obviously the one living-room of the house. On his right hand there
+was a great fireplace with a peat fire burning in the grate, and a
+high-backed horsehair sofa in front of it. On his left at a small
+round table Thresk and his wife were dining.
+
+Both Thresk and his wife sprang up as he entered. Linda advanced to
+him with every mark of surprise upon her face.
+
+"You!" she cried, holding out her hand. "Where have you sprung from?"
+
+"South Uist," said Glynn, repeating his lesson.
+
+"And you have come on to us! That is kind of you! Martin, you must
+take Mr. Glynn's bag up to the guest-room. I expect you will be
+wanting your dinner."
+
+"I sent you a telegram asking you whether you would mind if I
+trespassed upon your hospitality for a night or so."
+
+He saw Linda's eyes fixed upon him with some anxiety, and he continued
+at once:
+
+"I sent it from Loch Boisdale."
+
+A wave of relief passed over Linda's face.
+
+"It will not come up until the morning," she said with a smile.
+
+"As a matter of fact, the driver brought it up with him," said Glynn.
+And Martin handed to Mrs. Thresk the telegram. Over his shoulder,
+Glynn saw Thresk raise his head. He had been standing by the table
+listening to what was said. Now he advanced. He was a tall man,
+powerfully built, with a strongly-marked, broad face, which was only
+saved from coarseness by its look of power. They made a strange
+contrast, the husband and wife, as they stood side by side--she slight
+and exquisitely delicate in her colour, dainty in her movements, he
+clumsy and big and masterful. Glynn suddenly recalled gossip which had
+run through the town about the time of their marriage. Linda had been
+engaged to another--a man whose name Glynn did not remember, but on
+whom, so the story ran, her heart was set.
+
+"Of course you are very welcome," said Thresk, as he held out his
+hand, and Glynn noticed with something of a shock that his throat was
+bandaged. He looked towards Linda. Her eyes were resting upon him with
+a look of agonised appeal. He was not to remark upon that wounded
+throat. He took Thresk's hand.
+
+"We shall be delighted if you will stay with us as long as you can,"
+said Thresk, "We have been up here for more than three months. You
+come to us from another world, and visitors from another world are
+always interesting, aren't they, Linda?"
+
+He spoke his question with a quiet smile, like a man secretly amused.
+But on Linda's face fear flashed out suddenly and was gone. It seemed
+to Glynn that she was at pains to repress a shiver.
+
+"Martin will show you your room," said Thresk. "What's the matter?"
+
+Glynn was staring at the table in consternation. Where had been the
+use of all the pretence that he had come unexpectedly on an
+unpremeditated visit? His telegram had only this minute arrived--and
+yet there was the table laid for three people. Thresk followed the
+direction of his visitor's eyes.
+
+"Oh, I see," he said with a laugh.
+
+Glynn flushed. No wonder Thresk was amused. He had been sitting at the
+table; and between himself and his wife the third place was laid.
+
+"I will go up and change," said Glynn awkwardly.
+
+"Well, don't be long!" replied Thresk.
+
+Glynn followed Martin to the guest-room. But he was annoyed. He did
+not, under any circumstances, like to look a fool. But he had the
+strongest possible objection to travelling three hundred miles in
+order to look it. If he wanted to look a fool, he grumbled, he could
+have managed it just as well in the Midlands.
+
+But he was to be more deeply offended. For when he came down into the
+dining-room he walked to the table and drew out the vacant chair. At
+once Thresk shot out his hand and stopped him.
+
+"You mustn't sit there!" he cried violently. Then his face changed.
+Slowly the smile of amusement reappeared upon it. "After all, why
+not?" he said. "Try, yes, try," and he watched Glynn with a strange
+intentness.
+
+Glynn sat down slowly. A trick was being played upon him--of that he
+was sure. He was still more sure when Thresk's face relaxed and he
+broke into a laugh.
+
+"Well, that's funny!" he cried, and Glynn, in exasperation, asked
+indignantly:
+
+"What's funny?"
+
+But Thresk was no longer listening. He was staring across the room
+towards the front door, as though he heard outside yet another
+visitor. Glynn turned angrily towards Linda. At once his anger died
+away. Her face was white as paper, and her eyes full of fear. Her need
+was real, whatever it might be. Thresk turned sharply back again.
+
+"It's a long journey from London to North Uist," he said pleasantly.
+
+"No doubt," replied Glynn, as he set himself to his dinner. "But I
+have come from South Uist. However, I am just as hungry as if I had
+come from London."
+
+He laughed, and Thresk joined in the laugh.
+
+"I am glad of that," he said, "for it's quite a long time since we
+have seen you."
+
+"Yes, it is," replied Glynn carelessly. "A year, I should think."
+
+"Three years," said Thresk. "For I don't think that you have ever come
+to see us in London."
+
+"We are so seldom there," interrupted Linda.
+
+"Three months a year, my dear," said Thresk. "But I know very well
+that a man will take a day's journey in the Outer Island's to see his
+friends, whereas he wouldn't cross the street in London. And, in any
+case, we are very glad to see you. By the way," and he reached out his
+hand carelessly for the salt, "isn't this rather a new departure for
+you, Glynn? You were always a sociable fellow. A hunting-box in the
+Midlands, and all the lighted candles in the season. The Outer Islands
+were hardly in your line." And he turned quickly towards him. "You
+have brought your guns?"
+
+"Of course," said Glynn, laughing as easily as he could under a
+cross-examination which he began to find anything but comfortable.
+"But I won't guarantee that I can shoot any better than I used to."
+
+"Never mind," said Thresk. "We'll shoot the bog to-morrow, and it
+will be strange if you don't bring down something. It's full of duck.
+You don't mind getting wet, I suppose? There was once a man named
+Channing----" he broke off upon the name, and laughed again with that
+air of secret amusement. "Did you ever hear of him?" he asked of
+Glynn.
+
+"Yes," replied Glynn slowly. "I knew him."
+
+At the mention of the name he had seen Linda flinch, and he knew why
+she flinched.
+
+"Did you?" exclaimed Thresk, with a keen interest. "Then you will
+appreciate the story. He came up here on a visit."
+
+Glynn started.
+
+"He came here!" he cried, and could have bitten out his tongue for
+uttering the cry.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Thresk easily, "I asked him," and Glynn looked from
+Thresk to Thresk's wife in amazement. Linda for once did not meet
+Glynn's eyes. Her own were fixed upon the tablecloth. She was sitting
+in her chair rather rigidly. One hand rested upon the tablecloth, and
+it was tightly clenched. Alone of the three James Thresk appeared at
+ease.
+
+"I took him out to shoot that bog," he continued with a laugh. "He
+loathed getting wet. He was always so very well dressed, wasn't he,
+Linda? The reeds begin twenty yards from the front door, and within
+the first five minutes he was up to the waist!" Thresk suddenly
+checked his laughter. "However, it ceased to be a laughing matter.
+Channing got a little too near the sapling in the middle."
+
+"Is it dangerous there?" asked Glynn.
+
+"Yes, it's dangerous." Thresk rose from his chair and walked across
+the room to the window. He pulled up the blind and, curving his hands
+about his eyes to shut out the light of the room, leaned his face
+against the window-frame and looked out. "It's more than dangerous,"
+he said in a low voice. "Just round that sapling, it's swift and
+certain death. You would sink to the waist," and he spoke still more
+slowly, as though he were measuring by the utterance of the syllables
+the time it would take for the disaster to be complete--"from the
+waist to the shoulders, from the shoulders clean out of sight, before
+any help could reach you."
+
+He stopped abruptly, and Glynn, watching him from the table, saw his
+attitude change. He dropped his head, he hunched his back, and made a
+strange hissing sound with his breath.
+
+"Linda!" he cried, in a low, startling voice, "Linda!"
+
+Glynn, unimpressionable man that he was, started to his feet. The long
+journey, the loneliness of the little house set in this wild, flat
+country, the terror which hung over it and was heavy in the very
+atmosphere of the rooms, were working already upon his nerves.
+
+"Who is it?" he cried.
+
+Linda laid a hand upon his arm.
+
+"There's no one," she said in a whisper. "Take no notice."
+
+And, looking at her quivering face, Glynn was inspired to ask a
+question, was wrought up to believe that the answer would explain to
+him why Thresk leaned his forehead against the window-pane and called
+upon his wife in so strange a voice.
+
+"Did Channing sink--by the sapling?"
+
+"No," said Linda hurriedly, and as hurriedly she drew away in her
+chair. Glynn turned and saw Thresk himself standing just behind his
+shoulder. He had crept down noiselessly behind them.
+
+"No," Thresk repeated. "But he is dead. Didn't you know that? Oh, yes,
+he is dead," and suddenly he broke out with a passionate violence. "A
+clever fellow--an infernally clever fellow. You are surprised to hear
+me say that, Glynn. You underrated him like the rest of us. We thought
+him a milksop, a tame cat, a poor, weak, interloping, unprofitable
+creature who would sidle obsequiously into your house, and make his
+home there. But we were wrong--all except Linda there."
+
+Linda sat with her head bowed, and said not a word. She was sitting so
+that Glynn could see her profile, and though she said nothing, her
+lips were trembling.
+
+"Linda was right," and Thresk turned carelessly to Glynn. "Did you
+know that Linda was at one time engaged to Channing?"
+
+"Yes, I knew," said Glynn awkwardly.
+
+"It was difficult for most of us to understand," said Thresk. "There
+seemed no sort of reason why a girl like Linda should select a man
+like Channing to fix her heart upon. But she was right. Channing was a
+clever fellow--oh, a very clever fellow," and he leaned over and
+touched Glynn upon the sleeve, "for he died."
+
+Glynn started back.
+
+"What are you saying?" he cried.
+
+Thresk burst into a laugh.
+
+"That my throat hurts me to-night," he said.
+
+Glynn recovered himself with an effort. "Oh, yes," he said, as though
+now for the first time he had noticed the bandage. "Yes, I see you
+have hurt your throat. How did you do it?"
+
+Thresk chuckled.
+
+"Not very well done, Glynn. Will you smoke?"
+
+The plates had been cleared from the table, and the coffee brought in.
+Thresk rose from his seat and crossed to the mantelshelf on which a
+box of cigars was laid. As he took up the box and turned again towards
+the table, a parchment scroll which hung on a nail at the side of the
+fireplace caught his eye.
+
+"Do you see this?" he said, and he unrolled it. "It's my landlord's
+family tree. All the ancestors of Mr. Robert Donald McCullough right
+back to the days of Bruce. McCullough's prouder of that scroll than of
+anything else in the world. He is more interested in it than in
+anything else in the world."
+
+For a moment he fingered it, and in the tone of a man communing with
+himself, he added:
+
+"Now, isn't that curious?"
+
+Glynn rose from his chair, and moved down the table so that he could
+see the scroll unimpeded by Thresk's bulky figure. Thresk, however,
+was not speaking any longer to his guest. Glynn sat down again. But he
+sat down now in the chair which Thresk had used; the chair in which he
+himself had been sitting between Thresk and Linda was empty.
+
+"What interests me," Thresk continued, like a man in a dream, "is what
+is happening now--and very strange, queer, interesting things are
+happening now--for those who have eyes to see. Yes, through centuries
+and centuries, McCulloughs have succeeded McCulloughs, and lived in
+this distant, little corner of the Outer Islands through forays and
+wars and rebellions, and the oversetting of kings, and yet nothing has
+ever happened in this house to any one of them half so interesting and
+half so strange as what is happening now to us, the shooting tenants
+of a year."
+
+Thresk dropped the scroll, and, coming out of his dream, brought the
+cigar-box to the table.
+
+"You have changed your seat!" he said with a smile, as he offered the
+box to Glynn. Glynn took out of it a cigar, and leaning back, cut off
+the end. As he stooped forward to light it, he saw the cigar-box still
+held out to him. Thresk had not moved. He seemed to have forgotten
+Glynn's presence in the room. His eyes were fixed upon the empty
+chair. He stood strangely rigid, and then he suddenly cried out:
+
+"Take care, Linda!"
+
+There was so sharp a note of warning in his voice that Linda sprang to
+her feet, with her hand pressed upon her heart. Glynn was startled
+too, and because he was startled he turned angrily to Thresk.
+
+"Of what should Mrs. Thresk take care?"
+
+Thresk took his eyes for a moment, and only for a moment, from the
+empty chair.
+
+"Do you see nothing?" he asked, in a whisper, and his glance went back
+again. "Not a shadow which leans across the table there towards Linda,
+darkening the candle-light?"
+
+"No; for there's nothing to cast a shadow."
+
+"Is there not?" said Thresk, with a queer smile. "That's where you
+make your mistake. Aren't you conscious of something very strange,
+very insidious, close by us in this room?"
+
+"I am aware that you are frightening Mrs. Thresk," said Glynn roughly;
+and, indeed, standing by the table, with her white face and her bosom
+heaving under her hand, she looked the very embodiment of terror.
+Thresk turned at once to her. A look of solicitude made his gross face
+quite tender. He took her by the arm, and in a chiding, affectionate
+tone he said very gently:
+
+"You are not frightened, Linda, are you? Interested--yes, just as I
+am. But not frightened. There's nothing to be frightened at. We are
+not children."
+
+"Oh, Jim," she said, and she leaned upon his arm. He led her across to
+the sofa, and sat down beside her.
+
+"That's right. Now we are comfortable." But the last word was not
+completed. It seemed that it froze upon his lips. He stopped, looked
+for a second into space, and then, dropping his arm from about his
+wife's waist, he deliberately moved aside from her, and made a space
+between them.
+
+"Now we are in our proper places--the four of us," he said bitterly,
+
+"The three of us," Glynn corrected, as he walked round the table.
+"Where's the fourth?"
+
+And then there came to him this extraordinary answer given in the
+quietest voice imaginable.
+
+"Between my wife and me. Where should he be?"
+
+Glynn stared. There was no one in the room but Linda, Thresk, and
+himself--no one. But--but--it was the loneliness of the spot, and its
+silence, and its great distance from his world, no doubt, which
+troubled him. Thresk's manner, too, and his words were having their
+effect. That was all, Glynn declared stoutly to himself. But--but--he
+did not wonder that Linda had written so urgently for him to come to
+her. His back went cold, and the hair stirred upon his scalp.
+
+"Who is it, then?" he cried violently.
+
+Linda rose from the sofa, and took a quick step towards him.. Her eyes
+implored him to silence.
+
+"There is no one," she protested in a low voice.
+
+"No," cried Glynn loudly. "Let us understand what wild fancy he has!
+Who is the fourth?"
+
+Upon Thresk's face came a look of sullenness.
+
+"Who should he be?"
+
+"Who is he?" Glynn insisted.
+
+"Channing," said Thresk. "Mildmay Channing." He sat for a while,
+brooding with his head sunk upon his breast. And Glynn started back.
+Some vague recollection was stirring in his memory. There had been a
+story current amongst Linda's friends at the time of her marriage. She
+had been in love with Channing, desperately in love with him. The
+marriage with Thresk had been forced on her by her parents--yes, and
+by Thresk's persistency. It had been a civilised imitation of the Rape
+of the Sabine Women. That was how the story ran, Glynn remembered. He
+waited to hear more from James Thresk, and in a moment the words came,
+but in a thoroughly injured tone.
+
+"It's strange that you can't see either."
+
+"There is some one else, then, as blind as I am?" said Glynn.
+
+"There was. Yes, yes, the dog," replied Thresk, gazing into the fire.
+"You and the dog," he repeated uneasily, "you and the dog. But the dog
+saw in the end, Glynn, and so will you--even you."
+
+Linda turned quickly, but before she could speak, Glynn made a sign to
+her. He went over to her side. A glance at Thresk showed him that he
+was lost in his thoughts.
+
+"If you want me to help you, you must leave us alone," he said.
+
+She hesitated for a moment, and then swiftly crossed the room and went
+out at the door. Glynn, who had let his cigar go out, lit it again at
+the flame of one of the candles on the dining-table. Then he planted
+himself in front of Thresk.
+
+"You are terrifying your wife," he said. "You are frightening her to
+death."
+
+Thresk did not reply to the accusation directly. He smiled quietly at
+Glynn.
+
+"She sent for you."
+
+Glynn looked uncomfortable, and Thresk went on:
+
+"You haven't come from South Uist. You have come from London."
+
+"No," said Glynn.
+
+"From Melton, then. You came because Linda sent for you."
+
+"If it were so," stammered Glynn, "it would only be another proof that
+you are frightening her."
+
+Thresk shook his head.
+
+"It wasn't because Linda was afraid that she sent for you," he said
+stubbornly. "I know Linda. I'll tell you the truth," and he fixed his
+burning eyes on Glynn's face. "She sent for you because she hates
+being here with me."
+
+"Hates being with you!" cried Glynn, and Thresk nodded his head. Glynn
+could hardly even so believe that he had heard aright. "Why, you must
+be mad!" he protested. "Mad or blind. There's just one person of whom
+your wife is thinking, for whom she is caring, for whose health she is
+troubled. It has been evident to me ever since I have been in this
+house--in spite of her fears. Every time she looks at you her eyes are
+tender with solicitude. That one person is yourself."
+
+"No," said Thresk. "It's Channing."
+
+"But he's dead, man!" cried Glynn in exasperation. "You told me so
+yourself not half an hour ago. He is dead."
+
+"Yes," answered Thresk. "He's dead. That's where he beat me. You don't
+understand that?"
+
+"No, I don't," replied Glynn.
+
+He was speaking aggressively; he stood with his legs apart in an
+aggressive attitude. Thresk looked him over from head to foot and
+agreed.
+
+"No," he said, "and I don't see why you should. You are rather like
+me, comfortable and commonplace, and of the earth earthy. Before men
+of our gross stamp could believe and understand what I am going to
+tell you, they would have to reach--do you mind if I say a
+refinement?--by passing through the same fires which have tempered
+me."
+
+Glynn made no reply. He shifted his position so that the firelight
+might fall upon Thresk's face with its full strength. Thresk leaned
+forward with his hands upon his knees, and very quietly, though now
+and then a note of scorn rang in his voice, he told his story.
+
+"You tell me my wife cares for me. I reply that she would have cared,
+if Channing had not died. When I first met Linda she was engaged to
+him. You know that. She was devoted to him. You know that too. I knew
+it and I didn't mind. I wasn't afraid of Channing. A poor, feeble
+creature--heaps of opportunities, not one of them foreseen, not one of
+them grasped when it came his way. A grumbler, a bag of envy, a beggar
+for sympathy at any woman's lap! Why should I have worried my head
+about Channing? And I didn't. Linda's people were all for breaking off
+their engagement. After all, I was some good. I had made my way. I had
+roughed it in South America; and I had come home a rich man--not such
+a very easy thing, as the superior people who haven't the heart even
+to try to be rich men are inclined to think. Well, the engagement was
+broken off, Channing hadn't a penny to marry on, and nobody would give
+him a job. Look here!" And he suddenly swung round upon Glynn.
+
+"I gave Channing his chance. I knew he couldn't make any use of it. I
+wanted to prove he wasn't any good. So I put a bit of a railway in
+Chili into his hands, and he brought the thing to the edge of
+bankruptcy within twelve months. So the engagement was broken off.
+Linda clung to the fellow. I knew it, and I didn't mind. She didn't
+want to marry me. I knew it, and I didn't mind. Her parents broke her
+down to it. She sobbed through the night before we were married. I
+knew it, and I didn't mind. You think me a beast, of course," he
+added, with a look at Glynn. "But just consider the case from my point
+of view. Channing was no match for Linda. I was. I wanted time, that
+was all. Give me only time, and I knew that I could win her."
+
+Boastful as the words sounded, there was nothing aggressive in
+Thresk's voice. He was speaking with a quiet simplicity which robbed
+them quite of offence. He was unassumingly certain.
+
+"Why?" asked Glynn. "Why, given time, were you sure that you could win
+her?"
+
+"Because I wanted enough. That's my creed, Glynn. If you want enough,
+want with every thought, and nerve, and pulse, the thing you want
+comes along all right. There was the difference between Channing and
+me. He hadn't the heart to want enough. I wanted enough to go to
+school again. I set myself to learn the small attentions which mean so
+much to women. They weren't in my line naturally. I pay so little heed
+to things of that kind myself that it did not easily occur to me that
+women might think differently. But I learnt my lesson, and I got my
+reward. Just simple little precautions, like having a cloak ready for
+her, almost before she was aware that she was cold. And I would see a
+look of surprise on her face, and the surprise flush into a smile of
+pleasure. Oh, I was holding her, Glynn, I can tell you. I went about
+it so very warily," and Thresk laughed with a knowing air. "I didn't
+shut my door on Channing either. Not I! I wasn't going to make a
+martyr of him. I let him sidle in and out of the house, and I laughed.
+For I was holding her. Every day she came a step or two nearer to me."
+
+He broke off suddenly, and his voice, which had taken on a tender and
+wistful note, incongruous in so big a creature, rose in a gust of
+anger.
+
+"But he died! He died and caught her back again."
+
+Glynn raised his hands in despair.
+
+"That memory has long since faded," he argued, and Thresk burst out in
+a bitter laugh.
+
+"Memory," he cried, flinging himself into a chair. "You are one of the
+imaginative people after all, Glynn." And Glynn stared in round-eyed
+surprise. Here to him was conclusive proof that there was something
+seriously wrong with Thresk's mind. Never had Mr. Glynn been called
+imaginative before, and his soul revolted against the aspersion.
+"Yes," said Thresk, pointing an accusing finger. "Imaginative! I am
+one of the practical people. I don't worry about memories. Actual real
+things interest me--such as Channing's presence now--in this house."
+And he spoke suddenly, leaning forward with so burning a fire in his
+eyes and voice that Glynn, in spite of himself, looked nervously
+across his shoulder. He rose hastily from the sofa, and rather in
+order to speak than with any thought of what he was saying, he asked:
+
+"When did he die?"
+
+"Four months ago. I was ill at the time."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+The exclamation sprang from Glynn's lips before he could check it.
+Here to him was the explanation of Thresk's illusions. But he was
+sorry that he had not kept silent. For he saw Thresk staring angrily
+at him.
+
+"What did you mean by your 'Ah'?" Thresk asked roughly.
+
+"Merely that I had seen a line about your illness in a newspaper,"
+Glynn explained hastily.
+
+Thresk leaned back satisfied.
+
+"Yes," he resumed. "I broke down. I had had a hard life, you see, and
+I was paying for it. I am right enough now, however," and his voice
+rose in a challenge to Glynn to contradict him.
+
+Nothing was further from Glynn's thoughts.
+
+"Of course," he said quickly.
+
+"I saw Channing's death in the obituary column whilst I was lying in
+bed, and, to tell you the truth, I was relieved by it."
+
+"But I thought you said you didn't mind about Channing?" Glynn
+interrupted, and Thresk laughed with a little discomfort.
+
+"Well, perhaps I did mind a little more than I care to admit," Thresk
+confessed. "At all events, I felt relieved at his death. What a fool I
+was!" And he stopped for a moment as though he wondered now that his
+mind was so clear, at the delusion which had beset him.
+
+"I thought that it was all over with Channing. Oh, what a fool I was!
+Even after he came back and would sidle up to my bedside in his old
+fawning style, I couldn't bring myself to take him seriously, and I
+was only amused."
+
+"He came to your bedside!" exclaimed Glynn.
+
+"Yes," replied Thresk, and he laughed at the recollection. "He came
+with his humble smirk, and pottered about the room as if he were my
+nurse. I put out my tongue at him, and told him he was dead and done
+for, and that he had better not meddle with the bottles on my table.
+Yes, he amused me. What a fool I was! I thought no one else saw him.
+That was my first mistake. I thought he was helpless.... That was my
+second."
+
+Thresk got up from his chair, and, standing over the fireplace,
+knocked the ash off his cigar.
+
+"Do you remember a great Danish boar-hound I used to have?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," replied Glynn, puzzled by the sudden change of subject. "But
+what has the boar-hound to do with your story?"
+
+"A good deal," said Thresk. "I was very fond of that dog."
+
+"The dog was fond of you," said Glynn.
+
+"Yes. Remember that!" Thresk cried suddenly. "For it's true." Then he
+relapsed again into a quiet, level voice.
+
+"It took me some time to get well. I was moved up here. It was the one
+place where I wanted to be. But I wasn't used to sitting round and
+doing nothing. So the time of my convalescence hung pretty heavily,
+and, casting about for some way of amusing myself, I wondered whether
+I could teach the dog to see Channing as I saw him. I tried. Whenever
+I saw Channing come in at the door, I used to call the dog to my side
+and point Channing out to him with my finger as Channing moved about
+the room."
+
+Thresk sat down in a chair opposite to Glynn, and with a singular
+alertness began to act over again the scenes which had taken place in
+his sick room upstairs.
+
+"I used to say, 'Hst! Hst!' 'There! Do you see? By the window!' or if
+Channing moved towards Linda I would turn the dog's head and make his
+eyes follow him across the room. At first the dog saw nothing. Then he
+began to avoid me, to slink away with his tail between his legs, to
+growl. He was frightened. Yes, he was frightened!" And Thresk nodded
+his head in a quick, interested way.
+
+"He was frightened of you," cried Glynn, "and I don't wonder."
+
+For even to him there was something uncanny and impish in Thresk's
+quick movements and vivid gestures.
+
+"Wait a bit," said Thresk. "He was frightened, but not of me. He saw
+Channing. His hair bristled under my fingers as I pointed the fellow
+out. I had to keep one hand on his neck, you see, to keep him by me.
+He began to yelp in a queer, panicky way, and tremble--a man in a
+fever couldn't tremble and shake any more than that dog did. And then
+one day, when we were alone together, the dog and I and Channing--the
+dog sprang at my throat."
+
+"That's how you were wounded!" cried Glynn, leaping from his sofa. He
+stood staring in horror at Thresk. "I wonder the dog didn't kill you."
+
+"He very nearly did," said Thresk. "Oh, very nearly."
+
+"You had frightened him out of his wits."
+
+Thresk laughed contemptuously.
+
+"That's the obvious explanation, of course," he said. "But it's not
+the true one. I have been living amongst the subtleties of life. I
+know about things now. The dog sprang at me because--" He stopped and
+glanced uneasily about the room. When he raised his face again, there
+was a look upon it which Glynn had not seen there before--a look of
+sudden terror. He leaned forward that he might be the nearer to Glynn,
+and his voice sank to a whisper--"well, because Channing set him on to
+me."
+
+It was no doubt less the statement itself than the crafty look which
+accompanied it, and the whisper which uttered it, that shocked Glynn.
+But he was shocked. There came upon him--yes, even upon him, the sane,
+prosaic Glynn--a sudden doubt whether, after all, Thresk was mad. It
+occurred to him as a possibility that Thresk was speaking the mere,
+bare truth. Suppose that it were the truth! Suppose that Channing were
+here! In this room! Glynn felt the flesh creep upon his bones.
+
+"Ah, you are beginning to understand," said Thresk, watching his
+companion. "You are beginning to get frightened, too." And he nodded
+his head in comprehension. "I used not to know what fear meant. But I
+knew the meaning well enough as soon as I had guessed why the dog
+sprang at my throat. For I realised my helplessness."
+
+Throughout their conversation Glynn had been perpetually puzzled by
+something unexpected in Thresk's conclusions. He followed his
+reasoning up to a point, and then came a word which left him at a
+loss. Thresk's fear he understood. But why the sense of helplessness?
+And he asked for an explanation.
+
+"Because I had no weapons to fight Channing with," Thresk replied. "I
+could cope with the living man and win every time. But against the
+dead man I was helpless. I couldn't hurt him. I couldn't even
+come to grips with him. I had just to sit by and make room. And that's
+what I have been doing ever since. I have been sitting by and
+watching--without a single resource, without a single opportunity of a
+counterstroke. Oh, I had my time--when Channing was alive. But upon my
+word, he has the best of it. Here I sit without raising a hand while
+he recaptures Linda."
+
+"There you are wrong," cried Glynn, seizing gladly, in the midst of
+these subtleties, upon some fact of which he felt sure. "Your wife is
+yours. There has been no recapture. Besides, she doesn't believe that
+Channing is here."
+
+Thresk laughed.
+
+"Do you think she would tell me if she did?" he asked. "No."
+
+He rose from his chair and, walking to the window, thrust back the
+curtains and looked out. So he stood for the space of a minute. Then
+he came back and, looking fixedly at Glynn, said with an air of
+extraordinary cunning:
+
+"But I have a plan. Yes, I have a plan. I shall get on level terms
+with Mr. Channing again one of these fine days, and then I'll prove to
+him for a second time which of us two is the better man."
+
+He made a sign to Glynn, and looked towards the door. It was already
+opening. He advanced to it as Linda came into the room.
+
+"You have come back, Linda! I have been talking to Glynn at such a
+rate that he hasn't been able to get a word in edgeways," he said,
+with a swift change to a gaiety of voice and manner. "However, I'll
+show him a good day's sport to-morrow, Linda. We will shoot the bog,
+and perhaps you'll come out with the luncheon to the sand-hills?"
+
+Linda Thresk smiled.
+
+"Of course I will," she said. She showed to Glynn a face of gratitude.
+"It has done you good, Jim, to have a man to talk to," and she laid a
+hand upon her husband's arm and laughed quite happily. Glynn turned
+his back upon them and walked up to the window, leaving them standing
+side by side in the firelight. Outside, the moon shone from a clear
+sky upon the pools and the reeds of the marsh and the low white
+sand-hills, chequered with their tufts of grass. But upon the sea
+beyond, a white mist lay thick and low.
+
+"There's a sea-fog," said Glynn; and Thresk, at the fire, suddenly
+lifted his head, and looked towards the window with a strange
+intensity. One might have thought that a sea-fog was a strange,
+unusual thing among the Outer Islands.
+
+"Watch it!" he said, and there was a vibration in his voice which
+matched the intensity of his look. "You will see it suddenly creep
+through the gaps in the sand-hills and pass over the marsh like an
+army that obeys a command. I have watched it by the hour, time and
+time again. It gathers on the level of the sea and waits and waits
+until it seems that the word is given. Then it comes swirling through
+the gaps of the sand-hills and eats up the marsh in a minute."
+
+Even as he spoke Glynn cried out:
+
+"That's extraordinary!"
+
+The fog had crept out through the gaps. Only the summits of the
+sand-hills rose in the moonlight like little peaks above clouds; and
+over the marsh the fog burst like cannon smoke and lay curling and
+writhing up to the very reeds twenty yards from the house. The sapling
+alone stood high above it, like the mast of a wreck in the sea.
+
+"How high is it?" asked Thresk.
+
+"Breast high," replied Glynn.
+
+"Only breast high," said Thresk, and there seemed to be a note of
+disappointment in his voice. However, in the next moment he shook it
+off. "The fog will be gone before morning," he said. "I'll go and tell
+Donald to bring the dogs round at nine to-morrow, and have your guns
+ready. Nine is not too early for you, I suppose?"
+
+"Not a bit," said Glynn; and Thresk, going up to the door which led
+from the house, opened it, went out, and closed it again behind him.
+
+Glynn turned at once towards Linda Thresk. But she held up a warning
+hand, and waited for the outer door to slam. No sound, however, broke
+the silence. Glynn went to the inner door and opened it. A bank of
+white fog, upon which he saw his own shadow most brightly limned by
+the light behind him, filled the outer passage and crept by him into
+the room. Glynn closed the latch quickly.
+
+"He has left the outer door open," he said, and, coming back into the
+room he stood beside the fire looking down into Linda's face.
+
+"He has been talking to me," said Glynn.
+
+Linda looked at him curiously.
+
+"How much did he tell you?"
+
+"There can be little he left unsaid. He told me of the dog, of
+Channing's death----"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Of Channing's return."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"And of you."
+
+With each sentence Glynn's embarrassment had increased. Linda,
+however, held him to his story.
+
+"What did he say of me?"
+
+"That but for Channing's death he would have held you. That since
+Channing died--and came back--he had lost you."
+
+Linda nodded her head. Nothing in Glynn's words surprised her--that
+was clear. It was a story already familiar to her which he was
+repeating.
+
+"Is that all?" she said.
+
+"I think so. Yes," replied Glynn, glad to get the business over. Yet
+he had omitted the most important part of Thresk's confession--the one
+part which Linda did not already know. He omitted it because he had
+forgotten it. There was something else which he had in his mind to
+say.
+
+"When Thresk told me that Channing had won you back, I ventured to say
+that no one watching you and Thresk, even with the most indifferent
+eyes, could doubt that it was always and only of him that you were
+thinking."
+
+"Thank you," said Linda, quietly. "That is true."
+
+"And now," said Glynn, "I want, in my turn, to ask you a question. I
+have been a little curious. I want, too, to do what I can. Therefore,
+I ask you, why did you send, for me? What is it that you think I can
+do? That other friends of yours can't?"
+
+A slight colour came into Linda's cheeks; and for a moment she lowered
+her eyes. She spoke with an accent of apology.
+
+"It is quite true that there are friends whom I see more constantly
+than you, Mr. Glynn, and upon whom I have, perhaps, greater claims."
+
+"Oh, I did not mean you to think that I was reluctant to come," Glynn
+exclaimed, and Linda smiled, lifting her eyes to his.
+
+"No," she said. "I remembered your kindness. It was that recollection
+which helped me to appeal to you," and she resumed her explanation as
+though he had never interrupted her.
+
+"Nor was there any particular thing which I thought you could do.
+But--well, here's the truth--I have been living in terror. This house
+has become a house of terror. I am frightened, and I have come almost
+to believe----" and she looked about her with a shiver of her
+shoulders, sinking her voice to a whisper as she spoke--"that Jim was
+right--that _he is_ here after all."
+
+And Glynn recoiled. Just for a moment the same fancy had occurred to
+him.
+
+"You don't believe that--really!" he cried.
+
+"No--no," she answered. "Once I think calmly. But it is so difficult
+to think calmly and reasonably here. Oh----" and she threw up her arms
+suddenly, and her whole face and eyes were alight with terror--"the
+very air is to me heavy with fear in this house. It is Jim's quiet
+certainty."
+
+"Yes, that's it!" exclaimed Glynn, catching eagerly at that
+explanation because it absolved him to his own common sense for the
+inexplicable fear which he had felt invade himself. "Yes, Jim's quiet,
+certain, commonplace way in which he speaks of Channing's presence
+here. That's what makes his illusion so convincing."
+
+"Well, I thought that if I could get you here, you who----" and she
+hesitated in order to make her description polite--"are not afflicted
+by fancies, who are pleasantly sensible"--thus did Linda express her
+faith that Mr. Glynn was of the earth, earthy--"I myself should
+lose my terror, and Jim, too, might lose his illusion. But now," she
+looked at him keenly, "I think that Jim is affecting you--that you,
+too--yes"--she sprang up suddenly and stood before him, with her dark,
+terror-haunted eyes fixed upon him--"that you, too, believe Mildmay
+Channing is here."
+
+"No," he protested violently--too violently unless the accusation were
+true.
+
+"Yes," she repeated, nodding her head quietly. "You, too, believe that
+Mildmay Channing is here."
+
+And before her horror-stricken face the protest which was on the tip
+of his tongue remained unuttered. His eyes sought the floor. With a
+sudden movement of despair Linda turned aside. Even the earthliness of
+Mr. Glynn had brought her no comfort or security. He had fallen under
+the spell, as she had done. It seemed that they had no more words to
+speak to one another. They stood and waited helplessly until Thresk
+should return.
+
+But that return was delayed.
+
+"He has been a long time speaking to the keeper," said Linda
+listlessly, and rather to break a silence which was becoming
+intolerable, than with any intention in the words. But they struck a
+chord of terror in Glynn's thoughts. He walked quickly to the window,
+and hastily tore the curtain aside.
+
+The flurry of his movements aroused Linda's attention. She followed
+him with her eyes. She saw him curve his hands about his forehead and
+press his face against the pane, even as Thresk had done an hour
+before. She started forward from the fireplace and Glynn swung round
+with his arms extended, barring the window. His face was white, his
+lips shook. The one important statement of Thresk's he now recalled.
+
+"Don't look!" he cried, and as he spoke, Linda pushed past him. She
+flung up the window. Outside the fog curled and smoked upon the marsh
+breast high. The moonlight played upon it; above it the air was clear
+and pure, and in the sky stars shone faintly. Above the mist the bare
+sapling stood like a pointing finger, and halfway between the sapling
+and the house Thresk's head and shoulders showed plain to see. But
+they were turned away from the house.
+
+"Jim! Jim!" cried Linda, shaking the window-frame with her hand. Her
+voice rang loudly out on the still air. But Thresk never so much as
+turned his head. He moved slowly towards the sapling, feeling the
+unstable ground beneath him with his feet.
+
+"Jim! Jim!" again she cried. And behind her she heard a strange,
+unsteady whispering voice.
+
+"'On equal terms!' That's what he said--I did not understand. He said,
+'On equal terms.'"
+
+And even as Glynn spoke, both Linda and he saw Thresk throw up his
+arms and sink suddenly beneath the bog. Linda ran to the door,
+stumbling as she ran, and with a queer, sobbing noise in her throat.
+
+Glynn caught her by the arm.
+
+"It is of no use. You know. Round the sapling--there is no chance of
+rescue. It is my fault, I should have understood. He had no fear of
+Channing--if only he could meet him on equal terms."
+
+Linda stared at Glynn. For a little while the meaning of the words did
+not sink into her mind.
+
+"He said that!" she cried. "And you did not tell me." She crept back
+to the fireplace and cowered in front of it, shivering.
+
+"But he said he would come back to me," she said in the voice of a
+child who has been deceived. "Yes, Jim said he would come back to me."
+
+Of course it was a chance, accident, coincidence, a breath of
+wind--call it what you will, except what Linda Thresk and Glynn called
+it. But even as she uttered her complaint, "He said he would come back
+to me," the latch of the door clicked loudly. There was a rush of cold
+air into the room. The door swung slowly inwards and stood wide open.
+
+Linda sprang to her feet. Both she and Glynn turned to the open door.
+The white fog billowed into the room. Glynn felt the hair stir and
+move upon his scalp. He stood transfixed. Was it possible? he asked
+himself. Had Thresk indeed come back to fight for Linda once more, and
+to fight now as he had fought the first time--on equal terms? He stood
+expecting the white fog to shape itself into the likeness of a man.
+And then he heard a wild scream of laughter behind him. He turned in
+time to catch Linda as she fell.
+
+
+
+
+
+                            THE BROWN BOOK
+
+
+
+
+                            THE BROWN BOOK
+
+
+A few friends of Murgatroyd, the physician, sat about his
+dinner-table, discussing that perplexing question, "How much of the
+truth should a doctor tell?" In the middle of the discussion a quiet
+voice spoke up from a corner, and all turned towards a middle-aged man
+of European reputation who sat fingering the stem of his wine-glass.
+
+"It is dangerous to lay down a general rule," said Sir James Kelsey.
+"But I should say, if you want to keep a secret tell half the truth.
+People accept it and pass on to their own affairs." He hesitated for a
+moment and continued, rather slowly: "I am thinking of a tremendous
+secret which has been kept that way for a good number of years. I call
+it the story of the Brown Book."
+
+At once the discussion ceased. It was so seldom that Kelsey indulged
+in anything like a confidence. Now on this one evening amongst his
+brethren it seemed that he was in the mood to talk.
+
+"All of you will remember the name of John Rymer, and some of you
+his meteoric career and the tragic circumstances of his death. There
+was no doubt that he was a master of surgery. Yet at the age of
+thirty-seven, at eleven o'clock on a July morning, after performing
+three operations with all his accustomed skill, he walked into his
+consulting-room and blew his brains out."
+
+Here and there a voice was raised.
+
+"Yes, I remember."
+
+"It was overwork, I think."
+
+Sir James Kelsey smiled.
+
+"Exactly," he said. "That's the half-truth. Overwork there was. I am
+familiar with the details of the inquest, for I married John Rymer's
+niece. It was proved, for instance, that during the last week of his
+life he had been curtailing his operations and spending more time over
+his dressings--a definite policy of his when the strain became too
+heavy. Moreover, there was some mention made of a sudden reasonless
+fear which had attacked him, a fear that his practice was dropping
+away, and that he would be left with a wife and young family to
+support, and no means to do it with. Well, we all know round this
+table that that particular terror is one of the commonest results of
+overwork. So overwork there undoubtedly was. A spell of tropical heat
+no doubt, too, had its effect. Anyway, here was enough for a quite
+acceptable verdict, and so the world thought. The usual platitudes
+about the tension of modern life made their appearance. The public
+read, accepted, and passed on to its own affairs. But behind John
+Rymer's death there lay a tremendous secret."
+
+Once more he hesitated. Then he took a cigar from the box which his
+host held out to him, and said, in a kind of rush: "No one could make
+any use of it now. For there's no longer any evidence but my word, and
+I should deny it. It's overwork John Rymer died of. Let us not forget
+it."
+
+And then he told the story of the Brown Book. At the end of it his
+cigar was still alight, for he smoked while he talked. But it was the
+only cigar alight in that room.
+
+
+I was twenty-five, and I had bought a practice at Chailsey, a village
+deep amongst tall, dark trees in the very heart of the Berkshire
+Downs. You'll hardly find a place more pastoral and remote in all that
+country of remote villages. But a couple of training stables were
+established there, and, what with kicks and jumping accidents, there
+was a good deal of work at times. I quite liked the spot, and I liked
+it still more when Bradley Rymer and his daughter took the big house
+on the slope of the Down above the village.
+
+John Rymer, the surgeon, had then been dead eight months, and Bradley
+Rymer was his brother, a shortish, broad man of forty-five with a big,
+pleasant face. Gossip had it that he had been very poor, so poor,
+indeed, that his daughter had made her living at a typewriting
+machine. There was no doubt, however, that he was rich now. "Canada's
+the country," he used to say. "I made my money out of Canadian land,"
+and when he fell into conversation of a morning with any of the
+stable-boys on the gallops he was always urging them to better
+themselves in that country.
+
+His daughter Violet--a good many of you know her as my wife--had
+little of his fore-gathering disposition. She was an extremely pretty
+girl of nineteen, with eyes which matched her name. But she held
+herself apart. She seldom came down into the village, and even when
+one met her in her own house there was a constraint in her manner and
+a look upon her face which I was at a loss to understand. It wasn't
+merely trouble. It was a kind of perplexity, as though she did not
+know where to turn. For the rest, the couple did not entertain.
+
+"We have had hard lives," Bradley Rymer said to me one rare evening
+when I dined there, "and a year or two of quiet is what we want beyond
+everything." And never did man speak a truer word.
+
+Bradley Rymer had lived for three months at Chailsey when Queen
+Victoria died, and all the great kings and the little kings flocked
+from Europe to her funeral. We at Chailsey--like the rest of Great
+Britain--determined to set up a memorial, and a committee of five was
+appointed to determine the form it was to take.
+
+"It must be a drinking-fountain," said I.
+
+"No; a stained-glass window," the vicar interrupted; and there we
+were, Grayly the trainer and I on one side, the vicar and Hollams the
+grocer on the other. The fifth member of the committee was absent.
+
+"Well, I shall go up and see Mr. Bradley Rymer this afternoon," I
+said. "He has the casting vote."
+
+"You may do just as you please," said the vicar, with some
+acerbity--Bradley Rymer did not go to church; "but until Mr. Bradley
+Rymer condescends to be present at our committee meetings, I shall pay
+not the slightest attention to his opinion."
+
+Thereupon the committee broke up. I had a good many visits to pay to
+patients, and it was close upon eight o'clock when I set out upon my
+walk, and darker than it usually is at that time of the year. Bradley
+Rymer, I knew, did not dine until late, and I hoped to catch him just
+before he and Violet sat down.
+
+The house stood a good half-mile from the village, even by the short
+cut which I took up the side of the Down. It was a big, square
+Georgian house with rows of high, flat windows; a large garden of
+lawns and flowers and beech trees surrounded it; and the whole
+property was enclosed in high red-brick walls. I was kept for a little
+while at the great wrought-iron gates. That always happened. You rang
+the big bell, the corner of a white curtain was cautiously lifted in
+the window of the lodge, you were inspected, and at last the gates
+swung open. Berkshire people were slow in those days, and, like most
+country-folk, curious. I walked up the drive to the house. The front
+door stood open. I rang the bell. A big mastiff came out from the hall
+and sniffed at me. But we were good friends, and he retired again to
+the corner. Finally a maid-servant appeared. It was perhaps a curious
+fact that Bradley Rymer had no man-servant living in the house.
+
+"A butler is a spy you set upon yourself," he once said to me. Another
+case of the half-truth, you see. I accepted it, and passed on to my
+own affairs. So when only a maid answered the bell I was not
+surprised.
+
+"Can I see Mr. Rymer?" I asked.
+
+"He is in the library, I think, sir," she answered.
+
+"Very well. I know my way." And, putting down my hat, I climbed the
+stairs.
+
+The library was a long, comfortably-furnished room upon the first
+floor, lighted by a row of windows upon one side and lined to the
+ceiling with bookshelves upon the other. Rymer had a wonderful
+collection of books bound in vellum and calf, but he had bought the
+lot at a sale, and I don't think he ever read one of them. However, he
+liked the room, and it was the one which he usually used.
+
+I opened the door and went into the library. But the servant had been
+mistaken. The library was empty. I waited, however, and while I waited
+a noise in the next room attracted my attention. I don't think that I
+was conscious of it at first, for when I did notice it, It seemed to
+me that the room had perceptibly darkened. It was so familiar a noise,
+too, that one wouldn't notice it unless there were some special
+unsuitability of time and place to provoke one's curiosity. For
+a busy man walks through life to the sound of it. It was the sharp
+tack-tack-tack of a typewriting machine, with the little clang and
+break when the end of a line is reached. I listened to it first of all
+surprised at the relentless rapidity with which the machine was
+worked, and then, wondering why at this hour, in this house of leisure
+and wealth, so tremendous an assiduity was being employed. Then in a
+rush the gossip of the village came back to me. Violet Rymer, in the
+days of her father's poverty, had made her living in a typewriting
+office. Yes; but why should she continue so monotonous a practice now?
+I couldn't think that she, if it were she, was keeping up her
+proficiency for amusement. You can always tell whether the typist is
+interested or whether she is working against time from the sound of
+the machine. In the former case it becomes alive, one is conscious of
+a personality; in the latter one thinks of an absent-minded clergyman
+gabbling through the Lessons in church.
+
+Well, it was just that last note which was being struck. The machine
+was racing to the end of a wearisome task, and, since already Violet
+Rymer was very much to me, I thought with a real discomfort of her
+bending over the keys. Moreover, I seemed to be stumbling upon a
+secret which I was not meant to know. Was this tack-tack-tacking the
+explanation of why Chailsey saw so little of her?
+
+While I was asking myself this question a door opened and shut
+violently. It was the door into that next room, and as it was banged
+the typewriting ceased altogether. There was a moment's pause, and
+then a voice was raised in passion. It was Bradley Rymer's voice, but
+I hardly recognised it.
+
+"What is it now?" he cried, bitterly. "A novel, a volume of sermons, a
+pamphlet? Am I never to see you, Violet? You remain hidden in this
+room, breaking your back for sixpence an hour. Why, I bought this
+house for you. My one aim was to get rich for you." And the girl
+interrupted him with an agonised cry.
+
+"Oh, don't say that, father!"
+
+"But I do say it." And suddenly his voice softened. "It's true, Vi.
+You know it's true. The one thing I hated was that you should lose all
+the fun of your youth at that grinding work. And now you're still at
+it. Why? Why?"
+
+And through the door came her voice, in a passionate, broken reply:
+
+"Because--because--I feel--that not even the clothes I am wearing
+really belong to me."
+
+The dispute suddenly ceased. A third voice spoke so low that I could
+not hear the words, but I heard Bradley Rymer's startled reply:
+
+"In the library?"
+
+I had just time to get away into the farthest window before he entered
+the room. It was almost dark now, and he peered about in search of me.
+I moved from the window towards him.
+
+"Oh, you are there, Kelsey," he said, suavely. "We'll have a light.
+It's so confoundedly dark that I can hardly see you."
+
+He rang a bell and a lamp was brought, which he took from the hands of
+the servant and set down on the corner of his writing-table between
+us.
+
+"How long have you been here?" he asked, and--I can't account for
+it--he stood facing me in his dinner-jacket, with his usual pleasant,
+friendly smile; but I suddenly became quite sure that he was
+dangerous. Yes, that's the word--dangerous.
+
+"Just a minute or so," I answered, as indifferently as I could, and
+then, with a strangely swift movement, he crossed the room again to
+the fireplace and rang the bell. "Will you tell Miss Violet that Dr.
+Kelsey is here?" he said to the parlourmaid, as soon as she appeared.
+"You will find her in the next room."
+
+He came softly back and seated himself at the writing-table.
+
+"And why do you want to see me?" he asked, in a queer voice.
+
+I spoke about the memorial, and he answered at random. He was
+listening, but he was not listening to me. In a sort of abstraction he
+drew open a drawer in his writing-table on a level with his hand, and
+every now and then he shut it, and every now and then he drew it open
+again.
+
+I cannot hope to make you realise the uncanny feeling of discomfort
+which crept over me. Most of us at this table, I imagine, have some
+knowledge of photography and its processes. We have placed a gaslight
+paper in the developing-dish, and seen the face of our portrait flash
+out in a second on the white surface. I can never get accustomed to
+it. I can never quite look upon it as not a miracle. Well, just that
+miracle seemed to me to be happening now. Bradley Rymer suddenly
+became visible to me, a rogue, a murderous rogue, and I watched with
+an increasing fear that drawer in his table. I waited for his hand to
+slip into it.
+
+But while I waited the door of the next room was opened, and Rymer and
+I both ceased to talk. We pretended no more. We listened, and,
+_although we heard voices, we could not distinguish words_. Both
+Violet and the servant were speaking in their ordinary tones, and
+Rymer and I were now on the far side of the room. An expression of
+immense relief shone upon Bradley Rymer's face for a moment, and he
+rose up with the smile and the friendliness I knew.
+
+"Will you stay to dinner?" he asked. "Do!" But I dared not. I should
+have betrayed the trouble I was in. I made a lame excuse and left the
+house.
+
+It was now quite dark, and in the cool night air I began, before I had
+reached the lodge, to wonder whether I had not been misled altogether
+by some hallucination. Bradley Rymer brought to my memory the tragic
+case of his brother, and I asked myself for a moment if the long and
+late hours of a country practice were unbalancing me. But I looked
+back towards the house as I took the track over the turf, and the
+scene through which I had passed returned too vividly to leave me in
+any doubt. I could see Bradley Rymer clearly as he opened and shut the
+drawer of his writing-table. I could hear his voice raised in bitter
+reproach to Violet and the click of the typewriting machine. No, I had
+not been dreaming.
+
+I had walked about a hundred yards down the slope when a sharp whistle
+of two notes sounded a little way off upon my right, and almost before
+I had stopped a man sprang from the grass at my very feet with a
+guttural cry like a man awakened from a doze. Had I taken another step
+I should have trodden upon him. The next moment the light from an
+electric torch flashed upon my face, blinding me. I stepped back and
+put up my hand to my eyes. But even while I raised my hand the button
+of the torch was released and the light went out. I stood for a moment
+in utter blackness, then dimly I became aware of some one moving away
+from in front of me.
+
+"What do you want?" I cried.
+
+"Nothing," was the word spoken in answer.
+
+I should have put the fellow down for one of the gipsies who infest
+those Downs in the summer, and thought no more about him, but for one
+reason. He had spoken with a pronounced German accent. Besides, there
+was the warning whistle, the flash of the torch. I could not resist
+the conviction that Bradley Rymer's house was being watched.
+
+I walked on without quickening my pace, for perhaps a hundred yards.
+Then I ran, and as fast as I could, down to the village. I did not
+stop to reason things out. I was in a panic. Violet was in that house,
+and it was being watched by strangers. We had one policeman in the
+village, and he not the brainiest of men. I got out my bicycle and
+rode fourteen miles, walking up the hills and coasting down them until
+I reached the town of Reading. I rode to the house of the Chief
+Constable, whom I happened to know.
+
+"Is Captain Bowyer in?" I asked of the servant.
+
+"No, sir; he's dining out to-night."
+
+"In the town?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+I was white with dust and wet through with sweat. The girl looked me
+over and said:
+
+"I have orders to telephone for him if he is wanted."
+
+"He is," I replied, and she went off to the telephone at once.
+
+I began to cool down in more ways than one while I waited. It seemed
+to me very likely that I had come upon a fool's errand. After all,
+what had I got to go upon but a German accent, a low, sharp whistle,
+and an electric torch? I waited about half an hour before Bowyer came
+in. He was a big man, with a strong face and a fair moustache,
+capable, but not imaginative; and I began my story with a good deal of
+diffidence. But I had not got far before his face became serious,
+though he said not a word until I had done.
+
+"Bradley Rymer's house," he then remarked. "I know it." He went out
+into the passage, and I heard his voice at the telephone. He came back
+in a moment.
+
+"I have sent for some men," he said, "and a car. Will you wait here
+while I change?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+I glanced at the clock. For now that he took the affair seriously all
+my fears had returned.
+
+"What time did you leave the house?" he asked.
+
+"Nine."
+
+"And it's now eleven. Yes, we must hurry. Bradley Rymer's house! So
+that's where they are."
+
+He hurried away. But before he had changed his clothes a great touring
+motor-car whirred and stopped in front of the door. When we went out
+on to the steps of the house there were four constables waiting. We
+climbed into the car, and the hilly road to Streatley, which had taken
+me so long and painful a time to traverse, now rose and fell beneath
+the broad wheels like the waves of a sea. At Streatley we turned
+uphill along the Aldworth Road, and felt the fresh wind of the
+downland upon our faces. Then for the first time upon the journey I
+spoke.
+
+"You know these men?" I asked of Captain Bowyer.
+
+"I know of them," he answered, and he bent forwards to me. "With all
+these kings and emperors in London for the funeral, of course a great
+many precautions were taken on the Continent. All the known Anarchists
+were marked down; most of them on some excuse or another were
+arrested. But three slipped through the net and reached England."
+
+"But they would be in London," I urged.
+
+"So you would think. We were warned to-day, however, that they had
+been traced into Berkshire and there lost sight of."
+
+A hundred questions rose to my lips, but I did not put them. We were
+all in the dark together.
+
+"That's the house," I said at length, and Captain Bowyer touched the
+chauffeur on the shoulder.
+
+"We'll stop, then, by the road."
+
+Very quietly we got out of the car and crept up the hill. The night
+was dark; only here and there in a chink of the clouds a star shone
+feebly. Down in the village a dog barked and the wind whistled amongst
+the grasses under our feet. We met no one. The lodge at the gates was
+dark; we could not see the house itself, but a glare striking upon the
+higher branches of the trees in the garden showed that a room was
+brightly lit.
+
+"Do you know which room that is?" Bowyer asked of me in a whisper.
+
+"The library."
+
+We spread out then and made a circuit of the garden wall. There was no
+one any longer watching, and we heard no whistle.
+
+"They have gone," I said to Bowyer.
+
+"Or they are inside," he replied, and as he spoke we heard feet
+brushing upon the grass and a constable loomed up in front of us.
+
+"This way, sir," he whispered. "They are inside."
+
+We followed him round to the back of the garden. Just about the middle
+of that back wall the men stood in a cluster. We joined them, and saw
+that an upright ladder rose to the parapet. On the other side of the
+wall a thick coppice of trees grew, dark and high. Without a word, one
+after another we mounted the ladder and let ourselves down by the
+trees into the garden. A few paces took us to the edge of the coppice,
+and the house stood in the open before us. Standing in the shadow of
+the branches, we looked up. The house was in complete darkness but for
+the long row of library windows upon the first floor. In these,
+however, the curtains were not drawn, and the light blazed out upon
+the green foliage. There was no sound, no sign of any disorder. Once
+more I began to think that I had brought Bowyer and his men here upon
+a fool's errand. I said as much to him in a whisper.
+
+"But the ladder?" he answered, "my men found it there." And even while
+he spoke there appeared at one of these windows a stranger. It was as
+much as I could do in that awful moment to withhold a cry, I gripped
+Bowyer's arm with so much violence that he could show me the bruises
+of my fingers a week afterwards. But he stood like a rock now.
+
+"Is that Rymer?"
+
+"No. I have never seen him in my life before."
+
+He was a dark man, and his hair and moustache were turning grey. He
+had the look of a foreigner, and he lounged at the window with as much
+assurance as if he owned the place. Then he turned his face towards
+the room with a smile, and, as if in obedience to an order, carelessly
+drew down the blinds.
+
+They were in the house, then--these men who had slipped through the
+net of the Continental police; more, they were masters in the house;
+and there was no sound. They were in peaceful possession. My heart
+sank within me when I thought of Violet Rymer and her father. What had
+become of them? In what plight were they?
+
+Bowyer made a sign, and, stepping carefully on the turf border and
+keeping within the shadow of the trees, we crept round to the back of
+the house. One of the party ran swiftly and silently across a gravel
+path to the house-wall and followed it for a little way. Then as
+swiftly he came back.
+
+"Yes, there's a window open," he said. We crossed to it. It yawned
+upon black emptiness. We listened; not a sound reached us.
+
+"What does it give on to?" asked Bowyer.
+
+"A passage. At the end of the passage there's a swing door. Beyond the
+swing door the hall."
+
+We climbed in through the window.
+
+"There should be a mastiff in the hall," I said.
+
+"Oh!" and Bowyer came to a stop. "Do you think Rymer expected these
+men?" he asked. I had begun to ask myself that question already. It
+was clear the dog had not given any alarm. But we found out the reason
+when we crept into the hall. He was lying dead upon the stone floor,
+with a piece of meat at his side.
+
+"Quick!" whispered Bowyer, and I led the way up the great staircase.
+At the head of it at last we heard voices, and stopped, holding our
+breath. A few words spoken in a foreign accent detached themselves
+from the general murmur.
+
+"Where is it? You won't say! Very well, then!" A muffled groan
+followed the words, and once more the voice spoke. "Wait, Adolf! He
+gives in. We shall know now," and as the voice continued, some one, it
+was clear, between each question asked, answered with a sign, a shake
+of the head, or a nod. "It is in the bookcase? Yes. Behind the books?
+Good. There? No. To the right? Yes. Higher? Yes. On that shelf? Good.
+Search well, Adolf!" And with that Bowyer burst into the room with his
+men behind him. He held a revolver in his hand.
+
+"I shall shoot the first man who moves," he said; and no one did move.
+They stood like wax figures moulded in an attitude for ever. Imagine,
+if you can, the scene which confronted me! On the library ladder, with
+a hand thrust behind the books on one of the highest shelves, was
+mounted one of the three foreigners. A second--he whom we had seen at
+the window--stood over a chair into which Bradley Rymer was strapped
+with a gag over his mouth. The third supported Violet. She was
+standing in the middle of the room, with her hands tied behind her and
+a rope in a noose about her neck. The end of the rope had been passed
+through a big ring in the ceiling which had once carried a lamp. I
+sprang towards her, cast off the noose, and she fainted there and then
+in my arms.
+
+At the back of the bookshelf we found a slim little book of brown
+morocco with a broken lock.
+
+
+At this point in Sir James Kelsey's story Dr. Murgatroyd leaned
+forward and interrupted.
+
+"John Rymer's private case-book," he said.
+
+"Exactly," replied Kelsey, "and also Bradley Rymer's boom in Canadian
+land."
+
+There was a quick stir about that table, and then a moment of
+uncomfortable silence. At last one spoke the thought in the minds of
+all.
+
+"Blackmail!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was hardly a man in the room who had not some record of a case
+locked away in a private drawer which was worth a fortune of gold, and
+each one began to think of the security of his locks.
+
+"But where do your foreign revolutionaries come in?" asked Murgatroyd,
+and Kelsey took up his tale again.
+
+"Bowyer and I went through that brown book together in my house, after
+the prisoners had been sent off. For a long time we could find no
+explanation. But right at the end of the book there was a case which
+puzzled me. A Mr. Johnson had entered Rymer's nursing-home on June
+17th of the year before at five o'clock in the morning, a strange time
+to arrive. But there it was, noted down with every other particular of
+his case. Three days later Mr. Johnson was operated on for cancer of
+the throat. The operation was remarkably successful, and the patient
+left the home cured seven weeks later. I think it was the unusual time
+of Mr. Johnson's arrival which first directed my suspicions; and the
+more I thought of them the more credible they became. I had lighted a
+fire in the sitting-room, for the morning had come, and it was chilly.
+I said to Bowyer:
+
+"'Just wait a moment here. I keep a file of _The Times_,' and I went
+upstairs, blessing the methodical instinct which had made me for so
+long keep in due order this record of events. I brought down the file
+of June of the year before, and, turning over the pages, I found under
+the date of June 14th the official paragraph of which I was in search.
+I put it under Bowyer's eyes. He read it through and sprang to his
+feet with a cry. The paragraph ran like this. I can remember every
+word of it. I am inventing a name for the country, that's all, instead
+of giving you the real one:
+
+"'The Crown Prince of Galicia left the capital yesterday for his
+annual visit to his shooting-box in the Tyrol, where he will remain
+for two months. This news effectually dispels the rumours that His
+Royal Highness's recent indisposition was due to a malignant growth in
+the throat.'
+
+"Underneath this paragraph there was an editorial note:
+
+"'The importance of this news cannot be overrated. For by the
+constitution of Galicia no one suffering from or tainted by any
+malignant disease can ascend the throne.'
+
+"Identify now Rymer's Mr. Johnson with the Crown Prince of Galicia,
+and not only Bradley Rymer's fortune but the attack upon his house by
+the revolutionaries was explained, for whether they meant to use the
+Brown Book for blackmail as Bradley Rymer had done, or to upset a
+monarchy, it would be of an inestimable value to them.
+
+"'What are we to do?' asked Bowyer.
+
+"'What John Rymer's executors would have done if the book had not been
+stolen,' I answered, balancing it above the fire.
+
+"He hesitated. The official mind said 'No.' Then he realised the
+stupendous character of the secret. He burst through forms and rules.
+
+"'Yes, by Heaven,' he cried, 'destroy it!' And we sat there till the
+last sheet blackened and curled up in the flames.
+
+"I had not a doubt as to what had happened. I took the half-truth
+which the public knew and it fitted like a piece of a Chinese puzzle
+with our discovery. John Rymer, assailed with a causeless fear of
+penury, had consented for a huge fee to take the Crown Prince into his
+home under the false name. Bradley Rymer had got wind of the
+operation, had stolen the record of the case, and had the Galician
+Crown and Government at his mercy. John Rymer's suicide followed
+logically. Accused of bad faith, and already unbalanced, aware that a
+deadly secret which he should have guarded with his life had escaped,
+he had put the muzzle of a revolver into his mouth and blown his
+brains out."
+
+"What became of the foreigners?" asked one of the guests, as Kelsey
+finished.
+
+"They were kept under lock and key until the funeral was over. Then
+they were sent out of the country."
+
+Kelsey rose from his chair. The hands of the clock pointed to eleven.
+But before anyone else got up Dr. Murgatroyd asked a final question:
+
+"And what of Mr. Johnson?"
+
+Kelsey laughed.
+
+"I told you Rymer was a great surgeon. Mr. Johnson has been King of
+Galicia, as we are calling it, for the past ten years."
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE REFUGE
+
+
+
+
+                              THE REFUGE
+
+
+The basket of _petits fours_ had been removed; cigars and cigarettes
+had been passed round; one or two of the half-dozen people gathered
+about the small round table, rashly careless of a sleepless night,
+were drinking coffee with their liqueurs; the conversation was
+sprightly, at all events, if it was not witty, and laughter ran easily
+in ripples; the little supper-party, in a word, was at its gayest when
+Harry Caston suddenly pushed back his chair. Though the movement was
+abrupt, it was not conspicuous; it did not interrupt the light
+interchange of chaff and pleasantries for a moment. It was probably
+not noticed, and certainly not understood by more than one in that
+small company. The one, however, was a woman to whom Harry Gaston's
+movements were a matter of much greater interest than he knew. Mrs.
+Wordingham was sitting next to him, and she remarked quietly:
+
+"So you are not going on to the Mirlitons' dance, after all?"
+
+Harry Caston turned to her in surprise.
+
+"You're a witch," he replied. "I have only just made up my mind to go
+home instead."
+
+"I know," said Mrs. Wordingham.
+
+"Then you oughtn't to," retorted Harry Caston carelessly. Mrs.
+Wordingham flushed.
+
+"I wish I didn't," she answered in a low, submissive voice. She was
+not naturally a submissive woman, and it was only in his ears that
+this particular note was sounded.
+
+"I meant that you had no right to be able to estimate so accurately
+the hidden feelings of your brother-man," he answered awkwardly, and
+wrapping up his awkwardness in an elaboration of words.
+
+Harry Caston looked about the supper-room, with its walls of white and
+gold, its clusters of bright faces, its flash of silver, its running
+noise of merriment. His fingers twitched restlessly.
+
+"Yes, I am going," he said. "I shall leave London to-morrow. I have a
+house."
+
+"I know that too--in the Isle of Wight."
+
+"Not so very far, after all, is it?" he said.
+
+"As far as Timbuctoo when you are there," replied Mrs. Wordingham. Her
+great dark eyes rested wistfully upon his face; she leaned the least
+little bit towards him. Harry Caston was silent for a moment. Then he
+turned to her with a smile of apology.
+
+"You know me----"
+
+"Oh, don't I!" she cried in a low voice. "We shall see you no more
+for--how many months?"
+
+Harry Caston did not answer. His memories were busy with an afternoon
+of early summer in that same year, when, as his motor-car slid down a
+long straight slope into a village of red-brick cottages, he had seen,
+on the opposite incline, a row of tall stone-pines, and glowing
+beneath their shade the warm brown roof of a small and ancient house.
+
+"Tell me about it," said Mrs. Wordingham, once more interpreting his
+silence.
+
+"There was a bridge at the bottom of the hill--a bridge across the
+neck of a creek, with an old flour mill and a tiny roof at one side of
+it. Inland of the bridge was a reach of quiet water running back
+towards the downs through woods and meadows. Already I seemed to have
+dropped from the crest of the hill into another century. Beyond the
+bridge the road curved upwards. I went up on my second speed between
+the hedge of a field which sloped down to the creek upon the one side,
+and a low brick wall topped by a bank of grass upon the other. The
+incline of the hill brought my head suddenly above the bank, and I
+looked straight across a smooth lawn broken by great trees on to the
+front of a house. And I stopped my car, believe me, almost with a
+gasp. There was no fence or hedge to impede my view. I had come at
+last across the perfect house, and I sat in the car and stared and
+stared at it, not at first with any conscious desire to possess it,
+but simply taken by the sheer beauty of the thing, just as one may
+gaze at a jewel."
+
+The lights went suddenly out in the supper-room, as a gentle warning
+that time was up, and then were raised again. Harry Caston, however,
+seemed unaware of any change. He was at the moment neither of that
+party nor of that room.
+
+"It was a small house of the E shape, raised upon a low parapet and
+clothed in ivy. The middle part, set back a few feet behind flowers,
+had big flat windows; the gabled ends had smaller ones and more of
+them. Oh, I can't describe to you what I saw! The house in detail?
+Yes. But that would not give you an idea of it. The woodwork of the
+windows was painted white, and, where they stood open to the sunlight
+and the air, they showed you deep embrasures of black oak within."
+
+He stumbled on awkwardly, impelled to describe the house, yet aware
+that his description left all unsaid. The tiles of the roof were
+mellowed by centuries, so that shade ran into shade; and here they
+were almost purple, and there brown with a glint of gold. Two great
+chimney stacks stood high, not rising from the roof, but from the
+sides of the house, flanking it like sentinels, and over these, too,
+the ivy climbed.
+
+But what had taken Caston by the throat was the glamour of repose on
+that old house. Birds flickered about the lawn, and though the windows
+stood open, and the grass was emerald green and smooth, no smoke rose
+from any of the chimney-tops.
+
+"I ran on for a few yards," he went on, "until I saw a road which
+branched off to the right. I drove up it, and came to a gate with a
+notice that the house was to be sold. I went in, and at the back of
+the house, in a second queer little grass garden, screened by big
+trees upon three sides and a low red-brick wall upon the fourth, over
+which you could see the upper reach of the estuary and the woods on
+the further hill, I found a garrulous old gardener."
+
+Mrs. Wordingham leaned forward.
+
+"And what story had he to tell?"
+
+"Oh, none!" answered Caston with a laugh. "There's no tragic
+or romantic history connected with the house. Of course, it's
+haunted--that goes without saying. There's hardly a bedroom window
+where the ivy does not tap upon the panes. But for history! Four old
+ladies took it for a summer, and remained in it for forty years. The
+last one of them died two years ago. That's all the history the
+gardener knew. But he showed me over the house, the quaintest place
+you ever dreamed of--a small stone-flagged hall, little staircases
+rising straight and enclosed in the walls, great polished oak beams,
+rooms larger than you would expect, and a great one on the first
+floor, occupying the middle of the house and looking out upon the
+grass garden at the back, and over the sunk road to the creek in
+front. Anyway"--and he broke off abruptly--"I bought the house, and
+I've furnished it, and now----"
+
+"Now you are going to shut yourself up in it," said Mrs. Wordingham.
+
+The lights were turned out now for the last time. The party sat almost
+in darkness. Caston turned towards his companion. He could just see
+the soft gleam of her dark eyes.
+
+"For a little," he replied. "I have to, you know. I can't help it. I
+enjoy all this. I like running about London as much as any man; I--I
+am fond of my friends." The lady smiled with a little bitterness, and
+Caston went on: "But the time comes when everything suddenly jars on
+me--noise, company, everything--when I must get away with my books
+into some refuge of my own, when I must take my bath of solitude
+without anyone having a lien upon a single minute of my time. The
+need has come on me to-night. The house is ready--waiting. I shall go
+to-morrow."
+
+Mrs. Wordingham glanced at him with a quick anxiety. There was a
+trifle of exasperation in his voice. He was suddenly on wires.
+
+"Yes, you look tired," she said. The head waiter approached the table,
+and the party broke up and mounted the steps into the hall. Caston
+handed Mrs. Wordingham into her carriage.
+
+"I shall see you when I come back?" said he, and Mrs. Wordingham
+answered with a well-assumed carelessness:
+
+"I shall be in London in the autumn. Perhaps you will have some story
+to tell me of your old house. Has it a name?"
+
+"Oh, yes--Hawk Hill," replied Caston. "But there's no story about that
+house," he repeated, and the carriage rolled away. Later on, however,
+he was inclined to doubt the accuracy of his statement, confidently
+though he had made it. And a little later still he became again aware
+of its truth.
+
+Here, at all events, is what occurred. Harry Caston idled through his
+mornings over his books, sailed his sloop down the creek and out past
+the black booms into the Solent in the afternoon, and came back to a
+solitary dinner in the cool of the evening. Thus he passed a month. He
+was not at all tired with his own company. The inevitable demand for
+comrades and a trifle of gaiety had not yet been whispered to his
+soul. The fret of his nerves ceased; London sank away into the mists.
+Even the noise of the motor-horns in the hidden road beneath his lawn
+merely reminded him pleasantly that he was free of that whirlpool and
+of all who whirled in it. If he needed conversation, there were
+the boatmen on the creek, with their interest in tides and shoals,
+or the homely politics of the village. But Caston needed very
+little. He drifted back, as it seemed to him, into the reposeful,
+lavender-scented life of a century and a half ago. For though the
+house was of the true E shape, and had its origin in Tudor times, it
+was with that later period that Caston linked it in his thoughts.
+Tudor times were stirring, and the recollection of them uncongenial to
+Caston's mood.
+
+He had furnished the house to suit his mood, and the room which he
+chiefly favoured--a room at the back, with a great bay window thrown
+out upon the grass, and the floor just a step below the level of the
+garden--had the very look of some old parlour where Mr. Hardcastle
+might have sipped his port, and Kate stitched at her samplers. Here he
+was sitting at ten o'clock in the evening, about a month after he had
+left London, when the first of the incidents occurred. It was nothing
+very startling in itself--merely the sound of some small thing falling
+upon the boards of the floor and rolling into a corner--a crisp, sharp
+sound, as though a pebble had dropped.
+
+Caston looked up from his book, at the first hardly curious. But in a
+minute or so, it occurred to him that he was alone, and that he had
+dropped nothing. Moreover, the sound had travelled from the other side
+of the room. He was not as yet curious enough to rise from his chair,
+and a round satin-wood table impeded his view. But he looked about the
+room, and could see nothing from which an ornament could have dropped.
+He turned back to his book, but his attention wandered. Once or twice
+he looked sharply up, as though he expected to find another occupant
+in the room. Finally he rose, and walking round the table, he saw what
+seemed to be a big glass bead sparkling in the lamplight on the
+dark-stained boards in a corner of the room. He picked the object up,
+and found it to be not a large bead, but a small knob or handle of
+cut-glass. He knew now whence it had come.
+
+Against the wall stood a small Louis Seize table in white and gold,
+which he remembered to have picked up at a sale, with some other
+furniture, at some old mansion, across the water, in the New Forest.
+He had paid no particular attention to the table, had never even
+troubled to look inside of it. It had the appearance of being a lady's
+secretaire or something of the kind. But there were three shallow
+drawers, one above the other, in the middle part of it--it was what is
+inelegantly called a kidney table--and these drawers were fitted with
+small glass knobs such as that which he held in his hand.
+
+Caston went over to the table, and saw that one of the knobs was
+missing. He stooped to replace it, and at once stood erect again, with
+the knob in his hand and a puzzled expression upon his face. He had
+expected that the handles would fit on to projecting screws. But he
+found that they were set into brass rings, and firmly set. This one
+which he held seemed to have been wrenched out of its setting by some
+violent jerk. He tried the drawers, but they were locked. There were
+some papers and books spread upon the top. He removed them, and found
+upon the white polish a half-erased crest. It was plain that the
+middle part of the top was a lid and lifted up, but it was now locked
+down. Caston did not replace the books and papers. He returned to his
+chair. The servants probably had been curious. No doubt they had tried
+to open the drawers, and in the attempt had loosened one of the
+handles.
+
+Caston was content with the explanation--for that night. But the next
+evening, at the same hour, the legs of the table rattled on the wooden
+floor. He sprang up from his seat. The table was shaking. He stepped
+quickly across to it, and then stopped with his heart leaping in
+his breast. The books and papers had not been replaced, and he had
+seen--it might be that his eyes had played him a trick, but he had
+_seen_--a small slim hand suddenly withdrawn from the lid of the
+table. The hand had been lying flat upon its palm--Caston had just
+time enough to see that--and it was the left hand.
+
+"That's exactly the position," he said to himself, "in which one would
+place the left hand to hold the table steady while one tried to force
+the drawers open with one's right."
+
+He stood without a movement, but the hand did not appear again; and
+then he found himself saying in a quiet voice of reassurance:
+
+"Can I help at all?"
+
+The sound of his own words stirred him abruptly to laughter. Common
+sense reasserted itself; his eyes had played him a trick. Too much
+tobacco, very likely, was the cause and origin of his romantic vision.
+But, none the less, he remained standing quite still, with his eyes
+fixed upon the table's polished lid, for some minutes; and when he
+went back at last to his chair, from time to time he glanced abruptly
+from his book, in the hope that he might once more detect the hand
+upon the table. But he was disappointed.
+
+The next morning he saw the old gardener sweeping the leaves from the
+front lawn, and he at once and rather eagerly went out to him.
+
+"I think you told me, Hayes, that this house is supposed to be
+haunted," he said, with a laugh at the supposition.
+
+The gardener took off his hat and scratched his head reflectively.
+
+"Well, they do say, sir, as it is. But I've never seen anything
+myself, nor can I rightly say that I've ever come across anyone who
+has. A pack o' nonsense, I call it."
+
+"Very likely, Hayes," said Caston. "And what sort of a person is it
+who's supposed to walk?"
+
+"An old man in grey stockings," replied the gardener. "That's what
+I've heard. But what he's supposed to be doing I don't know, sir, any
+more than I know why there should be so much fuss about his wearing
+grey stockings. Live men do that, after all."
+
+"To be sure," replied Caston. "You may count them by dozens on
+bicycles if you stand for an hour or two above the road here." And he
+went back to the house. It was quite clear that his visitant of last
+night, if there had been one, was not the native spectre of this small
+old manor-house.
+
+"The slim white hand I saw," Caston argued, "belonged to no old man in
+grey stockings or out of them. It was the hand of a quite young woman.
+But if she doesn't belong to the house, if she isn't one of the
+fixtures to be taken on by the incoming tenant--if, in a word, she's a
+trespasser--how in the world did she find her way here?"
+
+Caston suddenly saw an answer to the question--a queer and a rather
+attractive answer, especially to a man who had fed for a month on
+solitude and had grown liable to fancies. He had all through this
+lonely month been gradually washing from his body and his mind the
+dust of his own times. He had sought to reproduce the quiet of an
+older age, and in the seeking had perhaps done more than reproduce.
+That was his thought. He had, perhaps, by ever so little, penetrated
+the dark veil which hides from men all days but their own--just
+enough, say, to catch a glimpse of a hand. He himself was becoming
+more and more harmonious with his house; the cries of the outer world
+hardly reached his ears in that little parlour which opened on to the
+hidden garden. It seemed to him that other times, through some
+thinning out of the thick curtain of his senses, were becoming actual
+and real just to him.
+
+"The first month passed," he said to himself. "I was undisturbed; no
+sign was made. I was still too near to what I had left behind--London
+and the rest of it. But now I pass more and more over the threshold
+into that other century. First of all, I was only aware of a movement,
+a presence; then I was able to see--nothing much, it is true--only a
+small hand. But tonight I may see her to whom the hand belongs. In a
+week I may be admitted into her company."
+
+Thus he argued, pretending to himself the while that he was merely
+playing with his fancy, pursuing it like a ball in a game, and ready
+to let it fall and lie the moment that he was tired. But the sudden
+hum of a motor-car upon his drive, and a joyous outcry of voices, soon
+dispelled the pretence. A party of his friends invaded him, clamouring
+for luncheon, and in his mind there sprang up a fear so strong that it
+surprised him. They would thicken the thinning curtain between himself
+and her whose hand had lain upon the table. They would drag him back
+into his own century. The whole process of isolation would have to
+begin again. The talk at luncheon was all of regattas and the tonnage
+of yachts. Caston sat at the table with his fear increasing. His
+visitors were friends he would have welcomed five weeks ago, and he
+would have gaily taken his part in their light talk. Now it was every
+moment on his lips to cry out:
+
+"Hold your tongues and go!"
+
+They went off at three o'clock, and a lady of the party wisely nodded
+a dainty head at him as he stood upon the steps, and remarked:
+
+"You hated us visiting you, Mr. Caston. You have someone in that
+house--someone you won't show to us."
+
+Caston coloured to the roots of his hair.
+
+The lady laughed. "There--I knew I was right! Let me guess who it can
+be."
+
+Caston raised his head in a quick protest.
+
+"No, there is no one." He tried to laugh easily. "That's my trouble.
+There is no one, I am afraid."
+
+They had driven his visitor away, without a doubt; and though he sat
+very still in his arm-chair that night, careful as a hunter by no
+abrupt movement to scare away his quarry, he sat undisturbed. He
+waited until the light was grey and the birds singing upon the lawn.
+He went to bed disappointed as a lover whose mistress had failed to
+keep her tryst.
+
+On the next day he searched for and found the catalogue of the sale at
+which he had bought the table. The sale had been held at a house
+called Bylanes, some five miles from the Beaulieu river, and the
+furniture was advertised as the property of Geoffrey Trimingham, Esq.,
+deceased, and sold by his young widow. Caston's memory was quickened
+by these meagre details. He recollected stories which he had heard
+during the three days of the sale. The Triminghams were a branch of
+the old Norfolk family of that name, and had settled in the New Forest
+so far back as the reign of the first George. Geoffrey Trimingham,
+however, had delayed marriage until well sped in years, and then had
+committed the common fault of marrying a young woman, who, with no
+children and no traditions to detain her in a neighbourhood which she
+considered gloomy, had, as soon as she was free, sold off house and
+furniture--lock, stock, and barrel--so that she might retire to what
+she considered the more elegant neighbourhood of Blandford Square.
+
+This was all very well, but it did not bring Harry Gaston very much
+nearer to the identification of his visitor. She was a Trimingham,
+probably, but even that was by no means certain; and to what
+generation of Triminghams she belonged, he knew no more than he knew
+her Christian name. He searched the house for the keys of the table,
+but nowhere could he find them. He had never opened the drawers, he
+had never raised the lid. It seemed to him that he must have bought
+the table without the keys at all.
+
+He might have broken it open, of course, and from time to time, as the
+evenings passed in an expectation which was not fulfilled, he was
+tempted to take a chisel in his hand and set to work. But he resisted.
+The table was not his. It was _hers_, and in her presence alone it
+must be opened.
+
+Thus Caston passed a week, and then one evening there fell a shadow
+across the open page of his book. He looked swiftly up. He saw nothing
+but the empty room, and the flame of the lamp burned bright and
+steady. She was here, then, and as the conviction grew within him to a
+veritable exultation, he was aware of rustling of a woman's gown. The
+sound came from behind him. He turned with a leap of his heart, and
+saw her--saw her from the crown of her small head, with its thick
+brown hair, to the hem of her dress--not a shadow, not a vague shape
+dimly to be apprehended, but as actual as flesh and blood could be.
+She was dressed in a gown of pale blue satin of an ancient mode, and
+was slender as a child. Her face, too, was the face of one little more
+than a child, though pain and trouble had ravaged it.
+
+She stood as though she had just stepped from the garden on to the
+window-seat, and so to the floor, and in her dark eyes there was a
+look of the direst urgency. She moved swiftly across the room to the
+table, pulled at the glass handles, and sought to lift the lid, and
+all in a feverish haste, with her young and troubled face twitching as
+though she were at pains to check her tears. Caston watched her
+eagerly. He noticed that once more her left hand was pressed flat
+upon the lid, as she tried to open the drawer, and then a flash of
+gold caught and held his eyes. Young though she was, she wore a
+wedding-ring. He had barely noticed it, when she turned from the table
+and came straight towards him. Caston rose from his chair. He heard
+himself saying once more:
+
+"Can I help?"
+
+But this time he did not laugh upon the words. She stood before him
+with so pitiful an appeal, her hands clutched together in front of
+her, her face convulsed. He spoke with the deference due to those who
+have greatly suffered. Then came to him a whisper in reply, so low
+that he barely heard it--so low that perhaps he only imagined it.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Caston went across to the table, and, opening his knife, inserted it
+under the lid. The girl stood at his side, a gleam of hope in her
+eyes. Caston ran the blade of the knife along to the lock and turned
+it, prising up the lid. There was a sound of the splitting of wood,
+and the lock gave. Caston lifted the lid. It rose on hinges, and had
+upon the under-side a bevelled mirror, and it disclosed, when open, a
+fixed tray lined with blue velvet. The tray was empty.
+
+But now that the lid was raised in the centre of the table, the
+side-pieces could be opened too. The girl opened the one at her hand.
+Caston saw a well, lined, like the rest, with velvet, and filled with
+the knick-knacks and belongings of a girl. She took them out
+hurriedly, heaping them together on the tray--a walnut-wood housewife
+shaped and shut like a large card-case, with scissors, thimble,
+needle-case, tiny penknife, all complete--for she opened it, as she
+opened everything in the haste and urgency of her search--a large
+needle-case of ivory, a walnut-wood egg, which unscrewed and showed
+within a reel with silk still wound upon it, and a little oval box
+with a label on the top of it, and the royal arms. Caston read the
+label:
+
+
+                          STRINGER'S CANDY.
+              PREPARED AND SOLD ONLY BY THE PROPRIETOR,
+                             R. STRINGER,
+                        DRUGGIST TO THE KING.
+
+
+The top fell from the little box, and a shower of shells rattled out
+of it. Bags of beads followed, wash-leather bags carefully tied up,
+and some of them filled with the minutest of beads. It made Caston's
+eyes ache to think of anyone stringing them together. In the end the
+well was emptied, and, with a gesture of despair, the girl slipped
+round to the other side of Caston. She turned back the flap upon this
+side.
+
+On the other side were the implements of work; here was the finished
+product. She lifted out two small anti-macassars, completely made up
+of tiny beads in crystal and turquoise colours, and worked in the most
+intricate patterns. They were extraordinarily heavy, and must have
+taken months in the making. Under these were still more beads, in
+boxes and in bags and coiled in long strings. She heaped them out upon
+the tray, and looked into the well. Her face flashed into relief. She
+thrust her hands in; she drew out from the very bottom a faded bundle
+of letters. She clasped them for a moment close against her heart,
+then very swiftly, as though she feared to be stopped, she took them
+over to the fireplace.
+
+A fire was burning in the grate, for the night was chilly. She dropped
+the bundle into the flames, and stood there while it was consumed.
+Caston saw the glare of the flames behind the paper light up here and
+there a word or a phrase, and then the edges curled over and the
+sparks ran across the sheets, and the letters changed to white ashes
+and black flakes. When all was done, she sighed and turned to Caston
+with a wistful smile of thanks. She moved back to the table, and with
+a queer orderliness which seemed somehow in keeping with her looks and
+manner, she replaced the beads, the little boxes, and the
+paraphernalia of her work carefully in the wells, and shut the table
+up. She turned again to Caston at the end. Just for a second she stood
+before him, her face not happy, but cleared of its trouble, and with a
+smile upon her lips. She stood, surely a living thing. Caston advanced
+to her. "You will stay now!" he cried, and she was gone.
+
+This is the story as Harry Caston told it to Mrs. Wordingham when he
+returned to London in the autumn. She ridiculed it gently and with a
+trifle of anxiety, believing that solitude had bred delusions.
+
+"Thank you," said Harry Caston grimly, and sitting up very erect. Mrs.
+Wordingham changed her note.
+
+"It's the most wonderful thing to have happened to you," she said. "I
+should have been frightened out of my life. And you weren't?"
+
+Harry Gaston's face hardly relaxed.
+
+"You don't believe a word of it," he asserted sternly.
+
+"Of course I do," she replied soothingly, "and I quite see that, with
+us nowhere near you, all your senses became refined, and you
+penetrated behind the curtain. Yes, I see all that, Harry. But she
+might, perhaps, have told you a little more, mightn't she? As a story,
+it almost sounds unfinished."
+
+Harry Caston rose to his feet.
+
+"I tell you what you are doing," he said, standing over her--"you are
+getting a little of your own back."
+
+"But such a very little, Harry," murmured Mrs. Wordingham; and Harry
+Caston flung out of the room.
+
+He did not refer to the subject again for some little while. But in
+the month of December, on one foggy afternoon, he arrived with a new
+book under his arm. He put it down on the floor beside his chair
+rather ostentatiously, as one inviting questions. Mrs. Wordingham was
+serenely unaware of the book.
+
+"Where have you been, Harry?" she asked as she gave him a cup of tea.
+
+"In Norfolk--shooting," he said.
+
+"Many birds?"
+
+"So few that we did not go out on the second day. We motored to a
+church instead--a very old church with a beautiful clerestory."
+
+Mrs. Wordingham affected an intense interest.
+
+"Old churches are wonderful," she said.
+
+"You care no more about them than I do," said Harry Gaston brutally.
+"I am not going to tell you about the church."
+
+"Oh, aren't you?" said Mrs. Wordingham.
+
+"No. What I am going to tell you is this. The vicar is a friend of my
+host, and happened to be in the church when we arrived. He showed us
+the building himself, and then, taking us into the vestry, got out the
+parish register. It dates back a good many years. Well, turning over
+the leaves, I noticed quite carelessly an entry made by the vicar in
+the year 1786. It was a note of a donation which he had made to the
+parish as a thanksgiving for his recovery from a severe operation
+which had been performed upon him in Norwich by a famous surgeon of
+the day named Twiddy."
+
+"Yes?" said Mrs. Wordingham.
+
+"That little entry occupied my mind much more than the church,"
+continued Caston. "I wondered what the vicar must have felt as he
+travelled into Norwich in those days of no chloroform, no antiseptics,
+of sloughing wounds, and hospital fevers. Not much chance of _his_
+ever coming back again, eh? And then the revulsion when he did
+recover--the return home to Frimley-next-the-Sea alive and well! It
+must all have been pretty wonderful to the vicar in 1786, eh?"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Wordingham submissively.
+
+"I couldn't get him out of my head and when I returned to London a
+couple of days ago, I saw in a bookseller's this book."
+
+Caston picked the volume up from the floor.
+
+"It seems that Twiddy was no end of a swell with his knife, so some
+one of his devoted descendants has had a life written of him, with all
+his letters included. He kept up an extensive correspondence, as
+people did in those days. He had a shrewd eye and a knack of telling a
+story. There's one here which I wish you to read if you will. No, not
+now--when I have gone. I have put a slip of paper in at the page. I
+think it will interest you."
+
+Harry Caston went away. Mrs. Wordingham had her curtains closed and
+her lamps lit. She drew her chair up to the fire, and she opened "The
+Life and Letters of Mr. Edmund Twiddy, Surgeon, of Norwich," with a
+shrug of the shoulders and a little grimace of discontent. But the
+grimace soon left her face, and when her maid came with a warning that
+she had accepted an invitation for that night to dinner, she found her
+mistress with the book still open upon her knees, and her eyes staring
+with a look of wonder into the fire. For this is what she had read in
+"The Life and Letters of Mr. Edmund Twiddy."
+
+"I have lately had a curious case under my charge, which has given me
+more trouble than I care to confess. For sentiment is no part of the
+equipment of a surgeon. It perplexed as well as troubled me, and some
+clue to the explanation was only afforded me yesterday. Three months
+ago my servant brought me word one evening that there was a lady very
+urgent to see me, of the name of Mrs. Braxfield. I replied that my
+work was done, and she must return at a more seasonable time. But
+while I was giving this message the door was pushed open, and already
+she stood in front of me. She was a slip of a girl, very pretty to
+look at, and shrinking with alarm at her own audacity. Yet she held
+her ground.
+
+"'Mrs. Braxfield,' I cried, 'you have no right to be married--you are
+much too young! Young girls hooked at your age ought to be put back.'
+
+"'I am ill,' she said, and I nodded to the servant to leave us.
+
+"'Very well,' I said. 'What's the matter?'
+
+"'My throat,' said she.
+
+"I looked at it. There was trouble, but the trouble was not so very
+serious, though I recognised that at some time treatment would be
+advisable.
+
+"'There's no hurry at all about it,' I said, when my examination was
+concluded, 'but, on the whole, you are right to get it looked to
+soon.' I spoke roughly, for I shrank a little from having this tender
+bit of a girl under my knife. 'Where's your husband?'
+
+"'He is in Spain,' she replied.
+
+"'Oh, indeed!' said I with some surprise. 'Well, when he returns, we
+can talk about it.'
+
+"Mrs. Braxfield shook her head.
+
+"'No, I want it done now, while he's away,' she said, and nothing that
+I could say would shake her from her purpose. I fathered her, and
+bullied her, and lectured her, but she stood her ground. Her lips
+trembled; she was afraid of me, and still more desperately afraid of
+what waited for her. I could see her catch her breath and turn pale as
+she thought upon the ordeal. But the same sort of timid courage which
+had made her push into my room before I could refuse to see her,
+sustained her now. I raised my hands at last in despair.
+
+"'Very well,' I said. 'Give me your husband's address. I will send a
+letter to him, and if he consents, we will not wait for his return.'
+
+"'No,' she insisted stubbornly, 'I do not want him to know anything
+about it. But if you will not attend me, no doubt someone else will.'
+
+"That was my trouble. The throat, look at it how you will, is a
+ticklish affair. If she went away from me, Heaven knows into whose
+hands she might fall. She had some money and was well dressed. Some
+quack would have used his blundering knife. I could have shaken her
+for her obstinacy, and would have, if I had had a hope that I would
+shake it out of her. But she had screwed herself up to a pitch of
+determination almost unbelievable in her. I could make her cry; I
+could not make her draw back from her resolve. Nor, on the other hand,
+could I allow her to go out of my house and hand herself over to be
+butchered by any Tom, Dick, or Harry of a barber on the look-out for a
+fat fee. So I gave in.
+
+"I got her a lodging in this town, and a woman to look after her, and
+I did what needed to be done with as little pain as might be.
+
+"'You won't hurt me more than you can help,' she said in a sort of
+childish wail. And then she shut her eyes and bore it with an
+extraordinary fortitude; while, for my part, I never worked more
+neatly or more quickly in my life, and in a few days she was quite
+comfortable again.
+
+"But here she began to perplex me. For though the wound healed, and
+there was no fever, she did not mend. She lay from day to day in an
+increasing weakness, for which I could not account. I drew a chair up
+to her bed one morning and took my seat.
+
+"'My dear,' I said, 'a good many of us are father-confessors as well
+as doctors. We needs must be at times if our patients are to get well
+and do us credit. You are lying here surely with a great trouble on
+your mind. It shall be sacred to me, but I must know it if I am to
+cure you.'
+
+"The girl looked at me with a poor little smile.
+
+"'No, there's nothing at all,' she said; and even while she spoke she
+lifted her head from the pillow, and a light dawned in her eyes.
+
+"'Listen!' she said.
+
+"I heard a step coming nearer and nearer along the pavement outside.
+As it grew louder, she raised herself upon her elbow, and when the
+footsteps ceased outside the door, her whole soul leapt into her face.
+
+"'There will be a letter for me!' she cried, with a joyous clapping of
+her hands.
+
+"The footsteps moved on and became fainter and more faint. The girl
+remained propped up, with her eyes fixed upon the door. But no one
+came.
+
+"'It has been left in the hall,' she said, turning wistfully to me.
+
+"'I will send it up if it is there,' said I.
+
+"I went downstairs rather heavy at heart. Here was the reason why she
+did not mend. Here it was, and I saw no cure for it. There was no
+letter in the hall, nor did I expect to find one. I sent for the woman
+who waited upon her. 'Does she always expect a letter?'
+
+"The woman nodded.
+
+"'She knows the postman's step, sir, even when he is a long way off.
+She singles it out from all other sounds. If he stops at the door, I
+must run down upon the instant. But whether he stops or not, it is
+always the same thing--there is no letter for her.'
+
+"I went upstairs again and into her room. The girl was lying upon her
+side, with her faced pressed into the pillow, and crying. I patted her
+shoulder.
+
+"'Come, Mrs. Braxfield, you must tell me what the trouble is, and we
+will put our heads together and discover a remedy.'
+
+"But she drew away from me. 'There is nothing,' she repeated. 'I am
+weak--that is all.'
+
+"I could get no more from her, and the next day I besought her to tell
+me where I might find her husband. But upon that point, too, she was
+silent. Then came a night, about a week later, when she fell into a
+delirium, and I sat by her side and wrestled with death for her. I
+fought hard with what resources I had, for there was no reason why she
+should die but the extreme weakness into which she had fallen.
+
+"I sat by the bed, thinking that now at last I should learn the secret
+which ravaged her. But there was no coherency in what she said. She
+talked chiefly, I remember, of a work-table and of something hidden
+there which she must destroy. She was continually, in her delirium,
+searching its drawers, opening the lid and diving amongst her
+embroidery and beads, as though she could not die and let the thing be
+found.
+
+"So till the grey of the morning, when she came out of her delirium,
+turned very wistfully to me with a feeble motion of her hands, and
+said:
+
+"'You have been very good to me, doctor.'
+
+"She lay thus for a few moments, and then she cried in a low sad
+voice: 'Oh, Arthur, Arthur!' And with that name upon her lips she
+died.
+
+"She carried her secret with her, leaving me in the dark as to who she
+was and how I was to lay my hands upon one of her relations. I buried
+the poor girl here, and I advertised for her husband in _The London
+Newsletter_, and I made inquiries of our ambassador in Spain. A week
+ago Mr. Braxfield appeared at my house. He was a man of sixty years of
+age, and his Christian name was Robert.
+
+"He gave me some few details about his marriage, and from them I am
+able to put together the rest of the story. Mr. Braxfield is a Spanish
+merchant of means, and the girl, a Trimingham of that branch of the
+family which moved a long while since into Hampshire, was, no doubt,
+pressed into marriage with him owing to the straitened position of her
+parents. Mr. Braxfield and his young wife took up their residence in
+Soho Square, in London, until, at the beginning of this year, business
+called him once more to Spain for some months.
+
+"His wife thereupon elected to return to her home, and there Mr.
+Braxfield believed her to be, until chance threw one of my
+advertisements in his way. Her own parents, for their part, understood
+that she had returned to her house in Soho Square. To me, then, the
+story is clear. Having married without love, she had given her heart
+to someone, probably after her return to her own home--someone called
+Arthur. Whether he had treated her ill, I cannot say. But I take it
+that he had grown cold, and she had looked upon this trouble with her
+throat as her opportunity to hold him. The risk, the suffering--these
+things, one can imagine her believing, must make their appeal. She had
+pretended to return to London. She had travelled, instead, to Norwich,
+letting him and him alone know what she was about. The great
+experiment failed. She looked for some letter; no letter came. But had
+letters passed? Are these letters locked up amongst the embroidery and
+the beads in that work-table, I wonder? Let us hope that, if they are,
+they trouble her no longer."
+
+
+
+
+
+                               PEIFFER
+
+
+
+
+                               PEIFFER
+
+
+For a moment I was surprised to see the stout and rubicund Slingsby in
+Lisbon. He was drinking a vermouth and seltzer at five o'clock in the
+afternoon at a café close to the big hotel. But at that time Portugal
+was still a neutral country and a happy hunting ground for a good many
+thousand Germans. Slingsby was lolling in his chair with such
+exceeding indolence that I could not doubt his business was pressing
+and serious. I accordingly passed him by as if I had never seen him in
+my life before. But he called out to me. So I took a seat at his
+table.
+
+Of what we talked about I have not the least recollection, for my eyes
+were quite captivated by a strange being who sat alone fairly close to
+Slingsby, at one side and a little behind him. This was a man of
+middle age, with reddish hair, a red, square, inflamed face and a
+bristly moustache. He was dressed in a dirty suit of grey flannel;
+he wore a battered Panama pressed down upon his head; he carried
+pince-nez on the bridge of his nose, and he sat with a big bock of
+German beer In front of him. But I never saw him touch the beer. He
+sat in a studied attitude of ferocity, his elbow on the table, his
+chin propped on the palm of his hand, his head pushed aggressively
+forward, and he glared at Slingsby through his glasses with the fixed
+stare of hatred and fury which a master workman in wax might give to a
+figure in a Chamber of Horrors. Indeed, it seemed to me that he must
+have rehearsed his bearing in some such quarter, for there was nothing
+natural or convinced in him from the brim of his Panama to the black
+patent leather tips of his white canvas shoes.
+
+I touched Slingsby on the arm.
+
+"Who is that man, and what have you done to him?"
+
+Slingsby looked round unconcernedly.
+
+"Oh, that's only Peiffer," he replied. "Peiffer making frightfulness."
+
+"Peiffer?"
+
+The name was quite strange to me.
+
+"Yes. Don't you know him? He's a product of 1914," and Slingsby leaned
+towards me a little. "Peiffer is an officer in the German Navy. You
+would hardly guess it, but he is. Now that their country is at war,
+officers in the German Navy have a marked amount of spare time which
+they never had before. So Peiffer went to a wonderful Government
+school in Hamburg, where in twenty lessons they teach the gentle art
+of espionage, a sort of Berlitz school. Peiffer ate his dinners and
+got his degrees, so to speak, and now he's at Lisbon putting obi on
+me."
+
+"It seems rather infantile, and must be annoying," I said; but
+Slingsby would only accept half the statement. "Infantile, yes.
+Annoying, not at all. For so long as Peiffer is near me, being
+frightful, I know he's not up to mischief."
+
+"Mischief!" I cried. "That fellow? What mischief can he do?"
+
+Slingsby viciously crushed the stub of his cigarette in the ashtray.
+
+"A deuce of a lot, my friend. Don't make any mistake. Peiffer's
+methods are infantile and barbaric, but he has a low and fertile
+cunning in the matter of ideas. I know. I have had some."
+
+And Slingsby was to have more, very much more: in the shape of a great
+many sleepless nights, during which he wrestled with a dreadful
+uncertainty to get behind that square red face and those shining
+pince-nez, and reach the dark places of Peiffer's mind.
+
+The first faint wisp of cloud began to show six weeks later, when
+Slingsby happened to be in Spain.
+
+"Something's up," he said, scratching his head. "But I'm hanged if I
+can guess what it is. See what you can make of it"; and here is the
+story which he told.
+
+Three Germans dressed in the black velvet corduroy, the white
+stockings and the rope-soled white shoes of the Spanish peasant,
+arrived suddenly in the town of Cartagena, and put up at an inn in a
+side-street near the harbour. Cartagena, for all that it is one of the
+chief naval ports of Spain, is a small place, and the life of it ebbs
+and flows in one narrow street, the Calle Mayor; so that very little
+can happen which is not immediately known and discussed. The arrival
+of the three mysterious Germans provoked, consequently, a deal of
+gossip and curiosity, and the curiosity was increased when the German
+Consul sitting in front of the Casino loudly professed complete
+ignorance of these very doubtful compatriots of his, and an exceeding
+great contempt for them. The next morning, however, brought a new
+development. The three Germans complained publicly to the Alcalde.
+They had walked through Valencia, Alicante, and Murcia in search of
+work, and everywhere they had been pestered and shadowed by the
+police.
+
+"Our Consul will do nothing for us," they protested indignantly. "He
+will not receive us, nor will any German in Cartagena. We are poor
+people." And having protested, they disappeared in the night.
+
+But a few days later the three had emerged again at Almeria, and at a
+mean café in one of the narrow, blue-washed Moorish streets of the old
+town. Peiffer was identified as one of the three--not the Peiffer who
+had practised frightfulness in Lisbon, but a new and wonderful
+Peiffer, who inveighed against the shamelessness of German officials
+on the coasts of Spain. At Almeria, in fact, Peiffer made a scene at
+the German Vice-Consulate, and, having been handed over to the police,
+was fined and threatened with imprisonment. At this point the story
+ended.
+
+"What do you make of it?" asked Slingsby.
+
+"First, that Peiffer is working south; and, secondly, that he is
+quarrelling with his own officials."
+
+"Yes, but quarrelling with marked publicity," said Slingsby. "That, I
+think we shall find, is the point of real importance. Peiffer's
+methods are not merely infantile; they are elaborate. He is working
+down South. I think that I will go to Gibraltar. I have always wished
+to see it."
+
+Whether Slingsby was speaking the truth, I had not an idea. But he
+went to Gibraltar, and there an astonishing thing happened to him. He
+received a letter, and the letter came from Peiffer. Peiffer was at
+Algeciras, just across the bay in Spain, and he wanted an interview.
+He wrote for it with the most brazen impertinence.
+
+"I cannot, owing to this with-wisdom-so-easily-to-have-been-avoided
+war, come myself to Gibraltar, but I will remain at your disposition
+here."
+
+"_That_," said Slingsby, "from the man who was making frightfulness at
+me a few weeks ago, is a proof of some nerve. We will go and see
+Peiffer. We will stay at Algeciras from Saturday to Monday, and we
+will hear what he has to say."
+
+A polite note was accordingly dispatched, and on Sunday morning
+Peiffer, decently clothed in a suit of serge, was shown into
+Slingsby's private sitting-room. He plunged at once into the story of
+his wanderings. We listened to it without a sign that we knew anything
+about it.
+
+"So?" from time to time said Slingsby, with inflections of increasing
+surprise, but that was all. Then Peiffer went on to his grievances.
+
+"Perhaps you have heard how I was treated by the Consuls?" he
+interrupted himself to ask suddenly.
+
+"No," Slingsby replied calmly. "Continue!"
+
+Peiffer wiped his forehead and his glasses. We were each one, in his
+way, all working for our respective countries. The work was
+honourable. But there were limits to endurance. All his fatigue and
+perils went for nothing in the eyes of comfortable officials sure of
+their salary. He had been fined; he had been threatened with
+imprisonment. It was _unverschämt_ the way he had been treated.
+
+"So?" said Slingsby firmly. There are fine inflections by which that
+simple word may be made to express most of the emotions. Slingsby's
+"So?" expressed a passionate agreement with the downtrodden Peiffer.
+
+"Flesh and blood can stand it no longer," cried Peiffer, "and my heart
+is flesh. No, I have had enough."
+
+Throughout the whole violent tirade, in his eyes, in his voice, in his
+gestures, there ran an eager, wistful plea that we should take him at
+his face value and believe every word he said.
+
+"So I came to you," he said at last, slapping his knee and throwing
+out his hand afterwards like a man who has taken a mighty resolution.
+"Yes. I have no money, nothing. And they will give me none. It is
+_unverschämt_. So," and he screwed up his little eyes and wagged a
+podgy forefinger--"so the service I had begun for my Government I will
+now finish for you."
+
+Slingsby examined the carpet curiously.
+
+"Well, there are possibly some shillings to be had if the service is
+good enough. I do not know. But I cannot deal in the dark. What sort
+of a service is it?"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Peiffer hitched his chair nearer.
+
+"It is a question of rifles--rifles for over there," and, looking out
+through the window, he nodded towards Gibel Musa and the coast of
+Morocco.
+
+Slingsby did not so much as flinch. I almost groaned aloud. We were to
+be treated to the stock legend of the ports, the new edition of the
+Spanish prisoner story. I, the mere tourist in search of health, could
+have gone on with Peiffer's story myself, even to the exact number of
+the rifles.
+
+"It was a great plan," Peiffer continued. "Fifty thousand rifles, no
+less." There always were fifty-thousand rifles. "They are buried--near
+the sea." They always were buried either near the sea or on the
+frontier of Portugal. "With ammunition. They are to be landed outside
+Melilla, where I have been about this very affair, and distributed
+amongst the Moors in the unsubdued country on the edge of the French
+zone."
+
+"So?" exclaimed Slingsby with the most admirable imitation of
+consternation.
+
+"Yes, but you need not fear. You shall have the rifles--when I know
+exactly where they are buried."
+
+"Ah!" said Slingsby.
+
+He had listened to the familiar rigmarole, certain that behind it
+there was something real and sinister which he did not know--something
+which he was desperately anxious to find out.
+
+"Then you do not know where they are buried?"
+
+"No, but I shall know if--I am allowed to go into Gibraltar. Yes,
+there is someone there. I must put myself into relations with him.
+Then I shall know, and so shall you."
+
+So here was some part of the truth, at all events. Peiffer wanted to
+get into Gibraltar. His disappearance from Lisbon, his reappearance in
+corduroys, his quarrelsome progress down the east coast, his letter to
+Slingsby, and his story, were all just the items of an elaborate piece
+of machinery invented to open the gates of that fortress to him.
+Slingsby's only movement was to take his cigarette-case lazily from
+his pocket.
+
+"But why in the world," he asked, "can't you get your man in Gibraltar
+to come out here and see you?"
+
+Peiffer shook his head.
+
+"He would not come. He has been told to expect me, and I shall give
+him certain tokens from which he can guess my trustworthiness. If I
+write to him, 'Come to me,' he will say 'This is a trap.'"
+
+Slingsby raised another objection:
+
+"But I shouldn't think that you can expect the authorities to give you
+a safe conduct into Gibraltar upon your story."
+
+Peiffer swept that argument aside with a contemptuous wave of his
+hand.
+
+"I have a Danish passport. See!" and he took the document from his
+breast pocket. It was complete, to his photograph.
+
+"Yes, you can certainly come in on that," said Slingsby. He reflected
+for a moment before he added: "I have no power, of course. But I have
+some friends. I think you may reasonably reckon that you won't be
+molested."
+
+I saw Peiffer's eyes glitter behind his glasses.
+
+"But there's a condition," Slingsby continued sharply. "You must
+not leave Gibraltar without coming personally to me and giving me
+twenty-four hours' notice."
+
+Peiffer was all smiles and agreement.
+
+"But of course. We shall have matters to talk over--terms to arrange.
+I must see you."
+
+"Exactly. Cross by the nine-fifty steamer tomorrow morning. Is that
+understood?"
+
+"Yes, sir." And suddenly Peiffer stood up and actually saluted, as
+though he had now taken service under Slingsby's command.
+
+The unexpected movement almost made me vomit. Slingsby himself moved
+quickly away, and his face lost for a second the mask of impassivity.
+He stood at the window and looked across the water to the city of
+Gibraltar.
+
+
+Slingsby had been wounded in the early days of the war, and ever since
+he had been greatly troubled because he was not still in the trenches
+in Flanders. The casualty lists filled him with shame and discontent.
+So many of his friends, the men who had trained and marched with him,
+were laying down their gallant lives. He should have been with them.
+But during the last few days a new knowledge and inspiration had come
+to him. Gibraltar! A tedious, little, unlovely town of yellow houses
+and coal sheds, with an undesirable climate. Yes. But above it was the
+rock, the heart of a thousand memories and traditions which made it
+beautiful. He looked at it now with its steep wooded slopes, scarred
+by roads and catchments and the emplacements of guns. How much of
+England was recorded there! To how many British sailing on great ships
+from far dominions this huge buttress towering to its needle-ridge was
+the first outpost of the homeland! And for the moment he seemed to be
+its particular guardian, the ear which must listen night and day lest
+harm come to it. Harm the Rock, and all the Empire, built with such
+proud and arduous labour, would stagger under the blow, from St. Kilda
+to distant Lyttelton. He looked across the water and imagined
+Gibraltar as it looked at night, its houselights twinkling like a
+crowded zone of stars, and its great search-beams turning the ships in
+the harbour and the stone of the moles into gleaming silver, and
+travelling far over the dark waters. No harm must come to Gibraltar.
+His honour was all bound up in that. This was his service, and as he
+thought upon it he was filled with a cold fury against the traitor who
+thought it so easy to make him fail. But every hint of his anger had
+passed from his face as he turned back into the room.
+
+"If you bring me good information, why, we can do business," he said;
+and Peiffer went away.
+
+I was extremely irritated by the whole interview, and could hardly
+wait for the door to close.
+
+"What knocks me over," I cried, "is the impertinence of the man. Does
+he really think that any old yarn like the fifty thousand rifles is
+going to deceive you?"
+
+Slingsby lit a cigarette.
+
+"Peiffer's true to type, that's all," he answered imperturbably. "They
+are vain, and vanity makes them think that you will at once believe
+what they want you to believe. So their deceits are a little crude."
+Then a smile broke over his face, and to some tune with which I was
+unfamiliar he sang softly: "But he's coming to Gibraltar in the
+morning."
+
+"You think he will?"
+
+"I am sure of it."
+
+"And," I added doubtfully--it was not my business to criticise--"on
+conditions he can walk out again?"
+
+Slingsby's smile became a broad grin.
+
+"His business in Gibraltar, my friend, is not with me. He will not
+want to meet us any more; as soon as he has done what he came for he
+will go--or try to go. He thinks we are fools, you see."
+
+And in the end it seemed almost as though Peiffer was justified of his
+belief. He crossed the next morning. He went to a hotel of the second
+class; he slept in the hotel, and next morning he vanished. Suddenly
+there was no more Peiffer. Peiffer was not. For six hours Peiffer was
+not; and then at half-past five in the afternoon the telephone bell
+rang in an office where Slingsby was waiting. He rushed to the
+instrument.
+
+"Who is it?" he cried, and I saw a wave of relief surge into his face.
+Peiffer had been caught outside the gates and within a hundred yards
+of the neutral zone. He had strolled out in the thick of the dockyard
+workmen going home to Linea in Spain.
+
+"Search him and bring him up here at once," said Slingsby, and he
+dropped into his chair and wiped his forehead. "Phew! Thirty seconds
+more and he might have snapped his fingers at us." He turned to me. "I
+shall want a prisoner's escort here in half an hour."
+
+I went about that business and returned in time to see Slingsby giving
+an admirable imitation of a Prussian police official.
+
+"So, Peiffer," he cried sternly, "you broke your word. Do not deny it.
+It will be useless."
+
+The habit of a lifetime asserted itself in Peiffer. He quailed before
+authority when authority began to bully.
+
+"I did not know I was outside the walls," he faltered. "I was taking a
+walk. No one stopped me."
+
+"So!" Slingsby snorted. "And these, Peiffer--what have you to say of
+these?"
+
+There were four separate passports which had been found in Peiffer's
+pockets. He could be a Dane of Esbjerg, a Swede of Stockholm, a
+Norwegian of Christiania, or a Dutchman from Amsterdam. All four
+nationalities were open to Peiffer to select from.
+
+"They provide you with these, no doubt, in your school at Hamburg,"
+and Slingsby paused to collect his best German. "You are a prisoner of
+war. _Das ist genug_," he cried, and Peiffer climbed to the internment
+camp.
+
+So far so good. Slingsby had annexed Peiffer, but more important than
+Peiffer was Peiffer's little plot, and that he had not got. Nor did
+the most careful inquiry disclose what Peiffer had done and where he
+had been during the time when he was not. For six hours Peiffer had
+been loose in Gibraltar, and Slingsby began to get troubled. He tried
+to assume the mentality of Peiffer, and so reach his intention, but
+that did not help. He got out all the reports in which Peiffer's name
+was mentioned and read them over again.
+
+I saw him sit back in his chair and remain looking straight in front
+of him.
+
+"Yes," he said thoughtfully, and he turned over the report to me,
+pointing to a passage. It was written some months before, at Melilla,
+on the African side of the Mediterranean, and it ran like this:
+
+
+"Peiffer frequents the low houses and cafés, where he spends a good
+deal of money and sometimes gets drunk. When drunk he gets very
+arrogant, and has been known to boast that he has been three times in
+Bordeaux since the war began, and, thanks to his passports, can travel
+as easily as if the world were at peace. On such occasions he
+expresses the utmost contempt for neutral nations. I myself have heard
+him burst out: 'Wait until we have settled with our enemies. Then we
+will deal properly with the neutral nations. They shall explain to us
+on their knees. Meanwhile,' and he thumped the table, making the
+glasses rattle, 'let them keep quiet and hold their tongues. We shall
+do what we like in neutral countries.'"
+
+I read the passage.
+
+"Do you see that last sentence? 'We shall do what we like in neutral
+countries.' No man ever spoke the mind of his nation better than
+Peiffer did that night in a squalid café in Melilla."
+
+Slingsby looked out over the harbour to where the sun was setting on
+the sierras. He would have given an arm to be sure of what Peiffer had
+set on foot behind those hills.
+
+"I wonder," he said uneasily, and from that day he began to sleep
+badly.
+
+Then came another and a most disquieting phase of the affair. Peiffer
+began to write letters to Slingsby. He was not comfortable. He was not
+being treated as an officer should be. He had no amusements, and his
+food was too plain. Moreover, there were Germans and Austrians up in
+the camp who turned up their noses at him because their birth was
+better than his.
+
+"You see what these letters mean?" said Slingsby. "Peiffer wants to be
+sent away from the Rock."
+
+"You are reading your own ideas into them," I replied.
+
+But Slingsby was right. Each letter under its simple and foolish
+excuses was a prayer for translation to a less dangerous place. For as
+the days passed and no answer was vouchsafed, the prayer became a real
+cry of fear.
+
+"I claim to be sent to England without any delay. I must be sent," he
+wrote frankly and frantically.
+
+Slingsby set his teeth with a grim satisfaction.
+
+"No, my friend, you shall stay while the danger lasts. If it's a year,
+if you are alone in the camp, still you shall stay. The horrors you
+have planned you shall share with every man, woman and child in the
+town."
+
+We were in this horrible and strange predicament. The whole colony was
+menaced, and from the Lines to Europa Point only two men knew of the
+peril. Of those two, one, in an office down by the harbour,
+ceaselessly and vainly, with a dreadful anxiety, asked "When?" The
+other, the prisoner, knew the very hour and minute of the catastrophe,
+and waited for it with the sinking fear of a criminal awaiting the
+fixed moment of his execution.
+
+Thus another week passed.
+
+Slingsby became a thing of broken nerves. If you shut the door noisily
+he cursed; if you came in noiselessly he cursed yet louder, and one
+evening he reached the stage when the sunset gun made him jump.
+
+"That's enough," I said sternly. "To-day is Saturday. To-morrow we
+borrow the car"--there is only one worth talking about on the
+Rock--"and we drive out."
+
+"I can't do it," he cried.
+
+I continued:
+
+"We will lunch somewhere by the road, and we will go on to the country
+house of the Claytons, who will give us tea. Then in the afternoon we
+will return."
+
+Slingsby hesitated. It is curious to remember on how small a matter so
+much depended. I believe he would have refused, but at that moment the
+sunset gun went off and he jumped out of his chair.
+
+"Yes, I am fairly rocky," he admitted. "I will take a day off."
+
+I borrowed the car, and we set off and lunched according to our
+programme. It was perhaps half an hour afterwards when we were going
+slowly over a remarkably bad road. A powerful car, driven at a furious
+pace, rushed round a corner towards us, swayed, lurched, and swept
+past us with a couple of inches to spare, whilst a young man seated at
+the wheel shouted a greeting and waved his hand.
+
+"Who the dickens was that?" I asked.
+
+"I know," replied Slingsby. "It's Morano. He's a count, and will be a
+marquis and no end of a swell if he doesn't get killed motoring.
+Which, after all, seems likely."
+
+I thought no more of the man until his name cropped up whilst we were
+sitting at tea on the Claytons' veranda.
+
+"We passed Morano," said Slingsby. And Mrs. Clayton said with some
+pride--she was a pretty, kindly woman, but she rather affected the
+Spanish nobility:
+
+"He lunched with us to-day. You know he is staying in Gibraltar."
+
+"Yes, I know that," said Slingsby. "For I met him a little time ago.
+He wanted to know if there was a good Government launch for sale."
+
+Mrs. Clayton raised her eyebrows in surprise.
+
+"A launch? Surely you are wrong. He is devoting himself to aviation."
+
+"Is he?" said Slingsby, and a curious look flickered for a moment over
+his face.
+
+We left the house half an hour afterwards, and as soon as we were out
+of sight of it Slingsby opened his hand. He was holding a visiting
+card.
+
+"I stole this off the hall table," he said. "Mrs. Clayton will never
+forgive me. Just look at it."
+
+His face had become extraordinarily grave. The card was Morano's, and
+it was engraved after the Spanish custom. In Spain, when a woman
+marries she does not lose her name. She may be in appearance more
+subject to her husband than the women of other countries, though you
+will find many good judges to tell you that women rule Spain. In any
+case her name is not lost in that of her husband; the children will
+bear it as well as their father's, and will have it printed on their
+cards. Thus, Mr. Jones will call on you, but on the card he leaves he
+will be styled:
+
+
+                       Mr. Jones and Robinson,
+
+
+if Robinson happens to be his mother's name, and if you are scrupulous
+in your etiquette you will so address him.
+
+Now, on the card which Slingsby had stolen, the Count Morano was
+described:
+
+
+                            MORANO Y GOLTZ
+
+
+"I see," I replied. "Morano had a German mother."
+
+I was interested. There might be nothing in it, of course. A noble of
+Spain might have a German mother and still not intrigue for the
+Germans against the owners of Gibraltar. But no sane man would take a
+bet about it.
+
+"The point is," said Slingsby, "I am pretty sure that is not the card
+which he sent in to me when he came to ask about a launch. We will go
+straight to the office and make sure."
+
+By the time we got there we were both somewhat excited, and we
+searched feverishly in the drawers of Slingsby's writing-table.
+
+"I shouldn't be such an ass as to throw it away," he said, turning
+over his letters. "No! Here it is!" and a sharp exclamation burst from
+his lips.
+
+"Look!"
+
+He laid the card he had stolen side by side with the card which he had
+just found, and between the two there was a difference--to both of us
+a veritable world of difference. For from the second card the "y
+Goltz," the evidence that Morano was half-German, had disappeared.
+
+"And it's not engraved," said Slingsby, bending down over the table.
+"It's just printed--printed in order to mislead us."
+
+Slingsby sat down in his chair. A great hope was bringing the life
+back to his tired face, but he would not give the reins to his hope.
+
+"Let us go slow," he said, warned by the experience of a hundred
+disappointments. "Let us see how it works out. Morano comes to
+Gibraltar and makes a prolonged stay in a hotel. Not being a fool, he
+is aware that I know who is in Gibraltar and who is not. Therefore he
+visits me with a plausible excuse for being in Gibraltar. But he takes
+the precaution to have this card specially printed. Why, if he is
+playing straight? He pretends he wants a launch, but he is really
+devoting himself to aviation. Is it possible that the Count Morano,
+not forgetting Goltz, knows exactly how the good Peiffer spent the six
+hours we can't account for, and what his little plan is?"
+
+I sprang up. It did seem that Slingsby was getting at last to the
+heart of Peiffer's secret.
+
+"We will now take steps," said Slingsby, and telegrams began to fly
+over the wires. In three days' time the answers trickled in.
+
+An agent of Morano's had bought a German aeroplane in Lisbon. A German
+aviator was actually at the hotel there. Slingsby struck the table
+with his fist.
+
+"What a fool I am!" he cried. "Give me a newspaper."
+
+I handed him one of that morning's date. Slingsby turned it feverishly
+over, searching down the columns of the provincial news until he came
+to the heading "Portugal."
+
+"Here it is!" he cried, and he read aloud. "'The great feature of the
+Festival week this year will be, of course, the aviation race from
+Villa Real to Seville. Amongst those who have entered machines is the
+Count Morano y Goltz.'"
+
+He leaned back and lit a cigarette.
+
+"We have got it! Morano's machine, driven by the German aviator, rises
+from the aerodrome at Villa Real in Portugal with the others, heads
+for Seville, drops behind, turns and makes a bee-line for the Rock,
+Peiffer having already arranged with Morano for signals to be made
+where bombs should be dropped. When is the race to be?"
+
+I took the newspaper.
+
+"Ten days from now."
+
+"Good!"
+
+Once more the telegrams began to fly. A week later Slingsby told me
+the result.
+
+"Owing to unforeseen difficulties, the Festival committee at Villa
+Real has reorganised its arrangements, and there will be no aviation
+race. Oh, they'll do what they like in neutral countries, will they?
+But Peiffer shan't know," he added, with a grin. "Peiffer shall eat of
+his own frightfulness."
+
+
+
+
+
+                            THE EBONY BOX
+
+
+
+
+                            THE EBONY BOX
+
+
+"No, no," said Colonel von Altrock, abruptly. "It is not always true."
+
+The conversation died away at once, and everyone about that dinner
+table in the Rue St. Florentin looked at him expectantly. He played
+nervously with the stem of his wineglass for a few moments, as though
+the complete silence distressed him. Then he resumed with a more
+diffident air:
+
+"War no doubt inspires noble actions and brings out great qualities in
+men from whom you expected nothing. But there is another side to it
+which becomes apparent, not at once, but after a few months of
+campaigning. Your nerves get over-strained, fatigue and danger tell
+their tale. You lose your manners, sometimes you degenerate into a
+brute. I happen to know. Thirty years have passed since the siege of
+Paris, yet even to-day there is no part of my life which I regret so
+much as the hours between eleven and twelve o'clock of Christmas night
+in the year 'Seventy. I will tell you about it if you like, although
+the story may make us late for the opera."
+
+The opera to be played that evening was "Faust," which most had heard,
+and the rest could hear when they would. On the other hand Colonel von
+Altrock was habitually a silent man. The offer which he made now he
+was not likely to repeat. It was due, as his companions understood, to
+the accident that this night was the first which he had spent in Paris
+since the days of the great siege.
+
+"It will not matter if we are a little late," said his hostess, the
+Baroness Hammerstein, and her guests agreed with her.
+
+"It is permitted to smoke?" asked the Colonel. For a moment the flame
+of a match lit up and exaggerated the hollows and the lines upon his
+lean, rugged face. Then, drawing his chair to the table, he told his
+story.
+
+I was a lieutenant of the fifth company of the second battalion of the
+103rd Regiment, which belonged to the 23rd Infantry Division. It is as
+well to be exact. That division was part of the 12th Army Corps under
+the Crown Prince of Saxony, and in the month of December formed the
+south-eastern segment of our circle about Paris. On Christmas night I
+happened to be on duty at a forepost in advance of Noisy-le-Grand. The
+centrigrade thermometer was down to twelve degrees below zero, and our
+little wooden hut with the sloping roof, which served us at once as
+kitchen, mess-room, and dormitory, seemed to us all a comfortable
+shelter. Outside its door the country glimmered away into darkness, a
+white silent plain of snow. Inside, the camp-bedsteads were neatly
+ranged along the wall where the roof was lowest. A long table covered
+with a white cloth--for we were luxurious on Christmas night--occupied
+the middle of the floor. A huge fire blazed up the chimney, chairs of
+any style, from a Louis Quatorze fauteuil borrowed from the _salon_ of
+a château to the wooden bench of a farm-house, were placed about the
+table, and in a corner stood a fine big barrel of Bavarian beer which
+had arrived that morning as a Christmas present from my mother at
+Leipzig. We were none of us anxious to turn out into the bitter cold,
+I can tell you. But we were not colonels in those days, and while the
+Hauptmann was proposing my mother's health the door was thrust open
+and an orderly muffled up to the eyes stood on the threshold at the
+salute.
+
+"The Herr Oberst wishes to see the Herr Lieutenant von Altrock," said
+he, and before I had time even to grumble he turned on his heels and
+marched away.
+
+I took down my great-coat, drew the cape over my head, and went out of
+the hut. There was no wind, nor was the snow falling, but the cold was
+terrible, and to me who had come straight from the noise of my
+companions the night seemed unnaturally still. I plodded away through
+the darkness. Behind me in the hut the Hauptmann struck up a song, and
+the words came to me quite clearly and very plaintively across the
+snow:
+
+
+              Ich hatte einen Kamaraden
+              Einen besseren findest du nicht.
+
+
+I wondered whether in the morning, like that comrade, I should be a
+man to be mentioned in the past tense. For more than once a sentinel
+had been found frozen dead at his post, and I foresaw a long night's
+work before me. My Colonel had acquired a habit of choosing me for
+special services, and indeed to his kindness in this respect I owed my
+commission. For you must understand that I was a student at Heidelberg
+when the newsboys came running down the streets one evening in July
+with the telegram that M. Benedetti had left Ems. I joined the army as
+a volunteer, and I fought in the ranks at Gravelotte. However, I felt
+no gratitude to my Colonel that Christmas night as I tramped up the
+slope of Noisy-le-Grand to the château where he had his quarters.
+
+I found him sitting at a little table drawn close to the fire in a
+bare, dimly-lighted room. A lamp stood on the table, and he was
+peering at a crumpled scrap of paper and smoothing out its creases. So
+engrossed was he, indeed, in his scrutiny that it was some minutes
+before he raised his head and saw me waiting for his commands.
+
+"Lieutenant von Altrock," he said, "you must ride to Raincy."
+
+Raincy was only five miles distant, as the crow flies. Yes, but the
+French had made a sortie on the 21st, they had pushed back our lines,
+and they now held Ville Evrart and Maison Blanche between Raincy and
+Noisy-le-Grand. I should have to make a circuit; my five miles became
+ten. I did not like the prospect at all. I liked it still less when
+the Colonel added:
+
+"You must be careful. More than one German soldier has of late been
+killed upon that road. There are _francs-tireurs_ about, and you
+_must_ reach Raincy."
+
+It was a verbal message which he gave me, and I was to deliver it in
+person to the commandant of the battery at Raincy. It bore its fruit
+upon the 27th, when the cross-fire from Raincy and Noisy-le-Grand
+destroyed the new French fort upon Mount Avron in a snowstorm.
+
+"There is a horse ready for you at the stables," said the Colonel, and
+with a nod he turned again to his scrap of paper. I saluted and walked
+to the door. As my hand was on the knob he called me back.
+
+"What do you make of it?" he asked, holding the paper out to me. "It
+was picked out of the Marne in a sealed wine-bottle."
+
+I took the paper, and saw that a single sentence was written upon it
+in a round and laborious hand with the words mis-spelt. The meaning of
+the sentence seemed simple enough. It was apparently a message from a
+M. Bonnet to his son in the Mobiles at Paris, and it stated that the
+big black sow had had a litter of fifteen.
+
+"What do you make of it?" repeated the Colonel.
+
+"Why, that M. Bonnet's black sow has farrowed fifteen," said I.
+
+I handed the paper back. The Colonel looked at it again, shrugged his
+shoulders, and laughed.
+
+"Well, after all, perhaps it does mean no more than that," said he.
+
+But for the Colonel's suspicions I should not have given another
+thought to that mis-spelt scrawl. M. Bonnet was probably some little
+farmer engrossed in his pigs and cows, who thought that no message
+could be more consoling to his son locked up in Paris than this great
+news about the black sow. The Colonel's anxiety, however, fixed it for
+awhile in my mind.
+
+The wildest rumours were flying about our camp at that time, as I
+think will always happen when you have a large body of men living
+under a great strain of cold and privation and peril. They perplexed
+the seasoned officers and they were readily swallowed by the
+youngsters, of whom I was one. Now, this scrap of paper happened to
+fit in with the rumour which most of all exercised our imaginations.
+
+It was known that in spite of all our precautions news was continually
+leaking into Paris which we did not think it good for the Parisians to
+have. What we did think good for them--information, for instance, of
+the defeat of the Army of the Loire--we ourselves sent in without
+delay. But we ascertained from our prisoners that Paris was
+enlightened with extraordinary rapidity upon other matters which we
+wished to keep to ourselves. On that very Christmas Day they already
+knew that General Faidherbe, at Pont Noyelles, had repulsed a portion
+of our first army under General Manteuffel. How did they know? We were
+not satisfied that pigeons and balloons completely explained the
+mystery. No, we believed that the news passed somewhere through our
+lines on the south-east of Paris. There was supposed to exist a
+regular system like the underground road in the Southern States of
+America during the slavery days. There the escaped slave was quickly
+and secretly passed on from appointed house to appointed house, until
+he reached freedom. Here it was news in cipher which was passed on and
+on to a house close to our lines, whence, as occasion served, it was
+carried into Paris.
+
+That was the rumour. There may have been truth in it, or it may have
+been entirely false. But, at all events, it had just the necessary
+element of fancy to appeal to the imagination of a very young man, and
+as I walked to the stables and mounted the horse which the Colonel had
+lent me, I kept wondering whether this message, so simple in
+appearance, had travelled along that underground road and was covering
+its last stage between the undiscovered château and Paris in the
+sealed wine-bottle. I tried to make out what the black sow stood for
+in the cipher, and whose identity was concealed under the pseudonym of
+M. Bonnet. So I rode down the slope of Noisy-le-Grand.
+
+But at the bottom of the slope these speculations passed entirely from
+my mind. In front, hidden away in the darkness, lay the dangers of
+Ville Evrart and Maison Blanche. German soldiers had ridden along this
+path and had not returned; the _francs-tireurs_ were abroad. Yet I
+must reach Raincy. Moreover, in my own mind, I was equally convinced
+that I must return. I saw the little beds against the wall of the hut
+under the sloping roof. I rode warily, determined to sleep in one of
+them that night, determined to keep my life if it could be kept. I
+believe I should have pistolled my dearest friend without a tinge of
+remorse had he tried to delay me for a second. Three months of
+campaigning, in a word, had told their tale.
+
+I crossed the Marne and turned off the road into a forest path. Ville
+Evrart with its French garrison lay now upon my left behind the screen
+of trees. Fortunately there was no moon that night, and a mist hung in
+the air. The snow, too, deadened the sound of my horse's hoofs. But I
+rode, nevertheless, very gently and with every sense alert. Each
+moment I expected the challenge of a sentinel in French. From any of
+the bushes which I passed I might suddenly see the spurt of flame from
+a _franc-tireur's chassepot_. If a twig snapped in the frost at my
+side I was very sure the foot of an enemy was treading there.
+
+I came to the end of the wood and rode on to Chesnay. Here the country
+was more open, and I had passed Ville Evrart. But I did not feel any
+greater security. I was possessed with a sort of rage to get my
+business done and live--yes, at all costs live. A mile beyond Chesnay
+I came to cross-roads, and within the angle which the two roads made a
+little cabin stood upon a plot of grass. I was in doubt which road to
+take. The cabin was all dark, and riding up to the door I hammered
+upon it with the butt of my pistol. It was not immediately opened.
+There must indeed have been some delay, since the inmates were
+evidently in bed. But I was not in any mood to show consideration. I
+wanted to get on--to get on and live. A little window was within my
+reach. I dashed the butt of the pistol violently through the glass.
+
+"Will that waken you, eh?" I cried, and almost before I had finished I
+heard a shuffling footstep in the passage and the door was opened. A
+poor old peasant-woman, crippled with rheumatism, stood in the doorway
+shading a lighted candle with a gnarled, trembling hand. In her haste
+to obey she had merely thrown a petticoat over the shoulders of her
+nightdress, and there she stood with bare feet, shivering in the cold,
+an old bent woman of eighty, and apologised.
+
+"I am sorry, monsieur," she said, meekly. "But I cannot move as
+quickly as I could when I was young. How can I serve monsieur?"
+
+Not a word of reproach about her broken window. You would think that
+the hardest man must have felt some remorse. I merely broke in upon
+her apologies with a rough demand for information.
+
+"The road upon your right leads to Chelles, monsieur," she answered.
+"That upon your left to Raincy."
+
+I rode off without another word. It is not a pretty description which
+I am giving to you, but it is a true one. That is my regret--it is a
+true one. I forgot the old peasant woman the moment I had passed the
+cabin. I thought only of the long avenues of trees which stretched
+across that flat country, and which could hide whole companies of
+_francs-tireurs_. I strained my eyes forwards. I listened for the
+sound of voices. But the first voice which I heard spoke in my own
+tongue.
+
+It was the voice of a sentry on the outposts of Raincy, and I could
+have climbed down from my saddle and hugged him to my heart. Instead,
+I sat impassively in my saddle and gave him the countersign. I was
+conducted to the quarters of the commandant of artillery and I
+delivered my message.
+
+"You have come quickly," he said. "What road did you take?"
+
+"That of Chesnay and Gagny."
+
+The commandant looked queerly at me.
+
+"Did you?" said he. "You are lucky. You will return by Montfermeil
+and Chelles, Lieutenant von Altrock, and I will send an escort with
+you. Apparently we are better informed at Raincy than you are at
+Noisy-le-Grand."
+
+"I knew there was danger, sir," I replied.
+
+A regiment of dragoons was quartered at Raincy, and from it two
+privates and a corporal were given me for escort. In the company of
+these men I started back by the longer road in the rear of our lines.
+And it was a quarter to ten when I started. For I noticed the time of
+a clock in the commandant's quarters. I should think that it must have
+taken three-quarters of an hour to reach Montfermeil, for the snow was
+deep here and the mist very thick. Beyond Montfermeil, however, we
+came to higher ground; there were fewer drifts of snow, and the
+night began to clear, so that we made better going. We were now, of
+course, behind our lines, and the only risk we ran was that a few
+peasants armed with rifles from a battlefield or a small band of
+_francs-tireurs_ might be lurking on the chance of picking off a
+straggler. But that risk was not very great now that there were four
+of us. I rode therefore with an easier mind, and the first thing which
+entered my thoughts was--what do you think? The old peasant-woman's
+cabin with the broken window? Not a bit of it. No, it was M. Bonnet's
+black sow. Had M. Bonnet's sow farrowed fifteen? Or was that litter of
+fifteen intended to inform the people in Paris by some system of
+multiplication of the exact number of recruits which had joined one of
+the French armies still in the field--say, General Faidherbe's, at
+Bapaume, and so to keep up their spirits and prolong the siege? I was
+still puzzling over this problem when in a most solitary place I came
+suddenly upon a château with lighted windows. This was the Château
+Villetaneuse. I reined in my horse and stopped. My escort halted
+behind me. It was after all an astonishing sight. There were many
+châteaux about Paris then, as there are now, but not one that I had
+ever come across was inhabited by more than a caretaker. The owners
+had long since fled. Breached walls, trampled gardens, gaping roofs,
+and silence and desertion--that is what we meant when we spoke of a
+chateâu near Paris in those days. But here was one with lighted
+windows on the first and second storeys staring out calmly on the snow
+as though never a Prussian soldier had crossed the Rhine. A thick
+clump of trees sheltered it behind, and it faced the eastern side of
+the long ridge of Mont Guichet, along the foot of which I rode--the
+side farthest from Paris. From the spot where I and my escort had
+halted an open park stretched level to the door. The house had, no
+doubt, a very homelike look on that cold night. It should have spoken
+to me, no doubt, of the well-ordered family life and the gentle
+occupations of women. But I was thinking of M. Bonnet's black sow. I
+was certain that none of our officers were quartered there and making
+the best of their Christmas night in France. Had that been the case,
+black paths and ruts would have been trampled in the snow up to the
+door, and before now I should have been challenged by a sentinel. No!
+The more I looked at the house and its lighted windows, the more I
+thought of M. Bonnet's sow. Was this solitary château the undiscovered
+last station on the underground road through which the news passed
+into Paris? If not, why was it still inhabited? Why did the lights
+blaze out upon the snow so late?
+
+I commanded my escort to be silent. We rode across the park, and
+half-way to the door we came upon a wire fence and a gate. There we
+dismounted, and walked our horses. We tethered them to a tree about
+twenty yards from the house. I ordered one of my dragoons to go round
+the house, and watch any door which he might find at the back. I told
+the other two to stay where they were, and I advanced alone to the
+steps, but before I had reached them the front door was thrown open,
+and a girl with a lantern in her hand came out.
+
+She held the lantern high above her head and peered forward, so that
+the light fell full upon her hair, her face, and dress. She was a tall
+girl and slight of figure, with big, dark eyes, and a face pretty and
+made for laughter. It was very pale now, however, and the brows were
+drawn together in a frown. She wore a white evening frock, which
+glistened in the lantern light, and over her bare shoulders she had
+flung a heavy, black, military cloak. So she stood and swung the
+lantern slowly from side to side as she stared into the darkness,
+while the lights and shadows chased each other swiftly across her
+white frock, her anxious face, and the waves of her fair hair.
+
+"Whom do you expect at this hour, mademoiselle?" I asked.
+
+I was quite close to her, but she had not seen me, for I stood at the
+bottom of the steps and she was looking out over my head. Yet she did
+not start or utter any cry. Only the lantern rattled in her hand. Then
+she stood quite still for a moment or two, and afterwards lowered her
+arm until the light shone upon me.
+
+"You are Prussian?" she said.
+
+"A lieutenant of foot," I answered. "You have nothing to fear."
+
+"I am not afraid," she replied, quietly.
+
+"Yet you tremble, mademoiselle. Your hand shakes."
+
+"That is the cold," said she.
+
+"Whom did you expect?"
+
+"No one," she replied. "I thought that I heard the rattle of iron as
+though a horse moved and a stirrup rang. It is lonely here since our
+neighbours have fled. I came out to see."
+
+"The lantern then was not a signal, mademoiselle?" I asked.
+
+She looked at me in perplexity, and certainly the little piece of
+acting, I thought, was very well done. Many a man might have been
+taken in by it. But it was thrown away upon me, for I had noticed that
+heavy military cloak. How did it come to lie so conveniently to her
+hand in the hall?
+
+"A signal?" she repeated. "To whom?"
+
+"To some man hiding in the woods of Mont Guichet, a signal to him
+that he may come and fetch the news for Paris that has lately--very
+lately--been brought to the house."
+
+She bent forward and peered down at me, drawing the cloak closer about
+her neck.
+
+"You are under some strange mistake, monsieur," she said. "No news for
+Paris has been brought to this house by anyone."
+
+"Indeed?" I answered. "And is that so?" Then I stretched out my hand
+and said triumphantly: "You will tell me perhaps that the cloak upon
+your shoulders is a woman's cloak?"
+
+And she laughed! It was humiliating; it is always humiliating to a
+young man not to be taken seriously, isn't--especially if he is a
+conqueror? There was I thinking that I had fairly cross-examined her
+into a trap, and she laughed indulgently. Of course, a girl always
+claims the right to be ever so much older than a man of her own age,
+but she stood on the top of the steps and laughed down at me as though
+she had the advantage of as many years as there were steps between us.
+And she explained indulgently, too.
+
+"The cloak I am wearing belongs to a wounded French officer who was
+taken prisoner and released upon parole. He is now in our house."
+
+"Then I think I will make his acquaintance," I said, and over my
+shoulder I called to the corporal. As he advanced to my side a look of
+alarm came into the girl's face.
+
+"You are not alone," she said, and suddenly her face became wistful
+and her voice began to plead. "You have not come for him? He has done
+no harm. He could not, even if he would. And he would not, for he has
+given his parole. Oh, you are not going to take him away?"
+
+"That we shall see, mademoiselle."
+
+I left one dragoon at the door. I ordered the corporal to wait in the
+hall, and I followed the girl up the stairs to the first floor. All
+her pride had gone; she led the way with a submission of manner which
+seemed to me only a fresh effort to quiet my suspicions. But they were
+not quieted. I distrusted her; I believed that I had under my fingers
+the proof of that rumour which flew about our camp. She stopped at a
+door, and as she turned the handle she said:
+
+"This is my own parlour, monsieur. We all use it now, for it is warmer
+than the others, and all our servants but one have fled."
+
+It was a pretty room, and cheery enough to a young man who came into
+it from the darkness and the snow. A piano stood open in a corner with
+a rug thrown upon it to protect the strings from the cold; books lay
+upon the tables, heavy curtains were drawn close over the windows,
+there were cushioned sofas and deep armchairs, and a good fire of logs
+blazed upon the hearth. These details I took in at once. Then I looked
+at the occupants. A youth lay stretched upon a sofa close to the fire
+with a wrap covering his legs. The wrap was raised by a cradle to keep
+off its weight. His face must have been, I think, unusually handsome
+when he had his health; at the moment it was so worn and pale, and the
+eyes were so sunk, that all its beauty had gone. The pallor was
+accentuated by a small black moustache he wore and his black hair. He
+lay with his head supported upon a pillow, and was playing a game of
+chess with an old lady who sat at a little table by his side. This old
+lady was actually making a move as I entered the room, for as she
+turned and stared at me she was holding a chessman in her hand. I
+advanced to the fire and warmed my hands at it.
+
+"You, sir, are the wounded officer on parole?" I said in French. The
+officer bowed.
+
+"And you, madame?" I asked of the old lady. The sight of my uniform
+seemed to have paralysed her with terror. She sat still holding the
+chessman in her hand, and staring at me with her mouth half-open.
+
+"Come, come, madame," I explained, impatiently; "it is a simple
+question."
+
+"Monsieur, you frighten her," said the young lady. "It is my aunt, the
+Baroness Granville."
+
+"You tell me nothing of yourself," I said to her, and she looked at me
+in surprise.
+
+"Since you have come with an escort to this house I imagined you must
+know to whom it belonged. I am Sophie de Villetaneuse."
+
+"Exactly," I replied, as though I had known all along, and had merely
+asked the question to see whether she would speak the truth. "Now,
+mademoiselle, will you please explain to me how it is that while your
+neighbours have fled you remain at your château?"
+
+"It is quite simple," she answered. "My mother is bedridden. She could
+not be moved. She could not be left alone."
+
+"You will pardon me," said I, "if I test the statement."
+
+The wounded officer raised himself upon his elbow as though to
+protest, but Mademoiselle de Villetaneuse put out a hand and checked
+him. She showed me a face flushed with anger, but she spoke quite
+quietly.
+
+"I will myself take you to my mother's room."
+
+I laughed. I said: "That is just what I expected. You will take me to
+your mother's room and leave your friends here to make any little
+preparations in the way of burning awkward letters which they may
+think desirable. Thank you, no! I am not so easily caught."
+
+Mademoiselle Sophie was becoming irritated.
+
+"There are no awkward letters!" she exclaimed.
+
+"That statement, too, I shall put to the test."
+
+I went to the door, and standing so that I could still keep an eye
+upon the room, I called the corporal.
+
+"You will search the house thoroughly," I said, "and quickly. Bring me
+word how many people you find in it. You, mademoiselle, will remain in
+the room with us."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders as I closed the door and came back into the
+room.
+
+"You were wounded, monsieur," I said to the Frenchman. "Where?"
+
+"In the sortie on Le Bourget."
+
+"And you came here the moment you were released on your parole?"
+
+The wounded officer turned with a smile to Mademoiselle Sophie.
+
+"Yes, for here live my best friends."
+
+He took her hand, and with a Frenchman's grace he raised it to his
+lips and kissed it. And I was suddenly made acquainted with the
+relationship in which these two, youth and maid, stood to one another.
+Mademoiselle Sophie had cried out on the steps against the possibility
+that I might have come to claim my prisoner. But though she spoke no
+word, she was still more explicit now. With the officer that caress
+was plainly no more than a pretty way of saying thanks; it had the
+look of a habit, it was so neatly given, and he gave it without
+carelessness, it is true, but without warmth. She, however, received
+it very differently. He did not see, because his head was bent above
+her hand, but I did.
+
+I saw the look of pain in her face, the slight contraction of her
+shoulders and arms, as if to meet a blow. The kiss hurt her--no, not
+the kiss, but the finished grace with which it was given, the proof,
+in a word, that it was a way of saying "Thanks"--and nothing more.
+Here was a woman who loved and a man who did not love, and the woman
+knew. So much was evident to me who looked on, but when the officer
+raised his head there was nothing for him to see, and upon her lips
+only the conventional remark:
+
+"We should have been hurt if you had not come."
+
+I resumed my questions:
+
+"Your doctor, monsieur, is in the house?"
+
+"At this hour? No."
+
+"Ah. That is a pity."
+
+The young man lifted his head from his pillow and looked me over from
+head to foot with a stare of disdain.
+
+"I do not quite understand. You doubt my word, monsieur?"
+
+"Why not?" I asked sharply.
+
+It was quite possible that the cradle, this rug across his legs, the
+pillow, were all pretences. Many a soldier in those days was pale and
+worn and had sunken eyes, and yet was sound of limb and could do a
+day's work of twenty-four hours if there were need. I had my theory
+and as yet I had come upon nothing to disprove it. This young officer
+might very well have brought in a cipher message to the Château
+Villetaneuse. Mademoiselle Sophie might very well have waved her
+lantern at the door to summon a fresh messenger.
+
+"No; why should I not doubt your word?" I repeated.
+
+He turned his face to the old lady. "It is your move, Baronne," he
+said, and she placed the piece she held upon a square of the board.
+Mademoiselle Sophie took her stand by the table between the players,
+and the game went on just as though there were no intruder in the
+room. It was uncomfortable for me. I shifted my feet. I tried to
+appear at my ease; finally I sat down in a chair. They took no notice
+of me whatever. But that I felt hot upon a discovery, but that I knew
+if I could bring back to Noisy-le-Grand proof of where the leakage
+through our lines occurred, I should earn approval and perhaps
+promotion, I should very deeply have regretted my entrance into the
+Château Villetaneuse. And I was extremely glad when at last the
+corporal opened the door. He had searched the house--he had found no
+one but Madame de Villetaneuse and an old servant who was watching by
+her bed.
+
+"Very well," said I, and the corporal returned to the hall.
+
+Mademoiselle Sophie moved away from the chess-table. She came and
+stood opposite to me, and though her face was still, her eyes were
+hard with anger.
+
+"And now perhaps you will tell me to what I owe your visit?" she said.
+
+"Certainly," I returned. I fixed my eyes on her, and I said slowly, "I
+have come to ask for more news of M. Bonnet's black sow."
+
+Mademoiselle Sophie stared as if she were not sure whether I was mad
+or drunk, but was very sure I was one or the other. The young
+Frenchman started upon his couch, with the veins swelling upon his
+forehead and a flushed face.
+
+"This is an insult," he cried savagely, and no less savagely I
+answered him.
+
+"Hold your tongue!" I cried. "You forget too often that though you are
+on parole you are still a prisoner."
+
+He fell back upon the sofa with a groan of pain, and the girl hurried
+to his side.
+
+"Your leg hurts you. You should not have moved," she cried.
+
+"It is nothing," he said, faintly.
+
+Meanwhile I had been looking about the room for a box or a case where
+the cipher messages might be hid. I saw nothing of the kind. Of course
+they might be hidden between the pages of a book. I went from table to
+table, taking them by the boards and shaking the leaves. Not a scrap
+of paper tumbled out. There was another door in the room besides that
+which led on to the landing.
+
+"Mademoiselle, what room is that?" I asked.
+
+"My bedroom," she answered, simply, and with a gesture full of dignity
+she threw open the door.
+
+I carried the mud and snow and the grime of a camp without a scruple
+of remorse into that neat and pretty chamber. Mademoiselle Sophie
+followed me as I searched wardrobe and drawer and box. At last I came
+to one drawer in her dressing-table which was locked. I tried the
+handle again to make sure. Yes, it was locked. I looked suddenly at
+the young lady. She was watching me out of the corners of her eyes
+with a peculiar intentness. I felt at once that I was hot.
+
+"Open that drawer, mademoiselle," I said.
+
+"It contains only some private things."
+
+"Open that drawer or I burst it open."
+
+"No," she cried, as I jerked the handle. "I will open it."
+
+She fetched the key out of another drawer which was unlocked, and
+fitted it into the lock of the dressing-table. And all the while I saw
+that she was watching me. She meant to play me some trick, I was
+certain. So I watched too, and I did well to watch. She turned the
+key, opened the drawer, and then snatched out something with
+extraordinary rapidity and ran as hard as she could to the door--not
+the door through which we had entered, but a second door which gave on
+to the passage. She ran very fast and she ran very lightly, and she
+did not stumble over a chair as I did in pursuit of her. But she had
+to unlatch the door and pull it open. I caught her up and closed my
+arms about her. It was a little, carved, ebony box which she held, the
+very thing for which I searched.
+
+"I thought so," I cried with a laugh. "Drop the box, mademoiselle.
+Drop it on the floor!"
+
+The noise of our struggle had been heard in the next room. The
+Baroness rushed through the doorway.
+
+"What has happened?" she cried. "Mon Dieu! you are killing her!"
+
+"Drop the box, mademoiselle!"
+
+And as I spoke she threw it away. She threw it through the doorway;
+she tried to throw it over the banisters of the stairs, but my arms
+were about hers, and it fell into the passage just beyond the door. I
+darted from her and picked it up. When I returned with it she was
+taking a gold chain from her neck. At the end of the chain hung a
+little golden key. This she held out to me.
+
+"Open it here," she said in a low, eager voice.
+
+The sudden change only increased my suspicions, or rather my
+conviction that I had now the proof which I needed. A minute ago she
+was trying as hard as she could to escape with the box, now she was
+imploring me to open it.
+
+"Why, if you are so eager to show me the contents, did you try to
+throw it away?" I asked.
+
+"I tried to throw it down into the hall," she answered.
+
+"My corporal would have picked it up."
+
+"Oh, what would that matter?" she exclaimed, impatiently. "You would
+have opened it in the hall. That was what I wanted. Open it here! At
+all events open it here!"
+
+The very urgency of her pleading made me determined to refuse the
+plea.
+
+"No, you have some other ruse, mademoiselle," said I. "Perhaps you
+wish to gain time for your friend in the next room. No, we will return
+here and open it comfortably by the fire."
+
+I kept a tight hold upon the box. I shook it. To my delight I felt
+that there were papers within it. I carried it back to the fireside
+and sat down on a chair. Mademoiselle Sophie followed me close, and as
+I fixed the little gold key into the lock she laid her hand very
+gently upon my arm.
+
+"I beg you not to unlock that box," she said; "if you do you will
+bring upon me a great humiliation and upon yourself much remorse.
+There is nothing there which concerns you. There are just my little
+secrets. A girl may have secrets, monsieur, which are sacred to her."
+
+She was standing quite close to me, and her back was towards the
+French officer and her aunt. They could not see her face and they
+could hardly have heard more than a word here and there of what she
+said. For always she spoke in a low voice, and at times that low voice
+dropped to a whisper, so that I myself had to watch her lips. I
+answered her only by turning the key in the lock. She took her hand
+from my arm and laid it on the lid to hinder me from opening it.
+
+"I wore the key on a chain about my neck, monsieur," she whispered.
+"Does that teach you nothing? Even though you are young, does it teach
+you nothing? I said that if you unlocked that box you would cause me
+great humiliation, thinking that would be enough to stop you. But I
+see I must tell you more. Read the letters, monsieur, question me
+about them, and you will make my life a very lonely one. I think so. I
+think you will destroy my chance of happiness. You would not wish
+that, monsieur? It is true that we are enemies, but some day this war
+will end, and you would not wish to prolong its sufferings beyond the
+end. Yet you will be doing that, monsieur, if you open that box. You
+would be sorry afterwards when you were back at home to know that a
+girl in France was suffering from a needless act of yours. Yes, you
+will be sorry if you open that box."
+
+It seems now almost impossible to me that I could have doubted her
+sincerity; she spoke with so much simplicity, and so desperate an
+appeal looked out from her dark eyes. Ever since that Christmas night
+I can see her quite clearly at will, standing as she stood then--all
+the sincerity of her which I would not acknowledge, all the appeal
+which I would not hear; and I see her many times when for my peace I
+would rather not. Much remorse, she said very wisely, would be the
+consequence for me. She was pleading for her pride, and to do that the
+better she laid her pride aside; yet she never lost her dignity. She
+was pleading for her chance of happiness, foreseeing that it was
+likely to be destroyed, without any reason or any profit to a living
+being, by a stranger who would the next moment pass out of her life.
+Yet there was no outcry, and there were no tears. Had it been a
+trick--I ask the ladies--would there not have been tears?
+
+But I thought it was a trick and a cheap one. She was trying to make
+me believe that there were love-letters in the box--compromising
+love-letters. Now, I _know_ that there were no love-letters in the
+box. I had seen the Frenchman's pretty way of saying thanks. I had
+noticed how the caress hurt her just through what it lacked. He was
+the friend, you see, and nothing more; she was the lover and the only
+lover of the pair. There could be no love-letters in the box unless
+she had written them herself and kept them. But I did not think she
+was the girl to do that. There was a dignity about her which would
+have stopped her pen.
+
+I opened the box accordingly. Mademoiselle Sophie turned away
+abruptly, and sitting down in a chair shaded her eyes with her hand. I
+emptied the letters out on to a table, turning the box upside down,
+and thus the first which I took up and read was the one which lay at
+the very bottom. As I read it it seemed that every suspicion I had
+formed was established. She had hinted at love-letters, she had spoken
+of secrets sacred to a girl; and the letter was not even addressed to
+her. It was addressed to Madame de Villetaneuse; it was a letter
+which, if it meant no more than what was implied upon the surface,
+would have long since found destruction in the waste-paper basket. For
+it purported to be merely the acceptance of an invitation to dinner at
+the town house of Madame de Villetaneuse in the Faubourg St. Germain.
+It was signed only by a Christian name, "Armand," and the few
+sentences which composed the letter explained that M. Armand was a
+distant kinsman of Madame de Villetaneuse who had just come to Paris
+to pursue his studies, and who, up till now, had no acquaintance with
+the family.
+
+I looked at Mademoiselle Sophie sternly. "So all this pother was about
+a mere invitation to dinner! Once let it be known that M. Armand will
+dine with Madame de Villetaneuse in the Faubourg St. Germain, and you
+are humiliated, you lose your chance of happiness, and I, too, shall
+find myself in good time suffering the pangs of remorse," and I read
+the letter slowly aloud to her, word by word.
+
+She returned no answer. She sat with her hand shading her face, and
+she rocked her head backwards and forwards continually and rather
+quickly, like a child with a racking headache. Of course, to my mind
+all that was part of the game. The letter was dated two years back,
+but the month was December, and, of course, to antedate would be the
+first precaution.
+
+"Come, mademoiselle," I said, changing my tone, "I invite you very
+seriously to make a clean breast of it. I wish to take no harsh
+measures with you if I can avoid them. Tell me frankly what news this
+letter plainly translated gives to General Trochu in Paris."
+
+"None," she answered.
+
+"Very well," said I, and I took up the next letter. Ah, M. Armand
+writes again a week later. It was evidently a good dinner and M.
+Armand is properly grateful.
+
+The gratitude, indeed, was rather excessive, rather provincial.
+It was just the effusion which a young man who had not yet learned
+self-possession might have written on his first introduction to the
+highest social life of Paris. Certainly the correspondence was very
+artfully designed. But what did it hide? I puzzled over the question;
+I took the words and the dates, and it seemed to me that I began to
+see light. So much stress was laid upon the dinner, that the word must
+signify some event of importance. The first letter spoke of a dinner
+in the future. I imagined that it had not been possible to pass this
+warning into Paris. The second letter mentioned with gratitude that
+the dinner had been successful. Well, suppose "dinner" stood for
+"engagement"! The letter would refer to the sortie from Paris which
+pushed back our lines and captured Ville Evrart and Maison Blanche.
+That seemed likely. Madame de Villetaneuse gave the dinner; General
+Trochu made the sortie. Then "Madame de Villetaneuse" stood for
+"General Trochu." Who would be Armand? Why, the French people outside
+Paris--the provincials! I had the explanation of that provincial
+expression of gratitude. Ah, no doubt it all seems far-fetched now
+that we sit quietly about this table. But put yourselves in the thick
+of war and take twenty years off your lives! Suppose yourselves young
+and green, eager for advancement, and just off your balance for want
+of sleep, want of food, want of rest, want of everything, and brutal
+from the facts of war. There are very few things which would seem
+far-fetched. It seemed to me that I was deciphering these letters with
+absolute accuracy. I saw myself promoted to captain, seconded to the
+General Staff. M. Armand represented the French people in the
+provinces. No doubt they would be grateful for that sortie. The only
+point which troubled me arose from M. Armand's presence at that
+dinner-party. Now, the one defect from the French point of view in
+that sortie on Ville Evrart was that the French outside Paris did not
+come to General Trochu's help. They were expected, but they did not
+take part in that dinner-party.
+
+I went on with the letters, hoping to find an explanation there. The
+third letter was addressed to Mademoiselle de Villetaneuse, who had
+evidently written to M. Armand on behalf of her mother, inviting him
+to her box at the opera. M. Armand regretted that he had not been
+fortunate enough to call at a time when mademoiselle was at home, and
+would look forward to the pleasure of seeing her at the opera. Was
+that an apology? I asked myself. An apology for absence at Ville
+Evrart and a pledge to be present at the next engagement!
+
+"Mademoiselle," I cried, "what does the opera stand for?"
+
+Mademoiselle Sophie laughed disdainfully.
+
+"For music, monsieur, for art, for refinement, for many things you do
+not understand."
+
+I sprang up in excitement. What did it matter what she said? M. Armand
+stood for the Army of the Loire. It was that army which had been
+expected at Ville Evrart. Here was a pledge that it would be reformed,
+that it would come to the help of Paris at the next sortie. That was
+valuable news--it could not but bring recognition to the man who
+brought evidence of it into the Prussian lines. I hurriedly read
+through the other letters, quoting a passage here and there, trying to
+startle Mademoiselle de Villetaneuse into a confession. But she never
+changed her attitude, she did not answer a word.
+
+Her conduct was the more aggravating, for I began to get lost among
+these letters. They were all in the same handwriting; they were all
+signed "Armand," and they seemed to give a picture of the life of a
+young man in Paris during the two years which preceded the war. They
+recorded dinner-parties, visits to the theatres, examinations passed,
+prizes won and lost, receptions, rides in the Bois, and Sunday
+excursions into the country. All these phrases, these appointments,
+these meetings, might have particular meanings. But if so, how
+stupendous a cipher! Besides, how was it that none of these messages
+had been passed into Paris? Very reluctantly I began to doubt my own
+conjecture. I read some more letters, and then I suddenly turned back
+to the earlier ones. I compared them with the later notes. I began to
+be afraid the correspondence after all was genuine, for the tone of
+the letters changed and changed so gradually, and yet so clearly, that
+the greatest literary art could hardly have deliberately composed
+them. I seemed to witness the actual progress of M. Armand, a
+hobbledehoy from the provinces losing his awkwardness, acquiring ease
+and polish in his contact with the refinement of Paris. Gratitude was
+now expressed without effusion, he was no longer gaping with
+admiration at the elegance of the women, a knowledge of the world
+began to show itself in his comments. M. Armand was growing master of
+himself, he had gained a facility of style and a felicity of phrase.
+The last letters had the postmark of Paris, the first that of
+Auvergne.
+
+They were genuine, then. And they were not love-letters. I looked at
+Mademoiselle Sophie with an increased perplexity. Why did she now sit
+rocking her head like a child in pain? Why had she so struggled to
+hinder me from opening them? They recorded a beginning of
+acquaintanceship and the growth of that into friendship between a
+young man and a young girl--nothing more. The friendship might
+eventually end in marriage no doubt if left to itself, but there was
+not a word of that in the letters. I was still wondering, when the
+French officer raised himself from his sofa and dragged himself across
+the room to Mademoiselle Sophie's chair. His left trouser leg had been
+slit down the side from the knee to the foot and laced lightly so as
+to make room for a bandage. He supported himself from chair to chair
+with evident pain, and I could not doubt that his wound was as genuine
+as the letters.
+
+He bent down and gently took her hand away from her face.
+
+"Sophie," he said, "I did not dare to think that you kept this place
+for me in your thoughts. A little more courage and I should long since
+have said to you what I say now. I beg your permission to ask Madame
+de Villetaneuse to-morrow for your hand in marriage."
+
+My house of cards tumbled down in a second. The French officer was M.
+Armand. With the habit women have of treasuring tokens of the things
+which have happened, Mademoiselle Sophie had kept all these trifling
+notes and messages, and had even gathered to them the letters written
+by him to her mother, so that the story might be complete. But without
+M. Armand's knowledge; he was not to know; her pride must guard her
+secret from him. For she was the lover and he only the friend, and she
+knew it. Even in the little speech which he had just made, there was
+just too much formality, just too little sincerity of voice. I
+understood why she had tried to throw the ebony box down into the hall
+so that I might open it there--I understood that I had caused her
+great humiliation. But that was not all there was for me to
+understand.
+
+In answer to Armand she raised her eyes quietly, and shook her head.
+
+"You wish to spare me shame," she said, "and I thank you very much.
+But it is because of these letters that you spoke. I must think that.
+I must always think it."
+
+"No!" he exclaimed.
+
+"But yes," she replied firmly. "If monsieur had not unlocked that
+box--I don't know--but some day perhaps--oh, not yet, no, not yet--but
+some day perhaps you might have come of your own accord and said what
+you have just said. And I should have been very happy. But now you
+never must. For you see I shall always think that the letters are
+prompting you."
+
+And M. Armand bowed.
+
+I had taken from her her chance of happiness. The friendship between
+them might have ended in marriage if left to itself. But I had not
+left it to itself.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I said, "I am very sorry."
+
+She turned her dark eyes on me.
+
+"Monsieur, I warned you. It is too late to be sorry," and as I stood
+shuffling awkwardly from one foot to the other, she added, gently,
+"Will you not go, monsieur?"
+
+I went out of the room, called together my escort, mounted and rode
+off. It was past midnight now, and the night was clear. But I thought
+neither of the little beds under the slope of the roof nor of any
+danger on the road. There might have been a _franc-tireur_ behind
+every tree. I would never have noticed it until one of them had
+brought me down. Remorse was heavy upon me. I had behaved without
+consideration, without chivalry, without any manners at all. I had not
+been able to distinguish truth when it stared me in the face, or to
+recognise honesty when it looked out from a young girl's dark eyes. I
+had behaved, in a word, like the brute six months of war had made of
+me. I wondered with a vague hope whether after all time might not set
+matters right between M. Armand and Mademoiselle Sophie. And I wonder
+now whether it has. But even if I knew that it had, I should always
+remember that Christmas night of 1870 with acute regret. The only
+incident, indeed, which I can mention with the slightest satisfaction
+is this: On the way back to Noisy-le-Grand I came to a point where the
+road from Chelles crossed the road from Montfermeil. I halted at a
+little cabin which stood upon a grass-plot within the angle of the
+roads, and tying up all the money I had on me in a pocket-handkerchief
+I dropped the handkerchief through a broken window-pane.
+
+
+The Colonel let the end of his cigar fall upon his plate, and pushed
+back his chair from the table. "But I see we shall be late for the
+opera," he said, as he glanced at the clock.
+
+_November_, 1905.
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE AFFAIR
+                        AT THE SEMIRAMIS HOTEL
+
+
+
+
+                              THE AFFAIR
+                        AT THE SEMIRAMIS HOTEL
+
+
+                                  I
+
+Mr. Ricardo, when the excitements of the Villa Rose were done with,
+returned to Grosvenor Square and resumed the busy, unnecessary life of
+an amateur. But the studios had lost their savour, artists their
+attractiveness, and even the Russian opera seemed a trifle flat. Life
+was altogether a disappointment; Fate, like an actress at a
+restaurant, had taken the wooden pestle in her hand and stirred all
+the sparkle out of the champagne; Mr. Ricardo languished--until one
+unforgettable morning.
+
+He was sitting disconsolately at his breakfast-table when the door was
+burst open and a square, stout man, with the blue, shaven face of a
+French comedian, flung himself into the room. Ricardo sprang towards
+the new-comer with a cry of delight.
+
+"My dear Hanaud!"
+
+He seized his visitor by the arm, feeling it to make sure that here,
+in flesh and blood, stood the man who had introduced him to the
+acutest sensations of his life. He turned towards his butler, who was
+still bleating expostulations in the doorway at the unceremonious
+irruption of the French detective.
+
+"Another place, Burton, at once," he cried, and as soon as he and
+Hanaud were alone: "What good wind blows you to London?"
+
+"Business, my friend. The disappearance of bullion somewhere on the
+line between Paris and London. But it is finished. Yes, I take a
+holiday."
+
+"Business, my friend. The disappearance of bullion somewhere on the
+line between Paris and London. But it is finished. Yes, I take a
+holiday."
+
+A light had suddenly flashed in Mr. Ricardo's eyes, and was now no
+less suddenly extinguished. Hanaud paid no attention whatever to his
+friend's disappointment. He pounced upon a piece of silver which
+adorned the tablecloth and took it over to the window.
+
+"Everything is as it should be, my friend," he exclaimed, with a grin.
+"Grosvenor Square, the _Times_ open at the money column, and a false
+antique upon the table. Thus I have dreamed of you. All Mr. Ricardo is
+in that sentence."
+
+Ricardo laughed nervously. Recollection made him wary of Hanaud's
+sarcasms. He was shy even to protest the genuineness of his silver.
+But, indeed, he had not the time. For the door opened again and once
+more the butler appeared. On this occasion, however, he was alone.
+
+"Mr. Calladine would like to speak to you, sir," he said.
+
+"Calladine!" cried Ricardo in an extreme surprise. "That is the most
+extraordinary thing." He looked at the clock upon his mantelpiece. It
+was barely half-past eight. "At this hour, too?"
+
+"Mr. Calladine is still wearing evening dress," the butler remarked.
+
+Ricardo started in his chair. He began to dream of possibilities; and
+here was Hanaud miraculously at his side.
+
+"Where is Mr. Calladine?" he asked.
+
+"I have shown him into the library."
+
+"Good," said Mr. Ricardo. "I will come to him."
+
+But he was in no hurry. He sat and let his thoughts play with this
+incident of Calladine's early visit.
+
+"It is very odd," he said. "I have not seen Calladine for months--no,
+nor has anyone. Yet, a little while ago, no one was more often seen."
+
+He fell apparently into a muse, but he was merely seeking to provoke
+Hanaud's curiosity. In this attempt, however, he failed. Hanaud
+continued placidly to eat his breakfast, so that Mr. Ricardo was
+compelled to volunteer the story which he was burning to tell.
+
+"Drink your coffee, Hanaud, and you shall hear about Calladine."
+
+Hanaud grunted with resignation, and Mr. Ricardo flowed on:
+
+"Calladine was one of England's young men. Everybody said so. He was
+going to do very wonderful things as soon as he had made up his mind
+exactly what sort of wonderful things he was going to do. Meanwhile,
+you met him in Scotland, at Newmarket, at Ascot, at Cowes, in the box
+of some great lady at the Opera--not before half-past ten in the
+evening _there_--in any fine house where the candles that night
+happened to be lit. He went everywhere, and then a day came and he
+went nowhere. There was no scandal, no trouble, not a whisper against
+his good name. He simply vanished. For a little while a few people
+asked: 'What has become of Calladine?' But there never was any answer,
+and London has no time for unanswered questions. Other promising young
+men dined in his place. Calladine had joined the huge legion of the
+Come-to-nothings. No one even seemed to pass him in the street. Now
+unexpectedly, at half-past eight in the morning, and in evening dress,
+he calls upon me. 'Why?' I ask myself."
+
+Mr. Ricardo sank once more into a reverie. Hanaud watched him with a
+broadening smile of pure enjoyment.
+
+"And in time, I suppose," he remarked casually, "you will perhaps ask
+him?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo sprang out of his pose to his feet.
+
+"Before I discuss serious things with an acquaintance," he said with a
+scathing dignity, "I make it a rule to revive my impressions of his
+personality. The cigarettes are in the crystal box."
+
+"They would be," said Hanaud, unabashed, as Ricardo stalked from the
+room. But in five minutes Mr. Ricardo came running back, all his
+composure gone.
+
+"It is the greatest good fortune that you, my friend, should have
+chosen this morning to visit me," he cried, and Hanaud nodded with a
+little grimace of resignation.
+
+"There goes my holiday. You shall command me now and always. I will
+make the acquaintance of your young friend."
+
+He rose up and followed Ricardo into his study, where a young man was
+nervously pacing the floor.
+
+"Mr. Calladine," said Ricardo. "This is Mr. Hanaud."
+
+The young man turned eagerly. He was tall, with a noticeable elegance
+and distinction, and the face which he showed to Hanaud was, in spite
+of its agitation, remarkably handsome.
+
+"I am very glad," he said. "You are not an official of this country.
+You can advise--without yourself taking action, if you'll be so good."
+
+Hanaud frowned. He bent his eyes uncompromisingly upon Calladine.
+
+"What does that mean?" he asked, with a note of sternness in his
+voice.
+
+"It means that I must tell someone," Calladine burst out in quivering
+tones. "That I don't know what to do. I am in a difficulty too big for
+me. That's the truth."
+
+Hanaud looked at the young man keenly. It seemed to Ricardo that he
+took in every excited gesture, every twitching feature, in one
+comprehensive glance. Then he said in a friendlier voice:
+
+"Sit down and tell me"--and he himself drew up a chair to the table.
+
+"I was at the Semiramis last night," said Calladine, naming one of the
+great hotels upon the Embankment. "There was a fancy-dress ball."
+
+All this happened, by the way, in those far-off days before the
+war--nearly, in fact, three years ago today--when London, flinging
+aside its reticence, its shy self-consciousness, had become a city of
+carnivals and masquerades, rivalling its neighbours on the Continent
+in the spirit of its gaiety, and exceeding them by its stupendous
+luxury. "I went by the merest chance. My rooms are in the Adelphi
+Terrace."
+
+"There!" cried Mr. Ricardo in surprise, and Hanaud lifted a hand to
+check his interruptions.
+
+"Yes," continued Calladine. "The night was warm, the music floated
+through my open windows and stirred old memories. I happened to have a
+ticket. I went."
+
+Calladine drew up a chair opposite to Hanaud and, seating himself,
+told, with many nervous starts and in troubled tones, a story which,
+to Mr. Ricardo's thinking, was as fabulous as any out of the "Arabian
+Nights."
+
+"I had a ticket," he began, "but no domino. I was consequently stopped
+by an attendant in the lounge at the top of the staircase leading down
+to the ballroom.
+
+"'You can hire a domino in the cloakroom, Mr. Calladine,' he said to
+me. I had already begun to regret the impulse which had brought me,
+and I welcomed the excuse with which the absence of a costume provided
+me. I was, indeed, turning back to the door, when a girl who had at
+that moment run down from the stairs of the hotel into the lounge,
+cried gaily: 'That's not necessary'; and at the same moment she flung
+to me a long scarlet cloak which she had been wearing over her own
+dress. She was young, fair, rather tall, slim, and very pretty; her
+hair was drawn back from her face with a ribbon, and rippled down her
+shoulders in heavy curls; and she was dressed in a satin coat and
+knee-breeches of pale green and gold, with a white waistcoat and
+silk stockings and scarlet heels to her satin shoes. She was as
+straight-limbed as a boy, and exquisite like a figure in Dresden
+china. I caught the cloak and turned to thank her. But she did not
+wait. With a laugh she ran down the stairs a supple and shining
+figure, and was lost in the throng at the doorway of the ballroom. I
+was stirred by the prospect of an adventure. I ran down after her. She
+was standing just inside the room alone, and she was gazing at the
+scene with parted lips and dancing eyes. She laughed again as she saw
+the cloak about my shoulders, a delicious gurgle of amusement, and I
+said to her:
+
+"'May I dance with you?'
+
+"'Oh, do!' she cried, with a little jump, and clasping her hands. She
+was of a high and joyous spirit and not difficult in the matter of an
+introduction. 'This gentleman will do very well to present us,' she
+said, leading me in front of a bust of the God Pan which stood in a
+niche of the wall. 'I am, as you see, straight out of an opera. My
+name is Celymčne or anything with an eighteenth century sound to it.
+You are--what you will. For this evening we are friends.'
+
+"'And for to-morrow?' I asked.
+
+"'I will tell you about that later on,' she replied, and she began to
+dance with a light step and a passion in her dancing which earned me
+many an envious glance from the other men. I was in luck, for Celymčne
+knew no one, and though, of course, I saw the faces of a great many
+people whom I remembered, I kept them all at a distance. We had been
+dancing for about half an hour when the first queerish thing happened.
+She stopped suddenly in the midst of a sentence with a little gasp. I
+spoke to her, but she did not hear. She was gazing past me, her eyes
+wide open, and such a rapt look upon her face as I had never seen. She
+was lost in a miraculous vision. I followed the direction of her eyes
+and, to my astonishment, I saw nothing more than a stout, short,
+middle-aged woman, egregiously over-dressed as Marie Antoinette.
+
+"'So you do know someone here?' I said, and I had to repeat the words
+sharply before my friend withdrew her eyes. But even then she was not
+aware of me. It was as if a voice had spoken to her whilst she was
+asleep and had disturbed, but not wakened her. Then she came
+to--there's really no other word I can think of which describes her at
+that moment--she came to with a deep sigh.
+
+"'No,' she answered. 'She is a Mrs. Blumenstein from Chicago, a widow
+with ambitions and a great deal of money. But I don't know her.'
+
+"'Yet you know all about her,' I remarked.
+
+"'She crossed in the same boat with me,' Celymčne replied. 'Did I tell
+you that I landed at Liverpool this morning? She is staying at the
+Semiramis too. Oh, let us dance!'
+
+"She twitched my sleeve impatiently, and danced with a kind of
+violence and wildness as if she wished to banish some sinister
+thought. And she did undoubtedly banish it. We supped together and
+grew confidential, as under such conditions people will. She told me
+her real name. It was Joan Carew.
+
+"'I have come over to get an engagement if I can at Covent Garden. I
+am supposed to sing all right. But I don't know anyone. I have been
+brought up in Italy.'
+
+"'You have some letters of introduction, I suppose?' I asked.
+
+"'Oh, yes. One from my teacher in Milan. One from an American
+manager.'
+
+"In my turn I told her my name and where I lived, and I gave her my
+card. I thought, you see, that since I used to know a good many
+operatic people, I might be able to help her.
+
+"'Thank you,' she said, and at that moment Mrs. Blumenstein, followed
+by a party, chiefly those lap-dog young men who always seem to gather
+about that kind of person, came into the supper-room and took a table
+close to us. There was at once an end of all confidences--indeed, of
+all conversation. Joan Carew lost all the lightness of her spirit; she
+talked at random, and her eyes were drawn again and again to the
+grotesque slander on Marie Antoinette. Finally I became annoyed.
+
+"'Shall we go?' I suggested impatiently, and to my surprise she
+whispered passionately:
+
+"'Yes. Please! Let us go.'
+
+"Her voice was actually shaking, her small hands clenched. We went
+back to the ballroom, but Joan Carew did not recover her gaiety, and
+half-way through a dance, when we were near to the door, she stopped
+abruptly--extraordinarily abruptly.
+
+"'I shall go,' she said abruptly. 'I am tired. I have grown dull.'
+
+"I protested, but she made a little grimace.
+
+"'You'll hate me in half an hour. Let's be wise and stop now while we
+are friends,' she said, and whilst I removed the domino from my
+shoulders she stooped very quickly. It seemed to me that she picked up
+something which had lain hidden beneath the sole of her slipper. She
+certainly moved her foot, and I certainly saw something small and
+bright flash in the palm of her glove as she raised herself again. But
+I imagined merely that it was some object which she had dropped.
+
+"'Yes, we'll go,' she said, and we went up the stairs into the lobby.
+Certainly all the sparkle had gone out of our adventure. I recognized
+her wisdom.
+
+"'But I shall meet you again?' I asked.
+
+"'Yes. I have your address. I'll write and fix a time when you will be
+sure to find me in. Good-night, and a thousand thanks. I should have
+been bored to tears if you hadn't come without a domino.'
+
+"She was speaking lightly as she held out her hand, but her grip
+tightened a little and--clung. Her eyes darkened and grew troubled,
+her mouth trembled. The shadow of a great trouble had suddenly closed
+about her. She shivered.
+
+"'I am half inclined to ask you to stay, however dull I am; and dance
+with me till daylight--the safe daylight,' she said.
+
+"It was an extraordinary phrase for her to use, and it moved me.
+
+"'Let us go back then!' I urged. She gave me an impression suddenly of
+someone quite forlorn. But Joan Carew recovered her courage. 'No, no,'
+she answered quickly. She snatched her hand away and ran lightly up
+the staircase, turning at the corner to wave her hand and smile. It
+was then half-past one in the morning."
+
+So far Calladine had spoken without an interruption. Mr. Ricardo, it
+is true, was bursting to break in with the most important questions,
+but a salutary fear of Hanaud restrained him. Now, however, he had an
+opportunity, for Calladine paused.
+
+"Half-past one," he said sagely. "Ah!"
+
+"And when did you go home?" Hanaud asked of Calladine.
+
+"True," said Mr. Ricardo. "It is of the greatest consequence."
+
+Calladine was not sure. His partner had left behind her the strangest
+medley of sensations in his breast. He was puzzled, haunted, and
+charmed. He had to think about her; he was a trifle uplifted; sleep
+was impossible. He wandered for a while about the ballroom. Then he
+walked to his chambers along the echoing streets and sat at his
+window; and some time afterwards the hoot of a motor-horn broke the
+silence and a car stopped and whirred in the street below. A moment
+later his bell rang.
+
+He ran down the stairs in a queer excitement, unlocked the street door
+and opened it. Joan Carew, still in her masquerade dress with her
+scarlet cloak about her shoulders, slipped through the opening.
+
+"Shut the door," she whispered, drawing herself apart in a corner.
+
+"Your cab?" asked Calladine.
+
+"It has gone."
+
+Calladine latched the door. Above, in the well of the stairs, the
+light spread out from the open door of his flat. Down here all was
+dark. He could just see the glimmer of her white face, the glitter of
+her dress, but she drew her breath like one who has run far. They
+mounted the stairs cautiously. He did not say a word until they were
+both safely in his parlour; and even then it was in a low voice.
+
+"What has happened?"
+
+"You remember the woman I stared at? You didn't know why I stared, but
+any girl would have understood. She was wearing the loveliest pearls I
+ever saw in my life."
+
+Joan was standing by the edge of the table. She was tracing with her
+finger a pattern on the cloth as she spoke. Calladine started with a
+horrible presentiment.
+
+"Yes," she said. "I worship pearls. I always have done. For one thing,
+they improve on me. I haven't got any, of course. I have no money. But
+friends of mine who do own pearls have sometimes given theirs to me to
+wear when they were going sick, and they have always got back their
+lustre. I think that has had a little to do with my love of them. Oh,
+I have always longed for them--just a little string. Sometimes I have
+felt that I would have given my soul for them."
+
+She was speaking in a dull, monotonous voice. But Calladine recalled
+the ecstasy which had shone in her face when her eyes first had fallen
+on the pearls, the longing which had swept her quite into another
+world, the passion with which she had danced to throw the obsession
+off.
+
+"And I never noticed them at all," he said.
+
+"Yet they were wonderful. The colour! The lustre! All the evening they
+tempted me. I was furious that a fat, coarse creature like that should
+have such exquisite things. Oh, I was mad."
+
+She covered her face suddenly with her hands and swayed. Calladine
+sprang towards her. But she held out her hand.
+
+"No, I am all right." And though he asked her to sit down she would
+not. "You remember when I stopped dancing suddenly?"
+
+"Yes. You had something hidden under your foot?"
+
+The girl nodded.
+
+"Her key!" And under his breath Calladine uttered a startled cry.
+
+For the first time since she had entered the room Joan Carew raised
+her head and looked at him. Her eyes were full of terror, and with the
+terror was mixed an incredulity as though she could not possibly
+believe that that had happened which she knew had happened.
+
+"A little Yale key," the girl continued. "I saw Mrs. Blumenstein
+looking on the floor for something, and then I saw it shining on the
+very spot. Mrs. Blumenstein's suite was on the same floor as mine, and
+her maid slept above. All the maids do. I knew that. Oh, it seemed to
+me as if I had sold my soul and was being paid."
+
+Now Calladine understood what she had meant by her strange
+phrase--"the safe daylight."
+
+"I went up to my little suite," Joan Carew continued. "I sat there
+with the key burning through my glove until I had given her time
+enough to fall asleep"--and though she hesitated before she spoke the
+words, she did speak them, not looking at Calladine, and with a
+shudder of remorse making her confession complete. "Then I crept out.
+The corridor was dimly lit. Far away below the music was throbbing. Up
+here it was as silent as the grave. I opened the door--her door. I
+found myself in a lobby. The suite, though bigger, was arranged like
+mine. I slipped in and closed the door behind me. I listened in the
+darkness. I couldn't hear a sound. I crept forward to the door in
+front of me. I stood with my fingers on the handle and my heart
+beating fast enough to choke me. I had still time to turn back. But I
+couldn't. There were those pearls in front of my eyes, lustrous and
+wonderful. I opened the door gently an inch or so--and then--it all
+happened in a second."
+
+Joan Carew faltered. The night was too near to her, its memory too
+poignant with terror. She shut her eyes tightly and cowered down in a
+chair. With the movement her cloak slipped from her shoulders and
+dropped on to the ground. Calladine leaned forward with an exclamation
+of horror; Joan Carew started up.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing. Go on."
+
+"I found myself inside the room with the door shut behind me. I had
+shut it myself in a spasm of terror. And I dared not turn round to
+open it. I was helpless."
+
+"What do you mean? She was awake?"
+
+Joan Carew shook her head.
+
+"There were others in the room before me, and on the same
+errand--men!"
+
+Calladine drew back, his eyes searching the girl's face.
+
+"Yes?" he said slowly.
+
+"I didn't see them at first. I didn't hear them. The room was quite
+dark except for one jet of fierce white light which beat upon the door
+of a safe. And as I shut the door the jet moved swiftly and the light
+reached me and stopped. I was blinded. I stood in the full glare of
+it, drawn up against the panels of the door, shivering, sick with
+fear. Then I heard a quiet laugh, and someone moved softly towards me.
+Oh, it was terrible! I recovered the use of my limbs; in a panic I
+turned to the door, but I was too late. Whilst I fumbled with the
+handle I was seized; a hand covered my mouth. I was lifted to the
+centre of the room. The jet went out, the electric lights were turned
+on. There were two men dressed as apaches in velvet trousers and red
+scarves, like a hundred others in the ballroom below, and both were
+masked. I struggled furiously; but, of course, I was like a child in
+their grasp. 'Tie her legs,' the man whispered who was holding me;
+'she's making too much noise.' I kicked and fought, but the other man
+stooped and tied my ankles, and I fainted."
+
+Calladine nodded his head.
+
+"Yes?" he said.
+
+"When I came to, the lights were still burning, the door of the safe
+was open, the room empty; I had been flung on to a couch at the foot
+of the bed. I was lying there quite free."
+
+"Was the safe empty?" asked Calladine suddenly.
+
+"I didn't look," she answered. "Oh!"--and she covered her face
+spasmodically with her hands. "I looked at the bed. Someone was lying
+there--under a sheet and quite still. There was a clock ticking in the
+room; it was the only sound. I was terrified. I was going mad with
+fear. If I didn't get out of the room at once I felt that I should
+go mad, that I should scream and bring everyone to find me alone
+with--what was under the sheet in the bed. I ran to the door and
+looked out through a slit into the corridor. It was still quite empty,
+and below the music still throbbed in the ballroom. I crept down the
+stairs, meeting no one until I reached the hall. I looked into the
+ballroom as if I was searching for someone. I stayed long enough to
+show myself. Then I got a cab and came to you."
+
+A short silence followed. Joan Carew looked at her companion in
+appeal. "You are the only one I could come to," she added. "I know no
+one else."
+
+Calladine sat watching the girl in silence. Then he asked, and his
+voice was hard:
+
+"And is that all you have to tell me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are quite sure?"
+
+Joan Carew looked at him perplexed by the urgency of his question. She
+reflected for a moment or two.
+
+"Quite."
+
+Calladine rose to his feet and stood beside her.
+
+"Then how do you come to be wearing this?" he asked, and he lifted a
+chain of platinum and diamonds which she was wearing about her
+shoulders. "You weren't wearing it when you danced with me."
+
+Joan Carew stared at the chain.
+
+"No. It's not mine. I have never seen it before." Then a light came
+into her eyes. "The two men--they must have thrown it over my head
+when I was on the couch--before they went." She looked at it more
+closely. "That's it. The chain's not very valuable. They could spare
+it, and--it would accuse me--of what they did."
+
+"Yes, that's very good reasoning," said Calladine coldly.
+
+Joan Carew looked quickly up into his face.
+
+"Oh, you don't believe me," she cried. "You think--oh, it's
+impossible." And, holding him by the edge of his coat, she burst into
+a storm of passionate denials.
+
+"But you went to steal, you know," he said gently, and she answered
+him at once:
+
+"Yes, I did, but not this." And she held up the necklace. "Should I
+have stolen this, should I have come to you wearing it, if I had
+stolen the pearls, if I had"--and she stopped--"if my story were not
+true?"
+
+Calladine weighed her argument, and it affected him.
+
+"No, I think you wouldn't," he said frankly.
+
+Most crimes, no doubt, were brought home because the criminal had made
+some incomprehensibly stupid mistake; incomprehensibly stupid, that
+is, by the standards of normal life. Nevertheless, Calladine was
+inclined to believe her. He looked at her. That she should have
+murdered was absurd. Moreover, she was not making a parade of remorse,
+she was not playing the unctuous penitent; she had yielded to a
+temptation, had got herself into desperate straits, and was at her
+wits' ends how to escape from them. She was frank about herself.
+
+Calladine looked at the clock. It was nearly five o'clock in the
+morning, and though the music could still be heard from the ballroom
+in the Semiramis, the night had begun to wane upon the river.
+
+"You must go back," he said. "I'll walk with you."
+
+They crept silently down the stairs and into the street. It was only a
+step to the Semiramis. They met no one until they reached the Strand.
+There many, like Joan Carew in masquerade, were standing about, or
+walking hither and thither in search of carriages and cabs. The whole
+street was in a bustle, what with drivers shouting and people coming
+away.
+
+"You can slip in unnoticed," said Calladine as he looked into the
+thronged courtyard. "I'll telephone to you in the morning."
+
+"You will?" she cried eagerly, clinging for a moment to his arm.
+
+"Yes, for certain," he replied. "Wait in until you hear from me. I'll
+think it over. I'll do what I can."
+
+"Thank you," she said fervently.
+
+He watched her scarlet cloak flitting here and there in the crowd
+until it vanished through the doorway. Then, for the second time, he
+walked back to his chambers, while the morning crept up the river from
+the sea.
+
+
+                          *   *   *   *   *
+
+
+This was the story which Calladine told in Mr. Ricardo's library. Mr.
+Ricardo heard it out with varying emotions. He began with a thrill of
+expectation like a man on a dark threshold of great excitements. The
+setting of the story appealed to him, too, by a sort of brilliant
+bizarrerie which he found in it. But, as it went on, he grew puzzled
+and a trifle disheartened. There were flaws and chinks; he began to
+bubble with unspoken criticisms, then swift and clever thrusts which
+he dared not deliver. He looked upon the young man with disfavour, as
+upon one who had half opened a door upon a theatre of great promise
+and shown him a spectacle not up to the mark. Hanaud, on the other
+hand, listened imperturbably, without an expression upon his face,
+until the end. Then he pointed a finger at Calladine and asked him
+what to Ricardo's mind was a most irrelevant question.
+
+"You got back to your rooms, then, before five, Mr. Calladine, and it
+is now nine o'clock less a few minutes."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Yet you have not changed your clothes. Explain to me that. What did
+you do between five and half-past eight?"
+
+Calladine looked down at his rumpled shirt front.
+
+"Upon my word, I never thought of it," he cried. "I was worried out of
+my mind. I couldn't decide what to do. Finally, I determined to talk
+to Mr. Ricardo, and after I had come to that conclusion I just waited
+impatiently until I could come round with decency."
+
+Hanaud rose from his chair. His manner was grave, but conveyed no
+single hint of an opinion. He turned to Ricardo.
+
+"Let us go round to your young friend's rooms in the Adelphi," he
+said; and the three men drove thither at once.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+Calladine lodged in a corner house and upon the first floor. His
+rooms, large and square and lofty, with Adams mantelpieces and a
+delicate tracery upon their ceilings, breathed the grace of the
+eighteenth century. Broad high windows, embrasured in thick walls,
+overlooked the river and took in all the sunshine and the air which
+the river had to give. And they were furnished fittingly. When the
+three men entered the parlour, Mr. Ricardo was astounded. He had
+expected the untidy litter of a man run to seed, the neglect and the
+dust of the recluse. But the room was as clean as the deck of a yacht;
+an Aubusson carpet made the floor luxurious underfoot; a few coloured
+prints of real value decorated the walls; and the mahogany furniture
+was polished so that a lady could have used it as a mirror. There was
+even by the newspapers upon the round table a china bowl full of fresh
+red roses. If Calladine had turned hermit, he was a hermit of an
+unusually fastidious type. Indeed, as he stood with his two companions
+in his dishevelled dress he seemed quite out of keeping with his
+rooms.
+
+"So you live here, Mr. Calladine?" said Hanaud, taking off his hat and
+laying it down.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"With your servants, of course?"
+
+"They come in during the day," said Calladine, and Hanaud looked at
+him curiously.
+
+"Do you mean that you sleep here alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But your valet?"
+
+"I don't keep a valet," said Calladine; and again the curious look
+came into Hanaud's eyes.
+
+"Yet," he suggested gently, "there are rooms enough in your set of
+chambers to house a family."
+
+Calladine coloured and shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the
+other.
+
+"I prefer at night not to be disturbed," he said, stumbling a little
+over the words. "I mean, I have a liking for quiet."
+
+Gabriel Hanaud nodded his head with sympathy.
+
+"Yes, yes. And it is a difficult thing to get--as difficult as
+my holiday," he said ruefully, with a smile for Mr. Ricardo.
+"However"--he turned towards Calladine--"no doubt, now that you are at
+home, you would like a bath and a change of clothes. And when you are
+dressed, perhaps you will telephone to the Semiramis and ask Miss
+Carew to come round here. Meanwhile, we will read your newspapers and
+smoke your cigarettes."
+
+Hanaud shut the door upon Calladine, but he turned neither to the
+papers nor the cigarettes. He crossed the room to Mr. Ricardo, who,
+seated at the open window, was plunged deep in reflections.
+
+"You have an idea, my friend," cried Hanaud. "It demands to express
+itself. That sees itself in your face. Let me hear it, I pray."
+
+Mr. Ricardo started out of an absorption which was altogether assumed.
+
+"I was thinking," he said, with a faraway smile, "that you might
+disappear in the forests of Africa, and at once everyone would be very
+busy about your disappearance. You might leave your village in
+Leicestershire and live in the fogs of Glasgow, and within a week the
+whole village would know your postal address. But London--what a city!
+How different! How indifferent! Turn out of St. James's into the
+Adelphi Terrace and not a soul will say to you: 'Dr. Livingstone, I
+presume?'"
+
+"But why should they," asked Hanaud, "if your name isn't Dr.
+Livingstone?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo smiled indulgently.
+
+"Scoffer!" he said. "You understand me very well," and he sought to
+turn the tables on his companion. "And you--does this room suggest
+nothing to you? Have you no ideas?" But he knew very well that Hanaud
+had. Ever since Hanaud had crossed the threshold he had been like a
+man stimulated by a drug. His eyes were bright and active, his body
+alert.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I have."
+
+He was standing now by Ricardo's side with his hands in his pockets,
+looking out at the trees on the Embankment and the barges swinging
+down the river.
+
+"You are thinking of the strange scene which took place in this room
+such a very few hours ago," said Ricardo. "The girl in her masquerade
+dress making her confession with the stolen chain about her
+throat----"
+
+Hanaud looked backwards carelessly. "No, I wasn't giving it a
+thought," he said, and in a moment or two he began to walk about the
+room with that curiously light step which Ricardo was never able to
+reconcile with his cumbersome figure. With the heaviness of a bear he
+still padded. He went from corner to corner, opened a cupboard here, a
+drawer of the bureau there, and--stooped suddenly. He stood erect
+again with a small box of morocco leather in his hand. His body from
+head to foot seemed to Ricardo to be expressing the question, "Have I
+found it?" He pressed a spring and the lid of the box flew open.
+Hanaud emptied its contents into the palm of his hand. There were two
+or three sticks of sealing-wax and a seal. With a shrug of the
+shoulders he replaced them and shut the box.
+
+"You are looking for something," Ricardo announced with sagacity.
+
+"I am," replied Hanaud; and it seemed that in a second or two he found
+it. Yet--yet--he found it with his hands in his pockets, if he had
+found it. Mr. Ricardo saw him stop in that attitude in front of the
+mantelshelf, and heard him utter a long, low whistle. Upon the
+mantelshelf some photographs were arranged, a box of cigars stood at
+one end, a book or two lay between some delicate ornaments of china,
+and a small engraving in a thin gilt frame was propped at the back
+against the wall. Ricardo surveyed the shelf from his seat in the
+window, but he could not imagine which it was of these objects that so
+drew and held Hanaud's eyes.
+
+Hanaud, however, stepped forward. He looked into a vase and turned it
+upside down. Then he removed the lid of a porcelain cup, and from the
+very look of his great shoulders Ricardo knew that he had discovered
+what he sought. He was holding something in his hands, turning it
+over, examining it. When he was satisfied he moved swiftly to the door
+and opened it cautiously. Both men could hear the splashing of water
+in a bath. Hanaud closed the door again with a nod of contentment and
+crossed once more to the window.
+
+"Yes, it is all very strange and curious," he said, "and I do not
+regret that you dragged me into the affair. You were quite right, my
+friend, this morning. It is the personality of your young Mr.
+Calladine which is the interesting thing. For instance, here we are in
+London in the early summer. The trees out, freshly green, lilac and
+flowers in the gardens, and I don't know what tingle of hope and
+expectation in the sunlight and the air. I am middle-aged--yet there's
+a riot in my blood, a recapture of youth, a belief that just round the
+corner, beyond the reach of my eyes, wonders wait for me. Don't you,
+too, feel something like that? Well, then--" and he heaved his
+shoulders in astonishment.
+
+"Can you understand a young man with money, with fastidious tastes,
+good-looking, hiding himself in a corner at such a time--except for
+some overpowering reason? No. Nor can I. There is another thing--I put
+a question or two to Calladine."
+
+"Yes," said Ricardo.
+
+"He has no servants here at night. He is quite alone and--here is what
+I find interesting--he has no valet. That seems a small thing to you?"
+Hanaud asked at a movement from Ricardo. "Well, it is no doubt a
+trifle, but it's a significant trifle in the case of a young rich man.
+It is generally a sign that there is something strange, perhaps even
+something sinister, in his life. Mr. Calladine, some months ago,
+turned out of St. James's into the Adelphi. Can you tell me why?"
+
+"No," replied Mr. Ricardo. "Can you?"
+
+Hanaud stretched out a hand. In his open palm lay a small round hairy
+bulb about the size of a big button and of a colour between green and
+brown.
+
+"Look!" he said. "What is that?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo took the bulb wonderingly.
+
+"It looks to me like the fruit of some kind of cactus."
+
+Hanaud nodded.
+
+"It is. You will see some pots of it in the hothouses of any really
+good botanical gardens. Kew has them, I have no doubt. Paris certainly
+has. They are labelled. 'Anhalonium Luinii.' But amongst the Indians
+of Yucatan the plant has a simpler name."
+
+"What name?" asked Ricardo.
+
+"Mescal."
+
+Mr. Ricardo repeated the name. It conveyed nothing to him whatever.
+
+"There are a good many bulbs just like that in the cup upon the
+mantelshelf," said Hanaud.
+
+Ricardo looked quickly up.
+
+"Why?" he asked.
+
+"Mescal is a drug."
+
+Ricardo started.
+
+"Yes, you are beginning to understand now," Hanaud continued, "why
+your young friend Calladine turned out of St. James's into the Adelphi
+Terrace."
+
+Ricardo turned the little bulb over in his fingers.
+
+"You make a decoction of it, I suppose?" he said.
+
+"Or you can use it as the Indians do in Yucatan," replied Hanaud.
+"Mescal enters into their religious ceremonies. They sit at night in a
+circle about a fire built in the forest and chew it, whilst one of
+their number beats perpetually upon a drum."
+
+Hanaud looked round the room and took notes of its luxurious carpet,
+its delicate appointments. Outside the window there was a thunder in
+the streets, a clamour of voices. Boats went swiftly down the river on
+the ebb. Beyond the mass of the Semiramis rose the great grey-white
+dome of St. Paul's. Opposite, upon the Southwark bank, the giant
+sky-signs, the big Highlander drinking whisky, and the rest of them
+waited, gaunt skeletons, for the night to limn them in fire and give
+them life. Below the trees in the gardens rustled and waved. In the
+air were the uplift and the sparkle of the young summer.
+
+"It's a long way from the forests of Yucatan to the Adelphi Terrace of
+London," said Hanaud. "Yet here, I think, in these rooms, when the
+servants are all gone and the house is very quiet, there is a little
+corner of wild Mexico."
+
+A look of pity came into Mr. Ricardo's face. He had seen more than one
+young man of great promise slacken his hold and let go, just for this
+reason. Calladine, it seemed, was another.
+
+"It's like bhang and kieff and the rest of the devilish things, I
+suppose," he said, indignantly tossing the button upon the table.
+
+Hanaud picked it up.
+
+"No," he replied. "It's not quite like any other drug. It has a
+quality of its own which just now is of particular importance to you
+and me. Yes, my friend"--and he nodded his head very seriously--"we
+must watch that we do not make the big fools of ourselves in this
+affair."
+
+"There," Mr. Ricardo agreed with an ineffable air of wisdom, "I am
+entirely with you."
+
+"Now, why?" Hanaud asked. Mr. Ricardo was at a loss for a reason, but
+Hanaud did not wait. "I will tell you. Mescal intoxicates, yes--but it
+does more--it gives to the man who eats of it colour-dreams."
+
+"Colour-dreams?" Mr. Ricardo repeated in a wondering voice.
+
+"Yes, strange heated charms, in which violent things happen vividly
+amongst bright colours. Colour is the gift of this little prosaic
+brown button." He spun the bulb in the air like a coin, and catching
+it again, took it over to the mantelpiece and dropped it into the
+porcelain cup.
+
+"Are you sure of this?" Ricardo cried excitedly, and Hanaud raised his
+hand in warning. He went to the door, opened it for an inch or so, and
+closed it again.
+
+"I am quite sure," he returned. "I have for a friend a very learned
+chemist in the Collčge de France. He is one of those enthusiasts who
+must experiment upon themselves. He tried this drug."
+
+"Yes," Ricardo said in a quieter voice. "And what did he see?"
+
+"He had a vision of a wonderful garden bathed in sunlight, an old
+garden of gorgeous flowers and emerald lawns, ponds with golden lilies
+and thick yew hedges--a garden where peacocks stepped indolently and
+groups of gay people fantastically dressed quarrelled and fought with
+swords. That is what he saw. And he saw it so vividly that, when the
+vapours of the drug passed from his brain and he waked, he seemed to
+be coming out of the real world into a world of shifting illusions."
+
+Hanaud's strong quiet voice stopped, and for a while there was a
+complete silence in the room. Neither of the two men stirred so much
+as a finger. Mr. Ricardo once more was conscious of the thrill of
+strange sensations. He looked round the room. He could hardly believe
+that a room which had been--nay was--the home and shrine of mysteries
+in the dark hours could wear so bright and innocent a freshness in the
+sunlight of the morning. There should be something sinister which
+leaped to the eyes as you crossed the threshold.
+
+"Out of the real world," Mr. Ricardo quoted. "I begin to see."
+
+"Yes, you begin to see, my friend, that we must be very careful not to
+make the big fools of ourselves. My friend of the Collčge de France
+saw a garden. But had he been sitting alone in the window-seat where
+you are, listening through a summer night to the music of the
+masquerade at the Semiramis, might he not have seen the ballroom, the
+dancers, the scarlet cloak, and the rest of this story?"
+
+"You mean," cried Ricardo, now fairly startled, "that Calladine came
+to us with the fumes of mescal still working in his brain, that the
+false world was the real one still for him."
+
+"I do not know," said Hanaud. "At present I only put questions. I ask
+them of you. I wish to hear how they sound. Let us reason this problem
+out. Calladine, let us say, takes a great deal more of the drug than
+my professor. It will have on him a more powerful effect while it
+lasts, and it will last longer. Fancy dress balls are familiar things
+to Calladine. The music floating from the Semiramis will revive old
+memories. He sits here, the pageant takes shape before him, he sees
+himself taking his part in it. Oh, he is happier here sitting quietly
+in his window-seat than if he was actually at the Semiramis. For he is
+there more intensely, more vividly, more really, than if he had
+actually descended this staircase. He lives his story through, the
+story of a heated brain, the scene of it changes in the way dreams
+have, it becomes tragic and sinister, it oppresses him with horror,
+and in the morning, so obsessed with it that he does not think to
+change his clothes, he is knocking at your door."
+
+Mr. Ricardo raised his eyebrows and moved.
+
+"Ah! You see a flaw in my argument," said Hanaud. But Mr. Ricardo was
+wary. Too often in other days he had been leaped upon and trounced for
+a careless remark.
+
+"Let me hear the end of your argument," he said. "There was then to
+your thinking no temptation of jewels, no theft, no murder--in a word,
+no Celymčne? She was born of recollections and the music of the
+Semiramis."
+
+"No!" cried Hanaud. "Come with me, my friend. I am not so sure that
+there was no Celymčne."
+
+With a smile upon his face, Hanaud led the way across the room. He had
+the dramatic instinct, and rejoiced in it. He was going to produce a
+surprise for his companion and, savouring the moment in advance, he
+managed his effects. He walked towards the mantelpiece and stopped a
+few paces away from it.
+
+"Look!"
+
+Mr. Ricardo looked and saw a broad Adams mantelpiece. He turned a
+bewildered face to his friend.
+
+"You see nothing?" Hanaud asked.
+
+"Nothing!"
+
+"Look again! I am not sure--but is it not that Celymčne is posing
+before you?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo looked again. There was nothing to fix his eyes. He saw a
+book or two, a cup, a vase or two, and nothing else really expect a
+very pretty and apparently valuable piece of--and suddenly Mr. Ricardo
+understood. Straight in front of him, in the very centre of the
+mantelpiece, a figure in painted china was leaning against a china
+stile. It was the figure of a perfectly impossible courtier, feminine
+and exquisite as could be, and apparelled also even to the scarlet
+heels exactly as Calladine had described Joan Carew.
+
+Hanaud chuckled with satisfaction when he saw the expression upon Mr.
+Ricardo's face.
+
+"Ah, you understand," he said. "Do you dream, my friend? At
+times--yes, like the rest of us. Then recollect your dreams? Things,
+people, which you have seen perhaps that day, perhaps months ago, pop
+in and out of them without making themselves prayed for. You cannot
+understand why. Yet sometimes they cut their strange capers there,
+logically, too, through subtle associations which the dreamer, once
+awake, does not apprehend. Thus, our friend here sits in the window,
+intoxicated by his drug, the music plays in the Semiramis, the curtain
+goes up in the heated theatre of his brain. He sees himself step upon
+the stage, and who else meets him but the china figure from his
+mantelpiece?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo for a moment was all enthusiasm. Then his doubt returned
+to him.
+
+"What you say, my dear Hanaud, is very ingenious. The figure upon the
+mantelpiece is also extremely convincing. And I should be absolutely
+convinced but for one thing."
+
+"Yes?" said Hanaud, watching his friend closely.
+
+"I am--I may say it, I think, a man of the world. And I ask
+myself"--Mr. Ricardo never could ask himself anything without assuming
+a manner of extreme pomposity--"I ask myself, whether a young man who
+has given up his social ties, who has become a hermit, and still more
+who has become the slave of a drug, would retain that scrupulous
+carefulness of his body which is indicated by dressing for dinner when
+alone?"
+
+Hanaud struck the table with the palm of his hand and sat down in a
+chair.
+
+"Yes. That is the weak point in my theory. You have hit it. I knew it
+was there--that weak point, and I wondered whether you would seize it.
+Yes, the consumers of drugs are careless, untidy--even unclean as a
+rule. But not always. We must be careful. We must wait."
+
+"For what?" asked Ricardo, beaming with pride.
+
+"For the answer to a telephone message," replied Hanaud, with a nod
+towards the door.
+
+Both men waited impatiently until Calladine came into the room. He
+wore now a suit of blue serge, he had a clearer eye, his skin a
+healthier look; he was altogether a more reputable person. But he was
+plainly very ill at ease. He offered his visitors cigarettes, he
+proposed refreshments, he avoided entirely and awkwardly the object of
+their visit. Hanaud smiled. His theory was working out. Sobered by his
+bath, Calladine had realised the foolishness of which he had been
+guilty.
+
+"You telephone, to the Semiramis, of course?" said Hanaud cheerfully.
+
+Calladine grew red.
+
+"Yes," he stammered.
+
+"Yet I did not hear that volume of 'Hallos' which precedes telephonic
+connection in your country of leisure," Hanaud continued.
+
+"I telephoned from my bedroom. You would not hear anything in this
+room."
+
+"Yes, yes; the walls of these old houses are solid." Hanaud was
+playing with his victim. "And when may we expect Miss Carew?"
+
+"I can't say," replied Calladine. "It's very strange. She is not in
+the hotel. I am afraid that she has gone away, fled."
+
+Mr. Ricardo and Hanaud exchanged a look. They were both satisfied now.
+There was no word of truth in Calladine's story.
+
+"Then there is no reason for us to wait," said Hanaud. "I shall have
+my holiday after all." And while he was yet speaking the voice of a
+newsboy calling out the first edition of an evening paper became
+distantly audible. Hanaud broke off his farewell. For a moment he
+listened, with his head bent. Then the voice was heard again,
+confused, indistinct; Hanaud picked up his hat and cane and, without
+another word to Calladine, raced down the stairs. Mr. Ricardo followed
+him, but when he reached the pavement, Hanaud was half down the little
+street. At the corner, however, he stopped, and Ricardo joined him,
+coughing and out of breath.
+
+"What's the matter?" he gasped.
+
+"Listen," said Hanaud.
+
+At the bottom of Duke Street, by Charing Cross Station, the newsboy
+was shouting his wares. Both men listened, and now the words came to
+them mispronounced but decipherable.
+
+"Mysterious crime at the Semiramis Hotel."
+
+Ricardo stared at his companion.
+
+"You were wrong then!" he cried. "Calladine's story was true."
+
+For once in a way Hanaud was quite disconcerted.
+
+"I don't know yet," he said. "We will buy a paper."
+
+But before he could move a step a taxi-cab turned into the Adelphi
+from the Strand, and wheeling in front of their faces, stopped at
+Calladine's door. From the cab a girl descended.
+
+"Let us go back," said Hanaud.
+
+
+                                 III
+
+Mr. Ricardo could no longer complain. It was half-past eight when
+Calladine had first disturbed the formalities of his house in
+Grosvenor Square. It was barely ten now, and during that short time he
+had been flung from surprise to surprise, he had looked underground on
+a morning of fresh summer, and had been thrilled by the contrast
+between the queer, sinister life below and within and the open call to
+joy of the green world above. He had passed from incredulity to
+belief, from belief to incredulity, and when at last incredulity was
+firmly established, and the story to which he had listened proved the
+emanation of a drugged and heated brain, lo! the facts buffeted him in
+the face, and the story was shown to be true.
+
+"I am alive once more," Mr. Ricardo thought as he turned back with
+Hanaud, and in his excitement he cried his thought aloud.
+
+"Are you?" said Hanaud. "And what is life without a newspaper? If you
+will buy one from that remarkably raucous boy at the bottom of the
+street I will keep an eye upon Calladine's house till you come back."
+
+Mr. Ricardo sped down to Charing Cross and brought back a copy of the
+fourth edition of the _Star_. He handed it to Hanaud, who stared at it
+doubtfully, folded as it was.
+
+"Shall we see what it says?" Ricardo asked impatiently.
+
+"By no means," Hanaud answered, waking from his reverie and tucking
+briskly away the paper into the tail pocket of his coat. "We will hear
+what Miss Joan Carew has to say, with our minds undisturbed by any
+discoveries. I was wondering about something totally different."
+
+"Yes?" Mr. Ricardo encouraged him. "What was it?"
+
+"I was wondering, since it is only ten o'clock, at what hour the first
+editions of the evening papers appear."
+
+"It is a question," Mr. Ricardo replied sententiously, "which the
+greatest minds have failed to answer."
+
+And they walked along the street to the house. The front door stood
+open during the day like the front door of any other house which is
+let off in sets of rooms. Hanaud and Ricardo went up the staircase and
+rang the bell of Calladine's door. A middle-aged woman opened it.
+
+"Mr. Calladine is in?" said Hanaud.
+
+"I will ask," replied the woman. "What name shall I say?"
+
+"It does not matter. I will go straight in," said Hanaud quietly. "I
+was here with my friend but a minute ago."
+
+He went straight forward and into Calladine's parlour. Mr. Ricardo
+looked over his shoulder as he opened the door and saw a girl turn to
+them suddenly a white face of terror, and flinch as though already she
+felt the hand of a constable upon her shoulder. Calladine, on the
+other hand, uttered a cry of relief.
+
+"These are my friends," he exclaimed to the girl, "the friends of whom
+I spoke to you"; and to Hanaud he said: "This is Miss Carew."
+
+Hanaud bowed.
+
+"You shall tell me your story, mademoiselle," he said very gently, and
+a little colour returned to the girl's cheeks, a little courage
+revived in her.
+
+"But you have heard it," she answered.
+
+"Not from you," said Hanaud.
+
+So for a second time in that room she told the history of that night.
+Only this time the sunlight was warm upon the world, the comfortable
+sounds of life's routine were borne through the windows, and the girl
+herself wore the inconspicuous blue serge of a thousand other girls
+afoot that morning. These trifles of circumstance took the edge of
+sheer horror off her narrative, so that, to tell the truth, Mr.
+Ricardo was a trifle disappointed. He wanted a crescendo motive in his
+music, whereas it had begun at its fortissimo. Hanaud, however, was
+the perfect listener. He listened without stirring and with most
+compassionate eyes, so that Joan Carew spoke only to him, and to him,
+each moment that passed, with greater confidence. The life and sparkle
+of her had gone altogether. There was nothing in her manner now to
+suggest the waywardness, the gay irresponsibility, the radiance, which
+had attracted Calladine the night before. She was just a very young
+and very pretty girl, telling in a low and remorseful voice of the
+tragic dilemma to which she had brought herself. Of Celymčne all that
+remained was something exquisite and fragile in her beauty, in the
+slimness of her figure, in her daintiness of hand and foot--something
+almost of the hot-house. But the story she told was, detail for
+detail, the same which Calladine had already related.
+
+"Thank you," said Hanaud when she had done. "Now I must ask you two
+questions."
+
+"I will answer them."
+
+Mr. Ricardo sat up. He began to think of a third question which he
+might put himself, something uncommonly subtle and searching, which
+Hanaud would never have thought of. But Hanaud put his questions, and
+Ricardo almost jumped out of his chair.
+
+"You will forgive me. Miss Carew. But have you ever stolen before?"
+
+Joan Carew turned upon Hanaud with spirit. Then a change swept over
+her face.
+
+"You have a right to ask," she answered. "Never." She looked into his
+eyes as she answered. Hanaud did not move. He sat with a hand upon
+each knee and led to his second question.
+
+"Early this morning, when you left this room, you told Mr. Calladine
+that you would wait at the Semiramis until he telephoned to you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Yet when he telephoned, you had gone out?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I will tell you," said Joan Carew. "I could not bear to keep the
+little diamond chain in my room."
+
+For a moment even Hanaud was surprised. He had lost sight of that
+complication. Now he leaned forward anxiously; indeed, with a greater
+anxiety than he had yet shown in all this affair.
+
+"I was terrified," continued Joan Carew. "I kept thinking: 'They must
+have found out by now. They will search everywhere.' I didn't reason.
+I lay in bed expecting to hear every moment a loud knocking on the
+door. Besides--the chain itself being there in my bedroom--her
+chain--the dead woman's chain--no, I couldn't endure it. I felt as if
+I had stolen it. Then my maid brought in my tea."
+
+"You had locked it away?" cried Hanaud.
+
+"Yes. My maid did not see it."
+
+Joan Carew explained how she had risen, dressed, wrapped the chain in
+a pad of cotton-wool and enclosed it in an envelope. The envelope had
+not the stamp of the hotel upon it. It was a rather large envelope,
+one of a packet which she had bought in a crowded shop in Oxford
+Street on her way from Euston to the Semiramis. She had bought the
+envelopes of that particular size in order that when she sent her
+letter of introduction to the Director of the Opera at Covent Garden
+she might enclose with it a photograph.
+
+"And to whom did you send it?" asked Mr. Ricardo.
+
+"To Mrs. Blumenstein at the Semiramis. I printed the address
+carefully. Then I went out and posted it."
+
+"Where?" Hanaud inquired.
+
+"In the big letter-box of the Post Office at the corner of Trafalgar
+Square."
+
+Hanaud looked at the girl sharply.
+
+"You had your wits about you, I see," he said.
+
+"What if the envelope gets lost?" said Ricardo.
+
+Hanaud laughed grimly.
+
+"If one envelope is delivered at its address in London to-day, it will
+be that one," he said. "The news of the crime is published, you see,"
+and he swung round to Joan.
+
+"Did you know that, Miss Carew?"
+
+"No," she answered in an awe-stricken voice.
+
+"Well, then, it is. Let us see what the special investigator has to
+say about it." And Hanaud, with a deliberation which Mr. Ricardo found
+quite excruciating, spread out the newspaper on the table in front of
+him.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+There was only one new fact in the couple of columns devoted to the
+mystery. Mrs. Blumenstein had died from chloroform poisoning. She was
+of a stout habit, and the thieves were not skilled in the
+administration of the anćsthetic.
+
+"It's murder none the less," said Hanaud, and he gazed straight at
+Joan, asking her by the direct summons of his eyes what she was going
+to do.
+
+"I must tell my story to the police," she replied painfully and
+slowly. But she did not hesitate; she was announcing a meditated plan.
+
+Hanaud neither agreed nor differed. His face was blank, and when he
+spoke there was no cordiality in his voice. "Well," he asked, "and
+what is it that you have to say to the police, miss? That you went
+into the room to steal, and that you were attacked by two strangers,
+dressed as apaches, and masked? That is all?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And how many men at the Semiramis ball were dressed as apaches and
+wore masks? Come! Make a guess. A hundred at the least?"
+
+"I should think so."
+
+"Then what will your confession do beyond--I quote your English
+idiom--putting you in the coach?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo now smiled with relief. Hanaud was taking a definite line.
+His knowledge of idiomatic English might be incomplete, but his heart
+was in the right place. The girl traced a vague pattern on the
+tablecloth with her fingers.
+
+"Yet I think I must tell the police," she repeated, looking up and
+dropping her eyes again. Mr. Ricardo noticed that her eyelashes were
+very long. For the first time Hanaud's face relaxed.
+
+"And I think you are quite right," he cried heartily, to Mr. Ricardo's
+surprise. "Tell them the truth before they suspect it, and they will
+help you out of the affair if they can. Not a doubt of it. Come, I
+will go with you myself to Scotland Yard."
+
+"Thank you," said Joan, and the pair drove away in a cab together.
+
+Hanaud returned to Grosvenor Square alone and lunched with Ricardo.
+
+"It was all right," he said. "The police were very kind. Miss Joan
+Carew told her story to them as she had told it to us. Fortunately,
+the envelope with the aluminium chain had already been delivered, and
+was in their hands. They were much mystified about it, but Miss Joan's
+story gave them a reasonable explanation. I think they are inclined to
+believe her; and, if she is speaking the truth, they will keep her out
+of the witness-box if they can."
+
+"She is to stay here in London, then?" asked Ricardo.
+
+"Oh, yes; she is not to go. She will present her letters at the Opera
+House and secure an engagement, if she can. The criminals might be
+lulled thereby into a belief that the girl had kept the whole strange
+incident to herself, and that there was nowhere even a knowledge of
+the disguise which they had used." Hanaud spoke as carelessly as if
+the matter was not very important; and Ricardo, with an unusual flash
+of shrewdness, said:
+
+"It is clear, my friend, that you do not think those two men will ever
+be caught at all."
+
+Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"There is always a chance. But listen. There is a room with a
+hundred guns, one of which is loaded. Outside the room there are a
+hundred pigeons, one of which is white. You are taken into the room
+blind-fold. You choose the loaded gun and you shoot the one white
+pigeon. That is the value of the chance."
+
+"But," exclaimed Ricardo, "those pearls were of great value, and I
+have heard at a trial expert evidence given by pearl merchants. All
+agree that the pearls of great value are known; so, when they come
+upon the market----"
+
+"That is true," Hanaud interrupted imperturbably. "But how are they
+known?"
+
+"By their weight," said Mr. Ricardo.
+
+"Exactly," replied Hanaud. "But did you not also hear at this trial of
+yours that pearls can be peeled like an onion? No? It is true. Remove
+a skin, two skins, the weight is altered, the pearl is a trifle
+smaller. It has lost a little of its value, yes--but you can no longer
+identify it as the so-and-so pearl which belonged to this or that
+sultan, was stolen by the vizier, bought by Messrs. Lustre and
+Steinopolis, of Hatton Garden, and subsequently sold to the wealthy
+Mrs. Blumenstein. No, your pearl has vanished altogether. There is a
+new pearl which can be traded." He looked at Ricardo. "Who shall say
+that those pearls are not already in one of the queer little back
+streets of Amsterdam, undergoing their transformation?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo was not persuaded because he would not be. "I have some
+experience in these matters," he said loftily to Hanaud. "I am sure
+that we shall lay our hands upon the criminals. We have never failed."
+
+Hanaud grinned from ear to ear. The only experience which Mr. Ricardo
+had ever had was gained on the shores of Geneva and at Aix under
+Hanaud's tuition. But Hanaud did not argue, and there the matter
+rested.
+
+The days flew by. It was London's play-time. The green and gold of
+early summer deepened and darkened; wondrous warm nights under
+England's pale blue sky, when the streets rang with the joyous feet of
+youth, led in clear dawns and lovely glowing days. Hanaud made
+acquaintance with the wooded reaches of the Thames; Joan Carew sang
+"Louise" at Covent Garden with notable success; and the affair of the
+Semiramis Hotel, in the minds of the few who remembered it, was
+already added to the long list of unfathomed mysteries.
+
+But towards the end of May there occurred a startling development.
+Joan Carew wrote to Mr. Ricardo that she would call upon him in
+the afternoon, and she begged him to secure the presence of Hanaud.
+She came as the clock struck; she was pale and agitated; and in the
+room where Calladine had first told the story of her visit she told
+another story which, to Mr. Ricardo's thinking, was yet more strange
+and--yes--yet more suspicious.
+
+"It has been going on for some time," she began. "I thought of coming
+to you at once. Then I wondered whether, if I waited--oh, you'll never
+believe me!"
+
+"Let us hear!" said Hanaud patiently.
+
+"I began to dream of that room, the two men disguised and masked, the
+still figure in the bed. Night after night! I was terrified to go to
+sleep. I felt the hand upon my mouth. I used to catch myself falling
+asleep, and walk about the room with all the lights up to keep myself
+awake."
+
+"But you couldn't," said Hanaud with a smile. "Only the old can do
+that."
+
+"No, I couldn't," she admitted; "and--oh, my nights were horrible
+until"--she paused and looked at her companions doubtfully--"until one
+night the mask slipped."
+
+"What--?" cried Hanaud, and a note of sternness rang suddenly in his
+voice. "What are you saying?"
+
+With a desperate rush of words, and the colour staining her forehead
+and cheeks, Joan Carew continued:
+
+"It is true. The mask slipped on the face of one of the men--of
+the man who held me. Only a little way; it just left his forehead
+visible--no more."
+
+"Well?" asked Hanaud, and Mr. Ricardo leaned forward, swaying between
+the austerity of criticism and the desire to believe so thrilling a
+revelation.
+
+"I waked up," the girl continued, "in the darkness, and for a moment
+the whole scene remained vividly with me--for just long enough for me
+to fix clearly in my mind the figure of the apache with the white
+forehead showing above the mask."
+
+"When was that?" asked Ricardo.
+
+"A fortnight ago."
+
+"Why didn't you come with your story then?"
+
+"I waited," said Joan. "What I had to tell wasn't yet helpful. I
+thought that another night the mask might slip lower still. Besides,
+I--it is difficult to describe just what I felt. I felt it important
+just to keep that photograph in my mind, not to think about it, not to
+talk about it, not even to look at it too often lest I should begin to
+imagine the rest of the face and find something familiar in the man's
+carriage and shape when there was nothing really familiar to me at
+all. Do you understand that?" she asked, with her eyes fixed in appeal
+on Hanaud's face.
+
+"Yes," replied Hanaud. "I follow your thought."
+
+"I thought there was a chance now--the strangest chance--that the
+truth might be reached. I did not wish to spoil it," and she turned
+eagerly to Ricardo, as if, having persuaded Hanaud, she would now turn
+her batteries on his companion. "My whole point of view was changed. I
+was no longer afraid of falling asleep lest I should dream. I wished
+to dream, but----"
+
+"But you could not," suggested Hanaud.
+
+"No, that is the truth," replied Joan Carew. "Whereas before I was
+anxious to keep awake and yet must sleep from sheer fatigue, now that
+I tried consciously to put myself to sleep I remained awake all
+through the night, and only towards morning, when the light was coming
+through the blinds, dropped off into a heavy, dreamless slumber."
+
+Hanaud nodded.
+
+"It is a very perverse world, Miss Carew, and things go by
+contraries."
+
+Ricardo listened for some note of irony in Hanaud's voice, some look
+of disbelief in his face. But there was neither the one nor the other.
+Hanaud was listening patiently.
+
+"Then came my rehearsals," Joan Carew continued, "and that wonderful
+opera drove everything else out of my head. I had such a chance, if
+only I could make use of it! When I went to bed now, I went with that
+haunting music in my ears--the call of Paris--oh, you must remember
+it. But can you realise what it must mean to a girl who is going to
+sing it for the first time in Covent Garden?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo saw his opportunity. He, the connoisseur, to whom the
+psychology of the green room was as an open book, could answer that
+question.
+
+"It is true, my friend," he informed Hanaud with quiet authority. "The
+great march of events leaves the artist cold. He lives aloof. While
+the tumbrils thunder in the streets he adds a delicate tint to the
+picture he is engaged upon or recalls his triumph in his last great
+part."
+
+"Thank you," said Hanaud gravely. "And now Miss Carew may perhaps
+resume her story."
+
+"It was the very night of my début," she continued. "I had supper with
+some friends. A great artist. Carmen Valeri, honoured me with her
+presence. I went home excited, and that night I dreamed again."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"This time the chin, the lips, the eyes were visible. There was only a
+black strip across the middle of the face. And I thought--nay, I was
+sure--that if that strip vanished I should know the man."
+
+"And it did vanish?"
+
+"Three nights afterwards."
+
+"And you did know the man?"
+
+The girl's face became troubled. She frowned.
+
+"I knew the face, that was all," she answered. "I was disappointed. I
+had never spoken to the man. I am sure of that still. But somewhere I
+have seen him."
+
+"You don't even remember when?" asked Hanaud.
+
+"No." Joan Carew reflected for a moment with her eyes upon the carpet,
+and then flung up her head with a gesture of despair. "No. I try all
+the time to remember. But it is no good."
+
+Mr. Ricardo could not restrain a movement of indignation. He was being
+played with. The girl with her fantastic story had worked him up to a
+real pitch of excitement only to make a fool of him. All his earlier
+suspicions flowed back into his mind. What if, after all, she was
+implicated in the murder and the theft? What if, with a perverse
+cunning, she had told Hanaud and himself just enough of what she knew,
+just enough of the truth, to persuade them to protect her? What if her
+frank confession of her own overpowering impulse to steal the necklace
+was nothing more than a subtle appeal to the sentimental pity of men,
+an appeal based upon a wider knowledge of men's weaknesses than a girl
+of nineteen or twenty ought to have? Mr. Ricardo cleared his throat
+and sat forward in his chair. He was girding himself for a singularly
+searching interrogatory when Hanaud asked the most irrelevant of
+questions:
+
+"How did you pass the evening of that night when you first dreamed
+complete the face of your assailant?"
+
+Joan Carew reflected. Then her face cleared.
+
+"I know," she exclaimed. "I was at the opera."
+
+"And what was being given?"
+
+"_The Jewels of the Madonna_."
+
+Hanaud nodded his head. To Ricardo it seemed that he had expected
+precisely that answer.
+
+"Now," he continued, "you are sure that you have seen this man?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Very well," said Hanaud. "There is a game you play at children's
+parties--is there not?--animal, vegetable, or mineral, and always you
+get the answer. Let us play that game for a few minutes, you and I."
+
+Joan Carew drew up her chair to the table and sat with her chin
+propped upon her hands and her eyes fixed on Hanaud's face. As he put
+each question she pondered on it and answered. If she answered
+doubtfully he pressed it.
+
+"You crossed on the _Lucania_ from New York?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Picture to yourself the dining-room, the tables. You have the picture
+quite clear?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Was it at breakfast that you saw him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"At luncheon?"
+
+"No."
+
+"At dinner?"
+
+She paused for a moment, summoning before her eyes the travellers at
+the tables.
+
+"No."
+
+"Not in the dining-table at all, then?"
+
+"No."
+
+"In the library, when you were writing letters, did you not one day
+lift your head and see him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"On the promenade deck? Did he pass you when you sat in your
+deck-chair, or did you pass him when he sat in his chair?"
+
+"No."
+
+Step by step Hanaud took her back to New York to her hotel, to
+journeys in the train. Then he carried her to Milan where she had
+studied. It was extraordinary to Ricardo to realise how much Hanaud
+knew of the curriculum of a student aspiring to grand opera. From
+Milan he brought her again to New York, and at the last, with a start
+of joy, she cried: "Yes, it was there."
+
+Hanaud took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead.
+
+"Ouf!" he grunted. "To concentrate the mind on a day like this, it
+makes one hot, I can tell you. Now, Miss Carew, let us hear."
+
+It was at a concert at the house of a Mrs. Starlingshield in Fifth
+Avenue and in the afternoon. Joan Carew sang. She was a stranger to
+New York and very nervous. She saw nothing but a mist of faces whilst
+she sang, but when she had finished the mist cleared, and as she left
+the improvised stage she saw the man. He was standing against the wall
+in a line of men. There was no particular reason why her eyes should
+single him out, except that he was paying no attention to her singing,
+and, indeed, she forgot him altogether afterwards.
+
+"I just happened to see him clearly and distinctly," she said. "He was
+tall, clean-shaven, rather dark, not particularly young--thirty-five
+or so, I should say--a man with a heavy face and beginning to grow
+stout. He moved away whilst I was bowing to the audience, and I
+noticed him afterwards walking about, talking to people."
+
+"Do you remember to whom?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Did he notice you, do you think?"
+
+"I am sure he didn't," the girl replied emphatically. "He never looked
+at the stage where I was singing, and he never looked towards me
+afterwards."
+
+She gave, so far as she could remember, the names of such guests and
+singers as she knew at that party. "And that is all," she said.
+
+"Thank you," said Hanaud. "It is perhaps a good deal. But it is
+perhaps nothing at all."
+
+"You will let me hear from you?" she cried, as she rose to her feet.
+
+"Miss Carew, I am at your service," he returned. She gave him her hand
+timidly and he took it cordially. For Mr. Ricardo she had merely a
+bow, a bow which recognised that he distrusted her and that she had no
+right to be offended. Then she went, and Hanaud smiled across the
+table at Ricardo.
+
+"Yes," he said, "all that you are thinking is true enough. A man who
+slips out of society to indulge a passion for a drug in greater peace,
+a girl who, on her own confession, tried to steal, and, to crown all,
+this fantastic story. It is natural to disbelieve every word of it.
+But we disbelieved before, when we left Calladine's lodging in the
+Adelphi, and we were wrong. Let us be warned."
+
+"You have an idea?" exclaimed Ricardo.
+
+"Perhaps!" said Hanaud. And he looked down the theatre column of the
+_Times_. "Let us distract ourselves by going to the theatre."
+
+"You are the most irritating man!" Mr. Ricardo broke out impulsively.
+"If I had to paint your portrait, I should paint you with your finger
+against the side of your nose, saying mysteriously: '_I_ know,' when
+you know nothing at all."
+
+Hanaud made a schoolboy's grimace. "We will go and sit in your box at
+the opera to-night," he said, "and you shall explain to me all through
+the beautiful music the theory of the tonic sol-fa."
+
+They reached Covent Garden before the curtain rose. Mr. Ricardo's box
+was on the lowest tier and next to the omnibus box.
+
+"We are near the stage," said Hanaud, as he took his seat in the
+corner and so arranged the curtain that he could see and yet was
+hidden from view. "I like that."
+
+The theatre was full; stalls and boxes shimmered with jewels and
+satin, and all that was famous that season for beauty and distinction
+had made its tryst there that night.
+
+"Yes, this is wonderful," said Hanaud. "What opera do they play?" He
+glanced at his programme and cried, with a little start of surprise:
+"We are in luck. It is _The Jewels of the Madonna_."
+
+"Do you believe in omens?" Mr. Ricardo asked coldly. He had not yet
+recovered from his rebuff of the afternoon.
+
+"No, but I believe that Carmen Valeri is at her best in this part,"
+said Hanaud.
+
+Mr. Ricardo belonged to that body of critics which must needs spoil
+your enjoyment by comparisons and recollections of other great
+artists. He was at a disadvantage certainly to-night, for the opera
+was new. But he did his best. He imagined others in the part, and when
+the great scene came at the end of the second act, and Carmen Valeri,
+on obtaining from her lover the jewels stolen from the sacred image,
+gave such a display of passion as fairly enthralled that audience, Mr.
+Ricardo sighed quietly and patiently.
+
+"How Calvé would have brought out the psychological value of that
+scene!" he murmured; and he was quite vexed with Hanaud, who sat with
+his opera glasses held to his eyes, and every sense apparently
+concentrated on the stage. The curtains rose and rose again when the
+act was concluded, and still Hanaud sat motionless as the Sphynx,
+staring through his glasses.
+
+"That is all," said Ricardo when the curtains fell for the fifth time.
+
+"They will come out," said Hanaud. "Wait!" And from between the
+curtains Carmen Valeri was led out into the full glare of the
+footlights with the panoply of jewels flashing on her breast. Then at
+last Hanaud put down his glasses and turned to Ricardo with a look of
+exultation and genuine delight upon his face which filled that
+season-worn dilettante with envy.
+
+"What a night!" said Hanaud. "What a wonderful night!" And he
+applauded until he split his gloves. At the end of the opera he cried:
+"We will go and take supper at the Semiramis. Yes, my friend, we will
+finish our evening like gallant gentlemen. Come! Let us not think of
+the morning." And boisterously he slapped Ricardo in the small of the
+back.
+
+In spite of his boast, however, Hanaud hardly touched his supper, and
+he played with, rather than drank, his brandy and soda. He had a
+little table to which he was accustomed beside a glass screen in the
+depths of the room, and he sat with his back to the wall watching the
+groups which poured in. Suddenly his face lighted up.
+
+"Here is Carmen Valeri!" he cried. "Once more we are in luck. Is it
+not that she is beautiful?"
+
+Mr. Ricardo turned languidly about in his chair and put up his
+eyeglass.
+
+"So, so," he said.
+
+"Ah!" returned Hanaud. "Then her companion will interest you still
+more. For he is the man who murdered Mrs. Blumenstein."
+
+Mr. Ricardo jumped so that his eyeglass fell down and tinkled on its
+cord against the buttons of his waistcoat.
+
+"What!" he exclaimed. "It's impossible!" He looked again. "Certainly
+the man fits Joan Carew's description. But--" He turned back to Hanaud
+utterly astounded. And as he looked at the Frenchman all his earlier
+recollections of him, of his swift deductions, of the subtle
+imagination which his heavy body so well concealed, crowded in upon
+Ricardo and convinced him.
+
+"How long have you known?" he asked in a whisper of awe.
+
+"Since ten o'clock to-night."
+
+"But you will have to find the necklace before you can prove it."
+
+"The necklace!" said Hanaud carelessly. "That is already found."
+
+Mr. Ricardo had been longing for a thrill. He had it now. He felt it
+in his very spine.
+
+"It's found?" he said in a startled whisper.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Ricardo turned again, with as much indifference as he could assume,
+towards the couple who were settling down at their table, the man with
+a surly indifference, Carmen Valeri with the radiance of a woman who
+has just achieved a triumph and is now free to enjoy the fruits of it.
+Confusedly, recollections returned to Ricardo of questions put that
+afternoon by Hanaud to Joan Carew--subtle questions into which the
+name of Carmen Valeri was continually entering. She was a woman of
+thirty, certainly beautiful, with a clear, pale face and eyes like the
+night.
+
+"Then she is implicated too!" he said. What a change for her, he
+thought, from the stage of Covent Garden to the felon's cell, from the
+gay supper-room of the Semiramis, with its bright frocks and its babel
+of laughter, to the silence and the ignominious garb of the workrooms
+in Aylesbury Prison!
+
+"She!" exclaimed Hanaud; and in his passion for the contrasts of drama
+Ricardo was almost disappointed. "She has nothing whatever to do with
+it. She knows nothing. André Favart there--yes. But Carmen Valeri!
+She's as stupid as an owl, and loves him beyond words. Do you want to
+know how stupid she is? You shall know. I asked Mr. Clements, the
+director of the opera house, to take supper with us, and here he is."
+
+Hanaud stood up and shook hands with the director. He was of the world
+of business rather than of art, and long experience of the ways of
+tenors and prima-donnas had given him a good-humoured cynicism.
+
+"They are spoilt children, all tantrums and vanity," he said, "and
+they would ruin you to keep a rival out of the theatre."
+
+He told them anecdote upon anecdote.
+
+"And Carmen Valeri," Hanaud asked in a pause; "is she troublesome this
+season?"
+
+"Has been," replied Clements dryly. "At present she is playing at
+being good. But she gave me a turn some weeks ago." He turned to
+Ricardo. "Superstition's her trouble, and André Favart knows it. She
+left him behind in America this spring."
+
+"America!" suddenly cried Ricardo; so suddenly that Clements looked at
+him in surprise.
+
+"She was singing in New York, of course, during the winter," he
+returned. "Well, she left him behind, and I was shaking hands with
+myself when he began to deal the cards over there. She came to me in a
+panic. She had just had a cable. She couldn't sing on Friday night.
+There was a black knave next to the nine of diamonds. She wouldn't
+sing for worlds. And it was the first night of _The Jewels of the
+Madonna!_ Imagine the fix I was in!"
+
+"What did you do?" asked Ricardo.
+
+"The only thing there was to do," replied Clements with a shrug of the
+shoulders. "I cabled Favart some money and he dealt the cards again.
+She came to me beaming. Oh, she had been so distressed to put me in
+the cart! But what could she do? Now there was a red queen next to the
+ace of hearts, so she could sing without a scruple so long, of course,
+as she didn't pass a funeral on the way down to the opera house.
+Luckily she didn't. But my money brought Favart over here, and now I'm
+living on a volcano. For he's the greatest scoundrel unhung. He never
+has a farthing, however much she gives him; he's a blackmailer, he's a
+swindler, he has no manners and no graces, he looks like a butcher and
+treats her as if she were dirt, he never goes near the opera except
+when she is singing in this part, and she worships the ground he walks
+on. Well, I suppose it's time to go."
+
+The lights had been turned off, the great room was emptying. Mr.
+Ricardo and his friends rose to go, but at the door Hanaud detained
+Mr. Clements, and they talked together alone for some little while,
+greatly to Mr. Ricardo's annoyance. Hanaud's good humour, however,
+when he rejoined his friend, was enough for two.
+
+"I apologise, my friend, with my hand on my heart. But it was for your
+sake that I stayed behind. You have a meretricious taste for melodrama
+which I deeply deplore, but which I mean to gratify. I ought to leave
+for Paris to-morrow, but I shall not. I shall stay until Thursday."
+And he skipped upon the pavement as they walked home to Grosvenor
+Square.
+
+Mr. Ricardo bubbled with questions, but he knew his man. He would get
+no answer to any one of them to-night. So he worked out the problem
+for himself as he lay awake in his bed, and he came down to breakfast
+next morning fatigued but triumphant. Hanaud was already chipping off
+the top of his egg at the table.
+
+"So I see you have found it all out, my friend," he said.
+
+"Not all," replied Ricardo modestly, "and you will not mind, I am
+sure, if I follow the usual custom and wish you a good morning."
+
+"Not at all," said Hanaud. "I am all for good manners myself."
+
+He dipped his spoon into his egg.
+
+"But I am longing to hear the line of your reasoning."
+
+Mr. Ricardo did not need much pressing.
+
+"Joan Carew saw André Favart at Mrs. Starlingshield's party, and saw
+him with Carmen Valeri. For Carmen Valeri was there. I remember that
+you asked Joan for the names of the artists who sang, and Carmen
+Valeri was amongst them."
+
+Hanaud nodded his head.
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"No doubt Joan Carew noticed Carmen Valeri particularly, and so took
+unconsciously into her mind an impression of the man who was with her,
+André Favart--of his build, of his walk, of his type."
+
+Again Hanaud agreed.
+
+"She forgets the man altogether, but the picture remains latent in her
+mind--an undeveloped film."
+
+Hanaud looked up in surprise, and the surprise flattered Mr. Ricardo.
+Not for nothing had he tossed about in his bed for the greater part of
+the night.
+
+"Then came the tragic night at the Semiramis. She does not consciously
+recognise her assailant, but she dreams the scene again and again, and
+by a process of unconscious cerebration the figure of the man becomes
+familiar. Finally she makes her début, is entertained at supper
+afterwards, and meets once more Carmen Valeri."
+
+"Yes, for the first time since Mrs. Starlingshield's party,"
+interjected Hanaud.
+
+"She dreams again, she remembers asleep more than she remembers when
+awake. The presence of Carmen Valeri at her supper-party has its
+effect. By a process of association, she recalls Favart, and the mask
+slips on the face of her assailant. Some days later she goes to the
+opera. She hears Carmen Valeri sing in _The Jewels of the Madonna_. No
+doubt the passion of her acting, which I am more prepared to
+acknowledge this morning than I was last night, affects Joan Carew
+powerfully, emotionally. She goes to bed with her head full of Carmen
+Valeri, and she dreams not of Carmen Valeri, but of the man who is
+unconsciously associated with Carmen Valeri in her thoughts. The mask
+vanishes altogether. She sees her assailant now, has his portrait
+limned in her mind, would know him if she met him in the street,
+though she does not know by what means she identified him."
+
+"Yes," said Hanaud. "It is curious the brain working while the body
+sleeps, the dream revealing what thought cannot recall."
+
+Mr. Ricardo was delighted. He was taken seriously.
+
+"But of course," he said, "I could not have worked the problem out but
+for you. You knew of André Favart and the kind of man he was."
+
+Hanaud laughed.
+
+"Yes. That is always my one little advantage. I know all the
+cosmopolitan blackguards of Europe." His laughter ceased suddenly, and
+he brought his clenched fist heavily down upon the table. "Here is one
+of them who will be very well out of the world, my friend," he said
+very quietly, but there was a look of force in his face and a hard
+light in his eyes which made Mr. Ricardo shiver.
+
+For a few moments there was silence. Then Ricardo asked: "But have you
+evidence enough?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Your two chief witnesses, Calladine and Joan Carew--you said it
+yourself--there are facts to discredit them. Will they be believed?"
+
+"But they won't appear in the case at all," Hanaud said. "Wait, wait!"
+and once more he smiled. "By the way, what is the number of
+Calladine's house?"
+
+Ricardo gave it, and Hanaud therefore wrote a letter. "It is all for
+your sake, my friend," he said with a chuckle.
+
+"Nonsense," said Ricardo. "You have the spirit of the theatre in your
+bones."
+
+"Well, I shall not deny it," said Hanaud, and he sent out the letter
+to the nearest pillar-box.
+
+Mr. Ricardo waited in a fever of impatience until Thursday came. At
+breakfast Hanaud would talk of nothing but the news of the day. At
+luncheon he was no better. The affair of the Semiramis Hotel seemed a
+thousand miles from any of his thoughts. But at five o'clock he said
+as he drank his tea:
+
+"You know, of course, that we go to the opera to-night?"
+
+"Yes. Do we?"
+
+"Yes. Your young friend Calladine, by the way, will join us in your
+box."
+
+"That is very kind of him, I am sure," said Mr. Ricardo.
+
+The two men arrived before the rising of the curtain, and in the
+crowded lobby a stranger spoke a few words to Hanaud, but what he said
+Ricardo could not hear. They took their seats in the box, and Hanaud
+looked at his programme.
+
+"Ah! It is _Il Ballo de Maschera_ to-night. We always seem to hit upon
+something appropriate, don't we?"
+
+Then he raised his eyebrows.
+
+"Oh-o! Do you see that our pretty young friend, Joan Carew, is singing
+in the rôle of the page? It is a showy part. There is a particular
+melody with a long-sustained trill in it, as far as I remember."
+
+Mr. Ricardo was not deceived by Hanaud's apparent ignorance of the
+opera to be given that night and of the part Joan Carew was to take.
+He was, therefore, not surprised when Hanaud added:
+
+"By the way, I should let Calladine find it all out for himself."
+
+Mr. Ricardo nodded sagely.
+
+"Yes. That is wise. I had thought of it myself." But he had
+done nothing of the kind. He was only aware that the elaborate
+stage-management in which Hanaud delighted was working out to the
+desired climax, whatever that climax might be. Calladine entered the
+box a few minutes later and shook hands with them awkwardly.
+
+"It was kind of you to invite me," he said and, very ill at ease, he
+took a seat between them and concentrated his attention on the house
+as it filled up.
+
+"There's the overture," said Hanaud. The curtains divided and were
+festooned on either side of the stage. The singers came on in their
+turn; the page appeared to a burst of delicate applause (Joan Carew
+had made a small name for herself that season), and with a stifled cry
+Calladine shot back in the box as if he had been struck. Even then Mr.
+Ricardo did not understand. He only realised that Joan Carew was
+looking extraordinarily trim and smart in her boy's dress. He had to
+look from his programme to the stage and back again several times
+before the reason of Calladine's exclamation dawned on him. When it
+did, he was horrified. Hanaud, in his craving for dramatic effects,
+must have lost his head altogether. Joan Carew was wearing, from the
+ribbon in her hair to the scarlet heels of her buckled satin shoes,
+the same dress as she had worn on the tragic night at the Semiramis
+Hotel. He leaned forward in his agitation to Hanaud.
+
+"You must be mad. Suppose Favart is in the theatre and sees her. He'll
+be over on the Continent by one in the morning."
+
+"No, he won't," replied Hanaud. "For one thing, he never comes to
+Covent Garden unless one opera, with Carmen Valeri in the chief part,
+is being played, as you heard the other night at supper. For a second
+thing, he isn't in the house. I know where he is. He is gambling in
+Dean Street, Soho. For a third thing, my friend, he couldn't leave by
+the nine o'clock train for the Continent if he wanted to. Arrangements
+have been made. For a fourth thing, he wouldn't wish to. He has really
+remarkable reasons for desiring to stay in London. But he will come to
+the theatre later. Clements will send him an urgent message, with the
+result that he will go straight to Clements' office. Meanwhile, we can
+enjoy ourselves, eh?"
+
+Never was the difference between the amateur dilettante and the
+genuine professional more clearly exhibited than by the behaviour of
+the two men during the rest of the performance. Mr. Ricardo might have
+been sitting on a coal fire from his jumps and twistings; Hanaud
+stolidly enjoyed the music, and when Joan Carew sang her famous solo
+his hands clamoured for an encore louder than anyone's in the boxes.
+Certainly, whether excitement was keeping her up or no, Joan Carew had
+never sung better in her life. Her voice was clear and fresh as a
+bird's--a bird with a soul inspiring its song. Even Calladine drew his
+chair forward again and sat with his eyes fixed upon the stage and
+quite carried out of himself. He drew a deep breath at the end.
+
+"She is wonderful," he said, like a man waking up.
+
+"She is very good," replied Mr. Ricardo, correcting Calladine's
+transports.
+
+"We will go round to the back of the stage," said Hanaud.
+
+They passed through the iron door and across the stage to a long
+corridor with a row of doors on one side. There were two or three men
+standing about in evening dress, as if waiting for friends in the
+dressing-rooms. At the third door Hanaud stopped and knocked. The door
+was opened by Joan Carew, still dressed in her green and gold. Her
+face was troubled, her eyes afraid.
+
+"Courage, little one," said Hanaud, and he slipped past her into the
+room. "It is as well that my ugly, familiar face should not be seen
+too soon."
+
+The door closed and one of the strangers loitered along the corridor
+and spoke to a call-boy. The call-boy ran off. For five minutes more
+Mr. Ricardo waited with a beating heart. He had the joy of a man in
+the centre of things. All those people driving homewards in their
+motor-cars along the Strand--how he pitied them! Then, at the end of
+the corridor, he saw Clements and André Favart. They approached,
+discussing the possibility of Carmen Valeri's appearance in London
+opera during the next season.
+
+"We have to look ahead, my dear friend," said Clements, "and though I
+should be extremely sorry----"
+
+At that moment they were exactly opposite Joan Carew's door. It
+opened, she came out; with a nervous movement she shut the door behind
+her. At the sound André Favart turned, and he saw drawn up against the
+panels of the door, with a look of terror in her face, the same gay
+figure which had interrupted him in Mrs. Blumenstein's bedroom. There
+was no need for Joan to act. In the presence of this man her fear was
+as real as it had been on the night of the Semiramis ball. She
+trembled from head to foot. Her eyes closed; she seemed about to
+swoon.
+
+Favart stared and uttered an oath. His face turned white; he staggered
+back as if he had seen a ghost. Then he made a wild dash along the
+corridor, and was seized and held by two of the men in evening dress.
+Favart recovered his wits. He ceased to struggle.
+
+"What does this outrage mean?" he asked, and one of the men drew a
+warrant and notebook from his pocket.
+
+"You are arrested for the murder of Mrs. Blumenstein in the Semiramis
+Hotel," he said, "and I have to warn you that anything you may say
+will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you."
+
+"Preposterous!" exclaimed Favart. "There's a mistake. We will go along
+to the police and put it right. Where's your evidence against me?"
+
+Hanaud stepped out of the doorway of the dressing-room.
+
+"In the property-room of the theatre," he said.
+
+At the sight of him Favart uttered a violent cry of rage. "You are
+here, too, are you?" he screamed, and he sprang at Hanaud's throat.
+Hanaud stepped lightly aside. Favart was borne down to the ground, and
+when he stood up again the handcuffs were on his wrists.
+
+Favart was led away, and Hanaud turned to Mr. Ricardo and Clements.
+
+"Let us go to the property-room," he said. They passed along the
+corridor, and Ricardo noticed that Calladine was no longer with them.
+He turned and saw him standing outside Joan Carew's dressing-room.
+
+"He would like to come, of course," said Ricardo.
+
+"Would he?" asked Hanaud. "Then why doesn't he? He's quite grown up,
+you know," and he slipped his arm through Ricardo's and led him back
+across the stage. In the property-room there was already a detective
+in plain clothes. Mr. Ricardo had still not as yet guessed the truth.
+
+"What is it you really want, sir?" the property-master asked of the
+director.
+
+"Only the jewels of the Madonna," Hanaud answered.
+
+The property-master unlocked a cupboard and took from it the sparkling
+cuirass. Hanaud pointed to it, and there, lost amongst the huge
+glittering stones of paste and false pearls, Mrs. Blumenstein's
+necklace was entwined.
+
+"Then that is why Favart came always to Covent Garden when _The Jewels
+of the Madonna_ was being performed!" exclaimed Ricardo.
+
+Hanaud nodded.
+
+"He came to watch over his treasure."
+
+Ricardo was piecing together the sections of the puzzle.
+
+"No doubt he knew of the necklace in America. No doubt he followed it
+to England."
+
+Hanaud agreed.
+
+"Mrs. Blumenstein's jewels were quite famous in New York."
+
+"But to hide them here!" cried Mr. Clements. "He must have been mad."
+
+"Why?" asked Hanaud. "Can you imagine a safer hiding-place? Who is
+going to burgle the property-room of Covent Garden? Who is going to
+look for a priceless string of pearls amongst the stage jewels of an
+opera house?"
+
+"You did," said Mr. Ricardo.
+
+"I?" replied Hanaud, shrugging his shoulders. "Joan Carew's dreams led
+me to André Favart. The first time we came here and saw the pearls of
+the Madonna, I was on the look-out, naturally. I noticed Favart at the
+back of the stalls. But it was a stroke of luck that I noticed those
+pearls through my opera glasses."
+
+"At the end of the second act?" cried Ricardo suddenly. "I remember
+now."
+
+"Yes," replied Hanaud. "But for that second act the pearls would have
+stayed comfortably here all through the season. Carmen Valeri--a fool
+as I told you--would have tossed them about in her dressing-room
+without a notion of their value, and at the end of July, when the
+murder at the Semiramis Hotel had been forgotten, Favart would have
+taken them to Amsterdam and made his bargain."
+
+"Shall we go?"
+
+They left the theatre together and walked down to the grill-room of
+the Semiramis. But as Hanaud looked through the glass door he drew
+back.
+
+"We will not go in, I think, eh?"
+
+"Why?" asked Ricardo.
+
+Hanaud pointed to a table. Calladine and Joan Carew were seated at it
+taking their supper.
+
+"Perhaps," said Hanaud with a smile, "perhaps, my friend--what? Who
+shall say that the rooms in the Adelphi will not be given up?"
+
+They turned away from the hotel. But Hanaud was right, and before the
+season was over Mr. Ricardo had to put his hand in his pocket for a
+wedding present.
+
+
+
+
+
+                          UNDER BIGNOR HILL
+
+
+
+
+                          UNDER BIGNOR HILL[1]
+
+
+The action of the play takes place on a night in summer at the foot of
+Bignor Hill on the north side of the Sussex Downs. The time is that of
+the Roman occupation of England. In the foreground is an open space of
+turf surrounded with gorse-bushes. The turf rises in a steep bank at
+the back and melts into the side of the hill. The left of the stage is
+closed in by a wooded spur of the hill. The scene is wild and revealed
+by a strong moonlight. A fallen tree-trunk lies on the right, and a
+raised bank is at the left of the stage.
+
+On the summit of the hill the glow of a camp-fire is seen, and from
+time to time a flame leaps up as though fuel had been added. Towards
+the end of the play the fire dies down and goes out.
+
+When the curtain rises the stage is empty, but a sound of men marching
+is faintly heard. The sound is heard in pauses throughout the first
+part of the play.
+
+   [_Gleva enters from the R. She is a British princess, clothed in
+   skins. But she has added to her dress some of the refinements of
+   the conquerors--a shirt of fine linen, the high sandals of the
+   Roman lady, the Roman comb in her hair, some jewellery, a necklace
+   of stones, and bracelets. She is followed by three men of her
+   tribe, wild men in skins, armed with knives, and flint axes carried
+   at the waist. Gleva comes forward silently into the open space of
+   turf_.]
+Gleva: No one!
+
+Bran: The trumpet has not sounded the last call on the hill.
+
+Gleva: No. Yet the hour for it is past. By now the camp should be
+asleep. (_She looks up the hill and then turns to her men_.) Be ready
+to light the torch.
+
+Caransius: Everything is strange to-day.
+
+   [_He sits R. under the shelter of a bush, and with a flint and
+   steel kindles a tiny flame during the following scene. He has a
+   torch in his hand which he lays by his side. When the fire is
+   lighted he blows on it from time to time to keep it alight_.]
+
+Bran: Yes. And yesterday. For many months we have been left in quiet.
+Now once more the soldiers march through Anderida.
+
+Gleva (_holds up her hand_): Listen!
+
+   [_A pause. The sound of marching is heard quite clearly, but at a
+   distance_.]
+
+Bran: It does not stop, Princess.
+
+Gleva: All yesterday, all through last night, all through this long
+day! Listen to it, steady as a heart beating, steady and terrible.
+(_She speaks with great discouragement, moving apart, L., and sitting
+on tree bole_.)
+
+Caransius (_lighting fire_): I crept to the edge of the forest to-day.
+I lay very quiet behind the bushes and looked out across the clearing
+to the road.
+
+Gleva: You!
+
+   [_A general exclamation of astonishment._]
+
+Caransius: Oh, it's not easy to frighten me, I can tell you. I fought
+at Verulanium with the Iceni. I know. I carried a sling. (_He nods
+majestically at his companions._) And there you have it.
+
+Gleva: Yes, yes, good friend. But which way did the soldiers march?
+What of the road?
+
+   [_She goes over to him._]
+
+Caransius: Mistress, there wasn't any road. There were only soldiers.
+As far as my eyes could see, bright helmets and brown faces and
+flashing shoulder plates bobbing up and down between the trees and a
+smother of dust until my head whirled.
+
+Bran and Both Attendants: Oh!
+
+Gleva: But which way did they go?
+
+Caransius: I lost my dog, too--the brute. He ran from me and joined
+the marching men. I dared not call to him.
+
+Bran: Yes, that is the way of dogs.
+
+Gleva: Did they go north towards the Wall? (_She shakes him._)
+
+Caransius (_who has been blowing on the fire, now sits up comfortably
+and smiles upon Gleva, who is tortured with impatience_): God bless
+you, mistress, there isn't any Wall. I know about the Romans; I know!
+I fought at Verulanium. Now!
+
+   [_Gleva turns away in despair of getting any sense out of him. A
+   trumpet sounds on the top of Bignor Hill, faintly. All turn swiftly
+   towards it_.]
+
+Gleva: Ready!
+
+   [_A sound of armed men moving, a clash of shields is heard from the
+   top of Bignor Hill._]
+Now fire the torch. Give it me! (_She springs on to the bank and waves
+it three times from side to side, steps down, and gives it back to an
+attendant, who puts it out._)
+
+Caransius (_continuing placidly_): No, there's no Wall. There are a
+great many mistakes made about the Romans. They are no longer the men
+they were. I carried a sling at Verulanium, and there you have it.
+I'll tell you something. The soldiers were marching to Regnum.
+
+Gleva: To Regnum? Are you sure?
+
+Caransius: Yes. Up over the great Down they went. I saw their armour
+amongst the trees on the side of the hill, and the smoke of their
+marching on the round bare top.
+
+Gleva: They were going to Regnum and the sea. (_She speaks in
+despair._)
+
+Third Attendant: I am afraid.
+
+Gleva (_turns on him scornfully_): You! Why should you fear if they
+are marching to the sea?
+
+Third Attendant: I have been afraid ever since yesterday. The noise of
+the marching scattered my wits.
+
+   [_Gleva and the others laugh contemptuously._]
+
+And because I was afraid--I killed. (_A low cry of consternation
+bursts from Bran and Caransius._)
+
+Bran: Madman! Madman!
+
+Gleva: You killed one of the Romans!
+
+Third Attendant (_stands before her_): I was afraid. It was by the old
+forge in the forest. There's a brook by the forge.
+
+Bran: Yes.
+
+Third Attendant: He had fallen out of the ranks. He was stooping over
+the brook. I saw the sun sparkle upon his helmet as he dipped it into
+the water, and his strong, brown neck as he raised it. I crept close
+to him and struck at his neck as he drank.
+
+Caransius: That was a good stroke.
+
+Bran: A mad stroke.
+
+Third Attendant: He fell over without a cry, and all his armour
+rattled once.
+
+Bran: It will be the fire for our barns, and death for every tenth man
+of the tribe.
+
+Third Attendant: No one saw.
+
+Gleva: Stand here!
+
+   [_The third attendant stands before her._]
+
+I gave an order.
+
+Caransius: Yet, mistress, it is better to strike against orders than
+to leave one's friends and, like my dog, follow the marching men.
+
+   [_A cry bursts from Bran. He seizes Caransius. Gleva stands with
+   her hand upon her knife. Then she turns away, and buries her face
+   in her hands. A whistle is heard from the hillside above her on the
+   left. She looks up, and her face changes. She turns to third
+   attendant._]
+
+Gleva: Go up the hill--close to the camp, as close as you can creep,
+and watch. So may you earn your pardon. (_He goes off_.) You two stand
+aside--but not so far but that a cry may bring you instantly.
+
+Bran: We will be ready. (_Exeunt R._)
+
+   [_Gleva faces the spur of the hill on her left as if all her world
+   was there. There is a movement among the trees on the spur, a flash
+   of armour in the moonlight, and at the edge of the trees appears
+   Quintus Calpurnius Aulus, a Captain about thirty-five years old,
+   handsome, but in repose his face is stern and inscrutable. He is
+   active, lithe, self-confident. He comes out into the open just
+   below the trees, and stands quite still. His very attitude should
+   suggest strength._]
+
+Quintus: I am here. (_He speaks with the voice of a man accustomed to
+command, and to have his orders obeyed without question. Gleva stands
+erect questioning his authority. Then she crosses her hands upon her
+bosom and bows her head._)
+
+Gleva: My Lord Calpurnius.
+
+   [_Calpurnius laughs. He runs down the slope._]
+
+Calpurnius: That's well. (_He takes her in his arms._) You have a
+trick of saying "Calpurnius." I shall remember it till I die.
+
+   [_Gleva draws away from him._]
+
+Say it again.
+
+Gleva: With all my soul in the word. It is a prayer. Calpurnius!
+
+   [_Calpurnius is moved by the passion of her voice. He takes her
+   hands in his._]
+
+Calpurnius: Yes. I shall remember till I die. (_They move towards the
+bank._)
+
+Gleva: My lord is late to-night.
+
+Calpurnius: Late! A Roman soldier of fifteen years' service late. My
+dear, let us talk sense. Come!
+
+   [_The trumpet sounds again from the hill. Calpurnius stops._]
+
+Gleva: Why does the trumpet sound?
+
+Calpurnius: To call some straggler back to Rome.
+
+Gleva: Rome! (_With a cry._)
+
+Calpurnius: Yes. For every one of us, the camp on the empty hill-top
+there is Rome, and all Rome's in the trumpet call.
+
+Gleva: Is the sound so strange and moving?
+
+Calpurnius: Yes. Most strange, most moving. For I know that at this
+actual minute every Roman soldier on guard throughout the world has
+the sound of it in his ears, here in the forest of Anderida, far away
+on some fortress wall in Syria. (_Throws off his seriousness._) But I
+am talking of sacred things, and that one should be shy to do. Come,
+Gleva. We have little time. When the moon touches those trees I climb
+again.
+
+Gleva: Yet, my lord, for one more moment think of me not as the
+foolish, conquered slave. Listen! Turn your head this way and listen.
+
+Calpurnius: What shall I hear? Some nightingale pouring out love upon
+a moonlit night? He'll not say "Calpurnius" with so sweet a note as
+you.
+
+Gleva: You'll hear no nightingale, nor any sound that has one memory
+of me in it. Listen, you'll hear--all Rome.
+
+   [_He looks at her quickly. In the pause is heard the sound of men
+   marching._]
+
+That speaks louder than the trumpets.
+
+   [_He is very still._]
+
+Calpurnius! (_She sits by him, and puts an arm about his shoulder. She
+speaks his name as if she were afraid._) The Romans flee from Britain.
+
+Calpurnius (_with a start of contempt_): Madness! It's one legion
+going home. Another, with its rest still to earn, will take its place.
+
+Gleva: Which legion goes?
+
+Calpurnius: How should I know? (_A pause._) The Valeria Victrix.
+
+Gleva: Yours! (_She starts away from him._) Calpurnius, yours!
+
+Calpurnius: Yes, mine. My legion goes to Rome. (_His voice thrills
+with eagerness. He has been troubled through the scene how he shall
+break the news. Now it is out, he cannot conceal his joy._)
+
+Gleva: But you--you stay behind.
+
+Calpurnius (_gently_): This is our last night together. Let us not
+waste it. Never was there a night so made for love. (_He draws her
+towards him._)
+
+Gleva: You go with your legion?
+
+Calpurnius: Before the dawn.
+
+Gleva: It's impossible. No. You'll stay behind.
+
+Calpurnius: No.
+
+Gleva: Listen to me. You shall be King with me.
+
+Calpurnius (_in a burst of contempt_): King here! In the forests of
+Britain! I!
+
+Gleva: Yes. You'll lie quiet here. I by your side. Your hand in mine.
+See! We'll forget the hours. The dawn will come.
+
+Calpurnius: And find me a traitor!
+
+Gleva: I am already one. There was a servant with me. He told me I was
+like a dog that leaves its own people to follow the marching men.
+
+Calpurnius (_sits up_): And you let him live, with this knife ready in
+your girdle?
+
+Gleva: He spoke the truth.
+
+Calpurnius: The truth! (_Contemptuously._) There's a word for you!
+Child! There's a greater thing in the world than truth. Truth wins no
+battles.
+
+Gleva: What's this greater thing?
+
+Calpurnius: Discipline! You should have struck.
+
+Gleva: I wish I had. For he might have struck back.
+
+Calpurnius: Discipline! So I go with my legion.
+
+Gleva (_with a cry accusingly_): You want to go.
+
+Calpurnius (_springs up_): By all the gods I do. For ten years I have
+toiled in Britain building roads--roads--roads--till I'm sick of them.
+First the pounded earth, then the small stones, next the rubble, then
+the concrete, and last of all the pavement; here in Anderida, there
+across the swamps to Londinium, northwards through the fens to
+Eboracum--ten years of it. And now--Rome--the mother of me!
+
+Gleva: Rome? (_She speaks despairingly. Calpurnius has forgotten her:
+he answers her voice, not her._)
+
+Calpurnius: Just for a little while. Oh, I shall go out again, but
+just for a little while--to rise when I want to, not at the trumpet's
+call, the house all quiet till I clap my hands--to have one's mornings
+free--to saunter through the streets, picking up the last new thing of
+Juvenal in the Argiletum, or some fine piece of Corinthian bronze in
+the Campus Martius, and stopping on the steps of the Appian Way to
+send a basket of flowers or a bottle of new scent to some girl that
+has caught one's fancy. To go to the theatre, and see the new play,
+though, to be sure, people write to me that there are no plays
+nowadays.
+
+Gleva: Plays?
+
+Calpurnius: And in the evening with a party of girls in their bravest,
+all without a care, to gallop in the cool along the Appian Way to
+Baiae and crowned with roses and violets have supper by the sea. Oh,
+to see one's women again--Lydia'll be getting on, by the way!--women
+dressed, jewelled, smelling of violets. Oh, just for a little while!
+By Castor and Pollux, I have deserved it.
+
+Gleva (_who has been listening in grief_): Yes, you must go. (_She
+goes to him and sits at his side._) I have a plan.
+
+Calpurnius: Yes. (_Absently._)
+
+Gleva: Listen to me!--Calpurnius.
+
+   [_He laughs affectionately at her pronunciation of his name._]
+
+Calpurnius: Let me hear this wise plan!
+
+Gleva: I will go with you.
+
+Calpurnius (_rising_): What?
+
+   [_Gleva pulls him down._]
+
+Gleva: Yes, I'll give up my kingdom here, sacrifice it all, and go to
+Rome with you. Calpurnius (_in a whisper_), I'll be your Lydia. Oh, to
+drive with you on such a night as this, all crowned with roses, from
+Rome to Baiae on the sea.
+
+Calpurnius: These are dreams.
+
+Gleva (_passionately_): Why? Why? Are these women in Rome more
+beautiful than I? Look! (_She rises._) I can dress, too, as the Roman
+women do. I wear the combs you gave me. I don't think they are pretty,
+but I wear them. See, I wear, too, the sandals, the bracelets.
+
+Calpurnius: No. There are no women in Rome more beautiful than
+you--but--but----
+
+Gleva (_all her passion dying away_): You would be ashamed of me.
+
+   [_Calpurnius is uncomfortable._]
+
+Calpurnius: You would be--unusual. People would turn and stare. Other
+women would laugh. Some scribbler would write a lampoon. Oh, you are
+beautiful, but this is your place, not Rome. Each to his own in the
+end, Gleva. I to Rome--you to your people.
+
+Gleva: My people! Oh, you did right to laugh at the thought of
+reigning here. What are my people? Slaves for your pleasure. It can't
+be! You to Rome, the lights, the women--oh, how I hate them! You would
+not reproach me because my knife hangs idle, had I your Roman women
+here! Calpurnius, be kind. From the first morning when I saw you in
+the forest, shining in brass, a god, there has been no kingdom, no
+people for me but you. I have watched you, learnt from you. Oh! I am
+of the Romans--I'll----
+
+Calpurnius: Each to his own in the end. That's the law.
+
+Gleva: A bitter, cruel one.
+
+Calpurnius: Very likely. But it can't be changed. So long as the world
+lasts, centuries hence, wherever soldiers are, still it will be the
+law.
+
+Gleva: Soldiers! Say soldiers, and all must be forgiven!
+
+Calpurnius: Much, at all events, by those with understanding. Hear
+what a soldier is. You see him strong, browned by the sun, flashing in
+armour, tramping the earth, a conqueror--a god, yes, a god! Ask his
+centurion who drills him in the barrack square.
+
+Gleva: But the centurion----
+
+Calpurnius: The centurion's the god, then? Ask me, his Captain, who
+tells him off. Am I the god, then? Ask my Colonel, who tells me off.
+Is it my Colonel, my General? Ask the Emperor in Rome who, for a
+fault, strips them of their command and brings them home. Soldiers are
+men trained to endurance by a hard discipline, cursed, ridiculed,
+punished like children but with a man's punishments, so that when the
+great ordeal comes they may move, fight, die, like a machine. The
+soldier! He suffers discomfort, burns in the desert, freezes in the
+snow at another's orders. He has no liberty, he must not argue, he
+must not answer; and he gets an obol a day, and in the end--in the
+end, a man, he gives his life without complaint, without faltering,
+gladly as a mere trifle in the business of the day, so that his
+country may endure. And what's his reward? What does he get? A woman's
+smile in his hour of furlough. That's his reward. He takes it. Blame
+him who will. The woman thinks him a god, and he does not tell her of
+the barrack square. Good luck to him and her, I say. But at the last,
+there's the long parting, just as you and I part in the forest of
+Anderida to-night. Other soldiers will say good-bye here on this spot
+to other women in centuries from now. Their trouble will be heavy, my
+dear, but they'll obey the soldier's law.
+
+Gleva: Very well, then! Each to his own! I, too, will obey that law.
+(_She confronts him, erect and, strong._)
+
+Calpurnius: You will? (_Doubtfully._)
+
+Gleva: To the letter. To the very last letter. I'll gather my men.
+There shall be no more Romans in Anderida. There shall be only stubble
+in the fields where the scythes of my chariots have run.
+
+Calpurnius: Silence! (_Sternly._)
+
+Gleva: I learn my lesson from my Lord Calpurnius. Why should my
+teacher blame me if I learn it thoroughly?
+
+Calpurnius: Gleva, you cannot conquer Rome. (_He speaks gently. She
+stands stubbornly._) How shall I prove it to you--you who know only
+one wild corner of Britain! (_Thinks._) There is that road where the
+soldiers march. You know--how much of it?--a few miles where it passes
+through the forest. That's all. But it runs to the Wall in the north.
+
+Gleva (_scornfully_): Is there a Wall?
+
+Calpurnius: Is there a Wall? Ye gods! I kept my watch upon it through
+a winter under the coldest stars that ever made a night unfriendly. I
+freeze now when I think of it. Yes, there's a Wall in the north, and
+that road runs to it; and in the south, it does not end at Regnum.
+
+Gleva: Doesn't it? Wonderful road!
+
+Calpurnius: Yes, wonderful road. For on the other side at the very
+edge of the sea in Gaul it lives again--yes, that's the word--the
+great road lives and runs straight as a ruled line to Rome. For forty
+days you drive, inns by the road-side, post horses ready and a cloud
+of traffic, merchants on business, governors on leave, pedlars,
+musicians and actors for the fairs, students for the universities,
+Jews, explorers, soldiers, pack-horses and waggons, gigs and litters.
+Oh, if I could make you see it--always on each side the shade of
+trees, until on its seven hills springs Rome. Nor does the road end
+there.
+
+Gleva: This same road? (_Her scorn has gone. She speaks doubtfully._)
+
+Calpurnius: This same road which runs by the brook down here in the
+forest. (_Pointing L._) It crosses Rome and goes straight to the sea
+again--again beyond the sea it turns and strikes to Jerusalem four
+thousand miles from where we stand to-night, Rome made it. Rome guards
+it, and where it runs Rome rules. You cannot conquer Rome--until the
+road's destroyed.
+
+Gleva: I will destroy it.
+
+Calpurnius: Only Rome can destroy it. (_A pause._) Gleva, let what I
+say sink deep into your heart. A minute ago I sneered at the road. I
+blasphemed. The roads are my people's work. While it builds roads,
+it's Rome, it's the Unconquerable. But when there are no new roads in
+the making and the weeds sprout between the pavements of the old ones,
+then your moment's coming. When the slabs are broken and no company
+marches down from the hill to mend them, it has come. Launch your
+chariots then, Gleva! Rome's day is over, her hand tired. She has
+grown easy and forgotten. But while Rome does Rome's appointed work,
+beware of her! Not while the road runs straight from Regnum to the
+Wall, shall you or any of you prevail.
+
+Gleva (_looking inscrutably._) No, I cannot conquer Rome.
+
+   [_A moment's pause._]
+
+Calpurnius: Listen!
+
+Gleva: The sound upon the road has ceased.
+
+Calpurnius: There are no longer men marching.
+
+Gleva: All have gone over the hill to the sea.
+
+Calpurnius: Yes. There's a freshness in the air, a breath of wind. The
+morning comes----
+
+Gleva: I cannot conquer Rome.
+
+   [_A trumpet rings out clear from the top of the hill. The morning
+   is beginning to break. There is the strange light which comes when
+   moonlight and the dawn meet._]
+
+Calpurnius: The reveillé! (_He turns to her._)
+
+Gleva: And----
+
+Calpurnius (_nods_): My summons. Gleva!
+
+Gleva: My Lord will bid farewell to his slaves. (_She calls aloud_):
+Bran, Caransius.
+
+Calpurnius: Oh, before they come! (_He holds out his arms to her._)
+Gleva! (_She comes slowly into his embrace._) I shall remember this
+night. Some of our poets say that we are born again in another age. So
+may it be with us! We shall grow old and die, you here, I where my
+Emperor shall send me. May we be born again, love again, under a
+happier star.
+
+   [_He kisses her, she clings to him. Behind enter Bran, Caransius.
+   They approach carefully._]
+
+But now there's Rome in front of me.
+
+   [_He tries to draw away from her. She clings about his neck._]
+
+And I must go.
+
+Gleva: Not yet, my Lord--Calpurnius.
+
+Calpurnius: Farewell! and the Gods prosper you. (_He is seized from
+behind on a gesture from Gleva. She utters a cry._)
+
+Gleva: Do him no hurt! Yet hold him safe. (_They bind him. Calpurnius
+struggles._)
+
+Calpurnius: Help! Romans, help!
+
+   [_The two men gag him._]
+
+Gleva: Do him no hurt!
+
+   [_They lay him on the bank. Gleva goes to him._]
+
+No, I cannot conquer Rome, but one Roman--yes. You taught me,
+Calpurnius, the lesson of the road. I thank you. I learn another
+lesson. (_She is speaking very gently._) On that long, crowded way
+from the edge of Gaul to Rome many a soldier of your legion will be
+lost--lost and remain unheard of. Calpurnius, you shall stay with me,
+reign with me, over me. You shall forget Rome.
+
+   [_Once more the trumpet sounds only more faintly. Calpurnius utters
+   a stifled groan. The morning broadens. A cracking of bushes is
+   heard. From the right enters third attendant excitedly._]
+
+Attendant: Mistress! Mistress!
+
+Gleva: Well?
+
+   [_She turns, stands between Calpurnius and attendants, e. g._:
+
+        Bran.
+
+   Third Attendant. Gleva. Calpurnius.
+
+       Caransius.]
+
+                           [_Footlights._]
+
+Attendant: They have gone! The hill is empty; the camp is scattered.
+
+Gleva: They march to the coast. The Valeria Victrix.
+
+   [_A movement from Calpurnius, who is working his hands free._]
+
+Third Attendant: They are putting out to sea. The harbour's black with
+ships. Some have reached the open water.
+
+Gleva: All have gone.
+
+Third Attendant: All. Already there's a wolf in the camp on the hill.
+
+Calpurnius (_freeing his hands and mouth, plucks out his sword. He
+buries it in his heart._) Rome! Rome! (_In a whisper._)
+
+   [_Gleva turns and sees Calpurnius dead. She stands motionless. Then
+   she waves her attendants away. They go silently. Gleva seats
+   herself by Calpurnius's side. She runs her hand over his hair._]
+
+Gleva (_with a sob_): My Lord Calpurnius!
+
+                     [The Curtain Falls Slowly.]
+
+
+                              FOOTNOTE:
+[Footnote 1: Acting rights of this play are reserved.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Four Corners of the World, by
+A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason
+
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