The Edgar Wallace Collection 5
Author: Edgar Wallace
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Short pieces
Description: EDGAR WALLACE was a prolific author of short stories, which were published in all sorts of unlikely places and in many cases then entirely forgotten. Some of them were collected in his lifetime, mostly those short stories forming a series, such as The Reporter, The Iron Grip, and The Adventures of Heine. Most of them, however, were not in the form of series. These non-series stories are collected in this series of volumes. The stories in the volume are from Circumstantial Evidence and Other Stories (1; 3-9), Fighting Snub Reilly (2), and For Information Received and Other Stories (10-18), all

THE EDGAR WALLACE

COLLECTION

Short Stories of Edgar Wallace

Volume 5

2015

Contents

Introduction

1: Circumstantial Evidence

2: Fighting Snub Reilly

3: A Romance in Brown

4: Discovering Rex

5: A Tryst with Ghosts

6: The Child of Chance

7: The Dear Liar

8: The Christmas Princess

9: The Little Green Man

10: For Information Received

11: Snares Of Paris

12: A Business Training

13: Miss Prentiss Tells A Lie

14: A Priestess Of Osiris

15: The Timid Admirer

16: The Jewel

17: The Ear Of The Sanctuary

18: Nig-Nog

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Introduction

EDGAR WALLACE was a prolific author of short stories, which were published in all sorts of unlikely places and in many cases then entirely forgotten. Some of them were collected in his lifetime, mostly those short stories forming a series, such as The Reporter, The Iron Grip, and The Adventures of Heine. Most of them, however, were not in the form of series.

These non-series stories are collected in this series of volumes.

The stories in the volume are from Circumstantial Evidence and Other Stories  (1; 3-9), Fighting Snub Reilly (2), and For Information Received and Other Stories (10-18), all 1929, eliminating many duplications.

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1: Circumstantial Evidence

COLONEL Chartres Dane lingered irresolutely in the broad and pleasant lobby. Other patients had lingered awhile in that agreeable vestibule. In wintry days it was a cozy place; its polished panelled walls reflecting the gleam of logs that burnt in the open fireplace. There was a shining oak settle that invited gossip, and old prints, and blue china bowls frothing over with the flowers of a belated autumn or advanced spring-tide, to charm the eye.

In summer it was cool and dark and restful. The mellow tick of the ancient clock, the fragrance of roses, the soft breeze that came through an open casement stirring the lilac curtains uneasily, these corollaries of peace and order had soothed many an unquiet mind.

Colonel Chartres Dane fingered a button of his light dust-coat and his thin patrician face was set in thought. He was a spare man of fifty-five; a man of tired eyes and nervous gesture.

Dr. Merriget peered at him through his powerful spectacles and wondered.

It was an awkward moment, for the doctor had murmured his sincere, if conventional, regrets and encouragements, and there was nothing left but to close the door on his patient.

"You have had a bad wound there, Mr. Jackson," he said, by way of changing a very gloomy subject and filling in the interval of silence. This intervention might call to mind in a soldier some deed of his, some far field of battle where men met death with courage and fortitude. Such memories might be helpful to a man under sentence.

Colonel Dane fingered the long scar on his cheek.

"Yes," he said absently, "a child did that— my niece. Quite my own fault."

"A child?" Dr. Merriget appeared to be shocked. He was in reality very curious.

"Yes… she was eleven… my own fault. I spoke disrespectfully of her father. It was unpardonable, for he was only recently dead. He was my brother-in-law. We were at breakfast and she threw the knife… yes…"

He ruminated on the incident and a smile quivered at the corner of his thin lips.

"She hated me. She hates me still… yes…"

He waited.

The doctor was embarrassed and came back to the object of the visit.

"I should be ever so much more comfortable in my mind if you saw a specialist, Mr.— er— Jackson. You see how difficult it is for me to give an opinion? I may be wrong. I know nothing of your history, your medical history I mean. There are so many men in town who could give you a better and more valuable opinion than I. A country practitioner like myself is rather in a backwater. One has the usual cases that come to one in a small country town, maternity cases, commonplace ailments… it is difficult to keep abreast of the extraordinary developments in medical science…"

"Do you know anything about Machonicies College?" asked the colonel unexpectedly.

"Yes, of course." The doctor was surprised. "It is one of the best of the technical schools. Many of our best doctors and chemists take a preparatory course there. Why?"

"I merely asked. As to your specialists… I hardly think I shall bother them."

Dr. Merriget watched the tall figure striding down the red-tiled path between the banked flowers, and was still standing on the doorstep when the whine of his visitor's machine had gone beyond the limits of his hearing.

"H'm," said Dr. Merriget as he returned to his study. He sat awhile thinking.

"Mr. Jackson?" he said aloud. "I wonder why the colonel calls himself 'Mr. Jackson'?"

He had seen the colonel two years before at a garden party, and had an excellent memory for faces.

He gave the matter no further thought, having certain packing to superintend— he was on the eve of his departure for Constantinople, a holiday trip he had promised himself for years.

On the following afternoon at Machonicies Technical School, a lecture was in progress.

"… by this combustion you have secured true K.c.y… which we will now test and compare with the laboratory quantities… a deliquescent and colorless crystal extremely soluble…"

The master, whose monotonous voice droned like the hum of a distant, big, stationary blue-bottle, was a middle-aged man, to whom life was no more than a chemical reaction, and love not properly a matter for his observation or knowledge. He had an idea that it was dealt with effectively in another department of the college… metaphysics… or was it philosophy? Or maybe it came into the realms of the biological master?

Ella Grant glared resentfully at the crystals which glittered on the blue paper before her, and snapped out the bunsen burner with a vicious twist of finger and thumb. Denman always overshot the hour. It was a quarter past five! The pallid clock above the dais, where Professor Denman stood, seemed to mock her impatience.

She sighed wearily and fiddled with the apparatus on the bench at which she sat. Some twenty other white-coated girls were also fiddling with test tubes and bottles and graduated measures, and twenty pairs of eyes glowered at the bald and stooping man who, unconscious of the passing of time, was turning affectionately to the properties of potassium.

"Here we have a metal whose strange affinity for oxygen… eh, Miss Benson?… five? Bless my soul, so it is! Class is dismissed. And ladies,  ladies, ladies!  Please, please let me make myself heard. The laboratory keeper will take from you all chemicals you have drawn for this experiment…"

They were crowding toward the door to the change room. Smith, the laboratory man, stood in the entrance grabbing wildly at little green and blue bottles that were thrust at him, and vainly endeavoring by a private system of mnemonics to commit his receipts to memory.

"Miss Fairlie, phial fairly; Miss Jones, bottle bones; Miss Walter, bottle salter."

If at the end of his collection he failed to recall a rhyme to any name, the owner had passed without cashing in.

"Miss Grant— ?"

The laboratory of the Analytical Class was empty. Nineteen bottles stood on a shelf and he reviewed them.

"Miss Grant— ?"

No, he had said nothing about "aunt" or "can't" or "pant."

He went into the change room, opened a locker and felt in the pockets of the white overall. They were empty. Returning to the laboratory, he wrote in his report book:

"Miss Grant did not return experiment bottle."

He spelt experiment with two r's and two m's.

Ella found the bottle in the pocket of her overall as she was hanging it up in the long cupboard of the change room. She hesitated a moment, frowning resentfully at the little blue phial in her hand, and rapidly calculating the time it would take to return to the laboratory to find the keeper and restore the property. In the end, she pushed it into her bag and hurried from the building. It was not an unusual occurrence that a student overlooked the return of some apparatus, and it could be restored in the morning.

Had Jack succeeded? That was the thought which occupied her. The miracle about which every junior dreams had happened. Engaged in the prosecution of the notorious Flackman, his leader had been taken ill, and the conduct of the case for the State had fallen to him. He was opposed by two brilliant advocates, and the judge was a notorious humanitarian.

She did not stop to buy a newspaper; she was in a fret at the thought that Jack Freeder might not have waited for her, and she heaved a sigh of relief when she turned into the old-world garden of the courthouse and saw him pacing up and down the flagged walk, his hands in his pockets.

"I am so sorry…"

She had come up behind him, and he turned on his heel to meet her. His face spoke success. The elation in it told her everything she wanted to know, and she slipped her arm through his with a queer mingled sense of pride and uneasiness.

"… the judge sent for me to his room afterwards and told me that the attorney could not have conducted the case better than I."

"He is guilty?" she asked, hesitating.

"Who, Flackman… I suppose so," he said carelessly. "His pistol was found in Sinnit's apartment, and it was known that he quarrelled with Sinnit about money, and there was a girl in it, I think, although we have never been able to get sufficient proof of that to put her into the box. You seldom have direct evidence in cases of this character, Ella, and in many ways circumstantial evidence is infinitely more damning. If a witness went into the box and said, 'I saw Flackman shoot Sinnit and saw Sinnit die,' the whole case would stand or fall by the credibility of that evidence; prove that witness an habitual liar and there is no chance of a conviction. On the other hand, when there are six or seven witnesses, all of whom subscribe to some one act or appearance or location of a prisoner, and all agreeing… why, you have him."

She nodded.

Her acquaintance with Jack Freeder had begun on her summer vacation, and had begun romantically but unconventionally, when a sailing boat overturned, with its occupant pinned beneath the bulging canvas. It was Ella, a magnificent swimmer, who, bathing, had seen the accident and had dived into the sea to the assistance of the drowning man.

"This means a lot to me, Ella," he said earnestly as they turned into the busy street. "It means the foundation of a new life."

His eyes met hers, and lingered for a second, and she was thrilled.

"Did you see Stephanie last night?" he asked suddenly.

She felt guilty.

"No," she admitted, "but I don't think you ought to worry about that, Jack. Stephanie is expecting the money almost by any mail."

"She has been expecting the money almost by any mail for a month past," he said dryly, "and in the meantime this infernal note is becoming due. What I can't understand—"

She interrupted him with a laugh.

"You can't understand why they accepted my signature as a guarantee for Stephanie's," she laughed, "and you are extremely uncomplimentary!"

Stephanie Boston, her some-time room mate, and now her apartmental neighbor, was a source of considerable worry to Jack Freeder, although he had only met her once. A handsome, volatile girl, with a penchant for good clothes and a mode of living out of all harmony with the meager income she drew from fashion-plate artistry, she had found herself in difficulties. It was a condition which the wise had long predicted, and Ella, not so wise, had dreaded. And then one day the young artist had come to her with an oblong slip of paper, and an incoherent story of somebody being willing to lend her money if Ella would sign her name; and Ella Grant, to whom finance was an esoteric mystery, had cheerfully complied.

"If you were a great heiress, or you were expecting a lot of money coming to you through the death of a relative," persisted Jack, with a frown, "I could understand Isaacs being satisfied with your acceptance, but you aren't!"

Ella laughed softly and shook her head.

"The only relative I have in the world is poor dear Uncle Chartres, who loathes me! I used to loathe him too, but I've got over that. After daddy died I lived with him for a few months, but we quarrelled over— over— well, I won't tell you what it was about, because I am sure he was sorry. I had a fiendish temper as a child, and I threw a knife at him."

"Good Lord!" gasped Jack, staring at her.

She nodded solemnly.

"I did— so you see there is very little likelihood of Uncle Chartres, who is immensely rich, leaving me anything more substantial than the horrid weapon with which I attempted to slay him!"

Jack was silent. Isaacs was a professional moneylender… he was not a philanthropist.

When Ella got home that night she determined to perform an unpleasant duty. She had not forgotten Jack Freeder's urgent insistence upon her seeing Stephanie Boston— she had simply avoided the unpalatable.

Stephanie's flat was on the first floor; her own was immediately above. She considered for a long time before she pressed the bell.

Grace, Stephanie's elderly maid, opened the door, and her eyes were red with recent weeping.

"What is the matter?" asked Ella in alarm.

"Come in, miss," said the servant miserably. "Miss Boston left a letter for you."

"Left?" repeated Ella wonderingly. "Has she gone away?"

"She was gone when I came this morning. The bailiffs have been here…"

Ella's heart sank.

The letter was short but eminently lucid:

"I am going away, Ella. I do hope that you will forgive me. That wretched bill has become due and I simply cannot face you again. I will work desperately hard to repay you, Ella."

The girl stared at the letter, not realizing what it all meant. Stephanie had gone away!

"She took all her clothes, miss. She left this morning, and told the porter she was going into the country; and she owes me three weeks' wages!"

Ella went upstairs to her own flat, dazed and shaken. She herself had no maid; a woman came every morning to clean the flat, and Ella had her meals at a neighboring restaurant.

As she made the last turn of the stairs she was conscious that there was a man waiting on the landing above, with his back to her door. Though she did not know him, he evidently recognized her, for he raised his hat. She had a dim idea that she had seen him somewhere before, but for the moment could not recollect the circumstances.

"Good evening, Miss Grant," he said amiably. "I think we have met before. Miss Boston introduced me— name of Higgins."

She shook her head.

"I am afraid I don't remember you," she said, and wondered whether his business was in connection with Stephanie's default.

"I brought the paper up that you signed about three months ago."

Then she recalled him and went cold.

"Mr. Isaacs didn't want to make any kind of trouble," he said. "The bill became due a week ago and we have been trying to get Miss Boston to pay. As it is, it looks very much as though you will have to find the money."

"When?" she asked in dismay.

"Mr. Isaacs will give you until to tomorrow night," said the man. "I have been waiting here since five o'clock to see you. I suppose it is convenient, miss?"

Nobody knew better than Mr. Isaacs' clerk that it would be most inconvenient, not to say impossible, for Ella Grant to produce four hundred pounds.

"I will write to Mr. Isaacs," she said, finding her voice at last.

She sat down in the solitude and dusk of her flat to think things out. She was overwhelmed, numbed by the tragedy. To owe money that she could not pay was to Ella Grant an unspeakable horror.

There was a letter in the letter-box. She had taken it out mechanically when she came in, and as mechanically slipped her fingers through the flap and extracted a folded paper. But she put it down without so much as a glance at its contents.

What would Jack say? What a fool she had been, what a perfectly reckless fool! She had met difficulties before, and had overcome them. When she had left her uncle's house as a child of fourteen and had subsisted on the slender income which her father had left her, rejecting every attempt on the part of Chartres Dane to make her leave the home of an invalid maiden aunt where she had taken refuge, she had faced what she believed was the supreme crisis of life.

But this was different.

Chartres Dane! She rejected the thought instantly, only to find it recurring. Perhaps he would help. She had long since overcome any ill-feeling she had towards him, for whatever dislike she had, had been replaced by a sense of shame and repentance. She had often been on the point of writing him to beg his forgiveness, but had stopped short at the thought that he might imagine she had some ulterior motive in seeking to return to his good graces. He was her relative. He had some responsibility… again the thought inserted itself, and suddenly she made up her mind.

Chartres Dane's house lay twelve miles out of town, a great rambling place set on the slopes of a wooded hill, a place admirably suited to his peculiar love of solitude.

She had some difficulty in finding a taxi-driver who was willing to make the journey, and it had grown dark, though a pale light still lingered in the western skies, when she descended from the cab at the gateway of Hevel House. There was a lodge at the entrance of the gate, but this had long since been untenanted. She found her way up the long drive to the columned portico in front of the house. The place was in darkness, and she experienced a pang of apprehension. Suppose he was not there? (Even if he were, he would not help her, she told herself.) But the possibility of his being absent, however, gave her courage.

Her hand was on the bell when there came to her a flash of memory. At such an hour he would be sitting in the window-recess overlooking the lawn at the side of the house. She had often seen him there on warm summer nights, his glass of port on the broad window-ledge, a cigar clenched between his white teeth, brooding out into the darkness.

She came down the steps, and walking on the close-cropped grass bordering the flower-beds, came slowly, almost stealthily, to the library window. The big casement was wide open; a faint light showed within, and she stopped dead, her heart beating a furious rat-a-plan at the sight of a filled glass on the window-ledge. His habits had not changed, she thought; he himself would be sitting just out of sight from where she stood, in that window-recess which was nearest to her. Summoning all her courage, she advanced still farther. He was not in his customary place, and she crept nearer to the window.

Colonel Chartres Dane was sitting at a large writing-table in the center of the room; his back was toward her, and he was writing by the light of two tall candles that stood upon the table.

At the sight of his back all her courage failed, and, as he rose from the table, she shrank back into the shadow. She saw his white hand take up the glass of wine, and after a moment, peeping again, she saw him, still with his back to her, put it on the table by him as he sat down again.

She could not do it, she dare not do it, she told herself, and turned away sorrowfully. She would write to him.

She had stepped from the grass to the path when a man came from an opening in the bushes and gripped her arm.

"Hello!" he said, "who are you, and what are you doing here?"

"Let me go," she cried, frightened. "I— I—"

"What are you doing by the colonel's window?"

"I am his niece," she said, trying to recover some of her dignity.

"I thought you might be his aunt," said the gamekeeper ironically. "Now, my girl, I am going to take you in to the colonel—"

With a violent thrust she pushed him from her; the man stumbled and fell. She heard a thud and a groan, and stood rooted to the spot with horror.

"Have I hurt you?" she whispered. There was no reply.

She felt, rather than saw, that he had struck his head against a tree in falling, and turning, she flew down the drive, terrified, nearly fainting in her fright. The cabman saw her as she flung open the gate and rushed out.

"Anything wrong?" he asked.

"I— I think I have killed a man," she said incoherently, and then from the other end of the drive she heard a thick voice cry:

"Stop that girl!"

It was the voice of the gamekeeper, and for a moment the blood came back to her heart.

"Take me away, quickly, quickly," she cried.

The cabman hesitated.

"What have you been doing?" he asked.

"Take— take me away," she pleaded.

Again he hesitated.

"Jump in," he said gruffly.

THREE WEEKS later John Penderbury, one of the greatest advocates at the Bar, walked into Jack Freeder's chambers.

The young man sat at his table, his head on his arm, and Penderbury put his hand lightly upon the shoulders of the stricken man.

"You've got to take a hold of yourself, Freeder," he said kindly. "You will neither help yourself nor her by going under."

Jack lifted a white, haggard face to the lawyer.

"It is horrible, horrible," he said huskily. "She's as innocent as a baby. What evidence have they?"

"My dear good fellow," said Penderbury, "the only evidence worth while in a case like this is circumstantial evidence. If there were direct evidence we might test the credibility of the witness. But in circumstantial evidence every piece of testimony dovetails into the other; each witness creates one strand of the net."

"It is horrible, it is impossible, it is madness to think that Ella could—"

Penderbury shook his head. Pulling up a chair at the other side of the table, he sat down, his arms folded, his grave eyes fixed on the younger man.

"Look at it from a lawyer's point of view, Freeder," he said gently. "Ella Grant is badly in need of money. She has backed a bill for a girl-friend and the money is suddenly demanded. A few minutes after learning this from Isaacs' clerk, she finds a letter in her flat, which she has obviously read— the envelope was opened and its contents extracted— a letter which is from Colonel Dane's lawyers, telling her that the colonel has made her his sole heiress. She knows, therefore, that the moment the colonel dies she will be a rich woman. She has in her handbag a bottle containing cyanide of potassium, and that night, under the cover of darkness, drives to the colonel's house and is seen outside the library window by Colonel Dane's gamekeeper. She admitted, when she was questioned by the detective, that she knew the colonel was in the habit of sitting by the window and that he usually put his glass of port on the window-ledge. What was easier than to drop a fatal dose of cyanide into the wine? Remember, she admitted that she had hated him and that once she threw a knife at him, wounding him, so that the scar remained to the day of his death. She admitted herself that it was his practice to put the wine where she could have reached it."

He drew a bundle of papers from his pocket, unfolded them, and turned the leaves rapidly.

"Here it is," and he read:

"Yes, I saw a glass of wine on the window-ledge. The colonel was in the habit of sitting in the window on summer evenings. I have often seen him there, and I knew when I saw the wine that he was near at hand."

He pushed the paper aside and looked keenly at the wretched man before him.

"She is seen by the gamekeeper, as I say," he went on, "and this man, attempting to intercept her, she struggles from his grasp and runs down the drive to the cab. The cabman says she was agitated, and when he asked her what was the matter, she replied that she had killed a man—"

"She meant the gamekeeper," interrupted Jack.

"She may or may not, but she made that statement. There are the facts, Jack; you cannot get past them. The letter from the lawyers— which she says she never read— the envelope was found open and the letter taken out; is it likely that she had not read it? The bottle of cyanide of potassium was found in her possession, and—" he spoke deliberately—"the colonel was found dead at his desk and death was due to cyanide of potassium. A candle which stood on his desk had been overturned by him in his convulsions, and the first intimation the servants had that anything was wrong was the sight of the blazing papers on the table, which the gamekeeper saw when he returned to report what had occurred in the grounds. There is no question what verdict the jury will return…"

It was a great and a fashionable trial. The courthouse was crowded, and the public had fought for a few places that were vacant in the gallery.

Sir Johnson Grey, the Attorney-General, was to lead for the Prosecution, and Penderbury had Jack Freeder as his junior.

The opening trial was due for ten o'clock, but it was half-past ten when the Attorney-General and Penderbury came into the court, and there was a light in Penderbury's eyes and a smile on his lips which amazed his junior.

Jack had only glanced once at the pale, slight prisoner. He dared not look at her.

"What is the delay?" he asked irritably. "This infernal judge is always late."

At that moment the court rose as the judge came on to the Bench, and almost immediately afterwards the Attorney-General was addressing the court.

"My lord," he said, "I do not purpose offering any evidence in this case on behalf of the Crown. Last night I received from Dr. Merriget, an eminent practitioner of Townville, a sworn statement on which I purpose examining him.

"Dr. Merriget," the Attorney-General went on, "has been traveling in the Near East, and a letter which was sent to him by the late Colonel Dane only reached him a week ago, coincident with the doctor learning that these proceedings had been taken against the prisoner at the bar.

"Dr. Merriget immediately placed himself in communication with the Crown officers of the law, as a result of which I am in a position to tell your lordship that I do not intend offering evidence against Ella Grant.

"Apparently Colonel Dane had long suspected that he was suffering from an incurable disease, and to make sure, he went to Dr. Merriget and submitted himself to an examination. The reason for his going to a strange doctor is, that he did not want to have it known that he had been consulting specialists in town. The doctor confirmed his worst fears, and Colonel Dane returned to his home. Whilst on the Continent, the doctor received a letter from Colonel Dane, which I purpose reading."

He took a letter from the table, adjusted his spectacles, and read:

DEAR DR. MERRIGET,

It occurred to me after I had left you the day before yesterday, that you must have identified me, for I have a dim recollection that we met at a garden party. I am not, as you suggested, taking any other advice. I know too well that this fibrous growth is beyond cure, and I purpose tonight taking a fatal dose of cyanide of potassium. I feel that I must notify you in case by a mischance there is some question as to how I met my death.

Very sincerely yours,

CHARTRES DANE."

"I feel that the ends of justice will be served," continued the Attorney-General "if I call the doctor…"

IT WAS NOT very long before another Crown case came the way of Jack Freeder. A week after his return from his honeymoon, he was sent for to the Public Prosecutor's office, and that gentleman interviewed him.

"You did so well in the Flackman case, Freeder, that I want you to undertake the prosecution of Wise. Undoubtedly you will gain kudos in a trial of this description, for the Wise case has attracted a great deal of attention."

"What is the evidence?" asked Jack bluntly.

"Circumstantial, of course," said the Public Prosecutor, "but—"

Jack shook his head.

"I think not, sir," he said firmly but respectfully. "I will not prosecute in another case of murder unless the murder is committed in my presence."

The Public Prosecutor stared at him.

"That means you will never take another murder prosecution— have you given up criminal work, Mr. Freeder?"

"Yes, sir," said Jack gravely; "my wife doesn't like it."

Today, Jack Freeder is referred to in legal circles as a glaring example of how a promising career can be ruined by marriage.

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2: Fighting Snub Reilly

TEN MINUTES before Snub Reilly left his dressing-room a messenger delivered a letter. His seconds and his manager protested against his reading anything which might well be disturbing at such a critical moment, for the little man was fighting for his title, and Curly Boyd, the aspirant to championship honors, had knocked out four successive opponents before he claimed his right to a meeting with the World Champion.

"Let me see it," said Snub, and he was something of an autocrat. The letter was typewritten and was signed by two reputable men whose names were honored in the sporting world.

Snub read the letter slowly.

"A challenge," he said tersely, "for £10,000 a side."

"Who is the feller?" asked his manager.

"They call him 'An Unknown'; he wants to meet the winner of tonight's fight. Send a wire and say I accept."

His manager grinned. He was a stout man with a moist face, and he had infinite confidence in Snub, but—

"Better wait till after the fight?" he suggested.

"Send it," said Snub curtly, and put on his dressing-gown.

Manager Seller dispatched the wire, not without some discomfort of mind. The fourth round brought him relief.

Curly Boyd, an approved European champion, had himself to thank for such an early ending to his rosy dreams. He had detected, as he thought, a certain unsteadiness in Snub's leg movements, an uncertainty that was a hint of a stagger. So Curly, relying upon his excellent fitness, had put everything into a projected left and right. Incidentally he was fighting the greatest ring strategist of his day, and when he uncovered his jaw for the fraction of a second…

"Eight… nine… ten— out!" said a far-away voice in Curly's ear. Somebody shook him by his gloved hand, and he heard above the roaring in his head a louder roar, and dropped his head wearily to catch a glimpse of a figure in a flowered dressing-gown slipping through the gangway into the gloom behind the ring seats.

It was a fine thing for Snub, because the eyes of the world were on that fight— outside the building limousines were parked twenty deep— and before he reached his dressing-room the news of his victory was quivering in dots and dashes on every line and cable that ran from the city.

He stripped off his dressing-gown and submitted to the attentions of the masseur with some sign of impatience. Ten minutes after the fight he left the building by a side door, and mingled with the thousands who crowded about the entrances. Modesty was Snub Reilly's favorite vice.

The echoes of such a combat were not to die down in a day, for Snub was something of a national hero. This champion who never gave interviews, who was so taciturn and secretive that his very seconds did not meet him until the day before his fights, appealed to the popular imagination as no other ring favorite had done. And when, at the end of the press description, it was announced that "An Unknown" had challenged the winner for a purse of $50,000 (£10,000), and the challenge had been accepted, there was an added value to the news.

Even staid and sleepy Rindle, dedicated to the education of youth, was excited, wildly excited for Rindle. The headmaster read the account of the fight at breakfast and hummed and ha'd his approval of the lightning stroke which laid the presumptuous Curly Boyd so low. And on the opposite side of the breakfast table Vera Shaw, nineteen and beautiful, hid a newspaper on her lap, read furtively and was thrilled. A group of boys  en route  from their dormitories-houses to prayers and morning school, gathered about one daring soul who had broken all school regulations by purchasing forbidden literature, and whooped joyously.

It was natural that Barry Tearle, the mathematical master, should stop in the midst of correcting exercises, hitch up his gown at the neck for comfort, and sit back to study the account. Natural, because he was also games master and instructor of the noble art to Rindle School.

He put down the paper with a thoughtful frown and went back to his exercises, lighting his pipe mechanically the while. Presently he gathered the papers together and rose. The bell was clanging the warning for prayers in Hall, at which solemn function all masters were expected to be present. He hurried across the quadrangle-campus and under the archway above which was part of the head's quarters. He never passed under that arch without wondering whether Vera owned those rooms. It was part of the daily routine of unconscious speculation, and he was so wondering as he turned to join the stream of boys on the flagged path to Hall, when he heard his name called.

He turned quickly, startled almost, and swept off his cap.

It was the subject of his thoughts.

"I saw you come home this morning."

She pointed an accusing finger and he blushed.

"Did— did you? My car had a breakdown near Northwood— I hope I didn't disturb you?"

No errant boy called to his study to explain a delinquency could have looked more patently guilty than he, and she laughed, and when Vera Shaw laughed, it required all his self-possession to behave sanely.

"No, you didn't disturb me. I couldn't sleep and was sitting at the window approving of the moon when you sneaked into the quad— there is no other word for it. Did you see the fight?" she asked suddenly, and he gasped.

"No, I did  not  see the fight," he said severely; "and I'm surprised—"

"Pooh!" She flicked her finger at him. "I've read every bit about it. Do tell me who is 'An Unknown' who is going to fight that darling Snub— run, you'll be late!"

The bell had stopped, the trembling note of the organ quivered in the still air, and Barry gathered up his gown and sprinted. He hoped she would be waiting when chapel ended, and was the first to leave after the final "amen." She was standing where he had left her, but Sellinger was with her, and, forgetful of the admirable charity toward all men which he had so recently intoned, Barry cursed Sellinger most heartily.

John Sellinger lived in Rindle; his ancestors had founded Rindle School, and he himself assumed the style and manner and mental attitude of hereditary patron saint to the school. He was tall, overtopping Barry by six inches, florid, well fed, and prosperous. He was good-looking too, in a heavy, aquiline way. And he made no secret that his patronage of Rindle might extend to acquiring relationship with its headmaster.

"Morning, Tearle. I suppose you didn't see the fight?"

"No, I  didn't  see the fight," said Barry savagely. "Have I nothing better to do— did you?" he asked suddenly.

"Yes, rather— I was just telling Vera all about it. Wonderful fellow, Reilly. Smaller even than you."

"Is it possible?" asked Barry, affecting an extravagant surprise. "Could you see him?"

"Don't be sarcastic," said Mr. Sellinger. "Of course you could see him— you don't see much of him from where I sat, he doesn't stand still long enough, but, boy, he's a fighter!"

"So the papers say," said Barry wearily.

"As to the unknown idiot who wants to fight him—"

"Good morning," said Barry shortly, and with a lift of his hat went on.

"Curious fellow that." Sellinger shook his head. "Can't quite make him out, Vera."

"Mr. Sellinger." Her tone was very quiet.

"Yes, Vera?"

"Will you please not call me by my Christian name?"

He was surprised and hurt.

"But, my dear child—"

"But I'm not your dear child," she said in the same voice. "I'm not even a child."

He drew himself erect, for he was a Sellinger of Rindle; and Sellingers of Rindle have drawn themselves erect for several centuries at the mere suggestion that they could not do just what their sweet fancy dictated.

"Of course, if you wish it, Ve— Miss— er— Shaw; by all means. I'm sorry if I've offended you."

He was not sorry except for himself, of course; but it was the kind of reply that a representative of the oldest family in the county should make.

"You haven't offended me— only I don't like it. Why do you think that Mr. Tearle is curious?"

"Well," he hesitated, "a schoolmaster isn't the best paid professional in the world, and yet Tearle lives in style, has a car of his own, is always dressed well."

She looked at him in that weary, patient way which women can make so offensive.

"Other people have money— you have money, and yet it isn't curious," she said coldly. "Or do you think it is curious because you haven't got it all?"

He smiled indulgently.

"How like you to defend him!" he said, and before indignation could permit an appropriate reply he went on: "Did your father say whether the School Extension Committee was meeting at the usual hour?"

She shook her head and half turned to go.

"I wish—" he began, and stopped.

"You wish?"

"Well"— this time his halt of speech was less natural—"I wish that other arrangements would be made about—"

"About what?" She was exasperated by his studied hesitations, but she was curious.

"About the money that has been raised for the school extension. It is a tremendous sum for a— well, for an ill-paid master to handle."

He knew he had made a mistake before the words were out, for the girl's face had gone from crimson to white as the drift of his meaning appeared.

"Do you"— she was breathless, and her voice sounded strange even to her—" do you— mean to suggest that Mr. Tearle— gets his money for motor-cars… oh, it's too absurd— too wicked— how dare you!"

He blinked at her in amazement. He had never regarded her as anything but a soft, fluffy, kitteny thing, and a possible ornament to his gloomy house. He looked aghast upon a fury; her gray eyes, dark with passion, her lips straight drawn and unbecoming. That is the impression he carried away with him— her mouth was unbecoming in anger.

"My dear—" he began.

"You must have an evil mind to think such things," she flamed. "I hate you!"

He stood as a man petrified until she had disappeared through the porch of Dr. Shaw's study. Then he pulled up his collar, and stalked haughtily through the schoolhouse gate.

"Very unbecoming," he spluttered to himself. "Very unladylike… very unnecessary…"

Vera Shaw saw him depart from the window of her bedroom, and made faces at him which were unbecoming and certainly unladylike. Then she sat on the edge of her bed and wept bitterly. Which was unnecessary.

Dr. Shaw came into lunch ten minutes earlier than she had expected, and brought Sellinger with him, to the girl's intense annoyance.

"I've asked Sellinger to stay to lunch, Vera," he said. "Will you tell Mrs. Burdon to put another place at the table? We have a meeting of the Extension Committee this afternoon, and I cannot send Mr. Sellinger all the way back."

A more sensitive man than Sellinger might have been hurt by the apology for his invitation; but Sellinger was not that kind of man. He smiled graciously upon the girl, and in that smile conveyed a tacit agreement that what had happened that morning should be overlooked and forgotten.

Fortunately for Vera, there was little need for her to speak, for the conversation centered about the afternoon committee meeting. She was alert for any comment which might be remotely disparaging to Barry Tearle; but Mr. Sellinger, with unexampled wisdom, was careful to keep off the subject, and when Tearle's name came into the conversation it was Dr. Shaw who was responsible.

"There was rather an unpleasant little incident this morning in town," he said— and when those of Rindle School referred to "town," they meant all that part of Rindle which was not school. "I don't know what started it, but I'm quite sure the boy was not in the wrong."

"Is one of the boys in trouble, Father?" asked Vera quickly.

"Well, not exactly in trouble. You remember— do you know the man Crickley— he has a tumbledown shanty on the Jamaica Road?"

She nodded.

"An awful ruffian," she said; "he was at court last year, and he drinks, doesn't he?"

"I should imagine he had been drinking this morning. He was going through the town with his unfortunate wife, and apparently something she said disagreed with him— at any rate, the brute hit her first with his stick, and although I don't suppose he hurt her very much, one of the boys of the fifth— young Tilling, to be exact— who happened to be passing, interfered…"

"Good for him!" said the girl, her eyes sparkling.

Dr. Shaw smiled.

"It looked like being bad for him," he said. "For the blackguard turned his attention to the boy, and had him by the scruff of his neck, according to accounts, when Tearle, who was going over to the higher mathematical set, came upon the scene. I understand he asked the man very civilly to release the boy; whereupon he certainly loosed his hold of the boy, but he struck at Tearle."

The girl opened her mouth in consternation.

"Was he— was he hurt?" she asked.

"No, I don't think he was," the doctor chuckled quietly. "Tearle, you know"— he turned to Sellinger—"is our games master, and a rattling good instructor in boxing. I saw the captain of the school, who witnessed the encounter, and he is most enthusiastic about what followed."

"Did he strike the man? Was there a brawl?" asked Sellinger, ready to be shocked.

"I don't think there was much of a brawl, but he certainly struck the man," said the doctor dryly. "Crickley had to be assisted away."

Sellinger shook his head heavily.

"I don't know whether that sort of thing's good for Rindle," he said, in his capacity of patron saint.

"Nonsense!" said the doctor sharply, and the girl beamed upon her father. "A most excellent lesson and example to the boys. It means, of course, that the boys in Tearle's form will give themselves airs, but it is what I would term a most excellent thing to have happened."

Sellinger was discreetly silent on this conclusion.

"I talked to Tearle after school," he said. "Of course, Tearle was most apologetic." He paused and frowned. "Do you know, Vera," he said, "I had the most extraordinary impression when I was speaking to Tearle. In this morning's paper— which, of course, you haven't read, my dear, at least not the part that I am referring to— there was a reference to a challenge which had been issued by a certain Unknown to the boxer, Snub Reilly."

"You don't mean that—" she said breathlessly.

"Yes, I had that impression— that Tearle was the Unknown. You see, I mentioned the fight of the previous evening, and I talked to him about the challenge, just as I might talk to Sellinger here, in an ordinary matter-of-fact way. And do you know that he went as red as a beetroot?"

Sellinger laughed loud and heartily.

"That would be too absurd," he said contemptuously. "I grant that our friend Tearle may be a most excellent boxer, but an excellent amateur has no earthly chance against even a third-class professional; and Snub Reilly is at the top of his class."

Dr. Shaw shrugged.

"I agree it is ridiculous," he said.

"Besides," Sellinger went on, enlarging his argument, "before that match can occur, somebody has got to find ten thousand pounds; and ten thousand pounds is a lot of money—"

Vera was looking at him, and their eyes met. She saw in his the dawn of a great suspicion, and her hand gripped the handle of her bread-knife murderously. It was Sellinger who changed the subject abruptly, but the girl knew that he was far from relinquishing his theory.

Sellinger went out to telephone to his house, and the girl was left alone with her father.

"Daddie," she said, "do you like Mr. Sellinger?"

He looked at her over his glasses.

"No, dear; to be candid," he said slowly, "I think him a most unmitigated bore."

She held out her hand solemnly and her father gripped it.

"I think you are the most wonderful father in the world," she said. "And all this time I was thinking that you loved him."

"I loathe him," said her father frankly, "in so far as it is possible for a person of my profession to loathe anybody. But the Sellingers are a sort of tradition at Rindle, and one has to be civil to them."

"I'm going to tell you something."

She walked over and shut the door which Sellinger had left open.

"Do you know what he suggested to me this morning?"

"Who, Sellinger?"

She nodded.

"He suggested that the School Extension funds are being stolen by Mr. Tearle."

Dr. Shaw jumped up, pink with anger.

"How dare he? It's a monstrous suggestion!" he said. "I shall tell him— —"

"No, you'll tell him nothing," said Vera hastily. "What is the use of my giving you my confidence? I am only telling you for your guidance."

Mr. Shaw sat down in his chair again.

"A disgraceful suggestion," he rumbled, "and palpably stupid. Certainly, Tearle as treasurer has control of the money."

"Is it cash? I mean, could you go into a room and take so many hundreds or thousands from a box?" asked the girl, and Dr. Shaw laughed.

"Of course not. The money is represented by certain securities— stocks in various industries and railways. Tearle has the handling and the care of these stocks— he is a capital man of business. But to suggest— !" he fumed, and it needed all the girl's power of persuasion to bring him back to a condition of calm.

Mr. Sellinger went home that night deep in thought, and sat up until two o'clock in the morning writing letters to his friends. One of these friends was an editor of a newspaper closely identified with sport, and from him in a few days he learned more particulars of the challenge which had been issued to the great Snub Reilly. The fifty thousand dollars had to be deposited by the fifth of the following month, the sum being lodged in the bank in the name of three prominent sportsmen, one of whom was the writer. Where would Tearle get his fifty thousand? He was absolutely certain that Tearle was the challenger, and the news he had from the school confirmed him in his opinion. Further confirmation came one day at a committee meeting when Tearle had taken some papers from his pocket. Amongst them Sellinger saw a somewhat gaudy print. It was strangely familiar to him, but it was not until he got home that it flashed upon him that the print was a program of the Reilly-Boyd fight! So Tearle had been a spectator after all! And he had sworn that he had not seen the fight! The master, too, was in strict training, and once, looking from his bedroom in the dark hours of the morning— Sellinger was not a good sleeper— he saw a figure in white vest and shorts run past the lodge entrance, and recognized Barry Tearle as the runner.

The weeks that followed were for Mr. Sellinger weeks of interest and investigation. At a meeting of the Extension Committee, which gathered once a week to transact formal business, he asked for and secured a list of the securities held by the treasurer. And with this in his possession he bided his time.

There arrived at this period an unobtrusive individual who took lodgings in the village and appeared to have very little to do except to loaf about the school and watch the boys and the masters go in and out. He was a charming man, who made friends with the postmaster, and was on good terms with all the tradesmen before he had been in the village three days. One night Sellinger was finishing his dinner when a visitor was announced. It was the stranger, who greeted his employer deferentially.

"Well, Mr. Sellinger," he said, with satisfaction, "I have a few items of information for you which will interest you."

"Have you got him?" asked Mr. Sellinger eagerly.

"I wouldn't like to say that," said the detective, "but I rather fancy that if we haven't got him, we've put him in a very tight corner."

He took a notebook from his pocket, and turned the leaves.

"Yesterday afternoon Tearle sent a registered envelope to Taylor and Grime, the brokers. I got the address, because I'm a friend of the postmaster's— anyway, that was easy. I went straight up to the city by the night train, and called at Taylor and Grime the next morning, and it couldn't have happened better for me, because there's a clerk in the office who I know very well. As a matter of fact, I saved him from a whole lot of trouble a couple of years ago."

"What was it that Tearle sent?" asked Sellinger, holding his breath.

"Five thousand shares in the Rochester and Holbeach Railroad, one thousand shares in the Land Development Syndicate, and a thousand shares in the Newport Dock Corporation."

"Wait a moment," said Sellinger hastily, and went to his desk. He came back with a list.

"Read the names of those stocks over again," he said, and the detective complied.

"That's it!" Sellinger nodded. "All these shares are held by Tearle on behalf of the School Extension Fund!"

The detective looked at him curiously.

"Well, what are you going to do— pinch him?" he asked, and Mr. Sellinger smiled.

"No," he said softly, "I don't think we need arrest him yet awhile."

He paced up and down the room.

"I'll tell you what I'll do," he said. "I'm having the masters up to dinner tomorrow night. It's a practice that the Sellingers have always followed since the foundation of the school— I suppose you know that Rindle School was founded by one of my ancestors."

The detective did not know, but bowed reverently.

"Tearle lives with old Mrs. Gold in the High Street," Sellinger went on. "She's as deaf as a brick, and I believe goes to bed every night at nine o 'clock. His rooms are a long way from where she and the servants sleep, and anyway she's so deaf that she wouldn't hear you."

"What's the idea?" asked the detective

"Whilst I have Mr. Tearle here"— Sellinger emphasized his words with a regular thrust of his finger into his hireling's waistcoat—"you will make a very careful search through Tearle's papers."

The detective nodded.

"I get you," he said. "But how am I to find my way into the house?"

"The front door is always unfastened when Tearle is out at night," said Sellinger. "He was telling the Head last week that he never carried a key, and most of the houses leave their doors open— there is no crime in Rindle.

"Except what we commit," said the detective humorously.

"That," said Mr. Sellinger gravely, "is an impertinence. This is not a crime: I am acting in the best interests of justice."

The Sellinger dinner, which, as Mr. Sellinger said, was a feature of Rindle School life, was a deadly dull affair to two of the guests. For the host, with commendable foresight, had so arranged the seats that Vera Shaw sat at one end of the board on his right, and Barry Tearle at the other end of the long table on Dr. Shaw's right. This arrangement suited Mr. Sellinger admirably, because he had a proposal to make to Vera, the terms of which had taken a good day's thought. The girl, who would never have attended but for the fact that the three mistresses which Rindle boasted were present, was openly bored— a fact which Mr. Sellinger did not observe.

They were half-way through dinner when Sellinger exposed his grand scheme.

"Miss Vera," he said (he had compromised to that extent), "I want to make a suggestion to you, and I wonder how you'll take it?"

"That depends upon the suggestion," she said coolly.

"It may shock you," he began cautiously, lowering his voice. "But— how would you like to see the fight?"

"See the fight?" she repeated, startled. "Do you mean the fight between—"

"Between Snub Reilly and the Great Unknown," he said jocularly.

She thought a moment.

"I hardly think I'd like to see it at all," she said. "I do not approve of women attending such exhibitions."

"Suppose the Great Unknown were a friend of yours?" he said deliberately, and her face went pink.

"How absurd! Do you suggest—"

"I not only suggest, but I know," he said. "You must promise not to tell Tearle, because, if my surmise is correct, he would be upset by your knowing, and maybe the thing would peter out."

"But it's nonsense," she said contemptuously. "How could Mr. Tearle find ten thousand—" She bit her lip.

"He may have friends," said Sellinger suavely.

There was a silence.

"Do you think he could win— supposing he were— the— Unknown?"

"Why not?" lied Sellinger. "I'm told he is a very brilliant boxer, and I'm not so sure that Snub Reilly couldn't be beaten."

He saw the girl's head turn slowly, and, as if obeying a common impulse, Barry Tearle raised his head at that moment.

"Why do you want me to go?" she asked suddenly. But he was prepared for that: it was in framing the answer to such a question that he had spent the morning.

"Because," he said stoutly, "I think he will win. And, what is more"— it cost him a greater effort to deliver this sentiment than to carry out the rest of the scheme—"because I've an idea that Tearle is fond of you."

She turned quickly away, and did not reply for some minutes.

"I'll go on one condition," she said, "and I think that it can be managed. I have to go to town, and my aunt has asked me to stay the night— I can easily pretend that I am going to a theatre. Who will take me?"

"I, of course," said Mr. Sellinger gallantly, and she nodded.

"What is the condition?" he asked.

"That if you find you are wrong, and the— the Unknown is not Mr.— Tearle— you will take me away."

"Of course," said Mr. Sellinger heartily. "I wouldn't dream of allowing you to see the fight unless our friend was involved. Now remember, Miss Vera, it is absolutely necessary that you should not mention this matter to Mr. Tearle. Let it be a surprise to him. I can imagine," he went on, "how delighted he would be, how nerved for the— er— combat."

"Don't let us talk about it any more," she said.

To Barry Tearle's intense disappointment she left with her father, and scarcely spoke two words to him. He was puzzled. What had she and Sellinger been talking about so earnestly? he wondered. Did they know— he went pale at the thought.

He walked back to his lodgings a greatly worried young man.

The last guest had hardly departed before the detective was ushered into Sellinger's library, and one glance at his face revealed to that gentleman the measure of his success.

"We've got him, sir," he said exultantly. "Here you are." He laid a sheet of paper before the other.

"What is this?"

"I've copied them from a letter which I found on his table."

Mr. Sellinger picked up the paper and fixed his glasses. It was from a city bank and acknowledged the receipt of fifty thousand dollars which had been paid into Barry Tearle's account. But it was the second extract which filled Mr. Sellinger with joy. It was merely three lines copied from the counterfoil of Barry Tearle's check-book, which showed that the sum of fifty thousand dollars had been made out in favor of the Fight Committee!

Mr. Sellinger rubbed his hands.

"You've done splendidly, my friend, splendidly," he said. "Now, what shall we do?"

"You ought to have him arrested at once," said the detective, shaking his head. "Unless you take immediate steps, you'll never recover that money."

"No, no," said Sellinger.

He knew something better than that, but this he did not explain to the detective. He was going to see Tearle beaten— and somebody else was going to see him beaten too. And when the fight was over, the comedy would develop into drama and melodrama at that.

"I want somebody to have a lesson," he said solemnly, "a lesson which they will never forget in their lives, and which may have a lasting beneficial effect upon their future. To the uninitiated, my act may seem a cruel one; but it is often necessary, my friend, that one should be cruel to be kind."

"But what about the money?" asked the puzzled but practical detective. "That is going to be lost."

"I don't think so," said Mr. Sellinger. "If it is, then I am happily in a position to make good to the school the amount that this man has stolen."

He might have kept his secret, he might have maintained his outward calm to the grand dénouement; but it was impossible that he could keep his knowledge pent so long. The girl left for town early on the morning of the fight, and Barry, when he learned she had gone, and had gone without seeing him, felt as though the motor of life had dropped out. He himself went up by the afternoon train, having secured permission from the Head. An hour before he left, Dr. Shaw sent for him, and the doctor was obviously ill at ease.

"You wanted me, sir?" said Barry, coming into the study, and the Head looked round with a start.

"Yes, er— yes, Tearle," said the doctor uncomfortably. "Sit down, will you? I wanted to say to you— that I wish you luck."

He put out his hand.

"I'm a little worried, you know, Tearle, about it all, and to me it seems that you haven't a ghost of a chance."

"What do you mean, sir?"

"I mean, I believe you are the Unknown who has challenged this boxer, and somehow I wish you hadn't. It is not that I disapprove of boxing, and although there is certain to be a little trouble if the truth comes out that you are the challenger, we can get over that. No, it's the fear that you have risked your own private fortune"— he hesitated—"unless, of course, you persuaded your friends to assist you?"

"No, sir, it is all my own money," said Barry Tearle steadily.

"I hope you win." Dr. Shaw shook him cheerfully by the hand. "You're a good fellow, Tearle, and— and I hope you win; and I'm sure if my— if my girl knew, and of course she doesn't dream that you are taking part in this contest, that she would echo my wishes."

Barry wrung his hand in silence and left with a little lump in his throat.

It was a grand adventure for the girl. All day she had thought about nothing else, and alternated between hope and dread. Sometimes it was dread of the spectacle she would see; sometimes— and more often— it was the picture of Barry Tearle's failure which made her shiver. The faithful Mr. Sellinger arrived at nine o'clock in the evening. He was in his most jovial mood, as he had reason to be, for he had just parted from two Central Office detectives after putting them in possession of the vital facts.

He had arranged that the girl should arrive at the theatre where the fight was taking place, in time to miss some of the minor encounters which preceded it, and it was while they were waiting in the vestibule for one such contest to finish that he was hailed by a friend, and left her for a moment.

Vera was feeling self-conscious and uncomfortable. It did not bring ease to her mind that there were other ladies present. She felt ashamed and furtive and mean, and for the first time she began to have serious doubts as to what effect her presence would have upon the man whose victory she desired.

She still told herself that Sellinger was mistaken, and that the challenger was some other person than Barry, but in her heart of hearts she knew that she would see the man she loved within that cruel ring; and the thought of it set her heart thumping wildly.

"Talk to me later, Johnson. I'm going to get my seat," she heard Sellinger say, and then he took her arm and led her down a long aisle.

The theatre was in darkness save for the brilliant lights which hung above a square, white platform.

So that was the ring! It was smaller than she had expected. She looked round at the spectators in the gloom, and thought she had never seen so many thousands of faces so close together. She was seized with a panic as to what all those thousands would say if Barry was defeated. Would they cheer? She stopped, gripping fast to Sellinger's arm. She couldn't bear that.

"I don't think I'll go in," she whispered. "I really don't think that I can stand it."

"Come along," said Sellinger soothingly, and led her down to a ring seat.

She was too near. She knew that she was too near. She would rather see this thing at such a distance as made it impossible to distinguish between one fighter and the other. But she was there now and she must stay. And then it was that Sellinger could keep his secret no longer.

There was some delay, they learned. Snub had not arrived, but had telephoned that he was on the way. But for the delay, and the opportunity which it gave him, Sellinger might have maintained his silence to the end. But now he bent over the girl, and step by step traced the progress of his investigations, and she listened, chilled with horror. She could not even find the words to protest.

He might have noticed her distress, and in pity have toned down his lurid recital; but he was hot with triumph, and found a joy in his brutality. And then the climax came, when the girl was clutching to the arm of her chair, half fainting. The man to whom Sellinger had spoken in the vestibule came up, and said Snub had arrived. Mr. Johnson was stout, red faced, and white haired.

"Is the Unknown here?" demanded Sellinger with a grim smile.

"Oh yes, he's here. I'm told he's going to—"

"He's going nowhere," almost shouted Sellinger. "I've got a couple of detectives waiting for him, my friend."

"Oh, don't, don't!" said Vera, white to her lips.

"A couple of detectives?" The man looked from one to the other. "Well, I think that's rotten of you, Sellinger. The man has had his punishment. Why should he have more?"

"You know him, then?"

"I know him very well indeed," said Sellinger. "I don't know about his punishment."

"He had two years' imprisonment for forgery in Australia. He was one of the best lightweights we've had in this country for years. I told them that they ought to have come out boldly and told the public that it is Kid Mackay who was challenging; but the men who are behind him insisted on introducing him as 'An Unknown,' an idiotic piece of tactics."

The color was coming back to the girl's face as her eyes were fixed upon the other.

"Who is he?" she whispered.

"Kid Mackay, madam," said Sellinger's friend, and went on: "One of the best lads in the ring three years ago—"

"Then it's not Tearle?" wailed Sellinger.

Such a look of bewilderment was on his face that she could have laughed. Then with a start she remembered.

"You must take me away. You promised that if it was not—"

Her words were interrupted by a roar. A man was coming down one of the aisles in a purple dressing-gown. As he swung up between the ropes, his broad, good-humored face all smiles, one half the audience recognized the Unknown as the erstwhile champion and understood the reticence that his backers had shown.

But now a greater roar shook the building. Another figure moved amidst his seconds, and leaping lightly up to the ring, dodged through the ropes. From every part of the vast hall came a shout:

"Snub— Snub Reilly!"

"Snub Reilly!" Mr. Sellinger's voice was hollow, and then Snub Reilly turned, and the girl half rose from her seat.

For the man who stared down at her with wonder in his open eyes was Barry Tearle!

Mr. Sellinger sat, stricken dumb, his mouth agape. As for the girl, she looked on as if in a trance. She saw the preliminaries, watched the opening of the first round, her eyes never leaving the lithe figure that leaped and lunged. She could hear the thud of gloves as they struck, but whose gloves they were and who was being struck she could not tell. It was at the beginning of the second round that "the Unknown" forced the fighting, in spite of the injunctions and prayers of his seconds to remain strictly on the defensive for the first eight rounds. Right and left flashed Snub's terrible fists. The Unknown staggered. A second blow to the jaw landed, timed to the fraction of a second…

The fight was over. It was over, too, for Vera Shaw, and Barry Tearle leaped the ropes in time to catch her as she fainted…

It was in the Head's study the next morning that Barry Tearle, unmarked by his exertions the night before, told his story.

"My father was a boxer," he said. "He used to travel the country fairs, and every penny he made he put into my education. He did something more— he taught me the game as no man knew it better than he. He died whilst I was at the University, and it looked as though my education was going to stop short. I loved my studies, and I loved the life I had planned for myself. But I wanted money. I had no friends or influence. One morning at breakfast I saw in the sporting press a challenge issued on behalf of a man whom I had seen fight, and whom I thought I could beat. I pawned everything I had to cover his modest stake, and, adopting the name of Snub Reilly— Reilly is my second name, by the way— I fought him and won. I have fought during every vacation for three years, and"— he looked down at the girl—"I have fought my last fight."

The doctor cleared his throat.

"Vera has told me something of Mr. Sellinger's accusation. You sold some bonds?"

Barry nodded.

"They were my own bonds," he said. "I had to raise ten thousand pounds to cover this challenge. They were bonds similar to those which you held for the Extension Fund."

"Naturally," Dr. Shaw nodded, "you would buy the best stock, both for the school and for yourself."

He was looking down at his blotting-pad thoughtfully.

"You have fought your last fight?" he said.

Barry nodded.

"Yes, sir. From now on, Snub Reilly disappears. I have made a considerable sum, quite sufficient for my needs."

"Nobody at the school knows you are— Snub Reilly?"

"Except Mr. Sellinger," said Vera.

"I do not think Mr. Sellinger will be anxious to talk about the part he has played in a business which is only discreditable in so far as he has been concerned," said Dr. Shaw.

For the second time in twenty-four hours he put out his hand.

"I rather think," he said, "I should like to have seen that fight. Wouldn't you, Vera?"

The girl shuddered and shook her head.

"Of course not, of course not. How could I ask such a thing?" said the doctor tenderly, and he dropped his hand on her shoulder. "You couldn't imagine my little girl in that sort of atmosphere, could you, Tearle?"

Mr. Barry Tearle shook his head. He and Vera went out together into the old-world quadrangle, and neither spoke.

"I must go into the house now, Barry," she said. "You— you weren't very much hurt last night?" she added anxiously. "Oh, my dear, I was so happy when you won." She laid her hands impulsively on his breast. "And I've quite forgiven your little lie!"

"My little lie!" He was astonished.

"You said you had not seen the fight that night."

He smiled.

"I didn't see it," he insisted. "I felt it— but I didn't see it."

Since the classrooms overlook the quadrangle, what followed would have been witnessed by the whole of the fifth classical form but for the tact of the head prefect of School House who happened to be standing by the window, and closed it with a bang.

_________________

3: A Romance in Brown

"ROMANCE…? Yes, of a kind. Romance brings up the nine-fifteen… and there is romance in… well, courtship and that sort of thing. But life is fairly humdrum and unexciting. Wars… at a distance are immensely stirring, but close at hand, look rather like a street accident multiplied by millions. Life is utterly devoid of sensation, and romance is really sensation of a pleasant kind."

James Calcott Berkley sniffed.

"I wouldn't have your mind for money," he said, and his senior partner chuckled softly to himself.

He was a stout man and comfortable. You could not imagine him without a stiff collar and a heavy watch-guard. Jim often wondered what he looked like in pyjamas— the chances were that he wore a nightshirt anyway— a silk nightshirt with broad magenta stripes.

"Money doesn't buy experience," said Mr. Calley. "Years, disappointments, knowing successions of exquisitely featured chorus girls and small-part ladies, who look like Athens at its palmiest, and talk like the Old Kent Road; it's being looked at with pure limpid eyes, so big and innocent that you get a lump in your throat, and watching them, change to granite when they price the little present you've given to their owner."

This time Jim Berkley sighed.

"What a perfectly horrible past you must have, Calley!" he said.

"On the contrary," protested the stout Mr. Calley, "my life has been singularly free from complications. There is a gray which has a purplish tinge— that is the color which most nearly represents the past of Cæsar Calley. We look at the matter from the standpoint of fifty and twenty-seven. You ought to be married," he went on, and Jim closed his eyes wearily. "That statement may make you dither, but it is a fact. Marriage destroys the icing, but reveals the cake, and you can't live on almond icing any more than you can make a square meal of Turkish Delight. You're well off, you're nice looking, you have decent standards of conduct… in fact, you're a desirable match."

"I have never actually met anybody…" said Jim. "There are thousands of girls, of course—"

"But they lack the atmosphere of romance," interrupted the other dryly; "they eat food and they ride to hounds, and they are entirely without mystery. You'll never get married if you wait for mystery. There is nothing mysterious about women— they are just men with a different code of honor. They never pay their card debts, but they won't take tea in your rooms unless they bring their aunts."

"Br-r!" shivered Jim. "Marriage! The wedding reception… the awful church and the best man and the tight boots and the confetti!"

Mr. Calley put on his gold-rimmed glasses and surveyed his partner dispassionately.

"Even Prince Charming had to go through something of the sort when he wed the Fairy Princess," he said, "and I guess the fairy princess sat up half the night worrying whether the bridesmaids ought to wear gray charmeuse or white tulle. There is nothing wholly romantic and nothing wholly sordid. You can't have silk without worms."

Jim Berkley made a hasty exit. Marriage was a subject which irritated and annoyed him. And when Galley said that no woman had mystery…!

His watch said twenty minutes past three o'clock, and he stood at the window looking down into Gresham Street. He was so standing, absorbed in his thoughts, when Calley put his head in at the door.

"Hullo? Looking for the Brown Girl?" he asked.

"No!" said Jim loudly.

"Thought you might be; queer bird— I'm off. Shan't be up tomorrow— I'm playing in a foursome at Mid-Surrey."

"Good-night," said Jim absently.

"As to romance," insisted Calley, "have you ever considered Boccaccio's stories in cold blood? Why, there isn't a Sunday newspaper that doesn't beat the story of Violante and Theodoro—"

"Oh, shut up!" snarled Jim, and his amiable partner closed the door grinning.

The bells of St. Olives tolled the half-hour, and then James Calcott Berkley reaped the regard of his vigil. The Brown Girl was walking slowly along the pavement on the opposite side of the road— as she walked every day when the bells of St. Olives rang the half-hour.

He took up the pair of field-glasses that were on his desk, and standing back from the window, focused them. She was exquisitely beautiful— he had never seen such loveliness in his life. Invariably she was dressed in brown; but seldom did she wear the same costume twice. Who was she? By the regularity of her appearance, he was certain that she was employed somewhere in the neighborhood. Yet, she was too well dressed to be an ordinary employee, too young to hold any responsible post. And then, most unaccountable phenomenon of all, there was the little old woman who was always waiting for her, and to whom she invariably handed a letter with a little smile.

Every day this happened, the little old woman in the plaid shawl hobbled across the street and took the letter; there was a brief exchange of words and the little old woman crossed the street again, and the girl passed on out of sight. That happened today.

It was Calley who had first seen her, and in his prosaic unimaginative way had christened her "the Brown Girl." And yet it was a name which Jim liked. "Queer bird!" He shuddered at the grossness of the description. Presently she was out of sight, and he turned with a sigh and a sense of bitter resentment to a review of the day's transactions, for Jim was a stockbroker, as his father had been before him.

The arrival of his secretary with letters to sign gave him an idea.

"Thompson, I've often wondered how… well, poor people, without opportunities for meeting socially… get acquainted."

"Yes, sir? Well, they sort of meet," said Thompson vaguely. "You mean young men and young ladies?"

Jim, very hot, nodded, not daring to meet the eyes of his clerk, lest his secret be read.

"Generally the girl's got a brother who asks a boy to the house, or they meet at a dance. There are thousands of ways."

Jim coughed as he scribbled his name.

"Yes… but suppose he doesn't know the brother— if there is a brother. Just sees her on the street, and… well… falls in love with her and all that sort of thing?"

Thompson was young, but experienced.

"That's a bit difficult," he said, "because no lady likes to be picked up, in a manner of speaking. He just finds out who she is, and gets somebody to introduce him."

Jim shook his head impatiently.

"But, suppose he doesn't know who she is… suppose he just sees her and doesn't know from Adam or Eve what her name is?"

Mr. Thompson considered this weighty problem.

"There are several stunts he can work, such as picking up a handkerchief and saying 'Excuse me, miss, is this yours?' or he can follow her home and make inquiries, or he can pretend that he's met her before—"

"None of which methods appeal to me, Thompson," said Jim sharply, and went a fiery red under Thompson's suspicious scrutiny.

He went back to his flat in Portland Place, his mind wholly occupied by the Brown Girl, her mystery, her glorious beauty. That night he dreamed of her; she and he were sitting on the yellow sands, and before them stretched the unbroken horizon of a sunlit sea. He was holding her hand, sublimely, supremely happy, and she was looking at him shyly and saying, "Harold, do you think you really will be happy?"

When he awoke, and recalling the dream realized that his name was not "Harold," he was aggrieved until he remembered that dreams go contrariwise, and that no unknown Harold would ever hold her hand.

Calley was away next morning and he was glad, because he had determined to follow Thompson's advice— with modifications. He must discover who she was. The uncertainty was worrying him— spoiling his days and disturbing his nights.

At three-thirty, when the clock of St. Olives struck, he was waiting in the doorway of his office. He saw the little old woman come into Gresham Street from the Moorgate Street end, and take up her station.

And then he saw the Brown Girl. Nearer at hand, she was more radiantly lovely than ever. Looking neither to left nor to right, she came slowly on, and the little woman in the plaid shawl crossed the street to meet her. There was a brief colloquy, the invariable flash of the Brown Girl's smile, and then the little old woman recrossed the road, clutching tightly at the white envelope. The Brown Girl resumed her walk, and Jim, with a flutter at his heart, followed her boldly.

She turned into Moorgate Street, with Jim a dozen paces behind her. Her costume was expensive, her feet were daintily shod, her stockings of silk— he knew this much of woman's mystery.

Suddenly, to his surprise she stopped by the side of a limousine that was drawn up by the side of the street, opened the door and stepped in. He could only stand still, paralyzed with astonishment. The car was on the move, when the door opened and the girl stepped out. The reason for this reckless action was not at first apparent, for Jim did not see the bag she had dropped until after he had sprung forward and lifted her from where she lay.

"It is nothing. I'm sorry to have troubled you… I tapped on the window, but Bennett did not hear me… I was so alarmed about losing my bag…"

Nevertheless, she limped as she walked to where the bag lay. Jim snatched it up for her.

"Are you sure you aren't hurt?" he asked, and in his agitation his voice sounded as though it belonged to somebody else.

"No… really… it was stupid of me."

"Can't I take you somewhere… to a doctor's?" he asked, as he helped her into the car. The crowd that every such occurrence attracts had gathered.

"No… yes, please come in with me," she said hurriedly, and when he followed her and the machine moved on: "I'm really not hurt, but I didn't wish to argue with you before all those people. I really am quite well— you won't mind if I drop you at Liverpool Street? I am awfully grateful to you."

She also was a little incoherent.

Jim sat by her side, bolt upright, hardly daring to breathe. He was dazed and bewildered, and had not recovered when, in response to her signal, the car pulled up.

"I feel I'm being very rude in turning you out," she said, and her smile was adorable, "but… I don't want mother to know that I have been in the city."

"Of course not," said Jim. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that she should not wish her mother to know that she had been in the city.

He took her hand and dropped it instantly. She seemed amused. Watching the car as it plunged into the traffic he saw her looking back through the glass panel in the hood, and waved his hand. He was astounded at his boldness.

That night he thought of her. He found time to have dinner and read the evening newspapers, but these were the briefest interruptions to his thoughts.

Calley was boisterously cheerful next morning. He and his partner had unexpectedly beaten the club champions.

"My putting was a little short of marvelous," he said immodestly. "I'll show you one shot I did— Ferguson, the pro., said he'd never seen anything approaching it. Now, suppose this paper-weight is the ball…"

"And, by the way, Jim," he said, when he had finished his demonstration, "I want to be away all next Thursday. I'll look in in the morning, but I want to go almost immediately. I'm playing Jack Anderson, and we've got a side bet of a tenner. Will you remember that? Somebody must be at the office to deal with Balter's account— he's buying now, and he's a tetchy devil."

"I'll be here," said Jim, "though it is deplorable that a man of your age and substance should spend his days chasing an inoffensive ball."

"You don't know what golf is to an intellectual man," said Calley.

He went away after lunch and Jim was thankful. Ordinarily, golf talk mildly interested. Today it was torture.

At three-thirty the Brown Girl came into Gresham Street. He was watching her from the shadow of the doorway, and, waiting until the little drama had been played out and the woman in the plaid shawl had left her, he quickened his pace and overtook her as she turned the corner of the street.

"Forgive me the unpardonable liberty," he stammered, hat in hand, "but I was worried… I wondered, I mean, if your ankle was better?"

For a second she looked at him distrustfully.

"Yes; it is quite well. It is kind of you to ask."

Here he was at a loss to find an excuse to continue the conversation, but he was desperate.

"There is something I should like to say to you, Miss— —"

He saw alarm in her eyes and cursed himself for being the cause.

"Jones— Ella Jones. My name isn't Jones, really, but I can't tell you…" she said. "I'm afraid I can't wait… I have an appointment… you aren't Signor Vallassini, are you?"

The question took him aback.

"No," he said. "I'm not. I'm— not Signor… I didn't catch the name?"

"It doesn't matter— besides, I ought to have known that you weren't Italian. Oh!"

She was frightened now, looking at him with wide-opened eyes.

"You're… a detective!" she gasped.

He hadn't the presence of mind, nor yet the power of speech, to deny the charge.

"Will you come with me, please?" she asked hurriedly, and he accompanied her in silence to the waiting car. She gave some instructions to the driver and then stepped in. Jim followed, his heart beating wildly.

A detective! What had she to fear and who was Signor Whatever-his-name was? Into what tangle of trouble had this beautiful girl strayed?

"I won't ask you who you are, but I have a feeling that you have been watching me."

She waited for him to speak.

"Yes," he hesitated. "I have been…"

"For long?"

He nodded miserably.

"And you have seen me give the envelope to the agent?"

"To the old lady," he said, and she bit her lower lip.

"I meant 'old lady,'" she said. "You think it is strange, but I cannot explain. There are others involved— it is not my secret."

"I'm sure it isn't," said Jim. "My name, by the way, is Jim—"

"Don't tell me!" she begged earnestly. "I don't think it would be fair to you. You are doing your duty and it is hateful of me even to suggest that you can be bought—"

"I'm not a detective," said Jim. "Believe me, Miss Jones, I'm not a detective. I'm a very prosaic stockbroker, but if there is anything in the world I can do for you, I'd… I'd die to serve you!"

There was no mistaking his sincerity. Startled as she was by his passionate declaration, she recognized the earnestness of the man by her side. She went red and white, and then:

"I wonder if I can trust you?" she asked in a low voice.

Jim Berkley could only nod rapidly. He was incapable of speech.

"I can't tell you the whole story," she said, "but briefly it is this. My father, as a young man, lived in Italy and became, half in fun, half for the adventure of the thing, a member of a secret society. When he left Italy he thought the matter was ended, and indeed for many years the Milani— that was the name of the gang— left him alone. He became rich and married. A year ago he received a summons from the Milani, calling on him to assassinate—"

She mentioned a name revered in certain political circles, detested in others, and Jim gasped.

"Alternatively he was to pay a certain sum of money every day. They refused to accept a lump sum, wishing to give him a daily reminder of his obligations to the gang. Every day I come to Gresham Street, where I am met by one of the emissaries of the Milani—"

"That old woman?" asked Jim incredulously.

"That old woman," nodded the girl; "poor dear, I'm sure she doesn't realize the dreadful character of her errand, or the kind of people she is working for. The head of the movement is a villain named Vallassini— an Italian."

"But why doesn't your father inform the police?" asked Jim.

"He would be shot dead tomorrow," said the girl. "No, that isn't the way out. I have thought of a dozen."

"If you can tell me in what way I can help," said the fervent Jim, "I'll do anything!"

The car was passing through the streets of Bloomsbury. They might have been running along the top of the great wall of China for all that Jim noticed. He was conscious only of this vital and blessed fact. He was alone with the Brown Girl, her sleeve touched his, her little shoe was against his. He touched it furtively.

"There is one thing you could do," she said, "but it would involve such risks that I hardly dare ask you. You have been a soldier?"

"Yes— who hasn't?" said Jim, daring to smile for the first time. "And please do not worry about risks. There is nothing on earth I wouldn't face—"

"I'm sure," she said hastily; "but this is no ordinary risk. I want to know where these people live. Especially the Italian."

"Vaselini?" asked Jim. "I can remember his name by thinking of cold cream."

"Vallassini," corrected the girl; "the woman goes to him every day. Follow her… yet I hate asking you. These people are desperate—"

Jim drew a long breath.

"So am I," he said; "I'm desperately anxious to help you."

She dropped him at the end of Portland Place. It was a coincidence that she chose this spot, and this time he held her hand a little longer.

"You will see me tomorrow. After the old woman has left me, follow her. I will meet you… where?"

Outside the Regent's Park Station he suggested, and to this she agreed.

It required a little maneuvering to get away from the office next day. Calley was in one of his rare working moods.

"Going home?" he said in surprise, and looked up at the clock. "Well, perhaps you're right… I've a good mind to go myself. I'll walk with you."

"Don't trouble," said Jim in haste. "I'm— I'm meeting somebody quite close at hand."

"Somebody romantic, I hope," said Calley, crudely sarcastic.

Jim did not trouble to reply. Again he watched the meeting, but this time he followed the little old woman. He saw the girl pause at the corner of Moorgate Street and look back; he sensed approval and gratitude in that glance, and his heart swelled with pride.

The woman in the plaid shawl made her slow way across Southwark Bridge. On the other side she boarded a car and Jim followed…

At eight o'clock that night he met the girl at the appointed rendezvous.

"Your old woman's name is Murphy. She has a fruit stall near the Exchange, and she lives at 47 Paton Street, Herne Hill— she has one room," he reported. "She has twice been in the hands of the police for violent assaults on other ladies of her calling, but of late years, owing to infirmity and her conversion to the temperance movement, she has lived a fairly uneventful life."

"And Vallassini?"

Jim shook his head.

"Nobody knows him; the old woman has no visitors so far as I can discover."

They were pacing together the deserted pavement of Park Crescent. It was very dark and once, when her foot slipped, she caught Jim's arm and did not let it go.

"I want to ask you something," said Jim huskily, after they had walked to and fro for a quarter of an hour, mainly in silence; "I want to ask you something."

She inclined her head.

"I love you," said Jim.

He felt the arm in his shiver— but she did not take it away.

"I love you dearly… I have loved you ever since I first saw you. You are my dream girl… the mystery I have worshipped…"

"Oh, please!" she whispered imploringly. "I can't…"

"I want you to marry me. I am… well known… I mean I'm not… I mean I can give you a position."

"Oh, Jim!" she murmured, and he stooped and kissed her.

"My father will be furious," she said in a muffled voice. He was holding her very tightly at the time. "But I do love you… and I don't know your name even, except Jim… and I hate the thought of marriage and all the fuss that people make."

"I loathe it too, darling. I want to run away to some quiet registry office—"

"That's just how I feel— but we'll have to tell father."

"I suppose so," said Jim. "Of course we must tell him. Why not now?"

She did not answer at once.

"Mother will be horrified," she said, "and father will hate you. He has always wanted me to marry a rich man— are you rich?"

Jim laughed and kissed her again. He needed very little excuse.

"I'm not poor," he said. "Who was the man?"

"An awful person. I've never met him, but he must be a terrible prig. He thinks women are commonplace, and he says he'll not marry until he meets the ideal woman. I hate being trotted out for inspection like a prize horse that has to impress the purchaser, so the only time he came to dinner I went to bed."

"The brute!" said Jim. "Do I know him?"

"You may do. He's well known in the city— James Calcott Berkley."

"Eh?" said Jim Berkley hollowly.

"Do you know him? You must. Daddy has always poked fun at me because I am romantic. I love romance and all that is colorable in life. I love all that is out of the beaten ways. At first daddy's story thrilled me— then it frightened me. When he asked me to help him, I was glad— because he is a dear, even though he sneers at things that are precious to me. He always says I'll never find romance in this humdrum city— but he's wrong!"

She squeezed his arm and he kissed her again. He was calm now.

"What is your father's name, darling?" he asked softly.

"Cæsar Calley— of Berkley & Calley."

"Cæsar Calley!" repeated Jim. "Do you mind if we don't tell your father, Ella? Do you mind if I get a license tomorrow and we're married secretly the next day— that will be Thursday?"

She put up her face to his.

"Yes… I have an idea that father is playing golf on Thursday."

"I have an idea that he isn't," said Jim Berkley.

So on Thursday morning they were married, and Cæsar Calley, with his golf clubs propped against his desk, waited impatiently for the arrival of his junior partner to release him for his match. In a sense the day was spoilt for Mr. Cæsar Calley. In another sense it was the happiest day of his life.

When the telegram came, he sat back and smiled and did not stop smiling all day.

As the bells of St. Olives chimed the half-hour after three, he went down into Gresham Street and interviewed the old apple woman in the plaid shawl.

"The young lady hasn't come, sir," she said.

"No, and she won't come any more, Mrs. Murphy," said Cæsar Calley as he opened his note-case. "You'll miss the little money I sent you every day, but here is sufficient to last you for a year."

The little old woman took the notes and slid them into her skirt-pocket.

"Five shillings a day you used to send me," she quavered, "and I never earnt money easier. Not quite right in her head, you said, sir?" she asked.

"She's recovered now," said the shameless Calley; "quite recovered!"

________________

4: Discovering Rex

IN THE office of the Public Prosecutor was a young lawyer named Keddler, for whom the prospects were of the brightest until he grew impatient with the type of evidence which was supplied him by the painstaking but unimaginative constabulary, and went out single-handed to better their efforts. And he succeeded so remarkably well that a reluctant Commissioner of Police admitted his superiority as a detective and offered him a post at New Scotland Yard.

This offer was enthusiastically accepted, but since the regulations do not admit of amateur police work and he found himself relegated to the legal department, where his work consisted of preparing statements of evidence for his successor at the P.P. office to examine, he resigned at the end of six months. To return to his former position was, at the time, impossible, and against the advice of his friends and in face of solemn warnings from his old chief, he opened an office in the city of London, describing himself as an "Investigating Agent."

Despite the gloomy predictions of his associates, John Keddler grew both opulent and famous. The opulence was welcome, but the fame was embarrassing, not that John was unduly modest, but because it led on three occasions to his identification at a moment when it was vitally necessary that he should be unknown to the persons who detected him.

Starting on a small job for the Midland and County Bank, a matter of a forged acceptance, in which the real police had failed to satisfy the bank, he enlarged his clientele until he found himself working amicably with Scotland Yard in the matter of Rex Jowder, alias Tom the Toy, alias Lambert Sollon.

Rex was wanted urgently by several police departments for insurance fraud, impersonation, theft, forgery, and general larceny, but only the insurance fraud was really important because it involved a well-known Chicago house in a loss of 700,000 dollars, which they were anxious to recover before Rex, who was notoriously careless when he handled other people's money, dissipated his fortune in riotous living. John Keddler was commissioned by the London agents of the company to bring about this desirable result, but unfortunately the lean, shrewd thief had learnt from an indiscreet newspaper that John was his principal danger, and had spent two days waiting in the country lane in which the detective's modest little house was situated, and one dark night when John descended from his car to open the gates of his demesne, six pounds weight of sand had fallen upon his shoulder. The sand was enclosed in a sausage-shaped bag, and it was intended for his neck.

Taken at this disadvantage Keddler was almost helpless and would have ceased to worry Mr. Jowder until the inevitable give and take of the Day of Judgment, only the assailant had placed himself in an unfavorable position to follow up his attack, though it was helpful to him that the red rear light of the car reflected on the polished steel of the gun John pulled mechanically.

He dived to the cover of a hedge and ran, and John Keddler had been so respectably brought up that he hesitated to scandalize the neighborhood by discharging firearms to the public danger. In some respects John Keddler was a slave of convention. But this mild adventure served to concentrate his mind and attention still more closely upon the case of Rex Jowder, and so well did he work that at the end of a week there was a police raid upon a certain safe deposit in the city, and there was discovered the bulk of the stolen money which the misguided Jowder had cached (as he believed) beyond the fear of discovery.

Why this raid was carried out is a story made up of John's instinct, a drunken man, a frightened woman (Rex was strong for ladies' society), and an indiscreet reference, repeated by his terrorized lady friend, to a mysterious key which hung about his neck. He would have been captured also, only the police were a little over-elaborate in their preparations.

With his money gone, the fruit of two years' clever and dangerous work, Rex Jowder became something more than annoyed. Before him was a life sentence, and standing at the focal point of his misfortune was one John Keddler. From the point of view of the insurance company whose gratitude he had earned, John was not a "good life."

"What about Jowder?" asked his confidential clerk.

"Jowder can wait," said John. "As a matter of fact I am not very much interested in the man any longer."

But the man was very much interested in John, and he was content to wait too, though his waiting had to be done in a mean Lambeth lodging.

As for John Keddler, he accepted in a joyous holiday spirit the commission which followed the loss of Lady Bresswell's jewelry, for Lady Bresswell lived on the Lake of Como, and John was partial to the Italian lakes. Incidentally this visit was to introduce him to the Marchessa Della Garda— that unhappy lady.

From the first the wisdom of Mona Harringay's marriage bristled with notes of interrogation— those little sickles that trim the smothering overgrowth of truth.

There was no doubt that the Della Garda family hated the Marchessa with a hatred born of an enormous disappointment. They referred to Mona as "The Señora Pelugnera" (they affected Spanish by virtue of their descent from the Borgias), and "Mrs. Hairdresser" was adopted to keep fresh the ghastly fact that Mona's father was the very rich proprietor of Harringay's Elixir for the Hair.

The marriage was in every way an amazing one, for Giocomi was no impoverished third cousin of the real nobility. Head of the Della Garda clan and immensely wealthy, the ordinary excuses and explanations of a marriage between an Italian marquis and the daughter of a rich American were wanting. They had met in Harringay's Long Island home where Giocomi was a guest. He was making his first long absence from the Continent of Europe. Therefore he was home-sick and miserable when he met Mona, and their marriage was the natural reaction. She, for her part, was fascinated by his good looks and a little overwhelmed by the impetuosity of his wooing. The wedding was the social event of a brilliant season.

Not until the liner was clear of Sandy Hook did Giocomi Della Garda emerge from his delirium, and face the certainty of his relatives' wrath. For all his good looks and his perfect manners, he was not a nice young man. He had, in particular, a weakness for approval, one of the most fatal to which the human soul is liable, and the nearer to Genoa the vessel came, the more and more he resented the existence of a wife who had already surrendered her mystery, that lure which had led Giocomi into so many adventures, but which had never before yielded him a wife.

Mona, Marchessa Della Garda, realized the bleak failure of her life long before she came home to the cold, oppressive atmosphere of the gloomy palace which had housed sixteen generations of the family. Neither the cold majesty of the Pallacco Della Garda, nor the exotic splendors of the Villa Mendoza, set amidst the loveliness of Lake Como, brought compensation to a disillusioned heart-sick girl. But her one and only visit to the Como home was not without its consequences. Lady Bresswell, a grateful and somewhat voluble lady (her lost jewels recovered without the scandal which would have attended the investigations of the police), was showing John Keddler the glories of the lake. They had brought her ladyship's expensive motor-boat to a rest near Cadenabbia, and the servants were spreading lunch when round a tiny headland came a boat, the sole occupant of which was a girl.

She pulled with long, steady strokes and seemed oblivious to their presence, although she only passed them a dozen yards away.

John Keddler, a man to whom all women were very much alike, gazed at her fascinated. The sun in her russet gold hair, the appealing sadness of her delicate face, the sweep of her perfect figure, took his breath away. It was as though he had seen a vision of some other world.

He watched her until she brought the boat to a white landing-stage, and stepping out and tying the boat, had disappeared behind a great fuchsia bush.

Then he heaved a long sigh, and like a man waking from a dream turned to meet the laughing eyes of his hostess.

"Who was that?" he asked, almost in a whisper.

"I've told you twice, Mr. Keddler," smiled Lady Bresswell, "but you were so absorbed that you didn't hear me. She is lovely, isn't she?"

"Who is she?"

"The Marchessa Della Garda, an American girl who married Giocomi— poor dear. Giocomi is rather a beast."

"Oh," said John, and that was all he said.

Sixteen generations on her father's side of hairdressers, general workers, coal-miners, and peasants had supplied Mona Della Garda with the capacity for endurance and patience, but on her mother's side, she went back to some quick-drawing folks who had made the lives of successive western sheriffs exasperatingly lively, and when, some six months after John Keddler had seen her, Giocomi followed a flagrant breach of his marriage vows by boxing her ears, she took a pistol from the drawer of her dressing-table.

There was excellent reason for this act, for Giocomi was weeping with rage at her mild reproach and had flung off to his room in search of a hunting-crop. Following him went Pietro Roma, his valet, also in tears, for this man worshipped the young Marchessa and would have died for her. It nearly happened that he did, for in frenzy at his interference, Giocomi clubbed him into insensibility with the heavy end of the stock. He never used the whip.

The major-domo of his establishment, attending the cracked head of the valet, heard a shot and mistook it for the crack of a whip, until the Marchessa came downstairs wearing a heavy carriage coat over her evening dress and carrying her jewel-case in her hand. Even then, he did no more than wonder why the illustrious lady should go abroad on a night of storm.

Later came doctors, examining magistrates, and, one by one, white-faced Della Gardas to take counsel together. More than a week passed and Giocomi Della Garda was laid away in the dingy family vaults of SS. Theresa and Joseph, before the name of John Keddler was mentioned.

It came about that news reached Rome of Pietro Roma, who disappeared with a broken head the day after his master's death and had been seen in London.

"If she is in London too," said Philip Della Garda thoughtfully, "you may be sure that she will never be discovered. The English and Americans work hand in hand, and they will do everything that is humanly possible to cover up her tracks. I am all for employing the man Keddler. He recovered Lady Bresswell's jewelry last summer, and even at the British Embassy they speak of him with respect."

Prince Paolo Crecivicca, his kinsman, stroked his white beard.

"I shall never be happy until this woman is brought to trial," he said, "and I agree that this infernal rascal, Pietro, is probably in communication with her, for, according to Dellimono, he was the man who betrayed to 'The Hairdresser' poor Giocomi's little affair with the Scala girl, and these vulgarians would be on terms of friendship. Employ Mr. Keddler by all means. Wire to him at once."

John Keddler arrived in Rome thirty-six hours later— no miracle this, with the London-Paris, Paris-Milan, Milan-Rome air services in full operation. Though he answered the summons in such a hurry that Philip Della Garda not unnaturally believed he was eager for the job, he displayed no remarkable enthusiasm for the undertaking. Particularly was this apathy noticeable after all that Prince Crecivicca described as the "unfortunate facts" were revealed.

"In England, of course, she would be acquitted," he said, a little stiffly, "and even in Italy— do you think it is wise to bring this matter before your courts? The publicity… the scandal…?"

Philip Della Garda showed his small teeth in a smile.

"We are superior to public opinion," he said smugly. "Had this happened two hundred years ago we would have dealt with the Hairdresser without invoking the assistance of the courts. As it is—"

As it was explained by the Della Gardas in chorus, this woman must be subjected to the humiliations of a trial, whatever be the jurors' verdict.

"Of course," said John politely. "Have you a photograph of the lady?"

Not until then did he realize that he had been sent to track the woman of his dreams— the woman who had no name to him but "The Girl in the Boat." They saw him frown and a queer expression come to his face.

"I will do my best," he said.

When he had gone, leaving his employers with a sense of dissatisfaction, Philip Della Garda, accounted by his friends as something of a sportsman, had an inspiration.

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" he demanded pedantically. "I will go to London myself."

Passing through Paris, Keddler was seen by a journalist who happened to be on the aviation ground, and it was his speculative note on the occurrence which Mona Della Garda read in her Battersea lodging:

Among the famous people who now use the air express for their continental travels is Mr. John Keddler, the well-known private detective. Mr. Keddler, in an interview, says he finds the air-way an invaluable boon. He had been called to Rome in connection with the Della Garda murder, and was able to make the return journey in a little over twenty-four hours— a journey which ordinarily would have taken four to five days. He left immediately for London, and hopes to bring about the arrest of the Marchessa in a very short time.

OF COURSE, John Keddler said nothing about the Della Garda murder, or his hopes. He had grunted a "good afternoon" at the enterprising press agent of the Aviation Company, and there began and ended the interview— but Mona Della Garda, reading this paragraph, fell into a blind panic.

For now, the sustaining heat of righteous anger had departed from her, and the strain of the sixteen barber generations— they had been law-abiding and for the most part timorous barbers, with exalted views on the sanctity of human life— was asserting its pull. Murder in any degree was to them merely a phenomenon of the Sunday newspapers, as remote from reality as the moons of Saturn.

"I wonder, miss, if you ever read them agony columns in the newspapers!" asked Mrs. Flemmish one morning.

Mrs. Flemmish was her landlady and a woman from the Wessex borders of Devon, a woman of rolled sleeves and prodigious energy, whose stoves were brighter than the panels of limousines.

Mona had found her room by accident and was perfectly served, for Mrs. Flemmish had unbounded faith in the spoken word of her sex, and never doubted that "Miss Smith" was a young lady who wrote for the press. Mona had to excuse her feverish interest in the daily newspapers.

"Yes— yes," said Mona, going white. She lost her color readily in these days, and her frequent pallors gave her delicate face a fragility which Mrs. Flemmish in secret accepted as a symptom of lung trouble.

"I'd like to know who this 'Dad' is who keeps on advertising to 'M.', telling her to communicant— communicate, I mean, with him. Where's Long Island, miss?"

"In— in America," said the girl hurriedly, "near New York."

"I suppose she's run away from home," ruminated Mrs. Flemmish. "Girls be girls all over the world— but she ought to let her father know, don't ye think so, Miss Smith?"

Mona nodded. How could she let him know, other than by letter, and a letter was on its way. Mr. Harringay would pass that epistle in mid-ocean, for he had caught the first east-bound liner, a greatly distracted man.

If she could only get into touch with the devoted Pietro. The poor fellow was in London, searching for her— a mad search, since he would be followed, and he could not find her without also betraying her.

A thought came to her on the third evening after the return of John Keddler. There had been some reference to Pietro in the newspapers. A reporter had found him amongst the outcast and homeless on the Thames Embankment one night, and had secured a "good story" from him. Perhaps he slept there every night? She would search for him. A man's help might save her— even the help of this poor devoted servant.

"I am going out tonight, Mrs. Flemmish," she said.

Mrs. Flemmish made a little grimace.

"It's not a good night for ye, mum," she shook her head. "There's one of them Lunnon fogs workin' up. Did ye read the paper tonight about the Eyetalian lady, miss?"

Mona's heart almost stopped beating.

"N— no," she said; "is there any fresh— which Italian lady?" she asked.

Mrs. Flemmish had settled herself down in the chintz-covered arm-chair and was stirring the fire economically.

"They a' set a detective on her, poor creature," she said. "Do you think 'twas her father that put the advertisement in the paper?"

Mona had a grip of herself now.

"Perhaps," she answered steadily, and Mrs. Flemmish, staring in the orange depths of the fire, nodded.

"If I were her, her bein' a rich young woman, I know what I'd do, ees fay!"

Mona frowned. She had never looked to this sturdy country woman for a solution to her agonizing problems.

"What would you do?" she asked slowly.

"I'd marry a young Englishman," nodded Mrs. Flemmish. "My man were in a lawyer's office an' clever he was, as all the Welsh people are, an' often he's told me that you can't arrest an Englishwoman in England for a crime in foreign parts."

The girl could only stare. That solution had not occurred to her, and if it had, she would have rejected it, for even the enthusiastic scientist is not prone to repeat the experiment which cost him everything short of life by its failure.

"Her has money, by all accounts," said the woman, feeling furtively between the bars of the fire to dislodge a glowing piece of slate. "Her could buy a husband and divorce him, and even when she was divorced her'd be safe."

Mona stood for a long time pinching her red lips in thought, and Mrs. Flemmish turned her head to see if she was still there, a movement that startled the girl into activity.

"I'll go now, Mrs. Flemmish," she said hastily. "I have the key…"

A light yellow mist lay upon the streets, which were crowded even at this late hour, for it was Christmas week, as the cheery contents of the shop windows showed. Great blobs of golden light looming through the fog marked the blazing windows of the stores, and she passed through a road lined with stalls that showed vivid coloring under the flaring, pungent naphtha lamps.

She checked a sob that rose in her throat at the memory of other Christmas weeks, and hurried her pace, glad, at last, to reach the bleakness of the bridge that crossed a gray void where the river had been.

A taxi-cab carried her to the West End, and this she dismissed in the darkest corner of Trafalgar Square, making her way on foot toward Northumberland Avenue. She had to pass under the brilliant portico lights of the Grand Hotel, and had disappeared into the gloom beyond, before the young man who was standing on the step waiting for his car, realized it was she.

She heard his startled exclamation, and looking back in affright, recognizing Philip Della Garda, ran. Swiftly, blindly through the thickening fog she flew, crossing the wide thoroughfare and turning backward into Graven Street.

Philip Della Garda!

He hated London in the best of seasons. There could be only one incentive to his presence in the raw of December, and she was terrified. They would arrest her and take her back to Italy and a lifelong imprisonment. She had heard stories, horrifying stories, of the Italian prisons, where the convicted murderers were buried in an underground cell away from light and human companionship in the very silence of death. None spoke to them, neither guardian nor priest. They lived speechless until the thick darkness drove them mad.

She could have shrieked; the terror thus magnified by the uncanny mirk in which she now moved had assumed a new and more hideous significance.

Marriage could save her! It was this mad panic thought that sent her hurrying along the Strand, peering into the faces of men who loomed from the nothingness of the fog and passed, none dreaming of her quest. There were men who leered at her, men who stared resentfully at the eager scrutiny she gave them in the fractional space of a second that the light allowed.

And then the inspiration came, and she hurried down a steep slippery street to the Thames Embankment. The benches were already filled with huddled figures, so wrapped in their thread-bare coats that it was almost impossible to tell that they were human.

"May I speak to you?"

Her heart was beating a stifling tattoo as she sat down in the one unoccupied space which Providence had left by the side of the man whose face she had glimpsed in the light thrown by a passing tramway car.

Instantly she had made her decision. There was a certain refinement revealed in the lean face, a sense of purpose which seemed out of tune with his situation. He did not answer her, but drew more closely to the wreck that slumbered noisily at his side.

"I— I don't know how to begin," she said breathlessly, "but I'm in great trouble. I— I must tell you the truth; the police are searching for me for something I did in Italy—"

She stopped, physically unable to go on.

"The police are searching for you, are they?" There was an undercurrent of amusement in the man's words. "Well, I sympathize with you— I'm being sought for at this particular moment."

She shrank back almost imperceptibly, but he noticed the movement and laughed. She recovered herself. She must go on now to the bitter end.

"Are you British?" she asked, and after a second's hesitation he nodded. "Are you married?" He shook his head. "If I gave you money— a lot of money, would you— would you marry me— at once?"

He half turned and stared at her.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because if— if I became British by marriage they would not arrest me. I only want your name— I will pay you— anything, anything!"

Her voice was husky, and the underlying fear in it was not to be mistaken.

"I see," he said; "you want to be naturalized by marriage. That's the idea?"

She nodded.

"Could it be done— quickly?"

The man rubbed his chin.

"I think it could be done," he said. "Tomorrow is Thursday. If I gave notice we could marry Saturday— where do you live?"

She told him and he rubbed his chin again.

"It might be done," he said. "I've got a sort of claim to Battersea. If I— anyway you can meet me at the registrar's on Saturday at twelve. What is your name?"

She told him that and gave him the other particulars he asked. He seemed to be thinking the matter over, for he did not speak for a long time. A policeman strolled past, flashing his lantern in their direction, and he dropped his head.

"There is one thing I want to say," said Mona desperately. It took all her courage to tell him this. "I only want your name. When— when it is all over I shall divorce you… you understand?"

"H'm," said the man, and got up.

"Let's walk along," he said. "I'll take you as far as Westminster Bridge, and you don't mind if I cross the road occasionally; it might be very awkward if I met a certain person, if I was with you."

The man kept close to the parapet, Mona nodded, and they were abreast of Cleopatra's Needle when he caught her arm and drew her to the recess. The fog had lifted and he had seen a tall saunterer walking near the kerb and scrutinizing the sleepers on the bench.

The searcher did not see them, and the man at Mona's side looked after him.

"If you weren't here," he said softly, "I'd have settled an old score with that gentleman."

He left her at the end of the Embankment and Mona went home, not daring to think. The next day was a day of torture. She was placing her life in the hands of a man who, by his own confession, was a fugitive from justice. And yet… she must do it, she must, she must, she told herself vehemently.

That morning the newspapers had given greater prominence to the Della Garda murder. There was an interview with Philip Della Garda, who had seen her and had told of his recognition in half a column of closely set type. From this newspaper, too, she had a clue as to the identity of her future husband. She found it in a note dealing with the activities of John Keddler.

"Mr. Keddler, who has been commissioned by the Della Garda family to assist the police in their search, is also on the track of Rex Jowder, an international swindler, supposed to be of British origin, who is wanted for frauds both in London and New York."

In a flash it came to her. That saunterer was Keddler— the man who was tracking her down, and her chosen husband was an international swindler! She wrung her hands in despair, and for a second wavered in her resolution.

Nevertheless, a sleepless night spent in a painful weighing of this advantage against that peril, brought her to the registrar's office.

She carried with her a large portion of the money she had brought from Italy— happily, in view of a flight from the tyrannies of Giocomi Della Garda, she had kept a considerable sum in the house. She realized with consternation that she had fixed no sum; would he be satisfied with the four thousand pounds she brought to him? But what did that matter? Once she was married, she would be free to communicate with her father, and he would satisfy the most extravagant demands of her husband.

There was only one fear in her heart as she walked through the pelting rain to the dingy little office. Would the man repent of his bargain— or worse, would he be unable to keep the appointment? Both aspects of her doubt were cleared as soon as she set foot in the outer lobby of the office. He was waiting, looking more presentable than she had expected. His raincoat was buttoned to the chin and she thought him good looking in the daylight.

"I had the certificate made out in your maiden name," he said in a low voice. "It makes no difference to the legality of the marriage."

She nodded, and opening a door, they stepped into a chilly-looking office, and to the presence of an elderly man who sat writing slowly and laboriously at a big desk.

He glanced up over his spectacles.

"Oh yes— Mr.— er—" He looked helplessly at the certificate he was filling. "Yes— yes, I won't keep you young people longer than a few moments."

They sat down and Mona utilized the respite.

"Here is the money," she whispered, and pushed a roll of notes into his outstretched hand.

He took the notes without any great display of interest and coolly slipped them into the pocket of his raincoat without troubling to count them.

Presently the old man rose and beckoned them.

As in a dream Mona Della Garda heard his monotonous voice, and then a ring was pressed upon her cold finger.

"That's that," said her husband cheerfully. "Now come along and have some food— you look half dead."

She stared from him to the golden circlet on her hand.

"But— but I don't want to go with you," she stammered in her agitation. "It was understood… I leave you now… but you must tell me where I can find you."

"Young lady," the man's voice was not unkind, "I have taken a few risks for you and you must do something for me. There is a gentleman waiting in the rain for me; he has been trailing me all the morning, and my only chance of escaping a disagreeable occurrence is in your companionship."

"But I don't want…" she began, and seeing his face, "very well, I will go with you to a restaurant."

He nodded and they went out in the rain together. Three paces they had taken when there was a sound like the sharp crack of a whip. Something like an angry bee in terrific flight snapped past Mona's face, and her husband leapt at a man who was standing half a dozen paces away. Again came the explosion, but this time the bullet went high, and in a second she was the terrified spectator of two men at grips.

The struggle did not last long. Three policemen came from nowhere and one of the men was seized. The other came back to her wiping the mud from his coat.

"I didn't think he was such a blackguard," he said.

She could only look at him in wide-eyed fear.

"Who was he?" she gasped.

"A fellow named Rex Jowder," said her husband; "he's been looking for me for a month."

"Then you…?"

"I'm John Keddler," he smiled, "and I think I've lost a good client. Come along and lunch and I'll tell you how you can get your divorce— I'm a bit of a lawyer, you know. Besides which I'd like to return all that money you gave me."

WHETHER or not, in the complicated terms of the Extradition Treaty between Italy and Britain, Mona Keddler could have been tried in London for a crime committed in Rome, no jurist would commit himself to say. John Keddler in his wisdom did not challenge a decision. He had an interview with his furious employer, who threatened and stormed— and went home. Mona he sent to a place of safety until the storm blew over; but the storm was the mildest of breezes.

The winter turned to spring and the spring to summer. The Italian Government notified all persons concerned that the Della Garda "affair" would be regarded as a lamentable family tragedy, for which nobody could be held liable; and the summer came to autumn again before Mona Keddler sailed for New York.

The question of divorce, in spite of many meetings at luncheon, dinner, and tea-tables, had never been properly discussed by either. It was not until the evening before she sailed for New York that Mona Keddler asked the question that had puzzled her so through the six months of her curiously pleasant married life.

"I cannot quite understand, Jack, why you did it," she said.

"Did what?"

She hesitated.

"Married me," she said. "It has practically ruined your career, for I don't see just how we can divorce one another without… well, without unpleasantness. The divorce laws are so horribly strict in England. And you are married— without a wife. It was selfish, miserably selfish of me to let you do it— but why did you?"

He was unusually grave.

"For the last reason in the world you would suspect," he said.

"But what?" she asked.

Here he was adamantine.

"I'll keep my mystery," he said, "but I'll write my reason in a letter, if you swear you will not break the seal of the envelope until your ship is on the high seas."

She promised, and he watched the Olympic drift from the pier at Southampton with a little ache at his heart that nothing could assuage— watched until the trim figure on the promenade deck and the handkerchief she waved were indistinguishable from other figures and other wildly waving handkerchiefs.

Then he went back to town, heavy hearted, feeling that life was almost done with.

At that moment Mona Keddler was reading for the fortieth time the scrawled words in pencil:

"Because I loved you from the day I saw you rowing on the Lake of Como."

Her trunks were piled on the deck and she was watching the low-lying shores of France with a light in her eyes which no man had ever seen.

John Keddler had forgotten that the ship called at Cherbourg on the outward voyage.

________________

5: A Tryst with Ghosts

ONCE UPON a time, in the far-away days of war, there was a mythical or semi-mythical individuality whom the British Tommies named "Quiff." He was credited with a prescience which was quite inhuman. He knew when the divisions were mustering for attack; he warned commanders of impending raids; at his word battalion chiefs were superseded… for he had an uncanny instinct for weakness. He was the guardian angel of five hundred miles of trench line, and was visualized as a white-bearded gentleman, with a halo. When the enemy put a price on his head of 50,000 marks (in those days marks were real money), thus proving his tangibility, the line was immensely startled.

Nigel Porter was sitting in the shade of his porch one warm day in early December, reading a Vancouver newspaper. It was the anniversary of a battle in which the Canadians had been heavily engaged, and the writer of the reminiscences which he was reading recalled the fact that "Quiff" had warned the British higher command of the coming attack. This interested Nigel considerably. Later he saw a brief reference to himself, and the mention of his having been blown up by a land mine… The paper dropped from his hands, and he jumped with an exclamation. He picked the paper up and looked at the date. Then he went into his house— too big for a well-to-do bachelor— and began routing out cablegrams. In four days he was speeding eastward with two suit-cases and a sense of guilt.

If anybody had asked him why he was taking that cold and very comfortless journey, he would have been ashamed to say. A man who owns farmlands in British Columbia views the barrier of the Rockies, which keeps in check the shrivelling winds that roar down from the frozen north, with the same satisfaction that a man, snuggled by a log fire, a pipe between his teeth and a book on his knee, might regard the frosted windows and the stout walls of the house that keeps from him the howling gale without.

And here he was, a lover of comfort, and a man who grudged every second of the cold months that took him from sight of the Pacific and smell of cedar pine, tossing and pitching in the gray, wintry seas of the Atlantic, in the teeth of a nor'westerly gale. The ship was not a large one, the accommodation was fairly poor, his fellow-passengers… but there was a Compensation.

The Compensation was amazing in many respects, for Nigel was not a woman's man, and was almost, if not wholly, unromantic. If you forgot the extraordinary mission which was bringing him across the December sea, you might have said that romance had no place in his equipment. The Compensation came aboard at New York, and their eyes met for the fraction of a second before she stumbled upon the slippery deck (it had been snowing) and was caught in his strong arms. There was a murmured apology, an embarrassed second of incoherence on his part, and then she had vanished. He did not see her till the second day out, and then, literally, he fell against her. He was on his way to the smoke-room, a journey which involved alternate climbing and sliding along the rubber-tiled alleyways, as bow and stern of the Beranic went up and down like delicately poised scales. Again she was in his arms for just as long a time as it might take to count three, quickly.

On the fifth day he found her on deck, stretched in a chair, inadequately covered by a rug. A little self-consciously, he arranged the covering without invitation and they talked.

Her name was Elsie Steyne, and she was traveling alone. She gave no explanation, such as fellow-passengers in the first moments of their confidence give to one another, for her solitary journey. When, after another day's acquaintance, he offered her the opportunity of telling him why she was coming to Europe in Christmas week, she hesitated.

"…It is a queer season for holiday-making in Europe," she confessed, after a long and thoughtful pause, and then immediately; "but I am going to see my brother. He went over last week; it was arranged that I should spend Christmas with my mother in Ohio. But somehow… I am a little worried about him. And you, Mr. Porter? I suppose you are traveling on business?"

Nigel's blue eyes twinkled for a second.

"No, not exactly," he said, and she looked up at him in surprise.

"The fact is," he said humorously, "I have a tryst with a ghost!"

To Nigel's astonishment he saw the color fade from her face. She struggled up into a sitting position and stared at him.

"A tryst with a ghost?" she repeated, and her voice shook.

For a moment he was dumbfounded by the effect that his words had produced on the girl, and he cursed himself for his grim jest. Probably she was nervous; there were people in the world in whom the word "ghost" produced a shiver.

"I am very sorry, Miss Steyne," he said apologetically. "I am afraid I startled you."

Her eyes did not leave his.

"What do you mean?" she asked huskily. "A tryst with a ghost? Where did you hear…"

She stopped suddenly and, seeing the quick rise and fall of her breast, the pallor of her face, the queer, hunted look in her blue eyes, Nigel Porter became almost incoherent in his efforts to undo the mischief which his ill-timed remark had produced.

"The fact is," he began, and then, realizing how fantastical and absurd the explanation that he was on the point of making would sound, he laughed. "It was a startling thing to say, wasn't it? I am afraid I have a latent streak of melodrama in my composition. Won't you please forgive me?"

She settled back in her chair, and for a while she gazed blankly out over the tumbling gray seas.

"It was stupid of me," she said, "but my nerves aren't in very good order. Would you ask the steward to bring a cup of tea?"

No further reference to his unfortunate  faux pas  was made. He saw her the next morning, when the ship was rolling through the English Channel and Devonshire was a gray blur on the northern horizon; and she was apparently so absorbed in the book she was reading that she only gave him a nod before she returned to a steadfast scrutiny of the printed page.

The morning on which they reached Cherbourg, Nigel made an unpleasant discovery. He had been out of his cabin all the morning, walking the deck, in the hope of seeing the girl. She did not put in an appearance, however, and he went down to his cabin to prepare for lunch, with an unsatisfactory feeling that the morning had been wasted. It was then that he had his shock. Somebody had been in his cabin. A trunk which was under the bed had been pulled out, and a brief examination of its contents told him that it had been subjected to a hurried but thorough search. His passport, which he kept with other confidential papers under his pillow, was lying open on the bed. He rang the bell, and presently the steward came.

"No, sir," said the man in surprise, "I've seen nobody in your cabin. I've been on this deck all morning. Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure," said Nigel irritably. "Look at this trunk. And that— I haven't opened that passport since I left New York."

The steward looked round inadequately.

"There's nobody been in your cabin, sir, as far as I know," he said. "Of course, I haven't been watching it all the time, because I've been in the other cabins, tidying up."

"Have you seen any of the passengers near the cabin?"

"No, sir— yes, I have," he corrected himself. "I saw that young lady in 87, Miss Steyne. She came down this alleyway by mistake. Her cabin is two alleyways farther along."

Nigel scratched his chin in perplexity. "Of course, it couldn't have been Miss Steyne," he said, and the steward, who was happy to agree that it could not have been anybody at all, nodded.

"It has been a clean trip," he said. "There are none of the gangs on board that usually work the line, and yours is the first complaint we've had— would you like me to report this to the purser?"

Nigel shook his head.

"It doesn't matter," he said.

When the steward had gone, he made a search of his belongings to find if anything had been stolen; but although the intruder had evidently made a systematic search of his cabin, nothing was missing. With his passport had been a letter of credit, and this apparently had not been taken from its envelope. He was a fool, anyway, to leave important papers lying around, he thought, and congratulated himself that he had not suffered any important loss.

For some reason he could not escape the conviction that the search of his cabin had been conducted with no other object than the examination of his passport. The intruder had been searching for a document. What that document was, Nigel could not guess, though he racked his brains for some plausible explanation.

He saw the girl on the tender at Cherbourg, and to his surprise she was not only friendly but communicative.

"I am going to Paris," she said. "You are going too, of course? Where are you staying?"

"I am not going to Paris," said Nigel, with a little smile.

Again that look of suspicion and doubt appeared in her eyes, but she made no further inquiries. He saw her through the Customs, and then made his way in a crazy taxi-cab to the town, where, if his cabled instructions had been carried out, the car would be waiting. He found it— an ancient French machine, but suitable for his purpose. His temptation was to stay the night in Cherbourg, but the time at his disposal was short. He had landed at the French port on the 24th, and he had less than twenty-four hours to reach his destination.

As the car bumped and jolted along the pavé road that makes at long last for Calais, he could only wonder at himself. It did not seem real, and yet it was true that, a little more than a fortnight ago, he had been sitting in the sunlight of British Columbia, when there had come to him, in the nature of a shock, the realization that he was fast approaching the Christmas of 1921. Once he remembered the date, there was no other course for him to follow, being the man he was. He did not regret his lost comfort; he did not feel sorry for himself; he did not even regret that he was in a car of uncertain age, rattling through a driving blizzard that obscured all view, that made the  pavé  so slippery that the car skidded every five minutes. And even when, tired and hungry, with the dawn just showing in a gray sky, he came into the station square at Ypres, he did not regard his adventure as being outside the limitations of common sense.

Ypres was changed, he noticed silently. Handsome red villas were going up in all directions. The Cloth Hall still pointed its maimed tower to the sky, and here and there, half covered with snow, he recognized a gaunt shell of a house that had been as familiar to him in those painful days of war as the Eros in Piccadilly Circus, or the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

Early as was the hour, there were workers abroad. A goods train was shunting noisily in a station which had been shelled out of existence in his days. Facing the station was a brand-new hotel, and he got down, gave an instruction to the weary-eyed French driver, and carried his bag into the dimly lit hallway. A sleepy man was sweeping the floor.

"Yes, monsieur, Major Burns is here, but he is leaving by the early train for England. He has twice been down to look for you. I will tell him you have come."

Nigel made his way to the big, bare dining-room, redolent of new paint, and lighted by one yellow carbon lamp. A table had been laid near the window for two. This he noted with satisfaction. Burns had evidently received his cable and the wire he had sent from Cherbourg.

There was a quick step in the hall, and the Major, wearing his long military overcoat and (as usual) his cap perched rakishly on the side of his head, hurried in and offered a gloved hand.

"I've been over to the station to fix my trunks. I'm going on a month's leave," he said. "So you've come back to the salient? They all do. Had some fellows here last week who knew you. We were talking of old 'Quiff.' Do you remember him? Wonder what happened to the old devil… never heard about him— hasn't even written a book! Do you remember that night when he tipped us off about the gas attack…?"

The Major rattled on reminiscently. He was a red-faced man, with a bright, twinkling eye, and he was obviously amused. Men who are amused at seven o'clock on a raw, wintry morning, amidst the sorrowful shades of Ypres, may be written down as possessing a strong sense of humor.

"I suppose you think I'm mad?" asked Nigel, when the other stopped.

Major Burns pursed his lips.

"I don't think so," he said at last. "No, I really don't think so. I suppose that, having lived in the midst of so much madness these past years, one takes a generous view of human sanity. 'Joseph'"— he beckoned the waiter—"'coffee.' I can give you half an hour," he said to his vis-à-vis. "And by the way, here is the plan so far as I can reconstruct it from the old operation plans of 1917."

He lugged out from his inside pocket a thin sheet of paper and spread it on the table.

"There's Kelners Farm, there's Dead Horse Lane, and that's Windy Corner. You'll recognize Windy Corner; it's one of the few bits of the old battlefield that have been left. I had to get this, by the way, from the Belgians, because it was on their front, I think, that this happened. I must tell you that Houthulst Forest has entirely disappeared; you won't find any trace of it, except a few straggling trees… it's a perfect beast of a place, Nigel."

Nigel was examining the plan, and now looked up as he folded the paper.

"Do you think I'm mad?" he said again.

"I don't, probably because my knowledge of the circumstances is more or less shaky. If I had a larger understanding of what occurred, perhaps I would be less charitable. I only know that you cabled me from British Columbia that you wanted me to discover the exact place where you had been blown up, because you wished to spend Christmas Day in the hole. Which reminds me that I had a Belgian officer in here yesterday— Colonel de Villiers— who said that the mine craters still exist."

Again Nigel nodded.

"It was lucky your being here. Luckier still that I remembered you were here, Burns," he said, and then: "I'll tell you the story. It happened on Christmas Eve of 1917. As a matter of fact, it happened on the twenty-third of December. I was attached to the French corps that was holding the southeastern edge of Houthulst Forest. I was working in connection with the Canadian Intelligence, and my instructions were to go over to discover the exact composition of the force that was holding the Belgian front. The G.O.C. wasn't at all satisfied with the intelligence he got from the Belgian staff, who were supposed to be  au fait  with these particulars, and of course the French had only recently come up, and were not in a position to give any accurate information."

He paused and looked out of the window, and it came to him sadly that this was not the Ypres he knew, that smouldering furnace of a town, bombarded daily, hourly, every minute; rocked and shaken by high explosive shells, a town that rumbled and thundered night and day, year in and year out; a gray, dusty town, where long files of men crept cautiously under such walls as existed, on their way to the muddy inferno which lay along the ridges of the north. Sadly, for he was thinking of all the brave hearts that were stilled and the bright, boyish faces that had gone and were no more seen.

"The curious thing was that, at the identical moment I went over into No Man's Land, a young German officer was sent to discover the exact composition of the French force that was holding this sector. We met half-way. To be exact, I stumbled over wire in the dark and slid down the edge of the crater—"

"Crater No. 17," murmured Major Burns. "The hole is about twenty metres away."

The other nodded.

"I was on the Hun before he knew what had happened. We both pulled our guns, and by the most extraordinary coincidence we both missed fire. It looked like being a real caveman's scrap, when the German chuckled and threw down his pistol.

"'I think, my friend,' he said, 'we had better both go home again. It would be stupid for us to batter one another with our fists, for that would probably mean that we should both be killed in attempting to get back to our lines in a condition of exhaustion.'

"The logic of it struck me, and we just sat down and talked. We not only talked, but we exchanged confidences of a highly compromising character. He told me that the 18th Bavarian Division was on our front, and I responded politely with the information that the 43rd French Division was on his front. He didn't seem as interested as he might have been. He produced a packet of sandwiches, I had a flask of whisky, and we sat and talked, until—

"'It will be daylight soon,' he said. 'I think we'd better go home.'

"So we shook hands, and we were half-way up the crumbling slope of the crater, when there broke out the most infernal fire that I had ever heard before or since. The air seemed to be so thick with traveling bullets and shells that you couldn't have put up a fishing-line without getting it cut in three places simultaneously!

"'I think we'd better wait,' shouted the German.

"So we retired again to the shell-hole, and prayed fervently— at least I did— that 'shorts' on either side would be few, and in other directions than ours. Dawn broke, and the fury of the fire did not abate. And then I found myself talking about things I never thought I would ever discuss with a German. He didn't tell me a great deal about himself, except that he was an officer in a Bavarian regiment. His English was perfect. I could have sworn, when I first saw him, that he was an American. Well, to cut a long story short, there we sat throughout the day. Christmas Eve came, and there was no slackening of the fire. Every gun, big and little, on both sides was in action, and we spent the night counting Verey lights and speculating upon what was the cause of this unseemly disturbance. Christmas Day came, but still there was practically no reduction of fire. I afterwards discovered that this was the preliminary bombardment to an attack which the French commander had planned, and which he hoped would bring the Forest into his hands. Poor soul! He never lived to know what a hell-trap that forest was! Later in the morning the fire seemed to die down just a little, and I crawled to the edge of the shell-hole to take observation. What happened I don't know. I woke up to find my head on the German's knee, and he was draining the last dregs of my whisky flask down my throat. My head was wet and aching, my eyes seemed to be filled with sand.

"'Shell fragment,' he said. 'I don't think you're badly hurt. I have two sandwiches and half a bottle of water left. We look like having a peach of a Christmas Day.'"

"What was his name— did you find that out?" asked Burns curiously.

"Karl— that was all he told me," replied Nigel. "That fellow was some prophet! I think both sides must have brought up all their reserves of artillery and trebled their stock of machine-guns. It was when I realized that we had had no 'Quiff' message from G.H.Q. that I knew the initiative was on our side. It was toward the evening that Karl said:

"'If we get through this, my friend, I should like to have a little dinner with you somewhere.'

"'When and where?' I asked.

"He thought a long time before he answered.

"'Maybe we shan't get through,' he said. 'But I'll tell you what I will do. If I am alive in four years' time, I will come and meet you here; and if you're not here, well, I'll keep a tryst with your ghost.'"

"Why four years?" asked Burns.

"He thought the war would last another three. He made it four to give us a chance of getting a peace. Of course, it was lunatic, it was childish, it was anything you like to call it, but there and then we made our agreement. It was the sort of thing that schoolgirls do, and… anyway, there's something peculiarly simple and infantile about the full-grown soldier.

"It was eleven o'clock that night that the French fired the mine. My own impression was that it was just underneath where I was sitting, but my recollections of the circumstances are necessarily hazy. I just remember saying to Karl that I had a passion for marrons glacés, when I felt somebody slapping my face, and looked up into the eyes of an English surgeon who was in his shirt-sleeves. I just remember hearing him say 'He's all right,' and then I sort of dozed myself out of Belgium and woke up in an English hospital. The body of Karl was found and buried on the very edge of the crater. We took the ground and lost it, took it again and lost it again, but I know he was found, because the officer who picked me up after the mine was exploded was in the next bed to me in hospital, and he told me all about it, how they found this poor chap quite dead and buried him."

"Hum!" said Major Burns, gulping down his coffee. "I think you're a fool, but it's the sort of fool thing I should have done myself."

He scrutinized the lowering skies through the window.

"You're going to have a cold Christmas Day, my lad," he said.

"I never expected any other."

Just before noon Nigel came out of the hotel with a basket, a bottle of wine, and a box of cigars, which he stowed away in one of the car's pockets. He himself went to the wheel, and in a few minutes was passing slowly westward. The car sped down a perfectly gravelled road, and passed cemetery upon cemetery crowded with white crosses, whiter for the rim of snow which lay upon their edges, and presently, turning abruptly from the main road, he came almost instantly into a region of desolation. The new red buildings were behind him. The road was no longer a road, it was a succession of deep holes and ruts. Sharp-cornered paving-blocks jagged up from the sodden earth, stark walls that had once been houses loomed through the sleet on either side. Broken and jagged barbed wire, red with rust, trailed its tangled lengths by the roadside, and here and there he saw the drunken outlines of block-houses where men had lived horribly and had died in fear. Presently the car was lurching between flat heaps of rubble that the rains of the years had washed and pounded into little unrecognizable plateaux. A village had been here once. Rotting weeds showed where love and life had been, and holes gaped in the roadway before a medley of black, wrought-iron crosses which marked a graveyard that had been set around a church. There was no church.

These sights were too familiar to sadden him, though now it seemed, in the years of peace, that the ugliness of war was emphasized more strongly. He came at last, by the aid of his map, and after constant backings and changing of direction, and guided at the very last by a miserable-looking man who lived with his family in a deserted dug-out, to the edge of what was once a forest but was now nothing. For all that was left of the trees were blackened stumps and dead white stems that stood starkly against the cold sky.

He stopped his car, got out and took his bearings, and instinctively he went straight to the place he sought. The hole was deep: it was half filled with yellow water. To the right was a smaller hole, also water-logged, and he smiled faintly, contrasting the calm of that winter day with no other sound in his ear but the sough and sigh of the wind that swept down from the dunes, and the tawny sea beyond, with the deafening fury of the storm that swept this spot four years before. There was the grave: he saw it at once, a small black cross above a slab of concrete that the Government had laid down to prevent farmers ploughing ground hallowed by sacrifice.

Bending down, he read: "Allemand." Karl was "Allemand." In small letters was the word "officer." It was not usual to distinguish the rank of the dead. That was all. It stood for life and humor and courage, and God knows what hope. It stood also for an enemy, but that was incidental and meant nothing to Nigel Porter, sitting there on the edge of the crater, with his fur collar pulled up about his ears.

His eyes roved around the starved landscape. It was such a foul setting for the rare jewel of a soul.

"Well, my friend," he said— his tone was one of heavy jocularity; insensibly he had recalled, and was reproducing, the very tone of the man whom he apostrophised—"here am I, after four years! I owe you an apology, because I nearly forgot my promise. If I hadn't read in a Vancouver newspaper some highly flattering references to my services during the war, I should certainly have broken my promise."

There was such quiet dignity in that black cross, such serenity in the truncated pyramid of concrete that marked the abiding-place of this "Allemand, officer," that his voice died down. The dead are so immensely superior to the living that he felt abashed.

He sat for a long time, his gloved hands crossed on his knees, his head bent forward in thought, and then he got up with a sigh and dusted his coat.

"Well—" he began, and his jaw dropped.

Standing on the farther rim of the crater was a tall figure, draped from neck to feet in a long, dark cloak. It was bareheaded, and the wind had blown a lock of fair hair across the forehead of the man. Nigel stared open-mouthed, speechless, and then:

"Karl!" he croaked.

The voiceless figure stirred.

"Thank God! I thought you were a ghost."

In a dozen strides Nigel had flown round the edge of the crater and gripped the outstretched hand.

"What are you doing here!" he asked huskily… "Stupid question to ask, but you are—"

The other laughed.

"I'm keeping a tryst with a ghost," he said, with a twinkle in his eyes. "You see, I thought you were… dead. When our people took the ground they found a grave here."

Suddenly he gripped the other by the arm.

"Let's get out of this beastliness," he said. "My God! How hideous war is!"

They had nearly reached the sunken road where the stranger's car was waiting, when Nigel remembered that he had some responsibility in the matter of transportation.

"You can go back for it. I want to introduce you to my sister. By the way, my name is Steyne."

And there Nigel found the girl.

IT WAS after dinner in the barrack-like dining-room of the Hotel d'Ypres that Nigel Porter heard and understood.

"No, I'm not a German," said Mr. Charles Steyne, pulling gently at his cigar, "I am an American. I was in the war from the very first month."

"On the German side?"

"Oh yes, I was on the German side. That is to say, I wore the German uniform and served in the German Intelligence Department. There were five of us originally, and we were employed by the most effective secret service that the world has ever known. I speak respectfully of Great Britain. Of the five only one is left alive. Taylor was shot in Hanover after being tried by court-martial for running the secret wireless by which the British were informed of the movement of German ships. Jack Holtz suffered a like fate on the Russian frontier, when he was trying to get through to the Russian headquarters the news of the German concentration— he owed his death to the treachery of the Russian General Staff, by the way; and Micky Thomas was killed by a night watchman at the German Foreign Office after he had got away with some very important documents which were necessary to your Whitehall. Long Bill Fenner was accidentally killed by an aeroplane bomb dropped by an American airman. And I was almost, but not quite, destroyed by the explosion of a mine… Well, you know that story. If Elsie had only told me that she had met you on the ship, and had given me a hint about your keeping a tryst with ghosts— a phrase of mine, by the way, which, coming from you, so startled her that she nearly jumped out of her skin—"

Nigel was looking at the girl, and under his eyes the color came to her face, for she had anticipated the question which was coming.

"Why did you want to see my passport, Miss Steyne?" he asked.

"I think I can answer that," replied Charles Steyne. "My sister doesn't realize that war ever ends, and that the price the Germans put on the head of their pet enemy is no longer offered. She pictured you a member of the Government, tracking down the shy and elusive Quiff—"

"Quiff!" gasped Nigel. "Then you were— ?"

The other nodded.

"I was on my way to the French lines to tell the General not to attack. If I had told you I was 'Quiff' you would not have believed me."

"Phew!" Nigel sat back in his chair and stared at the girl, but she averted her eyes.

"I'm glad… you're not exactly German," he said, a little gauchely. "I don't believe in mixed marriages… I mean…"

The ghost smiled wisely.

________________

6: The Child of Chance

IT IS ABSURD to say that truth is stranger than fiction because, as everybody knows, fiction is the unstrangest product of life. That is to say, fiction would be very strange if it was notstranger. For if it had no novelty, it would be no better than the News-That-is-Fit-to-Print, which is just the dullest kind of printed matter (with the exception of the Theology section of a Free Library catalogue) that offends the eye of mankind.

There was a girl who lived in a tenement house in a very poor part of London, who used to pray to God every night that a nice clean dragon with blunt teeth would seize her and be starting to fly away with his prey, when there would appear upon the scene a young and beautiful man in shining armor, who would slice the head from the dragon and carry her off to a white castle on a purple hill where she would be arrayed in white garments by handmaidens, and given bread and milk in a golden bowl.

She never reached very far beyond that breathless preamble, leaving it to God to fill in the blanks of her imaginings and to supply an adequate continuation of her story— which she had designed as a non-stop serial, each chapter of which was to be more delicious than the last.

Her name was Verity Money, and her age was eighteen. She was very pretty, very slim, and childlike, both in her appearance and in her faith. Her uncle, for whom she kept house— there were two rooms and a kitchen, and she slept in the kitchen, which was warm and cozy— was a grim old market-porter intensely religious for eleven months and two weeks of the year, and somewhat unsober for the remainder. He was never unkind to the girl— indeed he was most lavish in his gifts, and had been known to present her with such undreamt of luxuries as a feather boa and a musical box.

For the other fifty weeks of the year he was a sober and taciturn man— you can picture him lean faced, with a fringe of gray whiskers, poring earnestly over the big print of his Testament and declaiming at length on the virtues of Paul and the vacillations of Peter, the girl, darning needle in hand, listening with every evidence of interest, but her mind occupied by visions of the mythological youth in glittering armor.

When Tom Money died, he left her about fifty pounds and all his furniture. He had been a careful man, and it was discovered that he had paid his rent in advance, and that there was still three years of unexpired tenancy.

So Verity Money lived alone, earning just enough by her needle to keep body and soul together, and was happy in her dreams, and as she had no women friends, she suffered no disillusionment. Her ideals had undergone a change, for a new factor had come into her life. The movies had opened a new world to her and shifted the angle of her visions. Now, she was a little girl with sunlight in her hair, with a slow dawning smile and little uplift of the big, serious eyes to greet the handsome stranger who had ridden into her picture from nowhere in particular. In fine, she adored Mary Pickford, and pinned a picture of that lady on the wall so that it was the first object she saw when she opened her eyes in the morning.

She would slip from her bed, carefully remove the print, and re-pin it above the mantelpiece. She could light the fire and wash the cups, spread the table and take her morning tea and bread and butter with a sense of companionship which was very precious to her.

Her heroes were no longer armed  cap-à-pie. They were handsome young men in sombreros and who wore sheepskin trousers. They rode fiery mustangs and earned a precarious livelihood by shooting one another with revolvers…

The war brought nothing of reality to Verity Money. The wilful murder on a small scale which was screened for her amusement was more real, more terrible, more thrilling than the grand murthering up and down the hundred-league line, eighty miles from her door, where day and night the guns of Flanders crashed and roared and massed ranks went down before the spraying fire of machine-guns.

The war dawned upon her slowly as one by one her customers dropped their orders. Her work was the finest embroidery on cambric and silk. There was plenty of sewing work to be had, but she could not make soldiers' shirts or stitch button-holes in such quantity as would give her a living wage. She was slow and careful, and the few button-holes she made were very beautiful indeed, but she earned exactly eightpence in two days.

She had exhausted much of the money which had been left to her, and there came a time when she had to reduce her expenditure to a point which gave her one square meal a day.

She had no friends. There was neither boy nor man in her life. Her lovers were living in the sunny places of the world, holding their wide-brimmed hats on the pommels of high Mexican saddles whilst they passed the time of day with lovely girls who wore divided skirts and rode astride.

One day she started to starve and nobody knew anything about it. If she had died, the coroner would have had some unpleasant things to say about moving pictures, because she had spent her last threepence to see a great railway picture where half the story was told in the cab of an engine and half in the bullion van, where train robbers and bullion guards took pot shots at one another with deadly effect.

On the second evening of her starvation she went to a house in Berkeley Square to deliver some d'oyleys. The lady was not at home, and nobody had orders to pay this girl with the curious pinched look in her face.

She came slowly down the steps of the house into the dark square, took a few steps, and staggered. Somebody caught her by the arm and pulled her to her feet.

"Hold up," said a voice, but she was beyond obedience, and the stranger lifted her in his arms as though she were a child and stood for a moment frankly embarrassed by the situation in which he found himself.

He looked helplessly around, then whistled to two bright points of light in the distance.

The taxi drove up.

"Take me to the nearest hospital," said the stranger.

"Middlesex?" suggested the driver.

The stranger hesitated.

"Is it near?" he asked cautiously.

"It's nearest if your friend is badly hurt," said the driver.

"That's just what I can't say," said the other.

"Put her in the cab," suggested the chauffeur, getting down; "there's an electric light inside."

"What a brain!" laughed the stranger.

He looked at the girl lying limp and white in one corner of the cab and whistled softly.

Then he pushed back his khaki cap and scratched his head.

"Now what is the matter with her?" he asked irritably— irritability is a natural condition of man in the presence of a sick woman.

"If you ask me," said the driver carefully, "she wants grub."

"Good Lord!" cried the soldier, startled; "food… hungry?"

The driver nodded.

"I've seen them symptoms before— I've driven a cab for twenty-eight years in London."

Still the rescuer was undecided.

"Drive around for a while and if she doesn't recover I'll tell you— then you can go hell for lick to the nearest hospital."

The car had hardly moved before Verity blinked open her eyes and stared, first at the cab and then with a frightened frown at the young man who sat on the opposite seat.

"Are you feeling better?" he asked.

She saw a soldier, indistinguishable from any other of the thousands who had passed her in the mist of her dreams. He was a good-looking mortal, as clean shaven as any cowboy or train robber or even as the blessed saint of England. His uniform was no different from any other, but the badge upon his collar was a bronze leaf.

She was seized with a sudden panic.

"Can I get out please?" she asked in a flutter.

"Sure," he nodded, "but we'd better have some food— I'm starving, and you've made me miss an appointment with a fellow of ours."

To say that she was horror-stricken at this last revelation, is to tell no more than the truth. She had never intruded her influence upon the machinery of society before. Not once, by any act, had she knowingly affected the plans or movements of others. She felt, as she looked at him with troubled eyes and parted lips, that no sacrifice she could make could be too great to repair the mischief which she had caused.

"I'm— I'm very sorry," she gulped; "I would buy you some supper, but— but…"

She went red and her eyes were moist and shining. The young man whistled again— but quite inside himself.

"We will have supper together," said he, with a smile.

So he brought her to a golden palace of splendor. She was not self-conscious and did not realize that she might be an incongruous figure in the midst of all this amazing luxury. He noted that she was neatly dressed and that she was very young— she saw only the clustering bulbs of light in the gilded ceiling, the snowy tables glittering with silver and glass, the gentlemanly waiters who spoke English so funnily, the flowers… beautifully dressed ladies… some of them smoking… She drew a long breath which was half a sigh and half a sob.

They brought her soup— thick white creamy soup and curly strips of crisp brown sole, and white slithers of chicken, and an ice and coffee. The man did not offer her wine, knowing instinctively that she would be shocked, and for this reason he denied himself the half bottle of Chablis his soul craved.

He tried to draw her, gently and tactfully, but it was not until he touched on the cinema as a method of filling up odd moments of waiting that she began to talk. He did not laugh, he did not even smile when she revealed herself, her dreams (this she did with a naïveté which brought a lump to his throat), and her illusions. He told her something of the untamed places of the world, of the country north of Edmonton, of the forest of Ontario, of lumber camps on the Kootenay lakes, and of Alberta.

"Are you— you aren't American?" she asked suddenly.

He smiled.

"I am Canadian," he said, "but that is near enough."

She looked at him in awe.

"Do you have cowboys and— and things like that?" she asked. "I mean… is it dreadfully rough there?"

They sat until they were the last people in the restaurant and the waiters stood about them in silent reproach, and in that time he had learnt all there was to tell about her. He learnt, too, of the lady in Berkeley Square who had ordered d'oyleys and had not paid. Then he drove her home by way of the square.

"Lady Grant is a friend of mine," he lied, "and she would like me to see that you were paid— I will go in and get the money."

"Her name is Lady Grey," corrected the girl timidly.

"Didn't I say Grey?" he asked in surprise.

Though she protested that her client should not be disturbed at that hour of the night, he insisted; and stopping the cab some distance from the house, he disappeared into the darkness, returning in triumph with a whole pound note.

"Lady Green asked me to say—" he began.

She looked at him in consternation.

"You went to the wrong house!" she whispered in horror; "oh, you must go back, please! It was Lady Grey—"

He groaned in spirit.

"Lady Grey asked me to say," he went on patiently, "that you—"

"But you said 'Green,'" she protested.

"I did not mention the fact," he answered gravely, "but I am color blind— I always say Grey when I mean Green— anyway, she said the work was so well done that she would like you to accept a little extra…"

All the way to her rooms on the south side of the river she was one babble of gratitude and adoration; Lady Grey was so kind, so generous, so good.

He caught himself yawning.

He went back to his hotel that night singularly thoughtful. A lean man from Toronto sprawling on the settee in the vestibule of the hotel rose up to meet him, and Private John Hamilton met his disapproving eye with a guilty smile.

"I waited till nine o'clock for you at Frascati's," growled the man from Toronto, clipping his canvas belt together, "you're the darnedest old—"

"Gee, Corporal, I'm sorry!" said the young man humbly, "but I met— my— er— cousin— and she— I mean he— well, he insisted—"

"Don't you try to put anything over me," warned the other, stretching himself. "I wouldn't have waited up for you, but I've seen the Colonel— he's going back tomorrow."

He looked round and lowered his voice.

"There's to be a big attack this week," he said, "and the Canadians will be in it. I've made my will," he added.

Hamilton looked at his lank friend with a twinkling eye.

"You're a cheerful soul," he said.

"Yep," said the other complacently. "I've left twenty-four dollars seventy-five cents, and any balance due from my army pay, to three lawyer fellers in Toronto."

He elaborated the scheme of his will, which with any good fortune must lead to endless law suits.

"I hate lawyers worse'n poison," he said, "and I guess I shall be as cheerful as any poor guy that goes west this week."

Hamilton was a long time getting to bed that night. He wrote a letter to his agents in Montreal and one to the manager of his office at Toronto— he was Hamilton of the Hamilton Steel Corporation before he became No. 79743, Private Hamilton of the 40th Canadian Infantry— and another to his London banker.

For an hour he sat on the edge of his bed, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, thinking.

At two o'clock in the morning he rang his bell and demanded of the astounded night porter the address of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The request was received tolerantly by the porter as an example of youthful good spirits. When the young man angrily persisted, the porter diagnosed the case as one of truculent intoxication and went in search of a reference book.

Verity Money had never received a telegram in her life and had no idea who "Hamilton" was. It was an imperative telegram ordering her to meet the said Hamilton at Marble Arch at three o'clock.

She obeyed the summons meekly, for it would have been flying in the face of Providence to disregard a message upon which nineteen cents had been spent.

In truth, she never suspected the identity of the sender, and puzzled her little brain to recall the Mrs. Hamiltons and the Misses Hamiltons who had swum majestically into her placid sea, had thrown overboard instructions and orders for embroidered nightdress cases and pillow-slips, and had as majestically retired.

She was dressed very plainly and very neatly in black, and could have found no more attractive setting to her undeniable beauty, for she was fair and petite, with a complexion like milk and hair of spun gold. Her big gray-blue eyes, her firm little chin, her generous mouth— all these details Hamilton took in as he came forward to meet her. She was frankly and unfeignedly surprised and glad to meet him. He had joined the angels, did he but know it, and was one with St. George and Bronco Billy and other great heroes.

"I want to talk to you," he said brusquely, and looked at his wrist-watch. "We have only a quarter of an hour."

He led her to a seat in the park under a big oak. They were free from interruption but, as the girl was relieved to discover, within call of the police.

"My name is Hamilton," he said, without any further preliminary, "and I am going back to the front by the six o'clock train."

She nodded and looked at him with a new interest. He was going back to the front! It seemed rather splendid and she regretted that she had not paid closer attention to the war. But then, of course, she had not known that he was in it, and that all the bombardments, charges, minings, and bombings had been either designed to destroy him, or to rescue him from danger. For the first time she felt a sense of personal animosity against the German Emperor.

"Now, I want to say this," he went on carefully, choosing his words and speaking slower than was his practice, "I have no relations in the world, and if I am killed nobody will be very miserable."

"I should be— awfully," she said, with an eagerness that brought a smile to his tanned face.

"I am sure you would," he said gently, "and that is what I want to speak about. You see, a man is always sorry for himself. The thought of dying and not being able to continue being sorry for himself is one of the most dreadful thoughts his mind can hold. You've read that in books, haven't you?"

She was doubtful, but admitted that she had often read of people who were quite bitter at the prospect of nobody being unhappy when they died.

"Well," he said, after a pause, "I want  you  to be unhappy—"

"But I shall be," she insisted, and he laughed again.

"I want you to have the right to be unhappy," he said; "naturally, I don't want to put people who aren't— related— or connected with me to a lot of trouble— so I thought it would be a good idea if you married me before I left."

"Married you?" she said blankly, and stared at him.

He nodded.

"But I— I couldn't marry you, could I— without being your wife?"

It was an insane question and she knew it, but for any words she could utter, she was grateful enough. She found speech almost a physical impossibility, and was amazed that she could speak at all.

"I have a special license," he said deliberately, "and I have a parson waiting. If you will marry me we shall have time for a meal before I go."

"But— I don't think I love you," she faltered, "and that wouldn't be right— would it?"

"I don't want you to love me," he said loudly; "all you have to do is to marry me and be sorry."

"Oh!"

She looked round helplessly.

She could hardly call the policeman to assist her in coming to a decision, and yet she felt the need of legal advice.

"I don't know what to do," she said at length, "I've never been— nobody has ever asked me— suppose I were your— your sister, what would you advise?"

"Come and be married," he said practically, and rose.

At five o'clock she stood upon the platform at Charing Cross Station and waved adieu to the man whose name she bore.

She waited until the train was out of sight, gently twisting the gold band upon her finger, and then with a little lift of her chin she came out to the crowded courtyard.

"Cab, miss?"

She looked at the porter a little frightened, and then with no small amount of dignity inclined her head.

The cab drew up.

"Where do you want to go, miss?" demanded the driver.

"Mrs. John Hamilton!" said the girl and grew for a moment incoherent. "I mean— oh, Hagan's Rents, please!"

VERITY MONEY learnt much from books. Even by cultured standards she was well read, but she found neither in Dickens, nor Dumas, nor in the efforts of the modern authors any situation analogous to her own. Nor did the cinema help her, though she indulged in a systematic search for parallels.

She had letters from her husband— kindly, brotherly letters. He had been in a big fight, and had come out without a scratch, though his friend ("you remember the Corporal who was at the church?") had been severely wounded, though he was now on the way to recovery. Was she well? Did she receive her allowance regularly? Had she moved as he suggested to the furnished flat he had urged her to take?

She answered his letters in a firm, childish hand, perfectly punctuated, and to his surprise and relief not only literate but literary in the sense that they conveyed a freshness and a clarity of view which was little short of marvelous.

"I shall try to be a good wife to you," she wrote, "and I am already reading the newspapers carefully. I have written to Lord Kitchener—"

He sat back on the step of the trench and gasped— then he laughed and laughed till the tears rolled down his face.

"I have written to Lord Kitchener to ask him when the war will be over, and he has written to me saying that he isn't sure, but he will let me know. I hope our marriage isn't a mistake, but I will try to be worthy of a hero who is fighting for his country. I have a picture of a Canadian soldier, and I am learning to sing 'The Maple Leaf.' I went to the flower shop in Regent Street and asked them if they had any maple leaves, but they had none. It was so silly of me, but I did want to buy some."

When John Hamilton came out of the trenches he went to No. 8 Base Hospital and saw a certain swathed and bandaged corporal, and discussed matters.

"Well, Don Quixote, and how is Mrs. Don?" asked the voice behind a large square of medicated gauze.

John sat on the bed and read extracts from the letter.

"I thought you were crazy," said the wounded man, "but I guess you've instinct. There's the making of a woman in that child. You're not feeling sorry for yourself?"

"On the contrary, I'm looking forward to life— it has possibilities," said the other.

Verity Hamilton in the Baker Street flat, with a maid of her own, was a serious little figure facing those possibilities for herself.

She adored her ten-minute husband because she was made to adore those who were kind to her. She prayed for him, she evolved great plans for his future, and she fought hard against the pin-point of doubt which had come into her mind and which was growing with every day which passed.

In a sense he had fulfilled her ideals and her dreams, for he had come violently into her life and had in a sense saved her from destruction. At any rate he had given her food when she was very hungry. And then she had seen him again— and whisk! she was married!

She used to sit with compressed lips, and eyes that were fixed in the far-away, wondering— and doubting.

He could not love her: he had never said that he did. He had not so much as kissed her, and it was only the strong grip of his hand that she remembered.

Her problem was a simple one. She loved her husband and he did not love her. Why he had married her she did not ask herself, curiously enough. Who was she to inquire into his godlike whims?

How could she make her husband love her? That was the problem, and presently a fortuitous visit to the movies told her.

Four months after his marriage, John Hamilton was sent to England on sick leave pending his discharge. The shrapnel bullet which was responsible for so much left him with a perceptible limp, and there was a big chance that he might rid himself of all traces of his wound (so the army doctors told him), but it would take time.

He arrived at Southampton in the early hours of a spring morning, and telegraphed to his wife that he would be staying at the Cranbourne Hotel and that he would call and see her.

He expected she would be waiting for him at Waterloo, but here he was disappointed and a little hurt. Yet— he had heard something of the commotion she had caused at the War Office when the news of the wounding had come through; of how she had appeared armed with a letter authorizing her to call upon a high personage. Being somewhat vague as to her husband's position in the army since he had been promoted to lance-corporal, she had described him as "Colonel," which accounted for her facilities.

And she had demanded to be taken at once to the Holy of Holies to meet the steel-eyed man from Khartoum, and had wept on the breast of a flustered field officer when that permission had been gently denied her.

All this John Hamilton had learnt, and, lying on his back in the Versailles hospital, had chuckled the morning through at the recital.

Perhaps she had a surprise for him? She had indeed.

When he came to her flat the maid opened the door expectantly and primly. Would he go to the drawing-room— Mrs. Hamilton was waiting.

The drawing-room door was opened and he was announced. He did not hear the door close behind him, for he stood out of breath and speechless looking down at the girl.

She was seated in a low chair before the fire, and on her knees lay a tiny pink-faced thing that scowled and spluttered and stared into space.

"My God!" whispered John Hamilton.

She looked up at him serenely with that smile which was peculiarly her own.

"Isn't he lovely?" she whispered.

John Hamilton said nothing.

"Whose— whose baby is that?" he managed to say at last.

"Mine," she said gravely.

"Y-yours— how old is it?" he asked, a cold sweat of apprehension breaking over him.

"Two months," she said.

He sat down heavily and she looked across at him with growing distress.

"Oh dear— please, aren't you glad?" she pleaded. "I thought you would be—"

He glared from the child to Verity and from Verity to the child, and then he laughed, but it was not a happy laugh.

"What an ass I am!" he said, half to himself. "What a stupid blind fool!"

The tears were standing in her eyes, tears of disappointment and chagrin. She was hurt— he saw the immeasurable pain in her eyes and was kneeling by her side in an instant.

"My dear, my dear," he said softly, "I am an awful brute— but it was such a surprise and I had no idea—"

"I thought— it would make you so happy," she sobbed. "I wanted you— to love me— and children bring people together as nothing else does— I've seen it in stories and things."

He patted her hand.

"Yes, dear— but this is not— my child."

She looked at him open-eyed.

"Of course it is your child!" she cried.

John Hamilton rose unsteadily.

"I think— I rather think you're wrong," he said, his head whirling.

She laid the unconscious cause of her unhappiness upon the downy deeps of the big arm-chair and faced him, her hands clasped behind her back.

"It's no use trying," she said brokenly. "I thought you would love a little baby about the house— I'll have to send it back."

She covered her face with her hands.

"Send it back!" he gasped.

He took her by the wrists and gently pulled her hands apart.

"I— I was going to adopt it," she gulped. "I have it on a week's— a week's trial—"

He took her in his arms and his laughter filled the flat with joyful sound. The baby on the sofa, scenting disaster for itself, opened its little red mouth very wide, screwed up its eyes into the merest buttons and added its voice to the chorus.

________________

7: The Dear Liar

SYLVIA CREST walked back to her surgery, her quick steps beating time to the song of triumph in her heart. She had declined Jonas Picton's offer to send her home in one of his many cars. Walking, movement of any kind, physical action she wanted to work down the bubbling exuberance which was within her. So she swung down the hill from the big house and through Broadway into busy Market Street, and people who knew her and who observed the lifted chin and the light in her eyes, saw Tollford's one woman doctor as a new being. They saw, though this they could not know, merely the reaction from months of depression bordering upon despair, months of waiting when her most precious quality, her faith in herself and her invincibility had been gradually shrinking until she had almost lost hold.

For she had thrown down the gage to the town of Tollford, and until this morning the glove lay moulding where it fell.

If Tollford had not been founded a couple of hundred years before the birth of Jonas Picton, it might and undoubtedly would have been known to history as Pictonville. It is on record that Jonas offered pretty substantial inducements, including the building of a new Town Hall, the presentation of a town park, and the equipment of a new Fire Station to induce such a change of name; but Tollford was more conservative in those days before Picton's tall smoke stacks stabbed the skyline east and north, and his great glass-roofed factory buildings sprawled half-way down the valley.

And when the Picton works, and some eight thousand Picton employees, had become so important a factor in the municipal life of Tollford, Jonas had outgrown the desire for advertisement and had found life held something bigger than the flattery of a purchased honor.

Yet, in every other sense, Tollford remained conservative. Strangers who came and surveyed the town and marked it down as easy, who saw gold lying on the sidewalks waiting to be lifted, and returned joyously to show Tollford how much better stores, theatres, and newspapers could be run— these people lost money.

Dr. Sylvia Crest had come straight to Tollford from Mercer's Hospital, her diploma painfully new but her heart charged with confidence. She, too, had surveyed the land and had duly noted the poverty of medical resources in the town. Of women doctors there were none— and there were at least four thousand women employed at Picton's. She sat down the night following her visit to Tollford, and, with a pencil and paper and the local health statistics before her, she took stock of opportunity and found the prospects beautiful.

So she arrived one dull day in February, rented a corner house, furnished her rooms with proper severity, put up her sign, and waited. The local newspaper man gave her a most outrageous puff, for Sylvia was pretty— the prettiness of regular features and a skin like silk; but, brazen sign and as brazen advertisement notwithstanding, few patients sought the advice of the new doctor.

Tollford was conservative.

Moreover, working women did not like women doctors. About the female of the medical profession all manner of legends circulated. Women practitioners (by local and even more general account) did not treat women as kindly as men doctors. They were liable to fainting spells, and think what would happen if, in the middle of a critical operation, the doctor needed medical attention!

All these things were said and agreed upon in the lunch hour at Picton's, when the women talked over the new arrival.

"I'd as soon die as have a woman doctor fussing round me," said one oracle, and her light-hearted preference for death before the attentions of one of her sex was endorsed with unanimity.

A haggard and droop-lipped Jonas Picton sitting in his ornate office at the works had heard of Dr. Sylvia Crest, and sighed. Where the great Steyne, most famous of modern physicians, had failed to find any other remedy than the knife, and offered even that dread remedy without assurance of cure, what hope could a "bit of a girl" bring? His secretary had pointed her out to him once when he was driving through Tollford. And yet one day in sheer desperation he had sent for her. The messenger had come at a moment when Dr. Sylvia was facing, perilously near tears, an accumulation of bills which called for an earlier settlement than her bank manager could sanction. No wonder that the sun shone more wonderfully, and the homely folk of Tollford took on a foreign charm under her benignant eyes as she made her way homeward.

Alan Brock was waiting in her study, and the hearth she had left clean and tidy was strewn with his cigarette ends. She looked suspiciously at him as she came in, his face was more yellow, his appearance more untidy than usual, and he had not shaved.

He was the one doctor in Tollford who had given her welcome— he was more presentable the first day he had called upon her— and she had been grateful. She did not realize until later that in seeking her out he had advertised his belief in her failure.

Alan Brock had neither friend nor practice in Tollford, and for good reason.

She took off her wrap, her disapproving eyes upon the figure sprawling in the one easy-chair she possessed.

"Doctor Brock, you have been taking morphine again," she said severely.

He chuckled, stretching out his hand to flick away the ashes of his cigarette. "I must keep one patient, you know," he grinned, "to alleviate suffering, to restore vitality— what used old Professor Thingummy say were the three duties of medicine?"

She smiled.

She was too elated to take anything but a charitable view even of one whose acquaintance she was determined to drop.

"Why don't you go away from here?" she asked. "You need not be a doctor—"

"The good people of Tollford make it obvious," he growled.

"You have money," she went on; "why stay here where—" She stopped, and he looked up.

"Where I'm not exactly respected, eh?" he asked. "Well, there are several reasons, and you're one of them."

"Me?" she was genuinely surprised.

He nodded.

"Yes, you. Do you know, Sylvia, doctoring isn't your line. You haven't the temperament for it, for one thing— it's a horrible profession for a woman, anyway."

Her lips were set tight now.

"That isn't the view you took a month ago, Dr. Brock," she said, and he waved his hand feebly.

"A few weeks ago I wanted to know you and I wasn't such a fool as to start right in telling you your faults. Sylvia, you and I are both hopeless failures."

He rose unsteadily and reached out his hand. Had she not moved quickly it would have rested on her arm.

"I want you to listen to me, Dr. Brock," she said quietly. "There is nothing in our relationship which justifies your calling me by my Christian name. There is, I am sorry to say, very little in our common profession which makes a continuance of our friendship possible or desirable— even the communion of failure has no attraction for me."

He was standing by the table, swaying slightly. The effect of the morphine was beginning to wear off and his face was drawn and haggard. He muttered something and sank back to his chair. Then lifting his sunken head with an unexpected alertness:

"Look here," he said, "I've got money, that's true. I tell you I'm mighty fond of you, and that's true also. Why don't you throw up this business and come away? It would make a new man of me, Sylvia."

She shook her head.

"Supposing I was fond of you, which I'm not, marrying a man to reform him would be a pretty thin occupation; and, honestly, I don't think you're going to be cured."

"You're certain about that, are you?" he said, with an ugly little smile.

"Do you realize," he asked suddenly, "that you're certain about almost everything?"

He was surprised to see the red come into her face. Later he was to learn the reason why.

"I'm sorry," he said humbly. "Don't let us quarrel— anyway, I'm leaving this hole. How did you get on this morning? Did you see the kid?"

"I saw the child," said the girl.

"Well?" He was looking at her queerly. There was something skeptical and challenging in his attitude which annoyed her, until she remembered that there had been a time when this broken man had been Picton's family doctor.

"I saw the child," she said again, "and I think that the trouble is local— in fact, I am certain." She cut the word short, as though it had slipped out against her will, and again she flushed.

"You think the spinal trouble will yield to treatment— in fact, you're certain, eh?" he said slowly. "Well, you're putting your opinion against the biggest expert."

"I realize that," she replied; "but I must say what I believe. I gave the child a thorough examination; she's a pretty little girl, isn't she? I am satisfied that with massage and fairly simple local remedies, the swelling on the back can be absorbed."

Brock was silent. He sat with his chin on his hands looking into the fire.

At last he broke the silence.

"And naturally old man Picton fell on your neck and blessed you."

She looked at him in surprise.

"He was rather grateful— why?"

"Because," said the other grimly, "that's the kind of verdict he's been trying to get for years. Jonas Picton hates the knife. His wife died on the table. His mother died in similar circumstances, and I believe one of his sisters had a very unhappy experience at the hands of a fashionable surgeon. It is just the knife that he wants to avoid, and naturally he believed you and was glad to swallow everything you told him. Do you know what you are, Sylvia? You're the straw, and he clutched you!"

The girl repressed her irritation with an effort.

"I gave what I believe to be an honest opinion," she said.

Dr. Brock had reached out his hand and taken a book from the bookcase and was looking at it idly. He turned the cover.

"S.A.C.— your initials," he said. "'Sure and Certain,' eh?" He laughed.

This time she made no attempt to conceal her anger.

"You are not quite as original as you think, Dr. Brock," she said, her lips trembling. "Those initials have been interpreted that way before by a man who would be a little more competent than you to sit in judgment on my diagnosis."

"Who is that?" he asked in surprise.

He had reached the stage in morphiomania where he found it impossible to take offense at rebuffs more pointed than Sylvia Crest's.

"John Wintermere," she said shortly, and he whistled.

"I remember," he said softly. "I heard some story about it from Mercers. He was rather sweet on you, wasn't he, and you had an awful row with him when you were a student, and—"

The girl had opened the door.

"If you will excuse me now, Dr. Brock, I shall be very glad to have this room," she said. "I am expecting some patients."

"Wintermere, eh?" He rose slowly, groping for his hat. "Good chap, Wintermere. He's married now, isn't he?"

He saw the girl's face go white.

"Married?" she faltered. "I don't know— perhaps— at any rate, it's no business of mine."

He chuckled. The effect of the marriage invention on the spur of the moment satisfied him.

"Perhaps he isn't— now I come to think of it. I was wrong to say he was married. Scared you, didn't it?"

She made no answer.

He turned at the door of the little house. "Jonas has taken you up and you'll get all the patients you want now, but, take my advice, combine business and pleasure by getting John Wintermere down to see Picton's kid. Picton has funked sending for him, though he knows Wintermere's opinion is the last word on spinal trouble—"

The door was slammed viciously in his face.

It seemed almost as though Brock's prophecy was to be fulfilled. As if some secret courier had run from house to house telling Tollford that the new woman doctor was under the sublime patronage of Jonas Picton and was no longer to be avoided. Patients appeared miraculously. Never before had Dr. Sylvia Crest's waiting-room been so crowded as it was that night.

She called the next day at the big house to see her little patient. Picton's car was at the door, and, as she walked up, the big man was pulling on his gloves in the hall and greeted her with almost pathetic eagerness.

"Just come into the library, doctor," he said, opening a door. "I want to talk to you about Fay."

He ushered her into the room, closed the door behind her, and lowered his voice.

"I didn't tell you yesterday, doctor, that I had consulted Dr. Steyne. You've heard of Steyne?"

Sylvia nodded.

"I have heard of him," she smiled, "and I also know that you've consulted him."

Picton looked relieved.

"I'm glad to hear that," he said. "Somehow I didn't like telling you for fear"— he laughed a little nervously—"for fear the knowledge that Steyne had seen her would influence your opinion. You know that he takes a different view from yours? He calls the disease some infernal long name and says that it cannot be cured save by an operation, and that it is extremely rare that such operations are successful. Sit down, won't you?"

He followed her example, stripping off his gloves as he spoke, and gaining something of the animation and forcefulness which Tollford associated with his dominating personality.

"There's another man, Wintermere," Picton went on. "You've heard of him?"

"I've heard of him," said Sylvia steadily.

"Well, they wanted me to bring him down to see the child, and I've heard that he's a pretty clever man. I met him when I was on my vacation, and he seems a very clever fellow, though a bit young looking for a specialist."

The name of John Wintermere invariably annoyed her. Today, with the memory of Brock's gibes so fresh in her mind, there was sounder reason for her irritation. But John Wintermere had been her master in surgery, and common decency demanded a testimonial.

"I don't think I should be deceived by his youthful appearance, Mr. Picton," she said. "I think he is the greatest surgeon in this country."

Jonas Picton pulled a wry face.

"I don't want any great surgeons," he said shortly. "I want a cure without surgery. And you think you can do it, don't you?"

Only for the fraction of a second did Sylvia hesitate.

"Yes, I think so, yes, I am cer— I am confident I can cure the child," she said, and if he noticed her confusion of terms he made no comment.

He rose quickly and gripped her arm with his big hand.

"My friend," he said, and his voice was a little shaky, "put my girl right and you shall never regret having come to Tollford."

Sylvia went up alone to the room of her patient, and she seemed to have lost something of the sprightliness of mind with which she had greeted the day.

In a large room chosen for its situation because its windows offered no view of her father's commercial activities, was the center and soul of Jonas Picton's existence.

"Hello, Miss Doctor!" said a cheery voice from the white bed, and Sylvia went across to her patient and took the thin hand in hers.

Fay Picton was seventeen and a prodigious bookworm; books covered the table by the side of the bed and filled two long cases which ran the length of the room. She was a pretty, fairy-like thing who turned big, smiling eyes to the newcomer.

"You're the first interesting doctor I've had," she said, "and I've had a lot. Your name is Sylvia, and it's what I'm going to call you. I couldn't tell you this yesterday because Daddy was here, and I had to appear impressed by all that stuff you were talking."

"And weren't you impressed?" smiled Sylvia, as she sat by the bed.

"Not a dreadful lot," said the girl, with disconcerting frankness. "You see, I know much more about my unhappy case than you or Daddy. I've read a lot about it."

But Sylvia was nettled. To suggest the fallibility of the young is outrageous.

"You ought not to have read any medical books," she said severely.

"Oh, skittles," said the patient contemptuously; "you don't suppose they'd let me have medical books, do you?"

"Well, where did you read about it?"

"In the encyclopædia, of course. Everything's in the encyclopædia, isn't it?"

Sylvia, for the first time in her life, was genuinely embarrassed.

"Well, anyway, we're going to cure you," she said cheerily, and Fay Picton laughed quietly.

"Of course you're not going to cure me," she said calmly. "This thing is more or less incurable. The only remedy is an operation, and there have been just four cases where an operation has been successful. Only Daddy shrieks inside himself at the very idea— poor soul!"

This was not exactly the start which Dr. Sylvia Crest had expected. She was dismayed at the thought that her task was to be doubly difficult and that she had two fights to wage— one against the disease and one against the skepticism of this self-possessed young person.

"You see, doctor dear, the spine and all its eccentricities is  terra nova  to the poor doctor," the patient went on remorselessly. She stopped suddenly as she saw the look in Sylvia's face. "I'm awfully sorry." She put out her hand and laid it on Sylvia's knee. "Anyway, it doesn't matter; do your best and come every day and talk to me, and I'll pray hard for faith in your treatment."

That was the beginning of the curious and torturing friendship which shook the self-confidence of Sylvia Crest more than the admonitions of professors or the jeers of Alan Brock.

"Fay is quite brightening up under the care of that woman doctor," Picton told his cronies, his managers, and the few who enjoyed the privilege of intimate friendship with him. "Never saw her looking so cheerful, my boy."

One afternoon Sylvia went in haste to her patient, obeying an urgent telephone summons from the nurse, and found the girl lying on her side, haggard and white, with a queer little smile on her face.

"Doctor, darling," said Fay, "send that gaunt female out of hearing and I'll tell you something."

Sylvia dismissed the nurse.

"Bend down as they do in books," whispered the girl, with a little laugh that ended in a grimace, "and I will tell you my guilty secret."

"What is wrong, dear?" asked Sylvia.

She was in a panic— an unreasonable, fearful panic— and there was need to exercise control, lest her voice betrayed her. The girl's bright eyes were fixed on hers, and there was elfish laughter struggling with the pain in her voice.

"If we could have a little slow music," she whispered, "I think it would be appropriate. Sylvia, you won't let that raw-boned creature weep over me, will you?"

"For God's sake, Fay, be quiet," said Sylvia hoarsely. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm going to glory," said the girl. "I sort of know it."

"Let me see."

Sylvia's hand trembled as she examined the spine. The tiny swelling which it had been her daily care to reduce had grown ominously, and there were other certain symptoms which could not be ignored.

Jonas Picton, called from a board meeting, came back to the house and listened in silence whilst Sylvia told the new development.

He seemed to shrink visibly at the telling, and when he spoke his voice was husky.

"I— I had a lot of confidence in you, doctor," he said. "Do you think— do you think there is anything to be done—"

Sylvia was silent for a while. But he might have foretold her answer in the sudden stiffening of her body and the upward throw of her chin.

"I still have faith in my treatment," she said.

He did not speak again, but sat on the edge of his chair, his head bent forward, his fingers twining, and then without a word he rose and went up to the girl's room.

Sylvia did not follow him. Somehow she knew instinctively that he wished to go alone. She waited for ten minutes and then he came back. He did not look at her, but walked to the window and stared out. Presently he turned.

"Who is the best surgeon in this country?" he asked.

"John Wintermere of Mercer's Hospital," she replied.

He nodded and went out of the room. Then he came back and opened the door wide, but he did not come into the room, nor did he look at her.

"You'd better go up and see Fay," he said. "I've telephoned to Dr. Wintermere, and he will be here this evening."

Sylvia Crest walked heavily up the stairs. She had heard the doom of her professional career, as though it were pronounced by a judge.

Fay lay with her face turned to the door, and as the girl entered she beckoned her.

"I had to do it, Sylvia darling," she said. "You don't mind me taking liberties with my staid old family doctor?"

She took the older girl's hand between hers and fondled it.

"Had to do what, dear?" asked Sylvia quietly.

"I had to tell him to send for Wintermere."

"You told him?" said Sylvia in surprise.

The girl nodded.

"You see, I've been thinking things out, and it occurred to me that I might be the fifth case in history, and really, for poor Daddy's sake, I ought to take a chance. You don't mind, do you, not really?"

Sylvia stooped and kissed the girl.

"No, dear," she said.

"It means a tremendous lot to you, in your profession, doesn't it, I mean your— your—" Fay checked the words.

"My mistaken diagnosis," finished Sylvia, with a laugh. "Yes, I suppose it does, but it means more to me that you should have the best treatment, irrespective of my fine feelings, and even though the treatment is contrary to my idea of what is right."

Sylvia waited at the house the whole of that afternoon, and she was alone in the drawing-room when John Wintermere came. She had nerved herself for the meeting, and was in consequence more cold and more formal in her attitude than she intended.

He walked slowly across the room to her, and it seemed as though the passage of six years had made no alteration in the disparity of their relationships. He was still the professor, she was still the student, though she felt she had grown older at a faster rate than he. But he was also the man who had held her hand one sunny day in the hospital gardens and had spoken incoherently of love, urging her to drop the profession to which she had dedicated her life. Perhaps the memory of this added to the awkwardness of the meeting.

"I'm glad to see you again, Sylvia," he said in that soft voice of his. "It is curious I should be called into a case of yours. Won't you tell me about it?"

She did not resent the "Sylvia." It came so naturally and rightly, and, in the detailing of Fay Picton's case, her nervousness wore off. He listened gravely, interjecting now and again a question, and when she had finished he heaved a long sigh.

"Well?" she challenged.

He hesitated.

"It may be what you think," he said, "but it seems to me that the symptoms suggest a series of complications. Have you"— he hesitated again—"have you offered a definite opinion?"

She nodded.

"Did you tell Picton that the case would yield to your treatment?"

She nodded again, and his face lengthened.

"So if the opinion I give is in contradiction to yours…?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"If that is the case," she said, "I shall regret not having followed the advice you offered to me six years ago."

He was looking at her thoughtfully.

"It would mean ruin for you, of course," he said. "I— I wish I had not been called in."

"That's absurd, Dr. Wintermere," she said sharply. "Personal friendship and that sort of thing— I don't mean friendship," she went on confused, "I mean—"

"I know what you mean," said Wintermere. "Will you take me up to the child?"

Jonas Picton was in the room when they went in, and he remained by one of the windows whilst the examination was in progress. After a while Wintermere rearranged the bedclothes.

"Well?" said Fay, looking up into his face, with a smile; "to be or not to be?"

He smiled back at her and gently twigged the end of her nose.

"That is the privilege of an eminent specialist," he said gravely.

"To be or not to be?" persisted the girl.

"Fay, Fay, don't talk about such things." It was her father who had come to her bedside and had taken her little hand in his. "Don't talk about things so flippantly, darling. You hurt your old Dad."

Then with sudden resolution he looked across the bed to Wintermere, and asked harshly:

"Is an operation necessary?"

Sylvia held her breath. Her heart was pounding violently, and she felt as though she were going to faint. What would the verdict be? She knew too well what sentence would follow that verdict. She met the grave, earnest eyes of John Wintermere, and there was in hers a momentary plea for mercy. She hated herself for it. She knew that deep in her woman's heart was only one desire— the health and the life of the frail child who was looking with a quizzical smile from one to the other.

"Well?" asked Picton. "Is an operation necessary?"

Wintermere cleared his throat.

"An operation is not only necessary but imperative," he said steadily, "and it must be performed at once."

Picton, with a groan, turned on his heel and walked from the room.

Sylvia saw the doctor only once again before the operation. At the request of the girl she was staying in the house. Picton had retired to his library and was not visible, and the girl was left alone in the big, cheerless drawing-room to plan her new future. She would have offered to help had Wintermere given her any encouragement, but he had (purposely, it seemed) made her attendance unnecessary by telephoning for an anæsthetist. So Sylvia sat and thought. She told herself a dozen times that every doctor makes a mistake, and the fact that their diagnoses were occasionally refuted does not ruin their career.

But it was not what the world might think of Sylvia Crest that worried her and that drove her to a condition of blank despair. It was the shattering of her own faith in Sylvia Crest.

At ten o'clock that night she went up to see the child and found her cheerful— even gay.

"Sylvia, my duck, sit down here," said Fay Picton, patting the side of the bed with her white hand, "and don't worry, because I'm going to be the miraculous fifth. I like your Dr. Wintermere."

"My Dr. Wintermere?" The protest was forced from Sylvia.

"Your Dr. Wintermere," said the girl coolly. "He's awfully good-looking, isn't he, and not so very old. I should hate having a man with whiskers carving me about. And he's fond of you. I saw him looking at you like the film hero looks at the poor but honest shop-girl. He devoured you— that's the word, my dear."

"Don't talk nonsense, please, Fay. You ought to be preparing yourself."

"For a happier life," the patient laughed softly.

"Now go down and see father, and tell him that I am brave but happy."

She had left the room, and was at the head of the stairs when she met Wintermere. They stopped, facing one another on the landing, and it was Sylvia who spoke first.

"I hope it is going to be very successful, doctor," she said.

"I hope so," he replied drearily. "God knows, this is the most awful end to six years of dreaming that could be imagined. Anybody but you— if it had been anybody but you, Sylvia."

She shook her head.

"If I am wrong, I am terribly wrong," she said. "If you are right, I shall thank God for it all my days."

He bowed his head for a second and walked past her.

To Sylvia's surprise she found Picton waiting for her in the drawing-room. And he was calmer and more friendly than she had expected. She delivered her message in a modified form, and he nodded and turned the conversation to a more general subject. So they talked for half an hour on matters which did not interest them, and their hearts and minds were in the room above.

Unexpectedly the old man turned the conversation to Sylvia herself.

"Doctor," he said, "I know you did your best for my little girl, and you've done all you could to make her happy— to make me happy too," he added, then paused as though he was in some doubt as to how he should proceed. "What I mean is this," he said, with an effort—"that whatever is the outcome of this," he waved his hand to the door, "I do not blame you."

"I shall not need your blame," said Sylvia in a low tone; "if I am wrong, I shall never practice again."

"You'll never practice again," he repeated. "Then this is a tragedy for both of us."

She bent her head. The handle of the door turned, and both sprang up as John Wintermere came in. He wore a long white wrapper, and had evidently come straight from his task. His face was white and drawn, and he looked from one to the other in silence as he closed the door behind him. Picton was shaking in every limb.

"Well— well?" he asked in a curiously squeaky voice.

John Wintermere nodded.

"Your daughter will recover," he said, "and, I believe, will be a strong and healthy girl."

"Thank God for that!" gasped the old man, and falling into his chair, he covered his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking.

"I want to say something else, please."

Picton lifted his tear-stained face to the man in the white wrapper, but John Wintermere was looking at Sylvia.

"I want to say this," he said, "that when the operation was well advanced I discovered that it was unnecessary."

"Unnecessary!" cried Sylvia.

And again he nodded.

"I am satisfied," he said, speaking slowly, "that had Dr. Crest's treatment been continued, your daughter would have made a complete recovery without recourse to the knife."

Then he walked from the room without another word.

It was the anæsthetist whom Sylvia saw just before he left the house that night, and she talked to him as doctor to doctor.

"Yes, he's a wonderful chap, Wintermere," said that medico, with a sigh of admiration and envy. "She'll recover all right. Yes, he's a wonderful fellow. Good-night, doctor." She smiled to herself in the darkness of the porch before the house.

Wintermere was saying good-night to Picton, who was almost hysterical in his relief and happiness. When he came out, Sylvia was waiting for him.

"Send your car on," she said; "I want to walk a little way with you."

It was a slow and a silent walk, and when the time for parting came, Sylvia turned to the man at her side and laid her hands on his shoulders.

"John," she said, "I'm going out of this profession."

"You're mad," he said, and his voice trembled. "You— you were right in this case."

She laughed quietly.

"You dear liar," she said, and kissed him.

________________

8: The Christmas Princess

THERE WERE times when John Bennett Watson (abbreviated for office purposes to "J. B.") wished he were not the Managing Director of the Western Commercial Corporation; moments when he envied the manager of the Broad Street branch of the Southern & Eastern Bank. This in spite of the fact that he was a normal man of thirty-something, without any business worries whatever, enjoying the best of health and an income which, at a moderate estimate, was twenty times larger than the hard-worked bank manager.

J. B. was a man who in no circumstances interfered in other people's affairs; meddlers, he loathed; outside folks who knew how things could be done better, he abominated, and yet there were certain domestic arrangements of the Southern Bank that he would alter.

Gray, the manager, a harassed little man with a straggling beard, came over to see him about a draft, and John made an awkward dive to the matter that at once intrigued and irritated him.

"You are very busy at the bank, Mr. Gray?"

"Yes," sighed Gray, rising and gathering up his documents, "too busy! With the annual audit coming on, the slump in industrials, the heavy cash balances I must carry to meet end-of-the-quarter demands, I look like having a happy New Year! Good morning!"

"I was working late in my office the other night," said John hastily, arresting the official's departure, "and, looking across the road, I saw a girl working at eleven o'clock— she was still working when I left, and the next morning I saw her at her desk when I arrived."

The manager scratched his beard.

"Who can that be, now?" he asked absently. "Oh yes, that is Miss Welford. She was secretary to our late accountant. Poor fellow! He died leaving things in a terrible muddle, and if it wasn't for the fact that she has an instinct for banking and has got his department work at her finger-tips, I should be in a fearful muddle. She is the only member of my staff that I would leave on the premises by herself, I assure you!"

"I thought I'd met her somewhere," said John carelessly and most untruthfully.

"I dare say," said the bank manager. "She is the sort of girl who has moved in a very good set. Her father lost his money in the rubber slump. By the way, rubber is a market that looks like reviving, Mr. Watson."

"I dare say," said John, to whom the fluctuations of the rubber market meant less than nothing. "I think I remember her— Annie Welford, isn't it?"

The manager shook his head.

"I don't know— 'F. G.,' her initials are." He frowned. "I never trouble about the names of people. Oh yes, it's Frances; that's the name. I've often thought she's quite a good-looking girl."

"You've often thought that, have you?" said John scornfully.

The man was scarcely human, and yet he was loath to let him go, and searched around in his mind for some excuse for detaining him.

"Where do you go for Christmas, Mr. Gray?"

"Home," said the other, showing the first sign of animation. "The two days in the year I look forward to are Good Friday and Christmas Day. Christmas is the one day I can't work and can be really a perfectly happy man! I sit in front of a fire, and my children read to me or tell me Christmas stories, and that's my idea of a perfectly happy day."

"Great heavens!" said John, aghast. "You are human, after all! Though I confess that, if anybody tried to tell me a Christmas story on Christmas Day, I should go and look for a hatchet. And your staff— do they work?"

"I'm sorry to say that headquarters won't allow that," said the manager regretfully. "It would add to my enjoyment considerably if I knew that somebody else was working."

John took an instant dislike to him, had thoughts of changing his bank.

"Do you mean to tell me you would let her— them, I mean— work on Christmas Day? Why, it would be disgraceful!" he said hotly.

When the bank manager had gone, John strode over the carpeted floor of his office and stood, staring across at the trim figure visible— more visible than he had hoped— from the window.

"Quite a good-looking girl!"

He smiled at the impertinence of the man. She was beautiful, the complete satisfaction of all his uncatalogued requirements. If he could only hear her speak! He shrank from the possibility of disillusionment. What would she do on Christmas Day? he wondered. Hold revel in her suburban home, possibly in the company of her sweetheart. He made a little grimace at the thought.

Yet it was perfectly ridiculous to suppose that such a girl would be without admirers, and that from their hosts she should not have given preference to one over all the rest.

If Gray had been just a little more human, it would have been possible to secure an introduction, though he shrank even from that prospect.

He was staring at her when the girl looked up, saw his dim figure behind the window-pane, and, as though conscious that she had been the object of his scrutiny, got up quickly from the table, switched on the light, and pulled down the shade. It was the first time she had ever noticed him, he reflected glumly, and it was not very pleasing that her acknowledgment of his admiration should be so emphatically resentful.

John Watson went back to his bachelor flat in St. James's with a feeling that the day had not been well spent, and that something in this one-sided intimacy had gone out of his life. He could no longer picture himself speaking to her, could weave no more dreams in which she played a complacent and agreeable part. Drawing the blind seemed to shut out even the visions that a pipe and a fire and a sprawling terrier bring to the most unimaginative. He must needs fall back upon the Princess.

Her Serene Highness had been a figure of speculation from the day when old Nurse Crawley, who attended his infant needs, and was locally credited with being possessed of the devil, predicted that he would inherit a great fortune and marry a princess— a faith from which she never wavered all the days of her life. Fortune had come unexpectedly and vastly, and had been doubled and trebled by his own peculiar genius. But the Princess remained amongst the glowing and shadowy shapes of the fire, less tangible than the blue smoke that curled from his pipe.

And now the Princess bored him. He wanted to meet "F. G. Welford." He wanted badly to meet her: first, to apologize for his rudeness, and then to ask her… well, just to ask her if life held any greater attraction than the balancing of a late accountant's books.

The blind was drawn the next morning when he looked out. It was drawn on the morning of Christmas Eve. He had brought his bag to the office and lost two trains in the hope that she might relent. She was inexorable. He always traveled to Tatterdown by train because the cottage (it had been his father's before him) had no accommodation for a car, and somehow his big limousine did not attune with the atmosphere of that faded and fragrant place.

The taxi-cab that took him to the station was half-way up Broad Street when he saw her. She was walking toward the office; had evidently been out to tea; and his cab was near enough to the sidewalk to give him the nearest view of her face he had yet had. He drew his breath at the sight of her, and for a second was seized with an insane desire to stop the cab, get out, and, on some desperate excuse or other, speak to her. But before he could commit that folly, she was gone.

Gray was a slave-driver, he decided, a sweater, a man of no sensibility or feeling. Christmas Eve! And to allow a girl to work… Perhaps the cunning devil had lied to him, and she was working on Christmas Day. He hated the unhappy Mr. Gray, hated his baldness, his beard, and all that was of him. Such a man had no soul, no proper appreciation of values. He was a cold-blooded exploiter of all that was best and noblest in humanity.

By the time he had reached Bullham Junction, John Bennett Watson was better balanced in mind, could chuckle at his own extravagances without wondering at them, which was ominous.

There was no conveyance at the station, and he walked through the one street of Bullham to the Red Lion.

"Excuse me, Mr. Watson."

He turned, to see the rubicund countenance and the blue coat of a policeman.

"Happy Christmas, Mr. Watson. You going out to Tatterdown?"

"Why, yes, sergeant, as soon as I can get a cab."

"Likely you'll see my dog Mowser round about the village; he's a rare fellow for Tatterdown. There's a dog there he's always fighting. Will you send him home with a flea in his ear? Give him a whack and he'll go. Getting into bad habits, that dog. Comes home in the middle of the night and scratches the door till I let him in."

J. B. smiled and promised.

Mowser, a bedraggled wire-haired terrier, he found literally on the doorstep of the cottage, and Mowser's feud had evidently found expression in violence, for he was slightly tattered.

John took him in and fed him. The hour was late, and he decided to send him back in the morning— an arrangement wholly agreeable to Mowser, who finished his scrap and went to sleep under the kitchen table.

So small was Tatterdown Cottage that the man and his wife who acted as caretakers had no accommodation and slept at the village— a risky proceeding, as an insurance company had told him, but one which he preferred, for there were memories about this little house with its thatched roof and Elizabethan chimneys which were very pleasant, and the presence of strangers was insufferable. Here, for ten years, John Watson had wakened to hail the Christmas morn and listen to the silvery bells of the parish church, and had spent the morning in the sheltered garden, tending those hardy plants that reveal their treasures in bleak December. For ten Christmas Eves he had sat, huddled up in the big, chintz-covered chair, with a pipe and a book and his pleasant thoughts, listening to the drip of rain or the thin whine of the wind, or watching, on one never-to-be-forgotten Christmas Eve, the snowflakes building white cobwebs in the corner of every pane.

It was half-past eleven, and he had risen with a yawn to stretch himself preparatory to going upstairs to bed, when there came to him from outside a sound which was familiar. He passed down the little passage, unbolted the front door, and stepped into the garden.

Out of the darkness came the peculiar and distinctive sound of an aeroplane's engines that were not running sweetly, and presently, peering overhead, he saw the shadow of great wings. Suddenly a blinding white light showed in the skies, illuminating fields and road, so brilliant that Tatterdown Parish Church, a mile away, was visible. The light swooped in a circle, coming lower and lower, and finally vanished behind the privet fence of the Hermitage field, its radiance throwing the trim boundary hedge into silhouette.

Going back into the cottage for his coat, Watson ran through the garden, across the road, and, vaulting the gate, stumbled over the frozen plough-land to the place where the landing lights of the big machine were flickering to extinction.

"Hello!" called a voice, and John answered the hail, and presently came up with the two men who were standing by the under-carriage. One was lighting a cigarette, and the newcomer caught a momentary glimpse of his face, long, white, and blackly bearded. The other he could not see, but it was he who spoke.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"Tatterdown, six miles from Pelworth," Watson answered. "You got down without accident?"

There was no reply for a few seconds, and then the bearded man laughed softly.

"We got down, but not without accident," he said, a dry note in his voice. "Is there a house where…"

Here he stopped and said something to his companion in an undertone. The short man grunted an inquiry in the same tone, and:

"I'll ask," he said. "Are we near to a village?"

"No— not nearer than a mile," said Watson. "I have a cottage, but it is rather isolated."

"Wife and family?"

John laughed quietly.

"No," he said; "I am all alone."

Again the whispered colloquy.

"It may sound a little— unusual and impertinent, these questions," said the tall man at last, "but we have a passenger who, for State reasons, is traveling incognito. I must take you this much into my confidence and tell you that she ought not to be within a thousand miles of England. May I therefore rely upon your discretion?"

Dumbfounded, John Watson listened, his sense of adventure piqued.

"Certainly, you may rely upon me," he said. "I am a bachelor and live alone— I usually come to Tatterdown to spend Christmas— and I haven't even a servant in the house. I was born here, and have a certain sentimental feeling towards the place. I am giving you confidence for confidence. My name is Watson, by the way."

"Thank you," said the other simply. "My name is James— Colonel Alfred James."

He walked towards the machine, and John heard him speak.

"You may descend, Highness," he said.

His eyes now accustomed to the darkness, J. B. saw a slim figure descend, and waited whilst the two men and the woman spoke together in a whisper. So far as he could gather, the lady said little, but the conversation continued for so long that John began to feel the cold.

"Will you come this way?" he called.

"Lead on," said the gruff voice of the smaller man, and the owner of Tatterdown Cottage led the way to the gate, and, after some delay, opened it and ushered them across the road into the cottage.

The tall Colonel James followed, carrying two heavy bags; then came the girl; and thirdly, the shorter of the two, a round, red-faced man with a slight moustache and a pair of small eyes that were set a trifle too close together.

The big man deposited the bags on the floor of the sitting-room.

"I present you, Mr. Watson, to Her Serene Highness, Princess Marie of Thurgen," he said. "Her Highness has a very dear friend in London, but owing to the War and the restrictions which have been placed upon Germans visiting England, it has been necessary for Her Highness to make a surreptitious and in some ways unauthorized trip to London. Whilst we realize that to land in England without a passport and without the necessary authority from the Home Office constitutes a technical offense, my friend and I have gladly undertaken the risk to serve one to whose father we are under a heavy debt of obligation."

All the time he had been speaking, John's wondering gaze had never left the girl's pale face. She stood with eyes downcast, hands lightly clasped in front of her, and only once during the interview did she look up. Presently John found his voice, though he spoke with extraordinary difficulty.

"I shall be happy to place my room at the disposal of Her Highness," he said.

"You have no telephone here?" asked the little man suddenly.

John shook his head.

"No," he said, with a half-smile, "we have nothing quite so modern at Tatterdown Cottage except a very modern bathroom leading from my room. May I show Your Highness the way?"

The tall man inclined his head gravely.

"Will you go first, please?" he said.

Lighting a candle, John went up the narrow stairs, opened the door of his chamber, a cozy room with its old four-poster and its log fire smouldering in the grate.

"This will do very well," said the tall man, who had followed him. "In here, Your Highness."

He put his hand on the girl's arm and led her into the room. Then, coming out quickly, he closed the door behind him. At the foot of the stairs stood the little fat man, grotesquely huge in his leather coat and as grotesquely ridiculous in his leather headgear.

"Her Highness is comfortable," said the bearded man. "You can go to work on the machine. Do you think you can get it right by the morning?"

"I ought to have it right in two hours," said the other, "but we couldn't possibly take off in the dark. I don't know the size of the field. It's plough-land, too, and that'll make it a bit more difficult, but I'll certainly be ready for you at daybreak."

With that he was gone, leaving John alone with the colonel.

"Will you come into the sitting-room?" asked John.

"I think not," replied James. "You see, Mr. Watson, my responsibility is a great one. Certain things have happened in London which have reduced Her Highness to the verge of despair. She has enemies— personal enemies, you understand?— who would not hesitate to take her life."

He pulled up his leather coat, and from his pocket slipped out a long-barrelled Browning and snapped back the jacket.

"I will not detain you any longer, Mr. Watson. You may go to bed with the full assurance that you have rendered an inestimable service to what was once the greatest ruling house in Germany."

John laughed softly.

"Unfortunately," he said, "I have no bed, and if you mean that you are going to sit up all night, you have relieved me of a great embarrassment, for I should have had no place to offer you but the settee in my sitting-room. You are welcome to that."

James shook his head.

"I will remain here," he said, and sat on the lower stair. Suddenly he got up. "Is your sitting-room beneath your bedroom?"

John nodded.

"Should I hear any— any noise above?"

"Undoubtedly," said John. "Every floor in this old house creaks."

"Then I will join you. It is inclined to be draughty here."

He accompanied his host into the sitting-room and stripped the leather coat he was wearing, pulled off his helmet, and sank, with a luxurious sigh, into the deep arm-chair that John had vacated when the sound of the aeroplane's engines had come to his ears.

"Christmas Eve, eh?" said the colonel. He extracted a cigarette from the case and tapped it thoughtfully on his thumbnail. Then, seeing John's eyes resting on the pistol that lay on the table by his elbow, he asked: "Looks a little theatrical, don't you think? I suppose firearms are not in your line, Mr. Watson?"

"I have an automatic at my London flat," said John, with a smile, "but I can't say that I get a great deal of pistol practice. Do you seriously mean that you would use that in certain extremities?"

The big man blew a cloud of smoke to the ceiling and nodded.

"I mean that," he said curtly.

"How fascinating!" said J. B. "And how un-Christmaslike!"

The other smiled broadly.

"There are one or two things about you that puzzle me," J. B. went on slowly.

"Such as— ?"

"Well," he hesitated, "did the Princess come to where the aeroplane was? I presume it was somewhere outside of London?"

"We picked her up in a car," said the other shortly.

"I see," said J. B. "How queer!"

"What is queer?" frowned James.

"The whole thing," said J. B. Watson. "You can't say that it is a usual experience for a bachelor to have a princess drop on to him from the clouds. And, for a reason which you won't want me to explain, I am especially interested in princesses. It goes back to a very old prophecy that was made by my nurse."

There was a slight movement above their heads.

"Excuse me," said James, and, rising quickly, ran up the stairs.

The sound of a low-voiced conversation floated down to John Watson, and, after a while, the footsteps of James upon the stairs. When he came in he was looking a little worried.

"Did Her Highness require anything?"

"Nothing." This time the man's voice was curt. "She wanted to know when the machine would be ready, that is all."

They sat in complete silence for half an hour till John rose.

"I'll make some coffee, or I shall go to sleep. And you would like some coffee too?"

James hesitated.

"Yes, I think I should. I'll come with you and see you make it," he said.

A sleeping Mowser lifted his wiry head inquiringly as the two men came into the kitchen, and watched them with unconcern, till, realizing that nothing in the shape of food was imminent, he tucked his head between his paws and went to sleep again.

James took a chair and watched the percolator working without comment, and J. B. could not escape a feeling that he stood in relationship to the man as a convict stands to a prison guard, and this impression was strengthened when, the coffee made, his guest walked behind him to the sitting-room again. It was some time before the steaming cups had cooled sufficiently to drink, and John took a sip and made a wry face.

"Do you take sugar?" he asked. "Because I do."

He went back to the kitchen, but this time the man did not accompany him. But he was standing in the doorway when J. B. returned.

"You took some time to find it," he said gruffly, and saw that his tone was a mistake, for he went on, with a laugh and a return to his old suavity: "Forgive my infernal cheek, but this little adventure of ours has got on my nerves."

"I couldn't find it," said John. "My caretaker discovers a new place to hide her stores every visit I make to the cottage."

He dropped two lumps into his coffee and stirred it, and, finding that the bearded colonel desired to do nothing more than to smoke an endless chain of cigarettes, he took down a book from the shelf and began to read.

Presently the heavy boots of the smaller man sounded on the paved pathway outside the cottage, and John jumped up.

"That must be your friend," he said, and went to admit him.

The pilot, for such he seemed to be, came in, grimy of face and black of hands.

"I've put it right," he said. "You can be ready to move as soon as you like. I have explored the field, and there's plenty of room to take her off."

"Go back to the machine and stand by," said the other sharply. And then, to John: "I am extremely obliged to you for courtesy, and I'm glad we have not had to trespass longer on your hospitality than was necessary. And may I add the thanks of the Princess to mine?"

"You may," said John.

James ran up the stairs and knocked at the bedroom door.

"I am ready, Your Highness."

There was a pause, and then the key was turned and the door opened. It closed again upon the man, and all that John Watson could hear was the murmur of voices through the ceiling.

He laughed softly, pure joy in every note. So old Nurse Crawley had been right, after all, and a princess had come into his life, and the prophecy might yet be fulfilled.

The door was opened, two pairs of feet descended the stairs, and presently James stood in the light of the table-lamp, which flowed through the open door of the sitting-room into the passage. In each hand he carried a bag, and behind him was a muffled figure in a fur coat, who kept her face steadily averted from John's eyes.

"I thank you again, Mr. Watson. If I have put you to any expense—"

"None whatever," said John politely.

He stood with his back to the fire and watched. He heard James put down his bag and turn the handle of the door, but it did not move. He tried again, feeling for the bolts, and finding that the door was of stout oak and the lock of ancient solidity, he came back to the sitting-room.

"I can't open your door, Mr. Watson."

"Very true," said John pleasantly, "very true!"

The man's brows gathered in a frown of suspicion.

"What do you mean— very true?" he asked harshly.

"You can't open it because I've locked it, and the key is in my pocket," said John.

Instantly the automatic appeared in James's hand.

"Give me that key," he said coldly, "or there'll be a village tragedy that will mystify the reporters. I ought to have shot you anyway," he said, "and, by God, if you don't— give me that key!"

John shook his head. His hands were still behind him, and, with a smothered exclamation of rage, the man pressed the trigger. There was a dull click.

"I took the precaution of unloading your pistol when you went upstairs an hour or two ago, Mr. James, or Colonel James, as the case may be," said John in his conversational tone. "I have also sent, attached— via the back door— to the collar of a small and intelligent dog, an urgent message to the Bullham police to put in as early an appearance as possible. I've been expecting them for the last five minutes."

With a roar of rage the big man sprang at him, and, as he did so, John withdrew his right hand and struck at his assailant with the poker, which it had held throughout the interview. Quick as a cat, the man dodged the blow, and in another instant he had gripped the other in his powerful hand. John wrenched his left arm free and struck twice at the man, but his padded coat softened the blows, and it was not until a lucky blow caught Colonel James under the jaw that he went floundering to the ground. There was the sound of voices outside. John took the key from his pocket and flung it at the foot of the terrified girl.

"Open the door, quick, Miss Welford!" he hissed, and turned to leap on his half-maddened adversary, who had thrown open his coat and was groping for a second pistol. Before it could be drawn, the room was full of people, and he went down under the weight of two policemen and the local blacksmith.

"THIS IS THE real miracle-play," said John. "But to make the miracle complete, you've got to stay here and have dinner, Miss Welford."

"But what I can't understand is, how you recognized me?" asked the puzzled girl.

"I not only know your name, but I know the whole story," said John. "You were working at the bank late, and these two gentlemen, who must have long planned the coup, broke into the vault to secure the very large sum in ready cash which would be on the bank premises on Christmas Eve. They then discovered that you were among the treasures that the bank contained—"

"I heard the noise and went down. They took me away with them in the car because they were afraid that I should identify them. I had no idea that, when the machine came down, they swore that, if I betrayed them, they would not only kill me but kill you also. They had to explain me, so I became a princess. But how did you know that I was not?"

"I knew you were a princess all right," said John. "I've known you were a princess ever since I started peeping into your palace window."

She drew a long breath.

"Oh, were you the man?" she said. "I've often wondered since. I never knew you."

"You know me now, and you will know me much better. Will you stay and have Christmas dinner with me?"

She looked at him quickly, then dropped her eyes.

"I think I will," she said. "I owe you so much, Mr.—"

"On Christmas Day," he interrupted, "I am 'John,' even to my enemies," and she smiled.

"I don't feel like an enemy," she said.

________________

9: The Little Green Man

1

AN UNDERSTANDING, disturbed or terminated, has a more tragic aspect than a broken contract. For understandings are without the foundations of pledge and promise written or spoken.

There was an understanding between Molly Linden and Thursby Grant. Neither was important, because they were young; they were as yet nebulæ, hoping to be worlds. He was poor in the sense that he could afford no more than a Kensington flat and the lightest of light cars; he was (Molly thought) very handsome and very, very nice.

Mr. Fathergill amused her— fascinated her by reason of his great age and romantic past. He was forty, and his immense riches were common knowledge. But that did not count with Molly. She much preferred riding in his smooth-running limousine to being buffeted and rattled in Thursby's two-seater. Mr. Fathergill's little dinners at the Ritz had a comfort which was not afforded by the solid restaurant where table-cloths were only changed when absolutely necessary.

Still, there was a sort of understanding. If the matter had been allowed to remain where Charles Fathergill left it, that warm night in June when they paced the scented dusky garden, Thursby Grant might have become a tender memory or a bitter disappointment, according to the way he accepted his congé. Unhappily, Molly's father had been a little tactless.

She carried the news to him in his study; she was fluttered, a little tearful. One nice word about Thursby would have swung her definitely to the side of Charles Fathergill.

Instead, Mr. Linden said:

"Thank God for that, Molly! You had better write to young Grant and tell him he need not call again."

There was no reason in the world why he should not have called again; why he should not have appeared with a sad, brave smile and a hearty, "Good luck, old girl!"

But Mr. Linden had been brought up in the Victorian tradition. Then and there Thursby Grant was martyred for love; became a radiant figure of persecution. Worse, he himself accepted the martyr's rôle, and indited severe and haughty letters to Molly's father, to Molly's fiancé.

One evening he walked fiercely down Pall Mall, entered the sublime portals of the Disraeli Club and, thrusting his hat at an inoffensive page-boy, was ushered into the smoke-room. For the greater part of an hour he sat in a sort of trance, listening to Mr. Charles Fathergill, who was never averse from talking…

Just beyond Fathergill's chair was a high marble pillar of a rich red, broken by white spots and minute serpentines. Thursby Grant had been staring at that pillar for twenty minutes with a painful intensity, some place in his brain busy with the baffling quest for the exact part of the world where such marble may be quarried. Rosso antico— that was its technical description. He remembered a big house in Marlborough with a fireplace. Rosso antico. That was it.

Behind the pillar, half concealed, was a hatchet-faced little waiter, whose livery hung upon him in folds. He was staring out of the window at the white façade of the Auto Club.

A big room, rather over decorated, with red paper and dingy gildings. Scores of well-used, cozy chairs about round tables, where middle-aged men sat smoking over their coffee and told one another of the queer thing that happened to them, twenty?— no, it must be twenty-five— years ago.

Rosso antico…

A buzz of talk as even as an asphalt pavement lay on the club smoking-room. Fathergill's voice, pitched on an infinitesimally higher plane, rippled along its surface.

All Thursby's brain which was not occupied by rosso antico was at Fathergill's disposition.

"… hundred, two hundred years ago, quite a lot of people would have hired a bravo to cut me up. Possibly you would not have descended to hiring an assassin. A quarrel in a coffee-house, chairs to Leicester Gardens, and a few passes with our swords would have settled the matter. Satisfactory— in a way. It would depend entirely upon who was pinked. Now we take no risks, carry no swords, do nothing stupid, and only a few things that are vulgar. Slay and heal with currency; the age of reason."

Fathergill's head was long and narrow. He had a dark face and black, abundant hair brushed back from his forehead. He affected a tiny black moustache, an adequate occupation for his long fingers in moments of abstraction. His lank body was doubled up in a low chair, and he lay back so that his knees were level with his chin. When he spoke he waved one hand or the other to emphasize a point.

With the free part of his mind Thursby found himself wishing that the man did not wear diamond studs in his dress shirt.

"I asked you to dinner tonight— you preferred to come in for coffee. I appreciate your feelings. You are hurt. You are saying to yourself: 'Here am I, a struggling engineer, who has found a nice girl who likes me'— I grant that— 'and here is a fellow worth millions who comes along and cuts me out, not because he's more attractive, but because he has enough money to order life as he wishes it.'"

"It isn't much to boast about, is it?" asked Thursby, his voice husky from a long, dry-mouthed silence.

Charles Fathergill shook his head.

"I am not boasting. You have suddenly found the door of a nice house on Wimbledon Common closed to you— or only opened as far as is necessary to tell you that Miss Molly Linden is not at home. All this is unexpected— rather staggering. Your letters are returned, your telephone messages not delivered. You know I am a friend of the family, and you ask me if I can explain. I bring you to my club, and I tell you plainly and honestly that I intend within the next twelve months marrying Molly Linden, that her father has agreed, and that she— seems reconciled. Could I be fairer?"

Thursby drew a long breath. It almost seemed that he had suddenly awakened from a heavy, ugly sleep.

"Money could not have been the only inducement," he said.

Fathergill shrugged one shoulder, silently inserted a cigarette in the end of a long holder, and lit it with deliberate puffs.

"The key to all power is knowledge," he said—"and ruthlessness."

Throughout the interview his tone, his manner, had been most friendly. The wrath of this good-looking young guest, who had come with murder in his heart, had been blanketed under the unconscious friendliness of one whom Thursby Grant so little regarded as a host that he had not sipped the coffee that had filmed itself cold under his eyes.

"I started life as a bricklayer's assistant"— Fathergill watched the ragged wisps of smoke dissipating with an air of enjoyment—"and at an early stage of my career I began to know. I knew that we were cheating the Borough Surveyor. The Borough Surveyor gave me ten shillings for my information. He took me into his office. He had a love affair with his typist. I knew— I was assistant store-keeper at eighteen."

"That sounds almost like blackmail to me," frowned Thursby.

Mr. Fathergill smiled slowly.

"Never label things," he warned. "Know them, but never commit yourself to labels."

"You mean you have some hold over Linden?"

"Melodrama," murmured the other, closing his eyes wearily. "How terribly young you are! No. I know that John Linden wants to marry again. He is fifty, and young for fifty. A good-looking man, with an ineradicable sense of adventure. You would not be able to marry Molly for three years— at least I would marry at once; she asks for a year. Molly must have an establishment of her own before John Linden makes his inevitable blunder and brings his inevitably youthful bride to Wimbledon!"

Again Thursby discovered that he was breathing heavily through his nose, and checked his rising anger.

"I think that is about all I wanted to know," he said, and rose awkwardly.

"You know  that is important," said Fathergill, and offered a lifeless hand.

As much of this interview as he deemed necessary went forward to Wimbledon.

John Linden, gray and red-faced, read scraps of the letter written on club notepaper to his daughter. Over his glasses he looked to see how she took the news. Her face was expressionless.

"I really think that a year will make all the difference," he told her— and himself. "I like Thursby, but, my dear, I have to consider you."

She raised her eyes from the plate. She was not especially beautiful: she was distinctly pretty— the kind of cultivated-garden prettiness which youth brings, and good, simply cut clothes adorn.

"Are you very rich, father?"

She had never asked him such a question before.

"Why, my dear? I'm not rich in money and not particularly rich in property. Why?"

She looked past him through the leaded casement window.

"Only… Charles never made the least suggestion that he wanted to marry me until he came back from Roumania."

He laughed loudly at this.

"What a romantic little devil you are!" he said good-humoredly. "I see how your queer little mind is working. Fathergill went to Roumania and discovered my oil property is worth a fortune; he kept the knowledge to himself and came back to propose to my daughter".

If she had not thought this, she should not have gone scarlet. He did not add to her embarrassment.

"I should be glad to get back the money I have sunk in Roumanian oil," he said. "You seem to forget that I have an agent in Bukharest who keeps me au fait  with all that is happening."

"Thursby says you can buy any Roumanian agent for a thousand lei," she protested, and he shook his head.

"You seem to forget that Charles Fathergill is a millionaire—"

"He says so. Thursby says—"

Mr. Linden consigned Thursby to the devil.

"I really am in love with Thursby," she said haltingly.

Mr. Linden said nothing. Soon after she got up from the table hurriedly. She was rather young.

It could not be said that Charles Fathergill was well known in the City. The obvious is accepted without analysis: that is the deadly danger of the obvious. One knows that Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square is built of stone. Nobody knows or cares who built it or what stone was employed. Everybody knew that Mr. Charles Fathergill was immensely rich. He had a flat in Carlton House Gardens, and paid a twenty-thousand-pounds premium to secure it. The cabmen he tipped, the club servants, the policeman on the beat— who else matters?— could all testify to his wealth and generosity. He grew richer by being rich. When interested people inquired as to his stability, Stubbs pointed out the fact that he had never had a judgment recorded against him; his lawyers certified him as a desirable client or customer to any person who wished him as a client or customer; one of his bank managers— he employed several bankers— seconded the reference. There is only one peculiarity which need be mentioned— each of his bankers was under the impression that they were carrying his smallest account, and often hinted to him that they would like to carry one of his heavier balances.

As has been remarked before, he was not known in the City, for he did not speculate or engage in commerce. And not being known in the City has this advantage, that nothing is known to your disadvantage.

Mr. Linden met his prospective son-in-law at the club a few days later.

"Going to Roumania?" Mr. Fathergill's eyes opened. "Good heavens!— why? I haven't been back four months."

Mr. Linden tossed down a cocktail and wiped his mouth busily.

"I thought I'd go… may meet the girl of my dreams, eh?" A long chuckle: John Linden was old enough not to be ashamed of dreams.

"When do you think of leaving? I am going as far as Budapest. I have some big interests there."

A rapid calculation produced the assurance that Mr. John Linden's many directorships and annual general meetings would make it impossible to leave before another month. Charles pursed his lips thoughtfully. He must go before then, he said.

He left London within a week.

Thursby Grant was at Victoria Station saying good-bye to a friend who was traveling to the Near East. He acknowledged Fathergill's smiling nod without effort, being helped to toleration by a letter which crashed all solemn promises made by the writer.

"Good Lord!" said Thursby's friend. "Do you know Charles Fathergill? They say he is a millionaire five times over."

"Six times," said Thursby, suddenly sour. "Why damn his reputation for a million?"

2

MR. LINDEN'S agent in Bukharest was a lawyer, one Bolescue. He was a stout man, with a large, damp face, who loved food and music and baccarat. Otherwise he and discretion and probity might have walked hand in hand. As it was, he vociferated refusals, his countenance growing moister, talked wildly of "committees," fearfully of engineers, but never once of the majestic law, soon to be flaunted.

Charles Fathergill had a letter of credit for many thousands of pounds. His French was not too good; the money spoke with the purest accent. M. Bolescue, with his light heart fixed upon the gambling tables at Cinta, agreed that certain reports might be postponed, an engineer's emphatic opinion suppressed, borings now in progress slowed till the coming of Mr. John Linden, and then suspended.

"After six months' more time all subterfuges is impossibility," said M. Bolescue, who occasionally tried to speak good English.

"After six months nothing matters," replied the lank man.

His plan was to stay a fortnight in Bukharest, leaving for Constantinople to avoid John Linden. But a fortnight is a long time, and the joys of motoring in hired machines are too easily exhausted. Nor had beautiful Cinta in the hills, with its glorious surroundings of mountain and forest, any attraction for him.

On the eighth night he sent for the hall porter of the Petite Splendide, and the official came quickly, Mr. Fathergill being a lordly dispenser of tips. A short man, square-shouldered, bow-legged, resplendent in gold lace, he came, hat in hand— would have crawled.

"I'm bored, Peter," said Mr. Fathergill.

His half-eaten dinner was on the table. He had scarcely touched his wine.

"Ah!" said Peter, and beamed.

"I want amusing: somebody who can talk or sing. God! I'm sick of Bukharest."

He was justified, for into Bukharest seem to have seeped the dregs of ancient Rome— dregs that have gained a little foulness from Turk and Slav. A rococo Rome.

"Talk… seeng… hum!"

Peter's stumpy hand caressed two of his blue-black chins.

"The book I can bring… some beautiful ones— no? Talk and seeng— ah! Gott of Gotts!"

He resolved into a windmill of waving palms; noises of pride and exultation came from him.

"One who never came to the books! New— a princess, Mr. Fat'ergill! No! I swear by Gott"— he put his hand on his heart and raised his eyes piously to the ceiling—"I would not lie. You will say, Peter says this of all. But a veritable princess. Russian… from— I don't know— the Black Sea somewhere. You say yes?" He nodded in anticipation, and then his face fell. "You must be rich for this princess… wait!"

He rummaged in the tail pocket of his frock coat and found a packet of letters, fixed steel-rimmed pince-nez, and sought for something, his lips moving in silent speech— a comical, cherubic bawd of a man.

"Here— it is in French… I read. From she— to me!" He struck an attitude. "Irene… listen…"

He read rapidly. Charles could not understand half the letter: the important half was intelligible.

"All right; tell her to come up and have a glass of wine with me."

"I shall telephone," said Peter…

Ten struck when Irene came. Charles, reading a week-old Times, looked up over the newspaper at the click of the lock and saw the door opening slowly. She stood in the doorway, looking at him. Very slim and lithe and white. Her black hair dressed severely, parted in the center and framing her face. Clear-skinned, no art gave her aid there. The exquisite loveliness of her caught him by the throat. He rose instinctively, and then the faintest smile twitched the corner of her blood-red mouth.

Regal… and Russian. Russia was in her dark eyes— the inscrutable mystery of the Slav… a million æons removed from Western understanding.

"May I come in?"

Her voice was as he had expected— rather low and rich. There was a sort of husky sweetness in it that made his slow pulses beat the faster. Her English was faultless.

"May I have a cigarette?"

She was at the table, looking down at him, one hand already in the silver box.

"Sit down, won't you?" He found his voice.

He drew up a chair so that he faced her.

"Do you want me to sing— really? I'm afraid my voice isn't awfully good. Or don't you?"

He shook his head.

"What are you doing… here?" His gesture embraced not only the material part of Bukharest, but the place she occupied in its social life.

Again that faint smile.

"One must live… singing and… and talking to people. I have not really begun my career as… an entertainer. You are my first audience. It may prove to be very amusing after all."

"Very amusing," he repeated mechanically.

"So many things have seemed— impossible." She blew ring after ring of smoke between her words. "So many nights I have sat on my bed and looked at The Little Green Man and wondered… and wondered. Then I have put The Little Green Man under my pillow and said: 'Let me see tomorrow— it may be fun.'"

She was smiling at his perplexity, reached for the black velvet handbag that she had laid on the table, and, opening it, took out a small green bottle. It was fashioned like a squat Russian moujik, wearing a heavy overcoat belted at the waist. The hat was the stopper. As she held it up to the light, Fathergill saw that it was three parts filled with a fluid.

"In other words, poison. That's rather theatrical, isn't it?"

"Is it?" She was interested. "I don't know. Professor Bekinsky gave it to me the week before he was arrested. He was a Jew and a good man. They blew his brains out in front of the house where I was staying in Kieff."

Charles Fathergill was chilled: this was not amusing.

"Has it any special properties— arsenic… aconite…?"

She shook her head.

"I don't know. He called it 'knowledge'— he had a sense of humor." She made a wry little face at him, then laughed softly. It was one of those delicious chuckling laughs that are so beautiful when heard from a woman. "You would rather I sang?"

"No… only it is rather depressing, isn't it?"

She asked him who he was. On the subject of Mr. Fathergill he could be eloquent. To talk of himself without exposing his theory of life was difficult. She listened gravely. He felt that it was impossible that she could be startled.

Lovely, he thought as he talked— amazingly lovely. The contours of her face had some indefinable value that he had not found in any other. In a pause she asked:

"But you are ruthless!" (He rather liked that.) "You would stop at nothing to reach your end?"

"Nothing. Knowledge is power only when it can be utilized for the benefit of its holders."

She shook her head.

"That is strange— because it seems you have no objective. You wish to get nowhere, only somewhere better at all costs. I could understand if it was for a definite place."

He was flattered by her disapproval.

"Have you any objective?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Happiness… security. The security that a peasant workman could give his wife."

"In fact, marriage?" he smiled.

She nodded slowly and mushroomed the red end of her cigarette in the silver ash-tray.

"Yes… I would fight like a devil to retain that. It is my idea of heaven. I have a little sister— here in Bukharest."

She looked up at him slowly.

"A sister is like a baby: one does things and puts The Little Green Man under the pillow for her sake."

She seemed to shake herself as though she were throwing off an unpleasant garment. When she spoke her voice was almost gay.

"We are getting tedious. Shall I sing, or shall we talk?"

"We have talked too much," said Fathergill.

He walked to the window and pulled the curtains together.

3

A FEW MONTHS later an eminent firm of lawyers wrote to Mr. Linden to the effect that they had a client who wished to acquire oil land. They understood he had a property, etc.

Mr. Linden, a very happy and cheerful man, wrote asking that the offer should be reduced to sterling.

There were many reasons why adventures in Roumanian oil should have no further appeal, and why he wished to convert a property of dubious value into something which paid six per cent with monotonous regularity.

Mr. Fathergill, who had reached Paris, received the lawyers' intimation with mild interest. It was curious, he mused, how much labor, how many hours of anxiety are involved needlessly and uselessly because one cannot foresee the end. In the months that had elapsed between his going to Roumania and his return to Paris he had become a millionaire, and every one of his banks believed that they carried his heaviest account.

He had met a man in Constantinople, an international financier, who bought properties for a song and talked them into cantatas. Dog does not eat dog except in Constantinople. Mr. Fathergill was unaware of this exception. He acquired a tract of wild mountain-land, and a concession sealed and signed by the Turkish Government. And on the day his check was honored and the vendor was on his way, per Orient Express, to acquire a timber concession in Sofia, a miracle happened. A forgotten and unpaid prospector made a discovery. Mr. Fathergill believed in quick profits, particularly if they were big profits. The syndicate which took over his holding and his concession offered him a head-reeling sum.

The oil proposition was now an amusing sideline… but there was Molly.

"That may be awkward," said Charles, and pulled at his nose thoughtfully.

For Mr. Linden was married again. Molly had mentioned the fact in one of her cold, proper letters. She did not tell him that John Linden had become de-Victorianized and that Thursby Grant was a frequent visitor at Wimbledon Common.

John Linden wrote. The letter was awaiting the wanderer on his arrival at the Meurice. Would he come over and spend Christmas with the family?

"I am getting rid of my oil lands— some foolish man wishes to buy and has offered me a good price."

Charles left for London on the next day: he would have preferred to have spent Christmas in Paris. The boat train was crowded, the sea choppy. Mr. Fathergill arrived in London a very ruffled man. Paris would have been ideal at Christmas— or Bukharest. Irene! A most unsubstantial dream. The fragrant memory of her caught at his heart. A week after he had left Bukharest he had gone back to find her. Peter contorted himself apologetically. The lady had left Bukharest: he had inquired for her; some other guest had desired speech and song. It was a thousand pities. She was a veritable princess. But (here he brightened) there was a beautiful little girl, a veritable lady…

Charles Fathergill had shaken his head. He looked for her in Budapest; caused inquiries to be made in Vienna… no.

He stalked up and down his beautiful drawing-room, his hands in his pockets. Wimbledon… roast turkey… plum pudding… Molly Linden… he shuddered.

Snow was falling heavily when his car pulled up under the portico, and there was John Linden, rubicund and white, and there were holly wreaths hanging on the panelled walls of the hall, and Molly, gauche and awkward, and an uncomfortable Thursby Grant— Charles could have fallen on his neck. And there too was a stranger— a pretty, slim child in white, with a clear skin and dark hair and eyes, and…

"You haven't met Mrs. Linden, old boy." John was very jovial, very excited. "I told you I would get my romance. We met on the train just outside of Trieste… Irene, darling!"

Irene, darling!

There she was, her calm, glorious self, framed in a doorway, as he had seen her before. Only now she wore purple… it suited her better than black, completed her regality.

Her eyes met his. Only the faintest hint of recognition lit and died within their unfathomable deeps. Had she been prepared, he would not have seen even that.

"Glad to meet you… Mrs. Linden."

He took her hand in his; the pressure was just as firm as, and no firmer than, one would expect in a hostess.

"Come along to my study— the man will take the suitcase to your room."

In the study Charles drank a little port and listened.

"Um… about Molly. I've been thinking— you don't mind if we have this out right away?"

Fathergill shook his head. He preferred that the matter of Molly should be disposed of.

"My wife— by the way, she was the Princess Irene Dalruski— had a terrible time in the revolution; I will tell you all about it one of these days— my wife thinks it would be a mistake for Molly to marry except where her heart is. Old-fashioned, eh?— By the way, did you see Vera— my wife's sister, a dear kid…"

How curiously futile everything was, Charles Fathergill thought. All his scheming— the Roumanian lawyer with a moist face. Suppose now he had put no spoke in the wheel, had let the reports go forward, and John Linden had entered into his minor riches, and instead had fastened to himself with hooks of iron this find of Peter's…

He was very silent at dinner; scarcely looked at the glorious being at the head of this suburban table; permitted himself the fatuity of wearing a paper cap. Molly thought he was sorrowing over a lost bride and cried herself to sleep that night.

"Have a talk with Irene. I'd like you to know her," said John Linden.

There was a little drawing-room that was half conservatory, and was in consequence a place that smelt faintly of the earth. Hostess and guest detached themselves from the noisy group about a Christmas tree.

"Well, my dear?" Charles Fathergill closed the door. His heart was beating a shade faster than usual, a sense of exhilaration made him feel a little drunk.

"Well?"

She did not sit down. Curiously was the scene reminiscent of another meeting— eighteen hundred miles away.

"You have reached your objective?" he said, and, when she slowly nodded: "I have searched Europe for you."

She looked at him steadily.

"Why?"

He was nonplussed for a moment.

"Why do you think?" he asked, and went on quickly: "We're going to be very good friends, aren't we?"

"I hope so. You won't come here again, of course?"

"Why not? Linden's a great friend of mine."

She nodded.

"That is the reason. I have heard a great deal about you, without realizing who you were."

He smiled at this; the hinted disparagement pleased him. She had aroused that kind of emotion once before.

"You still believe that knowledge is power?"

He still believed that. This was the moment he would have chosen to hammer home the guiding principle of his life.

"And The Little Green Man?" he bantered. "Has he been smashed?"

She shook her head.

"No. Once or twice I thought I would bury him, with all that belongs to his day. Something prevented me."

A very long, uncomfortable silence followed. The sound of laughter came faintly from the larger drawing-room.

"I have rather a nice apartment in Carlton House Gardens. I hope you will come along and see me. Often."

She made no reply. He repeated the invitation.

"You mean that I should enter a new bondage for an indefinite period?"

She looked round.

"It needs Peter to smooth over the crudities."

He thought she was being very sensible and was relieved.

"And if I cannot find time to see your beautiful flat? Will you grow reminiscent some day when you meet John Linden?"

He did not hesitate.

"Yes. You may say: 'What purpose will that serve?' You asked me that before. I reply now, as I replied then: 'Knowledge is of value so long as it is used. A threat of its use, unless it is backed by the will to use it, is so much foolish talk.' It is because you believe, rightly, that not in a spirit of revenge, but as a logical consequence…"

"I see."

She half turned towards the door.

"I wanted to be sure. Come and be festive… have you seen my little sister?"

"A lovely child," he said conventionally.

That was all that passed between them: they did not speak again. He asked for a glass of milk to be sent to his room, and this was done.

When he went upstairs to bed he looked for her, but she had already retired. The servant who knocked at his door the next morning could not make him hear. She went in and drew up the blinds, put down the tray, and did not notice that the glass she had taken up the previous night was gone.

"Your tea, sir," she said.

Even John Linden did not believe that Fathergill was dead until the doctor came.

"I am sorry your Christmas has been spoilt," said Irene gravely, and looked from him to the big fire which burnt in her bedroom. The Little Green Man had already melted out of sight.

_______________________

10: For Information Received

IN the days of his youth, long before he so much as dreamt of millions, Mr. Roy Emmet Grayson had asked a chance-met boy to carry his bag from one railway station to another, offering him, as a reward, a sum so large that, had the boy been blessed with intelligence, might have set him wondering why his benefactor did not hire a cab. And at the end of the journey he had dismissed the lad with a cuff, and might have got away with his conspiracy to defraud but for the intervention of a large-sized policeman.

Grayson made his money that way; in the fortunate absence of policemen at the crucial moments of his high-class larcenies. Seldom did his signature appear in binding documents: it was his boast that his word was his bond, and his favourite saying was, "You can leave it to me.... I'll see you right."

Most people believed him, only to discover that, their services ended, his memory failed to function.

Norma Brayle, his niece and secretary, knew him rather well, and gained her knowledge by successive jars, which rather shook her faith in human nature. Once she had protested....

"Listen," said Mr. Grayson, pointing the wet end of his cigar at her, "you've got a good job, haven't you? I keep you, I feed you, I pay you real money. Want to lose it? Want to go back to the girls' hostel and tout work in the City? You don't!"

"No, Mr. Grayson," she said, a little pale at the prospect.

"Well, see nothing, hear nothing, and say nothing. That's what you're paid for. And get that uncle and niece idea out of your head. You're my secretary, and when I die, the only difference it will make to you will be that you'll be short of a salary."

She hated him and was afraid of him— that was before she met Johnny Westall. And she would never have met Johnny but for the fact that Mr. Grayson left her in Paris for a whole week whilst he was in Madrid, fixing his new iron company.

Johnny was wonderful. He was an engineer, a metallurgist, and a dancing partner of supreme merit. He had the most glorious grey-blue eyes and a smile that was altogether adorable. And he was romantically poor, because he was a young engineer with ideas that old engineers were loth to accept.

Mr. Grayson came back from Madrid, flushed with success, for he had manoeuvred a concession without binding himself to giving any quid pro quo, and that kind of contract was his ideal.

He did not meet Johnny, but Norma spoke about him, timidly and with a grand attempt at indifference.

Mr. Grayson grunted. He was by nature suspicious, and never grudged time or money to prove that his suspicions were justified, but on this occasion he merely said: "Shut up! I've got something else to think about than your dam'd dancing partners," and there the matter ended. A day or so later, when he was lunching at the Embassy, he heard about Johnny Westall as an engineer, and at the moment did not identify him as his secretary's friend.

One morning, many months later, Mr. Roy Grayson finished the dictation of a letter, and said:

"You know that fellow Westall— the engineering fellow?"

"Yes, Mr. Grayson."

"I'm sending him to Russia. Some new platinum deposits have been found in the Urals. We have got the Russian Government's permission. It will be a fine thing for him, if the report is a good one...."

She did not ask what would happen if it was bad— good or bad, the result would be very much the same. There was little need for Mr. Grayson to take her into his confidence. In the privacy of her room she found a letter that had come by the morning post.

"...I wish I could have met him, dear— he seems to be a very decent fellow. The allowance for expenses is good, and his agent (who made the arrangement after he had spoken to Grayson on the 'phone) says that, although Mr. Grayson has fixed no salary, I can depend upon his doing the right thing. This is the biggest chance I have had, and when I come back I know a dear little flat in Knightsbridge that is mine for the asking."

Norma sighed. She was cursed with the instinct for loyalty, or Johnny Westall would know the value of her relative's promise. Yet, there was a chance, in this case....

JOHNNY HAD BEEN gone three months, and only one letter had come to her and to her employer...there followed an interval of nine weeks' silence.

Mr. Grayson, with American engagements to fulfil, fumed angrily. It never occurred to him that his niece might have heard.

"What the devil he is doing I don't know!" he snarled. "I'm leaving for America on Wednesday, and not a line! This comes of employing a waster who thinks more of his infernal dancing...he's in some pretty Moscow dance hall wasting my money..."

In reality he did not think this: in his soul was a growing suspicion that maddened him. There were other seekers after platinum in Russia. Men could be bought— his head swum with fury as he contemplated the bare possibility.

Then one morning came a wire from Berlin.

"Arriving Wednesday," and nothing more.

"Arriving Wednesday! And not a word about whether he has found anything!" he raged. "The dog! He knows I am leaving England on Wednesday—"

"He wouldn't willingly miss his bonus," She said, watching him, and he exploded.

"Bonus! Good God! do you imagine that I'm waiting for that! I never promised him a bonus anyway. He's had the experience at my expense, and he'll be lucky to get anything more."

ON THE Tuesday night, Roy Emmet Grayson left his sitting-room at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and strolled out to the Embankment to cool off.

"And who the devil are you?" demanded Mr. Grayson, not without annoyance.

The shabby apparition that confronted him, so suddenly that it seemed to have risen from the earth, chuckled. How shabby he was, the night mercifully hid. Grayson saw only a squat figure and the red glow of a burning cigar, but then his eyes were not yet accustomed to the darkness.

"My name," said the other amusedly, "is Caston— P. B. Caston— suggest anything?"

"It suggests printing machines to me," replied the millionaire, "but as I am not a printer—"

The cigar waved gracefully in the protesting hand of the other.

"I am hardly likely to hold you up outside the Ritz-Carlton to sell you a printing press," he said. "Fortunately, it is so dark that you cannot see me, otherwise you would probably hand me over to the police. For I am a most unprepossessing tramp. I have a four days' beard, my shoes are gaping at the toes, and my trousers are held up by a rope belt."

Grayson was interested— so interested that he forgot for the first time the irritation which had possessed him all that day.

"What is it?" he asked briskly. "A hard luck story? You were a schoolfellow of mine at Vermont— you were ruined by speculating in my Iron Syndicate— your wife played hockey with my sister— or is it a new one you are trying to put over?"

Again the stranger chuckled.

"Wrong!" he said triumphantly. "I've never seen you until to-day. I don't want to borrow anything, and I've never speculated a penny in any of your wild-cat corporations. I merely offer you my services."

The millionaire smiled in the night.

"Shoot, Felix," he said, for him good-humouredly.

The other pulled at his cigar.

"This afternoon you offered the Western Route Steamship Company a fabulous sum if they would postpone the sailing of the Carpathania. The ship leaves for New York to-morrow and you're anxious to cross by her— stop me if I'm wrong— but it is necessary that you should meet one John Westall, who is on his way from Russia and cannot possibly reach London until to-morrow, after the Carpathania has sailed."

Grayson listened with growing wonder at this very accurate recital of the situation.

"How do you know this?" he demanded suspiciously.

Again the cigar waved.

"Write me down head of the English Secret Service," said its owner easily; "call me Little Willie Pinkerton, the Boy Sleuth from Baker Street. Read this."

He produced from somewhere a sheet of paper. Mr. Grayson walked to a lamp-post and began reading. It was in Westall's writing and was the first part of a report— the very report on the very property he had been commissioned to make for Grayson.

"Where did you get this?" he demanded. "And where is the rest of it— the report leaves off before...before..."

"Exactly— before it starts in to report," said the man complacently. "Now the question is, not how I came to get this— I've just returned from Russia— but whether you will pay me for the remainder. One thing I can tell you: this is your chance of getting the first reading of Westall's interesting statement."

"You mean, if I don't buy it from you, he will sell it elsewhere— the swine!"

"Swine or hog or human, it is a matter of indifference to me," said the stranger. "Do you buy?"

"Yes," promptly. "Let me see the remainder."

The tramp chuckled softly.

"Let me see something more substantial than a promise without witnesses," he said. "One thousand pounds net and the report is yours."

Grayson thought quickly. Obviously the report was genuine. He knew the handwriting; the statement began by a recapitulation of the instructions Westall had received before he left...but a thousand pounds!

It would be worth that in many ways. The day's start he would get over his competitors, the fact that he would be able to catch his boat.

"I'll give you a cheque—" he began.

"Cheque me no cheques, man," said the tramp. "Cash is the blood of my body. I'll wait for you whilst you get it...."

A queer transaction in the darkness of a wind-swept embankment.... Roy Grayson hated to see money go— hated the tramp worse when he counted the notes that the millionaire gave him and found them a hundred short. At last:

"Here is the rest of the report— call a policeman if I have deceived you."

Rapidly the millionaire read...halfway through he uttered a cry.

"There isn't any platinum on the property!" he said angrily. "Then why is he trying to sell the report elsewhere."

"He isn't— I never said so. You're right about the platinum; there isn't the colour of it. And with a report like that, I knew (for I have been well informed upon your generous nature) that I might whistle for a bonus."

"You knew— who are you?"

"Westall— John Westall."

MR. GRAYSON did not see his secretary when he got back to his room. He did not even go to her wedding— you can get married on a thousand pounds— or send her a present.

_________________

11: Snares Of Paris

JOHNNY KELLY, in the outward guise of a gentleman of leisure, stood on the corner of Rue de la Paix and the Boulevard des Italiennes, and he was chewing a toothpick in his contemplative fashion. So he might have stood at the corner of Piccadilly and Shaftesbury Avenue, indicating with a wave of his white-gloved hand this way or that to the bewildered country visitor. For years and years ago he had served his apprenticeship in the uniformed constabulary.

Only now he was in evening dress and apparently wholly dissociated from the police force— though in this respect appearance lied, as any international crook could have testified, for Johnny Kelly, or "J. K." as they called him, was the cleverest inspector of the "Special Branch"— an unobtrusive force which Scotland Yard maintained in all the great capitals. The date was May 1919, and the conditions were ideal for introducing one who more than any other stood perpetually between the snares of Paris and its orders. He strolled a few paces along the deserted pavement— it was after the dinner-hour and the thick stream of traffic moved slowly on the other sidewalk. For here sat those connoisseurs in humanity, the clients of the Café de la Paix. They sat four deep facing the street, and above them the lights glowed and glittered, and the furled red and white sun-blind furnished a suggestion of decoration and festivity.

Johnny had often stood outside the Equitable Building and watched dusk fall over Paris. Mingling with the stars which hung in the dusky were millions of green stars and new constellations which spring had brought, for they were budding leaves on the branches of invisible trees, a trick of the arc lights which caught the emerald of the new green and toned the grey branches into the greyer dusk.

Mr. Kelly threw a professional glance along the Boulevard des Italiennes. The Café Americaine was a blob of light. To the left a golden slit marked the entrance to the Olysia, where rough houses might not be expected for hours yet, when the underground café was packed with moist humanity and the "private" dance hall where five franc champagne and women who looked cheaper got going.

He rolled his toothpick to the other corner of his mouth and nodded slightly to an officer of the Surete who approached him.

"Hello, M'sieur Kelly," said that individual, "your man has not turned up yet?"

Johnny shook his head.

"Tigiliki won't come himself," he said; "he's not the kind of fellow who would take a risk— your people are sure that he is up to his old game?"

"Certain," said the other emphatically. "He has a man named Smith working for him. If you can catch him we will put him over the border to- night."

Kelly nodded and resumed his lonesome vigil. It was a night for thought only. Johnny Kelly's thoughts were of a girl.... He sighed and eyed the stars again with a little twinge of pain.

IN THE VERY corner of the mass which packed the sidewalk before de la Paix, sat two bad men. They sat at a little table under the glass screen, and they talked across their sirops in low tones. They were both men of middle age, grey at the temple, and one was bald. Lex Smith was the notable leader of this pair. To describe them both as bad men is perhaps a little ungenerous to Solomon Levinsky, the second member of the party. He was a pale man with large, white hands. They were large because Nature made them so, they were white because he had been employed in the King's Prison at Portland in "light clerical duties."

Lex Smith regarded his friend with good-natured contempt.

"There never was a good crook with a conscience, Solly," he said; "a crook with a conscience is a bad crook. It don't pay anyway. Look at you. You've been doing five years in an English jug and why—"

"Because I wouldn't double-cross a pal," growled the other shortly; "but that's nothing to do with it, Lex. This kind of job you are putting up to me I don't want, and that's a fact."

"Well, you were in stripes—"

"Arrows," corrected the other grimly; "big, black, broad arrows, Lex."

"Don't make me a liar for the sake of a little error of description," pleaded Lex Smith; "it doesn't matter how you were decorated anyway. You were jailed whilst I was in Switzerland making good money, living in the best hotels, old pal— the Kaiserhof and the Beau Rivage— with wine at every meal, eh? And that's just the kind of life you can have for the next ten years. Now be wise. I've got you to France. I've done everything I can for you, and I need not even take you into this job at all. It's a one-man job and no sharings, but because I like you, Solly—"

"I only knew the girl slightly," interrupted Levinsky, "we had rooms in the same boarding-house— I knew her father."

"So much the better," said Lex Smith; "you will be able to pull some of that soft stuff about the old man— how you used to play nap together on the dear old farm—"

He looked at his watch— a large golden machine set with flashing stones that glittered in the light of the overhead lamps.

"She will be here in ten minutes, and you have got to make up your mind."

Solly was biting his nails thoughtfully.

"Who is this fellow that wants her?" he asked.

"He's a prince," said Lex Smith enthusiastically "He's got a flat on the Avenue Victor Hugo that's got Sarah Bernhardt's boudoir looking like a junk- shop. He's got a villa at Beaulieu that you couldn't describe and keep your reputation for veracity."

"And he's black," said Solomon bluntly.

"Not black," protested Lex Smith carefully, "he's lived in a sunny clime, and I guess it has kinder tanned him. His name's Tigiliki, and he calls himself Mr. Tigiliki, though his father was a prince in his native land, which is Ceylon. And he's worth millions of real money, Solly, made it out of tea, and selling his ancestral estates to the hated British planters. He is dark," he confessed, "and he's not what I might call a beauty, but he's got a heart of gold."

Solomon Levinsky shifted uneasily in his chair, and with a jerk of his head summoned a white-aproned waiter. He did not speak till the man returned with the Cognac, and had carefully measured two portions into the empty glasses.

"Give us the real strength of it again," he said.

"I met him in Switzerland," explained Lex, "and that is where I saw her. She was at the Red Cross Headquarters looking after those fool prisoners. Tigiliki saw her one day on the lake and went clean crazy over her, used to send her flowers, candies, and that kind of stuff to her hotel by the car- load."

"And she turned him down?" suggested Levinsky.

"Good and hard," said the cheerful Lex, "say, every morning when the post came, the hotel used to shake. She complained to the Red Cross people, and they passed the word to the British Commissioner or Ambassador, or whatever the guy is, and they put Tigiliki over the frontier into France, having no further use for the same. I came with him. I was sort of attached to him. I saw Molly once, but I knew there was nothing to be gained by persuasion. She is as crazy about a man who was killed in the last attack on Cambrai, and what do you think he was?"

The other shook his head.

"A cop!" said Lex contemptuously, "a low-down copper. Can you beat it!"

"He was killed?"

"Well, as a matter of fact," explained Lex, choosing his words carefully, "he was dead to her. She got a wire saying he was killed, and a printed casualty list. It cost me 250 francs to get the casualty list printed, but the wire was less expensive. Wouldn't you have thought she would have done something desperate? That's where I came in, to advise her, but apparently some old hen in the Red Cross Service supplied all the sympathy she wanted."

"But didn't she write to him?" asked Solomon, "she could find out—"

"There had been a quarrel. She was in Switzerland unknown to the fellow, which I only found out by accident by talking to a girl pal about this affair."

"What do you expect me to do?" asked Levinsky sullenly.

"When she comes you are to have been in the British Army and fought like Hell. You saw Private Johnny Kelly die, and you have some letters in your possession written by him to her. Do you understand?"

Solomon nodded.

"A car will be waiting at the corner of the Rue de la Paix. That looks like it," he nodded his head to a large limousine with bright headlights which was drawn up on the deserted corner opposite. "She will go away with you, and you are to keep her sweet till you reach your destination."

"Where will that be?" asked the other.

"God knows!" said Lex cheerfully, "but it will be somewhere where a Son of Araby hands you a wad of bills, and takes delivery of the goods. You needn't count them because Tigiliki is dead straight where money is concerned. There will be five hundred mile notes, and I shall expect you back at midnight."

Again a pause.

"Fifty-fifty I suppose?"

"Would I offer you any less?" demanded Lex, "here she is!"

He jumped to his feet and his hat flew off.

ON THE CORNER of Rue de la Paix, Johnny Kelly of the Special Branch was surveying a handsome limousine which had drawn up opposite to him. It was a very nice car, and the driver was a turbanned Hindoo.

"There's trouble coming my way," said Johnny, and he showed his teeth in a wicked smile.

THE GIRL WAS very pretty. Levinsky could hardly associate this radiant specimen of womanhood with the lank girl he had known in the old days.

"I remember you, Mr. Levinsky," she smiled, "and I was so glad when Mr. Smith told me that you were in Paris. I only arrived the day before yesterday you know. It was difficult getting away from Switzerland because I had taken on new work," she went on, "but the moment I got Mr. Smith's letter I applied for leave."

She wore some sort of close-fitting dark blue uniform and a wide- brimmed hat which shadowed her face.

"Oh yes, I knew Johnny Kelly," said Solomon awkwardly, "he was in my company. Let me get you some coffee."

She shook her head.

"Thank you, no," she said, "I cannot drink or eat." There were tears in her eyes, and her voice shook, "Johnny and I were— engaged. We quarrelled about a stupid thing, and he resigned from the police— he had a very good position, and joined up. It was really over that we quarrelled. He wrote, but I did not answer him, and then I had a chance to do work in Switzerland for the Red Cross, and I tried to find him, but there were so many regiments in France— and I didn't know the name of it. I heard that he had joined the first British unit which had arrived in France, but somehow i couldn't write, and then, and then—" Her voice shook.

"Terribly sad, terribly sad," said Lex Smith soothingly, "as Mr. Tigiliki said—"

The girl shivered.

"Please don't mention that man, Mr. Smith," she said, "the memory of him is a nightmare. I know he was a friend of yours in Switzerland."

"Not a friend of mine," said Lex Smith hastily, "just a casual acquaintance. A prince in his own country, Miss MacNalty. If I had had any idea that he was annoying you I should have—"

"I am sure you would," she said gratefully, "but you have no idea what I have suffered. He has bombarded me with letters ever since he has been in France, and he is such a dreadful man," she shuddered. "They tell awful stories about him even in Switzerland where the police are so very strict. He has a horrible harem in the South of France, and—"

"Yes, yes, yes," said Mr. Smith soothingly, "a real bad man I believe. I'm sorry I made his acquaintance, but you know when one is travelling, Miss MacNalty, one only gets to know people on the surface. He is immensely rich, and I am told he gives the most wonderful presents to people—"

"Please don't talk about it," said the girl shortly, and turned to the uneasy Solomon. "You were with Johnny— when he died?" she asked quietly.

Solomon cleared his throat.

"I was, indeed." he said. "A grand fellow was Johnny."

She looked from Smith to the other and then:

"Did he leave any letters?"

For a second Solomon hesitated, and his companion kicked him savagely under the table.

"Yes, he left a lot of letters addressed to you," said Solomon, "I have got them out at my house in Neuilly."

"Did you bring them?" she asked.

"Why no," interrupted Mr. Smith, "I wouldn't let him take the risk of carrying them about Paris, besides there are too many of them. Mr. Levinsky thought you would like to go out and take them yourself. His wife and mother will be glad to see you."

Levinsky looked so startled at the discovery of these relations in Paris that, had the girl been watching him, she must have seen through the invention.

Solomon recovered.

"That's right," he said, "they will be really glad to see you, Miss MacNalty. You see I keep the letters in my safe."

The girl looked at him dubiously.

"It's rather late."

"Oh, but they expect you," said Lex Smith with a smile, "Mrs. Levinsky told Solly before he left to-night that he's got to bring you out whatever the hour is. Where did she say she would send the car, Solly?"

Levinsky tried to speak, but failed. He could only nod his head toward the big limousine which was still patiently waiting. Again the girl hesitated. An uneasy sense of danger oppressed her, but she remembered Levinsky as a sober and mysterious personage who occupied the best rooms in the boarding-house where she was staying, and whose business took him out of town a great deal.

And somehow his association with her dead father (Levinsky used to play an occasional game of chess with him in their tiny room) created a faith which overrode her suspicion.

"You have not been in Paris very long then?" said Smith as they rose and made their way between the crowded tables.

"Two days," she replied, and then: "Are you coming out too?" she asked.

"Oh no," said Lex Smith, "I have a very important appointment with a member of the Embassy, but I will see you to your car."

The girl crossed the road a little ahead of them.

"I'll be waiting for you right here on the corner," said Smith in a low voice; "the money's as good as in your pocket."

"I don't like it," growled Solomon in a low tone; "this is an awful business."

"It will be more awful if you come back without that money," said Lex significantly. "Why, what's biting you? The man will treat her fine. You are probably doing her the grandest favour it is possible for a man to do a girl."

Molly was waiting on the sidewalk for them.

"That's your car," said Smith loudly; "good-night, Miss MacNalty."

He took off his hat and grasped her warmly by the hand. Evidently he knew the driver, for they exchanged nods and he opened the door of the big car. The girl had one foot on the step when suddenly she heard a little whistle— a whistle that sent a shiver clown her spine.

She looked at the dark figure in the shadow of the Equitable Building, and took a step toward him and stopped.

"I'm silly," she said with a pathetic little laugh, "but it sounded so—"

"I'm afraid you will be late," said Smith; "don't keep Miss MacNalty too long, Solly."

Still she hesitated.

"You will bring me back to my hotel— it is the Hotel Juillet?"

"Don't worry about that, Miss MacNalty," said Smith irritably. "I'll see that— Solly will see that you come back."

"Hotel Juillet in the— what is the name of the street?"

Smith suppressed a curse. He had no idea where the Hotel Juillet was, and to show any haste or inventive power at this moment might breed doubt in the girl's mind. He turned to the man in the shadow.

"Do you know where the Hotel Juillet is?" he asked in French.

Johnny Kelly came forward, still chewing his toothpick.

"The Hotel Juillet?" he said, and took off his hat to scratch his head— a reprehensible practice of his in moments of doubt— and the rays of the arc light fell across his face.

"I know where the Sante Prison is, Smith," he said cheerfully, "I'll relieve you of the responsibility of conducting the young lady to Mr. Tigiliki. Going quietly or do you want me to use violence?"

"I'd rather you didn't," said Smith.

Johnny heard a startled cry and saw in the dim light the girl staring at him as though he were a ghost.

"Johnny!" she cried.

In his surprise he released Smith, who darted across the road.

"Maggie!"

She was in his arms, sobbing and shaking from head to foot.

"Maggie!" he whispered, and gently disengaged her as a little knot of people came across the Rue de la Paix. In the centre was Mr. Smith, and he was in the hands of a gendarme and a man whom the Special Service man recognised as a private detective.

"Maggie," said Johnny Kelly, and his voice was soft, "I'm going to let that detective take you home— I've got to escort Lex Smith to the police station, and I think I heard him say that he did not want any violence."

"I'VE SEEN a queer thing," said an Englishman who went into the Olysia to join an American officer. "I saw one of your cops beating up two civilians."

"I'll bet they deserved it," said the philosophical officer. "What's yours?"

_______________

12: A Business Training

IT WAS Winifred Laudermere who suggested the business course. She and Tom and Jarnach were lunching one day to celebrate a successful piece of financing— it was the day Jarnach persuaded their father to put up the money for his motor car company.

And when the conversation came round to Lambie, Winifred snorted. She always snorted at the mention of the Laudermere "baby," not, as she was at pains to explain, because she was jealous of her half-sister, but because:

"Well, father gets positively senile over that kid. He sends frantic wires to Lausanne, if Lambie's letter doesn't arrive in time for Tuesday's breakfast, and did you hear about his flying— actually flying in a specially chartered aeroplane to Switzerland when she had measles? Flying! and he hates looking out of a third floor window!"

"It must have cost a lot of money," said Tom, with a disapproving frown, "you cannot hire aeroplanes for nothing. I hate to see the old man wasting money."

Any money that rose beyond the reach of Tom Laudermere's rod was wasted. Jarnach suggested as much.

"That's rot," disputed Winifred, "you know father is a fool about the kid. When she comes home from school she'll be unbearable, and so will he. I've written to him— did he say anything about my letter when you saw him this morning, Tom?"

Tom yawned. Lambie was a subject which bored him more readily than any other.

"Yes, he did— said that you had suggested Lambie should take a sort of intensive Business Course— do they take Business Courses at Swiss convents? Tell me, somebody?"

"Of course they do!" said Winifred scornfully, "and—"

"But why this brilliant suggestion, and why this devotion to the interests of Lambie," asked Jarnach curiously.

Winifred raised her pencilled eyebrows and regarded her younger brother with marked patience.

"Lambie must be provided for," she said primly; 'anything may happen to father— especially now that he has taken to galivanting around in aeroplanes. Besides if she gets a real business training, she'll be crazy to go into an office, or into politics, or something. We don't want her at home."

The last six words had significant pause and emphasis.

"You sound like one of the ugly sisters disposing of poor Cinderella," said Jarnach lazily. "It is all very enterprising and schemish, and I agree. Not that Lambie wants providing for. She had a heap of money of her own. Mary left her a lot."

"Mary" was their father's second wife.

"I agree anyway," said Tom, nodding at the liqueur whose colour he was admiring at the moment, "we don't want the old man to keep her at home spoiling her and all that sort of thing— here's luck."

Therefore was the intensive business training of "Lambie" Laudermere approved.

THERE WAS a very demure, straight-backed girl at the Convent of Maria Theressa at Lausanne. She had a soft voice, a pair of solemn grey eyes, and a certain grave sweetness of manner which endeared her to the good sisters and helped her to a well-deserved popularity amongst the lower fifth.

She had other qualities no less pleasing. One day (some eighteen months after her relatives had sketched her future to their satisfaction) the Reverend Mother sent for "Lambie" Laudermere and Lambie went meekly to the big cool study with its great wistaria framed windows.

The Mother Superior looked up from her desk with a smile at the slim figure with the folded hands.

The Principal of Maria Theressa had once been the wife of a rich Paris banker (you may remember, if you are over forty, the tragic death of the Count Henri d'Avignon and the retirement of his beautiful widow to the cloisters of Avro), and she was a wise woman who had known human love and something of human frailty.

"Sit down, Lambie," she said gently. She used the pet name which Mary Lambton Laudermere had borne since her arrival at the convent. The Superior took a little packet of letters from her desk.

"Do you know these?" she asked.

Lambie flushed pink.

"Yes, Reverend Mother," she said quietly. Sister Agatha nodded.

"These are letters written by a foolish girl to a man— who is not foolish," she said. "They might have brought great unhappiness to poor Viola Willus and greater unhappiness to her parents. We owe you a debt of gratitude for their recovery."

There was a silence, and Lambie changed her feet uncomfortably.

"I am curious to know," the Mother Superior went on, "how you induced Mr. Sigee— who, I think, is no more than a vulgar blackmailer— to part with these precious letters."

Lambie smiled— a faint, fleeting smile that dawned and vanished in a second.

"I met him in the garden last night," she said after a moment's hesitation, "you know, Reverend Mother, that I begged Viola to come to you, but the poor kid— child, I mean— simply hadn't the nerve. She's been to you since, I see," she nodded toward the letters, "and so I went. He was awfully surprised to see me instead of Viola, but he condescended to discuss things. It was quite innocent— Viola's affair, I mean."

The Superior nodded.

"It was one of those garden wall affairs that you read in—" she stopped, not desiring to admit her acquaintance with forbidden classics.

"In— let us say— Thomas à Kempis," said the Reverend Mother smoothly, "go on, dear."

Again the fleeting smile swifter than ever.

"And Viola wrote the letters and threw them over the wail, and he wanted her to meet him and threatened he would go to you if she did not agree. He gabbled on, such a vain little man, Reverend Mother! I think he is a jockey in one of the Italian stables. I told him how naughty it was of Viola, and what an awful row there would be, but he just prinked and beamed— but perhaps you don't know what I mean, Reverend Mother?"

Sister Agatha smiled.

"Prinking and beaming are two accomplishments with which I am well acquainted. Go on, please."

"So I asked him if he had her letters, and he produced them."

"'Can I read them?' I asked, and he was awfully pleased with himself and said I might. So I took them and put them into my pocket."

"What happened then?"

Lambie's lips were twitching, and presently she broke into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

"I'm so sorry, Reverend Mother!" she gasped, drying her eyes, but the Mother Superior was laughing too. Perhaps she had heard an account of this meeting from another source.

"He blustered a little," Lambie went on, "and threatened what he would do to me— so I just binged him and ran!"

"You— ?" asked the puzzled Mother Superior.

"I binged him— like this."

Lambie swung her arm round in a circle.

"You hit him?" said the horrified Superior, yet in her horror there was reluctant admiration.

Lambie nodded.

"I just binged him," she said complacently. "It hurt my hand awfully— but I couldn't help doing it; he was such a little wor— , little man, Reverend Mother. I knew he wouldn't follow, and if he did I could beat him for speed— and that's all, Reverend Mother."

The Mother Superior looked at the girl long and steadily.

"I used to be afraid what would happen when you returned home to your people," she said. "Your father I remember as the most gentle soul in the world, but your brothers I am afraid are not...but I am being uncharitable, Lambie, and that is the worst of all the sins. At any rate I think you will go back to England not ill-equipped for your struggle."

A troubled look came to the girl's face, but it passed.

"You've been a mother to me, Madame," she said quietly. "I shall go into the world without fear."

"I think you will hold your own, my dear," said the Mother Superior, and stooped to kiss the kneeling girl, "even with your brothers. By the way, do they know that word?"

Lambie on her way to the door turned.

"Which word, Reverend Mother?" she asked.

"Bing," said the Mother Superior, and shook a reproving finger before a face which was anything but reproving.

IT IS POSSIBLE that the Reverend Mother knew more of the Laudermere family than did Lambie, for there was a time when Paul Laudermere had been attaché at the British Embassy in Paris, and the Comtesse, as she was then, knew everybody, and her knowledge of the family she had gained partly from her own observation and partly from the little pupil whom Paul had sent to her care. She may have learnt something of them from other sources, for the world in which they lived was a very small one. Of the family she could know little that was calculated to strengthen her faith in humanity.

They robbed Paul Laudermere without shame or difficulty. Tom Laudermere, his big, ungainly, elder son, with his monocle and his pointed red beard (pride of his twenty-six years) robbed him openly; Jarnach Laudermere, his second (and younger) son, with less blatancy; Winifred, his elder daughter, married to Sir Colley Garr, was as calm a robber, and had the inestimable advantage of being assisted by Colley, who had lived by his wits all his life.

Each and every one of them had an euphemism for his or her depredations. Tom called his "finance." Jarnach spoke vaguely of "backing." Winifred's was thinly disguised as borrowing, but the result was mainly the same. Father Paul Laudermere, big and hearty, bearded brownly to the third button of his waistcoat, would be approached in the garden, hose in hand, and the end of strenuous tale-telling would be a "Certainly, certainly, my boy" (or "my girl," as the case might be), "You'll find my cheque-book under The Times— fill in the amount and leave it for me to sign."

Old Paul (he wasn't so old either) had been married at twenty, had lived seven unhappy years with a lady possessed of a temperament, who had presented him with three children and an accumulation of dressmakers' bills dating back to the days of her girlhood, had prevailed upon him to invest twenty thousand pounds in her brothers' cycle manufactory, nagged him daily for the greater part of those seven years, and had then died.

He married again, choosing a lady who presented him with a baby girl ere she also cried "Vale!" to a world which had interested her in the odd moments when she had been free from a gripping pain at her heart.

Thus ended Paul Laudermere's matrimonial ventures.

He superintended, or thought he superintended, the education of his children, cultivated a new variety of pansy, and wrote long letters to The Times on the necessity for introducing legislation to check the ravages of bee disease— for he was an enthusiastic apiarist. He had a large house and a considerable estate in Kent between Sevenoaks and Tonbridge, and at one time an income of £20,000 a year in gilt edge five per cent. stocks. He had sold some £30,000 worth of these to invest in Jarnach's motor works at Coventry, had dropped £40,000 in a gigantic deal in cotton (on Tom's earnest assurance that cotton was going sky high), had put out £20,000 on a mortgage of Garr Court, and had loaned Winifred so many thousands that he had ceased to keep account of them.

PAUL LAUDERMERE sat in his study, a big pipe between his sound white teeth, a thoughtful look on his face. Before him was a sheet of foolscap covered with figures, a fat passbook, and a nearly-written list of his securities furnished by his bank.

The handle of the study door turned and Mr. Laudermere, in some alarm, scrambled the tell-tale evidence of his perturbation into an open drawer of his desk, and shut it quickly as Tom, his cap on the back of his head, a big cigar in his mouth, and his hands (one recently released from the fag of opening the door) thrust into his baggy breeches pocket.

"Hello, governor!" he said, and looked round the apartment, "all alone?"

"Come in, Tom, boy," said Paul uneasily.

"I wanted to see you," Tom dropped into a big chair wearily, stuck his monocle in his eye, and took a steady survey of his parent, "I'm afraid I'm going to bother you, father."

Paul stared a little pleadingly at his son.

"Going to bother me, Tom— God bless my life, you never bother me. What is it?"

Tom crossed his legs and lent forward. He spoke very soberly, and pointed his argument with emphatic jabs of his cigar.

"You've never heard of Mexican Quarries, have you? It's a company that went into liquidation some years ago. I had a few shares in it."

It was remarkable that Paul had not heard of any company which had gone into liquidation and in which his son hadn't a few shares.

"Now, sir," Tom went on impressively, "we can get this property for £60,000—"

Paul Laudermere winced.

"We need only put up £I0,000 and the rest in instalments of ten thousand each, but there will be practically no necessity to put up any more money, because the quarries will show a profit sufficient to pay the other instalments. I wanted you to come to town to-morrow to meet Lord Willus who is the trustee for the debenture holders—"

"To-morrow?" Paul Laudermere shook his head. "Lambie is coming home to- morrow, Tom—"

A look of infinite weariness came to Tom Laudermere's face.

"Lambie! My dear father! Because a little schoolgirl is coming back from a convent, you're not going to allow a deal like this to fall through? Not that it is necessary that you should see Willus at all— I can fix everything. But apart from that, I wanted you to come to town to see that new car I spoke to you about."

But Paul shook his head, firm on this point. His baby was a very important person. He was unnecessarily in terror lest her half-brothers and sister should discover this, and his attitude toward the shy little schoolgirl who came home for her holidays to Hilltop Manor had been one of gruff and unyielding sternness. This was when other members of the family were present.

"No," he said. "I must be at home to meet Lambie.... I want to see her about her affairs.... Her dear mother left her a little, you know," he said hurriedly and apologetically.

Tom pursed his lips in thought.

Once before he had opposed his father in the matter of Lambie, and had been shocked by encountering a steely firmness which had not endeared his half- sister to him or, as it happened, to his nearer relatives, since in this matter of Lambie, Tom, Jarnach, and Winifred were one.

"I'll try to fix another day," he said, rising, "but I can take it that you are keen on the scheme—"

"Not keen," murmured his father, "the fact is, my boy, I've had rather an unpleasant letter from my bank manager.... I suppose we couldn't realise anything on Torson's?"

"Torson's are in liquidation, father," said Tom irritably. "I thought I explained that to you very fully; it will be a long time before they realise their assets."

"Or those Brebner shares?" suggested Paul in his mild way. "I had hopes of Brebners; you said—"

"Now don't reproach me about Brebners," said Tom, obviously hurt. "We couldn't foresee that they'd lose the government contract."

Mr. Laudermere sighed, and Tom went out of the room, swearing softly.

Down below in the big room which Jarnach had appropriated as a study, the remainder of the family was assembled.

Winifred, a pretty peaky woman, sat on the edge of a table, smoking; Colley, her husband, a florid, young man, was gazing moodily out of the window, and Jarnach, the genius of the family, with his epigrams and his deep turned down collar, was reading with evident amusement a circular which had come by that morning's post. It was an appeal issued by the Breunit Brotherhood demanding amongst other things the supervision of religious orders and the suppression of convents. Jarnach was a "societies" man, and dabbled in church reformation and anti-vivisection movements, but the foaming and intemperate document before him demanding as it did donations to further the work of "destroying the monstrous practices of priest and bigot" left him cold. Moreover, there were more intimate and vital questions calling for his attention at the moment.

Winifred turned to her brother as he came in.

"We've got to wait Lambie's pleasure," he said.

Colley turned from the window.

"What's Lambie got to do with it?" be asked fretfully. He had a hoarse voice and lisped a little. "We can get old Willus to sell for a song, an' there's five thousand at least to split—"

"Shut up about splitting," said Tom roughly. "Any one would think we were burglars to hear you talk."

"Well, ain't we?" asked Sir Colley Garr, with a laugh.

Jarnach made a little face.

What a coarse beggar you are, Colley," he said. "Tell us some more about dear Lambie, Tom."

"She comes home to-morrow from school."

"Oh," was all that Jarnach could find to say, and allowed the conversation to drift back to money. Presently he interrupted.

"Do any of you people know the Convent of St. Maria Theressa?" he asked.

"Why?" Winifred looked over to him, her delicate eyebrows raised.

"Oh, nothing," said Jarnach carelessly, "only I thought I heard you referring to Lambie just now as a little fool."

"That was me," admitted Winnie, with a slow smile. "Has the Convent of St. Maria Theressa any especial qualities for teaching wisdom to the young?"

"Yes," said Jarnach surprisingly.

He was a good-looking young man, clean-shaven and wholesome, though he wore his hair a thought too long, and he loved creating sensations.

"The Mother Superior of St. Theressa is Sister Agatha," he said profoundly, and ignoring the ironical expressions of surprise, he went on, "Sister Agatha in her secular days was Madame the Comtesse d'Avignon, the young wife of the greatest of French bankers and herself a famous society leader and wit. She took the veil on the death of her husband, and for twenty years has been teaching the young idea."

Tom looked at him curiously.

"Whilst you're in this communicative mood," said he, with a sneer, "perhaps you'll tell us how this affects us—"

"Only this," said the other. "Lady Goreston, whose daughter is at the same convent, tells me that Lambie is a great favourite with the Mother Superior."

"You don't tell me!" said his brother sarcastically.

He got up from his chair.

"I'm going to town," he said. "I've some people coming to dinner to- night. I regret I shall not be here to welcome this paragon."

Neither Winifred nor Colley had any interest in Hilltop other than the interest which Paul Laudermere's views on Mexican Quarries aroused. This was Tuesday, they would re-assemble on the Friday. They went their several ways, and Winifred was in her house in Curzon Street before she realised that she had gone away without saying good-bye to her father.

Jarnach had promised himself the felicity of greeting the child on her return, and went to town with that idea, but spent the afternoon at his club and missed the continental train.

HE CAME DOWN to Hilltop on Friday, travelling down with Winifred and her husband. Tom had motored down.

Had Miss Mary come? She had arrived, said Penter gravely. She was in Mr. Laudermere's study— had been there all the morning.

"He'll spoil that brat," said Winifred. "Tommy, you'd better go up and see father and settle this quarry business."

"Hullo, brother Tom," said Lambie, and gave him her cheek to kiss.

She had grown, he remarked, and was already above his shoulder. She was dressed all in dove grey ("like a convent girl straight out of a musical comedy," he described her).

Her eyes were grey, merging to blue, her hair gold, going brown. She was progressive, even in her features. You saw her growing. Her nose was straight, and her mouth firm above a chin too soft and young to be firm.

She was a straight girl in the first beautiful stage of womanhood.

She had a trick of blinking when she was amazed, which, considering she had come right away from school was surprising seldom. But she was Lambie still, with her gentle, apologetic little smile, her soft, soothing voice, her flutters of embarrassment.

"You're getting a big girl," patronised Tom, patting her cheek for the last time in his life.

"Yes, brother Tom," she agreed meekly.

"You must get out of that silly habit of calling me 'Brother Tom,'" he said, "and now you can run away and see Winifred and Jarnach. You'll find 'em downstairs."

She hesitated and looked shyly at her father. Paul Laudermere sat stiffly behind his desk, stroking his beard and frowning with a ferocity which only panic can lend to an easy man.

"I think, brother Tom," said Lambie gently, "I cannot afford the time now.... You see I'm daddy's secretary."

"His what?" laughed Tom. They heard his roar of laughter down below and drew an altogether wrong conclusion.

"His secretary. Aren't I, daddy?"

Paul Laudermere nodded and rose with a jerk.

"Lambie is my secretary," he said loudly, defiantly, rapidly, and all but incoherently. "Sound business training.... Winifred's idea.... Talk things over with her, Tom.... Mexican Quarry and all that sort of thing.... I've got a headache."

He escaped from the study through the library door.

For a moment Tom stood open-mouthed, staring at the place where his father had sat, then he looked at his half-sister, prim and business-like, yet with a hint of bubbling merriment behind her eyes.

"What the dickens does he mean?" he demanded. "Talk an intricate business like Mex— it's absurd!"

She nibbled the end of a brand new pencil and eyed him thoughtfully.

"Perhaps it isn't, Brother Tom," she suggested humbly. If he had known human nature better, Brother Tom would have been very suspicious of her humility.

She seated herself, with the effrontery of ignorance (so he said afterwards) in her father's chair, and without encouragement went into the question of Mexican Quarries.

"We talked it over yesterday," she said timidly. "You see, Brother Tom, the Mother Superior, who is awfully clever about finance— she has raised the money to rebuild three convents— has given me a lot of advice, I acted as her secretary for quite a long time. Daddy says you want to buy the— what do you call them?— the debentures of Mexican Quarries?"

"My dear little girl," said Tom, in bland irritation, "what is the use of our discussing this? There are certain things one isn't taught at school—"

"Oh yes, one is," she said calmly, "I was taught the principle of good business long before I went to school, the principle, I mean, that should guide me in dealing even with Mexican Quarries."

"And may I ask," demanded the wrathful Tom, "what is that wonderful principal?"

She looked at him for a second— a keen, searching look.

"Thou shalt not steal," she said.

He sprang up from his chair as though he had been shot, his face crimson with passion.

"You...you..." he spluttered.

"Don't be angry, Brother Tom," she said, and waved him down again. To his amazement, he obeyed her gesture.

"Sixty thousand pounds I think you said," she went on. "Lord Willus, the trustee for the debenture holders, says— I have his wire."

She unlocked a drawer and took out a pink telegraph form and read:

"Have offered property to Laudermere's Syndicate for £4000. Answering your inquiry I cannot honestly say that the property is even worth that."

There was a dead silence.

Tom's face went from crimson to white.

"You see," she went on apologetically, "I know Lord Willus's daughter, and he's by way of being a pal of mine"― Tom gasped ―"so I wired him. Don't you think, Brother Tom, that the Laudermere Syndicate is asking rather a big profit?"

"Does father know this?" he demanded huskily.

"Not yet," she said softly, "but I've told my own lawyer by 'phone. You see, Brother Tom, I had to have lawyers because dear daddy doesn't seem to have any, and there are so many things that require straightening out. All those funny investments that he has shares in. You know them, don't you?"

"WELL?"

The Laudermere Syndicate put the question collectively, and Tom answered in two sentences.

He added a comprehensive conspectus of the situation and the family listened.

"I'll see her," said Winifred, and came marching into the study just as Lambie was locking away a big envelope in Paul Laudermere's safe.

"What is this nonsense you have been talking to Tom?" she demanded without preliminary.

"Nonsense, Sister Winifred?" asked Lambie, big-eyed with wonder.

"Don't call me 'Sister Winifred.' Please drop your convent tricks," snapped Winnie. "If you think you're coming to Hilltop to set our father against us—"

Lambie, both hands on the edge of the desk, leant forward.

"I think we will leave your father out of the question," she said briskly, "and we will come right down to a sum of £20,000 in second mortgage on Garr Court— the existence of a first mortgage not having been disclosed."

Here was a thunderbolt for Winifred— all that she had ever dreaded had happened at last.

"I shall...speak to father," she whimpered.

"In which case," said Lambie, "I shall dump the whole of the facts into the hands of my lawyers! Now run away and tell Jarnach I want to see him."

What she said to Jarnach no man knows, but he came back to an animated and angry family circle with an air of preoccupation.

"What did she say?"

He shook his head.

"Nothing much," said he.

He walked to his desk and began rummaging amongst his papers.

"I want to find the address of those people who wish to suppress convents," he said good-humouredly. "I should like to send them a subscription. And, by the way," he turned, "whose idea was it to give Lambie a business training?"

Winifred Laudermere might have claimed the honour had she been capable of speech.

__________________

13: Miss Prentiss Tells a Lie

IT was a strange meeting, the strangest welcome that ever awaited a man from his future wife.

Remember that he had been for two years overseas, that he had acquitted himself splendidly and she, for her part, was as desirable as youth and loveliness could be. He felt the restraint before he walked into the drawing-room, pausing on the threshold with an air of irresolution.

(If the truth be told Jack Wardmaster was not without cause for embarrassment.)

She was lying on her favourite couch drawn up near the window which overlooked the park, and she did not attempt to rise. The air of the drawing- room was heavy with the scent of violets.

He hesitated a moment, then with firm stride crossed to her.

"Hullo, Jack," she said, and put up a white hand, "don't kiss me, old boy, sit down there where I can see you."

He was relieved, yet for some curious reason, irritated. With a little laugh, he sat on a low chair facing her.

"May," he said, "what an abominable smell of violets. I didn't know that violets could be so disagreeable."

She smiled slightly but made no excuse.

"Sorry," she said. "Why, Jack, you are getting better-looking; you're broader and browner. Yes, positively better-looking!"

At this he could do no less than laugh.

"You got my letters?" he said, after an awkward pause.

She nodded slowly.

"Yes, I got your letters. I'm afraid I was rather a pig about writing. You see, Jack, I am so—" she shrugged her shoulders. "I wish I could sell the factory," she said fretfully. "They come here every week and bother me with the accounts."

"They also bother you with large cheques at frequent intervals," smiled Jack, "and, anyway, May, you can't sell it, not under the terms of your father's will. He wanted you to keep your interest in the works, didn't he?"

She nodded. Another awkward pause, during which she twisted her big diamond engagement ring absently. It struck him, by the curiosity with which she was regarding this little bauble that she bad put it on that day especially for his benefit.

"May," he said desperately, "I want to talk to you about our marriage."

"Oh no, no, no!" she pulled a little face. "Please don't talk about it, Jack. I know it's hateful of me, but just don't talk about it for a little time. Tell me about France and all that happened there. You won all sorts of decorations, medals, and crosses, and things, didn't you? I saw a picture of you in one of the newspapers— the hero of somewhere or other. I felt quite proud of you."

He smiled again.

"I was always seeing pictures of you," she went on, yawning frankly and undisguisedly, putting her small hand over a smaller mouth. "I saw you in a delicious snapshot, getting out of a car at General Headquarters or somewhere. I remember now, there was an awfully pretty driver, a girl?"

"Oh yes," said Jack, "there was a girl, I remember. As a matter of fact, May, I wanted to see you about our marriage because—"

"Now, you're being tiresome, and I'm awfully worried to-day, Jack. Won't you come along and dine tête-à-tête? Then perhaps we'll talk of marriage and all that sort of thing. Come one night about six; it is my best time."

He rose, a little relieved that the interview was over, a little disappointed that he had not carried his grand resolutions into effect.

"You think I'm a pig," she said again, with a ghost of a smile in her blue eyes. "I'm sorry I am, Jack. Good-bye, dear, you may kiss my hand."

He took the shapely little hand in his and bent over it.

"Good-bye, May, I'll come to-morrow, or perhaps the next day, whichever suits you best."

"Any day suits me," she said, seeming to settle farther back into the cushions. "Push the bell as you go out, I want Annette. And, Jack!"

He paused half-way to the door.

"If you ever see Pitt Sweedon, I wish you'd— no, I won't tell you."

"What is it, May?" he asked, turning to come back.

"I won't tell you," she repeated, "but he is a horrid and an insulting man."

"Has he insulted you?" asked Jack quickly.

"No, no," so entirely with indifference that he was deceived, "I don't know what made me mention him. Good-bye, old boy, come along and see me, won't you?"

He went out, shaking his head.

"Queer," he said. "If this isn't the queerest thing that ever happened and the queerest courtship that ever was, I'm a Dutchman!"

Yet he did not seem unduly depressed, but went off across the Park, taking a short cut to the Cosmos, and had not gone far before he was whistling softly "Madelaine," that song which carried eight million French feet to victory. Also he dismissed Pitt Sweedon from his mind.

It is proverbial that threatened men live long. Pitt Sweedon had reached the age of thirty-nine years, eighteen of which had been prolific in threats, direct, oblique, and anonymous. At the age of thirty-nine he was still a handsome man, not the "beauty boy" who had come down from college in the nineties, but still good to look upon. Many busy years of sowing wild oats had not produced the furrows and pouches which one might have expected on the face of a man for whom life had been a joyous speedway.

The world and its creatures had been his sport. He took where he would, and was wholly indifferent to consequences; mainly the consequence to others, for the consequence to himself brought him no fear. He was a fine powerful man who never shirked a fight in life.

Once in the early nineties there came a blazing man to Pitt Sweedon's apartments intent upon disfiguring him with his two bands. Other men had come with the same intention, but this visitor possessed in addition to a pretty sister (he had left her wailing hysterically in her room) the reputation of a coming middle-weight champion.

The janitor of the flats heard some commotion as he passed the door, and, thinking it was no business of his, walked down the stairs. He and an unconscious prizefighter arrived at the foot of the stairs at about the same time. Pitt Sweedon had dropped his assailant over the banisters.

A wealthy man, a member of a good family, he had a pull beyond his undoubted physical attractions, yet there were men in town to whom Pitt Sweedon, was as a leper. They blackballed him from the Old County Club. He picked a quarrel with the chief of the faction which had brought about his humiliation and beat him into a pulp. A week later he was put up again for membership, but in the meantime the wise committee had passed a law, that no person who had been blackballed from a club was eligible for membership. The Cosmos accepted him because it accepted anybody whose name, though it might be without honour, was honoured if it appeared legibly written on the south-east corner of a cheque.

The tantalising thing about the Cosmos was that it was a good club, in the sense that it served its members particularly well, both in regard to food and comfort. And it was in the centre of the pleasure quarter, the only club where a man could dine his women folk and take them on to the theatre without wetting their feet on a rainy night. Therefore, though men might sneer at its quaint membership, and the members might even speak apologetically of themselves, it was successful.

Pitt Sweedon had his friends and admirers who were also his apologists; these talked vaguely about "youth" being "served." There were few members who did not fear him, none, it seemed, prepared to be anything but civil.

Jack Wardmaster, newly back from the war, indifferent to the legend of Pitt Sweedon's frightfulness, if he had heard it, came foul of the man the very day he had interviewed his fiancée. Pitt Sweedon with lazy insolence had taken Wardmaster's homage for granted. It was at night just before dinner. Jack was reading in a corner of the smoking-room when the other had strolled up.

"You're Wardmaster, aren't you?" said Pitt Sweedon. "I've heard about you. You've been doing such wonderful things on the Western Front. I am Pitt Sweedon."

Jack stared up at him, recalling May's words and giving them, for the first time, the importance they deserved.

"I don't seem to remember that I met you in France," he said, and a tinge of pink came to Pitt Sweedon's smooth face.

"I didn't go to France," he said, a little loudly. "I was doing more useful work at home."

"Splendid," said Jack Wardmaster, and dropping his eyes again to his paper seemed oblivious of the other's presence.

That was the beginning of the feud. Wardmaster was worried about other matters, and possibly some hint of Pitt Sweedon's unsavoury reputation had reached him, to add to the uneasiness which May's half-spoken charge had produced. Pitt Sweedon himself should have had enough to occupy his mind. He had received anonymous letters, breathing threats of sudden and terrible vengeance, had identified the writer and smiled, knowing the cause, which was a good one, for the outburst. He never worried about the letters which women wrote to him. He had expected a more serious complication when Tancy came back from Manchuria, because Tancy's wife was notoriously indiscreet and had spasms of remorse and repentance. She was the sort of woman who, in a wild and exalted moment, might tell everything, but apparently she had not, because Tancy had greeted him with his old smile and had begun boring him again with his views on undeveloped oilfields. It was to Tancy a month later that he unburdened his mind and allowed some of his pent-up animosity the expression of words.

"One of these days," he said, between his teeth, "I am going to take that cub and wring his neck."

"Which cub?" asked Tancy, looking at him round-eyed.

"Wardmaster," said Pitt. "If he thinks he is going to make me look foolish—"

Tancy smiled.

"Wardmaster's all right," he said. "He's one of the best boys in town. I'm his lawyer, you know."

"You've got a pup for a client," said Pitt. "If you have any influence with him, Tancy, advise him privately not to cross me because I'm a pretty bad man to have as an enemy."

Tancy stretched himself farther back in the deep club chair, chewed at his cigar, and surveyed the lacquered ceiling of the smoke-room thoughtfully.

"I think you take Wardmaster a little too seriously," he said. "He is very young; he is in all sorts of trouble—"

"And don't I know it?" replied Pitt Sweedon triumphantly. "He thinks it is his own private trouble and that nobody else has any knowledge of it."

Tancy was silent.

"He isn't off with his old love before he is on with his new," chuckled Sweedon. "That's the trouble, boy! And I could tell him something— maybe I will one of these days," he added, his eyes narrowing at the thought.

Tancy rose and waved a greeting through the club window to somebody outside.

"My wife is waiting for me," he said. "She promised to call. Otherwise I should sit here and argue with you as to the many virtues of Jack Wardmaster until the cows come home."

Pitt Sweedon shot a quick glance through the window, saw the trim, pretty woman who sat in her car outside, and smiled to himself. He waited until Tancy had left the club, then he took his hat from the vestaire and strolled out. It was unfortunate that he came to the turning doors at the same time as Jack Wardmaster, and that Jack, without so much as "by your leave" had pushed in front of him and sent the doors spinning. Pitt Sweedon bit his lip and said nothing. He watched the other as he crossed the road and disappeared from view.

"Some day I'll make you sit up, my friend," he said.

Jack Wardmaster hurried on his way, for he had discovered his watch was three minutes slow, and he had an important engagement which he would not have missed. He came to the rendezvous just as a taxi drove up and a girl jumped out. He hurried forward in time to pay off the cab. Two laughing eyes met his, two little hands caught both of his, and there was in her eyes something which men see only at one period of their lives.

"Let's turn into the park," he said. "I've a lot to tell you."

In the park are deserted walks where two people with confidences to exchange are free from interruption. More important, they are free from observation. She cuddled his arm in both of hers.

"And that's my answer," she said.

"You don't think I'm a—" he hesitated for a word.

"I don't think you're anything but a darling, Jack," she said, "but you have to be something more than a darling; you must go to Miss Prentiss and tell her. Have you seen her since you have been home?"

"Only once," he said, and shivered, and the impression the shiver might convey he hastened to dispel. "She is a sweet girl, Joan," he said earnestly. "It is funny my praising her to you. The whole engagement was wrong, wrong as it could be. You see, we were sort of sweethearts, long before her father made all his money, and we just drifted on, being sweethearts until we were formally engaged. And I think," he said ruefully, "the older we grew the less sweethearts we were. You see, dear, she was so cold and polite and proper, all that a good woman should be, and maybe if I had never met you I should have drifted into matrimony."

"If you had never met me," she repeated, and he caught her by the shoulders and swung her round to face him.

"It was God's blessing I met you, dear," he said. "Probably I should never have known what happiness life held."

"She might—" began the girl, but he shook his head.

"No, no, I'm not speaking against her," he said. "I just hate to talk about her at all because I feel a low-down cad."

"Is she pretty?" asked the girl curiously.

He nodded.

"Very pretty?"

He hesitated.

"Yes," he admitted honestly, and the girl laughed.

"And you are going to give up May Prentiss, heiress to millions and divinely beautiful— I know she is divinely beautiful, so don't contradict me— for plain Joan Smith! Don't you ever realise my name is Smith, Jack; don't you ever wake up in the middle of the night and shudder? Do you ever remember the time when I was a khaki chauffeur and you were a gilded staff officer, and how you gave me tea at Amiens?"

He stooped down and kissed her and suddenly she was curious.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I'm going to May and I'm going to tell her the truth," said Jack soberly. "I must tell her that I do not love her and that our engagement must be broken off."

He thought a moment.

"Somehow I don't think she will mind that much," he said. "I called to see her again the other day; it was in the afternoon, and I caught a glimpse of her on the balcony of her flat as I came through the garden. Her place is on the ground floor, and from the garden one can look right into her drawing-room, and I'll swear that not only did I catch a glimpse of her on the balcony, but I saw her disappearing through the door of the room, yet when I came to the entry to the flat her maid insisted that she was out."

The girl frowned.

"That's strange," she said. "Is she like that?"

Jack hesitated.

"Oh yes, she is rather like that," he admitted. "She goes into the country for weeks quite unexpectedly, and one does not know where she has gone. It was this lack of confidence between May and I which really decided me to end things before I met you," he said.

"Let's talk about something else," said the girl suddenly, and they talked about something else.

He went back to the club later in the afternoon because the club for the time being was his home. His own little place had been let and he was living at an hotel. The Cosmos was central, and here he could reach the people he wanted to meet. One of these greeted him as he entered the vestibule.

"Hullo, Tancy!" said Jack. "You're looking fit and fine."

"I want a talk with you, Jack," said Tancy. "Come along somewhere where we'll be quiet."

"Anything wrong?"

"Nothing—" Tancy hesitated. "Nothing particularly wrong," he said slowly, "only one or two things I would like to discuss with you."

They found an untenanted corner in the Chinese lounge.

"Jack, I want you to be careful of Pitt Sweedon. He's a dangerous man, more dangerous than most people imagine."

Jack Wardmaster grinned.

"Have a cigar, Tancy," he said, offering his case. "I'm a dangerous man myself, if you will excuse the braggadocio."

Tancy looked at the table with the concentrated vision of a crystal reader.

"Have you seen May Prentiss?" he asked.

"I haven't seen May Prentiss," replied Jack drily. "She's a difficult girl to see these days, and I have a mighty urgent reason for wanting to talk to her."

Tancy nodded.

"Queer, May," he said; "a very sweet girl, lots of money and all that sort of thing, but—"

"But what?" said Jack.

"She's eccentric— I don't understand it. By the way, May had a little scene with Pitt. I suppose you heard about that?"

"Scene?" said Jack incredulously. "I can't imagine May having a scene with anybody. Where did this happen?"

"At the Flying Club," responded Tancy. "I was there and saw it. It was just before dinner. We'd been having an afternoon dance. She was sitting by herself when Pitt Sweedon walked over to her and said something. May got up and—"

"And?" repeated Jack.

"She struck him across the mouth," said Tancy.

"Good God!" gasped Jack.

"It was all over in a second. Pitt Sweedon walked away and May went straight out to her car. I haven't seen her since, and— here's the devil himself," said Tancy.

Pitt Sweedon had come into the lounge at that moment, a resplendent creature dressed for dinner and such adventures as the evening held. For a little while he did not see the two men in the corner, but presently he came towards them.

"Hullo, Wardmaster!" he ignored Tancy. "I saw you crossing the park. Have you been to see your lady-love?"

Jack rose slowly.

"See here," said he. "I am not well enough acquainted with you to know whether I am addressing Pitt or Sweedon, or both of you, but to whichever half of you has the brains I would like to say this, that it is not usual to mention a lady's name in a club of this description or any other description."

"You're damned insolent," said Pitt Sweedon.

"And that is just what I'm trying to be, damned insolent," said Jack. "I know nothing about you, except that you're a little indecent, but I repeat you will not mention Miss Prentiss's name in public, or the chastisement you received from her—"

"Oh, she told you, did she?" said Pitt Sweedon, pale and strained. "Then perhaps you would like me to tell you something about the little beast— she—"

Pitt Sweedon was a fighter of no mean quality. Instinctively he guarded the blow to the jaw, but most unexpectedly Jack's right jabbed at his heart and he dropped his hands to guard, but too late. Two smashing blows came like lightning, the second, a terrific drive under the jaw, sent him rolling to the floor. For the first time in his life Pitt Sweedon had been knocked out.

He could not believe it himself as he rose slowly to his feet.

"All right, Wardmaster, you and I will settle this later," he said.

"It can be settled only in this way," said Jack, very white, "that if you mention the name of Miss Prentiss again in a public place, I will kill you."

Tancy watched the two men leave the club, and saw Pitt Sweedon standing irresolutely on the edge of the side walk. Dusk was falling, and the park was a place of misty shadows into which Jack Wardmaster melted at a leisurely pace.

Nearly opposite the club, a closed auto had drawn up. Tancy guessed from its shabbiness that it was a hired car, and was wondering who had had the bad luck to draw the poor relation of the garage when he saw the momentary flutter of a white handkerchief at the window of the limousine. It was an urgent flutter and could only be signalling to Pitt Sweedon.

Presently he too saw the summons and crossed the street. He stood for a moment on the kerb by the car's side, spoke to its occupant, and then walked quickly away.

"He's very annoyed," thought Tancy.

Then a woman jumped from the auto, ran after the retreating man, and gripped him by the arm. The casual observer might not have read into the incident any significance beyond the obvious fact that the owner or hirer of the motor-car had remembered something she wanted to say...they too melted into the blue spaces of shadow.

"I'm sorry," said Tancy from his heart, and called the waiter to settle his account.

Jack Wardmaster walked at his leisure. He wanted time to cool down for one thing, and only time can neutralise the poison juices of anger; and also he was on his way to another kind of trouble. He had already made his decision to end things with May Prentiss. His task was no less disagreeable after the crudities of Pitt Sweedon. Not that he believed anything that the man had said or hinted. May was not that kind of girl. Nor had he any anxiety to be relieved of the right to champion her or any other woman of his acquaintance. He respected her, placed her very high indeed in his scale of feminine values, only he did not love her. That was a simple fact easily stated— except to the person most interested. Street lights twinkled through the trees before Jack Wardmaster increased his pace. It was a spring evening, unusually warm.

Yet— he halted in sheer amazement.

Park Hall, that very exclusive block of flats, was built almost in the park itself, separated only by ornamental rails and a thick border of lilac and laurel bushes which gave to the ground floor tenants the illusion of privacy.

From where he stood he could see the balcony of her flat, and if that was not the languid May in sky-blue reclining defiant of chills and prosaic colds in the head, he was suffering from hallucinations. A warm evening; but May's chief abomination was any kind of evening air.

He passed quickly through the private wicket and along the narrow gravelled path which followed the length of the building. He turned an angle— it was May. He could hardly believe his eyes, but it was May, in her favourite lounge position, propped with down cushions, her fair hair showing against the blue silk covers.

"Why, May!" said Jack, half-amused, half-worried. "You oughtn't to sit here in that flimsy kit. You'll be ill."

She turned her head at the sound of his voice, and as she did so a church clock boomed out the hour of six.

"Hullo!"

Her voice was cold and distant.

"What do you want?" she emphasised the "you."

"Why...I wanted to see you for a few minutes if you could spare me—"

"Oh, go to hell!"

He stepped back as if he had been struck. He was incredulous, shocked, and for a while speechless.

"Go away! Go away!" she wailed. "I don't want to see you, Jack! Don't you understand— I don't want to see you— I— just— don't— want— to— see— you!"

He could only gaze at her, finding no words ready to carry the confusion of his thoughts.

"Damn you!" it was May's voice and was half a sob. "Damn you! Go!"

He turned back on his tracks and walked out of the gardens through the wicket gate he had used and across the park. Once he looked back, urged by subconscious causes, when he reached the spot from where he had first seen the flash of her blue dress. But now the balcony was empty. A light had been lit in the drawing-room, and her maid was pulling down the blind.

"Well, if that doesn't beat the band!" said the dazed young man.

He was making for the Cosmos when he remembered a certain disagreeable incident which must inevitably lead him to a meeting with the disciplinary committee of the club and possibly to expulsion.

He lifted his shoulders at the thought and struck out in another direction which would bring him near enough to his hotel.

The brute! What was the foul thing Pitt Sweedon was going to say when Jack's right to the heart had arrested his eloquence? What had he already told May? Jack Wardmaster stopped in his stride at this solution of her strange conduct. He set his teeth and walked on. Pitt Sweedon should tell him, and he would flog the life out of him until he confessed. Then he grinned to himself in the darkness as the humour of the situation was borne in upon him.

He had gone to the girl to break off his engagement, and she had anticipated his errand by sending him to hell— figuratively, if not literally. But that was not the finish he wanted. He bad a man's desire to be punished for the offence he had committed, not an offence of which he was guiltless. She might send him to perdition (he had never heard May swear before), but it must be justified.

He reached his hotel at seven o'clock, and the hall porter checked the hour in accordance with telephoned instructions, and waiting only until he had seen Jack safe in the elevator, he took up the instrument and called police headquarters.

Jack was writing a quarter of an hour later when two men walked in without knocking. They were strong-faced men, and there was something so purposeful and businesslike in their proceeding that the occupant of the room did not go through the formality of challenging their right to entry without knocking.

"Captain John Wardmaster?" asked one.

"That is my name."

"Get your hat, you're wanted at Headquarters!"

"Headquarters? What do you mean...police?"

The man nodded.

"Good God!" gasped John. "Pitt Sweedon! Did I hurt him so badly?"

"You'd better be careful what you are saying, Captain Wardmaster," said the other warningly. "Mr. Pitt Sweedon is dead."

"Dead?"

"Shot dead— his body was found in the park."

Late that night an urgent message brought Tancy to the cells, and Tancy listened in silence.

"According to the police, Pitt Sweedon was shot at six o'clock," he said. "A policeman on duty heard the shots and made his way to the shrubbery from where the sound came. As he started to run he heard a church clock strike six."

"At which hour," smiled Jack, "I was having rather an unhappy interview with May Prentiss. There will be no difficulty about proving an alibi in those circumstances."

"Thank God for that," said Tancy, with such heartfelt emphasis that Jack warmed toward him. "We shall be able to get you out to-night. I'll go over and see Miss Prentiss."

He took with him the detective in charge of the case.

"Captain Wardmaster is only held on suspicion," said the latter. "I'll take the responsibility of loosing him if Miss Prentiss is certain of the hour she saw him."

The flats were in darkness, and it was some time before Tancy could arouse any response to his persistent ringing at the girl's door. Presently her maid appeared in a dressing-gown.

"Miss Prentiss is asleep, and it's as much as my place is worth to wake her," she said.

She recognised Tancy as an occasional visitor.

"This gentleman is a detective," said the lawyer, "and we are here on a matter of life and death. We simply must see Miss Prentiss, even if we wake her ourselves!"

Nevertheless, the girl was unwilling, and it was only when Tancy showed a sign of carrying out his threat that she yielded. She left them standing in the hail and was gone fully ten minutes. Presently they heard a voice raised in anger, and then the girl reappeared, followed by May. The girl looked half asleep, and she was undoubtedly annoyed.

She had flung a wrap over her night clothes, and Tancy, even in his distraction, thought he had never seen a more lovely creature.

"What on earth does this mean?" demanded May angrily. "Mr. Tancy, who is this person?"

"This person, Miss Prentiss, is a detective," said Tancy quietly. "Mr. Wardmaster has been arrested on a very grave charge. Did you see—"

"Wait a moment, Mr. Tancy," interrupted the detective. "Will you tell me this, miss? When did you see Mr. Wardmaster last?"

The girl frowned at him.

"When did I last see him?" she said. "Oh, I don't know. Last week sometime."

"Not since?"

"No. Haven't I said so?"

"Have you seen him to-day— to-night?"

"No," said May Prentiss readily.

There was an exclamation from the lawyer.

"Think, think, Miss Prentiss! Jack is held on a charge of murder— the murder of Pitt Sweedon—"

"Pitt Sweedon? Dead— murdered?" she whispered huskily, and passed her hand over her eyes. "I'm glad!" she burst forth suddenly. "I hope Jack killed him. I told Jack he had insulted me—"

"For God's sake, think what you're saying!" wailed Tancy. "Every word you utter incriminates Jack Wardmaster still more deeply! Jack came to see you to-night!"

His voice held a plea— he was begging for the life of one who was more than a friend— he was begging for the life of the murderer.

She shook her head slowly.

"No, Jack did not see me to-night. Poor old Jack, he is a good fellow. I'm glad he is going to marry somebody nice. Pitt Sweedon wrote me about it."

Tancy could only look at her aghast. He knew that Jack had told him the truth.

"He did not come here to-night? Didn't you speak to him from the balcony?"

Again she shook her head.

"No," she said.

Jack Wardmaster spent the first of many nights in a cell.

The day before his trial Tancy came to him. He waited until the door of the cell slammed behind him, then he sat on the hard bench by the prisoner's side.

"Jack," he began, without preliminary, "I've played the lowest trick on you that any blackguard has ever played on a decent man. Wait! Don't interrupt until I'm through. I've let you sit under the shadow of a horrible crime, knowing you to be innocent. I've allowed your name to be dragged through the mud, but always I have hoped and prayed that a miracle would happen and that May Prentiss would come forward and explain why she lied and testify to the fact of your interview. She could have proved an alibi and God in heaven knows why she didn't."

Jack's laugh was short and helpless.

"I've been sitting here for the greater part of a month, wondering just what May has against me," he said, "but I just don't understand what you mean by the other things you have said, Tancy. This case is getting a little on your nerves, I think. I'm glad that you believe I am innocent. That is a comfort anyway, but—"

"I know you are innocent," interrupted Tancy. "I am certain because I know who murdered Pitt Sweedon."

"You— know!"

Tancy nodded.

"Pitt Sweedon was shot dead by my wife," he said calmly. "I know, because I was a witness to the crime, and dragged her through the laurels when I saw the policeman running."

"But—!"

"She shot him because— well, for a good and sufficient reason. Had I known all I know now, I should have spared her the trouble, for I should have killed him myself. My wife left the country by the first Cunarder that sailed after the shooting. She is now safe. But for the quarrel you had with Pitt Sweedon, and your having been in the park at the time, the crime would have passed into the category of undiscovered mysteries. As it is, I have kept you on the stretch— until she was safe. To-day you will be free— I am going— I am going....!"

He swayed and stumbled. Jack caught the limp figure in his arms and shouted for the warder.

"Paralysis," said the jail doctor who made a brief examination. "This is tough on poor Wardmaster. His trial comes on to-morrow, and Tancy had the case at his finger-tips. Somebody had better tell Wardmaster."

The prisoner sitting, his head between his hands, heard the news with indifference. Tragedy on tragedy, climax on climax had first bewildered, then stupified him. He saw poor Tancy's substitute, discussed apathetically such particulars of the case as he had already gone over a hundred times, and answered the same old maddening questions.

Some one else had heard of the new tragedy and guessed what it meant to the prisoner.

Joan Smith, sometime chauffeuse to General Headquarters, read of the stroke which crumbled poor Silvester Tancy, and sensed a deeper catastrophe than the news papers had revealed. Two interviews with her lover, and many long talks with an absent-minded lawyer, whose thoughts were everlasting elsewhere, had given her a knowledge of the case equal, save in one respect, to Tancy's.

She had now twenty-four hours to put that knowledge to good account. Hitherto she had stood aside watching the professional men at work, somewhat overawed by their apparent prescience. Now with all to lose she lost what reverence she had, called straightaway upon the chief of the detective agency which the lawyer had engaged to help him, and found that great man a very commonplace individual, rather stupid and a thought pompous.

"We've done our best, Miss Smith," he began. "I've had my best men trailing Miss Prentiss."

"And discovered that she gets up at eleven and goes to bed at midnight, so far as I can see," said Joan shortly. "Have you found anything which is going to help Mr. Wardmaster to-morrow?"

The chief shrugged his shoulders and shut his eyes, thereby indicating that sleuthdom had exhausted all the possibilities of the case.

"Very good," said the girl, and gathered up her handbag and gloves. "I will see what I can discover. Where did this Miss Prentiss get her money?" she demanded suddenly.

"Why, I thought everybody knew—" he began.

"Mark me down as one who doesn't," she said.

"Inherited," the chief was gruff and irritated. "Inherited from her father, Joe Prentiss. Everybody has heard of the Prentiss Machine Company."

She pressed her questions and learnt something of the late Joe Prentiss.

That morning May Prentiss was not in her best mood. She had risen late and was walking her drawing room en déshabillé when the faithful Annette had arrived with a card which bore a scribbled name.

"Joan Smith?" frowned Miss Prentiss. "Who is Joan Smith?"

"A young lady, Madame."

"Tell her I can't see callers and ask her to explain her business to you."

"I'll save everybody a lot of trouble," said Joan Smith from the doorway.

She was peeling her gloves as though she had come to stay, and Miss Prentiss went red.

"Will you please explain this?" she demanded.

"Yes— I agree that some explanation is necessary," said the girl, who had walked slowly into the room, "and I am going to ask you for an explanation— alter you have sent your servant away."

"I shall do nothing of the sort," cried May hotly, "and if you do not go at once, I shall send for a policeman and have you removed."

"Send for your policeman," Joan Smith seated herself without invitation. "Send for somebody engaged in the Pitt Sweedon case. He will be interested."

May shuddered and swayed for a second. "Come back when I ring," she ordered, but the dark-browed Annette stood.

"Madame, I would rather wait," she said, and for a French maid she spoke excellent English. She turned to Joan. "It is for Mr. Wardmaster you come, that poor young man?"

Joan sensed an ally in this inconsiderable servant and nodded.

"It is better that I wait," said the woman decidedly, "and, Madame, it is better for you to speak truly, for I will have not the life of a young man on my conscience—"

"Annette! How dare...."

May Prentiss dissolved into helpless tears.

SHE WAS the first witness called for the defence, and stepped to the stand, bright-eyed and cheerful.

Jack Wardmaster could only sit in dumb amazement at her cheery smile and at the gay wave of her hand as she passed. Smiling, she nodded to the judge and faced the examining attorney. Given a lead from the lawyer she needed no prompting.

"I knew Pitt Sweedon," she said, nodding. "Oh, yes, I knew him! And if you ask me whether I am glad he is dead, why I tell you that I am! Jack Wardmaster said he came over to see me and that he was talking to me when the murder was committed. Annette saw him and heard the clock strike."

"And why," asked the counsel, "did you persist in telling the police that he was not with you at that hour?"

"Because I didn't recollect," said the girl.

"You didn't recollect?" the judge swung round in his chair.

She shook her head.

"No," she said almost cheerfully. "I was drunk. I am drunk now. Does that make any difference, because Annette will come and tell you? I have been drinking since I was a girl. My father died in an inebriate's home. I had been drinking when Jack came to see me. I was afraid he would smell the liquor and emptied a whole bottle of violet perfume on the carpet. Pitt Sweedon knew I drank. He was rude to me once and I— I smacked his face. I was drunk when Jack called that night. I didn't know he had been until after the detectives had left and Annette told me, and then I just didn't worry. Annette worried terribly," she nodded her head wisely, the mechanical gaiety of her smile unabated. "Annette said she would come to the court and tell the truth if I didn't, but maybe she would not have betrayed me if this young person," she stared round the court seeking Joan, and presently recognized her with a flourish of her tiny white hands, "if this young person had not intruded into my drawing-room. I think the way people come into your drawing-room," she addressed the judge with sudden gravity, "without being invited...."

It took six months to get trustees appointed to her estate, and twelve months' treatment in a private home before anything like a cure was effected, by which time Jack Wardmaster had gone over to the great majority— he had married a girl named Smith!

_____________________

14: A Priestess of Osiris

BETWEEN Camden Town and the Gates of Damascus is a gulf which may not be stated in terms of geographical miles. The East and the West are largely incompatibles. The commonplace of either cannot meet and produce by their admixture a third commonplace, as this story proves, if proof is needed.

El Durr, the Carpenter, said his prayers hurriedly— this being the hour of Asr— and finished as soon as was decent, glancing, as was the custom, to right and to left with quick jerks of his head, a reverence due to the two invisible angels who stand at a man's side, marking off his pious performances.

El Durr, some men said, was of the heretical Melawitch, who live up against Beth-Labon— others that he was an Ismailian. This much all knew, that he was a pock-marked young man, who was master of a carpenter's shop in El Kuds, that he was a traveller, and that he invariably bolted his prayers at an enormous rate. Now he came out of the Mosque of Sidna Omar, looking across the Murista a little fearfully, as though he were apprehensive of meeting some one, shuffled hastily across the broad space and went quickly down the Street of Dabbaghin as one pursued.

In course of time, and by a circuitous route, he came to the Gate of Sion, and, halting irresolutely before the forbidding door of a large house by the gate, he passed through, crossed a courtyard, and, coming to another door, he knocked.

"Min?" asked a voice sharply.

"It is I, Durr," he answered, and was bidden to enter.

He waited the conventional minute to allow the women to withdraw, if so be they were in the Mandira, then he went in.

The great reception-room, divaned on three sides, was empty save for the tall man who rose and came to meet him.

"Peace on this house," said El Durr.

"And upon you peace," responded the tall man.

He was young, clean-shaven, and unusually fair. His face had all the quality of the æsthetic, his eyes were grey, and under the plain red tarboosh, the hair, close-clipped, was brown. This was he who was called Yisma Effendi— to be vulgarly translated "Sir Listener"— British by birth and thought, of Arab appearance, and most certainly the confidential spy of the six nations in the days before war made mudheads of some, gold sacks of others, and of one in particular, a dunghill where a foolish cock crowed a victory which was not entirely his own.

"Take it," said the carpenter, and with his two hands laid on the waiting palm of the other a fold of thin paper.

Yisma read quickly and nodded.

"Who saw you take this at the Mosque?" he asked.

"None, Yisma," said the man eagerly, "for I knelt close to the young man praying, and presently, as I prostrated at 'the merciful,' he pushed this along the floor"

Yisma paced the apartment in thought.

"Tewfik Effendi— is he within the city?" he asked.

Durr spat on the ground.

"May he roast in hell for a policeman," he said, "but he is not. This morning I saw him go out of the Jaffa Gate and take the road to Bethlehem— now I say to you, Effendi, that here in Jerusalem there is no man more fit to die than he, for he is an oppressor of the poor and a taker of bribes— I know a certain place near by the tomb of Rachael—"

"Where he buries his money, El Durr," said the other drily. "All men know this in Jerusalem. Yet none has seen him bury it or take it up again. Now I think you are from Hebron, and they who dwell near Hebron are, by all accounts, great thieves; tell me brother, why you have not found this treasure?"

The face of Durr twisted in a grin.

"Ashallah!" he said piously. "I am an honest man."

Yisma looked at the note again, a few scrawled words in Arabic, and, despite the mysteriousness of their passage from writer to reader, and for all the furtive passing from hand to hand, wholly unimportant. For it dealt with a certain sordid business at the Armenian Monastery which was remote from the realms of high politics in which Yisma moved. Yet he must speak significantly of TewfIk Effendi, that the dramatic instinct of his servants should be whetted, for his agents worked best under the illusion that, through their activities, the freedom and lives of their fellows were endangered.

Durr lingered on, though he had been dismissed, and his employer did not hurry him. Momentous news came at the tail of such interviews as this. That is the way of the Orient.

"Yisma, you are as a father to those who serve you, and your wisdom is greater than Suliman's. You know that I am a great traveller, and that I was educated in the English fashion by the blessed fathers of St. Francis, and can speak your language and pray correctly in your churches."

Yisma smiled faintly.

"I know that you neglect many religions, Durr. Also that you speak my tongue."

Durr twiddled his bare toes uncomfortably.

"I go by Joppa in three days," he said a little incoherently. "I have a friend who lives in a beautiful house in London; it is in a pretty place called Camden Town, and he makes magic and sees the future and is growing very rich. He has written to me asking that I go to him, for he needs a priest of Osiris."

"Osiris?" said the startled Yisma. "Oh man, is this a new religion?"

"It is a magic of Egypt," said Durr smugly, "in which I am proficient. And, Yisma, El Kuds has nothing for me— it is full of fleas and piastres— and what is a Turkish piastre? I work from sun up to sun down, hewing wood with the sweat of my body, and at the end have two silver coins to jingle. Let me go, Yisma Effendi."

"Go in peace," said Yisma. "But this remember. It is written that be who serves new Gods must first be immortal. I have a feeling that this will end badly for you, Durr the Carpenter. Go!"

Durr grinned and made his salaam, for he saw nothing that was deadly in Camden Town. He had smelt the cold cities of the north and found them good, and when a man of the hot lands is so perverted that he prefers the drab grubbiness of Camden Town to a cool, flat stone in the shadow of Sidna Omar, his perversion is beyond remedy. So Durr went northward, travelling cheaply— it is possible to go from Jerusalem to the East India Docks for 39s. if you know the ropes.

BAYHAM STREET, Camden Town,is not exactly beautiful, nor was the stuccoed house in which dwelt Ahmed Hafiz, B.A., the finest example of Bayham Street architecture.

Ahmed Hafiz, B.A., was both a teacher and a student. He was a teacher of Oriental languages and a student of the occult. That branch of occultism which he most earnestly studied was the mysterious workings of the feminine mind. He had sent urgently for Durr (they had been acquainted in his early student days, when Durr, a donkey boy of Egypt, had been brought to England by an eccentric philanthropist who had ideas of educating the native) because Durr represented a new source of income.

The reason for the urgency of his call to Jerusalem was Mrs. Sophia Baffleston. Mrs. Baffleston was the widow of a rich builder, and she lived in Torrington Square, and had servants and cats and canaries, window- boxes, and other appurtenances and appendages of the well-to-do. She was rich but cautious. She outraged Ahmed's holiest emotions by beating him down in the matter of fees, and even for the private seances she arranged in her own Victorian drawing-room, she deducted five shillings from the agreed honorarium because the seance had lasted half an hour less than the stipulated time.

He had gazed into crystals and had seen dark men and fair men; he had warned her of a fair woman who was plotting against her (thereby securing the instant dismissal of a perfectly innocent cook), and had emphasised the tender influences of a dark but educated man who secretly adored her; and the net result of his soul's perspiring was (so his books said) the sum of £12, 7s. 6d., which covered the activities of eighteen months.

It was a chance word, spoken at the end of a long, and to Ahmed, boring seance, that put him on the track of easy money. For the first time since their acquaintance, Mrs. Sophia Baffleston betrayed her romantic secret, and Ahmed was instantly alert.

"Osiris, lady? Yes, the great cult still lives. But it is a mystery into which I could not lead you. The priests are few and monies must be paid," he eyed her speculatively, but she did not seem pained. Rather her large face was shining, and in her faded eyes was a light which Ahmed had hoped to see when he had talked of adoring dark men.

"Much money," he said. "I have a friend who is a priest of the Son of Seb, and it may be possible to initiate you...even to make you a priestess."

That was it! She was exalted, trembling, bade him stay whilst she brought books that she had read. Rider Haggard's Cleopatra was one; she was word perfect, could quote grisly incantations and describe dark and terrible ceremonies. Ahmed went home thinking in thousands, and after considerable cogitation, wrote a letter which he addressed to "Mahmut El Durr, a Carpenter who lives in a small house near the Gate of Damascus, opposite the School of the Jews in El Kuds."

It was a long letter, mainly about Osiris, the Son of Seb and of Nut, the Giver of Justice in Hell Mrs. Baffleston had an admirer, who, like her late husband, was in the building trade, but, unlike her late husband, lived everlastingly on the verge of bankruptcy. He was a large, red-faced man with a leer, and his name was Harry Borker. Osiris was a name outside his knowledge. If he had been told Osiris was a giver of judgment in the nether regions, he would have thought it was a fancy name for the Official Receiver. On the day of Ahmed's discovery, he called upon the lady of his choice, and she tolerated him, her mind being so occupied with ecstatic possibilities that he was one with the wallpaper.

"Sophia, don't you think it's about time you gave up this fortune- telling business?" be pleaded. "It makes me jealous to see that skinny-gutted nigger popping in and out as if he owned the place. You're young; in a manner of speaking you're attractive, I always say there's many a good tune played on an old fiddle."

"Oh Set, slayer of my spouse! I am Isis, his beloved, and Horus my son shall slay thee!" murmured Mrs. Baffleston.

"Good God!" said the alarmed Mr. Borker. "What are you talking about, Sophia? I never laid my hands on your old man. And you ain't got a son called Horace!"

Mrs. Baffleston, dimly aware of his presence, pointed a fat and glittering finger to the door.

"To thy hell!" she said dreamily. Mr. Borker went.

In the months that followed, the handsome bank balance of Mrs. Baffleston seemed more and more remote. She was no longer accessible. Every afternoon at two o'clock she left the house, entered her small Panhard (in those days a very classy car), and drove to Bayham Street, where she was invariably met at the door of Ahmed's house by a young man of Eastern origin, whose pock-marked face was one the watchful Mr. Borker grew to know and hate.

Then one day he learnt that his lady-love had given her servants notice, and had placed her house and furniture, her Panhard, broughams, and high-stepping horses in the hands of an auctioneer. The discovery coincided with the arrival of a writ in bankruptcy, which determined Mr. Borker in his plans for the future.

Ahmed Hafiz learnt the news with no less of a shock.

"What is this, Durr?" he asked one day when the novitiate had departed. "What does this old woman intend?"

"I know nothing," said Durr dreamily. "I am a mere slave of Osiris, and She is the Lord's Priestess."

"Stuff and rubbish!" When Ahmed was annoyed, he expressed himself in English. "For three months you have, on your word of honour as a gentleman, promised to get me five hundred pounds from this old she-ox. By Jove! I have only had twenty-two pounds!"

"Have no fear, Ahmed, she will give you riches beyond the dreams of Suliman," soothed El Durr, and would have changed the subject if Ahmed had permitted.

"This jiggery pokery will not do for me!" he said violently. "I have brought you here and given you food and expensive clothes, and now you are going to do dirty work against me! Why is this unprintable woman selling her house? Where does she skip? Ah! That brings chagrin to your face, donkey boy! You are going to take her away! By gad! That's disgusting! After all the trouble I've had with the fat one, and a donkey boy comes and kidnaps her under my very nostrils! Who made you Osiris? Who gave you special speeches and bought incense at nine and six a pack?"

It cost El Durr £85 to appease the just wrath of his patron. He could well afford that sum, for he had hidden in his shirt the greater part of the £500 which an infatuated priestess of Osiris had given him.

Mrs. Baffleston came east as plain Mrs. Baffleston in a P. & O. steamer. None of her fellow-passengers guessed the tremendous mystery behind that plain, stout, and stumpy lady who went ashore at Alexandria. She saw the Nile under the most favourable conditions; the sun was setting and the river was alive with craft. Mrs. Baffleston regarded her domain majestically, and thought she would go on to Thebes by a Cook's excursion that was leaving the following morning, particulars of which she had studied in the quiet of her room at Shepheards.

"Priestess," pleaded El Durr, almost pathetically, "you must not go to Thebes. I have had word from the high priest that you must take your place in El Kuds, where I have a fine house for you."

Durr was thinking of the expense. Contrary to his general expectations, the priestess of Osiris had not handed to him the money she had received from the sale of her house and furniture, even though he had come to her in a state of agitation and ecstasy, and had told her of a vision which he had had, wherein the great god himself, supported by his divine relatives, had instructed her to place her confidence and her bank-roll in the hands of her faithful disciple.

What was more annoying, he did not even know where she kept the money, and although he had conducted a patient and thorough investigation of her baggage, his labours had been profitless. In Jerusalem, populated with his thieving relatives, it would be a fairly simple matter to make the transfer.

Mrs. Baffleston was not mad— no madder than any other enthusiastic sectarian. The dream of her life was realised; she was saturated in the mysticism of a cult which she imperfectly understood; she was swayed by emotions which were both pleasant and comforting; but although her faith in herself had been considerably augmented, her trust in humanity had undergone no perceptible change.

Durr was in a dilemma. The advent of a priest of Osiris into the chaotic welter of religions which distinguish the life of Jerusalem would attract very little notice. The arrival of an English woman, and her appearance in an eastern household, would reach the ears of the authorities. More undesirable, Yisma Effendi, who heard all things, would require an explanation.

One afternoon there arrived by the train from Joppa a veiled woman, to all appearances very much like a score of other veiled women, except that she was unusually stout and short, and wore jewels on her bare hands, which induced daydreams in many a Mussulman' s heart. Durr had already taken a house which had the advantage of being fairly remote from the establishment over which Yisma Effendi presided; a coat of blue wash and a few mystic designs transferred a big sitting-room into a temple. And here, for at least a month, she practised mystic rites, burnt incense and joss sticks, invoked Osiris and Isis and extending her fat palms, solemnly blasted and withered her enemies. She had no enemy, but a Camden Town butcher, with whom she had once engaged in a law action. Him she blasted three times a week with great ruthlessness. Durr, pursuing his own mystic studies, discovered that she kept her money in her boots.

One night there was some slight trouble on the Jaffa Road over a question of lamps. As you should know, the Greeks may hang five lamps in the Angels Chapel of the Church of the Sepulchre, four may be burnt by the Armenians and one by the Copts. This question of burning lamps in sacred places is a very strenuous one— did not the Greeks pay 10,000 piastres for the right of burning so much as a single candle over a certain holy stone?— and it became a frenzied casus belli on a night in May when the rumour spread that the Copts had received a faculty for adding another lamp to the one authorised.

And there was a free fight which brought out a company of infantry and all Tewfik Effendi's available police.

When order was restored, the police discovered a man lying in the middle of the road, stabbed to the heart. He was evidently a tourist and English, which made the matter more scandalous, for he could not possibly have been interested in the question of lamps.

Tewfik Effendi, a trifle too stout for his office, came to the house near the Gate and had an audience with Yisma Effendi.

"By the prophet I know nothing of this— nor did I see the Nazarene until after we had driven the Copts to their quarters," spluttered the Chief of Police. "Now tell the Mutasarrif this, Oh Yisma Effendi, that none of my men drew steel, for we are used to such troubles in Jerusalem." (He called the city "El Kuds," which is the Arabic name and means the Sanctuary.)

Yisma, in his long silk dressing-gown, sat by his desk examining the blood-stained papers which the Chief of Police had brought. They were business letters, mainly, and a Cook's tourist ticket.

"Did none see this man before the fight?" asked Yisma.

"I saw him," said Tewfik impressively. "He was in the street— this I saw before the light went and before I summoned my police. He was making strange signs to some one at the window of a house."

Yisma saw the body later, a stout, florid Englishman evidently of the middle classes, not an unusual type. Strangely enough, his clothes had not been searched for money, for in his hip pocket was some £80 in English banknotes.

He had been killed instantaneously by a quick knife-thrust through the heart, and there was still on his face that look of hall-amused, half-distressed surprise which is to be found in such cases.

There was nothing to do save to summon the British Consul and the English doctor— and that had already been done.

Yisma went back to his house before daybreak, with no other thought than that a very unfortunate accident had occurred to a too adventurous Englishman who, from curiosity, had sought to investigate a religious riot at first hand.

That night came a wire from London.

"Dead man's full name, Harry Borker, fugitive bankrupt. Remit any assets for benefit of creditors."

"Poor devil," said Yisma. "I wonder what brought him to Jerusalem?"

Yisma Effendi— he had almost forgotten what his name looked like in English— had a network of spies throughout Palestine and even beyond. For in Damascus and Cairo, to name extremes of the geographic pole, were men who looked and listened and told all that they saw and heard into his private ear.

Being, as he was, the faithful servant of several governments, who employed him to watch the beginnings of creeds and maintain a vigilant supervision of all miracles, his time was too fully occupied to worry overmuch about this regrettable incident, which was rather within the province of the British Consul and Tewfik's ragamuffins than his, and although he had given the greater part of a night to his investigations, the matter was put out of his mind when Yosef, his table-man, brought him his breakfast in the morning.

"God give you a happy day," said Yosef conventionally.

"And give you fortune," retorted the polite Yisma.

Yosef set the coffee, fussed around putting plates and knives and fruit in position, breathed on an apple and polished it on his sleeve (Yisma noted the apple carefully— he could never get Yosef out of this habit), and waited, knowing that there was news.

"In the bazaars they say that the Frankish man who was killed near the Bab el Amud sought to ravish the hareem of Bayhum Effendi."

"Who is this Bayhum Effendi?" asked Yisma, to whom the name was new.

"He is a rich merchant who lives here. Some say that he is one man and some another. There is a talk that he is Durr the Carpenter, grown rich."

Yisma smiled.

"Durr is in England serving new gods," he said. "The bazaar talks, to drown talk. In what café does this story run?

"In all," was the prompt reply. "Bayhum Effendi has a wife who is fairer than snow upon the great hills of Judea. This man came to take her away, and by Bayhum's order he was killed by a man from Gaza named El Khauwan, the deceitful. He has now gone out of the city to his own home, having been well paid. Yisma, he has a twisted nose and is haj."

Yisma, who accounted no gossip too light for study, sent a party of horsemen to intercept the deceitful one, and by nightfall he was brought to the little courtyard, where he was informally questioned.

"By my head and my father's grave, I know nothing of this evil story, Yisma," he swore. "I am a poor man who came here to see my own brother who is sick, I and the little donkey I rode."

Yisma considered. To bastinado a man in order to make him confess to a crime which would hang him, is a fairly unprofitable piece of work.

"Take him to Tewfik Effendi," he said at last. "Let him be held until to-morrow."

He sent for the mysterious Bayhum Effendi, but that defender of hareems did not come. Instead, there arrived in his courtyard a flushed and angry lady, who wore the costume of the East, but whose manner and style of talking was distinctly Occidental.

Yisma Effendi sat cross-legged on his divan, for once in his life speechless with astonishment.

"I want to see the British Counsel," she said violently.

"Consul?" murmured Yisma.

"I don't care whether it's counsel or whether it's consul, I've been robbed. £640 in English banknotes! It's lucky I had the rest hidden away or he'd have taken that too!"

"May I ask," said Yisma, "who you are and what you are doing in Jerusalem?"

Mrs. Baffleston jerked up her head defiantly, for she was a woman of property and not used to being questioned.

"I am a priestess of Osiris," she said loudly, "though I don't think there's much in it, because I've been blasting that fellow all the morning, 'is 'ead and 'is 'eart, and by all accounts he's still alive."

Yisma interviewed the Chief of Police, and found that, by the happy-go- lucky methods of Eastern justice, Mrs. Baffleston's evidence was not essential. He went to the station to see her off— an unusual act of condescension on his part.

"No more of this business for me," she said determinedly. "You've got my address, mister?"

Yisma nodded.

"You will send the money by registered post if you get it?"

"I shall get it," said Yisma, concealing a smile.

"I have telegraphed to a friend of mine to meet me in London; I'm going to settle down after this. The things I've had to endure since I've been in Jerusalem! No, I'm going to settle down. Maybe I'll get married." She smirked a little. "Mr. Borker— you've probably heard of him; he's well known in the building trade, Harry Borker."

"I've heard of him," said Yisma soberly.

IT WAS three weeks before they caught El Durr, and most of the money was intact. They brought him to Yisma the day before he came up for judgment.

"For every man, one land and one god," he said. "This man desired the woman's money and followed her to El Kuds, and because I was afraid that he would go to you, I hired a countryman to hit him a little on the head. I think Tewfik Pasha will hang me."

"I think that also," said Yisma Effendi.

El Durr's nose wrinkled.

"It is written," he said philosophically. "Now this is a mystery to me, Yisma Effendi, for if I had stayed in Camden Town I should not have hanged, nor this man have died. It seems to me there is very bad luck in new gods as you said. Let it be known to the good fathers of St. Francis that I died a follower of the prophet."

They hanged El Durr within view of the Mosque of Omar, in the shadow of which he was wont to take his siesta.

____________________

15: The Timid Admirer

MIRABELLE STOLL read the morning paper and yawned. She had read everything, the fashion page, the advertisements of the sales, the ducal wedding, and the serial; and beyond the political news, the Near Eastern war news and the financial crisis (which, of course, were too boring to be more than glanced at), there was nothing more to read. Mrs. Staines-Waltham's house had been burgled, but the only item that really interested her about that tremendous happening was the reproduction of a photograph showing an enormous diamond plaque which was part of the stolen property.

She strolled aimlessly about the grounds, and then:

"Wouldn't it be wonderful!" asserted rather than asked Mirabelle Stoll.

She had been feeding the chickens, and had come to Miss Mary's garden by way of Miss Bertha's rosary. The maiden ladies after whom these places had been named had been contemporaries of the big oaken press that stood in the flagged hall of Disaboys Farm, but the names held.

John Stoll looked up lazily over his book, stretched his booted legs farther to the sun, and asked:

"Wouldn't what be wonderful?"

Mirabelle eyed him severely.

"Take your pipe out of your mouth when you speak to a lady."

"You're no lady," said John, going back to his book. "No woman is a lady to her brother."

"You're a vulgar man," said Mirabelle without heat, and in the same tone she would have employed had she told him there was a fly on his nose. "Despite the handicap you mention, I am a lady. And it would be wonderful if the New Man introduced romance into our young and dreary lives!"

John Stoll dropped his book with a groan.

"Have you fed those darned chickens, and haven't you something better to do than jaw me?"

Mirabelle wiped a smut from her pink cheek with a forearm bare to the elbow.

"And whilst we are on the subject of vulgarity," said John, reproachful, "ain't you got a handkerchief, Mirabelle?"

"Don't say 'ain't,' and please take an interest in what I am telling you," said the girl, dropping suddenly to the grass beside him. "When I say, 'isn't it wonderful,' you must leap up with a cry and say, 'By heavens, you're right, Mirabelle! It is wonderful!'"

"If you catch me leaping up, or down, or sideways," retorted her brother emphatically, "look round for the bug that has stung me, that's all!"

Mirabelle was small and fair. John Stoll was tall and dark. Her features were faultless; his appeared different according to the angle from which they were viewed. He was mahogany skinned, she so daintily coloured that the village voted her "delicate."

He looked down at her with an amused smile upon his irregular mouth.

"What is wonderful, anyway?" he asked.

"We're going to have a lodger!"

He made a little face. "A he or a she?"

"A he," she said, and laughed.

"Hence the hilarity," said Jack Stoll, rising heavily. "Well, the cow has to be milked, the hay mown, and the harvest gathered, and the fruit—"

"P'ff!" she cried scornfully. "That means you're going to sleep like a pig all the afternoon!"

"Guessed it first time, lady," said the complacent young man, knocking out the ashes of his pipe. She laughed and pouted at one and the same time. "It's bad for your liver— sleeping."

"I was up all night attending the faithful Giles," he said glibly.

"Rubbish! The faithful Giles has nothing more romantic than chilblains—"

"Make that accusation to his face," said Jack Stoll dramatically. "See, he approaches— and with him the Timid Admirer."

Giles, whose real name was Brown, and Eustace Brown at that, was one of those men of nondescript age who are to be met with in agricultural areas. He had the complexion of a child and the chin beard of a patriarch. He walked with that stately, worm-slaying plod which horticulture claims from its devotees, and he was perpetually bare-armed. Winter and summer he was bare- armed. Winter and summer he wore a waistcoat slightly unbuttoned at the waist, and a silver watch-guard attached to a watch, the chief function of which was to tell him when to stop working. The case had been worn thin by what a German with a passion for the omnibus word would call "impatient frequency."

Following him, at a respectful distance, was the Timid Admirer. The Timid Admirer never walked in front of anybody, even Eustace Brown. He was a little man with a round, frightened face, who invariably carried his hat in his hand, and, from Mirabelle's observation, his heart in his mouth. He lived at the Sussex Arms, the one hostel that the village boasted; and he owned, in an apologetic manner, a Ford car. Mirabelle was sure that, if somebody else asserted his ownership of the car, Mr. Walter Grain would have instantly relinquished his claim.

"Good morning, Grain," said John, and the Timid Admirer bobbed his head awkwardly.

"I thought I would look in," he said a little lamely. "Good morning— good afternoon, Miss Mirabelle. How are the chickens?"

He invariably asked after the chickens; he felt that there he was on safe ground.

"The chickens are splendid," said Mirabelle gravely. "We had a new batch hatched out this morning. Would you like to see them?"

"I should be delighted," said the young man eagerly, and followed her across the orchard to that half-acre which John Stoll invariably referred to as "my poultry farm."

"Well, Giles, where did you find Mr. Grain?"

"Lord bless you, sir, he's been with me all the afternoon. I never saw a more nervous gentleman. The landlord of the Sussex Arms has been going on dreadful about him."

"How do you know what the landlord of the Sussex Arms said?" demanded John sternly.

"I happened to look in there on my way to the village for dinner," said Giles hastily.

"What has he been going on dreadfully about?" asked his employer.

"Well, this young Mr. Grain is that nervous that he went down to the village and bought three bolts and fixed 'em on to the bedroom door. And the landlord says that's aspersion on his character, because nobody that's ever stayed at the Sussex Arms has ever lost more than a gentleman can lose at shove- ha'penny if his luck's out."

"Is he afraid of Nicodemus?" asked John suddenly, a light dawning on him, and "Giles" nodded vigorously.

"That's it, sir. I told him that it was hardly likely that Nicodemus would rob him. He only does the big country houses. And what's this gentleman got to lose? Nothing except an old car that nobody would pay fourpence for!"

The activities of Nicodemus in the county of Sussex were at the moment exercising the attention and destroying the vitality of the local constabulary. Nicodemus was a burglar with a sense of humour. His idea of fun, however, concerned the police a little less than the fact that he was a very clever cracksman, who, by means of chance-found ladders, and a certain skill of hand and wrist, succeeded in removing the loose jewellery, money, and plate which the inhabitants of Sussex left unguarded.

And as invariably he left, in his indiscretion and good nature, an impudent message, written on the nearest mirror with a handy piece of soap, and that message was usually signed "Nicodemus."

"I think Mr. Grain is worrying himself unnecessarily," said John. "There are plenty of pickings in the neighbourhood for friend Nicodemus. He's not likely to trouble us."

At that very moment, Mr. Grain was explaining his condition of mind to the girl.

"I'm naturally nervous, Miss Mirabelle," he said tremulously. "In fact, I came down to the country to get away from business worries and trouble of all kinds. And the first thing I find when I get here is that a wretched burglar is at large, and I'm liable to be wakened up at any moment of the night to find him— phew!"

He mopped his large forehead vigorously.

"But he's not likely to come to the Sussex Arms, Mr. Grain," said the girl, trying hard not to laugh.

"I don't know, I really don't know. Suppose he did? There's only the landlord, who is an elderly person, and the ostler, who is even older, and me! I was thinking about it this morning, Miss Mirabelle, and I am going to ask you a great favour. In fact, it is so great that I don't know how to ask it."

Did he want to borrow John's gun, she wondered? She was not left long in doubt.

"The landlord of the Sussex Arms told me that in the summer time it is your practice to take in— well, not to put too fine a point upon it, a lodger."

"I'm afraid you're too late, Mr. Grain," said the girl. "We let a room occasionally, but it has been taken for the next month."

His face fell.

"By a lady?"

"No, by a gentleman," she said, "a Mr. Arthur Salisbury. Our agent in Horsham let it."

"I'm sorry to hear that," said the Timid Admirer, "very sorry." Here he brightened up. "But another able-bodied man in the village will do no harm. May I have that flower you dropped, Miss Mirabelle?" he asked.

The Timid Admirer's timid admiration was sometimes a source of amusement, but occasionally an embarrassment to Mirabelle.

"Won't you come up to dinner and meet him?" she said hastily.

Mr. Grain shook his head.

"I should like nothing better, but I'm so afraid of the walk home. It is generally dark, and the road between here and the village is a very lonely one. I hope you won't despise me, Miss Mirabelle, but I am nervous, and there's no use in blinking the fact."

"But if you made an effort—" she said.

"I have made an effort," he said vigorously. "For the last two days I've been making a tremendous effort to— to— say something to you." His voice was husky with emotion.

"Let us go and see the pigs," said Mirabelle promptly. The lodger came that afternoon; he drove in a fly from the nearest railway station, which was Melbury, and his baggage consisted of one trunk, about the heaviness of which Giles, who had to carry it to his room, complained bitterly.

Mirabelle was in the garden at the other side of the house, and did not hear him arrive, and was unconscious of his presence until his shadow fell across the garden. Looking up, she saw a tall young man, clean-shaven and somewhat sinister of face; though she admitted to herself that in some respects he was not ill-looking.

"My name is Salisbury," he said abruptly. "I believe I have lodgings here?"

She got up quickly, in some confusion, and not a little resentful of his attitude. For all the young men lodgers that had come her way had shown marked surprise and gratification at the youth and beauty of their landlady. It was they who were confused; they who declined to see their room, and were sure that it was comfortable without taking the trouble to inspect it; they who murmured their apologies for their intrusion upon a sylvan scene and for disturbing the serenity of its most beautiful adornment; they who expressed their pleasure, in tones of rapture and amazement, at the arcadian loveliness of Little Bempton; and when eventually they were shown their rooms, dissolved into paroxysms of satisfaction, and expressed their regret that they were not staying a year, or even two.

Mr. Salisbury, on the other hand, took both the loveliness of the farm and its presiding deity for granted. He examined the room critically, and immediately asked that the position of the bed be changed.

"I sleep most of the day," he said, "and spend the night looking for glow-worms. I am a naturalist."

"Indeed!" said Mirabelle haughtily. "I am afraid that will be rather upsetting to our domestic arrangements."

"I only want dinner at night and a cup of tea at about three in the afternoon," said the lodger, and seemed to notice her for the first time, for she saw a light in his eyes which might have been either interest or admiration. She trusted, for his sake, that it was the latter, for Mirabelle despised people who could not see the obvious.

"He's a bug-hunter and he specialises in glow-worms," she reported to John. "He sleeps all day and he roams the countryside all night."

"It looks as though we shall become acquainted," said John sarcastically. "But really, Mirabelle, that is the type of lodger that I have been looking for. If he ever feels lonely and in need of entertainment, all we have to do is to go out and gather a quart of glow-worms and turn 'em loose in his room."

The new lodger dined with them that night— a somewhat silent and restrained meal. Mirabelle was glad when it was over. The conversation was, in the main, topographical. Mr. Salisbury was a stranger in the neighbourhood, he said; and Mirabelle, who knew every road and field path for miles around, was able to give him a great deal of information, which he gratefully admitted might prove invaluable.

Nearer at hand, and under the genial influence of food, he seemed less sinister. He had one disconcerting trick— that of laughing unexpectedly and shortly at some joke which was not wholly apparent to his companions.

"I think he is rather a boor," said Mirabelle when, armed with a butterfly net mounted on a big white cane, be had gone upon his moonlight prowl.

John Stoll was inclined to agree.

She heard her visitor return. She happened to be awake, and, going to the window, looked out. The skies were grey with the coming dawn, and she saw the dark figure against the darker background of the garden as he came stealthily up the path. She could have sworn he carried a bag, though he had taken none out.

He came up the stairs so quietly that she did not hear him, and she thought he must have been unable to open the front door, until a slight noise in the next room, which he occupied, showed her mistake.

The lodger did not put in an appearance until five o'clock in the evening, when they were taking tea in the cool, chintzy drawing-room. He came in, a little weary looking, and, nodding to John, favoured her with a smile.

"How did the worm hunt go?" asked John.

"Splendidly," said Mr. Salisbury, folding a slice of currant bread with care. "I have three or four entirely new specimens."

He did not display the usual enthusiasm of the entomologist and produce the rarities for their inspection, but abruptly changed the conversation, and in this he was helped by the arrival of the Timid Admirer. Mr. Grain was twittering with news which he had received that afternoon from the sergeant of the village police.

"Sir John Bowen's house was burgled last night," he almost squeaked in his agitation. Nicodemus!"

"Burgled last night!" gasped the girl, and, to his amazement, John saw his sister go pale.

"Yes, last night— or rather, at two o'clock this morning. The butler heard a noise, went down to find the dining-room window had been forced, the butler's safe opened, and Sir John's gold plate stolen— all his racing trophies are gone. The thief must have been disturbed, for he went away in such a hurry that he left a long white cane on the lawn. It is the only clue the police have."

Mirabelle remembered the cane of the butterfly net, and almost swooned.

"Why do you call him Nicodemus?" asked Mr. Salisbury calmly, and John and the Timid Admirer, speaking together, gave him an explanation. As for Mirabelle, she said nothing.

"I had no idea there were burglars in the neighbourhood," said Salisbury, speaking slowly. "Perhaps I have been indiscreet."

He put his hand in his inside pocket and took out a flat leather case and snapped back the lid. The girl's mouth opened in amazement, for, lying upon the blue velvet bed of the case, was a gorgeous plaque of diamonds, the finest piece of jewellery she had ever seen.

"In addition to being a naturalist, I am a jeweller," said Mr. Salisbury, "and I brought this plaque down, intending to make a resetting in my spare time. I think I ought to send this to a bank at once."

The calm audacity of the man took her breath away. It was the piece of jewellery which had been stolen from Mrs. Staines-Waltham, a picture of which had appeared in every illustrated newspaper.

"That is worth at least twelve thousand pounds," said Salisbury thoughtfully, as he replaced the case in his pocket. "It doesn't seem to me to be an intelligent thing to sleep with this under my pillow."

At the first opportunity she made her excuses and went out into the garden. She wanted to think. She must tell John that the mystery of the lodger's midnight amble was a mystery no longer.

What was the bag he had brought in in the early morning? Acting upon a sudden impulse, she went back to the house, ran up the stairs, and, her heart bumping painfully tried the door of his room. It was locked. Crouching down, she looked through the keyhole, but could see nothing. Would he go out that night? If he did, it would be easy to make a search of his room.

When she got back to the garden, she found the Timid Admirer, hat in band, sniffing respectfully at a large cabbage rose.

"I don't like that man," said Mr. Grain daringly.

"You mean Mr. Salisbury?"

He nodded many times.

"There is something queer about him," he said, solemnly, "something deuced queer. He has just been saying that he thinks Nicodemus must be a fellow called Jumpy Johnny from Australia. The way he was laughing and carrying on— well, really, Miss Mirabelle, I have a feeling that he sympathises with this terrible burglar. Yes, I do, really! And the idea of his being in the same house as you, Miss Mirabelle, is repugnant to me!"

He glared up at the open lattices of the bedroom, as though he did not altogether free the builder from responsibility.

"He is in the next room to me," said Mirabelle, and pointed tragically.

"Good gracious!" said the Timid Admirer, and looked again. "Do you think it would be a good idea if I slept in the house, Miss Mirabelle? I find I can borrow a gun from the landlord. Or perhaps if I stayed in the garden all night, underneath your window?" He pointed almost romantically to the lodger's room, and Mirabelle did not undeceive him.

She was in a fever of impatience for the lodger to depart. The dinner was an ordeal; and when, instead of going straight to his room, as she had expected, he strolled out on to the tiny lawn to join them at coffee she groaned.

He seemed in no hurry to take his departure, and was unusually communicative. Watching him, she felt a little pang at the thought of the fate which awaited him. He was undoubtedly good-looking, and she wondered what there was in his face that she could have regarded as sinister.

He was young too, as men go— somewhere about thirty, she guessed. What a waste! She found herself pitying him, and made a resolute effort to eradicate such a weakness. The man was a criminal, a danger to society, and, moreover, had intensified his offence by lodging under her roof.

And then, with a gasp of dismay, she realised what his arrest would mean. She would have to go to court and testify against him, and probably be present when he was sent to penal servitude.

She rose unsteadily, walked away from the little group, and was standing at the garden gate when he appeared, carrying his butterfly net.

"Are you going out, Mr. Salisbury?" she found voice to say.

"Yes, I thought I'd stroll round. I shan't be back till late. The glow- worms do not glow until it is dark."

She gulped down a little sob, and:

"I hope they will not glow at all to-night, Mr. Salisbury— for your sake."

He turned sharply at her words.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Nothing— only, I think I know who you are," she said in a low voice. "I feel I ought to warn you of the terrible risks you are running."

He stood in silence, looking down at her, his eyebrows meeting in a frown.

"Thank you," he said at last, and without another word went through the gate.

She watched him till a bend in the road hid him from view. Then she went back to her brother.

"John," she said, "do you know who Mr. Salisbury is?"

"I only know that he's a bug-hunter and a jeweller which seems to me to be a very curious combination," said John, between puffs at his pipe.

"John, don't be foolish. Mr. Salisbury is Nicodemus!"

John leapt to his feet.

"Nicodemus! You're mad!" be cried. "You mean that he's the burglar?"

She nodded.

"I have known it since this morning. I saw him come back."

John Stoll whistled.

"He was out all night, of course, and Bowen's house was burgled— by gad! I wonder if you're right?"

"We can soon find out," she said. "When he returned this morning be carried what looked like a sack in his band, and he slept with his room locked all day. John, get a ladder."

"What do you mean?" be gasped.

"I'm going to search his room. I know it is useless trying to get through the door, because it is locked."

"But does he know that you suspect him?"

She nodded.

"I told him a few minutes ago," she said. "When I was standing at the gate and he went out, I warned him. He will not return."

"But—" he began.

"Get the ladder," said Mirabelle quietly and her obedient brother went at a run, returning in a few minutes with the one ladder which they possessed.

"I will search the room," said Mirabelle firmly. "You hold the ladder, John. Or— go to the gate, and if he comes back let me know."

"I think that would be a fairly wise precaution." said John.

She mounted the ladder and slipped into the room. He had made his own bed and tidied the room, more efficiently than she expected. There was nothing of suspicious character in sight, and she tried the cupboards. The first yielded nothing, but as she opened the door of the second she stepped back with a gasp.

A potato sack lay on the floor, and, as she dragged it out, it tinkled metallically. She put in a trembling hand and brought out a small gold vase, a racing trophy, and one glance at the inscription revealed the worst.

She walked unsteadily to the window and beckoned John.

"It is here— everything," she said incoherently. "The Bowens' gold plate— oh, John, how dreadful!"

"We'd better send for the police," said John, but she stopped him.

"Wait till the morning," she insisted. "Remember, John, he is our lodger, and he has paid his rent in advance."

"But in the morning he'll be miles away," protested her practical brother.

"That is no business of ours. We must wait until he returns. Of course, he will not return, and the first thing in the morning we will send for the police sergeant and tell him all we know."

She was adamant on this point. Twelve o'clock came, and there was no sign of the lodger. John went to bed, promising to keep awake throughout the night in case of the man's return. Passing his room an hour later, Mirabelle heard his snores, and was not greatly disappointed.

One o'clock, two o'clock came, and although she was satisfied in her mind that the burglar would not return, she lay down, fully dressed, on the bed, as full of good intentions as her brother had been, and in five minutes was asleep.

Suddenly she woke. She looked through the open window for some sign of the dawn, but it was still dark, and, by the little splashes she heard, she knew it was raining. And then she sat up on the bed quickly. somebody was in the room. She guessed rather than saw the figure by the bedside, and asked:

"Who's there?"

She heard a smothered exclamation, and somebody moved toward the door. With a courage which surprised her, she sprang after him.

"You can't go out. What are you doing in my room?" she demanded, and seized the figure by the collar.

Instantly a hand closed about her throat.

"Shut up!" hissed the voice. "If you make a row, I'll kill you!"

She struggled desperately but unavailingly, and then she felt the hand relax, and her assailant fall back, and, looking round, saw the outline of a head and shoulders against the open window.

"I want you, Jumpy," said a voice, and a beam of light struck into the room from an electric torch.

"Good God I" said Mirabelle profanely.

Standing in the circle of light, and crouching back against the wall, she saw the figure of the Timid Admirer!

"IN AUSTRALIA be was known as Jumpy. Nervousness and shyness were always his pose. We didn't know that at Scotland Yard till we got a description through, and then we began to tour Sussex in search of a gentleman with whom timidity was a speciality. And naturally, we hadn't long to search before we found Mr. Grain. I had an idea that he'd go for Bowen's house, and I was watching for him, and just missed taking him. He dropped the swag, and of course I brought it home with me, because I didn't want anybody to know that I was a police officer though I intimated privately to Sir William Bowen that the property was safe— or would be safe unless some curious individual came stealing through the window—"

"That is very rude," said Mirabelle. "I was doing everything in the interests of justice."

Salisbury laughed softly.

"I think you're wonderful," he said.

"But why did he come into my room?" she asked.

"That puzzled me. I thought he would go to mine because I had thoughtfully shown him a piece of jewellery that was worth stealing. It was a replica of one stolen from another house. He must have mistaken the room."

Mirabelle sighed.

"And now we're going to be without a boarder for the rest of the season."

"I don't think so," said Captain Salisbury of the Criminal Investigation Department. "I've applied for three months' leave of absence, and I really am a naturalist. Are you interested in glow-worms?"

______________________

16: The Jewel

"THIS man," said Dandy Lang, and impressed the point with the damper end of his cigar, "is so rich that he's ill with it, and he's crazy about this wench. When a guy gets crazy on a bird, and he's got that much money, he practically camps in the Rue de la Paix. He never goes to Paris but he doesn't bring her back three years' keep, and he'll fall for this diamond clasp as sure as my name is what you think it is."

He was a tall, dark, not ill-looking man, immaculately dressed. He at any rate looked the part, a well proportioned man-about-town, as he sat under the soft shaded lights in the Arabelle Restaurant. Mr. Hokey Smith, his companion, hardly fitted the clothes or the setting. He was a quiet little man with a ragged moustache and a bulging shirt-front; his cuffs were a little too long, his black waistcoat a little too tight. And gentlemen, as Dandy explained, did not wear black ties when they wore tail coats.

"He's science," said Hokey huskily. "I tell you, Dandy, I'm scared to death of science. Whatever you may say, it's been the ruin of our business. Look at wireless! Once a feller got clear of Southampton on one of them fast packets to America, he was home and dry! Now they pick you up in the middle of the sea and ask the captain the colour of your eyebrows. It looks an easy job, I grant you, but this Macready fellow's science, and once you get going after science you're finished."

His companion looked at him with a calm and only slightly malignant eye.

"The trouble with you, Hokey," he said gently, "is that you're not educated. Macready is not more scientific than you and less than me. He goes in for all kinds of push-the-button gadgets, I admit, but we're not burgling his house. If we were, that would be another story. The minute you stepped on a mat you'd hear the Soldiers' Chorus from Faust."

"Who's she?" asked Hokey, who never lost an opportunity of acquiring knowledge.

"And if you walked up the stairs, you'd probably fire six rockets from the roof. But he won't carry any of those contraptions on a railway journey, and it's a million pounds to fourpence that if we don't get him in France we'll get him between Dover and London. He always travels by the midnight sleeper from Paris. Now are you on? We cut two ways, share and share alike. It's an easier job than the emeralds we got from that American woman."

Hokey hesitated, shook his head half-heartedly, sighed again.

"I don't like interfering with science," he said, and, as he saw the lips of his companion curl in a snarl, he added hastily: "I'll take you!"

MR. JOHN MACREADY had every reason to pay homage at the shrine of science. For had not a maternal uncle discovered a method of hardening steel, and his own father built up a fortune of fabulous dimensions out of organised electricity?

He was lamenting his own failure that very night when the enemies of society planned his undoing; and he had a sympathetic audience, for the pretty girl who sat beside him on the floor before a big fire in his house in Berkeley Square, and helped herself to cigarettes from his case with that proprietorial air which a woman acquires during the period of her courtship and loses so quickly after marriage, had no doubt at all that John Macready outrivalled his illustrious relations in inventiveness, brilliancy of intellect, and financial genius.

"I don't want to come to you, darling, with nothing but money," he proclaimed fervently. "I want to bring Achievement. I want to Find Something, exploit it, add a pound to every pound I've inherited; and I think I'm on the track of The Very Big."

He was fair and tall, very good-looking, extremely enthusiastic. Her eyes kindled to that enthusiasm.

"I do understand that, darling," she breathed. "It is so perfectly ghastly to hear people say: 'Oh yes, if he hadn't inherited the money he would never have made it."

In gratitude and love he swooned towards her, and for twenty-five minutes sane conversation was interrupted.

She came to earth by way of that interesting thoroughfare of Paris which Dandy Lang had mentioned.

" ....It's the most gorgeous plaque you ever saw. Lecomte wants eighteen thousand for it, but I think he'll take less. You simply must have it, beloved. It shall be your wedding present."

"Oh no," she murmured; "darling, it is so extravagant of you!"

She said this in that tone of cooing regret which women employ when they are accepting a present that a man cannot afford.

But John Macready could afford this and more.

"I'll combine business with pleasure," he said. "I've got to go over and see this man Arkwright, and he's going to be a pretty tough proposition. You know what these Americans are. If I can only get him to my way of thinking...."

At this point Mr. John Macready became really scientific, helped his lady love to her feet, and from now on they sat at a table, whilst he illustrated, with pencil and paper, the benefits and joys he hoped to bring to the world, and (in parallel columns) the steady accretion to his already bloated income which would arise as a direct consequence of his philanthropy.

THREE DAYS LATER, Hokey Smith, shivering miserably, his face a pale apple-green, for the crossing had been a rough one, stood beside his more debonair companion and watched Mr. Macready pass rapidly along the rain-soaked platform at Calais and climb into a Pullman. He was travelling alone, as was his custom.

"In you get, Hokey," said Mr. Lang under his breath. "He's aboard."

"Don't say 'aboard,'" said Hokey, with a shudder, and added, with a little spirit: "I don't see how he could get to Paris any other way unless he walked."

"He might have gone to Berlin, you poor fish!" said the guiding light of the enterprise. "Ever Since that broker got into the wrong train at Calais I've been careful."

Dandy's knowledge of France and of French railways was a very extensive one— not a remarkable fact, since he had "worked" the Continent for the greater part of twelve years, and was the most expert luggage thief in Europe. And he would add complacently to his confidant, "without a conviction."

Paris he knew, French he spoke. To Hokey Smith, all countries and languages were foreign and meaningless.

There were times when Mr. Lang regretted the necessity for bringing his companion; but Hokey was a clever "mover" ; it was said that he could take a pillow from under a sleeper's head without occasioning him the least discomfort or causing him to stir in his slumbers. And he was a marvellous duplicator of bags. It was exactly for this quality that he had been chosen.

As a trailer he was valueless; spent most of his time while they were in Paris looking for improper pictures in the French illustrated newspapers, and hardly left his hotel. Dandy, on the other hand, only came in to sleep and report.

"He's been three times to Lecomte, the jeweller, and he's getting the stuff this afternoon," he reported at last. "I went into the shop while he was there, and heard him say: 'I want a very special case for this'; and here's a copy of the wire he sent from his hotel."

He pushed a slip of paper across to Hokey Smith, who adjusted his pince-nez— for he was really a very respectable-looking man— and read:

"Have got the jewel! Leaving Paris tonight. Keep your congratulations until I arrive."

"I've booked sleepers for to-night," said Dandy. I am depending on you."

Hokey Smith rubbed his bald head and looked disconsolately out into the gloomy streets of Paris— it had not stopped raining since they arrived.

"If there's no science in it, I'll get it," he said. " Do you know what his bag looks like?"

This was an important question. Mr. Smith carried with him a peculiar equipment. He was an expert bagmaker, and, given an hour, could manufacture an exact duplicate of any valise for which he had to find a substitute.

"I'll find out," said Dandy, and the rest of the day be spent in intensive observation.

In a sense Mr. John Macready was a very difficult man to trail. Perhaps "boring" would be a better word, for he spent quite a lot of his time in the company of an American inventor named Arkwright, who was an interminable conversationalist. He had a laboratory out towards Auteuil, and was, as the watcher discovered, something of a figure in the world of applied science. Dandy's observation and espionage, however, was profitable.

He missed Mr. Macready for an hour, but picked him up again outside his hotel, the Bristol, just before seven in the evening. His taxi came from the direction of the Rue de la Paix, and he was accompanied by a man who had the appearance of a French detective. He took from the cab, with the greatest care, an attaché ease of red morocco, and this he carried, refusing the porter's offer to relieve him of his burden, into the hotel. Dandy noted the size, shape, and colouring, and saw near the handle an inscription in gold lettering. And then Mr. Macready and his escort disappeared into the vestibule of the Bristol.

He came back quickly to Hokey and gave him the dimensions and appearance of the case.

"He had a French 'busy' with him— if Macready takes the man to London with him, it's good-bye eighteen thousand quid!"

Hokey, who was no fool, though a bad sailor, pulled at his plump chin.

"A shot of morph in a cigarette has been known to work wonders," he said, and added: "And it's scientific. I'll take care of the 'busy.'"

IT WAS a wild night when the train pulled out of the Gare du Nord, and Dandy, looking through the window of the sleeping car, had the infinite satisfaction of seeing the bareheaded French detective left behind on the platform. If the energy and the humility of his parting salutations meant anything, he was the best-tipped detective in Paris that night.

Mr. Hokey Smith had not been entirely idle whilst the train was standing in the station. He came into a sleeping compartment which his friend shared, opened his big bag and put the finishing touches to a small red morocco case that he had been working on with such industry that evening.

"The size is right to the eighth of an inch," he said complacently, "and the lettering is usual."

"Did you get it?" asked Dandy eagerly.

Mr. Smith nodded.

"'The Jewel,'" he said; and, despairingly: "You wouldn't think that a man of intelligence and science would put a label on a thing like that, would you?"

Whatever doubt they had as to the contents of the attaché case was dispelled when they went into the supper car which was attached to the train. Mr. Macready came in, carrying the red morocco case, which he put between his feet when he sat down to the table. They followed him closely along the narrow corridor back to his sleeping berth. Macready occupied this alone, and presumably paid double fare for the privilege. Between his compartment and that occupied by the two adventurers was a small washplace, and it was possible, supposing he were careless and did not lock the communicating door, to pass from one compartment to the other. Mr. Macready was not careless, and when, in the dead of night, Hokey tried the door, he found it most securely locked.

To force it would not be a difficult matter, but it would make a great deal of noise. It was much easier to enter from the corridor, and after Hokey had gone along to keep guard outside the little compartment where the conductor was dozing, Dandy inserted a key gently, lifted the latch of the door, slid it back gingerly, and stepped inside. As he did so, he drew up a hand kerchief which he had knotted round his neck, so that the lower part of his features was concealed.

He pulled the door close after him, gently unfastened the door communicating with the washplace, as a quick way of escape, and began to make his investigations, with the help of a tiny electric lamp which threw a pinpoint of light. The attaché case was not on the luggage rack or on the spare seat. He heard Macready move and grunt, and switched off the light. Presently came the sound of heavy breathing, and he tried again.

It was not long before he located the red attaché case. It was humped under the bedclothes at the sleeper's feet. Gingerly he inserted his hand, and found a piece of cord firmly knotted to the handle. The other end was possibly fastened round Macready's ankle.

He was feeling for his nippers when somebody rapped at the outer door, and a voice in French demanded:

"Is all well, Monsieur?"

Dandy had only time to slip into the washplace, and softly fasten the catch from the inside, before he heard Mr. Macready's sleepy voice say :

"All right, conductor."

Evidently there was a working arrangement by which the conductor should call him at regular intervals.

When he got to his own compartment he found Hokey already there.

"That French bird had an alarm clock. It buzzed off just after you'd got into the sleeper," he said.

They waited for half an hour, and were preparing to make their second attempt when they heard the bell ring in the corridor, and a few moments afterwards a conversation between Macready and the conductor. Apparently the young man was restless. They heard him ask the conductor to make coffee for him:

"That lets us out," groaned Dandy. "The chance of getting it on the boat is one in a million. That man's got a hell of a conscience, or he'd be able to sleep!"

But luck was not entirely against them. They arrived at Calais in the grey dawn; the wind howled and whistled round the bleak station buildings; the boat lying by the side of the quay pitched and tossed as though it were in mid- Channel rather than in calm harbour waters. There was an announcement on the platform that the boat would not sail owing to the gale raging in the Channel.

For two hours they hung about the station; then they saw Mr. Macready drive off with his precious red case, and followed him. He went to an hotel, engaged a room, with orders that he was to be called at midday. Dandy made a reconnaissance, and returned discouraged.

"This hotel's full of waiters who've got nothing else to do but look after Macready," he said.

At two o'clock that afternoon the storm-tossed Maid of Kent wallowed and rolled her way into Dover Harbour. She carried a small complement of passengers who did not care. Hokey Smith was dragged limply to firm land, propped against a wall. By the time he had recovered, Mr. Lang had got his meagre baggage through the Customs. He also carried a small attaché case with a brown canvas cover. This was not remarkable, for he had carried the dummy case since he arrived at Boulogne.

They found a compartment for themselves and the train drew out.

"If ever I take a trip like this again," said Hokey faintly, "you can punch me on the nose and I'll say thank you. All this time wasted.... and that ship.... Oh God!"

"Wasted nothing," said Dandy, and there was a strange look in his eyes.

"What's science doing?" wailed Mr. Smith. "They ought to have had a tunnel years ago—"

"Tunnels are no good to me," said Dandy. "Did you see Macready?" be demanded. "They had to carry him, almost, to the Lord Warden. He's greener than you— and anything greener than you is blue. Look!"

He unsnapped the cover of the attaché case, and Hokey Smith was not so sick that he could not see that the case was not the thing be had made.

"You got it!" he exploded, and Dandy smiled. "When that fellow was lying in his state-room, waiting and hoping for death, I went inside and made the change. It was easier than biting butter! Let's have a look at a lot of money."

He tried to unfasten the clasps, but they were firmly locked.

"It'll do in London," urged Smith. "If you chuck the case out of the window, it'll only give 'em a clue."

As the train was running into Victoria, Dandy took another look at the red morocco attaché case. In the centre, between the locks, was a small dial which moved in his hand. He thought it was a combination lock, but he had no time to make further investigations. The train came to a standstill, and he stepped on to the crowded platform, carrying the case in his hand. And then:

"Good evening, everybody! Good evening, Doris May of Camberwell! Many happy returns! If you look under the sofa you'll find a beautiful little present. Hullo, Mary Agnes of Walthamstow! Many happy returns! I'm glad your father has bought you a nice push-cart...."

Dandy stood paralysed. The voice was coming from the attaché case. Everybody was staring at him.

"Good evening, Mary Jones of Brixton! If you'll look behind the piano you'll see such a beautiful little thing that Daddy's bought you for a birthday present..."

Somebody took Dandy Lang by the arm.

"Going quietly?"

Dandy looked round slowly into an inspectorial face, not unfamiliar.

"It's a cop! What's the idea?"

The inspector looked at him reproachfully.

"If you will go pinching portable wireless sets, you must expect to get into trouble," he said.

In the cab that carried them to Rochester Row Police Station, Hokey Smith made one comment.

"This comes of messin' about with science," he said.

"I MISSED the case the moment I got to the hotel," John Macready told his bride-to-be, "and I was simply frantic, and wired the police in London. I had given this inventor fellow a bond that the instrument should not pass out of my hands until the patents were in order. It's the loudest-speaking portable that the world has ever known. I called it 'The Jewel,' darling. Oh, by the way," he put his hand in his pocket and took out a flat case which he had carried all the way from Paris, "here's the clasp. But, as I was saying, 'The Jewel' is going to make history in the wireless world. You can get London, you can get Berlin, Rome...all you've got to do is to turn this little switch on the outside..."

____________________

17: The Ear of the Sanctuary

WHEN men, in all sincerity, express their amazement that such a woman should fall in love with such a man, and fall in love to the extent of sacrificing husband and home and all of the big material things of life, the women to whom such amazement is expressed, offer their polite agreement. They will even echo man's astonishment and enlarge upon the incomprehensibility of the proceeding. But in reality they understand. For man to a woman is largely geist, certain imponderable qualities which men cannot see in man.

John Hazell had the sympathy of his friends, men and women. Sonia Hazell had the society and violent adoration of Josephus Brahm, a man inclined to stoutness from his youth, a great eater of greasy dishes and notoriously careless about his attire. He wore everlastingly a frock coat with watered-silk lapels and he used scent. The only advantage he possessed over John was a magnificent voice. He sang "Donna e mobile," and proved it.

John was a fine type of gentleman. Handsome in a lean, tanned way, he had grey-blue eyes that smiled at the least provocation. He was clean and wholesome, a rider to hounds, a brilliant Orientalist (he spoke the four Arabics), and an authority on all matters pertaining to Islam. For he had been born in Syria, and did not think in English until he was twelve.

One acquired quality he possessed which served him well in that moment of crisis.

"You can drink, Jack," said his father, the great Scottish archæologist. "You can smoke hemp and gamble and make love to Pashas' sacred wives, and I'll forgive ye. But if I ever catch ye being sorry for yersel', I'll tak' the biggest stick I can find an' ye'll be sair!"

When John Hazell returned from a meeting of a hunt committee and read the note his wife had left, a defiant, illogical letter it was, he sat down to piece together the world this light woman had shattered. He did not see her again until she returned, a broken shrew of a woman, demanding forgiveness as her right, and citing certain acts of neglect on his part which more than justified any failure of hers to keep the letter and the spirit of the law.

She brought back with her a smattering of Polish expletives, a taste for old brandy and cigarettes, and an extensive knowledge of European cities.

John handed her over to the care of her sister, arranged an allowance, and went abroad, never to return. In Constantinople he renewed acquaintance with Sekrit Bey (they had played together as children when the Hazells had a house at the foot of Mount Carmel), and from this renewed acquaintanceship was evolved a new and much-desired bureau.

Josephus Brahm came to Constantinople whilst John was there.

"Hazell Effendi," said Sekrit, a slim seemingly effeminate young man, "though we are as brothers, it would be unpardonable in me to speak of your house. But there is a story about this singing-man which hurts me to hear. That which is behind the curtain is not to be mentioned— istaghfir Allah! But if it pleases you, the singer shall sing in hell to-night."

Hazell shook his head and smiled.

"Let him live— only I hear that this man goes to Adrianople to the Governor's house...this man has a way with women."

Sekrit tucked his legs farther under his body— they were sitting in the cool of his reception-room, a place of silken diwans and plashing fountains, and his even white teeth showed for a fraction of a second.

"A man's house is his citadel," quoth he, and went on to talk of Hazell's strange new mission.

"You leave for Jerusalem to-morrow?" (He used the Arabic designation, "El Kuds," which means "The Sanctuary.") "For years I have been suggesting the appointment of such a man as you. There is trouble— there is always trouble in El Kuds. Sometimes it is trouble over lamps, sometimes over altars. Last week the Copts and the Armenians fought with sticks and knives in the Chapel of the Ascension because the Copts have been granted an extra lamp to burn! You shall be the Ear of El Kuds. Hazel Effendi, you shall have power greater than theMutesarrif, and only less than the Vali. Remember that El Kuds is the very centre of world intrigue. There are more political murders planned in the shadow of Mount Olive than in any other city of the world— and we must know. They will fight you, Musselman and Copt and Russian and Greek, but here we will be strong for you..." a long silence and Hazell thought intensely, "as to the Frank singing-man?"

"Leave him to God," said Hazell conventionally.

ALL THIS HAPPENED in the days before the Great War, when El Kuds held mystery and wonder; before the men in helmets came with their guns and their sanitary inspectors. They have the appearance of permanency— istaghfir Allah! God forbid!

The Ear of the Sanctuary? The many consuls shook their heads. There was no such person— he was a legend, a travellers' tale. Hazell Effendi? Neither the Governor nor the Chief of Police knew the name.

Once in the hectic days of war a swaggering Prussian Staff Officer came to the bureau of the Turkish governor.

"There is an Englishman at large in Jerusalem— Hazell, I want him. Where is he?"

The governor stroked his grey beard.

"Effendi, I know of no such man."

The next day the Prussian was recalled to Berlin and sent to the Western Front.

Yet Hazell was alive and his spies covered Jerusalem.

Mostly Yisma Effendi (as they called him― Literally: "He will hear.") watched the secret men who came and went to Russian monasteries, but most vigilant was he in the detection of miracles. For example:

Once the sisters of the blessed Sanctuary of St. Inokente had found a stone— revealed by vision— beneath which was a key of ancient make (Hadid Ayra, the cunning ironworker by the Damascus Gate, made this, charging ten roubles for his labours), and this key opened an old box which was revealed at the bottom of a well. (Yussef the carpenter of the Jewish Quarter manufactured this for a lira osmanlizeh), and in the box which the key opened, in the presence of the whole congregation of Sisters of St. Inokente (on their knees), were three stones darkly coloured and a simple inscription in Latin:

"These Stones Slew Stephen."

Though Latin and Greek strove furiously by vastly circulated pamphlet and authoritive letters, signed and sealed, to demonstrate the absurd unauthenticity of the discovery, yet from Russia and Armenia, from Italy, and even from certain places in Scandinavia, subscriptions had flowed into the coffers of the Sisters of St. Inokente. An idea and an inspiration, and the Monastery of the Ass was not above accepting the lead.

It was the authoritive word of Yisma Effendi that destroyed the miracle. The Ear of the Sanctuary produced Hadid Ayra and Yussef the carpenter. Both had been heavily bribed to keep silence, but Yisma Effendi whipped them until they spoke.

A WEEK after the exposure he tasted a pomegranate at his breakfast...and sent for his tabbackh.

"Eat this, man," said Yisma, and the cook would have obeyed had not Yisma struck it from his hand.

The pomegranates had been delivered at the door of the servants' quarters. They had not been ordered. Hazell, who preferred pomegranates when they had not been treated with cyanide of potassium, ordered others and made no complaint. In this city of hate where men do murder cheerfully in the name of God such happenings are incidental to life.

Inshallah! It is as God please!

Once he was shot at as he rode by the Jordan. He rode down the shooter and extracted information from him. The next day the would-be assassin was found dead. He gained a strange reputation amongst the followers of Mahomet. They called him a sorcerer, and it was supposed that by a compact with Satan he had the power of making himself invisible, of forecasting events, and of producing rain.

One day he sat in his mandara thinking and reading alternately, and his mind was not very far from the Frankish singing-man.

For a story had hummed along his private wire, a story of an errant girl who had fled her house at the word of a man who sang sweetly.

This was no ordinary adventure; for once Joseph Brahm had thrown obstruction into the delicate machinery of statesmanship. Five cipher messages testified to Europe's agitation.

Presently he clapped his hands, and there came to him an Arab youth.

"Mahmud Ali, did you deliver my message to the dragoman of the Nazareen lady?"

"Effendi, it was delivered. The dragoman is William, a great thief and a talker, but he is also frightened. And when I said to him that he must tell the Nazareen lady that you are a magician and can tell the future, he swore he would do this."

Hazell nodded, and with that nod was Mahmud dismissed.

Would she come? And if she came, what should he tell her? Tell her that she was the dupe of a man who duped others...his wife? She would dismiss such a warning, and see in it only the spleen of an injured man. Could he tell her that Josephus Brahm was already married, and that if he wed her it would merely be to hold her to ransom? The King of Hellinium would pay heavily for the release of his daughter. The sum had been hinted fearfully on the wire.

Or....

Yisma Effendi might crook his finger, and Brahm would be found with his throat cut in a low house, and every woman in the house would swear to the suicide of a drunk, frenzied man.

That was not the way either. Brahm would die when the hour brought the proper killer.

So he was musing when two people turned into the narrow street and paused before the green door of his garden.

"Lady," said William the dragoman impressively, "this is the fine house of Yisma Effendi. He is fine fellow, ver' great, plenty frien' with Mutesarrif— good man, clever magic— I spoke of him."

Her eyes twinkled with laughter, but her lips no more than twitched.

She was an exceedingly pretty girl in her habit of fine white cloth, and the big white topee perched on the back of her head, its green lining an effective frame for her healthy face.

Her mouth was big, the mouth of a giver: but the chin was small and beautifully modelled. Her nose a little retroussé, but the eyes large and of a lovely blue. Such hair that showed beneath the helmet was the colour of brown, into which gold had been woven.

She stood before the green door set in the high white wall, the handle of her riding-crop at her lips— she was a little thoughtful and the dragoman formed quite an erroneous view of her hesitation.

Past her moved the ceaseless stream of humanity which all day long, from sun-up to sundown, flows through the City of Sanctuary; donkey-boys urging their unwilling charges, long-tuniced Jews, their stiff curls plastered to each side of their faces; slovenly Turkish soldiers; elaborate tourists, Baedeker in hand; monks, sandal-footed and helmeted; Turkish women, heavily veiled peasants from the lands about Bethany— hard-faced, wiry men these; magnificent dragomen, stalking majestically before a sheep-like flock of straggling sightseers. She might abandon her projected visit and, standing with her back to the wall, secure a whole day's amusement from watching the people.

She looked at her tiny watch, then nodded, and William struck hard on the door.

They waited a while and then it opened.

An inquiring old face was thrust round.

"This woman desires to see your master," said William, "therefore, Ahmet Ali, let us enter."

The old man stood back and salaamed to the girl as she passed.

She was in a beautiful little garden filled with European flowers. Rose and heliotrope, great butterfly pansies, flaming gladiolas, and big masses of geraniums set her eyes roving. The white house behind, with the big green jalousies, its domed roof was smothered with wistaria.

Altogether a delightful place, thought the girl, and approved the plashing little fountain in one corner of the garden.

The old man knocked upon the door of the house.

"Min?" said a voice, and then, "Enter."

As she crossed the threshold of the mandara— this large cool room with its diwans and tiny tables was that indispensable apartment— a man rose and came to meet her.

She took him in with one swift glance from the tarbosh on his head to the red slippers on his feet.

"Oh, Yisma Effendi," said William the dragoman, "this Nazarene has a desire to see you. Before God I would not disturb your honourable peace, but she wished to see this house, being mad and shameless."

He spoke in the Arabic of Syria, feeling tolerably safe.

"Say to her that all my house is hers," said the grave man.

He clapped his hands twice, and a servant in spotless white appeared.

"Bring sherbet," said the young host.

The girl, a curious spectator, was watching him, her eyes scarcely leaving his face.

"Ask the lady if she will be seated," he said.

Before the dragoman could speak, the girl answered in perfect Arabic.

"Oh, Yisma Effendi, let me stand and give me pardon that I disturb you."

William the dragoman gasped a little, and strove hard to remember all that he had said in Arabic to which a young and delicately-nurtured lady, having some influence with the Russian Consul, might take exception.

"Lady," said Hazell, watching her, "all manner of people disturb my rest, seldom so pleasantly."

She nodded at the compliment and looked at the dragoman.

"I will speak to you alone," she said.

Hazell nodded to William, and that man, by no means reluctant to get away to some quiet place where he might prepare needful excuses, went out quickly.

"Here in El Kuds," said she, using the Arabic name for Jerusalem, "they tell many strange stories of you. Some say that you are a magician, others that you can read the future and the hearts of men and women, now"— she hesitated and the colour deepened in her face—"I have come to you because of your wisdom and because I require your help."

He smiled.

"What would you know?" he asked quietly.

"I would know more of somebody who is coming here," she hesitated again, "to see me."

She said this defiantly and with a little touch of hauteur.

"There are certain plans of mine about which I need assurance. Tell me, Yisma Effendi, how will these matters turn out?"

He looked down at her— he was almost a head taller— gravely, almost sadly.

"Lady," he said gently, "who knows the future save God? Yet this will I tell you, that though Ruth forsook all others and clave to the one, she hurt none by so doing. Now it seems to me that you go to shame a very noble house, for I see—" he fixed his eyes dreamily upon one corner of the apartment, and a startled look came into the girl's face, "I see a royal house of three crowns, and a great white palace with broad gardens, and a wilful maid who walks therein and somebody who speaks easy love, being well versed in the art, my lady!"

The girl turned red and white.

"A wilful maid, I tell you," Hazell went on, "who must have her way and disappears from the palace, none knowing whither, and because the man whom she loves is watched night and day— leaves there alone."

He walked slowly up and down the apartment, his head bent, his hands clasped behind him.

"In the Holy Land, men and women come and go and none notice," he said. "Who knows how quickly this lover of yours may come? It is written that wolves will tear down the lamb even in the Sanctuary of God, for wolves are ignoble and beastly. Highness," he said abruptly, "this will mean broken hearts in Hellinium."

The girl was white now, white and shaking. She stared at the man speechbound in her panic, and there was a long and painful silence.

"Tell me," she began at last in a faint voice, but could say no more. From very loyalty she could not put the question. Somehow, in the stilted Arabic they employed, her offence seemed the greater.

"I will tell you of him," said Hazell, "though that is bad talk for a young maid. For there are other women, princess, exalted even as you, and he has sung beautiful songs to them, as beautiful songs as Hafiz of Shiras made amidst his roses, and these he will sing again, but not to you." He frowned again. "I know of one woman—" he began, and then closed his lips tightly.

She walked with knees that trembled to the nearest divan, and sank down suddenly upon the down cushion, white to the lips.

"What do you know?" she asked.

"I know that you are the Princess Helene of Hellinium," said Yisma Effendi, "that your lover is Josephus Brahm in the Frankish language."

She sprang to her feet.

"You knew, you knew all the time!" she stormed. "I will not be intimidated, you are paid by my father!"

"How can that be, lady?" he asked calmly. "I did not bring you here, rather you sought me. I tell you only the things I choose, now go with God."

He raised both his hands as in blessing.

As though watching for this signal, a little boy came pattering across the tessellated floor from one of the draped doorways, and flung wide the big door that led to the gardens without. She stood for a moment on the threshold, then she opened the gold chain bag upon her wrist and took out a tiny handful of Egyptian sovereigns.

"Madam," said Hazel sharply, "I do not seek for gold, but for that which is better."

He waited until the outer gate of the garden had closed, then he crossed the mandara, opened a small door in the wall, and passed through.

He was now in a large room furnished in the modern style as an office. In one corner of the room, under a shade of glass, was a small telegraph instrument. Lifting the shade he placed it carefully on the floor, and with deft hands he manipulated the keys. He received a response almost immediately, and for ten minutes without stopping he rattled the keys with the fingers of an expert.

THE MAN who came ashore at Jaffa was certainly handsome in a black and heavy way. He was too stout for the loose-fitting tussau silk suit he wore, and even to mop his brow he should not have taken off his helmet in the shade of the bazaar, for it showed most conspicuously through the curly hair, a certain pinkness of scalp at the back of his head. Yet he was beyond doubt handsome enough, with his bold brown eyes, the careful moustache, the exactly pencilled eyebrows.

Such a man as might easily capture the romantic fancy of a girl of seventeen and hold her in bondage.

He walked quickly from the landing-place and gained the ill-kept streets of the town. Near the centre of the city he found a café and turned in. He was followed a few minutes later by another European, somewhat similarly attired, younger, more sallow, and if his demeanour went for anything, more humbly placed.

"Well?" asked the first man.

He stirred his tall glass of syrup nervously, and his eyes searched the face of the other.

"Everything is well, Josephus," said the sallow man, and he spoke in German, "you slipped them at Alexandria— that I know. There is nothing to fear now, except—"

Josephus Brahm frowned.

"Except—"

The other shrugged his shoulders.

"You know what the minister at Alexandria said— Yisma Effendi."

The other laughed contemptuously.

"Yisma Effendi!" he scoffed. "Always that! At Begradia our friends say— 'the Holy Land is your safest objective— but keep from Yisma Effendi!' At Alexandria the same, 'Beware of Yisma Effencli.' Stein!" he thumped the table savagely, "what do I get from this— the girl, yes— but what is a girl!" He shrugged again. "Two hundred thousand drachma to restore her, perhaps. Dinoorbeh says the King will pay a million for a divorce, but if he does, how much do I get? Two- fifths! Sapristi! Dinoorbeh takes a fifth for the idea, the master of the household a fifth, and a fifth goes to all who helped. This is no coup— as I understand coups. And at the end of it all with success in sight— Yisma Effendi— for heavens' sake, who is he?"

Stein looked thoughtfully out to the sun-washed streets.

"Jerusalem is safe," said he, evading the direct question. "As for Yisma, our friends are very watchful. He has more enemies than thee or I. We could not come at a better time— there is no occasion for nervousness."

Josephus laughed.

"My friend," said he, twirling his fine silky moustache, nervousness, I do not understand. Somebody once said, Beware of— I forget his name. His wife was Sonia, a dear little soul of whom you have heard. Yet I and that husband were at Constantinople together and he the friend of the great Sekrit Bey— and yet I live! I have penetrated to a harem and lay beneath silken cushions listening to the eunuchs...."

And he told a story to his own discredit. Of a Princess of the Royal House— a veiled daughter of Sultans, scented notes to the sweet singer who had sung in the courtyard of a palace in Adrianople...of escapes over high walls.

"The daughter of the great Azrael Pasha," he boasted. "He said he would kill me, yet I have walked through Adrianople since."

"What happened to the girl?" asked the other curiously.

"She was tiresome," was the unsatisfying reply. "Let us talk of Yisma and his enemies."

And for an hour they sat, whilst Stein told of the net which was closing about this officious man.

A WEEK LATER Yisma Effendi, none called him Hazell, riding briskly near the sown lands, pulled back his horse almost to its haunches, and he did this with his left hand, whilst his right dropped to his riding boot of soft undressed leather.

The four men who had jumped into the road from behind two great boulders, blinked at him and parted their teeth— a ludicrous sight. Not so humorous was the short-barrelled Manlicher carbine which each man carried.

"Oh friends," said Yisma, "what do you seek?"

"Haj, we seek the man who is called the Ear of the Sanctuary," said the least pleasant of the men huskily.

"I am that man," said the horseman.

"Manwitah!" breathed the leader, but paused before the levelled barrel of the Browning.

"Oh man," said Hazell gently, "you are very near to the mountains of Kaf which border hell— put down your arms quickly."

They had no heart for the business, being only paid men, and they obeyed.

"Tell me now," said Hazell, "who is the man who desires my death, by your head, Wahiput rasak!"

The man who answered the function of leader squatted to the earth and spat on the ground.

"Give me, Oh Yisma Effendi, no more than a gold lira osmanlizeh and I will tell you."

The horseman shifted his pistol from his right hand to his left. Suddenly a whistling snake of a thong cracked down on the squatting man and he leapt to his feet with a yell.

"Who sent you to kill me, oh thief?" said the horseman calmly.

"Lord— it was a certain Nazarene," sobbed the man. "God knows I wish you no ill, being an honest man ruined by Ashim the Armenian, the usurer of Bethlehem, but they came to me, the Greek—"

So it was the Greek cabal? Hazell had guessed as much.

The men gathered their discarded carbines and handed them to him, butt first.

Brand new every one of them, of Essen make and the ammunition newly issued.

"Go in peace," he said, and watched the assassins out of sight. Then he turned his horse's head and took the uneven road which leads through Jericho to Jerusalem.

At the former village he halted long enough to hand the weapons to the Chief of Police.

"Tewfik Effendi," said the man on the horse, "your district is such that a man cannot ride abroad in safety. Now if this comes to the ears of Nazarene there will be trouble for you."

The stout Tewfik salaamed.

"By my head, Yisma Effendi," he swore, "there has been no theft in this district for the space of four months!"

"There was nearly a murder," said the other grimly. "The governor spoke to me of a new chief of police, thinking because of the dropsy in your legs, you were past the noon. Let there be no more armed robbers hereabouts, on your head, Tewfik Effendi."

"By the grave of my mother," said Tewfik, all shaking, "will you not take coffee with me, Effendi?"

"I sleep in Jerusalem," said the other and went on his way.

He came to the big house near the Jaffa Gate to find a tall old man pacing the mandara. The visitor wore the uniform of a Turkish General, and his short white beard and bushy eyebrows gave him an appearance of ferocity which his known kindliness and benevolence denied.

"Peace on thy house," said Yisma, and drank a long tumblerful of spring water greedily.

"And on you peace," said the visitor. "What did you learn?"

"The man is in the neighbourhood of Jericho. He came by road and has gone the long way round," said Hazell. "To-night the girl goes to meet him."

"A word to the Mutesarrif and she does not leave her house," said the other, but Hazell shook his head.

"That would mean complications," he said. "Diplomacy does not recognise good intentions— there are people who greatly desire the embarrassment of the King of Hellinium. There must be another way of saving her."

He eyed the old man thoughtfully.

"Oh friend of the poor," be said at last, "tell me as between man and man, do you act for your government in this matter— that you command the troops in this sanjac I know, but—"

The other threw out his hand with a weary gesture. "Yisma Effendi," he growled in his gruff deep voice, "I act because you are greater than generals, and I think you set the government moving in this matter. I am responsible for the law and the order of this sanjac, and I am told to put myself in your hands. But there is another reason that I move against all stealers of women." He fingered his beard nervously. "It is not seemly that I should speak of happenings behind the curtain, for I am an old-fashioned Musselman...but.... before I was sent to this place by my cousin— God give him a thousand years. Ah-min!— I had a daughter...the lights of my eyes, Effendi—" he gulped something. "Ai! She is dead, please God, for there came a Frankish man with a voice, to an entertainment I gave to the military governor of Adrianople. And behind the screens the women of my house (forgive me that I speak of such matters) heard...and my daughter...letters and sighings and poems...you understand...and my little bird flew from me," he stopped dead in his walk and turned his eagle face to the other. "I tell you this, that you may know why I act for this Nazarene, I who am a father, and feel— here!" He struck his chest. "Tell me what you call this man who comes."

The nose of Hazell Effendi wrinkled, and there came to him the knowledge that the years had brought a proper ending to the singing man.

"In the Frankish way," he said softly, "he is called Josephus."

"Inshallah!" gasped Azrael Pasha, and went staggering to the wall.

He waved aside the assistance his alarmed host offered.

"Such a man," he asked, "tall— of some breadth— curly of hair like a Laventine Jew, with a tonsure like a priest— ?"

Rapidly, fiercely he questioned, point by point, identifying the man, and the Ear of the Sanctuary confirmed each phrase.

"It is written," said Azrael Pasha.

He picked up his long steel-scabbarded sword from a diwan and hitched it to his belt.

"Leiltak saideh! May thy night be happy," he said gravely.

"And thine be happy and blessed," said Hazell as he salaamed the old man out.

AZRAEL PASHA, with eight men of his house, rode out to meet Josephus Brahm in the bright moonlight. He met him riding alone to an appointment by the Gate of Mary— or, as some call it, St. Stephen.

And Josephus was in good heart, for he had a summons from a girl too wilful for regret, too much of a lover for fear.

Azrael Pasha met him in the Valley of Pomegranates, and with his own hands encircled his neck with the silk cord that strangled him.

______________________

18. "Nig-Nog!"

THIS story is about a matter which, in itself, is ancient history. It is only told now because Mr. Cymbeline Smith (his real name is something which is almost as outrageous) has placed himself under a fifty-thousand dollar bond that he will not "associate in any way whatsoever" his name or his preparation with those which occur in this story, "providing a genteel account of the aforesaid affair be put into writing by a newspaper man." This is that genteel account.

Cymbeline Smith is an American citizen who made a deal of money in the traveling circus business before he took up the serious study of medicines. It had been an asset of his that he might have stood as a model for any artist who desired to draw Uncle Sam. He had a long, somewhat dissatisfied face, a fringe of amber and gray whisker at his chin, he always wore a top hat of antique shape and trousers which were strapped under Wellington boots. In the circus days he affected a blue cut-away swallowtail and a high stock, but these he abandoned when he gave his mind and money to medical science, and produced in conjunction with a drummer (who afterwards drank himself to death) the preparation which is known commercially as "Nig-Nog!" I have little space to dilate upon the pharmaceutical values of "Nig-Nog!" You have read the full page and the double page ads., and you know (or you disbelieve) that "Nig-Nog!" cures all nervous ailments, builds up nerve forces, clears the dazed and dopey brain, and restores to its vie— , to its grateful and delighted purchaser that roseate outlook upon life, that balance of reason, that clarity of vision which the brainworker, the cigarette-fiend, and the chronic pessimist cannot enjoy.

It was described as being compounded from a prescription which had been in the family of a Royal House of Europe for five hundred years, but this may not have been true. Now it is a fact that an advertised patent medicine which does not produce most of the results it claims brings ruin to its proprietor, for it costs more money to put the first supplies on the market than it is humanly possible to get back even if every bottle is sold. But "Nig-Nog!" was a success from the beginning. It sold in the United States of America by the million. It did build up nerve forces and clear the dazed and dopey brain. It did restore the balance of reason and the clarity of vision. And its delighted patrons told other sufferers that "Nig-Nog!" was according to specification, and in consequence Cymbeline Smith grew rich and lived in a suite at Knickerbocker House and drove a machine which was something between Cinderella's Fancy Coach and a Band Wagon.

And then he crossed the waters to conquer Europe. He flooded the London market with "Nig-Nog!"; he added a new tone to the English landscape; in car and train, on omnibus, on house-side, in druggist window, in printed page he spoke earnestly, violently, almost convincingly of "Nig-Nog!"— its virtues, its amazing qualities, and, still more, amazing cheapness.

And then he did that which of all things was unpardonable. Overlooking the weald of Sussex was a long and wooded ridge, and at its highest point was Weald Lodge, the country home of the Rt. Hon. Gregory Thessiger, Minister of Ordnance, an irritable, intolerant man who had a mild dislike for most Americans and a violent dislike for that type of American which Cymbeline Smith represented. Because he was a great man and people trembled at his nod, and because he was almost godlike to the villagers of Adfriston, he had never seriously considered the building possibility of the nine-acre lot which lay on the slope of the hill between his estate and the village. He woke one morning to discover that Mr. Cymbeline Smith had purchased that "estate" through a soulless agent at Eastbourne.

To say that Mr. Thessiger was annoyed, was to put the matter with amusing moderation. He endeavored to cancel the sale. He offered to buy the ground, but Cymbeline Smith was first and foremost a showman, and the thought that he was to be a neighbor of the powerful Minister of a most powerful British Cabinet was not wholly abhorrent to him. So he built a dwelling which was a tactful compromise between the White House and the Tower of London, thus reconciling in one spasm of architecture the ideals of the new and the old world. But the culminating point of his infamy came when he took possession and added his final improvement.

The newspaper reporters who saw Mr. Thessiger step from his car at the door of the Treasury reported him as looking ill and worried, and drew conclusions which were wholly erroneous. The Prime Minister also noted the haggard face of his colleague, and his conclusions were almost as wide of the mark as the reporters'.

He walked across to where the Minister sat, and dropped his hand upon his shoulder.

"I think you are worrying too much about this business, Thessiger," he said; "the outlook is not as bad this morning as it was. I think Baremia will climb down."

Thessiger looked up.

"It's not that, Prime Minister," he said irritably; "It's that infernal Yankee! Confound his impertinence!"

The Prime Minister was secretly relieved. He had heard about the infernal Yankee before.

"Is his castle finished!" he asked.

"Finished!" spluttered the other. "Do you know what the rascal has done? On the roof of his house, sir, right under my nose so that I cannot miss it, he has had an electric sign put up: 'NIG-NOG FOR THE NERVES.' It is illuminated at night. He has made it impossible for me to live in my own house. By-heavens, I'll sue him!"

"An electric sign?" said the Premier; "but surely he will take it down if you ask?"

"Ask!" roared the other. "I have demanded, I have pleaded— I didn't go myself, of course, but I sent Grey, my man; but the scoundrel says it is good advertising, for it can be read from the trains six miles away. 'Nig-Nog!' for the nerves," he repeated, grinding his teeth. "Good heavens, if I had only known that he was coming!"

"Why not sue him in the court? He seems to be a nuisance within the meaning of the Act," said the Prime Minister soothingly.

It was very necessary that he should calm his violent colleague, for certain matters were coming up for consideration which called for Thessiger's support on a measure to which, as the Prime Minister knew, the Minister of Ordnance was bitterly opposed. His worst fears were realized when that measure was brought forward. If Thessiger had been violent at previous sittings of the Cabinet, he was now wholly unmanageable; and the Prime Minister walked down to the House of Commons with the Minister of Finance.

"Thessiger is going to make a split," he said moodily, "and at a time when we all ought to stand together and drop petty differences. I'd hate to lose him, but he has things all wrong. He doesn't seem to realize Baremia's object. I wish this infernal American had not come to bother him. He was unmanageable enough without that added cause of irritation. You are a suave sort of devil, Ralph," he said suddenly. "Why don't you go to this 'Nig-Nog!' man and see if you couldn't persuade him to drop his electric sign?"

The other laughed.

"One has to be a very suave kind of devil," he repeated, "to persuade a patent medicine advertiser to surrender a good position. My acquaintance with the press, which is fairly extensive, does not encourage me to believe that Mr. Smith is amenable to reason, but I will try if you like."

So Cymbeline Smith, sitting on his broad verandah, with his red-slippered feet elevated to the rail and with a long cigar between his strong white teeth, had a visitor.

"Why, it's very good of you," said Cymbeline, who had reached that point of prosperity where he accepted the unexpected visits of Cabinet Ministers as an ordinary event of life. "I would like to oblige Mr. Thessiger, Sir Ralph, but I am a business man. I am, sir," he went on in his finest oracular style, "not only a business man, but a humanitarian, a benefactor of the human race, a man to whom the sufferings of his fellow-creatures is a clarion call to duty.

It is my opinion, sir, and it is the opinion shared by the faculty of the United States of America, that there is no more pernicious act that a man can permit than to deny to a suffering world a knowledge of this sovereign remedy. 'Nig-Nog!', sir, may be found in the medicine chests of royal and imperial personages. It may be seen, a bright and pleasant sight, on the shelves of the humblest cottages. Until that miraculous compound, which is at once a prophylactic, a refreshment, and a cure which secures the palingenesis of the atrophied nerve centers and the reintegration of the frazzled brain, is known to every man, woman, and child of your ancient country, I cannot, without reproaching myself with my treachery to humanity, relax in the slightest degree my effort to bring 'Nig-Nog!' to the notice of the world."

"But, my dear Mr. Smith," said Sir Ralph smoothly, "surely it would serve your purpose if the electric sign were placed at our expense nearer to the railway line."

Mr. Cymbeline Smith shook his head.

"No, sir," he said, "the very remoteness of these golden words twinkling against the dark and mysterious background of the immemorial hills produces in the mind of the sufferer the impression of hope— for hope, sir, is a distant prospect. Hope, sir, is the Uranus of the psychological sky."

That night Mr. Thessiger was sitting at his desk in the big library of his house in Chepstowe Place. To be exact, he alternated between the table and the fireplace, for he had half written six letters of resignation which had been consigned to the flames, and the seventh had been begun when his butler came in, closing the door discreetly behind him.

"What is it, Carter?" asked the Minister, looking up.

"The Countess Castlavera. She wishes to see you on a very important matter."

A look of surprise came to Mr. Thessiger's face and he pulled out his watch. It was nine o 'clock.

"Ask the Countess to come in, please, Carter."

He half crossed the room to meet the beautiful woman who was ushered in by the butler.

"My dear Countess," he said, "this is a great surprise and a great pleasure."

"I am afraid you are fearfully busy," she said, with a quick glance at the table. "What curious blotting paper you use!"

He smiled as he pulled forward a chair for his visitor.

"All Ministers use black blotting paper," he said; "It tells no stories."

"And you have so many secrets to hide— what a wonderful thing it is to be a Minister!"

The envy and admiration in her tone was particularly flattering to this lonely man, and, indeed, his friendship with the Countess, which had begun in a small Algerian hotel where they had found themselves in the most unfashionable season of the year, the only people of consequence amongst the guests, had been a source of the greatest comfort to him.

They had met in Paris once, and then the Countess, who was a widow, had come to London and had established her little salon in Curzon Street, and Mr. Thessiger had been an occasional visitor. That she was a fascinating woman is well enough known. Absurdly young for a widow, her eyes had that quality of blue which is found only in the eastern skies at sunset. They were that rich, cloudy blue that particularly appealed to him. Her hair he had likened in his one poetical indiscretion to "a mane of daffodils." Her mouth was small and delicately shaped— her chin, her poise, her air, were all adequately described in that "Memory of Algiers" published in the Saturday Review over the initial "T," the authorship of which was ascribed by none to the somewhat forbidding Minister of Ordnance.

"I have come to see you on rather an important matter," she smiled, "and it is because I know I can trust you that I have come at all."

He inclined his head, at once gratified and curious.

For the moment all thought of the Cabinet crisis, of the grave issues which were pending in the country, even of the exasperating vendor of patent medicines vanished from his mind, and his attention was concentrated upon this fragrant, delicate thing who already occupied too large a portion of his thoughts for his comfort.

"My late husband was, as you know, the agent for an armament firm. He had invented a wonderful howitzer— that is the word?"

Mr. Thessiger nodded.

"And most of the specifications were deposited in a Paris bank. The very secret parts of the gun he confided to me; they were never put on paper."

Mr. Thessiger raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"A somewhat complicated thing to remember, my dear Countess."

She smiled a little sadly.

"And yet by memorizing day after day I had the whole particulars here," she tapped her forehead, "except one, and that has escaped me. I am anxious to sell the gun to a certain government— you need have no fear, it is a government very friendly to yours," she laughed, "and I have recalled everything except the exact mixture in the recoil cylinders."

Mr. Thessiger shook his head.

"I am afraid I cannot help you," he said.

"You can," she said emphatically; "if I were to see another gun, I am sure it would all come back to me. I mean, if I saw it in the process of making; and I want you to help me to this extent, that you give me a permit to visit one of your great gun factories."

The minister made no reply. It was rather a delicate position. The big gun factory, and particularly that section in which the recoils were made, was inaccessible to the general public.

"I cannot answer you straight away," he said. "I do not know what objections there are."

In this he did not speak the truth, for there were many objections. For example, the new 9:6 was in process of creation, and it would be impossible for a visitor with any knowledge of guns to overlook this fact. She seemed to divine what was going on in his mind, for she said quickly:

"Please understand that I know nothing of guns, and that my technical knowledge is confined to just one tiny bit of their construction."

"I cannot give you permission yet. I will let you know in the morning," said Mr. Thessiger; and in a few minutes the conversation had drifted off into more conventional channels, and the Minister was listening with an inward purr of satisfaction to divers things which had been expressed about his genius, all of which views were conveyed to him in the most subtle fashion.

She left him with a sense of longing and an additional feeling of irritation. He slept badly, and in the morning he decided upon his line of action. Incidentally he had decided that there was no valid objection to issuing the permit which the Countess had asked for. He would only be another few days in the Cabinet and he might at least utilize his power to grant her that favor.

As for the other matter, he would oppose the breach with Baremia— for that was what the new Defense Bill would involve.

On that he was determined. He knew that his opposition to the Government would split the Cabinet, for he had enjoyed something of a following in the House, sufficient at any rate to turn the scales against the Government. Once resolved, every hour brought a new argument, which justified to himself the attitude he had adopted. Baremia was bluffing. War was incredible, and being incredible was impossible. Before lunch he had worked himself up to a condition of smouldering anger against his colleagues. To make matters worse, a tactless member of the Cabinet called upon him before the House sat to urge a point of view which could only be described as crassly ignorant.

As the day advanced he grew more and more irritable, more and more unbearable. He snapped and snarled at his secretaries, he declined point-blank to attend the extraordinary meeting of the Cabinet which was summoned for two o'clock, and refused with equal vehemence a luncheon party with the Prime Minister. He walked down to the House that afternoon, a raw man all on edge.

To his alarm he found the hand he put up to return the salute of a passing acquaintance was shaking, and turned into a druggist's shop. The man behind the counter knew him.

"I want something to steady me, Mr. Bolsover," said the Minister. "I am a little nervy."

"I think I know the very thing," said the man. He went behind the little partition and presently came out with a glass containing a white mixture that fizzed and spluttered.

"Drink this quickly," he said, and Mr. Thessiger, with a growl at doing anything he was told, drank the mixture.

"It's not very unpleasant to take," he said in surprise.

"No, sir," smiled the chemist, "It is rather palatable. We have a great demand for that particular medicine. It has really a marvelous effect upon the jaded nerves."

"Is it your own prescription?"

The chemist shook his head.

"I wish it were. I should be a rich man," he laughed. "As a rule I do not recommend proprietary drugs, but this is out of the ordinary. It is called 'Nig-Nog'—"

"It is called what?" roared Mr. Thessiger.

"'Nig-Nog,' sir."

"If I had known that!" said the Minister between his teeth. "If I had only known that!"

He turned quickly and walked from the store boiling with rage. This was the last straw.

The House was crowded, but the Ministerial bench was empty. Ministers had gathered in the Premier's room, and they were not happy.

"Well, gentlemen," said the Prime Minister at last. He stood balancing himself upon the stone fireguard, his hands behind him and his big, harsh mouth curved in a little smile. "I think we must reconcile ourselves to going out— that doesn't matter so much. What does matter is the fact that we are likely to land this country in a pretty unholy mess."

"Don't say 'we,' " said Ralph Yerne grimly; "say Thessiger."

"He is wholly impossible," said the stout and florid Minister of the Interior. "I went to him, my dear Prime Minister, with arguments which were absolutely unanswerable, and he had the audacity to tell me to go to the devil, sir! I have never been so insulted in my life."

"I don't think arguments are much good for Thessiger," said the Prime Minister, regarding the ceiling with minute interest. "He is determined to oppose our measures of National Defense, and there is an end to it."

"What I can't understand," said Sir Ralph, "is that an intelligent man like Thessiger runs around with that infernal Castlavera woman. Everybody knows she is an agent of The Big Embassy, and I have tried in a delicate way to hint as much. She is a very dangerous woman, particularly when one knows that The Big Embassy have been trying to get some particulars of our new 9:6 guns. Thessiger is in a position to supply the information."

"Thessiger is not a fool," said the Prime Minister. "He is—"

At that moment the door opened and Thessiger came in. The Prime Minister looked at him and gasped. For the first time in his life, Thessiger's unhappy face was wreathed in smiles and he chuckled as he entered.

He nodded round genially.

"Had a most amusing experience," he said, and laughed again. "You remember that infernal American?"

"The 'Nig-Nog' man?" said the Prime Minister, relieved to find that his colleague was capable of taking a cheerful view of anything.

"The 'Nig-Nog' man," said Thessiger. "Do you know that ten minutes ago I was inveigled into drinking some of his noxious preparation. The joke is on me with a vengeance," he laughed this time with rare heartiness, and they stared at him. "I have been thinking things over on my way up. Prime Minister," he went on, "and I believe I have taken rather a narrow view of your proposal, in fact I do not think I have been very normal lately. How do you do. Coulter?" he waved a cheerful hand to the astounded Minister of the Interior. "No," he went on, "I am going to support that measure of yours. I think it is a very wise and very sound measure. One has to look at things clearly and drop the purely personal view."

"I am delighted " began the Prime Minister.

"Not a bit, sir," said the jovial Thessiger; "but the 'Nig-Nog' story is quite a good one, don't you think?"

He strolled out of the room humming a tune and entered his own private bureau, crossed to the desk, and pressed a bell-push. His chief clerk entered a little apprehensively.

"Oh, by the way," said Thessiger, "that pass I issued to the Countess Castlavera, has it been sent?"

"No, sir, not yet," said the clerk quickly; "but I will send it by special messenger. I am very sorry—"

"0h, don't bother about it," said Thessiger. "You can cancel it. Perhaps it was rather indiscreet to issue a pass of that character. And— wait, please," the clerk was at the door and turned back; "send down to the druggist and get me a dozen packages of— er— 'Nig-Nog' I think they call it."

"Which druggist, sir?"

"They sell it everywhere," said Thessiger. "Surely you have heard of 'Nig-Nog'!"

"THE speech of the Minister of Ordnance," wrote the leader writer of The Times, "was a masterpiece of constructive eloquence, though it is not wholly clear what the Right Honorable gentleman meant when he referred to the Defensive Bill as being a dose of 'Nig-Nog' for nerve-shattered Europe..."

If the readers of The Times did not understand, Mr. Cymbeline Smith grasped the allusion with remarkable rapidity, and was only prevented from adding this wonderful testimonial to the already inflated list by the eloquent persuasion of a combined Cabinet and a promise which I have endeavored to fulfill.

The End Vol 5

Table of Contents

- Introduction
- 1: Circumstantial Evidence
- 2: Fighting Snub Reilly
- 3: A Romance in Brown
- 4: Discovering Rex
- 5: A Tryst with Ghosts
- 6: The Child of Chance
- 7: The Dear Liar
- 8: The Christmas Princess
- 9: The Little Green Man
- 10: For Information Received
- 11: Snares Of Paris
- 12: A Business Training
- 13: Miss Prentiss Tells A Lie
- 14: A Priestess Of Osiris
- 15: The Timid Admirer
- 16: The Jewel
- 17: The Ear Of The Sanctuary
- 18: Nig-Nog