BETWEEN LONDON AND CLYMPING

    

    

    The next morning I went up to town by the 9.45 from Crawley: and Burgess drove me to the station, very loth to let me go. I could see, however, that he was both piqued and puzzled that I had not spoken more openly to him as to what was working in my mind: but the whole idea was so bizarre and at such an embryonic stage, that I frankly did not feel myself justified in unburdening myself at the expense of burdening him with what could only be throughout my absence an ever-present horror in his mind, as ghastly in its uncertainty almost as in its actuality, if correct. Moreover, it was something entirely outside the scope of his mental diathesis, and would seem to him an utterly wild absurdity in the absence of any proof. Therefore I had decided, after turning the matter over in my mind from every point of view, that Fitzroy Manders was the only man to whom I could talk openly—the only man whose help I could enlist in the first instance at such an early stage of the ultimate possibilities.

    In the train I skimmed through all the morning papers, which were still full of the sensation, padding out the lack of anything fresh with a whole carnival of rumour, which may have served to appease the hungry public, but certainly took the matter no further from a practical point of view. Amongst them were one or two hot and windy attacks upon Scotland Yard and its ineptitude, which secretly rather pleased me, as they promised to make the difficult task I saw ahead of me easier at the psychological moment, when I should find myself forced to call in official help in what was likely to be a very unofficial and certainly unconventional manner.

    From Victoria I took the Underground to the Temple, making my way in by the Embankment entrance by the Library. Fitzroy Manders had chambers in the new buildings in Garden Court overlooking the beautiful old gardens; but in the train I had been struck with unpleasant misgivings as to finding him, as I had suddenly realized that it was the vacation.

    And time was an urgent factor.

    However, I was in luck, as his clerk told me that he had just arrived, being detained in town correcting the proofs of his new book on “Criminal Law,” which he had not had time to finish while the Courts were sitting.

    He ordered me to be shown in at once and welcomed me warmly.

    “Osgood, by Jove, this is a pleasant surprise,” was his greeting, as he shook hands cordially. “Wherever have you sprung from in your wanderings to and fro up and down the earth?”

    “Clymping Manor,” I replied; and he started with surprise.

    “By Jove,” he exclaimed again, “of all the peculiar coincidences! How did that happen?”

    I told him of my old friendship with Burgess, and the tie that always drew me there first upon arriving in England.

    “And a strange state of affairs you found there,” be commented. “Of course Clymping mentioned my name in connexion with the Bullingdon affair; and that is what recalled my existence so promptly to your mind?”

    “Not exactly that,” I answered, taking the armchair by the fire, to which he pointed. “I was intending anyhow to renew our very pleasant acquaintanceship at an early date: but it is on account of this strange mystery that I have run up to consult you to-day, much to the disgruntlement of poor old Burgess, and I hope to enlist your help.”

    “Anything I can do, of course,” he said warmly. “But how? Have a cigar?”

    He passed the box; and I took one and lit it without haste, pondering the best line of approach, while he seated himself upon the leather fender, puffing at his pipe.

    “We are up against a very tough proposition, Manders,” I began, and he nodded acquiescence—“up against the toughest thing you ever dreamt of in all the annals of crime: and I honestly believe that you are the only man in England—certainly the only man I can lay hands on—who can help me.”

    Manders shrugged his shoulders slightly in deprecation.

    “They are at the end of their tether at the Yard, anyhow,” he said, “and at their wits’ end how to carry the matter an inch further. I saw Blenkinsopp only yesterday; and he admitted in confidence, which he won’t mind my divulging to you, that it is a proper brick wall of a problem.”

    “Did he mention the German professor to you?”

    I asked.

    “Yes, and he interested me very much as a type. What has he got to do with it?”

    I liked his directness as a quick thinker.

    “Possibly everything,” I replied, “if my instinct be not playing a trick on me. I have a theory, strange and bizarre beyond all words in this humdrum twentieth century, one which touches a subject we discussed at considerable length one night in Rumania: and he is the key-stone, the pivot of the whole thing, which only came home to me as the result of my years of travel in the remote parts of the Near East. It is fantastic to a degree and may prove futile; and it is certainly not the sort of thing I would care to spring unsubstantiated upon cold-blooded officialdom for fear of being locked up in one of your polite lunatic asylums for the rest of my life. But I must have help—immediate help; and that is where you come in, if you will give up a month, or possibly less, of your valuable time. Time is of the utmost urgency to forestall the possibility of even worse happenings.”

    “It’s the vacation fortunately,” he said, “and apart from the last few pages of those proofs”— waving his hand in the direction of the big table in the window overlooking the gardens—“I have nothing to do but golf according to programme. So come along and unburden yourself fully to me. I certainly shall not think you mad,” he concluded, with a little laugh.

    And then and there, walking up and down the room as I often do when thinking hard and talking at the same time, I laid my whole weird theory before him, recapitulating the story of the Brighton Road affairs and picking up my points as I went along, laying special stress upon the reasons which had connected Professor Wolff with them in my mind and keeping nothing back.

    Manders proved a splendid listener as he absorbed his brief, so to speak: and I was delighted at the fact that, beyond starting once and raising his eyebrows, he did not turn a hair as I unravelled my fantastic theory. I covered a good deal of ground, recalling much of our talk in Rumania, and spoke for nearly an hour in my anxiety to prove the possibility, if not the probability, of the suggestion I was propounding.

    When I stopped and threw myself back in the armchair a trifle exhausted, he gave one long low whistle.

    “My God,” he said, passing me another cigar almost mechanically: and then he put me through as searching and strenuous cross-examination as ever it has been my lot or most other people’s to face.

    “Now what do you want me to do?” he asked, when he had concluded. “I do not call you mad, and to my mind you have made out a terribly strong case: and I’m with you to see it through to the end, however ghastly it may prove. As you say, above all things we must try and forestall worse happenings, if what you surmise be true. No, obviously there is not a moment to be lost.”

    “I must stay on the spot and watch any possible developments,” I said. “I am convinced that it is my plain and obvious duty, pending the elaboration of a sufficiently strong case to take action upon. Preventive action I shall take myself at all hazards, if all else fail; and then I may require your assistance in your professional capacity if the authorities object subsequently. The situation is so tense at the present juncture that I dare not go away myself and get out of touch, or risk anything delaying my return at the critical moment: so I must fall back on someone else—you, I sincerely trust—to go abroad immediately and make inquiries into the past and the habits of this Professor Lycurgus Wolff of Berlin and Vienna. With your cosmopolitan habit, your knowledge, and your brains, you are the ideal man for my purpose, especially as your inquiries may lead you further afield into the Near East, of which you, like so few people, have a more than superficial knowledge. I hardly like to mention the subject,” I added, “but money, either by way of fee or expenses, is no object. I fortunately haven’t to worry about that side of things in life, and will draw anything you may want this afternoon.”

    Manders laughed: and it relieved the situation.

    “That’s all right, old chap,” he struck in. “The cost of a week or two’s travel fortunately doesn’t matter much to me either, especially as my wife, apart from myself and my earnings, is pretty well off: but I appreciate the thoughtful suggestion. A fee I would not hear of, thank you all the same: but I am your man, and there’s my hand on it.”

    “Thank God,” I exclaimed, taking his outstretched hand and wringing it with more feeling than I am usually in the habit of showing—” and thank you! You have taken a great weight off my mind.”

    “What I can do, I will do, and you may rest assured that I will not spare myself,” said Manders, solemnly; “and I am with you to the end of this ghastly business. We will see it through together.”

    There was a moment of silent reaction, both of us thinking deeply.

    “There must be no delay,” I said. “It is now the tenth of April, and the thirtieth is Walpurgis Nacht.”

    Manders gave a little start.

    “Yes, I know. I’ll start this very evening by the boat train. Two or three hours, fortunately, will see these beastly proofs through and ready for the printer; and then I’ll get back home, collect a few things, and appease my wife. She’s all right,” he interjected, with a laugh, “a real good sort who will understand without being told too much, when she gets a hint that it is of vital importance.”

    “Then, if she does not raise any objection, we might have an early dinner together at the Travellers’ and a final talk,” I suggested. “Meanwhile, I will see about tickets, money, etc., for your journey, and we can have a square up later on. You will at least give me the satisfaction of standing in upon expenses, as I can’t go myself? Manders made a little gesture.

    “As you insist then—halves,” he agreed; “and I’ll leave all that to you, as time presses. My man will take my luggage to the train and see about my seat. And now to work! Don’t think me inhospitable in not asking you to lunch, but time won’t admit. Mine will be some sandwiches at my writing-table—not for the first time.”

    “Of course, I understand,” I answered, rising. “I’ll leave you at once. We will meet at the Travellers’ at a quarter to seven. I am most deeply grateful to you, Manders; you have taken an enormous weight off my mind.”

    “Rot, old chap,” was his answer in characteristic English fashion, as he showed me out, “I’m just as keen as you are to get this whole business cleaned up before any more hell’s play takes place.”

    No words will ever express my relief as I made my way up through the Temple into Fleet Street, and hailed a taxi to take me first to my bank and then to Cook’s in Ludgate Circus; and I did not realize that it was two o’clock before I had got all arrangements made, and I was thoroughly hungry.

    I drove to the Travellers’ and lunched heartily, with a temporary sensation of relief as the result of my morning’s success; and then, during the afternoon, I diligently pursued inquiries as to what was known of Professor Wolff through certain scientific channels open to me, and by calling upon two or three leading men in the scientific world I knew. The result of my investigations proved that, while they knew comparatively little of him personally, his name and his work was quite familiar to them, and that he had a very considerable reputation. I felt restless, but at the same time so absorbed by the fascination of the business in hand that, rather than seeking the society of friends or acquaintances, I was anxious to avoid anyone to whom I should have to talk upon indifferent or personal subjects.

    Eventually I made my way back to the club soon after five and wrote certain letters of introduction for Manders, which might prove helpful. Then I dropped Burgess a line to tell him that I had seen Manders, and would be back the next afternoon at half-past four, as I had some business to transact in the morning: and I was very glad when my guest turned up sharp on time.

    Over dinner and a bottle of old Chambertin I went over the whole groundwork of my case again, and he asked me a good many shrewd questions elucidating details; and I told him about my inquiries of the afternoon.

    “You had better go straight through to Berlin and on, in due course, to Vienna,” I suggested, “and after that Heaven only knows where your information may take you—farther East in all probability, if you don’t find out anything we can go upon. Fortunately the Professor is so well known in the scientific world that it is not like seeking out anyone obscure; and I have got here some letters of introduction which may prove helpful. The one thing, however, that stands out is urgency; and the sooner you are back the better—not later than, say, this day fortnight. Keep me advised by cable if you can; and let me have addresses, whenever possible, in case I require to communicate with you. I leave the contents of your cables to your discretion in view of the alive condition of the local post-office and the fact that the Professor is a local man.”

    “I shall call the gentleman ‘John,’ if I refer to him” said Manders, with a laugh, as we drank success to his journey. “There is one good thing however much we may suspect him of the most extraordinary things, no one will suspect us.”

    After dinner I handed over the money and the tickets to Manders, together with the letters.

    “We’ll settle up when you return,” I said: and we left it at that.

    We were almost silent in the taxi on the way to Charing Cross, as people often are when they have said all that is to be said upon a serious occasion.

    Only once Manders spoke.

    “By God,” he burst out, “it seems all too wildly impossible in solemn old foggy London!”

    "I know,” I said almost humbly.

    “Not but what,” he added, laying his hand on my arm, “I feel sure that you are right. My instinct tells me so; and, if we succeed—and we shall succeed—you will be instrumental in ridding the world of a ghastly pest, of a most evil thing.”

    “We,” I said with emphasis, feeling mightily cheered.

    Manders’ man was waiting at the train by the door of the carriage, everything ready and arranged with the deft correctness of a good body-servant; and I found that Manders was taking him with him.

    “Can’t do without Pycombe on a journey,” he said, with a laugh. “Best courier in Europe, and saves a lazy chap like me no end of bother.”

    And he waved me good-bye out of the window as though there was no trouble or wickedness in the world, and he were just off on an ordinary vacation jaunt But I felt the pressure of his final grip, strong and reassuring, long after the boat-train was out of the station.

    

    

    The next morning I spent first at my gun-maker’s, going over my guns and testing two or three rifles, which I ordered to be sent down to me without delay at Clymping Manor, together with a couple of Browning automatics, to supplement the one which, as an old traveller, I always carry from long habit. Then I went on to my solicitor and put a few little outstanding matters in order, informing him incidentally that, in the course of the next day or two, I should be bringing or sending him a sealed document under cover to be held on my behalf, but to be taken without a moment’s delay to Major Blenkinsopp at Scotland Yard in the event either of my death or of my arrest. I know it sounded rather melodramatic, and he looked at me a bit curiously: but, after ten or twelve years of my unexpectedness, he is getting too case-hardened to offer comment or advice.

    It’s all right,” I said, unable to resist the temptation “It may be murder this time, and it will be up to you to defend me. Above all, don’t forget to brief Fitzroy Manders. I regard him as a very coming man.”

    And then I made my way back to the club for lunch, stopping on the way to buy a present for Ann—one of those handbags with all sorts of unnecessary bottles that women like to bother themselves with, and the usual chocolates—and two or three boxes of rather special Ramon Allones for old Burgess, who loves a big cigar after dinner.

    At the club I picked up a man I hardly knew and made him lunch with me, talking about anything and everything to keep my mind off the real thing and give it a rest.

    Dear old faithful Burgess was on the platform waiting for me, and I could see that he was noticeably relieved at my appearance.

    “Well, old chap,” I asked, as we greeted each other, “what’s the news? “All well,” he replied cheerfully, “but nothing particular to report. Young Bullingdon is much quieter and more rational, though frightfully weak, but can’t make out where he is. His mind appears blank about the whole affair and what led up to it. The wounds are going on splendidly, the doctors say. Sir Humphrey has just left: and for the first time he allows himself to take a really hopeful view of the case.”

    “That’s good,” I said, as we got into the car. “Perhaps it is the Professor’s magic ointment which has worked the cure. How is he, by the by, and what is the news of him?”

    “None at all,” answered Burgess. “He has not been up again, and I have not been down.”

    “We must go and return his call one day very soon,” I said, speaking lightly. “I came across one or two big scientific folk in town, who tell me that he is a very big man in his own line. It will interest me to see something of him and his collection, if he will show it.” Then I changed the subject: “How’s Ann?”

    “Splendid. She has quite got over the first shock, and is very interested in the nursing and ‘her patient,’ as she will call young Bullingdon, though, naturally, she is not allowed to do anything for the present at any rate, except run the ‘hospital’ on the first floor and play at matron.”

    “Good,” I said warmly. “It is a very great thing at the moment for her to have something to interest her and take her mind off the awful side of the whole affair. It is splendid that she has reacted so well, and shows what a healthy state she is in mentally as well as physically. And poor old Mutton and the C.I.D. men?”

    “Poor old Mutton,” echoed Burgess, with a laugh I was glad to hear, as he had struck me as a bit overstrained, “he is like a bear with a sore head; and the C.I.D. men are kicking their heels and trying to invent clues.”

    I smiled a bit grimly in the dusk. I had hardly expected them to be any further forward if my own theory were correct. If it were, there was no question of suspicions or half-measures. It was the whole thing—and a very horrible thing—or nothing, merely the fantasy of a usually cool and collected brain running riot as the result of weird experiences in elemental parts off the beaten track of the ordinary.

    Then came the question I had been fearing, knowing that Burgess would expect my full confidence, which I was not prepared to give him for the first time in the history of our long and intimate friendship.

    “And what is your news?” he asked with a nervous abruptness, which concealed both his eagerness and a certain umbrage, which I could not but appreciate. “Were you successful in what you went up to see Manders about?”

    “Yes, quite, thank you,” I replied, “in so much as I have enlisted his help; and it has carried things appreciably forward, if my idea should prove correct. I found him very cordial and receptive; and he went abroad last night at my request upon an important mission in connexion with the business, a thing that neither you nor I could be spared to do at the moment under the existing conditions down here. Don’t mention this journey of his to the police or anybody else, by the way.”

    “Of course I won’t,” answered Burgess after a pause which was barely noticeable; but I could feel that he, not unnaturally, was annoyed that I showed no sign of taking him fully into my confidence. So we lapsed into silence.

    I felt the position quite as keenly as he did, and turned things over in my mind again most carefully: but it was obvious that I could do no good by burdening him with the details of my bizarre theory, which, to be frank, he was the last person in the world to fall in with, unless substantiated by solid facts and not merely recounted to him like a wild and preposterous chapter out of a hypersensational novel. I knew his limitations and his prejudices as no one else did; and, frankly, he was about the last man I would have chosen in cold blood to make a confidant of in such a matter, especially as he was so nearly concerned in it. It could do no good, and it might even do harm, loyal as he was: and it could only make him miserable to go about with the burden of it on his mind.

    “Burge, dear old friend,” I said at last, breaking the strained silence, as we drew near the house, “you must trust me a little longer and leave me to work this business in the way that seems best to me. I told Manders because Manders can do something immediate to help. At the moment neither you nor I can do anything but await developments which, if I prove correct, cannot be delayed many weeks—most probably not beyond the end of this very month of April. If anything should arise to alter the position and you can do anything, you may rest assured that I will not delay one hour, not one moment, in telling you the strange idea in my head. To do so prematurely could and would only make you miserable in more ways than one; and, if the whole thing turns out to be only a wild twist of my imagination, I would never forgive myself if I had put it into your mind unnecessarily. We are at the moment faced with a position extraordinary beyond words; and that is my only reason, my only excuse. I hardly know how to express myself. I feel so rotten about the whole thing, which must seem so queer to you. It is on our old and close friendship that I rely; and on its account I do beg your indulgence to work this thing my own way.”

    He did not answer immediately: and then there was a certain exasperation in his voice, which was quite intelligible under the circumstances.

    “I fail to see,” he began…

    “Yes, of course you do, old chap,” I broke in, determined to bring things to a head, “of course you do. Here am I, your oldest pal, staying in your house and treating you, as you think, though it certainly is not so, as a baby. It is very riling; and I quite appreciate that. On the other hand, think of my position. It is equally rotten for me. Surely I can count on you to ascribe the best intentions to me in a difficult position anything but of my own making? Would you prefer me, in the circumstances, to go back to town and await developments there?”

    It was the only really strained moment of our years of friendship: and I played the card purposely, trading upon his generosity to appreciate my position.

    As the car drove up at the door he held out his hand.

    “God forbid,” he said; and we clasped on it. “I can’t understand things: but God knows I trust you as I trust no one else. So I shall just be content to leave things at your discretion.”

    “Without reservation?” I asked.

    “Without reservation,” he replied in the old cordial tone: and I must add that, during the difficult days that followed, no man could have kept his word more loyally or lessened my own feeling of awkwardness more by his charm of manner, though at times I caught him unawares, frowning and thinking hard with a grim puzzled look on his face. It was a delight to me, and doubled our bond of friendship on my side—if possible.

    

    

    It was with no small pleasure that I heard Jevons say, as he took the things out of the car, that Dorothy Wolff was having tea with Ann; and I noticed Burgess’ face light up almost imperceptibly, making me feel more than ever satisfied that I had not yielded to a natural temptation and laid my whole soul bare to him to his distress, rather than risk straining the friendship so dear to me.

    For my own reasons I was particularly anxious to study Dorothy Wolff more closely for better, for worse: and here was the opportunity without delay.

    Ann, delightful as ever with her wonderful fair hair and white dress, ran across the hall and greeted me with her usual frank sisterly kiss, second only to the one reserved for old Burgess.

    “It is good to get you back, Linc,” she said. “We have missed you horribly: and Burge hasn’t known what to do with himself while I have been busy upstairs with the hospital. Where are my chocolates?”

    I handed them over to her. I don’t think I had missed once since she was a little girl in short frocks and she had begun to regard them as a prescriptive right. In fact, I always used to say that I would not dare return without them.

    “Chocolates, Dorothy,” she said, as I greeted the girl, “just at the psychological moment, as superior novelists say, when we have done tea. Tea, Linc, or a drink?”

    “Both, please,” I said, deliberately expropriating Burgess and sitting down next to Miss Wolff—“that is, tea first and the drink some time later, when I get stuffy old Burge by himself sucking at an old pipe and grunting in an armchair.”

    They all laughed: and I had created the atmosphere I wanted. For the next few days it was imperative to keep things going and permit no brooding.

    Dorothy Wolff was looking more charming than ever in the white fur cap which suited her so well, yet at the same time, instinctively raised acute antagonism in me: and I must admit that I was very much drawn to her personally by the frankness of her eyes, her direct look which bred confidence. It gave me to think analytically, if not furiously, as the old melodramatic tag has it: and even frankness is often a disconcerting factor. Somehow—well, we will get to that later.

    “And how is the Herr Professor?” I asked, keeping the lighter vein. “I have run across one or two of my scientific friends in town, who tell me that he is a wonderful man with an alphabet of more than twenty-six inadequate letters after his name and the past-master of his own subject.”

    I noticed Burgess shoot an almost unconscious glance across at me, as though he suspected the fact that I had been making inquiries about the Professor in town; but I went on cheerfully, as though I had seen nothing.

    “I am very anxious to pursue the acquaintance, if I may, Miss Wolff, and would like to call one afternoon and have a chat with him. What is his best time? I mustn’t interrupt his work on any account.”

    “Then come in the afternoon,” said the girl naturally and cordially. “He usually goes out for a walk after lunch—or dinner, as it really is with us—and returns between three and four. So come down with Ann—and Mr. Clymping, too, if he cares to,” she added a little shyly, looking across at Burgess— “and stay on to tea. My father is all right when he finds people there and has to talk to them: but if anyone attempts to make an appointment, he always tries on his side to evade it with the instinct of a recluse, a thing which grows upon him more and more each year. So choose your own afternoon, and come unexpectedly. I am sure to be in, as I go nowhere except here. The very few people who called soon dropped us when they found what a funny household we are and how unapproachable and irresponsive father is. Only Ann took the trouble to think of me, and be kind to me in my loneliness—and Mr. Clymping.”

    “That is the drawback of having a genius for a father,” I said; and it seemed to me as though she were about to say something, but checked herself sharply. “They can’t help having their individualities, which spell peculiarities: and it would be a dull world if we were all turned out of the same ordinary mould, wouldn’t it? I rather like eccentric people myself.”

    “I always regard you as a bit eccentric myself, Linc,” broke in Ann chaffingly, “with your long disappearances into the unknown. I am always expecting you to turn up with one, if not more coloured wives with their blankets on their backs and a long row of papooses, whatever they are. I often wonder where I should put them and what I should feed them on.”

    “No, never that, my dear Ann, I promise you,” I answered solemnly—“any eccentricity short of matrimony either in the singular or the plural. I swear to you that, if ever I contemplate the greatest adventure of all, I’ll bring the poor creature round for your inspection and opinion first: and, more than that, unlike most futile folk in love who go through this formality, but in their egotism brook nothing but effusive approval, I’ll guarantee to abide by your mature and well-balanced decision. What are your views upon the subject of marriage, Miss Wolff?”

    “I haven’t any, to be frank,” she answered, looking at me candidly with her big solemn blue eyes. “It is a thing which has never come under my immediate notice.”

    “Then you are rather like old Burgess here,” I said, perhaps a trifle wickedly. “He has kept clear of the snares set for such a charming and eligible young fellow with the imperviousness of a misogynist.”

    “Don’t be an ass, Linc,” said Burgess, reddening little, to my amusement.

    Ann laughed.

    “Burge has got me,” she said, patting his hand with an air of ownership: “and that ought to be enough for any man.”

    “Perhaps it will be some day,” I said, “if not too much.”

    “Oh, shut up, Linc, I hate you,” said the girl. “Have a chocolate to keep you quiet? You are incorrigible. You have come back from town in a very bad mood. What did you do with yourself?”

    “Nothing I couldn’t tell you or any other nice young girl in her teens,” I replied. “I went to see my lawyer and made a codicil to my will, leaving you an annuity of chocolates; and, talking of lawyers, I renewed my acquaintance with Fitzroy Manders and took him to dinner at the club, a carnal joy which appeals much more to sensible men of our age than all your unsubstantial fantasies of love and sugary sentiment.”

    “A very nice man,” said Ann. “You might have done much worse. I liked him very much: he is so clever.”

    There was nothing in our tea-table talk, as we babbled on—purposely lightly on my part: but it served my object, and gave me the chance I wanted of drawing out Dorothy Wolff and forming my own opinion of her. Candidly it was all, more than all, in her favour. She was charmingly frank and unaffected: and nothing could lurk behind the complete candour of those solemn blue eyes. In fact, she was as unsophisticated as a child; and the real wonder was that she was so fresh and natural considering the strangeness of her surroundings. And I felt more than ever that it was up to me to penetrate the mystery that lay behind it all— if I were not mistaken, the victim of an hallucination of my own deliberate creation.

    Then came the old question which has broken up so many happy interludes in life.

    “What is the time?” the girl asked, as the grandfather clock in the hall chimed.

    “A quarter to six,” answered Burgess reassuringly; “but it’s all right. I told Wilson to leave the car at the door, and I’ll drive you home: so you won’t be late.”

    The girl gave him a grateful look; and it struck me how typical it was of Burgess’ thoughtfulness of detail for others, and what a good husband he would make when the time came for me to stand beside him at the chancel rails as his best man.

    Ann and I saw them off; and then I lit a cigar.

    “You shall play me something nice and thoughtful and soothing, Ann,” I said, “if you don’t think it will disturb the hospital or reach the Bullingdon ward. It’s so nice to be home.”

    And I settled myself down in a big chair in front of the fire and was soon deep in thought, while Ann, knowing my habits, played on by instinct just what I wanted without my realizing particularly what it was. Such music helps to co-ordinate thought.

    

    

    The next three days, much to Burgess’ disgust—and Ann’s, too, for that matter—I was busy writing. It was the document for my solicitor and, ultimately, Scotland Yard, covering the possibilities ahead and working out my theory in detail on paper. It was difficult writing in a way, but it helped me more than I was aware of in many respects to put the thing on paper in a logical, well-elaborated fashion, giving my reasons and references, scientific and personal: and, apart from acting as a covering document in certain eventualities—a precaution, I may add, many doctors and other persons placed in strange anomalous positions would often be well advised to take—it not only relieved my mind from the point of view of regularizing the irregular as far as humanly possible, but served to convince me more than ever, in my own mind, that I had hit upon no wild fantasy, no bizarre hallucination, no lunatic theory, but the key to the weirdest and most gruesome thing that had ever befallen sedate old England in these latter days of alleged civilization, which is, after all, only the conventional veneer adopted to cover the primitive that is in us all, be it deep down or near the surface.

    The conviction that I was correct, however, despite the relief of having finished my unwelcome task, left a dull weight behind it: and I blotted the last page with a heavy anxious heart in view of what I felt was ahead, just as it was time to dress for dinner on Sunday, the third day of my self-imposed task, which Ann believed to be a dry-as-dust contribution to one of the big reviews. Burgess, I could see, knew better, though, sportsman that he always is, he made my task easier by never saying a word, far less asking a question. I admired his splendid loyalty, under the circumstances, more than I can ever say, as I know what it all meant to him, and how inwardly he was irked by this atmosphere of secrecy and reserve, which he naturally could not appreciate.

    At dinner that night I announced my intention of running up to town the next day. I felt, though I did not say so, that, after all, I hardly dared trust my document to the post, even though registered, and would prefer to deliver it into my solicitor’s hands myself. It was not a thing to risk falling into anyone else’s hands at the moment: and it was not worth leaving such a thing to chance, small as the danger really was.

    Ann made a face of disappointment; and Burgess looked up quickly.

    “I’ll drive you up, if you like,” he offered; “and we can come back after lunch. I want to go to my tailor.”

    “It’s awfully good of you,” I answered noncommittally. “We’ll talk it over later on.”

    But over our last cigar I told him frankly that I could not risk his being away even for the inside of a day, in case anything should happen: and he nodded without a word, perhaps not displeased in a way to think he was essential after all. Once Burgess has made up his mind, there never was a fellow like him to play the prescribed game, whatever it might be, down to the most meticulous detail without question or reproach: and in this great tragic game in which we were involved he had accepted me as captain. I went up by the morning train, deposited my document, lunched at the club, and was back again at four-thirty, with Burgess on the platform to meet me—this time with no inconvenient questions.

    

    During the days just covered all had gone smoothly, and without hitch or complication both indoors and out—greatly to my relief, but for certain reasons not altogether contrary to my expectation.

    The best of accounts came from the “hospital” of young Bullingdon’s progress: and not only was he pronounced quite out of danger, but gaining strength and making progress, though no one had been allowed to see or question him for fear of throwing him back. His extreme weakness and the mental reaction made him apathetic; and he did not seem to worry, sleeping long recuperative hours, taking his nourishment without question, and satisfied simply to be where he was without undue questioning. His system, both mentally and physically, had been exhausted by the delirium: but youth was obviously asserting itself, and Sir Humphrey promised that in a day or two, if all went well, possibly Major Blenkinsopp might see him for a few minutes and talk to him more in the guise of a new doctor than as a detective.

    The delirium had quite gone, and his mind seemed a blank with regard to “the big dog with green eyes jumping over the moon,” or any such seeming absurdities of an uncontrolled mind; and he had not even mentioned Miss St. Chair. The nurses, however, reported that he had once or twice, during the time I was in town, worn a puzzled look and appeared as though he wanted to ask a question: but from the inertia of absolute weakness he had apparently let things slide and relapsed into a state of contentment.

    He had recognized Sir Humphrey Bedell, whom he had known all his life, and had smiled when he told him to lie still and be a good boy, adding that he had been very ill, but was in the best of hands and doing well. He had also told him to ask no questions, but had deputed Burgess or myself to see him, if he grew restless and worried.

    So far, so good: but I felt morally certain that there could be nothing to be learnt from him that would help things forward. Whatever it was, it had obviously all been too sudden and complete for him to tell us more than we knew already.

    With regard to the Professor I had not been, for my own reasons, anxious to hurry things in the absence of Manders or any report from him or—of fresh developments, shall I say? Above all, I was anxious not to make this strange recluse suspicious by any sign of eagerness that I had any but a purely scientific interest in him. A recluse by the very essence of things resents intrusion, and this natural resentment of itself breeds unnatural suspicion: and such people, especially in the position in which I found myself placed, have to be approached ostensibly casually, yet with the utmost tact. Moreover, beyond studying his habits and personality in his own chosen surroundings, in his case, too, I felt I could really do little that was practical until the time for action came—the psychological moment that Ann had made fun of—when action would of necessity be short and sharp to be decisive and successful. Therefore, it was essential to lay all my lines with scrupulous care. Nevertheless, I was by no means sorry to find Dorothy Wolff again at tea, and took the opportunity to arrange that we would all drop in casually the following afternoon and stay to tea.

    The more I saw of the girl, the more I liked her, I must admit: but there were still things I could not quite understand or reconcile. Of the fact that Burgess had at last fallen a victim to the oldest commonplace in the world’s history, which to each individual pair seems the height both of originality and bliss, I felt no longer in doubt: yet, much as I liked Dorothy personally, God knows there was much at the back of my mind to make me strangely worried and anxious as to the outcome of his passion, which, quiet and unobtrusive as it was, would, I knew, prove a very strong and virile thing, overriding all difficulties and objections, and lifelong in its reaction if things went agley. It was a constant thought that lived with me after I had realized the fact itself: yet, awful as I knew the intermediate stage must be, I felt with a strange totally illogical optimism that somehow, by some means—by the grace of God— it would come right in the end.

    And thus Dorothy was after all the principal reason why I dared not, would not take my dearest and oldest friend into my confidence, until Fate, fortified by facts, forced my hand: and I had a fear at the back of my mind at times lest she might, after all, be destined—even temporarily—to come between Burgess and myself after so many years of such close intimacy and understanding with never a cloud, far less a quarrel, to look back on. Yet, as I have said, I was nevertheless strangely drawn to Dorothy, the rock of danger upon which our treasured friendship might split and find shipwreck, as so often the case with a woman and two men, even where there has been neither jealousy nor competition: and I could not persuade myself that destiny, with all its spite and freakishness, held anything but friendship for Dorothy and myself. But in the background of it all lurked the unknown quantity that might make shipwreck of the happiness of all of us: and, at best, she was destined to suffer much before we could any of us hope to take up the threads of life and face a future of happiness. But the ordeal would be short and sharp in its dénouement.

    Burgess again took the opportunity of driving her home; and Ann laughed happily.

    “I believe it has happened at last,” she said; “and do you know, Linc, I believe I should have been horribly jealous of any other girl?”

    I nodded solemnly, preoccupied by my thoughts.

    “What an old bear you are!” exclaimed the girl. “I must say I don’t envy any girl who gets you as her lot in life. You haven’t a spark of romance in your whole make-up. Yet, after all, I believe I should be frantically jealous of her somehow—in a purely platonic way—from force of habit and old association, I suppose.”

    “My dear child,” I replied, recovering my gaiety, “I am a crusty curmudgeon who would certainly be fated to make any romantic young girl abysmally unhappy: so I shall forgo the doubtful pleasure of a personal dip into the matrimonial lucky-tub and play godfather to the lot of you—pantomimes, silver mugs, and all the rest of it.”

    “Shut up,” said Ann, taking my arm, “and come and have a game of billiards.”

    

    

    The next morning Burgess had to go to the farthest corner of the estate to see about some repairs; and I cried off, pleading laziness and the fact that I had promised to drive into Crawley with Ann, who wanted to do some household shopping.

    It was a glorious morning, and Ann looked radiant as I took my place beside her in her own special two-seater—a Rover similar to the one in which the poor Bolsovers, who in their newly married happiness and joy of life had always made a special appeal to my imagination, had met their ghastly fate, as I read it, growing more and more certain in my own mind every day of what really had happened.

    Ann was in specially high spirits at the excellent news from the “hospital”: and the nurses had allowed her to peep round the screen at “her” patient while he lay there sleeping.

    “So pale, Linc, and so frail,” she said, looking at me in her frank sisterly fashion, “but so nice-looking, bandages and all. My whole heart went out to the poor boy lying there: and I can’t tell you how it bucks me up—horrid word, isn’t it, but expressive—to get such good accounts of him. You see, it was I who found him and gave him ‘first aid’: so I was his first nurse, and he is really my patient, I consider, and I always tell the nurses so, whatever they may think! They only laugh and say that, as soon as Sir Humphrey will allow it, they will dress me up in uniform and send me in as the new nurse to take my turn.”

    I laughed. It was so like Ann and what I loved about her. Besides that, it was one of God’s own mornings, when one wanted to sing, if it had not for a reservation at the back of one’s mind. The sun was high in the heavens: but was all well with the world? “Oh, Ann dear, you’re a perfect darling,” I cried. “If you weren’t you, I would never know whether you were ingenuous or ingenious! God bless your innocence and keep the ‘u’ where the ‘i’ is with most girls in this day and generation.”

    “Whatever do you mean, Linc?” she asked, half-puzzled. “You always talk like a bad actor out of a worse play.”

    “I mean I’d marry you myself, my one and only Ann,” I answered, “if I weren’t old enough to be your grandfather and so horribly fond of you—the absurdly mistaken reason for which so many futile folk face a parson in full uniform on a weekday, and agree to make each other mutually miserable for life.”

    “It takes two, if not more, to a marriage, my good Linc,” she replied, making an eleven-yearold face at me, which recalled so many happy days. “And now here we are at the butcher’s, where all problems are practical and still-life is served out automatically by the pound and the ounce: so a truce to cynicism and love alike. What shall I get?"

    “Devilled kidneys,” I replied, as I helped her out.

    “You’ve got to catch your kidney first at a country butcher’s,” she called back over her shoulder, as she entered the shop.

    I waited on the pavement, watching the butcher’s assistant cutting off a very large piece of topside, as I lit a cigarette.

    “You’ve got a fine show of meat,” I said casually, by way of making conversation: “and that’s a healthy lump for a large family.”

    It’s for a very small family, as it happens, sir,” the man replied. “It’s for that old German professor up at the Dower House. He eats a wonderful lot of meat, and very little else: and they do say he eats it mostly raw.”

    I started involuntarily. Chance was bringing extraordinary little details to light—tiny corroborations all piecing into one big whole: and again I knew that, for all its bizarreness, that my weird theory was the correct solution, and I was determined to go ahead without allowing myself to be put off or diverted an inch either to the right hand or to the left.

    “People talk a parlous lot of nonsense in the country,” I said as lightly as I could, “especially about foreigners.”

    And I turned the talk on to other things, wondering, incidentally, that the vagaries of yokel public opinion had not fastened upon the strange old Teuton recluse in connexion with the Brighton Road mysteries for lack of anything more definite.

    And then out came Ann triumphant, with the butcher’s boy following with kidneys and a basket-full of other things, and took me off to give the grocer a turn.

    

    

    After lunch and a game of billiards we started off on our projected visit to the Dower House, walking through the gardens to the wood, and examining the progress of Ann’s pet bulbs, just as Burgess and she had done exactly a fortnight before on the memorable day on which they had chanced upon young Bullingdon: and, as on that day, Whiskers trotted along gaily beside us with a terrier’s joy of living on a fine afternoon.

    “What’s that parcel you’ve got there, Linc?” asked Ann. “Something for the Professor?”

    “No, my curious child,” I replied, “only a box of chocolates for your blue-eyed Dorothy. It was really intended for you one day when you were good or looked hungry, or tumbled down and hurt your knee—that is, if you still have such things, though we don’t see so much of them as we used to: but I thought it would be nice to take it to Miss Wolff instead, as I don’t suppose down in your out-of-the-way old Dower House very many come her way.”

    “Very thoughtful of you, dear Linc—at my expense!” laughed Ann. “What a good thing I’m not so greedy as you used to make me!”

    We turned into the dense wood: and, when we came to the place where young Bullingdon had been found, Whiskers showed signs of eagerness to explore, and had to be called to heel.

    “He always gets excited now when we get near here,” said Burgess, patting him. “He doesn’t seem to he able to get over his discovery, and is inordinately proud of the big part he played. Good dog, good dog.”

    The last to Whiskers, who looked up and wagged his tail frantically, coming on after us with a wistful look back from time to time.

    Then we struck off to the right where the path forked, and began to descend between the dense trees. These had been to an extent cleared round the house itself, which was officially approached by a drive through the wood on the other side, and lay in a gloomy garden, disproportionately small for its importance, with only patches of sun-light amidst the prevailing shadow.

    The whole atmosphere was one of dampness amongst the trees, and there were one or two big pools to the side of the track as we drew near to the little slip-gate into the woods; and I noticed Whiskers, who trotted up and sniffed one, shake his head and run off, whining as though frightened. I purposely made no remark, but went across, as though casually, and examined it. The water had a strange, unpleasant appearance—turgid, with a strange lurid sparkle of its own out of keeping with the shadow around, as though the water itself held some strange individual life within it: and it had a peculiar, though not very strong odour, which was quite distinctive.

    At the gate I rejoined Ann and Burgess, bending down to pat Whiskers reassuringly, knowing how susceptible a dog is—in fact most, if not all, animals are—to the human touch when frightened: and he looked up into my face and began again to cock his tail and wag it.

    “No wonder your Georgian ancestor sacrificed architecture to hygiene and sunshine, Burge,” I said, glad that neither of them appeared to have noticed anything strange about either the clog or myself: “and you ought to be grateful to him for risking the accusation of vandalism or swank, and building for his descendants a fine airy hill-top abode in the sun. And he certainly wasn’t a vandal either, as the house he built is the perfection of the period,” I added lightly—the atmosphere I wanted to preserve at all costs. “I wonder that you don’t scrap some of your personal artistic instincts, and at least clear off all the trees for a good distance round and give the sun a chance, even in such a hollow, of burning out the dampness.”

    Burgess laughed.

    “I have often thought of it, but somehow hated the idea—silly prejudice in these days, I suppose: but I must admit that it seems to have grown worse of late, more oppressive somehow and a trifle mouldy. I’ll talk to the Professor about it.”

    

    

    And so we passed into the garden: and somehow I could appreciate his feeling with the true American’s love of the tradition we so largely lack in our own lives and surroundings, as I looked upon the low, mullion-windowed house with its stone court and big old stone barn to the right, the sole remnant the original Clymping Castle with its historic memories. Beyond the barn was a glimpse of old red wall, such as folk can’t grow nowadays—and Americans envy— concealing the kitchen garden beyond, which lay to the right of the front garden and got more sum, but not much withal.

    The whole place wore an air of neglect, quite different from the last time I had seen it; and did not tend to cheer one, especially in my particular mood.

    “Damned bad tenant you’ve got anyhow, Burge,” I said a trifle caustically. “The place looks and smells horribly neglected.”

    Burgess laughed a little awkwardly, if not apologetically.

    “The Professor does not keep a gardener,” he said. “I suppose he doesn’t understand our ways. I must send one of the men down to tidy up a bit, and suggest to him to get someone.”

    I made no further comment, realizing the psychology of the situation and knowing how much more it must irk tidy, methodical, agricultural old Burgess than my casual self. But obviously he did not want to quarrel with his tenant’s shortcomings for private reasons.

    We made our way round the house and found Dorothy at the front, ostensibly gardening, but in reality waiting for our arrival.

    She advanced a trifle flushed and more beautiful than ever, taking off a pair of muddy gloves as she held out her hands to Ann and kissed her.

    “This is indeed kind of you all,” she said, greeting Burgess and myself more discreetly. “I am tidying up a bit and admiring all the bulbs, not only the ones that are in bloom, but those coming on. I love tulips—great tall Darwin tulips, like regiments of Guards with all sorts of wonderful coloured head-dresses. One begins to get tired of white and yellow as the spring goes on and summer approaches.”

    “You will find plenty of them here, Miss Wolff,” said Burgess eagerly; “and I will tell you where all the different sorts are and what colours to expect. Ann and I love them, too; and it is a hobby of ours to work out designs and colour schemes. Next month you will find them a picture; and you will love ours up at the Manor, I’m sure.”

    I gave the pair a little moment of their own, the old prelude to the love song—without words; or with words used to disguise intention, which Talleyrand diagnosed to be their proper use in this wicked world.

    Then I broke in, greeting my hostess: “From the sublime to the succulent, Miss Wolff! I have brought you a box of chocolates, and shall be so glad if you’ll relieve me of them my arm is getting tired with carrying them.”

    “It is kind of you, Mr. Osgood,” said the girl, turning to me: “and what a big box! It will last me weeks and weeks. A year ago I would have eaten them in a day or two: but somehow, in my old age, I am not nearly so fond of sweet things as I used to be.”

    Again I started, mentally more than physically. Strange ideas surged up, one confirming another: and this one was fraught with a strange mixture of disturbance, touched with a certain assurance.

    “Ann will always help,” I said, laughing nevertheless.

    Another thing I had noticed which gave me an unpleasant qualm—almost a feeling of nausea. At her breast Dorothy Wolff was wearing a weird orange flower covered with hideous black protruding spots, which suggested more than anything else some particularly noxious disease—a flower the like of which I would dare have bet had never been seen in England before.

    The beastly thing, fraught with ill omen, irritated my nerves beyond all words: and I felt that I must take some action to relieve my feelings, as I could not spend the whole afternoon with its offensiveness under my nose.

    Meanwhile, the conversation had become general; and we began to stroll round the garden, Burgess telling Dorothy about the bulbs and pointing out the different names and colours that were due to reveal themselves the following month. I was silent, wondering how I could get the girl alone for a moment, when chance, as so often in fact as well as in fiction, came to my rescue.

    “Oh, look there, Burge,” cried Ann, pointing to the hedge that divided the garden to the left of the house from a field, “some big animal has made a hole in the hedge—a cow, I suppose. It will want seeing to; or they will be straying into the garden and doing damage to the beds. It’s just by dear old granny’s favourite herbaceous border, too.”

    And with proprietorial instinct they both moved off to examine the damage.

    I seized the opportunity without beating about the bush.

    “Wherever did you get that flower?” I asked abruptly.

    “My father gave it to me,” she answered. “With his peculiar scientific tastes he seems rather to admire them, though he treats all flowers as mere specimens, so far as that goes.”

    “Wherever did he get it from?” I asked, with something deeper than idle curiosity.

    “Oh, he brought some roots from the Balkans with him to see if they would grow in this country,” she replied without any reserve: “and this is one of the first results—small but satisfactory, he says.”

    “Where are they?” I asked; and she led me across to a damp corner of the garden under some tall trees.

    There was a small hollow; and in it a small puddle of the same queer water. Whiskers, who had stuck close to me as though for protection since I had patted him, again began to whine and grow restive; and I had to pat him reassuringly once more. Then he turned tail and ran across to Burgess.

    Round the banks of the hollow were growing other flowers like the one at the girl’s breast, though not so far out in bloom—not only this hideous orange variety with its black spots, but vivid white and some red ones as well.

    “May I examine yours?” I said, holding out my hand.

    She took it from her breast and handed it to me without demur: and I took it and examined its orange and black hideousness carefully. It had a faint and sickly smell, subtly suggestive of death, and from its stalk oozed a sticky white sap.

    “Of the snapdragon family,” I said quietly.

    Then I threw it, apparently impulsively, upon the ground and crushed it under my heel. “Ugh, what a damnable thing! It makes me positively sick.”

    Then I made as though to recover myself, as I saw a half-look of fear in her eyes.

    “Oh, I am sorry, Miss Wolff,” I apologized. “Can you forgive my rudeness?”

    “Yes,” she answered, taking no offence and speaking with more truth than she knew, “you meant no harm: but my father…”

    “Your father? Yes, please don’t tell him I destroyed one of his botanical experiments: he would never forgive me. For my sake you must pretend you lost it: you needn’t say how.”

    We heard Ann and Burgess coming up from behind to join us, and we turned to meet them before she could reply: but I had gathered the fact from the sudden look in her eyes that she was afraid of the saturnine old Professor, and my heart went out to her with a redoubled determination to shield her, if not too late, from the horrible doom that was hanging so closely over her head. But it was a heart doubly heavy for Burgess’s sake.

    “Yes, some animal has broken through,” called out Burgess, as we walked forward to meet them, leaving the ill-omened hollow behind us. “I must speak to Hedges or Reece about it, and have it fixed up some time; but at present there are no beasts of any sort in the field.”

    “What wonderfully quick eyes you have got, Ann,” I said, again getting on to the lighter tack essential to the salvation of the situation. “Thank the Lord I’m not your husband; or I should be afraid to come into the house with my boots on the country, or to go out for the evening on my own in town.”

    “My dear Linc,” she answered, in a tone of assumed haughtiness, “if you laid your face and your fortune—and your face is certainly not your fortune, I may add—at my feet, wild automobiles would never drag me like a lamb to the altar. People soon get tired of chocolates; and they are your only excuse or saving grace in my life.”

    “Did you ever hear such a couple for nagging at other?” laughed Burgess to Dorothy. “They really ought to be married; and I believe that old Solomon would refuse a decree nisi from his appreciation of the fitness of things, and his wonderfully sardonic sense of humour.”

    

    

    We were approaching the house; and my eyes ran over it with a sense of deep affection, half-love of architecture and half-sympathy with Burgess—a masterpiece in miniature, an epitome of tradition. But I think what had always fascinated me most was the wide, massive, rather squat front door of fifteenth-century oak, windswept by Sussex sou’-westers for close on four hundred years, and studded with great nails of iron. Round it was a weather-beaten stone arch, surmounted by the old Clympynge arms over the door upon a stone shield, almost erased by the tooth of time—a bend with three escallops charged upon it, between six bulls’ heads cabossed, with the motto “Ascendo” underneath—supposed to be an example of heraldic word-play, falsely connecting the name of Sir Burgess de Clympynge, the Norman founder of the family, with the word “climbing.”

    But somehow that afternoon—April 16 according to my diary—even with the afternoon sun aslant across its mellow brick, it seemed almost to have assumed some sinister aspect, and the old mullioned windows to frown—imagination, of course, and overwrought nerves, ever on the strain beneath a light exterior and cloak of carelessness, but nevertheless hard to shake off.

    And the unpleasant impression was not lightened of any of its sinister suggestion when the old familiar door was opened, with a clanking and the rattle of the chain, by the old German-Polish servant, Anna Brunnolf, whom I had not seen before——a strange figure with her slanting eyes and towsled grey hair, wearing her habitual cape of brown far. She was not only bizarre in herself and so utterly out of the picture, but there was something about her that gave me a sort of “gooseflesh” feeling. There was an aura of evil, of repulsion, round her to those sensitive to such intangible influences, as I have always been since I can first remember: and she made no effort to welcome us, closing the door behind us, locking it again, and putting up the old chain with an attitude suggestive of hostility.

    “That’s one of Anna’s fads,” said Dorothy, trying to speak lightly. “It has grown on her through living in wild parts of recent years with my nomadic father.”

    Whiskers had made no effort to follow us in, nor had Anna given him either encouragement or chance: and to Burgess’s surprise, when we got home that evening, we found him lying in front of the hall fire, strangely out of spirits and apologetic for his desertion. I made no comment at the time, but felt that there was a special bond of understanding and sympathy between the dog and myself.

    There was no fire in the old oak-panelled hall with its big open fireplace, which had in the old days blazed with big logs and a cheerful glow of welcome, lighting up the armorial shield over the stone arch, this time striking a richer note with its heraldic colourings—azure, a bend gules with the three escallops argent charged upon it, between six bulls’ heads cabossed or. There was no reflection from it either, as of old, upon the minstrel gallery in miniature opposite, or the old oak staircase; and in the deepening light, through the leaded windows, it looked forlorn and cheerless—almost dour.

    Moreover, without the great fire that had burnt for centuries of winters disguising it, its dampness lay revealed; and it was dank and musty with the suggestion of a charnel-house. Again, it seemed to me that there was a slight, almost imperceptible odour of strange decay, faint, yet to me strangely pungent. There was a blight, a gloom over the whole place; and I could not repress a slight shiver as we found ourselves out of the sunlight.

    Dorothy seemed to notice it, and spoke half-apologetically.

    “Come into the drawing-room. It’s always nice and cheerful in there with a big fire—I see to that. Anna won’t be bothered with a lot of fires or have any help: and father and she don’t seem to notice things as I do, as they both keep up their habit of wearing furs, acquired during severe winters in the Balkans and other such places, regardless of the fact that we are in England. And Anna has put away such a lot of Mr. Clymping’s beautiful furniture and nice things in unused bedrooms with sheets over them, like dead bodies, to save trouble and work. Ugh, it all gives me creeps, though I am accustomed to it,” she concluded, leading the way to the drawing-room. “I love light and fires and lots of lovely things everywhere. I often feel that I was made for them, though I have had so little chance of having them—so far.”

    It was unconsciously pathetic.

    I caught a glimpse of Burgess’s face with the sunlight across it. His eyes were fixed intently upon the beautiful girl: and it seemed to me that I could read both displeasure with the present state of things and the unspoken intention of doing all that lay in his power to give her the surroundings she craved for. I could not, however, help wondering, had things been otherwise, how Burgess would have felt and acted towards tenants who treated his intensely venerated ancestral home in such a careless and cavalier fashion, lacking not only artistic appreciation, but even common consideration.

    

    

    A few minutes later the door opened abruptly; and in came the saturnine old professor, crossing the room with his long characteristic stride, his strange eyes, under their shaggy, slanting brows, fixing upon each one of us in turn none too kindly, and looking through us half-suspiciously. I took his hand, with the long pointed fingers, and gripped it with apparent heartiness, looking him back straight in the eyes.

    “I have availed myself of your kind invitation to come and have a scientific chat with you, Professor,” I said: “and I trust that I have not come at an inconvenient time.”

    Professor Wolff mastered his disinclination with an effort, and did his best to welcome me.

    “I am delighted to meet anyone interested in my subjects,” he replied. “It is so rare in Sussex. Come into my room; and leave these young people to discuss the sort of things that interest them.”

    He took me into the library, which looked as though it had not been dusted since his arrival. It was both musty and dusty, with the furniture all awry, odd tables of all periods collected from various parts of the house and piled with open books, bundles of notes, specimens, and all the paraphernalia of a student and a bookworm.

    A small fire smouldered on the hearth, and he stirred it impatiently and threw a couple of big logs on before throwing himself down on a big sofa and curling himself up like a dog, with his legs half under him, in one corner, motioning to me to seat myself, as he drew up a great grey fur rug over the lower part of his long body.

    He was a most wonderful man, unpleasant as he was personally and abhorrent physically; and he had a rare and marvellous brain. I shall never forget that hour with him, sitting opposite to him, fascinated not only by his ceaseless talk upon recondite subjects which were obviously everyday commonplaces to him, but by his extraordinary personality, which, above all things, I had come to study: and the only thing was that the one warred with the other and divided my attention, while he watched me the whole time intently, yet withal furtively and with shifty eyes, as I listened to the rough, guttural sentences pouring from him like a scientific avalanche.

    I can hardly say whether I was glad or sorry when Dorothy tapped on the door and nervously announced that tea was ready. It broke the spell but I had accomplished the real object of my visit, and my last lingering doubt—if any there had been—had vanished as to the inwardness of the strange genius, with whom I had sat in such close proximity all alone in the fading light—a weird experience in the twentieth century for one who knew the horrible truth the whole time.

    “Come,” he said abruptly, as though the spell had been broken, “we must go back to your friends as they will be anxious to be leaving before the light entirely departs.”

    The drawing-room was bright and cheerful, a pleasant contrast, which I welcomed with every fibre of my body. Even my intellect felt surcharged.

    I stood by Dorothy while she poured out the tea, the Professor standing on the hearthrug and talking intermittently to Burgess with his mouth full as he greedily devoured sandwich after sandwich—a most unpleasing sight.

    “I do not know whether you dainty English will care for my special sandwiches,” he remarked truculently. “I have them made of raw meat. Some of our leading professors in Germany advocate them; and they are given to invalids as they are so strengthening and so easily”—he paused for an instant for the word, munching the while—“what you call assimilated. I find my brain works much better on them. Once you folk got over your silly ideas and prejudices you would find that they are delicious—much better than your dry, tough, scorched meat. I am teaching Dorothea to eat them.”

    I looked at the girl a trifle anxiously.

    “Yes,” she said without affectation; “and I hope you won’t think it horrid of me, but I am quite beginning to like them, though they don’t seem very dainty, and I have never eaten them in public. I have always looked at them from the scientific or medical point of view.”

    I saw the Professor’s eyes fixed furtively upon her.

    “Where is the flower that I gave you, Dorothea?” he asked across the room, in a rough, angry voice.

    She put her hand instinctively to her breast and looked down.

    “I—I must have lost it,” she answered, flushing.

    “You are very careless,” began the old man with something that sounded very much like a snarl; and then he broke off, as though conscious of his visitors.

    One thing was certain in my mind—to my relief—at any rate he was not suspicious, and never dreamt that perhaps people were even then hovering upon the fringe of his horrid secret.

    I turned to the girl, asking for a second cup of tea to cover any awkwardness, feeling that she was afraid of the old German, who was obviously an autocrat and a bit of a bully in his own household.

    “Thank you for not giving me away,” I said in a low voice, as Burgess began to speak about sending one of his men down to tidy up. “Is your name really ‘Dorothea’ and not ‘Dorothy?’ ”

    “My father always calls me by the German form—perhaps not unnaturally,” she answered; “but my mother always used to call me ‘Dorothy.’”

    “Your mother?” I asked sympathetically.

    “She died when I was quite a little girl,” she answered very softly, as though not wishing to be overheard and nursing something very sacred to herself. “I always like to call myself Dorothy and to be called Dorothy by my friends, as it reminds me of her.”

    “May I call you Dorothy?” I asked upon impulse.

    “If you care to,” she answered, with a little look of friendly confidence, which was much in my mind during the next few urgent, anxious days.

    

    

    I was glad and relieved when we found ourselves once more out in the open air, and I heard old Anna shoot the bolts and clank the chain behind us, though my heart was very heavy for the poor doomed girl inside—doomed unless by the grace of God she could be saved from a fate too hideous to contemplate: and I was not very talkative on the way home, as we hurried as well as we could through the dark wood, which had grown so strangely oppressive to me.

    When we reached the terrace I drew a deep breath of relief and filled my lungs with the crisp, clean air.

    “You are lucky to live up here on the hill, old chap,” I said to Burgess, speaking from the bottom of my heart: but all the evening I was depressed, though I did my best to conceal it, and somehow I did not seem able to get the unpleasant odour of decay out of my nostrils.

    

    

    The next morning brought strange news.

    As we were smoking in the ball over the papers after breakfast, Jevons announced our old friend Mutton; and Burgess ordered him to be shown in at once.

    “Dirty work on the downs last night, gentlemen,” he announced solemnly, “but nothing like as serious as before—no connexion with the other in fact. Two of Farmer Stiles’s sheep have been killed and mutilated on the downs.”

    “That’s bad business,” said Burgess, with a low whistle. “What do you make of it?”

    I made no remark. My only feeling was one of relief, in a way, that it was nothing worse.

    “It looks something like that Great Wyrley business up in Staffordshire,” answered Mutton, pleased to have a theory. “Both are torn, badly lacerated, and partially disembowelled; and it looks like some devil’s mischief.”

    Yes, that’s just what it is,” I rejoined, “sheer wanton devil’s mischief, inspector, without apparent object. We will come along with you and have a look at it.”

    It was four or five miles away; so Burgess ordered the car, and it was not long before we were on the spot.

    “Looks as if they had been worried by some big dogs,” said Burgess; and I assented, purposely not taking any very marked interest or advancing any theory of my own.

    “You don’t know of any savage dog or other big animal in the neighbourhood?” I asked Mutton casually.

    “No,” he answered, shaking his head; “but I will put my men on to search. It looks as though some lads or young ruffians had set something on to worry the poor brutes.”

    “And the rest of the flock?” I asked.

    “Oh, they were evidently frightened out of what little wits sheep have, and were found no end of a way off, all huddled together and sort of dazed, if you can say such a thing of a sheep. Farmer Stiles has had them all driven into a field near his house.”

    We had a talk with the farmer, who could throw no light on the subject; and then, as we turned to go home, I saw the new moon for the first time from the top of the downs, and I calculated that it was the third day.

    I gazed at it without remark, fascinated at the thought of the possibilities of horror with which it was fraught. Why should the moon have such a malign influence, I asked myself? Was it soured virginity, or revenge for the havoc Endymion had wrought? And each day and night after that I watched her growing crescent approaching full face, wondering each time what it was going to bring forth.

    

    

    Thursday and Friday passed without event, everything going well on the surface; and we seemed to be living through beautiful spring days without a worry or a horror in the world, especially in dear old sleepy Sussex.

    Bullingdon made capital progress and gave the doctors every cause for satisfaction; and on Saturday morning he was so much better that he began to worry, and expressed a desire to see his host. He was insistent; and Ann came down to Burgess and myself and told us. In view of Sir Humphrey Bedell’s contingent permission and the state of the patient, the nurses considered that it would do no harm—in fact, that it would do more good than harm, as it would keep him from worrying.

    “All right, dear,” said Burgess, rising, “I’ll go up.”

    Then once more I intervened, a little awkwardly.

    “It is a strange thing to ask even of such an old friend in his own house,” I said, laying my hand on his arm, “and I don’t want to appear to take too much upon myself: but do you mind if I am the first to see him? I have my own particular reasons.”

    Burgess looked at me for a moment in surprise—a little chagrined, I thought—and I must confess that I was more than a trifle uncomfortable in view of the secretive attitude I had felt compelled to take up.

    “His first impressions may be valuable to my theory,” I explained—“the theory upon which I build so much to clear up the whole of this ghastly business. More depends upon it than perhaps you can ever guess.”

    “All right, old chap,” came his prompt reply: and I don’t think I have ever admired his character and his staunchness so much. It made me more than ever determined to repay him if it lay in my power—if by my instrumentality his life’s happiness could be secured.

    “Thank you,” was all I dared say at the moment, however; and I went straight upstairs.

    Young Bullingdon was looking frail, but he had made wonderful progress the last day or two; and I took his hand and sat down near him.

    “You mustn’t worry, Lord Bullingdon,” I said reassuringly. “You are in good hands and making splendid progress.”

    “What has happened?” he asked in a puzzled voice.

    “You had a bad accident with your big car and have been lying between life and death for over a fortnight.”

    “I don’t remember anything about it,” he said blankly.

    It was as I expected I might almost say, hoped.

    The shock, as in so many cases of sudden and severe accident, had left his mind a complete blank with regard to the event; and perhaps, in the circumstances it was better, if memory upon the point returned at all, that it should be later rather than sooner, when he would be both physically and mentally better able to bear the shock. In some cases on record shock has cut memory clean off at a point long before and often totally unconnected with the accident; and I was anxious particularly to test the reaction in this case.

    “What do you remember last?” I inquired, speaking casually.

    “Supper, or dinner, or something of the sort—at Brighton, I think,” he answered confusedly. “I can’t be quite sure. It makes my head ache to think.”

    “Well then, don’t try to think; leave it at that,” I answered encouragingly, afraid lest he might remember Miss St. Clair and begin to ask inconvenient questions. “You have not got to worry about anything at present, the doctors say, until you are better: and now I’m going to leave you, if you will promise not to trouble about anything. Mr. Clymping will come to see you any time the doctors allow him, he is very pleased to have you here: and Colonel Gorleston has been down and will come down again soon.”

    I could see that anything more at the moment would be too much for him; so, nodding to the nurse, I left him with a reassuring pressure of the hand.

    Then I went downstairs and told Burgess and Ann exactly how he was: and, with Burgess’s permission, I telephoned Major Blenkinsopp at Scotland Yard and advised him exactly how things stood, and that, so far, Lord Bullingdon remembered nothing that could assist—in fact, that his memory was a blank upon the whole subject.

    After that he went on famously, the subject of the accident being studiously avoided, and no reference being made to anything that might disturb him. Burgess and Ann were both allowed to see him; and the latter, to her delight, was permitted to take her share of sitting with and reading to him. Colonel Gorleston ran down again with Sir Humphrey Bedell on the Sunday: and he was promised in due course that he should see Bellingham and Verjoyce. To Miss St. Clair he made no reference. Possibly she had temporarily been banished from his mind in connexion with the accident by the shock; or he was waiting to ask them about her.

    

    

    Meanwhile my one outstanding anxiety for the moment, which was holding up my plans, was the fact that I had had no cable from Manders as to his return; and it was an intense relief to me to find one waiting when we came in from a morning walk over the down on Monday.

    It was sent from Vienna and said:

    

     “No doubt about John. Back Thursday. Meet me midday Temple.—MANDERS.”

    

    I felt a clutch at my heart. It spelt the climax of the great drama, which was so swiftly drawing to a head, unless I were mistaken. Yet withal it was an immense relief: and, self-reliant as I am both by nature and as the result of circumstance, I do not mind admitting that I was glad to feel that I should soon have his quick, alert brain with its full appreciation of the case, to say nothing of his strong personality, beside me to help as the crisis approached. Moreover, it meant that I should at last be able to take Burgess into my full confidence; and, whatever the cost to himself, I knew that I would then have another strong resolute collaborator to rely upon, in addition to being at last in a position to clear up all reservation between us. The latter, I own, was perhaps a little selfish, but few people will ever realize what it had meant to me to live with him hour by hour as his guest and his oldest friend under such circumstances. Facts had to be faced; and I knew from my long acquaintance with his character that he was a man who would rather face things than burke them.

    “Manders will be back on Thursday morning,” I said, putting the cable into my pocket: “and I shall have to run up to town. His mission, apparently, has been successful from the point of view I anticipated; and upon my return, Burge, old friend, I shall be able to explain everything and clear up this beastly mystery between us, though God knows you will like it even less than I do.”

    Burgess nodded.

    “I am content, as I trust I have shown, to leave myself in your hands,” he said quietly. “Whatever is right or for the best you may rely upon me to do.”

    “I know that,” I said with emphasis, as Ann called us to come to lunch.

    Dorothy came and spent the afternoon, and I must confess I liked her more than ever. But she struck me as looking pale and worried; and I had my fears as to the old man. Of him I had seen enough for my purpose; and I had no desire to further the acquaintance, however great his genius or however valuable his scientific knowledge. He was, to my mind, an object lesson in the value of life’s simplicities, the real things that make for happiness after all. Further, I had no desire unnecessarily to visit the decaying atmosphere of the Dower House.

    And so what between Bullingdon’s progress, visits of doctors with good reports, and other folk, including Blenkinsopp, and general trivialities, the next two days passed without incident.

    Ann was full of her patient; and we saw Dorothy again on the Wednesday, pale but red-lipped, and—possibly my imagination—it seemed to me that her eyes were contracting and lengthening towards the ends of the lids, a strange phenomenon.

    But of the Professor we saw nothing; and Dorothy informed us that he had one of his high-pressure working fits on, and would brook no interruption for meals or anything else.

    

    

    On the eve of Manders’ return the moon entered its first quarter; and somehow I was hardly astonished to hear, upon my way to the station to catch the 9.30, that two more sheep had been found mutilated on the downs a little farther south than before. It all coincided; and I should have been surprised, rather than otherwise, had any attempt been made to devour the carcases.

    Still, it added yet one more to the many things I had to think about going up in the train; and from Victoria I drove straight to my solicitor’s to get from him the statement I had left in his hands, as it was my intention to take it in person to Scotland Yard that afternoon, accompanied by Manders, when we had talked everything out finally.

    I was at Garden Court on the stroke of noon and found him there, bathed and shaved after his journey, and none the worse for his long trip, though I fancied that there was a slightly worried expression in his eves.

    However, he greeted me cheerfully enough, as we gripped hands, speaking in a light tone which was in reality far removed from both of us.

    “Phew,” he said, passing me a cigar, “there is not a possible shadow of doubt in my mind as to your being only too correct in your surmises about our friend ‘John.’ In Berlin I could get nothing beyond praise of his scientific work—of his personality little or nothing. All was vague: but it was obviously a subject which no one seemed inclined to pursue. He has not actually resided in Berlin for over twenty-five years. So on I went to Vienna. There again I was baffled—everything equally vague and unsatisfactory. There too, he has not actually resided for a very long time; and his visits of recent years have been intermittent and never prolonged. In one instance—that of Professor Mendel, to whom you luckily gave me a letter—I received some pretty strong hints of something very wrong, confirming your suspicions; and he practically said that, whatever it was, he was a man of baleful influence, and that no one who knew anything of him would have anything to do with him. Better still—obviously not wishing to be more explicit himself—he gave me one or two clues, which took me to the Harz Mountains and then on into Rumania. As you can imagine, I had not much time; and without Professor Mendel’s hints and names of places I could never have done what I have in these few days. I found out that he was never very long in one place at a time, leading a strange recluse’s life, and always leaving a trail behind him of strange, unaccountable disappearances. There were weird tales that the peasants would hardly breathe: but I found one or two in different places, mostly older people, who spoke out their suspicions quite frankly. His final departure is completely wrapped in mystery; and no one I saw or spoke to seemed to have the least idea as to whither he had vanished or where he was. Here,” he concluded, handing me a bundle of manuscript, “are the details all collated, ready for immediate use. I think that they will be found pretty convincing—certainly so far as we ourselves are concerned.”

    “You have done wonders in the time,” I said, taking the manuscript; “and I am most grateful for your help. It has come just at the critical moment, and will, I trust, be the means of convincing the authorities and saving something possibly worse, at an early date, even than what has already happened—if, indeed, that be possible.”

    And I told him my fears with regard to Dorothy; and his face grew very grave.

    “My God,” he said in a low tone, “that is too horrible to think of, especially with your friend Clymping head over ears in love with the girl in his solid, complete fashion, and Walpurgis Nacht next Tuesday. We haven’t a moment to waste.”

    “No,” I agreed. “Just let me study this document of yours, while you study this one of mine, which I drew up after you left. Then this afternoon we must get right through to headquarters at the Yard, and thrash the whole thing out—and, what is more, convince them at any cost.”

    I read Manders’ statement through carefully twice; and, though naturally somewhat vague and elusive in itself, it was quite convincing enough when added to the other facts we had to work upon. dovetailing into the whole and making one complete piece—that is, if anything could ever convince the official British mind of things that stand outside the ordinary courses of nature in these latter days. I was especially struck by these events surrounding the Professor’s final disappearance from Transylvania, when his life was actually in danger amongst the superstitious peasants. But were they so superstitious after all; or rather were they not in closer touch with elemental facts than we of the West? The Brighton Road mysteries were only history repeating itself after all—at no very distant interval.

    “The two statements piece together admirably,” said Manders, giving counsel’s opinion, as he laid down my manuscript: “and you have covered the case from this end most concisely and completely. You have a legal mind, while fortunately lacking the verbosity of the law.”

    The compliment I must admit pleased me, coming from such a source.

    Then for nearly an hour we went over everything in considerable detail, cross-questioning each other upon the statements, and getting things finally into order for official presentation: and I laid before Manders the plan of action which I had sketched out in my own mind.

    “Drastic, but practical and to the point,” was his only comment. “Personally I approve; but what if the authorities do not?”

    “Then,” I answered, looking him straight in the eyes, “I shall take the law into my own hands—that is, if human law there be in such a case standing outside all human laws. Burgess Clymping, I know, will not fail me.”

    Fitzroy Manders laughed in his light way, which often disguised so much beneath the crust.

    “I shall be in at the finish, too, old chap,” he said, “don’t you fret. I don’t believe in leaving a job half done. I like seeing things through myself.”

    “But your career, your future?” I said. “Suppose anything should be wrong? We are on very dangerous ground in event of failure, or even a serious hitch.”

    Manders laughed again.

    “With our facts and you in command we will so organize things that there will be no failure,” he said with quiet assurance.

    Then he looked at his watch.

    “By George, five minutes to two! You will be hungry after your early breakfast: I was a bit late myself. I’ll ring up Scotland Yard and get an appointment for this afternoon; and then we will go off to the Garrick and have lunch.”

    He rang up himself, his clerk being out, and got through to Major Blenkinsopp’s room, only to find that he was at lunch and not expected back till three o’clock: so he left word that he would telephone at that time for an appointment, adding that it was most urgent.

    We lunched in a quiet corner; and I told Manders everything that had happened during his absence. He was specially interested in my visit to the Professor and my investigation of his habits firsthand: and I found that during his trip he had been studying the literature of these strange elemental things, besides having learnt a good deal about it from the folk-lore of the peasants and some of the tales which had been told him first-hand.

    At three o’clock he went to the telephone, and returned in a few minutes with the news that he had arranged an interview with Sir Thomas Brayton at four o’clock, at which Major Blenkinsopp would be present also. We were to go to Blenkinsopp’s room at ten minutes to four, and he would take us straight through and introduce me. Manders himself had met the Chief two or three times, although he did not know him well.

    We were in Blenkinsopp’s room up to time, and he greeted us both most cordially.

    “Manders tells me that you have some very important and extraordinary facts to lay before the Chief with regard to the Brighton Road affairs,” he said, as we shook hands: “and I can only say, between ourselves, that we shall be very receptive, we are candidly at our wits’ end, and public comment has been none too kind of late.”

    I frowned slightly, but decided not to prejudice my case by saying that probably—certainly if I had my way—the public would never know the truth, and would continue for all time to blame Scotland Yard as the ever handy scapegoat in all cases of crime either undiscovered, or upon which they are not fully enlightened with all the morbid details which sell the newspapers and spice their breakfast-tables.

    “I trust I shall be able to help,” I answered; “but, as the matter is a somewhat long and abstruse one, it is no good my starting on it till we are with Sir Thomas Brayton.”

    Blenkinsopp nodded acquiescence, and asked Lord Bullingdon and the news from Clymping.

    “And that surly old brute of a German professor?” he added.

    “We are coming to him,” I replied, a trifle grimly: and he shot a quick glance across at me. He seemed as though he were about to speak, but checked himself.

    

    

    Sir Thomas Brayton received us cordially and motioned us to sit down. He was seated at a big table looking out across the river; and I purposely took a chair opposite to him, with Manders supporting me on my right, laying our two statements on the table for reference.

    “You have some special information with regard to the Brighton Road business which you wish to lay before me personally, Mr. Osgood,” he said without beating about the bush; and I saw that it was up to me to make good.

    I first explained my position in the matter, and how, through Burgess Clymping, I had, so to speak, been pitchforked right into the middle of the affair at its height upon my arrival in England three weeks before; and then I added a short explanation with regard to Manders, and how he had come into the business equally unexpectedly.

    Sir Thomas nodded.

    “Mr. Manders is known to me personally; and his considered opinion, in all matters like this, carries great weight.”

    It encouraged me, and gave me confidence to feel that I was introduced under such good auspices, considering the strangeness of the story which I was about to put forward.

    “Then, as his opinion fully coincides with mine. Sir Thomas,” I said with slight emphasis, “I trust that you will not too readily write me down a freak or a lunatic, but hear me through in detail, and with an open mind go into these two statements, which I have brought for your perusal and that of Major Blenkinsopp—one by Mr. Manders and the other by myself—dealing with the case from two points of view.”

    The Chief made a slightly impatient gesture.

    “You may rest assured on the subject.”

    “Thank you,” I said: and then I leant forward a trifle across the table.

    “Have you ever studied the subject of lycanthropy?” I asked.

    I could swear he started slightly.

    Again he nodded, as much as to convey that he knew something about the subject theoretically or academically, but that it was not one that he had lever entertained seriously in the sphere of practical everyday life or modern ermine, especially in twentieth-century England.

    “Professor Lycurgus Wolff and his old servant, Anna Brunnolf, are werewolves,” I said solemnly: “and they are responsible for the disappearances on the Brighton Road.”

    I heard Blenkinsopp breathe deeply, the sound of a man deeply moved.

    The Chief tapped his blotting-pad with a big blue pencil, looking across at me noncommittally.

    “Go on,” he said without comment; and for an instant I wondered if either or both were doubting my sanity—I, a strange American in London, advancing a theory so bizarre as to astound even the heads of Scotland Yard! “The lore of lycanthropy and the manifold legends of werewolves are one of the oldest things in the world, and appear in practically every country in Europe and Asia, including such outlying places as Iceland, Lapland, and Finland, to say nothing of other Continents, including even my own country; and it would hardly seem logical, upon the face of it, that there should be no foundation in fact for such widely spread—aye, and widely believed stories, many bearing close examination.

    “In the fifteenth century a council of theologians was actually convoked upon the subject by the Emperor Sigismund; and they solemnly decided in convocation that the werewolf was a reality. Amongst the ancients—without going into the matter deeply at the moment—Herodotus describes the Neuri as persons who had the power of assuming the shape of wolves once a year. Pliny relates that one of the family of Antæus was each year chosen by lot to be transformed into a wolf. Ovid, as doubtless you will recall, tells how Lycäon, King of Arcadia, was turned into a wolf for testing the divinity of Jove by serving up to him a ‘hash of human flesh.’ Again, St. Patrick in more recent times converted Vereticus, King of Wales, into a wolf. And so on… without labouring legends and piling up detail, though, in passing, I may add, perhaps not without point, the fact that in Great Britain itself in the North, in the history of the County of Durham, the actual name ‘Brunnolf’ itself is on record, and Gervase, of Tilbury, in his Otia Imperiala.’ writes: ‘Vidimus enim frequenter in Anglia per lunationes homines in lupos mutari, quod hominum genus gerulphos Galli nominant, Angli vero “were-wulf“ dicunt’ Finally, surely the most primitive and obvious werewolf legend of all, accepted from the earliest days of our dawning intelligence, is the tale of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’? “In the whole history of demonology—the super-physical, spiritual projection, elementals, and so forth—which, as the result of civilization has been growing less and less, or been more concealed where such things still flourish in isolated or, at worst, sporadic fashion—things which, by the aid of science and the development of modern thought, we are again beginning to reconsider and reclass in many instances in the light of greater knowledge—in the whole of this world-long and world-wide history there is an unbroken sequence which cannot but carry conviction of itself. As a modern writer phrases it with regard to those other elementals, vampires—‘These intangible beings, who, though scoffed at in an age of materialism and negation, have throughout history given intermittent evidences of their existence… who belong to that unseen world to whose mystic manifestations time imaginative and soul-seers of all times have testified.’ It is very well put and applies equally to werewolves, who are super-physical hybrids of the material and the immaterial: and their power of metamorphosis dates back as far as can be traced, growing less and less frequent, as I have said, with the advance of civilization and the better ordering of things. However, this is not the side of the matter which I wish to labour. Doubtless you are familiar with it in the main”—Sir Thomas shook his head a trifle irritably—“and I have embodied the essentials in this statement of mine with references to the literature of the subject in many languages.”

    I paused and drew breath.

    “It was a subject that at one period was equally academic to my mind, though fascinating, I must admit, from the first time I struck it in my reading: but I have, as a man of means and leisure, ever since I left school, made travel my hobby, and I have been amazed at the legendry I have come across first-hand in all sorts of isolated parts—in the Harz Mountains, Austria-Hungary, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Russia, Siberia—and, more than that, modern cases of lycanthropy firmly believed in and vouched for locally. I have had actual werewolf men and women pointed out to me—families of werewolves who have a lycanthropic inheritance of many generations; and it is years since, as the result of actual personal investigation, that I have accepted lycanthropy as a fact—rare, but perhaps not so rare as people in circumscribed London imagine. It is essentially a survival, so far as it does survive, on the outer fringes, driven into outlying and outlandish places, and segregated by civilization and the rough-and-ready methods of centuries towards those convicted or often only suspected of lycanthropy. It is centuries since there was a case—at least, an actually authenticated case—of lycanthropy in Great Britain, though there have been strange stories touching upon it even in more recent times and certain unexplained manifestations, again in outlying and isolated parts. But the werewolf in this country and in Ireland is a fact as well established as in any other, if not so frequent in instance. I can give you specific references; but again I do not wish to labour this part of my statement unduly with quotations from Bodleian MSS., Richard Verstegen in his ‘Restitution of Decayed Intelligence’ in 1605, and the like. Why, the very story of the dog Gelert is a werewolf legend in itself! But in the present case in hand we have not to fall back upon British lycanthropic lore itself for justification or substantiation, as here it is plainly a matter of importation.”

    Again I paused.

    

    

    Blenkinsopp was staring hard at me, so hard that he scarcely seemed to see me in his absorbed intentness. The weirdness of it was gripping him, I could see; and once or twice I had felt as much as seen Manders nod encouragingly. But so far I had evoked no encouragement from the Chief.

    “And to apply your theory?” he said, raising his eyebrows a trifle, and drumming away more vigorously than ever with his infernal blue pencil on his pad.

    “I was as much at a loss as anybody to start with, to be candid,” I continued; “no clue, nothing seemingly to get hold of. Yet the key to the whole thing I felt instinctively lay in Lord Bullingdon’s oft reiterated delirium—obviously the last impression upon his conscious mind, and that a sharp and sudden one—‘Big dog… jumped over moon… green eyes.’ I repeated it over and over again to myself. It ran through my brain day and night. I could neither get rid of it nor hit upon its significance. Its very absurdity, suggestive of a nursery rhyme, seemed to me to accentuate its importance, and to take it out of the sphere of the events of everyday grown-up life—a paradox perhaps, but none the less a fact in such matters of deduction. And so it thrummed and hammered away insistently in my head, till the next light was supplied by the visit of this Professor Lycurgus Wolff himself, who interested me intellectually as much as he repulsed me physically, setting something working subconsciously at the back of my brain.

    Then, that evening, when I was sitting smoking and puzzling, it came to me in a flash. The Professor was an absolutely typical example of a werewolf in its human shape that one should well imagine, with his remarkably bright piercing black eyes under the characteristic long slanting brows, meeting in a point over his nose—his pointed ears set low and far back on his head—his brilliantly white, strong teeth, almost like fangs—his full mouth, with its bright red lips—his long pointed hands with their curiously projecting third fingers and their red, almond-shaped curving nails—his general hairiness of aspect—his stoop—and, above all, his peculiar long swinging stride, which is, perhaps, the most characteristic of the lot, to which must be added his habit of wearing and his predilection for fur. Had it not been that, in such an environment of all places, I was as little ready or likely to suspect any possibility of lycanthropy as either you or Major Blenkinsopp or my friend Manders here, it would have come to me more easily: but we are not on the look-out for such things in Sussex. When it did come, however, it seemed to strike me full between the eyes, almost dazing me.”

    I saw that Sir Thomas was showing a little more interest, and that his pencil was quiet for a moment.

    “So,” I continued, “as I have put down in detail in my statement, I reviewed the whole situation from his unexpected appearance in the wood, when Miss Clymping was luckily guarding Lord Bullingdon, and his destroyal of certain clues which annoyed Major Blenkinsopp so much at the time, the laceration of Lord Bullingdon’s shoulder, and so forth. I knew that at that point it would he futile to advance my theory officially: so, by a lucky inspiration, I determined to enlist the assistance of Mr. Manders to go abroad and investigate the private history of this famous German scientist, while I, at home, looked into his habits and mode of life. Mr. Manders only returned this morning; and his statement more than bears out all my anticipations. He has put it into writing; and I will read it to you.”

    I did so, ending with the climax of Wolff’s hurried and secret flight from Transylvania to escape what we call lynching—a story practically bringing home to him any allegations or accusations I might make, a ghastly tale of children and young girls, in the main, disappearing with increasing frequency until it became a case of almost nightly—totally without clue, as in the Brighton Road business. At last suspicion began to fix itself upon Professor Wolff and Anna Brunnolf, and the word “werewolf” began to take shape in the minds and on the lips of the peasantry, until they commenced to grow threatening—and then suddenly, without warning or trace, the Professor and his old maidservant disappeared. These events had happened some two years ago: and there were slight references in the papers at the time—not, of course, to the Professor, but to the mysterious series of disappearances in Transylvania.

    Sir Thomas nodded a quick assent, showing that he had some recollection of the matter; and I felt that I had scored a strong point at last.

    Then I took up my own end of the story in Sussex.

    “In and round that now tainted old Dower House, gentlemen,” I said solemnly, “I saw and smelt enough to convince the most cynical of sceptics. Never did a place in so short a time reek more of lycanthropy and all its filthy surroundings—the typical smell of decay and strange pungent odour, indescribable yet animal.”

    And I recapitulated all the seemingly trivial facts that I have set down at some length in this document, not only with regard to the Professor and his ways, his habit of devouring quantities of raw meat, his obsession of fur, and other characteristic matters, but laying special stress upon the strange pools of water, which are typically lycanthropous, and the hideous yellow flowers with their black protuberances, together with the white and red ones, all reeking of lycanthropy and, worse still, capable of communicating it and contaminating those coming into contact with these two recognized sources of impregnation—in many ways the most diabolical part of the whole affair, to my mind, with its obvious intention of founding a cult of lycanthropy in the very heart of England itself, which, if not realized and frustrated, might take years to eradicate, or possibly never be eradicated at all.

    Then—a small point perhaps, but a very convincing one to those who trust animal instinct as I do, especially in the case of a dog—there was Whiskers’ deadly fear and horror, not only of the pools themselves, but of the old house under its changed conditions, and the way in which he would not enter it even with his master, and his equal fear and avoidance of the Professor, from whom he always slunk away with his hair raised and his tail between his legs.

    Finally, there was the climax of the sheep on the downs, which I pointed out was a very typical instance of werewolf mischief, when he kills out of malign freakishness, or for sheer lust of killing, and not for food, lacerating and disembowelling and leaving his victims to die: and I also drew particular attention to the influence of the moon upon such manifestations.

    “And this, sir,” I went on, drawing to a conclusion, “brings me to a point that is both vital and immediate. The moon always has a most marked and malign occult influence upon all elementals, a point too well recognized for it to be necessary for me to dilate upon or to labour it; and in this case it has been most marked. The Bolsover tragedy occurred about midnight at full moon on February 2, you will remember. The Bullingdon St. Chair affair at full moon on Sunday, April 1, also about midnight, the hour which has special influences upon elementals and evil spirits.

    “Next Tuesday,” I went on solemnly and impressively, “is not only full moon, but it is Walpurgis Nacht, a most sinister coincidence; and in the present case, especially when preceded by these two minor affairs of the sheep on the downs, showing elemental restlessness and a blood-craving, it is practically bound, in my judgment, to lead up to a horrible climax, an orgy of some diabolical character which will put the other tragedies into the shade. Walpurgis Nacht is the night of the year which makes the initiated shudder. It is the night when all evil spirits and elementals are released to hold Hell’s own high festival and practise every orgy of vice; when human sacrifice, above all, is ever at its height. On that night the peasants of the Near East, in isolated parts, retire to their homes before sunset, and nothing will induce them to venture forth for fear of what may happen to them, such is their firm belief in these super-physicals and elementals of all sorts. It is the great night of All Evil, and they lie huddled close in their beds and cross themselves and I ask you, therefore, whether a full moon at midnight, synchronizing with Walpurgis Nacht, cannot but be an irresistible combination in malign influence, especially with the signs of activity we have already seen with the new moon and in its first quarter? Frankly I feel convinced in my own mind and fear the worst, if we do not act and take effective precautions to rid, not merely Sussex and the Brighton Road, but Great Britain itself of this horrible importation of incarnate evil.”

    Blenkinsopp was breathing deeply and had not moved, like a man fascinated: and Sir Thomas had stopped tapping his pad and was leaning forward slightly, his eyes fixed intently on my face. Manders was nodding from time to time in his characteristic fashion.

    “The Professor, wolf by name as by nature, and Anna Brunnolf are werewolves,” I reiterated with strong emphasis—“undoubtedly and beyond all question werewolves, hybrid beasts of prey, such as in these days we have no organized or recognized way of dealing with. They will, I am fully convinced, metamorphose on Tuesday night and wreak havoc, exacting human toll. Of the daughter, Dorothy—or Dorothea, as the old man prefers to call her—I am hopeful, but uncertain.

    It does not seem to me that she has shown any signs of inherited lycanthropy up to the present, and I am morally certain that she has never suffered metamorphosis; or why should her father be so obviously trying to impregnate her by the recognized means—especially those thrice-damnable flowers? There are symptoms, however, that she is tending that way—the increasing redness of her lips and her finger-nails to that peculiar vivid tint. Her eyes, too, show signs. Then there are two other noticeable points—one negative and the other positive—her growing lack of enjoyment of sweet things and her increasing liking for raw meat diet. My fear and my anticipation is that this may all be heading up to that irresistible combination on Walpurgis Nacht, and that next Tuesday night may be the fatal hour of her first metamorphosis against her will and even her own consciousness. To my mind it adds a very grave aspect to this whole terrible business.”

    I stopped and sat back, keeping my eyes on the Chief.

    

    

    “And what steps do you propose to take?” he asked, speaking non-committally still and calmly enough, but with a touch of suppressed excitement in his voice. “I presume that you have a plan in your mind?”

    “Yes, I have, sir,” I replied promptly and emphatically. “I propose, with the help of certain good friends, and possibly with your official assistance, to picket the Dower House on Tuesday night and to shoot down any werewolf or werewolves that may show themselves.”

    The Chief raised his eyebrows.

    “I shall have at least half a dozen crack shots posted, three at time front and three at the back, armed with Winchester repeaters. The night should be almost as light as day, and the visibility good; and there should be no mistake. If no werewolves appear, there will be no shooting; but a very careful watch would then have to be preserved over the house till things prove themselves one way or the other.”

    Again the Chief was drumming upon his pad with his blue pencil, beating a regular tattoo.

    “And how do you promise to dispose of your werewolves and account for the disappearance of their human counterparts?” he asked dryly.

    I leant forward again over the table, focusing my eyes hard on him: and in a few words I detailed my further plan for covering all tracks, adding certain reasons connected with the exigencies of lycanthropy.

    “By God, Mr. Osgood,” he said quietly, in a tone I took to be quite complimentary, “I must say that you are a cool hand. In fact, you would make a fine criminal. It is a pity you have missed your vocation, as you would have given us some stirring times in the sleepy old C.I.D. And pray what do you propose to do if I do not see eye to eye with you—and Mr. Manders, I presume?” Manders nodded quick cordial assent—“and refuse my consent to such unorthodox action?”

    I looked him straight in the face.

    “Then, God helping me, sir, I shall take matters into my own hands and act without it, and stand or fall by what happens.”

    “And I, too,” broke in Manders incisively. The Chief laughed.

    “I am much obliged to you, gentlemen, for all your trouble in this most extraordinary affair,” he said, rising and holding out his hand to each of us in turn. “Leave your documents with Major Blenkinsopp and myself; and be good enough, if you will, to call upon me to-morrow morning at ten-thirty.”

    Blenkinsopp shook hands most warmly; and I could see that he, at least, had been convinced.

    

    

    That night I spent at Manders’ house, and we sat late into the night thrashing out the details of the plan of action until we had them all cut and dried.

    The next morning, needless to say, we were at Scotland Yard in good time, and went straight to Blenkinsopp’s room.

    He greeted us cordially.

    “You have won through with the Chief,” he said.

    “At first he was incredulous to a degree, and regarded the whole business as preposterous, as a wild and utterly impossible theory: but he was coming round before you left. He and I were up nearly all night reading and discussing your documents; and I don’t mind telling you that we consulted certain authorities upon lycanthropy. Now come along,” he concluded, looking at the clock, “as the Chief hates to be kept waiting.”

    Sir Thomas Brayton greeted us both less officially and with more cordiality; and then, after we were seated, he put us through a very vigorous and searching cross-examination, covering the whole ground—past, present, and future.

    At the end of two hours he gave his decision.

    “Well, gentlemen,” he said, “it is a strange proceeding and entirely unorthodox: but unorthodox cases demand unorthodox methods at times. You may shoot any wolf or any number of wolves you may see anywhere in Sussex—there is neither legal nor moral harm in that. But, mind you,” he added impressively, “if there be any taking of human life, you will do it at your own risk, and will be held responsible.”

    He paused and looked at us almost sternly.

    “I will take all responsibility,” I said, “and stand or fall by what happens.”

    “And I, too,” again said Manders, with sharp decision.

    “Then I will send down a high confidential official with special instructions and full powers to act,” said the Chief, “as a safeguard both to yourselves and ourselves.”

    Then Blenkinsopp spoke.

    “With your permission, sir, I will go myself.”

    The Chief nodded: and so it was arranged to my intense relief and satisfaction, as time was growing perilously short.