The Great Mendax Transmitter (2018)
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Short fiction; sf; fantasy; humour
Description: Mendax 1: The Great Mendax Transmitter 2: The Invisibility of Mendax 3: The Mendax Gold Saver 4: The Rejuvenation of Slogger Binns 5: An Awkward Dilemma 6: "Forty Bob Or—" ...and other stories 1: The Gift Of Venus 2: The Demoralisation of Muriel 3: What the Archbishop Knew 4: The Cog Wheels 5: A Black Cat For Luck 6: Her One Aim In Life 7: When Kean Funked 8: A Matter Of Creed 9: Faux Pas 10: Charlotte Bronte is Shocked 11: Even the Valkyrie 12: The Social Code 13: The Two Vows of Lady Anne

THE GREAT MENDAX

TRANSMITTER
and other stories

Erle Cox

This collection 2018

(Previously published 1920-1941)

Contents

Introduction

Mendax

1: The Great Mendax Transmitter

2: The Invisibility Of Mendax

3: The Mendax Gold Saver

4: The Rejuvenation Of Slogger Binns

5: An Awkward Dilemma

6: "Forty Bob Or—"

...and other stories

1: The Gift Of Venus

2: The Demoralisation of Muriel

3: What The Archbishop Knew

4: The Cog Wheels

5: A Black Cat For Luck

6: Her One Aim In Life

7: When Kean Funked

8: A Matter Of Creed

9: Faux Pas

10: Charlotte Bronte Is Shocked

11: Even The Valkyrie

12: The Social Code

13: The Two Vows of Lady Anne

__________________

Introduction

ERLE COX (1873-1950) was a Melbourne journalist, book and film reviewer who wrote three novels and a number of short stories for his newspapers, the Argus and the Australasian.

His first novel, Out of the Silence (1919), was for many years listed as one of the classics of the genre. Its lustre has faded now, but its status as the first Australia science fiction novel to stride the world's stage remains.

First published as a serial in The Argus, a Melbourne daily newspaper, in 1919, it subsequently made it into book form (Vidler, Melbourne), (Hamilton, London) and (Libraire de Champs Elysées, Paris), all in 1925, and Henkle, New York in 1928. It was turned into a comic strip serialised in the Argus in 1934, and the same year adapted to an Australian radio serial. The novel was reprinted several times in the 1930s and 1940s and has recently been revived both in print and e-book form.

His second novel is Fools' Harvest (1938). This seems to be science fiction in the "alternate history" mode, but really its roots lie in the "awful warning, wake-up" novels which abounded before World War 1, postulating various forms of the invasion of Britain.  William Le Queux, Edgar Wallace and several others wrote on this theme. This book, published as Japan was tearing through China and aiming south, tells of the rapid, blitzkreig conquest of Australia by the Japanese (lightly disguised as "Cambasians") from the viewpoint of fleeing refugees from the cities, some of whom become resistance fighters.

His third is a comic take on the "Faust" theme, entitled The Missing Angel (1946) in which a henpecked, downtrodden man accidentally summons the Devil, with farcical complications. The devil assumes the guise of a suave man about town named Nicholas Senior (from the euphemism "Old Nick"), rather than the cloven footed horned version.  (An early hint of this concept of the Devil appears in one of the short stories in this collection.)

HIS SHORT stories are equally varied in theme and type. The Mendax stories tell of an abrasive scientist and his mad schemes; they are comic, and sometimes a little cruel, in tone: Grimm's fairy tales for grownups.

The others range from straight romance through social comedy to fantasy. The short stories are mostly set in or around Melbourne and all reflect a pre-war, and even pre-first-war,  Australia that is long lost. Some of the colloquial language and references used will be unfamiliar even to modern Australian readers, never mind non-Australians. The very first story in this collection was, after all, published a century ago.

I have included brief above-the-title teasers in the manner of pulp science fiction and detective story magazines of the period. They are unique to this collection and not part of the original stories as published.

The first-publication credit is included under the story's title.

―Editor

________________

MAJOR MENDAX

A shaggy dog tail...

1: The Great Mendax Transmitter

Australasian (Melbourne), 27 March 1920

HE LIVES a retired, misanthropic life, in spite of his big income. Partly, I think, because he is without exception the vilest mannered man in the Commonwealth, and partly because of his undisguised contempt of the rest of his fellow-creatures. At any rate, I believe I am the only person with whom he retained even an approach to friendship, and, if the truth be confessed, I kept up my connection with him more as a wholesome but disagreeable tonic, rather than from admiration for his personal qualities. Although the name of Major Mendax may not be well known in Australia outside a chosen few, scientists all over the world regard him with unbounded admiration, probably because they have only met him in writing, for he corresponds with half the learned societies in the world, and liberally insults the other half on paper.

Some kind of mental kink has made him an all-embracing scientific genius, and has given him the right to a score or so of letters after his name, which he snorts at and never uses. When any problem has tangled the brains of the thinkers beyond all hope of unravelment Mendax is usually called on as the last court of appeal.

"I EXPECT you over this afternoon, as I suppose otherwise you will be wasting your time in some idiotic way. M.M."

This is a fair sample of his usual form of invitation. The mere fact of his taking taken the trouble to write, however, indicated something passing strange; so in this instance I pocketed my pride and obeyed the summons.

I found him working about some machinery in the great garden that surrounds his laboratory, and his sole acknowledgment of my presence-was a grunt as he went on with his occupation. I wandered round curiously inspecting, but without understanding. There were four or five coops, containing a variety, of domestic fauna, chiefly cats, dogs, and poultry, watched over by Mendax's own cross-grained Newfoundland, "Savage," whose manners were a fair copy of his master's.

The objects which chiefly attracted my attention, however, were two structures standing side by side that rather resembled sentry-boxes with doors. On the top of each was a porcelain insulator, with wires attached, that disappeared amongst the trees of the garden. Each sentry-box, too, was. connected by thick, curly wires to the machinery on which Mendax was working. While I stood, surveying them he came over to me.

"Well, what do you make of it?" he snapped.

"Private telephone?" I ventured.

He repeated my words with a scornful expletive added. "That, you idiot, is an organic transmitter."

I tried to look intelligent, but under his searching gaze failed miserably.

"I'll show you what I mean," he raid, shortly, and, opening one of the crates, he drew forth a loudly protesting brown Leghorn rooster and approached me.

"See that bird? Well, mark it somehow so as you will know it again." I took my penknife and cut a nick in one of its wing pinions. Then Mendax opened the door of one of the sentry-boxes and, after dropping the fowl in, he smartly locked it again.

"Now!" he said, indicating the two structures, "this near one with the bird is the transmitter, the other is the receiver; and they are four miles apart."

As a matter of fact, they were only six inches apart. and I said so, pointedly.

"I mean electrically, you jackass. There arc four miles of wire run in and out of the garden connecting them. Electrically they are as far apart as from here to the G.P.O. See?"

I nodded comprehension.

"Now watch," he went on, walking-over to the machinery. "This is a  motor," he said, pointing to one part, "and this, is a dynamo, indicating another, "and I start it so."

Here he performed certain evolutions, and the whole contraption woke into angry, buzzing life, that, even in the daylight showed evil blue sparks. For about three minutes it hummed savagely, while Mendax watched a hand on a dial move slowly over its face, then he shut off the Current with a snap and  with an expression of triumph, opened the door of the transmitter. I gasped. The bird had disappeared.

Then he opened the receiver and on the floor stood the missing rooster, looking as astonished as I doubtless did. In fact Mendax made a caustic comment on the similarity of our expressions.

"You see what happened?" he asked.

"I'm shot if I do," I answered.

"Well, this old bird," he said, taking the still dazed victim up by the legs, "has been dissolved, for want of a better expression, and sent along those four miles of wires and reconstructed in the receiver, and that, my friend, is what an organic transmitter is. It's my own invention."

There was an inventor's  pride in his voice.

"Why organic?" I asked, as that seemed to me to be an intelligent question.

"Speaks for itself," he answered scornfully. "It can only transmit substances of organic structure, of animal or vegetable origin, generally speaking. l can't send along any things of inorganic origin, such as minerals."

The possibilities were staggering, and moved me to inquire how the miracle was accomplished.

"My dear fellow," came the characteristic answer, "You haven't the intelligence to understand me, and if I thought you had the intelligence I  wouldn't explain."

I swallowed the tribute for the sake of my unsatisfied curiosity.

"Just think," he went on, after seeing that I wad properly humbled. "With a proper plant it will be possible  to send from here all over the world all the produce we now export by water, and in a few minutes instead of weeks, and if we can transmit living animals, why not human beings."

Here a suspicion crossed my mind, but I kept it to myself.

"A man could step into a transmitter in his own home, and his wife could switch him into his own office in three minutes. Great, isn't it?"

I didn't feel so sure on the point; I had a lively recollection of one or two previous experimental inventions of his and  their results.

"Look here. Mendax!" I asked as severely as I could; "Have you had any accidents with this contribution to culture yet?"

He grinned broadly. "I had one about a month ago.  l found a stray fox  terrier, so I put him through and somehow I got a short circuit."

"What happened to the pup?" I put in.

He thought for a while. "Well to tell the truth. I'm hanged if I know. About a week after the electricians  at the G.P.O. called me to investigate a trouble in the telephone wires down this way that had floored them. The subscribers could not hear themselves speak for a sound that resembled the howling of a dog. I couldn't help them, but I had my suspicions. Still, accidents will happen, but I've fixed that trouble now, so there's no danger."

I looked up and found him staring at me with an expression I didn't like, and my suspicions of his intentions, became a certainty.

"Suppose," I asked, "that the door of the transmitter opened while the dynamo was working?"

"Humph! Can't say, but I've guarded against that. You see it locks automatically, and can't be opened until the process is complete. Anything else?"

"Yes!" I spat but savagely. "If you think you'll get me to risk my life in that. blame machine, it's the biggest mistake you ever made."

He didn't try to hide his contempt as he looked at me. "Pshaw! you miserable cocktail! Why I put through a sheep the other day, and it came through safely. You haven't the pluck of that old rooster there."

The argument waxed warm and painfully personal, but my resolution was adamant, and I wound up by asking him why he didn't try it on himself.  He explained, with vitriolic comments on my intelligence, that he would be glad to do so if he thought I had sense enough to work the dynamo.

I could see that he was on his mettle, and for half an hour he explained to me just what I had to do. It was simple enough; I was just to lock him in the transmitter, start the machinery, and keep it going until the hand on the dial pointed to zero, and then to shut off instantly. Also, it was to move quickly, as the transmitter had no ventilation, and he didn't went to be suffocated by an idiot of my calibre.  I remembered afterwards that "Savage," his dog, with all his master's love of a row, was standing by, apparently enjoying our discussion.

After making me send through a rabbit and then a cat as an experiment, Mendax placed himself in the transmitter, giving me fair warning of his vengeance if I bungled the operation.

Then came the catastrophe.

Just as I threw the door shut, '"Savage," who had been intently watching his master, sprang in beside him, and the door slammed. I knew it was automatically locked until the machine had done its work, and he might suffocate before I could break it open. A dozen horrible possibilities flashed through my mind, but I jumped to the dynamo and jerked over the lever. The thing buzzed and spat viciously as I watched the hand creep over the dial, scarcely daring to breathe, and trying to collect my paralysed wits.

At last the moment came, and I switched off the current and flung open the receiver.

He was standing there, but the first glance I had I scarcely restrained a semi-hysterical shout of laughter. To begin with, he was absolutely dishevelled. His clothing was hanging loosely about him, his collar was at his feet, and the eyeglass that he was never without was missing. But that was not the worst. On either side of his face hung the two long silky ears of "Savage," —and from his shirt-cuffs protruded unmistakably, and hung dejectedly, that worthy animal's two forepaws.

And the dog! Try and imagine a well-bred Newfoundland with two  very red oversized human ears projecting from his head, and with forelegs terminating in two large red human hands, set plantigrade-wise. I have as much sympathy for the sufferings of human beings as the next man, but, try as I would, the laughter came uppermost, and I sat back on a chicken-coop and let it come.

He looked at his paws and he looked at "Savage," and, hanging clumsily to his falling garments, he ramped and raged in the broad light of day, a figure unspeakable, for when he turned  I saw protruding from underneath his coat the bushy tall of the astonished dog― the dog who was lying down and licking his new-found hands in dazed amazement.

Never in my life  have I listened to anything approaching the heights of florid abuse and reckless denunciation that Mendax hurled at me as he stamped savagely before me.  It was an Homeric tirade, and  since all the joy was mine, I bore him no ill-will.

In the end he had to stop for want of breath, and I, too, managed to choke back my mirth, that came to the surface, every time I looked at that nightmare figure.

"When you've finished your asinine cackling perhaps you'll tie something round my waist for me, I can't hang on to my togs all day like this," he said, glaring wildly.

"What the dickens has happened to them?" I asked.

"Oh! you silly cuckoo! Haven't you sense enough to think that all the inorganic stuff about me has been left behind in the transmitter. Buttons and all. Open it and look, you blithering jackass."

Sure enough, there was a queer collection on the floor when we examined it. We found his watch and chain, three studs, and his sleeve links, together with his eyeglass, and all his trouser buttons, mixed with the brass eyelets of his boots and sundry nails. Also there was, all the small change and metallic objects from his pockets. Moreover, and this made him renew his eloquence, several small pellets of gold turned out to be the stopping from, his teeth.

Apart from his anatomical peculiarities I will allow that Mendax had some cause for annoyance. I improvised a belt from two handkerchiefs, and we sat down with as much calm as we could muster to discuss the crisis, although I nearly wrecked all hope of an amicable settlement, by giggling hysterically when those two unspeakable ears suddenly pricked up straight beside his cap when he thought he heard someone coming.

It was a serious business. Mendax had to allow that the only hope he had  of regaining his normal state was by being put through again with the dog, but against this we had to face the possibility of the change becoming worse instead of better, and then where would it end. At last he refused absolutely to take the risk, and in language, as he, looked at those awful paws, that was absolutely unprintable.

But it was "Savage" himself who finally altered his decision.

In his excitement, Mendax recklessly kicked at the coop on which he was sitting, and broke the door, from which immediately bolted a terrified cat. This was too much for "Savage," and, in spite of his disadvantages he raced madly after it, and cornered it against the fence, in full view. Puss fought a short, desperate, but hopeless battle, but before the end left her marks scored across the hands and ears that didn't belong to the dog, in a dozen crimson fur rows.

"See what that infernal brute's doing to my hands and ears," Mendax shouted wildly. "Oh, you—"

The rest was pure, or rather impure, profanity.  I think in his rage he would have killed the dog if he had not been prevented by his obvious helplessness. Then he decided that, come what might, he would be transmitted, again with "Savage" making me swear, most unwillingly, that if the next change were for the worse I would keep on repeating the operation until I had got him back to his normal shape.

I captured "Savage," and Mendax took his place in the transmitter, but the dog had soured on the proposal, and it took a wild tussle before I could drag him to his master, and even then in my excitement I came in for a special volley of abuse by jamming Mendax's tail, or the dog's, whichever you please, in the door. I expect it Was Mendax's, for he felt the pain; at least, so I judged from his remarks.

At last, I had them locked in. The dynamo woke into life at my touch, and the pointer moved slowly to zero.

It was with trembling hands I opened the receiver, not knowing what I would find, But the relief was almost worth the anxiety, for both dog and man stood intact with but one slight departure from the normal. Mendax was still wearing the bushy tail, and "Savage" a somewhat cut-off appearance.

I offered to repeat, the operation, but my erstwhile friend threatened, such a variety of physical violence at the suggestion that I did not press the point, and was told to mind my own qualified business when I asked him how he would manage. Indeed he became so abusive that, even allowing for everything, I walked off and left him, vowing I was finished with him so long as I lived.

A few days later I met his housekeeper, who informed me that Major Mendax had gone to a private hospital to undergo a slight operation. I guessed what it was.

ABOUT TWELVE months later I was paying an unprofessional visit to a well-known surgeon. In his study over the mantelpiece I saw hanging on the wall the tail of a Newfoundland dog. As an experiment, I asked what use he had for it.

"My dear fellow, if I told you the history of that, you'd say I am mad, so I'll say nothing."

But I knew.

As for the transmitter, well, Mendax and I pass as strangers now, so I am. not aware of his intentions, but he may put it on the market yet.

_________________

"Anything H G Wells can do, I can do better..."

2: The Invisibility Of Mendax

Australasian (Melbourne) 29 May 1920

LIKE MY former friend Major Mendax, his housekeeper, Mrs. Verjuice, was a woman of strong character. An impartial judge would have had difficulty in deciding whether she or her employer had the more objectionable characteristics. Anyone who lived in daily association with Mendax needed a disposition resembling his own in order to exist. He and Mrs. Verjuice blended as naturally as nitric and sulphuric acid, and at every meeting one or other added the glycerine necessary to form a perfect detonating mixture. It was a household that any sane person would give a good deal to avoid, although it was worth an occasional, visit if only to realise how thankful one ought to feel that one did not form part of it. Just as the visitor always felt that some woman had a fortunate escape in Mendax's being a bachelor, so he felt that no human being, even her husband, would wish to have Mrs. Verjuice other than a widow.

It was the lady who rang me up early on one Sunday morning, and at the  first syllable that assaulted my ears I recognised the voice.

"Is that you?" came the question, and from the snap in the tones I judged that things were as usual in the Mendax ménage. I admitted that no one but myself was speaking.

"Oh! Well you're wanted over here at once, but you'll be a bigger fool than I think you are if you come."

The receiver at the other end went on the hook abruptly, and prevented any inquiry into the Sibylline utterance. Even Mendax himself, I thought, could not have issued the invitation less cordially.

My first thought was to disregard the message, but the reflection that Mendax never issued an invitation unless there was something unusual in the wind shook my decision, and after a while my curiosity got the better of my  injured feelings. Crossgrained to the verge of brutality as he was, I was obliged to admit to myself that I had never visited him without seeing or hearing something that compensated for his almost intolerable manners.

For instance, as far back as 1898 he had shown me a more nearly perfect aeroplane than any in use at the present time, and I saw him ruthlessly destroy it, on the ground that mankind was murderous enough without his putting worse weapons into their hands. At the outbreak, of this great war he had taken me info the country, and, with an, instrument small enough to rest on the palm of his hand, I saw him shatter to matchwood an immense red-gum over 1,000 yards away, and afterwards I saw him destroy that instrument  as he had destroyed the aeroplane.

When once he had succeed in perfecting an invention he lost all interest in it. His income was immense, and far more than sufficient for his needs, and he would never bother himself to make commercial profit out of his work.

When I reached his house the front door was wide. open, and no attention was paid to the bell against which kept my finger pressed. From somewhere in the direction of the laboratory I heard sounds, subdued by closed doors, that indicated that a lively verbal riot was in progress.

After hesitating for a while I entered and stood in the vestibule, and as I did so the door of the laboratory at the far end of the passage was flung open. Nothing but sounds issued from it for a few minutes. There came the steady, uninterrupted rattle of Mrs. Verjuice's file-like tongue, and breaking in on it, and momentarily drowning it, crashed the sound of Mendax's voice, I could tell, although no word was distinguishable in the din, when one of the master's heavy guns got home on his lighter opponent. Her voice seemed to catch for a second, and when it came into action again its note was a shade higher than before. Presently, she backed into view, still spitting venom. Her words drifted down the passage.

"I works for yer, and I cooks for yer, but I tell yer this, me fine bird, ye'll whistle a queer tune before yer get me rubbin' yer all over with a basin full of nothink. I'm a respectable woman, though no one would believe it that knew I— 'Old fool' yourself!  Rub yerself down, yer wicked old devil. Nice goin's on, I must say. Where's my cat with yer unchristen doin's?"

Mendax's voice broke in at this moment, and his words, that I couldn't catch, seemed to ruffle the lady's feelings.

"You're a grinnin', sneerin'  lump of lyin' wickedness" she screamed at the  top of her voice, and came hurrying down the passage muttering to herself.

She pulled up when she saw me waiting.

"Oh! So you did come, did you! More fool you to be humouring that ruffian. Me cat's gone and he swears he don't know where, and that's the fifth cat that's disappeared on me since Christmas. Him and his doin's! Why he might be me 'usband by the way he swears at me! Then he asked rue to rub him, down with a basinful of nothink. Wants a nurse and 'ousekeeper for five quid a week. I'll let him know!"

"I'm afraid that Major Mendax's scientific work must be rather trying at times," I said, by way of conciliation.

She sniffed openly and with intention.

"I'd sooner 'ousekeep for a man with brains in his head instead of pictures of theirselves like some fools know of."

I accepted the implication and bowed ceremoniously. Then, head in air, I walked past her down the passage, followed by a well-delivered "Stuck up coxcomb!" from her ladyship.

When I entered the laboratory I found Mendax seated in an armchair, robed in a dressing-gown, below which his long, attenuated legs protruded.  One of his feet was bare, and the other, sockless, was thrust into a bath slipper.

"Just pick up that slipper of mine, will you," he asked when saw me.

I found it lying beside the door and handed it to him.

"That old demon," he said as he wriggled his toes into it, "tried my patience too far, and l shied it at her."

"Why on earth don't you get rid of the fiend?'' I asked, for her manner had somewhat ruffled me.

"Because," he answered, grinning his twisted grin, "she's the only person I ever met who would live under the same roof with me for more than 24 hours, and besides," he went on after a moment, "I think I'm the only person in the world who would put up with her for half that time. What was she saying to you? I think you overheard some of her observations to me." He grinned again.

I repeated Mrs. Verjuice's remarks without dilution.

"Hump!" and Mendax laughed outright. "She has got a deadly eye for one's weak points, hasn't she?"

"Oh!" I said, acidly, "if you wished to call me a fool by proxy it's a wonder you took the trouble to send for me."'

"Well," he sneered, "since you have brought up the subject, I'll be honest and admit that there was no one else to send for. However, don't let that worry you, as the service I wish from you does not require a vast amount of intelligence. Honesty, my dear idiot, is what I require in this case, and I have reason to know that you possess that attribute."

I eyed him with no friendly glance. "Look here, Mendax, if you start being complimentary you'll strain something. Your system's not used to it."

"Well you are honest, are you not?"

There was something in his voice that seemed to bracket the virtue with imbecility.

I swallowed hard. "If you want me to help you in any way, you had better try, for the time being, to be less of a beast than usual, or you'll do without my assistance." I will say this for him; that he never resented being spoken to as he spoke to others.

"Very well," he answered, coolly, "go if you like, but if you do you'll miss seeing something you'll never forget."

For once, as' it turned out, he spoke a mighty truth.

"All right," I answered, irritably, "come to the point then, and don't let us stay here snarling, all day."

"Good!" He waved his hand towards a chair, which I took. "Tell me, have you ever read Wells's Invisible Man?

I nodded. "I remember reading it when it came out."

"Wells," went on Mendax, "is, I think, the only one of your scribbling gang who ever showed a grain of sense."

"Thanks," I answered with, cold politeness; "for myself and a few thousand others."

He disregarded the interruption. "Wells gave me the idea, and I found it absolutely practicable. I've proved it."

I sat up straight "Do you mean to tell me—?"

"Precisely," he went on, "and that is why I sent for you. The honesty that I require of you is that you keep your mouth shut."

"Pooh!" I said, "no need of that; no one would believe me if I told."

"Just so," he nodded; "I was relying to some extent on that factor also."

"But look here, Mendax," I protested, "what's the good of it anyway? It would be no practical use to humanity if people could make themselves invisible; and besides it would be a devil-sent aid to criminals."

"Your argument is perfect," he answered. "Wells's man came to grief, but—" he paused, "I shall not. And I intend that no one but myself shall know the secret."

"But what good can you make of it?" I persisted.

"I intend to benefit humanity. A man protected by invisibility and speaking every European language, as I do, can penetrate the most secret councils of the statesmen of the world. I intend to do this, and then publish the rotten intrigues of every chancellery in Europe, side by side with their public utterances. I'll publish the book simultaneously in every country in Europe and America, and the people will be so pleased that they will kick every plotting ruffian but of power, and run the show themselves. It will be the end of war."

"It looks to me, Mendax," I said, when he had finished, "like a morbid bid for popularity with the diplomatic Corps. They will be delighted with your programme."

"Just so," he grinned. "Love of popularity was always my weak point."

I looked him over for a while doubtfully, for I knew, from experience that if he said he could do a thing he would do it.

Then, "How do you start fading away?" I asked.

He got up and went to a bench on which stood two large basins, one of which was covered with a board. "

I stood up and walked over to him.

"That," he said, pointing to the uncovered one, "is full of water. Lift it!"

I did so, and looked to him for enlightenment.

"And this"— here he took the cover from the second basin—  "It's empty," I interrupted.

"That's just where you make the mistake, my dear fool," he snarled.

"I'm not blind," I said, "Unless you mean it's full of air."

"I mean nothing of the kind," he said shortly. "Lift it too, but gently, or there'll be trouble."

I took the basin in both hands and raised it carefully. It weighed rather more than the one full of water. The sensation was curious.

"Now perhaps you have a glimmer of understanding?" he asked sourly.

"I'm shot if I have," I retorted.

"Might have, known it,"  he grunted. "Well my dear, wise, intelligent being, that basin is full of fluid that is invisible, and I have sent for you with the express purpose of asking you to bathe or anoint me all over with that particular fluid to complete the experiment."

Enlightenment of several kinds came to me. "By Jove! Mendax," I laughed, "did you ask Mrs. Verjuice—"

"I did," he cut in, "and discovered that to her many other vices she added prudery."

I knew that in the cause of science he held that any action was justifiable,. and that he was utterly incapable of understanding the good lady's point of view.

"So that," I said, "accounts for her remarks about a basin full of nothink. Perhaps it accounts, too, for the discussion I heard when I came in?"

"Pooh!" he answered, "The old harridan must be 60 if she's a day. Enough to make one sick to hear her carrying on like a school-girl."

"Did you tell her that?" I asked.

"That and a few other things," he replied, dismissing the subject. "Will you do it, or are you too shy?"

"As you please," I answered, "It's your funeral. I suppose you've weighed the pros and cons."

He went to a drawer and produced a pair of gardening-gloves and a gossamer veil.

"Better put these on," he said; "If you get any of that stuff splashed on you you'll look rather unusual."

It isn't often I agree with Mendax, but I did on this point.

"Now," he said when I had donned the armour, "take this brush and get to work. It must be done quickly. Start, on the head and work down. The stuff will take effect as soon as it dries."

"How am I to see what I'm doing?" I asked. "I may paint you patchy."

"Use your brains, man. You'll have to do it by touch. I can help. That stuff's a cold fluid, and I can feel if you guise anything." He was throwing off his garments as he spoke, and in a few seconds stood ready for the fray. Mendax is built on most perfect gas pipe lines. He is about six feet four tall, and not much more than twelve inches through, anywhere. I doubt whether nature ever turned out a less graceful specimen from her workshops. I must confess I was burning with curiosity as to the result of the experiment, and since he was prepared to undergo the operation I was prepared to perform it.

With Apollo standing in front of me, I dipped the brush into the apparently empty basin. An odour more evil than anything that had ever before offended my nostrils sent me back gasping for breath.

"Holy wars! What are you gaping at?" he asked savagely, "get to work man. I'm cold."

"Gaping!" I retorted. "Is that the perfume of the unseen fluid or of an unseen dead cat— Mrs. Verjuice's for instance?"

"It's just the fumes you can notice when you stir it up,", he replied. I found that there was more in my painting contract than I had bargained for; but if Mendax was content to be decorated with the concentrated odour of ancient eggs, who was I that I should say him nay? So, taking my nose and my courage in one hand and the brush in the other, I set to.

It was a weird proceeding. I could feel the fluid in the basin, and could almost see its flamboyant odour, but it left no trace on the shrimp-pink hide of Mendax, and when I rubbed it into his hair it gave no appearance of moisture. Indeed— during the whole operation I was guided almost entirely by his language, and that, to use a colloquialism, was "no violets."

It appeared from his comments that the brush tickled, and that the mixture was cold. Though he minded these troubles less than my amazing clumsiness. I learned, amongst other things, during the few minutes I worked, that I was not competent to whitewash a fowl house and that for delicacy of touch I compared unfavourably with a rhinoceros. However, when at last I grabbed his ankles and carefully painted the soles of his feet he was satisfied that I had completed my task thoroughly, if not skilfully.

It was a relief to stand back a few yards from the amazing stench and wait further developments. "None of your beauties seem to have evaporated," I said, pulling off my veil and pressing my handkerchief to my nose.

"Wait a jiff," he answered, superciliously: "it will dry in a moment or two, and  then you will see something, or rather you will see nothing."

I watched carefully, for truth to tell, though I had seen Mendax perform some amazing scientific stunts, I had my doubts about this one and I was considerably more than half convinced that he was riding for a fall. Presently I gave a gasp of amazement; his ears, which were his least beautiful feature, grew suddenly shadowy and faded from sight and were followed his nose.  I had not thought it possible that anything could disfigure Mendax's face, but the absence of his three most, salient features worked fearsome havoc with his appearance: I choked back a wild desire to laugh, and a moment later the desire for laughter vanished with the rest of the scientist's features.

In a space of time less than it takes to write these lines his face faded. In a few moments more the outline of his body blurred and disappeared. Within a minute from the time his ears had melted into thin air all that was visible of Mendax was the skeleton that had supported his ungainly body.

Not all though, for the sandy hair and the straggly moustache remained, and, although they toned down the crude part of Mendax in the flesh, they added nothing to the beauty of his skeleton. I suppose my feelings were visible in my face; out I almost yelled with the nervous jolt I got when the bony jaw commenced to wag and the voice of Mendax came from the fleshless  mouth.

"What on earth are you glaring at? Didn't I warn you what would happen?" There was a note of triumph in his voice.

"Look at yourself! Look at yourself!" was all I could get out.

The skull bent forward on the bony neck; then the hands were held before the eyeless sockets.

"Great Scott! Mendax," I gasped. "Suppose, the bones won't disappear. What will you do?"

"Look almost a bigger fool than you do," he retorted. He reached out a bony right hand, and clutched the brush I had put down, and began rubbing more of the mixture vigorously on his left arm, but rub as he would the polished white bones only showed out more clearly. He flung the brush aside with a blistering expletive, and commenced to stride up and down the laboratory.

Now, it has fallen to my lot to see many skeletons and it had never occurred to me that there was anything objectionable about the human framework divested of its flesh; but the original owners of all the skeletons I had come into contact with had ceased to have any use for them, and, moreover, their bones would "stay put," so to speak.' But the sight of an oversized set of fully articulated human bones in active motion was quite another thing, even though one knew that the original owner was in full possession. My nerves are as good as the next man's. But I am free to admit that I found the spectacle disquieting, to put it mildly.

Try to imagine that portent striding furiously from end to end of the great laboratory, waving its arms, and tugging at its amazing moustache with its bony fingers, and all the time pouring out language. The things that Mendax said about H. G. Wells during the next five or ten minutes were both original and remarkable. He commenced with simple slanders that were not worth much more than ordinary damages, but it was not long before he was going strong with compound-criminal libel.

I just stood and gaped; but for the time being he took no notice of me. I said nothing, for the situation was beyond words, besides, big as the laboratory was, there was no room in it for any remarks of mine; Mendax filled it, completely. I could only judge his feelings by his movements and his language, for I never realised until then how absolutely devoid of expression the human countenance is when bereft of its surrounding meat. If a man could only divest himself of the outside covering of his face at will, it would be a great boon to poker players.

Then I noticed an alteration in the behaviour of the raging spectacle, his steps became uncertain aid his language faltered. Though what there was left of it lost nothing in force, an entirely new note crept into it, but it could hardly be called an improvement. Presently I gathered sufficient courage to inquire the, cause, and for the first time since Mendax had started his career as a skeleton he deigned to notice my existence. He came to a halt before me, and then, though he remained in one spot, he certainly went through some surprising contortions. His hands made wild passes all over his unseen body, and at times he tried to reach over his shoulders to claw at the middle of his back.

Shorn of unnecessary verbiage, his statement was to the effect that the fluid, since it had dried, had commenced to sting and smart in an entirely unforseen manner, and I think, from his procedure, that the irritation increased rapidly in intensity. He did not know whether the effect would pass off or whether it would increase, meanwhile his wriggles would have been highly diverting had they arisen from any other cause.

Then I asked if there were no reagent that would counteract the sting, and gathered that though he knew of one, for some reason or other which he was disinclined to give, Mendax did not wish to use it.

The next fifteen minutes were interesting to look back on afterwards, but at the time I found intimate association with a half-demented skeleton rather trying. At length, after prancing and clawing wildly at himself, his endurance gave way, and he howled to me to call Mrs. Verjuice.

Wondering what effect Mendax would have on that lady I went to the door and bellowed her name down the passage, and a moment later she appeared. Now, while there was nothing in his appearance to shock the most modest of women, there was enough to try the strongest nerves, and I expected developments.

Mendax pranced, up to her, squirming as he came.

"Get a bucket of hot water. Hurry! Don't stand gaping!" he shouted.

Mrs. Verjuice ejaculated "Lor!" and stared at all that was visible of her employer with wide-eyed astonishment for a few moments. Then she turned to me. Nodding her head in the direction of the portent, she said, "Is. that him?"

"Yes," I answered, "there has been a slight accident and he is in pain. Bring hot water quickly."

Instead of obeying, that graceless woman leaned against the doorpost and commenced to giggle, and from giggling went off into a fit of uncharitable mirth. Let me put it on record that I strove hard with my feelings, but I admit with regret, I joined in her laughter, while Mendax stormed at us.

"Get hot water, you old idiot!" he yelled, "Can't you see I' m in pain. My skin's burning."

"Pain! Pain in yer skin!" gasped Mrs. Verjuice. "Why yer couldn't even have a pain in yer stummick. Yer haven't got none," and she relapsed into helpless  cackles. Then suddenly she remembered her latest grievance, and pulled herself together and faced him. "It's hot water yer wanting. Well, not a drop do yer get till yer tell me where me cat is— Not a drop!" and she shook an unclean finger before the gibbering skull.

In swift, clear-cut phrases he described both his persecutor and her cat as  they appeared to him at the moment, then disclosed that puss was in a box at the end of the room, and was alive and well.

What scientific end had been reserved for the unfortunate animal it is just as well not to speculate. Mrs. Verjuice trotted to the box and raised the lid, and out shot her pet.

Tom seemed excited about something, for he eluded his mistress, and made endeavours to climb on several cabinets without much success. Then, not having human intelligence, puss tried to climb Mendax. Perhaps he mistook the scientist's framework for a new kind of tree.

He was partially successful in this endeavour; indeed he managed to claw more than half-way up before Mendax flung him off, with remarks appropriate to the occasion.

Unfortunately the flying body of the feline struck the bench that held the basins, and upset the one "full of nothink." I was standing fairly close to the bench at the time, but did not recollect until afterwards that felt something strike against my legs as it fell.

Tom bounced off the bench and made for the door. By this time Mendax was in a stale bordering on dementia, and Mrs. Verjuice evidently realised that he was in no condition for a debate on the subject, she followed her cat, returning in a few minutes with a bucket of hot water. With frantic haste the dancing skeleton seized on various bottles and jars from his shelves, and measured out, with bony fingers that shook, quantities of chemicals that he dashed into the bucket, and I stirred the mixture furiously, spurred on by the tongue' that scarcely ceased for a moment. "

Finally he flung himself on the floor, and bade me get to work with the mixture from the bucket. To me chemistry is a sealed book, but I never cease to marvel at its powers. I had ample reason to marvel now, 4 for with the first smear of the steaming concoction on his chest the vanished anatomy of Mendax commenced to reappear.

As I proceeded with my task it became ; more and more difficult to conceal my feelings, for I understood now why Mendax had hesitated to use the only reagent that would counteract the invisible fluid. Instead of the pinky white skin that had disappeared, the new Mendax showed blue― not sky-blue, or any of the finer shades of the most beautiful of colours, but that cross a between indigo and slate grey, known as Prussian blue. I think if I were choosing a new colour for my body Prussian blue would be the last that would enter my mind. It did not suit Mendax. Even the tints which Nature, had given him could not make him handsome, but his new colour scheme was atrocious beyond words. That my ministrations gave him relief from pain was the only consolation I could find, and I prayed that my desire to laugh would not get the upper hand, but it did eventually.

When, my work being completed, he donned his dressing-gown and slippers and subsided into a chair. I think his explanation alone saved me from punishment, for as I laughed he merely sat still in his chair and glowered, saying no word. Once or twice a twisted grin appeared on his face, and he appeared about to speak, but changed his mind.

At length I found sufficient gravity to inquire how long he would remain discoloured, and he broke the grim silence by remarking that he had not the slightest idea, but he supposed that the blue would, work off in time. His one trouble was that he had an important engagement for the following evening, which he would be obliged to cancel; as for my giggling, only a mind of my calibre would see anything humorous in a perfectly natural chemical reaction. Even my suggestion that he could break his engagement by pleading that he was feeling somewhat blue failed to draw him, so I lefts him to his own devices.

My house is about half a mile from that  Mendax, and while I made my way homeward the recollection of the morning's proceedings cheered me as I went, until I commenced to meet folk on their way from church. The first was the mother of a certain young lady— well, never mind; but that matron, who usually greeted me so charmingly, gave one stony glare and cut me dead. The shock sobered me somewhat, but the unrestrained mirth of the new couple that passed me caused me to take stock of my appearance. Then I recollected. the splash of the basin "full of nothink," and the twisted grin of Mendax.

Down to my knees I could claim to be a well-dressed; citizen; below them my legs were inadequately covered by a fringe of ragged trouser ends, and my feet were displayed by patches of leather that appeared to hold in place only by a miracle.

The remainder of that walk was one of the most unhappy experiences of my life. I think I met everyone in the neighbourhood with whom I was acquainted, and each seemed more amused than pleased to see me. Be it remembered that I had won, not unjustly, the reputation of being the local dandy. To explain that I was as was truly clothed as themselves, only a part of my clothing was invisible, was obviously impossible, so I scurried on and reached the sanctuary of my roof with burning cheeks and fury in my heart.

I had scarcely entered my door when the phone bell rang. I snatched up the receiver.

"Say, old man," came the gravel voice of Mendax, "did you meet anyone on the way home? If you hadn't been so funny I'd—"

I slammed the receiver on the hook. I'd had enough of Mendax one day.

__________________

"There is gold in them there waves..."

3: The Mendax Gold Saver

Australasian (Melbourne), 14 August 1920

THE TROUBLE commenced with Merton. He invented a new process for treating low-grade gold-bearing soil. It was more simple than the cyanide process, and, according to Merton, would give payable results if applied to crushed bricks. His enthusiasm and Rashleigh's carefully reasoned arguments induced me to invest rather more than I should have in purchasing an interest in a syndicate to exploit Merton's invention.

It was this business that brought  Merton and Rashleigh to my house one afternoon to settle some final details; and I think it must have been some devil of unreason with a warped sense of humour that urged Mendax to choose the time for one of his rare visits.

The inventor and the promoter were deep in their discussion, to which I was listening with all the intelligence I could muster when Major Mendax arrived. He came through the open French window, unheralded, and so left no opportunity for evading the infliction.

That he was intruding on a private conference must have been apparent even to Mendax, and an ordinary man would have apologised and retired, but  Mendax had a code of social decency that was, praise be, peculiarly his own; he included the three of us in a general bob of his head, and strolling to the table at which we sat, he leisurely lowered his long, thin, body into the only vacant chair.

I had no course but to introduce him to my friends, who, in spite of their politeness, could hardly disguise their surprise at his inopportune appearance. If he noticed his rather frigid reception, Mendax chose to ignore it completely.

"Having a confab? Don't mind me. I'll just sit here and have a smoke until you have finished."

The position was awkward, but I turned to the others. "Major Mendax Is not interested in business matters," I said.  "He will not mind in least if you go on talking!"

"Not in the least," echoed Mendax, pulling his pipe from his pocket, and settling himself back in his chair. The others looked rather upset, but, in response to a covert glance from me, commenced rather haltingly to take up their debate at the point where it had stopped so abruptly.

I had more than one reason for discomfort at the moment. First there was Mendax a intention of smoking.  It was purely characteristic of him that lie affected a tobacco that belonged to the dark, ages, known as "Navy Twist," of appalling strength and odour. Rashleigh and Merton were both drawing at "Perfectos" that probably cost a florin apiece. My second cause for uneasiness Was that while he hacked up his abomination with a blunt penknife Mendax's eyes were riveted on the blueprints of the gold-saving plant that were spread on the table. I knew he could no more resist the lure of the blue prints than, a cat could resist cream. Presently he struck a match (on the leg of my table), and sent a cloud of poisonous gas into the atmosphere that blotted out the aroma of the "Perfectos" in one horrible spasm; and at the same moment his long, bony arm reached out and gathered in the blue prints.

Merton and Rashleigh paused in their talk, and the latter flung his half smoked cigar into the fireplace in disgust. I think it was only the imploring look in my eyes, and their recognition of my embarrassing position as host, that prevented an outbreak from both, but they resumed their talk with evident difficulty.

Meanwhile the culprit himself was obviously unconscious of having in any way offended. Jn justice I will say this much for him, that I do not think that the word of the business talk reached his understanding. We might have been a  thousand miles away for all the interest he took. He just humped his ungainly body into a heap and pored over the prints, bearing a remarkable likeness to the well-known sketch by Furniss entiled, "Since when I have used no other."

For quite half an hour he sat sending out clouds of abomination. We took no further notice of him beyond opening another window and holding our handkerchiefs to our noses. Politeness had to make that much concession to Navy Twist.

Suddenly Mendax looked up, and his voice jarred into our talk. Circular saws might have been sharpened on His voice. "Who is Gordon Essex Merton?" he asked, tapping the blueprints with his knotty forefinger.

"I am," answered the owner of the name.

"Are you the same man who wrote an article on 'Static Electricity' in the March number of The Engineer?"  went on Mendax, with evident interest.

"Yes," replied Merton, so briefly that it evident that his politeness was fast reaching its limit of perfect elasticity. Mendax ignored the very patent snub.

"Urr― You're doubtless then an interested amateur," he said smoothly (for him).

Merton stiffened in his chair, and Rashleigh ever a mail of action, watched him carefully through half-closed eyes.

"I am," spoke up the outraged inventor with crushing dignity, "the managing director and superintendent of the Vulcan Power Company, the latest concern of it kind in the Southern Hemisphere. I' hold three scientific degrees, and I am a Fellow of the Royal Society."

Vendax's lopsided smile showed one yellow canine tooth: "Urr. That may account for it. However, I merely asked because it so happens that I wrote a criticism on your article in the following month's issue of the same journal."

Merton grabbed the edge of the table in front of him, and with chin out-thrust he glared at Mendax with murder in his eye.

"Did you sign it. "M.X.?" he spat out.

Mendax nodded. "That was my nom de plume."

Merton breathed hard for a moment, then: "Let me tell you, sir, you're a damned insulting ill-bred scribbler of egotistical hogwash."

I knew Mendax too well not to know that he was enjoying himself thoroughly. He looked at me maliciously.

"Really, I can't help observing that your good friend's manners are almost as elementary as his knowledge of static electricity."

"And your methods and manners, sir, stink almost as vilely as your pipe," thundered Merton.

Rashleigh flung himself on Merton and pinned his arms, while I pushed Mendax back into his chair before he had time to uncoil himself properly. Merton's blind reference to his pipe was about the only tender spot on which he could have flicked Mendax.

It took ten minutes wrangle before the meeting regained some semblance of order, but the two men eventually subsided into a sort of armed peace that it would have taken very little to terminate. Mendax had gone as near to an apology as I had ever heard from him, which made me suspect that he had something to gain thereby. When the atmosphere became a little less electrical (the storm, had not, unfortunately, affected the thickness of it) Mendax said, "Sorry I hurt your feelings, but it was your signature on these blue prints that attracted my notice. If you hadn't been so thin-skinned--"

"Thin-skinned be hanged! A man would have wanted a chilled steel hide to put up with your--"

Here Rashleigh cut in. "What were you going to say, Major Mendax?"

"Merely," replied Mendax, "that these drawings strike me as being very remarkable. A gold-saving device, I take it?"

"My invention, sir," said Merton truculently, "and my plans, sir. The patents be long to a syndicate of which we three are members. They are remarkable," he went on with a bellicose air. "It's the most effective system that was ever invented," and his tone carried a challenge to Mendax to deny it.

"Urr― My dear sir, I find them very remarkable because the inventor has circled round and round and trampled over and over a very startling theory without having sufficient intelligence to discern it." He spoke as a much-tried head master would to a rather thick-headed boy. It took five minutes to induce Merton to take off his hat and resume his seat, and another five for their gross personalities to cease. Thank goodness, daring the interlude Mendax pocketed his pipe.

It was Rashleigh who poured oil on the troubled waters. Mendax's statement had roused his business instincts. "Do you mean to infer," he said, "that the system is capable of improvement?"

Merton had subsided into sulky silence, but he eyed his tormentor malevolently.

"Nothing of the kind," grated Mendax. "I do say, However, that the drawings contain the germ of an idea that is worth millions―"

"Fiddlesticks and flapdoodle!" This from Merton.

He might have said more, but Rashleigh quietened him with a gesture. He was a bloodhound on the trail how. I had heard Rashleigh say that he would sell churches to the Devil had there been any financial benefit accruing.

"Here," he said, "could you prove what you say?"

"Never say anything I can't prove," snapped Mendax.

"Well," went on Rashleigh, "here's a proposal. We want some more money in the syndicate." (That was true.) "Come in with us, and we will make you an offer for your work as well."

Mendax scowled at the blue prints, and then said, "I've made it a rule never to make commercial profit from my work. I like to keep my hands clean."

Rashleigh flushed.

"But in this case I  will make an exception. My sole reason for doing so is to bring home to your interesting friend," here he looked at Merton, "what an absolutely futile mind he has."

Now Rashleigh knew as much of science as Mendax did of high finance, but he was a faultless judge of character, and had summed Mendax up to a nicety. "Would you be game to back your opinion to the extent of £500," he asked with a nicely toned hint of doubt in his voice,

For answer Mendax drew a cheque-book from his pocket, and spread it before him. "To whom shall I make it payable?" he asked, grabbing a pen; and when Rashleigh had told him he filled in the form with his awful scrawl, and then ripped it put and tossed it across the table.

"Hold on," said Rashleigh, "how long will you want to experiment?

"A week or ten days," grated Mendax. "I want these plans too," he said, gathering up the blue prints. Rashleigh nodded. Merton had reached a stage at which cold rage had left him speechless. When Rashleigh passed over a stamped and signed receipt. Mendax promptly tore it in pieces and dropped it on the floor. Then he relit his pipe and put on his hat and, wonder of wonders, he shook hands with me, a courtesy I had never before known him offer anyone.

"Thanks, old man," he said, "for a very pleasant afternoon," and with scarcely a glance at the other two, he departed, leaving behind an evil odour of Navy Twist.

"A very pleasant afternoon," repeated Merton, softly. "May the good Lord spare me from being round when lie's having an unpleasant one," he added, piously.

Rashleigh turned to me. "By Jove, that is the Grand Master of the Order of Horrible Hogs. Is his cheque O.K.?"

"Good for another two noughts after it," I answered,

Merton glared at the ceiling, "Is that the Mendax who wrote the treatise on the ultra violet rays?" And when I answered in the affirmative, he said, "To think that such a beast could have written such a book."

EXACTLY one week afterwards Mendax rang me up and asked me― no, I  had better be precise― ordered me to be at the Port Melbourne town pier at half-past two, and bring those two friends of mine as well. In answer to a question, I admitted that I was capable of managing a boat. He said he had secured a suitable one, which would be in readiness for us. He also mentioned that he did not care much whether the commercial animal turned up, but at all costs I was to have Merton at our meeting.

We arrived slightly before the appointed time, though I had had some difficulty in persuading Merton to make one of the party. I was obliged to admit that our outing included a boating expedition of some sort, the reason for which I could offer no explanation. Merton, whom I could hardly blame, contended that he didn't relish the prospect of the society of Mendax in a rowing boat even for a short period; indeed he claimed that he would feel cramped if he were on the Aquitania with him. Rashleigh shied at first until I pointed out that it would not be safe to allow Merton and Mendax to come into such close proximity without some controlling influence. I explained, to Rashleigh that he would, soon get used to Mendax's peculiar manner, and would not notice it. Rashleigh said that, while I might be right, he had never heard of anyone getting used to the toothache.

Exactly on time Mendax's big touring car stopped at the foot of the pier. As usual, he drove himself, because he could never get a man who would stay in his service longer than 24 hours. In the back of his car were a suitcase and a wooden box about the size of a kerosene case. He lifted out the suitcase himself and consigned the other to my care. It nearly broke both my back and Rashleigh's by the time we had carried it to the waiting boat. Mendax remarked that it contained storage batteries; had he said a battery of artillery I would have credited it.

I will pass over our embarkation. Mendax did nothing but stand on the jetty and criticise. Merton, with wrath in his heart and vitriol on his lips, answered him nobly, so nobly indeed that Rashleigh confided to me that he left nothing for anyone else to say. When we pushed off Mendax and Merton were in the stern, I was rowing with my legs straddling the heavy case, and Rashleigh was in the bows. The boat was down by the stern a good deal, which did not add to my comfort.

We rowed to a spot about midway between the railway and the town piers, at the former of which lay the long black hull of R.M.S. Malabar, and there at the order of Mendax I ceased rowing and let her drift.

Then Mendax commenced his explanation to his audience of three, who heard his amazing address with very mixed feelings. To begin with, he stated that sea water contained on an average .06 of a grain of gold to the ton in solution, and that Merton's gold-saving scheme had given the idea by which it would be practicable to deposit this gold in a pure state on copper, in fact; roughly speaking, he had evolved an apparatus that would attract gold as a magnet attracts steel.

"If," he went on, "by using the apparatus I have brought with me I can procure, say, six or eight ounces of gold in the afternoon, then perhaps you will agree that I am not the fool of the party."

"If―" said Merton with undisguised contempt.

"We'll give it a flyer, anyway," said Rashleigh. "we owe it to the syndicate not to turn down a possible chance," but his words did not sound enthusiastic.

Mendax got to work. From the suitcase he produced what appeared to be a copper frame, from the edge of which, and from some bars which crossed it, depended some dozen pieces of copper tubing, about the length and thickness of candles, to all of which were run  wires that were connected with two thick insulated wires, that were in their turn hitched up to a black box in the suitcase, and afterwards to the box containing the storage batteries.

After much adjustment the copper frame was securely lashed to a strong hemp-line, and under Mendax's directions Rashleigh and I lowered it overside to a depth of about thirty feet. After that we drifted, while Mendax and Merton wrangled over the storage battery, and performed rites from which we two ignorant ones were excluded by common consent. One point I gathered from the riot in the stern was that the current Mendax was using would be effective over a radius of about two thousand feet.

Presently I noticed that we were drifting rather quickly, and were making straight for the Malabar, and just about the same time Rashleigh drew my. attention to the behaviour of the line. Instead of dead weight of copper at the end of it, it might as well have had a lively and sizable fish on it, from the way it ran taut from the cleat to which it was fastened to an angle of 45 degrees with the surface.

I was directing Mendax's attention to the phenomenon, when the pull on the line swung the bow of the boat round, and before we could get the oars out our craft rammed R.M.S. Malabar amidships, with a jolt that sent Rashleigh sprawling, and bumped Mendax and Merton together in a manner which gave me intense satisfaction.

I expected to bear some remarks on our performance from the mail steamer, but, strange to say, the incident passed unnoticed, and in the few minutes that ensued we became aware that something was causing unusual excitement on board; sufficient, indeed, to cause even Mendax to notice it, even during the trouble we had to pull clear of the steamer's towering flank.

Eventually Rashleigh took one oar and I the other, and it was like pulling a barge to get the boat back to our first position between the two piers, for she had gone down by the head as much as she had been down at the stern before.

That the experiment was not going according to timetable I could judge from the scowl on the unlovely face of Mendax, and when Rashleigh suggested that the line had fouled something he agreed to an investigation.

An investigation was not such a simple matter after all. I found that I could not haul in unaided, and it took all the united strength of me and Rashleigh, and a large amount of advice from Mendax, before we drew the "fixin's" to the surface, and then we almost dropped it in our excitement when we saw what we had hauled up.

However, with a final heave, we landed the whole concern in the suitcase in the bottom of the boat. Then we sat back, and for a while the four of us stared into the suitcase and then at each other without being able to find words to fit the situation. It was an unforgettable sight. The whole frame with its pendant tubes was one mass of gold, not a mere coating, but an almost solid mass. It was gold that seemed to live, for it twisted and wreathed in festoons round the bars with that peculiar bristling appearance that iron filings have when magnetised.

Mendax was the first to speak.

"Switch off that current," he snapped to Merton, and in a moment the whole brilliant, glittering, mass subsided, leaving the copper bare and free from its glorious mass of wealth.

Then our tongues were loosened. Merton so far forgot himself as to pat Mendax on the back. and Mendax had so far forgotten himself as not to resent the familiarity. While we gabbled and shook hands joyfully, Mendax sat frowning at the mass of gold before him, occasionally running his fingers through it thoughtfully. Then he stooped suddenly, and before we could interfere he took the suitcase in his octopus-like arms, and, with a heave of his shoulders, he cascaded the whole glorious mass overboard. That he didn't upset the boat was a miracle.

To our howl of indignant protest he only grunted that we could easily get more when we wanted it, but that at present it behoved us to get back to the shore, and to lose no time in the going. No other explanation would he give, and there was nothing for it but to obey his orders and pull back to the pier.

He piled us into his car with the suitcase and the box of storage batteries, and drove in grim silence, with a twisted grin on his face, while we three excitedly spent large fortunes and indulged in mutual congratulations.

It was when we had pulled up at the Flinders street station, where we had asked him to drop us, that he spoke for the first time on the subject of his invention.

"If you men will take my advice, the lees you have to say about today's work the less you will have to regret. You may get congratulations, but unless I'm mistaken you are more likely to get five years quod apiece, me included."

The car slipped a way and left us mystified and upset.

I KNEW next morning what he meant when I opened my paper at breakfast. I read that a case containing 5,000 ounces of specie had been dropped between the pier and the boat while the Malabar was being loaded. Between the time it had been dropped and the time the divers had gone to retrieve it the case had been broken open, and its entire contents had been stolen. The police were trying to obtain a clue that would lead to the capture of four men in a rowing boat whose actions at this time were extremely suspicious.

I went to the telephone.

"Urr," grated Mendax in answer, "So you know now do you? I knew at once that it was all alluvial gold, and that we had tapped the wrong line. I suppose that case was smashed in the fall and the magnet did the rest. Anyway I've proved what an ass Merton is."

He rang off and that was the end. He point blank refused to let us into the secret of his invention, and said we'd value money more if we worked for it honestly, for his part he had enough for his requirements. Rashleigh stormed and raged and pleaded, and even threatened him with an action to force him to hand over his invention to the syndicate. Mendax only laughed uproariously and derisively, and asked Rashleigh how he would explain the incident of the Malabar gold when he was putting his case before the Court. Finally he relinquished all claim to the £500 he had paid into the syndicate, saying that it was worth that amount to settle with Merton.

Rashleigh summed up the situation.

"I said he was the Grand Master of the Order of Horrible Ham, and I withdraw the statement and apologise; the hogs have done nothing that I know of to warrant such an insult."

Merton is dead, and Rashleigh is, I believe, a munitions millionaire in the United States, and I am not very particular about the feelings of Mendax. Therefore I give the true story of the Malabar gold robbery, especially as the lapse of time would make it somewhat difficult for the police to work up a case, even by producing my narrative in court. I could always swear that it is founded strictly on fiction, and defy the law to prove otherwise.

__________________

Dr Victor Frankestein sought to animate the dead. But why wait until they're dead?

4: The Rejuvenation Of Slogger Binns

Australasian (Melbourne) 27 September 1924

I HAD NOT seen Mendax for several months, and at our last meeting I had registered an oath that not even the prospect of being thrilled by some of his latest magic would in future induce me to be the butt for his vile and vitriolic tongue. I had told him so frankly, and in his calm "The benefit will be all mine," the arrogant insult was more in the inflection than the words, but it rankled. And now I had allowed myself to be taunted (over the telephone) into visiting him again. As I walked towards the house I consoled myself by the reflection that I need not stay should he overstep the bounds of decent behaviour, and I determined that the standards of what constituted decent behaviour should be mine and not his.

The long drive from the gate to the house was overgrown with weeds; and the 30 acres in which the house stood were a wilderness that bore witness to its owner's contempt for appearances. It was all part and parcel of the cussedness of Mendax, for I knew well that he had the means to keep 20 men employed in maintaining it if he wished.

It was not until I had hammered three times at the great paint-blistered doors, and sent hollow echoes booming through the house, that they were opened by Mrs. Verjuice, his housekeeper, and sole domestic. I have never been able to decide whether I disliked Mendax or Mrs. Verjuice the more. While talking to the one the balance always seemed in favour of the other. "Where is Major Mendax?" I asked. "I wish to see him."

She was standing as though to bar my entrance. Her very look was a quite unnecessary defiance. "Rummy thing to wish," she snorted.

"Will you kindly tell him I am here," I said coldly, disregarding the truth of her comment.

She stood aside. "Let him know yourself," she said belligerently.

I knew I would be lost if I attempted to retaliate, and replied, "Very well, if you will kindly tell me where to find him."

"If you will kindly wipe your boots, and kindly not muddy my floors, you'll kindly find him out at the back talking to my father."

I let the provocative mimicry pass; in any case safety lay that way. Her announcement that she possessed a father; and that he was on the premises, took my breath away. Mrs. Verjuice had undoubtedly left 60 years of a disagreeable life behind her, and the thought came to me that her proud parent must be fairly elderly.

"Your father, Mrs. Verjuice!" I allowed curiosity to get the better of my discretion.

"Well! what about it?" she retorted acidly. "He used to be Slogger Binns, and a better man than you ever were, or will be." Then she turned on her heel and flounced down the wide empty ball. Halfway she halted and shrilled back at me, "Any'ow I'm one of them persons that knows who my own father is." Her tone left no doubt in my mind that she classed me as one of those who did not, and could not.

She disappeared in a dim side passage and left me, boiling, to find my way for myself. It was no easy task in that desolate mansion, but I finally succeeded by finding a door that opened out on to a wide asphalted yard, bounded by the wilderness of the garden. In the middle of the yard was a packing-case, before which stood Mendax, his back towards me, engrossed with a figure that was using the case as a seat. Mendax acknowledged my presence with the barest of nods, and indicating the figure before us with his eyes, grated out "What do you think of that?"

I took at the object slowly and distastefully before I answered. It was a man, or rather the remnants of what had once been a colossal specimen of humanity. Unwarped. I should say he measured six feet six in height, with corded, hairy, gorilla-like arms of amazing length, that, hung idly beside him. The arms terminated in two of the hugest and ugliest hands that it had ever been my misfortune to see. The short, thick neck supported the wickedest-looking old head that ever disfigured a human body, even such a body as the one to which it belonged. It was bald except for a wispy fringe at the base of the round skull that slanted back at an angle of 45 degrees from the bushy eyebrows. It had enormous cauliflower ears and a flattened, twisted nose that told of his past profession. The slack mouth worked incessantly. This was all bad enough, but the dim red-rimmed eyes that moved furtively from my face to that of Mendax gave him an absolutely repellent expression. I suppose he was about eighty, but he looked older. Only Mrs. Verjuice could have boasted of possessing such a relative, and on inspecting him carefully I arrived at a better understanding of that lady than had previously "been possible.

I looked at Mendax.  He was positively gloating over the wreck.

"Good Lord, Mendax, where did you get it?" I asked in wonder.

He grinned his twisted grin: "What do you think of it? You won't hurt its feelings by being candid; it's deaf."

"Horrible!' I said with, a shudder. "Where on earth did you get it?"

He spoke without looking up. "From the Benevolent Asylum originally. It's mine, too."

Had the pitiful object been a unique work of art there .could not have been greater pride in his, voice. I reminded him that Mrs. Verjuice claimed the specimen as a father.

"Oh, does she?" he said shortly. "I'll allow her that much honour, but no more. I bought him from her for £50." I passed the legal and ethical aspect of the question. Mendax was a law unto himself, and he indulged any fancies he had without restraint. All I answered was, "Well, you've been had. He's not worth fifty bob."

"Mrs. V. could have stuck me for £500 if she liked―"

Here the object interrupted.

"Slugged him with a bit of lead pipe. I did. No one ever copped me for it either," he croaked, and then stopped and chuckled wickedly.

I glanced an inquiry at Mendax. "Oh, he's always talking like that— dwelling on his glorious past. Man, that's the most perfect example of senile decay I have ever come across."

"I'll admit that," I said, "but it's infernally repulsive. .What are you going to do with it?" I was certainly curious.

He turned on his heel. "Come inside," he said, leading the way through the house to the great laboratory that was at the same time his living-room and the centre of his existence. "Wait a moment, he interrupted as I was about to  speak, and seating himself at a table he glued his eyes to a microscope. I stood by lingering the cotton wool stopper of a test tube absently. Without lifting his he spoke: "I wouldn't fiddle with that if I were you."

I drew back swiftly. "Why?" I asked.

He did not appear to notice the question, but presently he spoke in disjointed sentences.

"Don't know exactly what it is. I'm cross-culturing germs. That's anthrax,  bubonic, and smallpox. One hundredth of a grain killed a horse in eight minutes. Interesting to find out how much it would take to kill an ass. Beastly coroner would get nasty about it, though, I suppose."

I ignored the innuendo. Presently he straightened up.

"I believe Backford, the surgeon is  a friend of yours?"

I nodded.

"Well," Mendax went on, "I want you to ask him to come and give me a hand with some work I want to do."

I spoke emphatically. "I value Backford's friendship, and I'll see you jiggered before I make myself responsible for his meeting you."

He contented himself with getting back. "The fact that he is your friend is a slur on his intellectual attainments. Nevertheless I want him," he grinned.

"Well, get him yourself," I answered shortly. Decency and politeness would have been wasted on him.

"Fact is," went on Mendax, crossing one stick-like leg over the other. "Fact is, someone appears to have been distorting my character to him. He's quite shy about coming. Said he'd sooner call on Mollie at the Zoo. Who's Mollie?"*

I let the question pass.

__________

* Mollie was a popular gorilla at the Melbourne Zoo at the time the story was written.

"Then you have met Backford?" I said.

"Only over the telephone. "A stiff-necked and high-stomached earl.  However, I want him still."

I was interested, for Backford was the most genial of men, and worshipped Mendax on the scientific side. It occurred to me that the interview must have been worth hearing. I thought for a moment. I asked abruptly, "Why do you want him?"

"Well," he answered, "it's hardly your business, but I want him to operate on our friend Slogger Binns."

"Great Scott!" I shouted, "surely you don't want to prolong a life like that."

Mendax nodded his head like a mandarin. "I do. Not only prolong his life, but rejuvenate him."

"What? Dr. Voronoff business? Interstitial glands and that sort of thing?"'

"Interstitial mules," grunted Mendax; "I wrote to Voronoff three years ago that he was barking up the wrong tree. Phoo! The man's an infant. Corresponded for months to put some sense into his head. He threatened me with a libel action in the end. Quite interesting."

"It must have been especially for Voronoff," I replied. "Anyhow, you think you can do what he can't, and you want Backford to help?"

He sneered back. "Strange, but I find if I talk to you long enough you get a glimmering of what I mean. You have this time, anyhow."

I stifled my irritation. To show it would only encourage him. "What an absolute beast you are," I said after a moment.

He lifted a corner of his mouth. "I'm one of the few people with the courage to speak the truth. Well, what about Backford?"

"Why pick on Binns as a subject?" I returned. "Is it a sort of fellow feeling?"

He laughed. "Not bad  you. Fact is that Binns is absolutely perfect model of senile decay. Success with him would be proof positive. And then again the treatment might kill him. so it wouldn't be altogether wasted."

That seemed reasonable enough, but the thought of giving a new lease on life to that wreck on the box outside did not appeal to me.

"Do you know anything of his past?" I inquired.

"Not much, except that he appears to have been a prize-fighter by profession and a criminal by intent. I gather from his conversation that he has been guilty of at least one undetected murder, and I suspect a second."

Binns might have been a pillar of the Church for all Mendax cared.

I wanted to get away. Mendax in anything but tabloid doses did not agree with me, so I stood up. "Well, here's what I'll do," I said; "I can't see Backford, as I am leaving town tomorrow, but I'll write to him tonight: I'll explain as well as can, and try and persuade him to see you, but he'll do so with his eyes open."

The untidy head bent again over the microscope. "You can find your own way out, I suppose," he raid without looking up.

"Gladly," I raid, shortly, as I turned away. I had reached the door when his voice came after me.

"Say he can name his own fee, and that he need not recognise me afterwards."

"He won't anyway, if he has any sense," I retorted, closing the door.

I wrote the letter as I had promised, extenuating nothing, naught setting down, in malice, and took my trip to the country, and it was a month before I met Backford at the club. He did not open the subject himself, but in answer to my inquiry whether he had seen Mendax, Backford paused, with a whisky half-way to his lips.

"If I knew," he growled,  "that Mollie at the Zoo even contemplated marriage with that beast of a friend of yours I'd forbid the banns. By Gad, Sir! I would. She would be infinitely superior to him in everything but scientific knowledge. It would be a terrible, mesalliance for Mollie." I gathered there from that he and Mendax had met

"Look here, Backford," I "said; "if it*B not trespassing on your professional secrets, what happened ?"

He thought a moment; then, "That man is absolutely— oh! I don't know. Genius or lunatic?" A long pause. "I operated on a human ape for him, and I'm ashamed of it." He lowered his voice. "If he's right he'll revolutionise medical science. I could get no details from him, but I found out between insults that he has an unholy knowledge of biology. Don't know where he picked it up. Never took a course, so far as I know."

He was about, to say more, but two men we knew came over to us. One was Carter of the Taxation department, a neighbour of mine. He had a grievance, evidently.

"It is a disgrace to the State," he was saying, "twenty-two burglaries in the  month in the one neighbourhood, and two of them with violence. Not a chance of getting the man. My place was opened last night, and he got away with £100 of loot. I've been raising Cain up at Russel street about it."

Backford grinned. "You're lucky, old man. The jewellers seem to be having the time of their lives. I see by the papers this morning that their total loss in the three weeks has been £12,000."

Carter grinned back, "It seems to be a more lucrative profession than surgery."

I had been far enough from town to lose interest in the papers, and their talk did not affect me— until I arrived home. Then it did. For I found that my flat had been wrecked, and pretty well everything valuable that was small enough for easy transport had vanished. The visitor had used a nice discrimation in his selection, and a method of making it.

I borrowed a neighbour's telephone (the wires of my own had been carefully cut), and called the police; and while I waited I read my accumulated letters. There was one, a brief one from Mendax, demanding my immediate presence. It was a week old. There were two others, the latest of which had come that day, reiterating the demand. While, the first two were couched with characteristic rudeness, the last was worded with such politeness that made me think that something unprecedented had arisen in the life of Mendax. There was a postscript that made me thoughtful. When you come, as I trust you will, you had better bring a revolver (loaded), if you have one." Moreover, the latter itself enjoined the strictest secrecy.

I waited until the police had inspected the sacrilege towards my household gods. The representative of the C.I.D. who accompanied the uniformed men pointed out I undoubted indications that the incursion had been made by the expert who had more than a score of similar enterprises to his discredit. While his comments revealed a certain amount of reluctant admiration, I had no reason to doubt that his desire to meet the genius in person was genuine. It appeared that he had chosen a number of people, influential both socially, officially, and politically, as subjects for his professional attentions, and the kick they had given to the chief commissioner of police had lost nothing in force in being passed along. The representatives of the law departed, giving me little consolation, and taking with them an inventory of my losses.

Now, I did have a revolver— or, to be more accurate, I had had a revolver until my unknown visitor had departed, when, I assumed, it had also departed; so in visiting Mendax I was unable to comply with his request, but I took with me a walking-stick that I had never used since its donor, an enthusiast in Australian timbers, had presented it to me. It was made of polished red gum, and, while it was not only presentable but handsome, its weight was against everyday use.

Although I knocked long and loudly, my demands for admittance had no effect, and for a time I debated my best course of action, for I was seriously uneasy. I must either obtain assistance immediately, in spite of my instructions as to secrecy, or continue my investigations myself, and this was not inviting. I visualised a rejuvenated Slogger Binns whom I should not care to meet alone unless I were armed with, a repeating rifle, and even then I doubt if I should have voluntarily intruded on him.

Then suddenly I heard voices; and one of them bore the unmistakable snarl of Mendax. From the other I should have thought he was holding converse with a bull. I hurried round the house. They were not at the side, and then  came a cry— a woman's— from the direction of the yard where I had first seen Binns, and I broke into a run.

Clearly and indelibly photographed on my mind is the tableau that met my eyes as I turned the corner of the house. On the asphalt, in the middle of the yard, lay Mrs. Verjuice, an unlovely sight— with a thin streak of blood on her face and evidently unconscious. Not ten feet away from me, backed into an angle made by a window-bay, was Mendax. His face was towards me, but his eyes were fixed on a colossal, gorilla-like figure before him. There was only one such figure in the world, and although its back was towards me I recognised it immediately. But where before. I had seen it bent and warned with age, now it stood erect, mighty, and horrible. Mendax held up a futile arm, while the other, in the act of swinging an axe, poured out an unparalleled volume of profanity.

"You'll call no police, you!" he shouted. Indeed, it was a moment for swift action, for I saw clearly that Slogger Binns would not regard with anything but disfavour an inconvenient witness. Much golf had trained my eye, and pure funk lent me strength as I sprang forward and swung my stick. The knob lauded an inch above the huge cauliflower ear, and its owner, sagging at the knees, dropped like a pole

A second later Mendax had snatched the stick from my hand and administered another blow on the head of the prostrate, man. So far I was quite in agreement with him, but I stopped a repetition of the dose. I was about to ask a question, but Mendax did not seem in the mood for conversation; besides, his movements were extremely interesting. He peeled off his coat and waistcoat, and flung them aside, then he tore off his braces. I was about to remonstrate with him on the grounds of propriety, until I saw the method in his madness was to tie the gnarled wrists of his patient with his braces. Then he grabbed his' waistcoat, in which he fingered until he produced a pocket-knife. Then he ran to the clotheslines that hung about the yard. Two of these he cut down.

Seldom have I seen a man act with such speed and such purposeful zeal as Mendax when he trussed up the form of his late assailant. All the time he talked, but not to me. His remarks were all addressed to Mr. Binns, on whom they were quite lost. I knew of old that Mendax had an amazing flood of vituperation, but I never beard anything like the language that he used towards his fallen foe, either before on since. I can only hope that it was acquired from Mr. Binns himself, and not a gift. As he talked he pulled viciously and knotted savagely until the man was swathed in rope as though in a cocoon, beyond all hope of movement or resistance.

"Take his feet," he snorted to me as he raised the man's shoulders.

"What about Mrs. Verjuice?" I asked, I glancing at her.

"The old fowl's all right; only got a crack on the jaw from papa. Serve her right, too. She started it. Take his feet."

I obeyed, and between half carrying and dragging the man we got him to the laboratory. Here with much panting we raised the huge bulk to a table. Mendax turned from a drawer and approached the table with a small cedar case in his hand. From this he chose an extremely ugly and efficient looking knife, and bent over Binns.

This was too much for me.

"Good God, man!" I gasped, clutching his sleeve; "it's murder!"

Then he turned on me, and as he shook me off he directed towards me much of what he had been saying about Binns. From purely extraneous matter I sifted enough of his meaning to understand that he was about to perform an entirely necessary surgical operation to "de-juvenute," if I may coin the word, his demonstrative patient before he recovered consciousness. As I was quite in accord with his views in this respect, I raised no further obstacle. I watched fascinated for a few moments (Mendax evidently understood his unpleasant job), and then retired to the back yard, where I was violently ill. My stomach was entirely unused to surgery.

When I had I slightly recovered  turned round to find Mrs. Verjuice sitting on the ground regarding me with interest.

"Where is he?" she asked. "I mean me old man."

Briefly I outlined the situation, while I she, watching me, rubbed her jaw tenderly.

"What did you hit him with?" she asked when I had finished. I pointed to the stick that lay where Mendax had dropped it. She rose painfully and walking over picked it up and weighed it in her hand.

"Did you belt him good and hard?" she inquired.

I nodded. "Hard as I could," I replied.

For the first time since I had known Mrs. Verjuice she smiled. "I'm sure I'm very much obliged," said that filial lady graciously. "I'm sorry I couldn't give him one myself; come here and I'll show you."

She led the way down a path to what had once been the stables of the mansion. There in a room that had apparently been the grooms' quarters she displayed the most, astonishing collection of loot I have ever seen, and among which I recognised several articles of my own. I had estimated there was quite £20,000 of other people's property, principally jewellery, in the apartment, when Mendax joined us. He grunted his belated thanks for my intervention, adding that he thought that his "goose was cooked" when I arrived.

In the explanation that followed he told me that that he and Mrs. Verjuice had their suspicions, but could not find the hiding place until that afternoon, and it was the latter's ill-timed disclosure of the discovery that precipitated the crisis. His criticism of Mrs. Verjuice's indiscretion led to counter-criticism from the lady on science in general and rejuvenation in particular, that was to me more amusing than edifying.

I borrowed a suit case from Mendax and retrieved my own goods from the pile, and in the discussion that followed as to the best way of returning the rest to the respective owners, he treated my suggestions with such contempt that I left him to stew in his own juice.

It was with some interest then that I read a few days later an account of how four large packing cases crammed with the proceeds of numerous robberies had been found by a morning milkman by the roadside in a distant suburb. I was vastly interested in the speculations in the newspapers as not one of the journals got within a thousand miles of the truth, which is here presented for the first time.

___________________

What can Mendax experiment with next? Oh, I know: test tube babies...

5: An Awkward Dilemma

Australasian (Melbourne) 7 August 1937

IT had been more than three months since I had come into contact with Mendax. For reasons which would be obvious to anyone acquainted with that caustic genius, the loss of his society caused little or no regret.

On the last occasion on which I had called at his house to deliver a message for a mutual friend who feared that he would feel impelled to assault Mendax if he delivered it in person, he had refused to see me.

His housekeeper, Mrs. Verjuice, had delivered his reply to my request for an audience verbatim. It was to the effect that he was busy, and it specified most explicitly to where he wished I should go, how, as well as the length of my sojourn in that place. A few days later I met him in the street. He had either forgotten or he pretended to forget the offensiveness of his message. Indeed, I think he would have been surprised that I either remembered it or resented it.

I remember that in the course of our ten minutes' talk he referred to some cabled message that Sir Oliver Lodge had foretold the possibility of chemically vitalising artificial protoplasm, and to the condemnation of such experiments by leading churchmen. He went off into a blistering indictment of Sir Oliver Lodge's methods and of clerical interference with science, from which I gathered that he was deep in similar experiments himself, but on a much more elaborate scale.

At the moment I took little notice of his ravings, but later I had reason to remember them. That was the last I had seen or heard of him until I received a telephone summons through Mrs. Verjuice to call on him. She had said that "the boss wants to see you at once." In reply to my desire for further enlightenment, she said that it was none o' her business, and I'd be sorry for it if I didn't come. As she slammed up her receiver I caught a remark that sounded like "Nice goin's on, I don't think."

Now Mendax was, socially, an unspeakable brute. His manners were appalling, and his language was worse, but he had one inestimable virtue. He was never dull. At the time I received his peremptory message I was feeling very dull indeed. The thought that his society would be an improvement on my own at the moment urged me to pocket my pride and ascertain the meaning of the summons.

The great garden which surrounded his house seemed to be more neglected and overgrown than ever. Except for a track, the drive was obliterated by weeds. Remembering long waits on the worn mat, I hammered loudly on the paint-blistered double doors. It was Mrs. Verjuice who flung them open, rather to my surprise, before the echoes of the attack had died away.

She demanded fiercely to know whether I thought she was deaf. In exaggerated endearments I had found the only sure means of checking her venomous tongue. I bowed ceremoniously, and assured her it was only a turbulent and uncontrollable desire to gaze upon her countenance that had inspired my anxiety for admittance. "What you'll get one of these days is a clout over the head," she snorted.

I was about to tell her that even violence could not quench my devotion when a sound cut the words short on my lips. Prom the far end of the wide passage where Mendax's laboratory was situated' came the muffled but unmistakable cry of an infant. Of all the wonders I had come across in that strange house the very last I should have expected was an infant. Whatever other inclination Mendax had he had none for domesticity.

I stared at Mrs. Verjuice, a figure of wide-eyed, open-mouthed interrogation. In her hard grey eyes there was a light of malicious amusement.

" 'Ark at 'im― at 'is age― me bein' always respectable, too." Then as an afterthought, "Oh, ye, 'e's clever, but 'e ain't clever enough to stop that kid howlin'--nice goin's on," she sniffed.

"But whose child is it?" I demanded.

"E sez"― she stopped abruptly.

Mendax was in his shirt sleeves. He had flung off his collar. His unlovely mat of straw-coloured hair was on end. His face bore a look of furious exasperation, combined with hopeless anguish.

As I entered he scarcely looked up. His mind seemed to be concentrated on a bundle in a blanket which he held in his arms, and from which came vociferous evidences of infantile woe. Speech left me, but I was still able to laugh, and I did.

I even heard a dry cackle from behind me. The sound of my laughter seemed to be the spark that detonated Mendax, He reared his gaunt figure and poured over us a flood of vitriolic abuse, remarkable even for him. When at length he paused for breath, Mrs. Verjuice croaked: "Oh, you wicked old devil, talkin' like that in front of yer innocent kid."

"Take the wretched thing," he shouted, holding the bundle out to her. "I cant stop it,"

"Not me," she snapped, her hands on her wide hips. "I'm in a respectable woman, I am. I cooks for yer and I washes for yer, but I nurses none of that for yer."

"But didn't I tell you―"

She cut me short. "Think I'm a fool to believe that yarn? It's the very himage of yer. Take a squint at it," she appealed to me. "It's the dead spit of 'im."

Goaded into self defence, his nerve broken, Mendax threw back the blanket from the squalling bundle. "Did you call that like me?" he demanded furiously.

As a bachelor I am no authority on babies, but never did I imagine such a totally unprepossessing specimen. Its red, crinkled face seemed to be one vast mouth, from which came a volume of sound out of all proportion to the size of the puny body. I did not think it possible to libel Mendax's face, but Mrs. Verjuice had achieved that apparently hopeless slander.

Still, I owed him something, and after a close scrutiny I observed that its eyes and forehead were very like that of Mendax. He looked as if his last support had failed him.

Then he turned to Mrs. Verjuice. "I'll give you a quid, if you'll take it and quieten it," he begged.

She took the bundle from his arms and Mendax placed a note from a roll which he drew from his pocket into the greedy, outstretched hand.

A light dawned on me.

"How much is that costing you a day?" I asked as the closed door shut off the volume of sound. He came to himself and sighed. "A five yesterday, and that's the fourth today― but its worth it." For the first time in our long acquaintance, I saw Mendax broken and cowed.

He dropped himself wearily into a chair and nodded me to another. He was so hopelessly depressed that I could not find heart to protest as he commenced to fill his pipe with his awful black tobacco.

"Tell me the worst, Mendax," I asked, "that is if it's fit for the ears of innocence." Had he been normal that prod would have begun something. Instead he blinked at me reflectively and polluted the room with a cloud of smoke before he spoke.

"You remember the last time I saw you," he began, "we were talking of Sir Oliver Lodge's prophecies about synthetic life?"

"You were," I corrected.

He disregarded my interruption. "Well, I've been working on those lines for years. I've forgotten more than he is ever likely to know about it."

"Well?" I asked.

He stared at me with the offensive compassion that one would bestow on a congenital idiot. "Well," he mimicked me, "Isn't that sufficient?"

"I'm thick-headed, I suppose," I replied irritably, "but what's that got to do with that last thing in infants?"

"That, my poor fool," he answered, nodding his head in the direction of the faint wail that still reached us, "is the result of my experiments."

He rose and walked across the room where rows of great glass jars lined the shelves. Beginning at one end, he worked along, talking.

"Here," he said, pointing to the first jar, "was where I began. Now note the progressive improvement." The first jar showed a faint slimy sediment, which Increased in other jars until a sprawling, unsightly organism covered the bottom of the last.

"Those things alive?" I demanded, nodding towards the jars.

"Not only alive," he answered, with a ring of pride, "but endowed with life by me."

"Can't say I think much of them," was my candid comment. "It's a long way from that unpleasant creation of yours to that other."

"Is it?" he sneered. "It's only one step, my friend. I got the clue from that last jar."

"A pretty long step," I said, looking up from the unpleasantness he mentioned.

"See that jar on the bench?" He pointed with his pipe stem to the great wide-mouthed amphora. "I set that jar four months ago. Up till last week it was going along as I expected. Then I had to go to Sydney for the bacteriological conference. Got back the night before last. Found Mrs. V. had left to attend some fool relative who was sick. Two or three times in the night I heard a noise and thought it was a cat howling. Came down in the morning, walked in here, and that infant was howling in the jar.

"Take the wretched thing," he shouted, holding the bundle out to her. "I can't stop it."

There could be no doubt of his seriousness. Whatever the facts were, Mendax believed what he told me.

"Mendax," I said, "someone must have put it there."

For a wonder he did not storm at me.

"How?" he demanded. "The only living soul who knew what I was working on was Von Herkomer, of Bonn, and he is half-way back to Germany. That poisonous old she cat was not in the house. She didn't get back until after lunch. I had to look after the youngster myself till she came."

I let it go at that for the moment. "Anyhow, Mendax, where do I come in?"

"I can't keep it," he almost whined. "I must get rid of it somehow."

There was a long and painful silence. Then he spoke: "Look here, you get your living by writing lies, don't you?"

"Trying to conciliate me?" I asked shortly.

"Well, don't you?" he insisted. "That's your profession, inventing lies and all that!" He waved his hands largely.

"As a definition of fiction it is not very adequate; but I'll admit it."

He sat up and sat forward impressively. "Well, I'll give you the biggest fee you ever got if you'll invent a story to get me out of this."

I suppressed my mirth with difficulty. "Nothing doing," I said, firmly.  Telling lies for a living is one thing, but swearing to them is another. Much as I love you, Mendax, I do draw the line."

He stood up and paced the room like a restless I walked over to the bench on which the Jar stood, and looked into the tangled garden. Suddenly my eye fell on a small, freshly torn splinter on the window-frame, and enlightenment came to me.

"Mendax," I said. "You are convinced that that squalling horror is synthetic?"

"Nothing can alter my conviction," he said.

"What will you pay to get it off your hands?"

There was a dawn of hope in his eyes. "You think you can manage it?" he shouted, almost.

I nodded. "Then," he broke out, "anything― £5,000, or go to £10,000 if you like."

"I think I can fix it for less. Will you leave it absolutely to me?"

He nodded his acquiescence, and I turned and left the room.

A CRASH and clatter of crockery guided me to Mrs. Verjuice in her gloomy kitchen. She met my entrance with a swift glance of suspicion. In a basket beneath the window the synthetic infant lay asleep.

I looked at it long and carefully. Slumber added little to its beauty. I looked from Mrs. Verjuice to the basket and back again, and I was prepared to swear that there was Verjuice blood and not chemicals in its veins. The look of suspicion flashed back to her face again. '"Ere!" she said, sourly, "you get outter my kitchen."

For answer I sat on the table and smiled at her ingratiatingly. "Suppose," I said, looking carefully at my fingernails, "someone was given, say, £500 and 10 shillings a week until it is 21 years old, and then, say, another £500. Do you know of anyone who would adopt that child and register it as her own?"

I heard her give a short gasp.

"Someone forced the laboratory window recently," I added casually.

There was another gasp.

"No questions asked on either side," I went on, "and besides, he deserves it!"

" 'E do that," she chuckled, Then, after a pause, "Wot about £1,000 down and a quid a week?" she ventured.

I would not haggle. Mendax could afford it, and I did not love him over much. "Will you get it away tonight?"

She nodded.

"Very good," I said, "you'll trust me to fix up about the money?"

"You, but not 'im," she replied emphatically.

Our eyes met, and we both laughed. "Tell me," I asked. "Between ourselves. How did you know what he was at?"

She looked round and lowered her voice.

"I 'eard 'im talkin' to that German bloke one day. The winder was open."

"Whose?" I glanced down at the basket.

"Me granddaughter's," she grinned. "Most providential it were, too. I knew he was comin' back that night, so I slipped over an' got through the window. I emptied a lot o' muck out of the jar and stood by to shove the kid in when I 'eard 'im comin.' Got dashed near froze. too."

A few minutes later I was telling Mendax that Mrs. Verjuice had agreed to get a friend to adopt it. "I want two cheques for £1,000 each, one open. There'll be a few pounds for legal expenses, too," I added.

"Best money I ever spent," he said as he passed me two cheques before I left.

"I don't think I'd go on with those experiments if I were you, Mendax," I said as we strolled down the drive.

"Do you take me for a blithered fool?" he asked with a return to his own self.

"Perhaps, and perhaps not," was my cryptic reply as I left him.

_____________

Pay the man his forty bob!

6: "Forty Bob Or—"

as by "The Chiel"

Australasian (Melbourne) 5 August 1944

"AND," Mendax concluded, his voice shrill with wrath, "they fined me forty shillings with distress in default. And the magistrate, a cocky little blighter, had the frozen cheek to tell me that I deserved to be fined for contempt, also." Then, after a pause he added, "And you stand there grinning like an ape."

My apelike grin expanded into a laugh as I looked up from the pile of letters he had pushed into my hand. "Well," I said, "judging from this correspondence, you asked for it.

"Listen!" I went on. "You refused to take my advice, and you handled the business yourself. When you were asked for a reasonable explanation why you did not vote, you addressed the electoral authority as, wait"— I turned up the letter— "yes, as a blithered jackass. Also, if that were not enough, you referred to the two candidates as psychopathic impostors, and said you would not insult your conscience by voting for either."

"Well," he protested, "I had to tell the truth."

"A little tactless, don't you think?"

My understatement passed over his head. "Tactless, my foot," he shouted. "That's the only language these Government blighters understand."

"Apparently they did understand," I said and passed him back the letters.

"But, forty bob!" he wailed.

"You got out of it lightly." and there was no sympathy in my voice. "You're no more exempt from the law than anyone else."

He paced irritably up and down the great laboratory in which we talked. It was here where his warped genius had achieved some astounding scientific marvels that he never proclaimed.

Presently he paused and turned to me. "So I have to pay?"

I nodded. "You can't fight the law, and the whole country, Mendax."

His eyes ran round the maze of instruments and machinery in sight, and a lopsided smile lifted one corner of his mouth. "Perhaps not," he muttered. And then, "By heck, though, I can punish the whole country for making damned silly laws."

"A big contract," I laughed, "and for forty bob."

I made up his income tax returns, and knew that he had one of the few six-figure incomes in the Commonwealth, and that his living expenses did not amount to £250 p.a.

"It does not matter a hoot whether it is forty bob, pounds, or pence," he snarled. "I've been rooked by a dashed insolent Jack-in-office, and told off by a little squirt on the bench, because I did my duty to society in refusing to be party to sending one or two morons to Canberra."

What the PM said must have rankled. Mendax's manner at any time was an incitement to violence, and his conflict with an authority that held a whip hand must have come as a shock to his 'caustic system. The things he said about our legislative and judicial systems were entertaining but unprintable. My amusement drew his wrath on me, and as I had found by long experience that the only way to cope with him was to meet insult by insult, I told him where he could go.

As I left, he called after me, "Thanks, my dear idiot, I'll send for you again when I need an emetic." That was Mendax.

That night after dinner I tried to ring up a friend with whom I had an appointment next day, in order to cancel it. Apart from a momentary irritation at finding my line was dead, I thought no more about it. I was reminded, however, early on the following morning, when my neighbour, Carter, came in and asked if he might use my telephone, as something had happened to his. Mine, toe, was still dead. About fifteen minutes later he returned to tell me that every telephone in the street had gone phut. The things he said about the service were both lurid and uncomplimentary.

That afternoon I had to attend a board meeting in the city. I noticed vaguely that there seemed to be an unusual amount of activity in the streets, and that the motor-car jam at the intersections was above normal. It was not until I arrived at the company's office, usually a home of well-ordered and dignified activity, that I gained enlightenment. Its calm had been exchanged for the confusion of a disturbed ant heap. The staff was in a state of jostling disorder. The public was clamouring at its counters, and I heard voices raised, and expressions used that savoured more of the fish market than of high finance. In the boardroom I was greeted by a hot and furious general manager.

"Hold on! Jimmy," I begged. "What's it all about? What's happened?"

"Happened! Happened!" he yelped. "Haven't you heard? The entire telephone system of the Commonwealth collapsed completely last night. Every line is dead."

"Oh, nonsense!" I said. "My line is out, I know— but the entire system—impossible!"

"I tell you it's true." Jimmy unconsciously executed an ungraceful pas seul. "I've just come in from headquarters at the GPO. They're all crazy there. All crazy. I saw Hutchinson, though. He'd got in to one of the men higher up, and he tells me that they are utterly bewildered. Can't account for it."

"Well," I asked, "what are you doing?"

"Doing! What the blazes can I do? We're trying to hire messengers, and can't get any. You saw that howling bear pit outside?" He pointed towards the general office. "Well, every office in the city is like that."

Our meeting lapsed for want of a quorum, for the first time in the board's thirty years of existence. Two of the seven who should have put in an appearance, and who trusted to luck that the others would be there, stayed for about half an hour, during which we discussed telephones. Except for a wasted afternoon, the disruption of communication touched me but lightly, so far. However, it caught up with me that evening. Dinner was sketchy — very sketchy. It appeared that the system of ordering by telephone from the tradespeople had completely wrecked the domestic organisation, because there was no telephone by which to order. Our cook was temperamental. Unfortunately, Vera, my wife, had travelled some twenty miles that afternoon in response to an invitation from a friend, to find that her hostess had been called away to a sick mother. When she arrived at home again she also was feeling a bit temperamental. I never heard the full details of her exchanges with the cook, but, whatever they were, they left us cookless.

Next day the failure of the telephone system crowded all other news off the front pages of all of our newspapers. I never envied a man less than I did the Postmaster-General when I read what they said about him and his department. His plea that the public should slow down on letter writing because the sudden flood of letters had swamped the post-offices, was received with what I think was undeserved derision. Next day he had to beg for a let-up on telegrams. By the end of the week telegraphic despatches were two days behind in transmission, and the letter carriers had struck.

Extracts from newspapers gave some idea of what the collapse of the telephone service meant at the end of a fortnight. The newspapers were publishing news days old, despite the organisation of an interstate aeroplane and motor-car service. The Government had refused them telegraphic priority. Their reactions were not altogether favourable to the Government. From what they published, however, it was clear that commerce and finance in Australia were in a chaotic state. There were hundreds of advertisements for messenger boys at £3 and £4 a week with no takers. They opened special classified "ads" columns for people wishing to communicate with friends in a hurry. These columns were more worth reading than the news. The Government kept on reiterating that everything humanly possible was being done to discover the cause of the failure of the telephones. There was an acrimonious correspondence in the Press between theorists who claimed that the cause of the trouble lay in some obscure electrical influence beyond the stratosphere, and those practical people who said the theorists were nuts—or words to that effect.

New, it is curious that until I read a few lines in one Government announcement, a possible cause for the trouble never entered my mind. The announcement gave the names of several scientists who were appointed as a committee to investigate the calamity. Among these names was that of the "noted research worker, Major Max Mendax." Then a light came to me. I threw aside my paper, grabbed my hat. and sallied forth to call on Mendax. His housekeeper, Mrs Verjuice, admitted me. "Is he at home?" I asked.

She nodded her wrinkled old head. "Yes, and 'e's up to somethink dirty if I knows 'im. 'E's been whistlin' for days, and 'e never whistles unless 'e's doin' someone dirt." It was evidence, but not confirmation.

I found Mendax in his laboratory with his eyes blued to a double-barrelled microscope. He looked up as I entered, but immediately resumed his work with provocative intent. I waited a while, but he continued to ignore me. Then I said, "Mendax, you ruffian. You did it."

"Did what?" his eyes still at his lenses.

"Scuppered the telephones."

His head came up, and there was a twisted grin on his face. "That slander is worth £10,000 in any court."

"It'll be worth ten years to you if you don't stop it," I replied.

"You blazing idiot! Where's your proof? Why, I could choke you in the witness box with your own stupidity,"

"You did it," I reiterated, "proof or no proof."

He leaned back laughing. "Well— what of it?" My word against yours—your bare word."

"Stop it, Mendax," I begged.

"At a price." He was still laughing.

"What do you want?" I demanded.

"Your promise of secrecy, and an apology for your abominable smugness about that fine. I paid that forty bob— but I said I would punish them. You laughed at that. Now apologise."

There was nothing else for it. I seethed, but apologised— humbly, in word at least.

Then he slowly unfolded his ungainly length from his chair, walked down the laboratory with me at his heels, stopped a purring machine, and threw a switch.

"There!" he turned to me chuckling. "As easy as that."

"You mean ?" I asked.

"Just that," he answered. Then, as he waited back to resume his work, he said: "Do you know, I think it not a bad idea to remind people not to place too much dependence on the artificial amenities of life."

"You ought to be poleaxed," I said with feeling.

"Tut! Tut! would you like me to switch that machine on again?"

I yabbed hastily and apologised again.

"Then get out and go home," he retorted.

As I went down the passage his voice followed me. "Don't forget— forty bob, or in default distress." And I wasn't the one who was distressed.

________________

...and other stories

Meet Cupid's mother...

1: The Gift Of Venus

Australasian (Melbourne), 10 April 1920

MACK PEARSON Maitland Courtney (remember he was only one man) slid from by his saddle and closed the gates of the home paddock, and turned with the bridle over his arm to watch some 3,000 sheep spread fanwise from him towards the timber and water of the creek.

If you were to open up the red and gold covers of "Burke" you would find the above named gentleman mentioned, after several columns of condensed history, all more or less disreputable did you know the facts, as "6th. B July 16th., 1888."

Australians have been said, rather unjustly, to be rather reserved in referring to any of their ancestors who died suddenly, but Mark, English born and bred, was entirely without conceit except on one point: he could prove conclusively that three of his progenitors had ended their mortal careers suddenly on Tower Hill, in a manner not unconnected with an axe. Once, after three whiskies (he hadn't much of a head), he was heard to say that it was a pity his father hadn't made a fourth.

It was rumoured that his father, who was a very respectable peer as peers go, had coldly discouraged Mark's early aspirations to bankrupt all the bookmakers in England, and as a consequence Australia was the gainer, when hard work had modified his exalted ideas, by a valuable citizen. Mark was rather proud, too, of the fact that one could scarcely mention the name of a castle in the United Kingdom in which one or other of his forefathers had not done time. The fourth Earl had gone into well deserved retirement for fifteen, years for being connected with a plan to create a vacancy in the Sacred College by poisoning Cardinal Wolsey. Morals and manners are only relative after all,  and time graciously tones down the unpleasant features of such incident, still it is hard to think that the future Burke of the Commonwealth would find space even in its advertising columns for the name of the person who used prussic acid as a political expedient, whatever the provocation.

However, Courtney stood watching the sheep until his home gave a sudden jump and pull on the bridle without any apparent cause, The man drew on some years Australian experience to remonstrate with the animal, and it was proof of his adaptability that his remarks would, have done credit to a native.

He was considering further eloquence when small green apple passed the horse's withers, and struck him where his necktie should have been. Several words on his lips were checked as he glanced up and saw on the other side of the hedge a picture that had been in his mind since he had left the out-farm. The face would have stopped a saint at his prayers, let alone a mere man's whole-souled remarks at his horse's uncalled for agitation.

First, there was a shapeless broad-rimmed straw hat, torn in places, through which a gleam of gold showed against the dusty brown, and underneath a face bright with successful mischief. The red month curved into smiles below a pair, of eyes that in the shade looked black but were really blue, and just in the middle of the chin was a dimple that Courtney had sworn to subjugate. He formed endless designs for the conquest of that dimple, designs that seemed flawless when he turned them over in his mind. When away from its devastating influence its downfall seemed merely a matter of determination and self-assertion. In its presence, however, his courage melted, and his  carefully built plans ended in confusion. Even now, as he looked, a quickening , of his pulses warned him of coming defeat.

"Oh, you do look tired," said the owner of the dimple, as her eyes took in the dust covered figure of Courtney as he stepped from behind his horse.

"Your judgment is faultless," he laughed, glancing at the watch on his wrist. "I started at five, and it is now half-past four. I plead guilty, Miss Rita."

There was something more than sympathy in the girl's eyes, could he have but read it.

"I have something for you." Two shapely hands held up a brimming basin over the hedge. "It's half milk and half soda— much better than anything else."'

"To the Gods," said Courtney, and spilled a few drops on the ground before he raised the bowl to his lips and returned it empty. "I thank you, Miss Rita, for watching for me. You have given me new life."

"Watching for you, indeed!" The dimple flickered a moment, and: disappeared. "You flatter yourself, most noble Mr. Courtney. It was only the dust raised by those wretched sheep that reminded me of your existence, and made me think you might be thirsty."

Of course the man did not know that she was angry with herself because her heart beat so quickly, and that nervousness and the exquisite coquetry of maidenhood made her say the words that she felt least like saying.

He swung into the saddle, thinking that her words expressed her real thoughts, and hat in hand, made a bow that his cavalier ancestors might have envied.  "Nevertheless it was extremely kind of you," he said stiffly, and as the: horse clattered, towards the stables he never turned in his saddle. He might have lingered had he been able to see the eyes of the girl as they followed him, or had he known of the sigh that she would hardly have confessed to herself.

Courtney made his way forwards the creek, after seeing to his horse, in a frame of mind that was rare with him. He considered it an affront to the whole of his race that a dimple and two dark eyes, to say nothing of a perfect mouth, should destroy his peace of mind.

He flung himself down on the grass tussocks at the edge of the creek, and though a break in the green leaves high above him watched a speck that he knew to be an eagle, almost motionless an the eternal blue. The silence of the closing day settled over all as he stared upwards. He was aching in every limb, and did not realise how absolutely worn out he felt until he relaxed himself from the strain of his day-long ride.

He wondered vaguely why his temples throbbed so painfully, and why the leaves on the branches blurred at one moment and the next stood out with photographic detail. Then he became aware that the bird he was watching was slowly settling earthward. The circles narrowed, and with tense interest, scarcely daring, to move, he saw it come to rest on a charred stump not thirty yards away.

At the moment it alighted he became aware he was not alone. There was a stir and shiver amongst the grass, and Just beside him he saw a boy, such a boy as he had never dreamt of before. He was exquisitely formed and completely nude, except for a belt that held quiver full of arrows to his side. The body seemed transparent, as if fire and not blood pulsed through it, and a glow of grange lambent light seemed to emanate from his whole being. A mass of tumbled hair crowned a face that held in its wilful expression the simplicity and mischief of a child, blended in some strange way with awful and age-long knowledge. One chubby hand held an ivory bow, and his eyes were fixed on the great bird.

With infinite cunning and stealth, the child fitted an arrow to the cord of the bow. There was a soft twang, and the dart broke on to stiff-feathered wing pinions of the bird. What followed, Courtney never really knew. He saw the eagle rise and swoop savagely at the boy. He sprang to his feet with a yell, and, seizing a stick, struck wildly at the bird, which came to earth with one wing dragging helplessly on the ground. It was still full of fight, however, for hissing, and, with its claws out-turned, it watched the child that had taken refuge between his feet with baleful yellow eyes.

"You brute! You brute!" gasped the man, as he sent the stick smashing down on the evil head, and then stood dazed as he saw the eagle was dead at his feet.

For a few moments he was aware of the child's clinging arms about his leg; and then he became conscious of a strange awe that held him. What had he done? Where was he? He became conscious of some unearthly and terrible music that blended with the sound of the wind through the leaves overhead. The golden atmosphere around him seemed to liquefy in quivering robes of splendour. All the colour of the opal was in the sound and sight, and in the midst of all there was a Presence.

Dazed and dumbstricken he watched motionless, while his senses reeled before the majesty of that awful being. The love of this world, the world above, and the world below shone from her eyes. Maidenhood and maternity were there, and the all-embracing love of the almighty gods, and with them the wisdom of the ages and the pity of a Madonna.

"Thou hast done well, mortal. My son is very dear."  He heard the words come to him through the music wonderful that surrounded him. "Speak, and do not fear. What would you?" Through his dazzled senses ran the thought, "What can it be?"

The answer to his unspoken words came slowly and with infinite sweetness.

"I am she whom men call Love, and swine call Harlot. I am the life of mortals and their power. For once I will answer your prayer."

"Give me the one I love," came the ready thought.

"Think, mortal. If I grant your heart's desire it may bring earthy sorrow, and the gift once granted cannot be recalled. I can give you peace without her."

"Give me the one I love." Courtney knew his soul answered, for his lips were dumb.

"Then let it be so. She will be yours for ever. Sorrow and trial shall ye know, but this I grant, wherever the sorrow and trial may fall, the love I give will heal the wounds. Hand-in-hand along the path of life shall ye go together, shielding each other by the way, and hand-in-hand shall ye go into the shadows. The love I give will glorify all, and last, not only here but beyond. Farewell."

The vision of the Presence seemed to fade, but the dazzling splendour grew in a hurricane of fire that split and rolled together with a crash of thunder, and Mark Pearson Maitland Courtney dropped forward with a broken stick in his hand and great dead eaglehawk beneath him.

A doctor summoned by a frantic girl, who had not stayed to saddle her horse, called it a mild attack of sunstroke, but he didn't attempt to account for the bird.  If you ask Rita, she will tell you that she thinks the doctor was an old stupid. If you ask Courtney he will say he doesn't know what happened, and, further, as things have turned out, he doesn't care.

_______________

An amused look at the arrival of women's swimsuits with short legs and without sleeves, scandalously skimpy in 1921.

2: The Demoralisation Of Muriel

Australasian (Melbourne), 2 April 1921

"NOTHING," she said decisively, "will make me agree that it is either right or proper."

It is not much use arguing with Muriel when she speaks thus, and I dropped the subject for the moment. The sun, which looked as if it had been drinking heavily for the past week, had disappeared in a red haze, and the crowd of miscellaneously dressed people along the foreshore grew momentarily. The individual cries from the bathers blended as their numbers grew into an ear-satisfying volume of sound. Then half-a-dozen splendid, clean-limbed Australian girls broke from a group in the crowd, deployed on the water's edge with clasped hands, and went forward with a run, their clear, ringing laughter rising for a while, till it and they were swallowed up in the throng in the water.

"Now," I asked, returning to the charge, "what's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, and everything. To my mind, it is demoralising, and at any rate I'm not going to follow their example."

The deep-rooted Puritan strain in Muriel has its attractive side, but there have been times when I have found it inconvenient. To lay down the law that broad-mindedness is merely an excuse for behaviour that is not conventional may be all right, theoretically, but a too strict adherence to its letter spoils a lot of fun.

I tossed off my dressing-gown and stood up. "But wouldn't you care to come?"

"Indeed, no. I've been to bathe twice today, and I'm quite cool enough."

I trust this kind of fib is not permanently recorded, or my Muriel is in a parlous state. "Please yourself, my good woman." I retorted, and made for the water I wonder why a good woman should think it be offensive to he called a "good woman." I should probably have heard if I had stayed.

Friday night came. I lounged on the sand, waiting for Muriel (waiting for Muriel is chronic). At length she arrived.

Fortunately I had enough self-possession not to comment on the fact that she was wearing a raincoat, and that her slippers covered bare feet.

"Don't go in yet" she said uneasily, "wait until it is darker," and so when the hazy gloom settled she nerved, herself for the plunge.

It needed nerve too. I don't know where she had obtained that garment. I imagine it was an heirloom. It was just made in one-piece of some khaki coloured material, and looked like canvas. There were bands of Turkey , red about the neck, knees, and cut off sleeves. But the most demented tailor in Bedlam could not have achieved a more atrocious shape. However, it was modest beyond the imaginings of the sternest moralist, and most infernally (the only word) ugly.

Muriel, if you please, prides herself too, on ordinary occasions, on being a little ahead of the latest mode. But as I pride myself on knowing just when to be silent, I said nothing vigorously.

Half an hour later we had rejoined the crowd on the sand, the peace of the water upon us. All round were chattering groups, many of them flashing into view for a few seconds as the match of a smoker lit up their faces. Presently three girls, pattered up the sand from the water, and stopped at a small pile of garments and towels beside us. They seemed supremely happy and unconscious of the white limbs that gleamed vaguely in the dark.

In a few minutes I found myself unconsciously listening to them. It was hardly fair perhaps, but it would have been difficult not to hear.

"Oh, Millie! I wish you had been down earlier, and you would have seen her," said one.

"What was she like?" came from the depths of a towel.

'Well, just like a bag of potatoes tied up with Turkey "red" came the answer that took my breath away. There followed a chorus of delighted giggles, and I felt the start that Muriel gave as she sat upright.

"Was she old?" came the question in another voice.

"Well, I don't think she really was, but she looked about 55 to 60. You never saw such a fright. Poor thing, I was sorry for her. It was just the colour of mustard." Then after a pause. "The man with her was awfully decent looking too; it's a wonder her didn't get her to put more ginger into it." I failed to follow the finishing phrase, but I thanked Providence for the kindly dark that hid my face from Muriel.

I turned to my Wife. She was sitting bolt upright, staring straight ahead.

"About time we were going, I think."

Without a word she stood up, disregarding my proffered assistance, and we made our way homeward. I had a wild desire to return and embrace those three merry damsels, indeed I would have done so but for the fear of  being misunderstood. As we walked on in silence, I mentally took the three of them to afternoon tea every day for a week, and fed them on ices and strawberries and cream, and all that could delight the heart of a maid.

As I sat on the edge of the bed later, smoking a final concessionary cigarette, the humour of the situation became irresistible.

Muriel standing in white before the dressing-table, turned on me with flashing eyes. I sobered myself rapidly. 'If you laugh again, you creature, I'll through this brush at you."

I wasn't afraid of her hitting me, but those silver toilet things dent so easily. "And look here," she went on, "If you dare to tell your sisters I won't dine there on Sunday."

It was most disappointing, but I forced myself to say that I had not the remotest intention of retailing the incident to anyone. As I watched her, I felt pleased to think that it was her own hair that Muriel was combing, not mine. Then she went oh to make a few remarks that made the feel more pleased  that those three merry maidens were not in her power for the moment; had they been I fear the brush would have been for other than its legitimate purpose.

One Saturday evening after we had washed up (like the rest of our friends we are maidless), I put the usual question to Muriel.

"No I can't come yet. I have a few things to do about the house. Don't wait for me."

All the morning in the office I had been hungering for the moment, and fled, like a boy released from school. It was only 7 o'clock, but the beach was thronged. For nearly an hour I splashed round in perfect enjoyment, then I made for the beach. Thirty yards from the edge I paused. There in the half light, coming straight towards me, superb and unafraid, was a figure semi-clad in an emerald green Canadian, banded with yellow.

"Holy Smoke!" I gasped us she came up with me, "Muriel!"

She fled past me. "Come on, boy, I feel as if there were a thousand eyes on me, and I want to hide in the water."

"Two thousand would be nearer the mark," I answered as we splashed off together.

Presently she turned to me, "What are you laughing at, you great stupid?"

"I was just thinking," I said, "how demoralising it all is. Just four days' hot weather, and where are your scruples?"

"In the water, here with Caesar," she answered laughing. "Anyhow I'd like to see that minx who pitied me the other night, I'd show her something."

"Indeed you would, my dear " I replied with meaning.

"Oh! not that way, you creature," she laughed as we dived.

And now with Kipling, and the late lamented Sir Anthony Gloster, I repeat, "Anyhow, women are queer."

_______________________

The Archbishop was a man of great learning...

3: What The Archbishop Knew

Australasian (Melbourne) 18 June 1921

TO BEGIN WITH, I have no desire to mislead anyone into thinking that I have ever been on speaking terms with an archbishop. I have little doubt that all archbishops are companionable beings in their lighter hours, but I have less doubt that an archiepiscopal atmosphere would prove too rarefied for my comfort. What Father Duret did not know about them, however, was not worth knowing.

Because the coach was late in starting it most naturally followed that we broke a tyre while still ten miles out from St. Hildas, and we arrived at that deplorable township, with the back axle supported by a sapling, just about an hour after the only train had left. The day was just the sort of day on which such things happen.

I crawled down from my perch on the box half-frozen, and made for the bar. Larry Burns, who knew me, pushed across the essentials of life without waiting for me to speak.  When I felt a little better he, went across to the letter-rack, and pushed across a non-essential in the form of a telegram.

"Guessed you would be on board. This came along yesterday," he observed.

I read the message, and Larry and the driver, who had arrived a bad second, listened to my remarks in respectful silence. Said Burns when I paused for breath, "That's one of the advantages of travel, a man does pick up some language. What is it? Only murder, or twins?"

"Pretty nearly as bad as both in a heap," I growled. "I must get down to Ringbar this afternoon. Fix me up with a feed, Larry, and then I must have a trap.

"The feed's ready, but as for the trap, well, I don't like your chance."

"You don't? And why not?'

"Races at Dovertown— everything with a wheel on it, or anything that would pull it, went down there this morning. I'd be there myself only someone bad to stay at home."

The obligation of getting to Ringbar that day, and the vision of a 16-mile tramp to do so, detonated my reserve language. "Hang it all, Larry, don't stand there grinning, don't you surest anything?"

"Nothing better than hoofing it— unless you see his reverence," he added as an afterthought.

I failed to see any advantage in spiritual consolation, and said so. Anyhow, what had his reverence to do with the case?

"Dunno; we always go to him when we're in a hole," answered Larry stolidly.

I shelved the question for the time being, and went to the big, empty, dining-room. When I came out half an hour later Larry met me.

"Come along here. I've been talking to his reverence."   Before I could enter a protest he opened a door and called out, "Here's the gent, Father," pushed me inside and closed the door after me.

There and then I discovered what Father Christmas does when he is not crawling down chimneys.

In m armchair was Father Christmas in the flesh; rosy cheeks, white hair and  whiskers, and twinkling grey eyes all complete. He had changed his red furred cloak to the outfit of a Roman Catholic cleric.

Only his dancing eyes betrayed his amusement at my embarrassment, as I tried to apologise for my intension. "Larry's methods ate a little crude," he interrupted, "but his intentions are excellent. I hear you are in a fix."

I pointed out that l had no earthly right to worry him with my misfortunes, but he insisted gently. So I explained that a man in Melbourne to whom l owed obedience had wired me that the important man would he in Ringbar next day in pursuit of a contract that we regarded as our own. Therefore I must be at Ringbar before him, even if I had to walk.

He nodded a complete understanding, staring into the fire. Then he looked at the drizzling rain.

"I think l can manage it for you," he said presently, and he stood up and reached for his overcoat. I entered a guilty protest. It was too much to ask any man to leave such a fire on such a day. He waved my protest aside with, "I knew I was too comfortable; it is better this way." He spoke and acted like man whose actions are seldom challenged.

We went out though the muddy, wet lanes, and found a cottage where a sour faced woman was feeding some draggled chickens.

Her face lit up when His Reverence spoke to her.  Yes, of course he could have the horse and trap but the horse was in the paddock, and would His  Reverence step inside while she caught it? But Father Duret would do nothing the kind.

The catching of that horse left the two of us pretty limp. With me the limpness was due as much to laughter as exertion. I found neither rain nor discomfort could damp that man's irrepressible humour.

We harnessed the animal to a spring-cart and drove back to the hotel. I put my baggage on board, and commenced to thank my rescuer, who was still seated in the cart holding the reins. He smiled down at me through his whiskers.

"My son, if I borrow a horse, I drive it. Not that l doubt that you would take every care of it, but it's a matter of principle. Come, get in."

I stood back; this was too much.

"But it's sixteen miles to Ringbar, I wailed, feeling an utter criminal.

"And sixteen miles back," he answered serenely, still smiling.

"But I can't. It's an outrage— I—" I broke off, looking helplessly at Larry, who stood by grinning.

"Better do what he tells you," said Larry, "we all do in the end."

It seemed there was nothing else for it; so I climbed into the cart again, thinking of painful ways in which to slay Burns.

Off we went, jolting down one of the worst roads in a State notorious for its roads. That drive lives in my memory. It should have stood out as the worst of many bad ones; but as a matter of fact, I began to laugh when I left St. Hildas and scarcely stopped till we reached Ringbar.

Once l said to him, "But why should you do this for a total stranger? Why, I am not even one of your creed?"

The grey eyes twinkled as he turned to me. Ah! my son. Then you're in for a bad time hereafter so I must do what I can for your comfort in this world."

When we reached Ringbar I begged him to be my guest for the night, but he shook his head. There was an early service on the following morning. He must go back. He stayed with me for dinner, rather on the horse's account than his own, and afterwards he rattled off into the darkness on the lonely drive home, cutting short with a jest every attempt of mine to thank him.

So far nothing about archbishops, I merely, wanted to introduce you to  Father Duret before touching on his ecclesiastical chief. When one meets a man like Father Duret one does not like miss a chance of seeing more of him. Whenever I went into that district afterwards I made a point of putting up for the night at St. Hildas, and always the old man welcomed me. Some of the evenings I spent at the presbytery were good to remember. He was always a fresh delight. In some of the world's doings his simplicity was childlike, while in the ways of men and their motives his knowledge was appalling. He had come from France over forty years before, and had been in the one parish ever since, And the hardest bitten coalminer in the district would have eaten out of his hand.

We were sitting opposite one another one night. The stem of his pipe was between his lips. Its great meerschaum bowl was resting on his lap, and at intervals he emitted fragrant smoke and fragments of his own inimitable philosophy. He liked a good listener, and I filled the part, merely dropping a question here and there, as he described it, to "prod his thinking works".

He had caught a look in my eye after some chance phrase he had used.

"What was it my son?" he queried.

"Nothing of moment, I answered, "it was your accent just now."

"French?" With raised eyebrows.

"No, Irish— undoubtedly Irish. I have not heard a trace of French yet," I answered.

He chuckled, a chuckle that rippled all over him. "Ah! that was not mine but Kitty Riley's, bless her ould soul. I'll never lose it so long as l live."

Then he told me how, when he had arrived in the country first, his knowledge of English was in inverse ratio to his zeal to learn, and Kitty Riley, his housekeeper, had laboured to impart instruction. He had told her to correct him whenever she heard him make a mistake. "Say pase, yer rivirince, say pase," she had said over, his shoulder in a stage whisper one night at dinner when he had asked a guest to have some more peas.

"It must have, been pretty, uphill work for a start under these conditions," I commented, for he had given me a few sidelights on his early troubles.

"It was, and—" he paused reflectively, "the worst, of it was that in my innocence I picked up some of the language I could well have done without."

"That was hard luck."

"You see," he explained, "this place was no far out of the way then that I had no one to guide me in my excursions into colloquial English," and he chuckled again, reminiscently. Then he spoke suddenly: "I'll tell you about it, and I've not told half a dozen people since it happened."

With his beard in his hands and between clouds of smoke, he went on:

"The archbishop used to have a dozen of us at a time on an annual visit. It was more of an honour than a pleasure," he explained, dryly, "for his Grace was a disciplinarian of no mean calibre. But he had one weakness. and that weakness was whist. Not solo or bridge, they were unknown, but the old-fashioned, long whist. And I'll tell you this, there are a number of unpleasant things I would have done rather than sit out a game with him. Whist wasn't his religion exactly, but it came a good second. He'd choose three men each night, and each night he played a rubber, and one night to my undoing he chose me. When we cut for partners I was against him, and that was a little satisfaction, for the man who was his partner had a sorry hour to go through. It was a great rubber we had that night. Game each, and one hand to get the odd trick, and his Grace was in a good humour almost. The game was so close that the other men stood round the table to see the finish. He was getting the fall of my lead, and every time that evening I had played a king he had an ace for it. It was the last hand, and almost the last lead, when I got his king of trumps with an ace, and as I threw down the card I said, almost shouted, in fact—" here he leaned forward and whispered in my ear words of lurid and amazing profanity.

"Scott! Father! You didn't! You couldn't!" I gasped, rocking with laughter and horror.

"But I could, my son, and did. Those very words I hurled at the Archbishop across his own table.  I sat back, and laughed till the tears came to my eyes, and he rumbled in sympathy."

"What happened?" I asked at last.

"Well, at first the group round the table was too stunned to do anything but gape. I felt some catastrophe had happened without knowing what. But remember they were all Irishmen except me, and suddenly one of them whooped, and the whole flock went off into fits of laughter, all except the Archbishop.  His face was like a marble image of retribution, and it sobered them up quickly enough when they got a glimpse of it.

"He glared round the group. 'You will all retire, I will speak of this further in the morning.' I rose to follow the others, but he snapped, 'You will remain,' so I sat down again.

"My son, one night I lay out in the scrub with a compound fracture of the leg, but I'd go through that again rather than that half hour with his Grace."

"He explained in detail the exact nature of my exclamations, and insisted on knowing where I had learned, them; whether I used them habitually, and whether I knew any more. The first two questions I could answer. The third― well, as I explained, any word used might be better left unsaid, through my ignorance of colloquial English. He took my point and thought it over. Then he commenced to comb out my vocabulary. To a listener unaware of the circumstances it must have been an astounding proceeding. Picture the big bare room. The Archbishop and I stood at the card table strewn with cards, and the candles between us, and using swear words at one another as if for a wager."

He paused, and his eyes twinkled across at me through the smoke.

"And my son, believe me or not, but the Archbishop knew a great deal more than I had ever heard then, or have heard since!"

_______________

The wheels of love turn slowly... or do they?

4: The Cog Wheels

Australasian (Melbourne), 26 June 1920

"OH! HOW LOVELY!" the mother exclaimed from her end of the breakfast table, over her paper. The father looked up from his eggs with a mild inquiry in his eyes. "It's Kitty Dumereque. She has a little daughter."

The man returned to his breakfast unmoved by the announcement, and there was no shadow of interest in his voice when he inquired who Kitty Dumereque might be. He only smiled at his wife's explanation that she and Kitty had been at school together, and she was sure he had heard her spoken of dozens of times. "Anyhow," his wife continued, "you never take any interest in things."

"Well," answered the husband, "it's pretty hard to work up instant enthusiasm over the new-born infant of a woman one's never seen. However," he went on soothingly, "if you like I'll say it's glorious news, and I'm sorry it's not twins."

"But Kitty was the prettiest girl in the school. She was married just about the time Tony was born," the wife went on as though to urge the two points as a claim oh his interest. Tony, aged five, hearing his name mentioned, looked up from his bowl of bread and milk, but, seeing the grownups were engaged in one of their totally uninteresting talks he returned to more important matters.

The husband laughed lightly. "Upon my word, old girl, those schoolmates of yours are the most patriotic crowd in the Commonwealth. I am prepared to swear and take oath, that scarcely a week passes without your announcing at breakfast that one or other of them is responsible for another citizen."

"But this was Kitty, she was the pret—"

"Right-oh!" he interrupted, "It should have been triplets."

"You horror!" and a table napkin fluttered across the table."

The man chuckled and handed the missile back. "That's a nice example to set your son. Assaulting his father in his presence, and telling most outrageous fibs at the same time."

"Fibs! What fibs?"

"Well she couldn't possible have been the prettiest girl in the school," he answered, smiling across at her meaningly.

"Oh you goose!" his wife smiled back. "But she was nevertheless."

The man stood up, and at the same instant the clock chimed the half-hour. "Great Scott! Late again!" he exclaimed, "bother your friends and their babies. I'll miss my train." A few minutes later he departed tempestuously, and his wife returned to her interrupted meal. Unheeded by both, two cogs in the mighty machine of fate had engaged for a moment, and the wheels had rolled on.

EIGHT years passed before the wheels swung round again. Before the train had well stopped, a boy of 13 or 14 sprang from a carriage on to the suburban platform, and hurried towards the wicket. He was wearing the cap and badge of one of the big public schools, and was, from the pace he made, in a desperate hurry. Just as he readied the wicket, a woman, holding a small girl by the hand, ran through and made for the nearest carriage. She turned the door handle, but the door had jammed, and the train was on the point of starting. In one jump the boy was at her side; with a wrench, and a heave of a pair of shoulders that already gave promise of a mighty growth, the door was opened. The woman turned to thank him as he closed it after her, and as she spoke the boy noticed for the moment what nice shiny eyes they were . that smiled on him. "Just like mum's," he thought. He raised his cap and turned away bent on some boy's business of desperate importance. Had anyone asked him a moment later what he thought of the little girl he had just seen, his probable reply would have been: "Oh, that kid? I didn't notice her."

None the Jess, true to the second, the machine had brought the cogs together at the appointed time.

A GREAT queen had reigned for 60 years, and at night the City blazed in her honour. At a point where turn streets intersected, a mighty torrent of people whirled and eddied. The torrent reached from wall to wall, and the volition of the human units that composed it was merged into that of the mass. In the thick of the press, two men, each a total stranger to the other, met face to face. The younger, amused at the involuntary encounter, smiled as he said cheerfully, "Pretty thick, is it not?"

The elder nodded. "Too thick to be pleasant. I'm trying to get out. I have my daughter here and she is getting crushed. "

The younger looked down, and bearing back ward with mighty strength, he made a shelter between them for the slight figure of the girl. Then raising his head above the crowd, he looked over the singing mass. When he turned again he said, "It looks clearer over at the south corner, shall we try for it? I'll be only too glad to help."

The elder man thanked him heartily, and they commenced their struggle. It took ten minutes to cover the sixty feet to their objective. The younger man only knew that some tender, helpless being was committed to his care, and was sheltering beneath his arms, and exulting in his strength, he used it to the full in protecting her from the crowding mass that surrounded them.

When they reached the corner of the building where the throng thinned out slightly, and their, progress was assured, he nodded a cheerful farewell to the elder man and in a moment was swallowed up again in the crowd.

An hour later father and daughter were again beneath their own roof.

"I'm  glad you didn't come with us, Kitty," said the man to his wife. "The crowd was terrific, and we got caught near the Town Hall. Faith! I think we'd be there yet if it hadn't been for a young giant who came to the rescue.

"How did you get on, Babs?" asked the mother, turning to the girl.

"I was nearly squeezed to pieces," answered the maid. "I think I would have been if Daddy's giant had not come to the rescue. Then he put out his arms over me, and I was saved.

"What was he like?" inquired the mother, with interest.

"Couldn't say, mummy.' His head was miles in the air, but his coat was rough and scratchy, and he smelt of nice cigars, so I think he must have been a nice man." She smothered a yawn daintily. "Anyhow, I'm going to bed now. Battling with the entire population of .the city has simply unravelled me. Good night, dears," and she departed.

THE MAN lay back in an armchair, book in hand, but many minutes had passed since his eyes had fallen on its pages. To him entered his sister, hatted and veiled, drawing on the second glove.

"Tony!" she exclaimed in dismay, "not dressed yet, and its nearly three."

"No reason to get excited, dear child," he answered calmly. "Fact, of the matter is that I'm. not going."

"But, you promised,'' she said, angrily.

"Provisionally. Don't forget, provisionally."

"Pooh!" she said derisively; "I suppose you've got hold of some horrible book."

He looked at the offending volume reflectively. "Well, that depends on the viewpoint; the book deals with skin diseases mainly, but, to tell the truth, I'm not very interested in it. I was just trying to decide when you er— exploded into the room, whether I should go after schnapper or down to the hospital." Now which would you recommend?"

She held out her wrist, disdaining to answer. "Here, fasten, that glove for me, please; and remember this, it will be many a long day before I go to the trouble of getting an invitation for you to meet the prettiest girl in Melbourne. There are men who would give their eyes for the chance,"

He laughed quietly as he fastened the glove. "Same old tale. I've fallen in too often. Does she pose, or gush? I think I'll make it schnapper."

"Do come, Tony," she said coaxingly, making a last attempt to break down his indifference.

"Schnapper, my dear," was the only answer the brother made.

"All right! You can go killing fishes or humans, whichever you please; it was silly of me to bother about such a superior person," and she fled wrathfully. The man looked after her thoughtfully.

"By Jove!" he said half aloud, "the little sister does get into a paddy easily—I wonder, who the girl is?" Then he strolled off to change for his fishing, and the matter dropped out of his mind.

THREE years passed before the unerring machine brought the cogs together again!

In the early morning of a perfect day a liner passed through the Heads and nosed her way up the channel. A man, lying indolently smoking in the stern of a small motor launch, watched her idly as she neared him, with the newly risen sun blazing on her white upper works, and turning the long lines of ports to dazzling gold.

As she drew abreast she came almost close enough for the man to distinguish the faces of the people on her decks. He followed her with his eyes without turning his body, and noticed with momentary interest that someone was waving to him, and apparently endeavouring to attract his attention. For a moment he felt inclined, to reply, but to get at his handkerchief he would have had to turn over. Why, he thought, should he inconvenience himself for a  total granger, who chose to flap at him from a passing steamer, so he watched the tiny white speck with indifferent eyes until its fluttering presently ceased.

On the steamer's deck a young woman was leaning over the rail, watching the passing shore with eyes alight with pleasure. She made such a picture that the Captain paused beside her on his way from' the bridge.

"You are an early riser this morning. Miss Dumereque."

"I've been up since daylight to see the first of home," Isn't it splendid?  Look, there is Sorrento. It's been a lovely trip, Captain; and everyone has been so kind, but I can't help being glad that I'm home again."

The skipper smiled at the radiant face.

"Do you know that if all my unmarried officers desert in Melbourne I'll hold you personally responsible. "

"They're dears, all of them, but it's hardly fair to bring such a charge against me."

"Oh," he laughed, "I didn't say it was done with malice aforethought. It's just the corollary of certain natural manifestations"

The girl laughed heartily. "I don't think it's quite nice to be called a natural manifestation, besides it's not true. I've just been waving my arms tired at the first of my countrymen I've seen in nearly three years, and he took not the slightest notice. So you see—" she paused.

"Yes," went on the skipper, "I do see, and had he seen with my eyes he would have upset his boat in an endeavour to wave something in reply. In fact, I think by now he would he swimming after us."

The dimples on the girl's cheeks melted into laughter. "Now that's enough to make me hope the skipper will desert with the crew."

''Retro me Satanus," he said, with twinkling eyes, and he passed on, followed by her exclamation of mock protest.

WITH a small tea table between, two young women were seated on the veranda of a house set some way back from the street, but close enough to it for them to be able to distinguish the casual passers-by. They were indulging in tea and gossip in proportions, in which the tea had a very insignificant part.

Suddenly the elder of the two paused with the words she was speaking cut short on her lips, and with more than passing interest in her eyes she watched the movements of a man who was approaching from the opposite side of the street. "What's the excitement, Biddy?' inquired the younger, watching her curiously.

"Oh, Babs! It s a man, and I think he's coming here."

"How provoking," said her friend, sitting up;  "just as we were so comfy, too. Shoo him off." Biddy made no answer at the moment, and both continued to watch the approaching figure. The man crossed the street leisurely, and walked to the gate, At the instant he reached it a hooting motor car stopped with a jerk in a cloud of dust beside the footpath, and its driver jumped out. The newcomer crossed the footpath in two strides.

"The very man I'm after,  Tony. I just called at your house, and missed you. Look here—" and here followed a technical, and, to a layman, unpleasant description of badly mangled humanity— "it's the chance of a lifetime," he wound up; "I want you to give a hand with the rays. Will you come?"

"Will a duck swim," answered Tony, eagerly. "Hop in," and he followed the other lightly into the car that sped away in an odour of petrol. The two on the verandah were too far off to hear a word of, what had passed between the two men.

"Saved!" exclaimed. Babs, as the car started. "Who is he?"

Biddy gave a little exclamation of disgust. "Now, isn't that too bad," she said; "he would have been inside the gate in another second. I did want you to meet him."

"I'll survive the loss. There are quite a few others in the world. Might I remind you that you haven't told me who or what he is."

"Oh, Tony!" answered Biddy, turning back to her tea. "I forgot you've been away so long you don't know him. Tony's a medicine man of sorts. He's a most fascinating devil to know, but he's shy of women. I'm one of the few he visits, and, my dear, if you knew him, you'd realise why I preen my plumage on that account."

"Perhaps he saw I was here, and bolted," said Babs.

Biddy shook her head. "The man in the car was Doctor Gray-Forbes, and I expect he has taken Tony to help him cut some poor creature into little bits. He and Tony get more inside knowledge of society than any other men in Melbourne."

Babs made a little face. "Horrid! Is he married?"

"Confirmed bachelor, Babs," answered Biddy. "He's got heaps of money, too. Cissie Farmer says he's got no heart— nothing but an automatic muscular organ in his chest, and a stony glare in his eye. What are you grinning at?"

Babs laughed lightly. "Rich bachelors have no right to existence, in that form at any rate; still, I was just wondering how Cissie made the discovery."

"She's not the only one who went exploring in that direction. But none of them ever returned. I'm married; so I suppose he thinks I'm safe!"

"I wonder— now I wonder if he's really immune. I'd like—" Babs paused and smiled introspectively.

Biddy caught the look in her eye. "Babs Dumereque," she cried, threatening her with a teaspoon, "you're a menace to the safety of the public. If I catch you trying any of your tricks on Tony I'll most certainly warn him beforehand."

"On! keep your precious Tony, I don't want him," Babs laughed.

Biddy looked rather seriously. "Do you know, Babs, I think girls like you ought to be handicapped. You should be compelled by law to wear curl papers in public and calico frocks, and never be allowed to talk to a nice man unless masked. It's not fair to the rest of us."

The lovely brown eyes sparkled mischievously.

"I can't help them falling down in battalions, dear. Perhaps you might persuade your Tony to take, say, an inch off my nose to even things up."

Meanwhile Tony, because the time was not yet come, was busied with other mysteries. But the wheels of tale were moving more swiftly now.

"TONY," said the father from the head of the table, "I consider you are shirking your just responsibilities.  At my age, I should be the one to stay at home, and you should be taking your womenkind out."

Tony only laughed. "Dad, you're younger than I am, and if you'll only be honest, you'll confess you actually like these kiddy doings. The customs and manners of the tribes in these parts don't appeal to me."

"Pooh!" from his sister, "Diogenes the Cynic lived in a tub."

Tony took not the slightest notice of the interruption. "I've been talking things over with Forbes, and. I've definitely decided on the European trip."

"Oh! When?" asked the mother eagerly.

"No use wasting time how. If I can get a passage tomorrow, I'll leave next week. You see, if the rest of you are going next year we can all meet somewhere." As he was speaking a maid brought a note, which she handed, to his father, who read it with an exclamation of annoyance.

"Tony, my boy, luck's against you. You'll have to take my place, tonight, after all. Carter finds he must leave in the morning, and I must see him before he goes. There is no chance of our getting our yabber over before midnight, either."

The sister laughed merrily. "Just time to dress, Tony, and put on a party face. What a lovely time we'll have! You look so delighted at the prospect of taking us out."

Tony rose and turned to leave the room. "Hang Carter, dad; but I suppose it can't be helped. We men do suffer for our womenkind, don't we?"

Two hours later he was standing alone at the door of a great ballroom watching the whirling crowd with absent eyes. He seldom danced, and he felt supremely bored, and his thoughts turned longingly to certain books he had brought home with him that day, and which were still unopened. He did not notice that his hostess was beside him until she spoke.

"Tony, you poor boy, you lock bored to death."

He attempted a protest, but she shook a finger at him, laughing.

"I know you too well, and too long, Tony. In your heart of heart you are calling me anything but blessed."

Again he protested, and again she laughed.

"I'm going to punish you, and I'm doing it deliberately. There's a girl just arrived late, and you're going to look after her for me, like a good boy. Discipline of the kind is good for you. Here she comes now."

He turned quickly, and the hostess murmured two names, and left them; He looked straight into the upturned eyes of the girl, and then for a space of time, for two people in it, the world stood still.

NEXT DAY at lunch, striving desperately to keep a casual tone in his voice, he said, "After all, I think I'll change my mind, and wait till next year to go to Europe with you people."

"Why, Tony," said the mother with amazement, "What has happened?  Last night you were so keen on leaving immediately."

"Oh!" he said carelessly; "it will be rather lonely by myself, so I may as well wait."

The mother looked at him in perplexity, but the sister stood up, pointing the finger of derision. "Diogenes, the Cynic, lived in a tub. I know! I know! I counted. Four times, and you sat out as well. Habet! Habet! Thumbs down!" and she suited the action to the word.

He stood up with dignity. "My dear child, what you require is a tonic, and complete rest. I've always had my suspicions about your mental balance," and before she could retort he left the room. She followed tumultuously, while the parents, used to the family outbreaks, looked, on bewildered, but without comment.

Presently the sister returned, looking flushed, but happy.

"The wretch," she exclaimed, "He locked his door, and when I went round to the window to commiserate with him he pulled down the blind."

"May I be permitted to inquire," asked the father mildly, "the cause of this unseemly riot?"

The girl laughed. "He lonely! Why, its Babs Dumereque. He met her last night. All the men are mad over her." Then, after a pause. "Still, old Tony's got more sense than I thought he had."

SIX MONTHS later they were standing together watching the ferry lights weaving networks of jewels across the moonlit waters of the harbour.

"Just we two together, Tony, and to think that six months ago neither of us had ever heard of the existence of the other."

He held her closer. "Had my father had not been prevented from going to the dance that night we would never have met."

Then Fate, who sometimes listens to the prattle of mortals, smiled— almost.

_______________________

Some say black cats are good luck. Mr Pinceman begs to differ...

5: A Black Cat For Luck

Australasian (Melbourne) 17 December 1921

MR. Albert Pinceman was perfectly happy. It was Saturday afternoon, and the afternoon was fine, and to make his happiness complete Mrs. Pinceman had gone to the pictures. He was sitting on his back doorstep overlooking his back garden. The front, he knew, was a picture that arrested the steps of every passerby. There were a few ragged fringes round his lawns at the back that he purposed to remedy, and as he sat with his pipe between his teeth he worked industriously at putting a razor edge on a pair of sheep shears.

He was a metal engraver, not only by trade, but by instinct, and the long sensitive fingers, as delicate as a woman's, that held the stone, carried out their office almost of their own accord. Nature, who had made Pinceman a superb craftsman, had been niggardly in the matter of brains, but generous in the endowment of his body. Given the proper costume, he would have passed as one of Ouida's guardsmen, both physically and intellectually.

He was not a vain man, and had long ago found that the same good looks that had won him his wife were the cause of that lady's ceaseless jealousy and their almost ceaseless domestic friction. Indeed, Albert sometimes wished he were as insignificant in appearance as that scrubby little animal Hicks, who lived next door, and whose wife, according to Lydia, spent her time in endeavouring to capture Albert's affections.

Neither Mrs. Hicks nor Lydia perceived how remote was the prospect of success in such a venture, for, from the sounds that occasionally came across the fence, Pinceman knew that Hicks had even a worse time than he had himself, which was some consolation.

Presently Pinceman tested the edges of the shears on his thumb nail, and was satisfied. He picked up a sack that lay beside him, and strolled across his garden. Beside one bed he stopped, and scowling angrily breathed a few such words as are written on a slip of paper and banded up for the inspection of virtuous J.P.'s. The tomato plants which he had cherished through a sickly infancy to a vigorous youth had been infamously treated. Four were completely out of the earth, and lay wilting in the sun. No need to ask the culprit s name; it was that blanked cat, Diddums.

Lydia owned Diddums, a black she-cat, for luck, and Diddums owned the house. It was Diddums who was responsible for the frieze of toms of all sizes and colours that decorated the back fence all day and made night one long classical concert, and he loathed Diddums from the innermost recesses of his soul. He replaced the plants, gloomily, wondering whether they would survive the outrage, and cursing the criminal. Then he turned to his lawns.

Squatting on the bag he had brought with him, Pinceman trimmed the edges of the lawns with the same care as a barber would bestow upon a head of hair. As he worked, his irritation died down, and peace returned. For half an hour there was no other sound in the garden save the grating ring of the shears.

Then he happened to look up, and contentment vanished. Thirty feet away, from him on the tomato-bed, he saw Diddums, end Diddums was gardening on her own account. Albert sat up and yelled, "Shoo!" Diddums remained calm, and went on with her work. He looked round for something to throw; but his garden was bare of stick or stone.

Then, in his anger, he hurled the shears.

He had no intention of hurting the brute; he merely wished to frighten her; but he reckoned without his hands: those hands that had been trained for a lifetime to and met the commands of his brain with unerring accuracy. The twin blades whirled flashing through the air. From the corner of her eye Diddums saw them coming, and stretched her neck for flight. Too late! Even as she moved her fate was upon her; a point of the shears drove down on either side of her slim neck, and deep into the ground.

Pinceman sat paralysed at the success of his endeavour. Then he breathed one word: "Gosh!" and rose to his feet.

The guillotine could not have severed the head more completely or neatly. On one side lay the sleek black body, scarcely twitching, and on the other the small black head. Seldom had Albert thought more quickly than he did then. Diddums was deceased; that was one outstanding fact. Another was that the means of her decease must remain for ever unknown to Lydia. She had enough ammunition for nagging already without his providing such a tit-bit as the murder of Diddums.

"A black cat for luck" murmured Pinceman, looking down on his handiwork, "I wonder whose luck, mine or Lydia's or Diddums'?" Then he made a swift resolution to bury his victim deeply, and profess not only ignorance of her whereabouts, but intense sympathy for her loss.

Swiftly he went to his tool shed, glancing as he did towards the attic in the window of Hicks's house, where Mrs. Hicks sometimes sat working in the afternoon. He knew the sensations of a murderer and feared a witness. He took a spade and returned to the scene of his crime. As he turned the comer of the shed, he stood wide eyed and speechless.

Reclining on the grass beside the bed was a woman.

That in itself was sufficient to stagger Mr. Pinceman, but as his slow brain took in the details of her appearance his eyes fairly goggled with amazement. She was young, not more than 20, and beautiful.

Yes she was beautiful enough to make Albert feel almost dizzy. She was more beautiful than her costume was scandalous in the eyes of the owner of Namecnip Lodge. He wondered vaguely if mortal woman could possess such large and melting brown― no,  black, eyes, as gazed up at him, or how could it be possible that the owner of such eyes could possess such a tiny scarlet flower for a mouth. Her hair (there were stormcloud masses of it) was loosely bound with a blazing band of jewels, pendants of which fell across her forehead. About her neck was a thin band of rubies that looked almost like a streak of blood. The roundness of her bosom was tightly confined in pink gauze thickly never with flashing gems. Below this was a hiatus; her costume petered out completely, until it recommenced with a heavy rose and gold sash about her slim waist and hips, and instead of skirts she wore trousers of pink . gauze that were banded closely at her ankles. On the tiny, the absurdly tiny feet, were dainty slippers with curled up toes. Across her waist was a thin gold chain, from which hung a small jewelled knife.

Taken all in all, she was not the lady that the ordinary suburban householder would, expect to find in his back garden on a fine Saturday afternoon.

For a long minute he stood gazing at her, while the vision smiled up at him unabashed. Then the spade dropped from his hand, and with dragging feet he moved towards her trying to find words. He paused beside her. The only speech he could find blurted out: ''Who the dickens are you?"

The answer came unhesitatingly: "I am Miriam, daughter of Ben Hafiz Ben Sadi. Do you not remember?"

To Albert the only thing mundane that resembled her voice waas iced beer being poured into a crystal goblet on a hot day. But he steeled, his heart, and thought of Lydia.

"Are you?" he said, shortly. "Well, all I can say is, it's a pity. Ben doesn't look after you better. Don't you know you could be had up for coming out in those togs? You get back to your theatre quick and lively."

The girl laughed lightly, and sat up supporting herself impudently with both hands on the grass behind her. "Don't you really remember?"

"Don't be a fool," he answered irritably, "as though a man who had met you once would forget you.".

She looked up at him, still smiling mischievously. "And yet, Selim, jeweller to my lord the King Solomon, you once swore under the orange-trees that death itself could not make you forget. Ah, you men! You men!"

The sign and the glance wade him quiver to his fingertips. The two were so absorbed that" neither heard the gasp of astonishment from the attic of the house of Hicks, whence its overlady had obtained her first amazed view of the scene below.

The delicate flattery of the glance was turned aside by a thought of Lydia. "Now, dinkum!" said Mr. Pinceman. "What are you trying to come at? Who are you?"

"Forgotten! Forgotten!" she sighed, "That I will tell. Our great lord King Solomon, the wisest of men, had 700 wives, and 300 of us, and I was his favourite."

The much married Pinceman interrupted. "The wisest of men― seven hun― Strewth! Must have been balmy as a bandicoot."

The girl went on without noticing the interjection, just altering her attitude to clasp her hands across her knees, and Albert unconsciously sank beside her on the grass, to the edification of Mrs. Hicks, who now had an uninterrupted view of the scene.

"We were lovers, you and I, Selim, before they took me to the palace, and you swore that you would never forget, but you never heard what happened to me."

He looked at her helplessly. "All right, have it your own war. Though mind, I'll swear I never laid eyes on you before."

She shook her head. "I was the favourite, beloved of our lord the king. He would have made me his wife also, but those others poisoned his mind with lies against me; horrible lies, and he believed, but would have pardoned me, but those wives urged and begged him night and day to punish me "

"Excuse me, Miss," broke in Pinceman, "How many wives did you say?"

"Seven hundred," she answered, "and the King yielded."

Mr. Pinceman nodded with complete understanding. "My oath he would!" he muttered.

"And Selim―" ("Name's Albert, please Miss, if you don't mind," he interrupted)― "Can you guess the punishment?"

Pinceman shook his head.

"I was transformed into a black cat by the magic of the King, who laid it upon me that I could never regain my human form until two blades on the one hilt struck off my head at a single blow."

Had anyone mentioned transmigration in the hearing of Mr. Pinceman, he would have wondered, for which race it had been entered. A wiser head might have been pardoned for doubting the sanity of his visitor, and Albert doubted frankly.

"Look here miss," he said sharply, "I don't know where you come from, but you're clean batty in the nut. You go home like a good girl.''

For answer a hand fluttered like a while jewelled moth to his sleeve. "Ah! Selim, can you not understand? I was Diddums, and you have broken the spell. You are my deliverer, and I still love you."

For the first time since he had seen the girl he remembered the tragedy, and looked at the spot where the body of his victim lay. The shears were still sticking in the ground, but the remains had vanished.

"Somebody's pinched my dead cat!" he gasped; then remembering that a dead cat was not a negotiable security, he turned to stare at the girl.

"Yes, Selim, my beloved," she went on, and again the soft cooing voice brought the vision of iced beer to Alberts mind, "Your hand has freed me, and you and I will live together for ever."

Consternation fell on the man at this announcement.

"Here!" he said aghast, "I'm married; what about my missus?"

She pouted deliciously. "Phoo! That fat cow, Selim! I can poison her. I'm  quite good at poisoning. I learned from my lord the King."'

The amazing suggestion made Albert overlook the disparaging description of his wife.

"Cripes!" he gasped, "You're a bit hot, ain't you miss? Nice sort of bird that King must have been." Gradually it had filtered into his mind that there might be truth in the girl's statements.

"Oh, well," said his visitor airily, "You can keep her if you wish. I don't mind. Marry me and she will be our slave."

Said Mr Pinceman, more to himself than her, "A bonzer time I'll have, I don't think."

Up in the attic Mrs. Hicks was straining her senses to a point that threatened serious consequences in her endeavour to catch the words of the murmuring voices. Down in the yard she could see Hicks with his eye glued to a hole in the palings.

"Now look here, my girl--"

"Miriam," she corrected softly

"All right, Miriam if you like. How long ago do you think this King business happened?"

"Three thousand years ago, my Selim. Three thousand years have I lived waiting for release."

"Rats!" said  Mr. Pinceman  indignantly. "Why, Lydia got you as a kitten not two years ago from her sister Maggie. Cats have nine lives, but you can't kid me they live 3,000 years."

She nodded her head. "That was the worst of my punishment. Nearly 2000 times have I been born a cat. Over 700 times I been drowned as a kitten. I  know, Selim, girl cats are not loved by human beings. And all this time I waited for the blow from a double-bladed hilt, and now―" She paused and looked up into his eyes.

Mr. Pinceman felt his pulses beat quicker she did so, but thought of Lydia saved him. He pulled himself together with an effort, and drew away. There was a shade of vexation in the girl's eyes for a moment. Then she smiled at him again.

"Can you not remember, Selim?"

"No!" he said, shortly. "I'm blowed if I can. Just remember I'm married  and I don't hold with carrying on with girls."

"Once," she said, softly, "you loved to see me dance. You said I was like a moonbeam glancing on a rippling stream of foam-flecked golden wine of Persia."

Albert looked at her in amazement.

"Did I ever say that, miss?'' he inquired incredulously.

"Aye," she answered, ''that and more."

"Then," he said, with deep conviction, "I must have been shickered."

She shook her head and laughed.

"Yet Selim, your tongue was very ready with sweet soft words in those days. But watch, even now I may be able to waken the old memories."

She sprang to her feet and with a wriggle of her ankles, discarded the pink slippers and stood balanced lightly before him with outstretched arms.  Glancing at her tiny white feet Albert grew hot all over at an almost irresistible desire to tell her that they looked like orange blossoms dropped upon the sward. Never before had such ideas entered his head.

With half-closed eyes Miriam commenced to sway her body from the hips. Now there are some Oriental dances that may be performed before the most censorious of Occidentals without giving cause for uneasiness, and then again there are others. And the performance of Miriam, daughter of Hafiz Ben Sadi, in the back garden of Mr Pinceman in broad daylight was one of the others.

Albert sat glued to the grass. Not for a bank full of money could he have moved. But the dance had an entirely contrary effect on the shocked Mrs. Hicks. It stung her into activity. Safety first, however, was her motto, and who could blame her? Downstairs she fled, and swiftly and silently her hands pounced on the heel of Mr. Hicks, who still bent with protruding eye at the crack in the fence.

"Not a sound," she hissed, and led him indoors.

"In there, and stay there," she said as she. pushed him into the sitting-room and turned the key in the door. Then she fled to the grocers shop at the corner, where there was a public telephone. She sent her message over the wires, and sped homeward. Even before she reached her gate on the screen of a suburban picture theatre there flashed a message. "Mrs. Pinceman―  Honeysuckle street―Wanted home urgently. Take a cab."

MRS. HICKS, on arriving home, was breathless with exertion and indignation, and there was Hicks back at the palings again. He had escaped through the window. The brute! Again she descended on him like a hissing fury, and sat him a far corner of the attic, while she returned to her post.

All her strict, hopelessly commonplace training was in arms at what she saw. She breathed words like "Hussy" and "Shameless minx," and occasionally turned to call Hicks a low brute, over her shoulder and all the time she listened for the sound of wheels.  But if a thunderbolt had fallen beside Pinceman at the moment it would have passed unheeded, for he was witnessing a display of temptation that had turned a much wiser head than his.

He had risen to his feet, when or how he had no notion. Gradually the swaying figure drew closer to him The strange perfume of her hair wakened memories undreamed of. His senses reeled before the out-stretched arms and the appealing, white-jewelled hands.

Before he knew it Miriam was nestling closely to him, and his arms were about her slim body. Resistlessly his head bent and his lips hovered over the red parted lips of the girl.

Then the storm smote him. One mighty avenging hand reached his ear, and another wrenched at the collar of his shirt and drew him backward as he released the girl.

"You devil!" his wife almost shrieked. "You dastardly beast! In your own home, no sooner than my back is turned. Who is this vile creature?"

The two women glared furiously at each other. Miriam's hand fell on the hilt of her knife. Albert was at no time ready-witted, and the magnitude of the disaster scattered his senses to the four winds. He just gaped.

"Who is she?" snorted Lydia.

Pinceman found his voice, A really satisfactory lie was out of the question, so he told the truth. "She's the cat, Liddy."

The disengaged hand landed swiftly on his car. "Cat! Cat! Of course she's a cat, as if I couldn't see that. What's her name?"

"Diddums!" answered the worm feebly.

Here Miriam intervened. "He speaks the truth, you fat cow! By chance he sIew your cat, and I am his reward. Peace, fool! For henceforth he is mine."

The mighty bosom of Mrs. Pinceman heaved like a blacksmiths' bellows, and her face grew purple.

"Fat cow!'' she gasped. "Yours!" She released her husband and made one stride towards the girl,

Albert threw an arm round her and checked her momentum with an effort.

"Don't listen to her, Liddy, she's mad!  I never saw her till an hour ago. I'll swear it."

Again the wrath of the outraged woman fell on him. '"So, for an undressed hussy like that, you forget me in an hour!"

Here a shriek from the girl cut into her speech.

"My hour is passing. My lord the King gave me but an hour to win a kiss from the man who released me, or die a cat! Selim―" she flung herself upon him, and her arms about his neck."Selim, my beloved, kiss me. Kiss me but once―"

Albert wrenched the arms from around his neck.

"Be blowed if I do," he said simply.

Speech failed Lydia, but her feelings found  vent in action, and she landed one full-handed slap just where she thought it would have the greatest moral effect. The girl spun around, and a knife flashed in her hand.

"I go!" she hissed, "I go; but I take you to Gehenna with me!"

Mrs Pinceman's courage failed before the fury in the eyes, and she fled.

Up in the attic Mrs. Hicks had watched with keen enjoyment: but this new  development spurred her into action, and again she fled to the grocer's shop, and this time her message sent a constable flying to his motorcycle.

Mrs. Pinceman screamed. Miriam darted after her, but Albert threw himself across her track. To dodge him the girl ran across the tomato-bed, and as she did so the shears, still sticking upright, caught her foot. She tumbled― fell― and Albert Pinceman stood staring at the ground. There was no jewelled fury there, but the body of Diddums, still twitching slightly as it lay.

Mrs. Pinceman had locked herself in the woodshed.

An intense relief filled the soul of Albert.

"Liddy! Liddy!" he called. "It's all right, she's gone."

The door of the shed opened, and the white face his wife peered out.

HAIF AN HOUR later a constable made a report at the station to the sergeant.

"Nothing doing, " he said, hanging up his helmet and laughing. "Chap named Pinkhman or something, killed his wife's cat, and when I got up there  she'd hauled about three handfuls of hair out of the poor devil. I had to pull her off, or she'd have got it all.  Seems he'd been cuddling a chorus girl as well. I couldn't get the hang of it altogether. No charge, anyway. Sorry for him."

The sergeant nodded sympathetically. He too, had a Lydia.

''Dashed unlucky to kill a cat!"

_______________

Sometimes accuracy is everything...

6: Her One Aim In Life.

Australasian (Melbourne) 28 July 1923

SHE HAD seated herself on the arm of his chair; one bare arm was round his neck, and one soft hand had pushed his head back so that his eyes could not avoid hers even had they so wished; Jim Ben ton, who still loved his wife desperately, although they had been married a whole month, found the position becoming increasingly untenable. It would hare been hard enough to refuse Betty anything she asked in ordinary circumstances, but to have to deny Betty her heart's desire— with Betty's eyes, with a slight mist of tears in them, looking down into his— was, as Jim thought, "the very devil." Still, because he did love her, he steeled his heart and tried to look inflexible.

"Jimmy," she said mournfully, "I believe you've stopped loving me."

Jim tried to draw her to his knees, but she resisted stubbornly. "I don't sit on the knees of a man who doesn't love me, even if he is my husband."

Benton , laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "Aren't you satisfied with being on committees and things, without going on the platform to be heckled by any rotter in the crowd who likes to at tend a meeting?"

"That's just why I want to do it," she put in defiantly.

"Well, all I've to say is that it's a queer perversion of taste."

"Oh, Jim, won't you see it from my point of view? The easy things are not worth doing. It's the difficulties that appeal to me. I want to be one of the leaders, not one of the mob." And she threw out one small baud in appeal.

Benton dropped one arm over the back of his chair, and stared at the half-written page on the table before him for a moment. "Jove! Betty, if I had my way, I'd close the universities against women. Here you are a B.A., and your head full of fantastic theories that wouldn't run two pennyweights to the 100 tons for practical application."

She bridled. "Oh, yes, close the universities to women, by all means, my lord the Sultan."

"All right; Sultan if you like, Betty; but I hear what other men think of the woman politician, and if the newspapers are not kind they're just."

She went on without heeding his interruption. "Any way, if women couldn't do better than men, they couldn't make a worse hash of government. Where have we ever failed when we had the chance? Look at "

"Oh, yes, I know," he broke in; "I've heard the whole list before, from Boadicea and Joan of Arc down to Ella Wheeler Wilcox and the Pankhursts."

The frown vanished from her forehead for a moment as she laughed. "Oh, you bear! It's nothing but masculine jealousy. But it's no use, Jim; we've got to stand with you as equals in everything." The hobby-horse had the bit between its teeth now. "We're your equals in science now. Look at Madame Curie. We have broken into law and medicine, and we'll lead you there in the end. Aren't women going more and more into business every day?"

"Humph!" he growled. "They are. I've had four typists in three months, and I couldn't say whether their ideas of business or their spelling were the more remarkable."

She waved his words away. "Phoo! the ruck's the same whether they're men or women. I mean in the big things. Jim, if we set our minds to it, there's nothing on earth we can't do as well as or better than men. Nothing! Nothing! Look!" she said, pointing to the attaché case on the table at his hand, "there's a case in point. I'll wager that if you had had a woman accountant with an ounce of brains that blunder would never have occurred."

He looked at the case sourly. "That, my dear girl, is the gist of what I intend to tell the usually impeccable Mr. Percy Lincoln at a quarter past nine in my office in the morning. I'll admit that drawing nearly £300 too much for the wages at the mine for me to bring home again is over the odds. Still, accidents will happen."

"Any excuse so long as it's a man who makes the mistake."

"Lincoln will have to find a much better one, I can assure you that." He picked up his pen.

"You re not going on with that tonight, Jim? It's after eleven."

"Must," he said, bending over the table.

"Get off to bed, there's a dear girl— I'm absolutely, dog-tired— up till two this morning, and seven hours in the car today. Still the meeting's at 10 am, and I must have the report ready for the board."

"Bother the board! Your rest's more important than that wretched report," she said, standing up.

He smiled at her. "Betty, one half of you—no, one quarter of you—is B.A." and Women's Rational League, but the rest, praise be, is good, sound, illogical woman. Trot off to bed."

Standing beside him she pressed her lips to his hair. "May I, Jimmy?"

He reached up and took the hand that rested on his shoulder. "Please yourself, Betty. It's unfashionable for a man to give orders to his wife, these days, and besides," he went on with a shake of his head, "it is rather a waste of good orders" .

"I'll make you very proud of me in the end, Jim," she said, bending over him tenderly.

"I'm all that now, chick," he said, "still, if it makes you happy—"

"Good night, you dear. Shall I close the window before I go?"

He looked up at the French window opened on to the veranda. "No, I'll lock up when I have finished. Let me have all the air I can. It will keep me from going to sleep."

Long after she had vanished through the curtains that fell across the doorway behind, he stared before him musing as a million million others have done over the eternal feminine riddle.

BETTY WENT to her room. Her fingers rested for a moment on the switch of electric light, but the splash of moonlight across the floor drew her irresistibly. She crossed over, and settling herself the window seat sat looking out into the garden. The night could justly have been described as perfect— still and cool after a hot day, with a cloudless sky and a full moon. The silence was unbroken except, for the occasional distant hoot of a honking motor-car.

In spite of her desire to lead nations, Betty, because she was young, and because she loved her obstinate husband, let herself drift away in the romance of the moonlight. Dreaming dreams, she  smiled to herself, thinking other interview with Jim. He was a perfect dear, and there was not another man in the world to equal him (that was a discovery of her own that would startle the world some day), but in some things he was "horribly"  (her adverb) conservative. She wouldn't let the words "old fashioned" shape themselves in her mind in connection with Jim. Still she was not content with the result of her petition. True, Jim had consented; but unwillingly. Not because he had thought it right for her to go on the platform, but because her womanhood had lured it from his manhood.

Her eyebrows came together slightly, and she gave a little sigh. He would go on thinking all the time she was wrong. That was what she wanted to overcome, that "spoiled child" idea. She wanted a consent given not only enthusiastically, but proudly. He had keen proud enough of her swimming and  tennis and riding. She wanted to show him that, in spite of her sex, she was equal to any emergency. She did not want to be considered something to coddle, but Jim's equal in everything as well as his wife. She felt there would be no pleasure in using the consent as it had been won, but only if it were given ungrudgingly.

How? That was the question she sat turning over in her mind. How convince Jim?

Time had ceased to exist for Betty.  The magic of the moon held her. Truly she saw the garden in its light, but as truly she was unconscious of its existence, had drifted into another world where she had triumphed over every obstacle; to another world where women ruled and were led by a Betty Benton, who was Prime Minister of Australia, and the moon light made it seem quite feasible.

Then she came back to life and found herself standing staring into the night, with one hand pressed to a heart that stilled for a moment, then bounded like a racing engine. She had seen the figure of a man detach itself from some bushes, and run, bent low, towards the house.

In a moment she found herself on her feet.

Two thoughts' rushed to her mind—Jim, and the money. Then came a discovery, a splendid discovery, she was not frightened. Excited, yes— the leaping heart told that, but there was no trace of fear. Betty moved to the door, but, swiftly as she moved, another thought had time to shape itself. Here was her chance. Dare she take it?

She paused. There was no irresolution, no hesitation. Her thoughts came clearly and in proper sequence. She knew there was no weapon in the house, but she must have one of some kind.

Without a sound she crossed the room again to the mantelpiece. So sure were her movements that her outstretched hand fell on what it sought in the darkness at first attempt, and her fingers closed round the piece of silver-lead ore which she knew Jim had left there. It was small enough to fit her hand easily yet it weighed nearly two pounds. The weight of it brought her comfort. With that in her hand, she felt she was ready to face anything.

Then she turned and glided into the passage. She had no plan of action. Something rose in her and told her that she would be ready to meet any contingency as soon as it arose. Holding her skirts closely in her left hand to hide the sound of her movements, she made her way swiftly to the front of the house. The passage was in darkness, except for the thin streak of yellow light that lay across the polished floor, from between the curtains of Jim's  study door. She stooped quickly and drew off her slippers, so that the sound would not betray her when she left the rugs, and a moment later gained the curtains and peered between them into the room.

The tableau before her eyes was one that stamped itself into her brain with photographic detail. Jim was still at his table, but his head was lying against the padded back of his chair, and his body was relaxed in sleep.

Beside him the attaché case lay open. Half hidden by a blue print, but terribly conspicuous, she could see the roll of notes, with its rubber band. On top of the blue print lay Jim's collar and tie that he had discarded for the sake of comfort. She even noticed the tiny star of light reflected from the gold band of the fountain pen that lay on the unfinished report.

But it was the other occupant of the room that fascinated her. He was quite unlike her conception of a criminal— a tall, slight figure, with clearcut features. He was not badly dressed, and it was only for a second, when he raised his eyes from her husband, that she realised the relentless cruelty in them. He was within two feet of Jim's chair, and directly behind it, and not fear, but a storm of anger, rose in Betty's heart when she saw the short thick baton the right hand held. He had bent forward, with his left hand outstretched, to the open case. Caution fled. With one swift sweep of her hand, Betty dashed the curtains aside, and stepped into the room.

At the ring and rattle of her entrance, the intruder straightened up, staring at her, and at the same instant Jim's eyes opened on her with mild surprise and  question at the tense expression on her face. What followed was not matter of seconds, but fractions of seconds.

"Jim!" she gasped. Then— "You brute! You unspeakable brute!" As she spoke she stepped forward and hurled her weighty weapon with all the strength of her arm at the burglars head.

The direction was splendid; but, alas! the elevation was a woman's, and that flying chunk of metal took Jim Benton like a shell fragment, and thudded fairly on the third button of his waistcoat, and Jim's eyes closed again to the sound of grunts, but not in sleep. By the time he had recovered himself and partially revived a hysterical wife, a burglar whose hip pocket bulged with loot, was leaning against a fence more than half a mile away, shaking with unrighteous but heartfelt mirth.

Now, if there be a moral to this parable, dearly beloved sisters, it may be in that your aim, although directed by the best intentions, is not always as straight as you think it may be.

______________

Kean, the intrepid world adventurer, meets his Waterloo...

7: When Kean Funked.

Australasian (Melbourne) 15 March 1924

BECAUSE Holcroft spent most of his time on a sofa, his remarkable circle of friends used his smoking-room as a club. Two or three at least would drop in every evening, and sometimes as many as a dozen would be spread out in Holcroft's easy chairs, exchanging anecdotes of the unconventional domestic policies of little-known nations, and hair-raising stories of the underworld of international diplomacy.

They told their yarns in slow even voices, and with little emphasis or adornment, and what was more amazing than the stories themselves was that they were all true.

In Holcroft's smoking-room were discussed the lives and deeds of international celebrities in detail that would never appear in any obituary notice or biography. There I heard the true story of the now almost forgotten Dogger Bank incident, from one who had taken part in it. I heard the rotund, innocent Macrae tell without a smile on his face why certain great oil concessions were cancelled, and his part in the matter, to an audience that rocked with mirth.

Most of Holcroft's friends were men who had done the actual work, taking their lives in their hands, for which statesmen at home and in Europe had received the credit and rewards. They had gone alone into strange places, and, escaping by miracles themselves, had seen men die horribly. All ordinary emotions seemed to have burnt out of them. To them, the amazing was commonplace, and what would stir a normal man to the depths left them unmoved and cold.

It followed, naturally that they viewed life from unusual angles. Because they had lived and worked in outlandish places and among savage men, they were strangely "woman-shy." Their ideas of woman dated back to the early nineties, and she of the third decade of this century was something beyond their comprehension, Rossiter, who had lived five years in Moscow with a price on his head, and thought little of it, was stricken dumb one day when I introduced him to Kitty Carew, and apparently suffered agonies until he excused himself awkwardly and fled. Kitty was certainly rather overpowering, but few men wished to fly from her presence; indeed the effect of her personality was usually the reverse.

One night at Holcroft's I heard Kean raging against the progress of science and all its works, and the lunacy of a French confrere who had introduced it into their peculiar brand of diplomacy. The incident concerned the involved policies of some native state near Chitral, and the iniquities of one Nazim El-Mulk, its ruler, whom, for some reason, both England and France wished to remove from his throne during the war. In that part of the world, it appeared from Kean, a natural death was so unusual as to excite comment, assassination was a dignified profession, and treachery was regarded as a virtue (especially if successful).

Kean's idea of handling the situation was to finance a rather less blackguardly aspirant to the throne to get rid of Nazim El-Mulk by one of the orthodox local revolutionary methods. However, the Frenchman had brought with him a gaudy brass clock, the base of which was filled with high explosives. This he insisted on presenting to the simple ruler, who accepted it with childish gratitude.

"I knew he'd make a mess of things, and, by Jove! he did," said Kean, and went on to explain how one of El-Mulk's lady-loves saw the clock immediately, and persuaded him to give it to her. That night, instead of blowing Nazim El-Mulk to Jehennum, his harem and its inhabitants were spread thin over about five acres of ground by French science, and the infuriated monarch chased the two of them into Siberia, from where they had a little Hades of a time in making their way to Manchuria and comparative safety. I sympathised with Kean's conservatism, and agreed solemnly that old and tried methods were the best. It would scarcely have been safe to express any other opinion, for Kean saw nothing abnormal in the incident beyond his confrere's departure from established custom.

The emotion known as fear was the least likely to affect any of them. They had seen others die and a violent-death as a termination of their work was always at their elbow while the work lasted. Now it was all over and; they had come here; a little coterie, living on half pay or on what they had saved during their hectic careers, to settle down and dwell in peace-- a crew with chilled steel nerves, and granite courage. Being a class apart, they lived apart, and mixed only with their kind.

As a friend of Holcroft's I had been accepted by them as part of the scheme of things, and gradually they came to discuss subjects before me where they would have been dumb in the presence of a stranger.

One night I had pulled my chair up to Holcroft's sofa, and was yarning quietly with him while half a dozen of the others talked spasmodically and filled the room with thick blue clouds of tobacco smoke. The reason why Holcroft stuck to his sofa was that his legs were in New Guinea. In an interval of other work he had undertaken to collect bugs and butterflies for one of the Rothschilds, and a raiding party of natives, also collectors of a kind, had added Holcroft to their bag. He was not killed immediately, he explained, because  they wanted him to keep "fresh," which he would not have done after death, very long, in that climate. But so that he should not escape they fractured both his legs with clubs. This necessitated their carrying him, of course, so they suspended him by wrists and ankles from a bamboo pole which they carried over their shoulders. When he talks about the episode at all, he will say that he was not often conscious during the two days he was being carried to his culinary destination, but he I could still remember every resting-place, for his bearers used to throw the pole from their shoulders as though he had been a bunch of bananas.

Holcroft is somewhat of a Germanophile, because it was a survey party of Germans who fell in with his captors, and with true Teutonic thoroughness shot them down to the last man. "Now we," he would say, "would have let them all escape rather than plug one who was innocent, while the Germans , laid out the whole lot rather than let a guilty one escape. The natives understand the Huns, but they think we are all cracked."

As we talked, occasional snatches of what the others were saying drifted to us through the smoke. Heavy-handed banter, and now and again a chuckle of laughter. Presently I noticed Kean's voice without actually hearing what he was saying, but from their silence the others were apparently deeply interested. Then the words, "I don't mind admitting that I was in a perspiring funk," made Holcroft straighten up in his cushions and me turn in my chair.

Kean was leaning back his thin leathery length in his seat, and speaking slowly. "It was the most beastly hole I was ever in in my life. I had completely lost my bearings, and knew I should never find my way out alone. Reminded me of a time when I was getting snakes for Jamrach's in Borneo in '93, and a gang of Dyaks had chased me into one of those old ruined temples away in the mountains, full of dark corridors and vaults, and I was in it for two hours before I got clear. The jolly place seemed to carry about two cobras to the square yard, and I cursed myself a good deal for an idiot for not staying to have it out with the Dyaks in the open with my rifle. Anyhow this was worse. I was thrashing round like an alligator on a hook, wondering what was going to happen next, when I lifted a curtain and turned into a big dim room. It was light enough though to see what I had stumbled against as. I crossed the threshold―" He paused and bent forward towards the listening group. "It was half the body of a woman. The eyes were staring, up at me from the floor― just glazed, staring, empty eyes, and the lips were drawn back from the teeth in a grin."

'"Phew! Jim, cut out the beastly details," broke in Rossiter. "Had she been a white woman?"

"Yes," replied Kean, "she was white― except where she was red," he added significantly. Then he went on, "and the arms were missing too. There was just the head with its wide staring eyes and the upper part of the trunk lying at my feet. That about finished me. I was feeling pretty pale before, and it only needed that to break my nerve― that and the grisly silence of the place Just put me in a perspiring funk. I didn't know which way to turn, and anyhow I couldn't have moved if I did, because my knees had gone. Then as I looked up I saw the inhabitants of the Sheol, just as one of them looked up and saw me.

"Women no less! Four of them, all dressed in long black robes, and they had another in a chair practising some of their devilish work on her. Then the four of them turned and stared at me. Gad! Never in my life did I see anything more baleful and malignant than those faces. I couldn't see their victim properly, and I was glad of it; I had seen too much of their work already. I felt as if some were rubbing my backbone with a chunk of ice. It wouldn't have been so bad if I'd had any means of defence, but I stood there as helpless as a child and watched the high-priestess come at me. She was a tall, gaunt woman, and her face― you remember. Kipling's line, 'White and stale as a bone'― it fitted her like an old glove. Except for that, she reminded me of a black panther ready to strike. There was the same stealthy feline poise of body, and the same remorseless glare in the eyes. I'd have given a pension to be back in the old temple with the cobras; they would have been friendly in comparison. She walked― no, glided― to within a foot of me, and stared right into my face; it was only then my eye caught the gleam of steel in her hand.  I wanted to explain, but couldn't, and stood there shivering and waiting for her to speak. Then it came.

"The haberdashery department is on the first floor; this is the millinery department. There is the lift," and she pointed to a door behind her with her scissors; and, by Jove! I nearly fainted when I tumbled into it."

________________

Sometimes a reporter earns a very hard dollar...

8: A Matter of Creed

Australasian (Melbourne), Saturday 7 June 1924

IT was sheer lunacy to turn into the office on Saturday morning to look at the letter rack, and it was worse to venture upstairs, but I only perceived this when I barged into the chief as he was mining out of his room. The pleasure of the meeting was all on his side.

"You'll do," he said; pushing a slip of paper at me; "Carton, of the Primitive Bethellists' Mission, was to have sent me in this chap's photograph today, and rang up to say he could not get one. Dig out the man himself. I want the photograph in here by midday at the latest."

He turned to go, but  stayed to hear my wail that I was on my way to tennis, that I was already on the book for an afternoon and evening job, and that in any case he ought to catch a cub and send him instead.

The chief grinned, "Sorry, but I can't help that. I'll take you off the night job"― a pause― "You'll probably have as much exercise getting the photograph an you would at tennis," and he left me glaring at the slip of paper.

"The Reverend Horace Gorster, Evangelist," ran the legend; only that, and nothing more. I got Carton on the telephone, and inquired, for the Gorster's address. Carton was "awfully sorry," but he did not know; if I inquired at the church there, the caretaker could tell me; and he went on to enlarge on the Reverend gentleman's piety and eloquence. He was a recent arrival, and had done some wonderful work in England.

I cut Carton short, and left for the church. The time was then 0.35. The caretaker did not know the address either, but if I called at the house where he formerly boarded, kept by "the widow of one of our ministers of the Gospel," I could find out. The caretaker was also inclined to tell me of Mr. Gorster's burning eloquence, and how the church had been crammed every night during the mission.

I made the widow's boarding-house by 10.15. She came to the door in person. She gave me the address, and then it occurred to me that the parson-had infected everyone with whom he came into contact with his own flu* of speech. The widow would have been talking of his amazing oratory still, I think, had I waited to listen. It would have taken me as long to reach a tram as to walk, so I followed the lady's directions on foot, through streets swarming with kids, whose average of complete seats in their pants was one in three.

Number 676 was a weatherboard cottage standing on land with a frontage of 25 feet, with a depth to a right-of-way, where a hawker was bellowing "Rabbi, wild rabbi!"

A pale woman, with pale eyes and pale hair, opened the. door. Under cross-examination she admitted that the Reverend Horace Gorster lived there, and that he was at home. She took my card, and held the door open for me to enter. I had already made one idiotic error that morning in going into the office, but I made a worse one in accepting that that invitation. From a 3ft. 6in.  passage I was ushered into the operating theatre. It was a small room, and as stuffy as the inside of a church hassock. The dull tapestry-covered suite, with red plush embellishments, filled it so that navigation was hazardous. There was a wool and wax bouquet in the middle of the mantelpiece under. a glass cover, and on either end was a white china poodle-looking dog, with black ears, a blue ribbon round its neck, and a vivid scarlet tongue hanging out. From the distant clash of crockery, it was evident that the pale woman was washing up. I glanced at my watch. It was then 10.35. Just bear that 10.35 in mind.

He slid into the room so quietly that I did not hear the door open, and he was beside me, blinking at me like a benevolent owl through his horn-rimmed glasses, before I knew of his presence. He certainly looked anything but the fiery evangelist of whom I had heard― a short, thick man with sandy hair, and a stubby sandy moustache. He had not shaved, and he wore no collar, and his baggy suit was snuff coloured. I had always thought that carpet slippers became extinct about the time when sub-editors began putting the boot into devouring element. Anyhow, he had a pair― carpet slippers, not boots. They were red, with a pink and green design on them. Providence only knows how he acquired them, for he did not look like; the sort who would pilfer them from a museum.

Gently and persuasively I unfolded my mission. We needed his photograph for publication, and would be extremely grateful, etc. Now bishops priests, and deacons had jumped at the distinction I was holding out to the Reverend Horace Gorster, Evangelist, and he just blinked at me and ruminated.

Presently he asked, "Is yours a daily publication?''

I remembered that he was a new arrival, but even then the question was disconcerting. In a few words I sketched him what sort of a paper it was, and what it stood for.

He nodded, and continued to ruminate. Then, "And do you think, my friend, that if I do this for you I will advance the Lord's work?"

That would have, been a poser had I been on oath, but as things were I took it in my stride. More rumination, and then he turned aside to a small table, and picked up a frame with a postcard-sized picture of himself on it. It would do splendidly. I told him, and held out my hand for the prize.

He replaced it, oil the table, however, and said, "Well, well! I shall let you have it. Now, my dear friend, tell me, have you our dear Lord in your heart? Have you really found Him?"

Whatever reputation I possess among my peers has not been gained either for or by exuberant piety, and having the question direct and searching, and demanding an immediate answer, hurled straight at my head, put me in an embarrassing position. Had I answered as the spirit moved, me, he might have gone "cold" on the photograph, and that I had to get at all costs. There was nothing for it but evasion. I replied that perhaps my views might not agree with his, but I was very busy, and (pulling out my watch) would be glad to discuss, the question with him at another time, l had something to learn, however, of the Reverend Horace Gorster, and I had come to the right man to teach me.

"My very dear friend, can you say, with absolute certainty that you will be alive tonight? No, no, you cannot. 'Now' is the appointed time. I feel that our dear Lord has sent you here to me that you may be saved. Hear me while I give you His message."

I quarrel with no man's creed; that is his own affair, and when I thought the matter over quietly afterwards, I had to admit to myself that Gorster's job was to convert me as much as it was mine to get his photograph; more, he was working overtime on a hopeless contract, and drawing no pay for it. So give him all that in--that and, his transparent sincerity of, purpose. Where did  quarrel with him was in that he mixed my professional visit with his professional aims, and even an English evangelist should have known better than to try and convert a newspaper man; an American would not have wasted his breath. Why, even General William Booth apologised to a reporter whom he had inadvertently approached with similar intent.

The position then was that I had to sit tight, and take what was coming to me or lose the photograph. There was no second choice. So I sat tight.  He had pressed me into a chair, and his own chair effectually barred the exit, even if I had wanted to grab the frame on the table and bolt― an alternative to which I  gave serious consideration.

Now it is one thing to make one of a congregation from 500 to 1,000 in a church, and stand fire at a long range, from even the most incandescent evangelist, who ever hurled threats of damnation, or offered promissory-notes on the future, from the pulpit. But it is another thing to sit in a 10ft. by 12ft parlour, with china dogs poking out their tongues at one; and be the sole object of the same enthusiastic manifestations.  What my informants had told me about his oratory was far, far short of the truth, glowing as were their tributes. Never had I conceived of a human being with such an amazing store of speech: or such a relentless flow of discourse, He sawed the air, and he pawed at me,  and he talked, and he talked, and he talked, and the more he talked the more furious he grew. He was a wet orator, too, and as he was not more than three feet from we the verbosity was more like a nightmare of a demented gramophone with a Grinnell sprinkler attachment, than anything I know. The raucous voice filled, the stuffy room until it vibrated under the strain.  He forgot lie was speaking to one and not a thousand, and more than once he sideslipped and called me "brethren."  But be never paused, and burning charge and sentence flowed over my brain until it almost reeled.

It is a queer point of psychology that, in spite of my rage, and thoroughly mixed up with it, was a wild and almost uncontrollable desire for laughter, it had flashed through my mind how gladly some of my confreres would have been unseen witnesses to my plight, and how gladly I would have watched any of them under similar conditions; and I had fairly to wrench back the laughter that kept rising to the surface. At the game time my wrath was encouraging speculation as to what would lie the extreme penalty for "outing" an evangelist with a china poodle.

I think a jury would have given me a strong recommendation to mercy at any rate, if they had had the case fairly presented to them. It seemed ages since the din commenced, and I thought that time had ceased and that the eternity he raved about had started. Then there came a ray of hope. He began to miss-fire, then gradually he slowed down and stopped. I think his petrol must have run out.

Right from the deepest depths of my being came a sigh of relief, and had he let me go then all would have been well with him, but in what followed he was "asking for it'' fairly, and he got what he asked for. He rose and slipped the photograph from its frame and handed it to me. Then he said, shaking his unkempt head:  "Not yet, my dear friend, not yet, but it will come." I slipped the card for which I had suffered so much into my wallet and picked up my hat, but--

"We will now pray," said the Rev. Horace Gorster, and before I had realised what was happening he had plumped on his knees before me, and barred my projected flight. If I looked such an ass as I felt, my expression must have been priceless. There at my feet was the untidy bulk, and as he knelt he fingered purposefully in his waistcoat pocket. I watched the proceeding with dazed curiosity. Presently he produced my card, the. one I bad handed to the pale woman. He held it up to his short-sighted eyes and read it carefully, and then he began. He commended me to the notice of the Almighty, calling me by name and address (I had not noticed that I had given him a card with my private address pencilled on it), and he told the Deity all he knew about me-how I was walking in darkness, and how I was a poor miserable sinner.  (I admit I am poor, that I was infernally miserable at the time, and that I am not by any stretch of imagination a saint; but still, that did not-justify, the emphasis he laid; on my spiritual condition.) From that he went on to speak to the Creator with more familiarity than he did to me, and in much the same way as you would tell Jenkins going home in the train at night of how Brown would not lock up his fowls, and how. they got into your garden. He told of my stony heart, of my middle age (confound him), of my whitening hair (confound him. again). He gave an interesting but embarrassing catalogue of my moral infirmities, as they appeared to him--not nearly as amply as l could have done myself; but still he did not do too badly. He made rather a fuss about my smoking, too. He must have deduced that from the aroma I generally have hanging around me. Then suddenly switched off and began putting in a word for the paper. That was the last straw. There were men in the Trades Hall who could have told him that it was past praying for; it still did me good to think that I had been present on the only occasion in its history in which the ceremony had been performed. Strange to say, through my wild desire to yell, I found myself mentally adding a few words on behalf of the chief. They might not do any good, but they would not do much harm.

It was about then that I saw a light, and a light that flooded my injured spirit into a soothing balm. I saw my way to deal with Gorster, so let him pray on, which he did for a good 10 minutes until even he could not hold out longer,  and I was "all in".

He saw me, to the door, and grabbed my hand in his soft damp paw. "My dear friend, make me a promise. Come to my service tonight, and let me lead you to the light."

He stood in the doorway blinking, still holding my hand lest I should escape without giving an answer. I looked at him doubtfully, and murmured that I thought it would be scarcely expedient; indeed, hardly right."

"Why?" he demanded, earnestly.

Then I said slowly and very sweetly, "You see, Mr. Gorster, I am a member of the Jewish community."

He dropped my hand as if I had shot him and stepped back, and with a gay "Good morning," I fled.

It was only when I got round the nearest corner that I let myself go, though my watch showed 11.40. It had lasted one hour and five minutes. And I had only 20 minutes to reach the office: but I spent the first five of them in mirth.

___________________

An old colloquialism is put to the test

9: Faux Pas

Argus (Melbourne) 22 December 1928

IF there be any reason for relating this story as a Christmas story, it is because the main incident, in which I was concerned, happened on Christmas Day. It might just as easily have happened on Guy Faux Day. But for a miserable attempt on my part to be facetious it would never have happened at all.

The event which made the whole wretched business possible took place unknown to me in the first year of the present century, just before the period when the motor-car and the flapper combined to wreck the Victorian social order. In that year Henry Winston Clifford, articled clerk, was travelling by coach from Wonga to Ringunyah. He was the sole passenger, and he occupied the box seat with Simeon Rice, the driver, who was a humorist in a quiet way.

At Wonga someone had told Clifford, who knew little of wallabies and less of shooting, that wallabies were plentiful along the road and could be easily shot from the coach. For this reason Clifford carried a loaded Winchester across his knees; while Simeon, who knew there was not a wallaby within fifty miles, encouraged him cheerfully with the assurance that every turn in the road would open up wallaby. Simeon said afterwards that the sport lay in the anticipation of sport. It was only when a mile from Ringunyah, where the bush thinned out to the desolation of old diggings, that Clifford awoke to the fact that it was an off day for wallaby. Then, as the coach swung round a bend in the road, there happened that which was to affect vitally the remainder of his life.

About 100 yards ahead slightly off the road Clifford saw a most disreputable looking shanty. It was composed principally of kerosene-tins, packing-cases, and hessian, and it seemed to be as uninhabitable as it was ugly. A small door faced the road, and in one side was a very small square opening. Clifford had a cartridge in his rifle, and he was pining for a shot at something after his disappointment over the wallabies.

"I'll bet you," he said suddenly to Simeon, "I can put a bullet through that hole." Before Simeon could speak or change the reins from his left to his right hand, Clifford threw the rifle to his shoulder and fired.

"A fool's trick, young feller," snorted Simeon. "That's a chow's hut. You might have killed someone."

A moment later as the coach drew abreast of the hut the door opened violently and an excited and unprepossessing Chinaman stood framed in the doorway. He waved his arms widely and squealing "Whaffor? Whaffor you shoot my bally mate?"

Simeon swore deeply but softly as he reined in his team and leaped to the ground. The Chinaman still danced and reiterated his pertinent but unpleasant demand for information. Clifford sat on the box seat and his knees knocked together as he sat, while Simeon thrust the gibbering Chinaman aside and entered the hut, to reappear in a moment looking very white.

"Is he—?" gurgled Clifford.

"Slap between the eyes," answered Simeon.

One does not kill a Chinaman every day. It was a novel experience for Clifford, who there and then became exceedingly ill.

An influential uncle arrived at Ringunyah in answer to a frantic telegram and bailed Clifford out. The same uncle arranged for his defence when the coroner's court found a verdict of manslaughter. Being what it is, the law makes as much fuss over the sudden death of a tubercular and opium-sodden Louey dice as over a useful citizen. Clifford's uncle retained the best criminal barrister in the State, and after one disagreement of the jury on the second trial he obtained a verdict of "not guilty" directly in the face of the evidence and the judge's summing up. The judge raised his eyebrows, but made no comment. The foreman of the jury was heard to say later in the day that "they weren't going to jug a decent young bloke for a bloomin' chow."

Clifford was a naturally sensitive soul. The anxiety and the publicity of the case, apart from its cause, hit deeply into his character. Thereafter, with great circumspection, his friends avoided any reference to China or the Chinese in his presence. They spoke of porcelain rather than china, and were careful to offer him nothing but Ceylon tea.

AS THEY SAY in the theatre programmes, ten years have elapsed since act one. The scene of act two is Denny Morrisy's hotel at Whiting Bay. Denny was a bachelor by instinct and conviction. Women he would not have about the place, either as guests or servants. Denny ran his hotel solely for men who came there for the fishing, which was ideal, from year's end to year's end. Occasionally women did inflict themselves on Denny as guests, but they did not stay long. He was studiously polite and attentive, but never a woman who left in a hurry but had some hair-raising story of snakes to tell. The snakes were harmless, and Denny used to catch them himself for use as required.

Within reason visitors could do as they pleased. The same men used to make for Denny Morrisy's season after season. They could dress as they pleased, and if the spirit moved them to go to the kitchen at 2 o'clock in the morning to make Welsh rarebits no one worried. Denny's Japanese cook, too, was an artist in preparing any food that wore fins, scales, or shells.

A few days before Christmas I arrived at Denny's with Billy Garnett and Jack Mason. They were rather a godless pair, but they were sound on fishing. Anyhow, we went to the bay for whiting rather than morals. We found the usual cheery crowd, and accepted one another as members of a brotherhood, dropping into easy friendships. There was one man the others called Cliff who took my fancy. He was quiet almost to shyness. Though he never laughed outright at the nonsense of the crowd his eyes would dance with appreciation, and when he did drop a word or two into the riot it was to score heavily. He fished with us most of the time, and the more I saw of him the more I liked him.

Came Christmas evening. The day had been perfection. We were all tired and all fit for bed― all except Garnett. His guardian demon, never far from his shoulder, prompted him to propose a game of draw poker before we turned in. In vain we told him that it was an unhallowed pastime, unfitted to the day. He was a pertinacious brute. First Mason surrendered, and Cliff's good nature led him to follow. Two others joined them, and finally Garnett's jibes spurred me to make a sixth in the hope of winning his money.

As a game it was a wash-out. Never before or since did I see a man hold such cards as Cliff. The more we rushed him the worse the disaster. Coolly he raked in our cash; his eyes twinkling at our comments on his luck. By eleven o'clock, when Denny came in to leave what bottles and glasses we required, we told him that if he wanted his accounts settled when we left he'd have to apply to Cliff. We were permanently and hopelessly "broke."

Just about midnight the crisis arrived. The table rocked with laughter when Cliff calmly showed four sevens to my full hand, and relieved mc of IS shillings. Garnett picked up the cards and dealt.

"Gad! Cliff," growled Mason, picking up his hand, "I wish you'd show us how to do it?"

"Shame to take the money!" Garnet grinned. "Where do you get your luck, Cliff?"

Here my guardian angel must of got tired of her job. I was looking at my cards and said lightly, "Don't you know how he got his luck?"

There was a chorus of "Put him away?" "How?" "Or is it skill?"

Still looking at my cards and wondering whether to draw for a flush or throw in, I said, "One card, Billy," and added, "Don't you know the beggar killed a Chinaman. Didn't you Cliff?"

I had picked up the card Billy dealt me and for the moment, looking at my hand, I did not notice the silence that had fallen. It was the crash of a chair to the floor that made me look up. Cliff was standing glaring at me, his face white as paper. For a moment I thought he was going to strike. The other four sat staring at me in open-mouthed dismay. Then without a sound Cliff turned on his heel, flung open the door, strode through, and slammed it behind him.

The tension broke.

"You blazing idiot," gasped Mason. "Great Scott! You have torn it," from Garnett. "Red hot!" and "Help!" from the others.

"What the deuce―?" I began in bewilderment.

"Good Lord! Didn't you know he did?"

"Did what?" I gasped; "kill a Chinaman?"

"Plugged him with a Winchester, and nearly got into quod," growled Garnett, throwing three kings face up on the table in his excitement.

Then from the fragments told by all present I heard for the first time the story of the death of Louey Chee.

"And you, you flathead," wound up Mason, "go and rub his nose in it."

"How was I to know?" I demanded feebly. "Everyone says it's luck to kill a Chinaman. Anyhow, who'd expect that a man in a crowd like this had slaughtered a Mongolian, unless he were a doctor? I suppose I must try to apologise and live it down."

"Apologise my foot!" was Mason's rude comment. "Cliff's a sensitive bird, and you won't see him again. He'll be gone by morning."

Mason's surmise proved to be correct. At breakfast he was missing, and Denny enlightened us by telling how Cliff had roused him at daybreak, settled his account, and departed in his car in an atmosphere of gloom.

About eleven o'clock that morning the crowd was lounging about the hotel veranda, waiting for a favourable fishing tide. Most of them were making me the butt of their alleged wit. They complimented me on my tact, and made oblique references to my appalling "break."

Suddenly Garnett shouted, "He's coming back!" The chaff ceased, as all stopped to watch the approaching car. It was not Cliff, however, but Martin Burns, a relative of Mason.

Burns returned the hilarious greeting of the gang, as he scrambled from among his gear. "Any news, Mart?" asked Garnett.

"By Jove, yes― hullo, Denny, make it a full pint. News! You know Harry Clifford, the solicitor?"

There was a chorus of "Yes― he's just left here."

"Well, he's made a deuce of a mess of things."

Never did news-bearer have a more attentive audience.

"Get on with it, Mart; you can drink that afterwards," said someone, as Burns showed an inclination to pay more attention to the beer Denny had handed him than to his story.

Mart stood with the pint in his hand. "You know that S bend just this side Montrose. I heard this as I came through the town--"

"Get on with it, dash you!" interjected Garnett, as Mart paused to dip his nose in the froth.

"Well, he swung his car wide to avoid another, and hit a cart coming up behind. Clifford's car went clean over the bank with Cliff underneath."

"Hurt?" barked half a dozen voices.

"Not a scratch," replied Burns. "Did you ever know such luck? What happened was that he absolutely did in the cart, and killed the Chinaman who was driving it."

Then he paused and gaped. It was not a matter for laughter, but every man in his audience doubled up with ill-timed mirth.

____________________

Beware of Distinguished Personages bearing gifts...

10: Charlotte Bronte is Shocked

Argus (Melbourne), 22 September 1928

IT would be well perhaps not to go into the details of the service I was, by the merest chance, enabled to render to a very Distinguished Personage. The cost to me in time and trouble was very slight. It merely entailed opening a church door that had slammed violently before the Distinguished Personage was quite clear of it. His gratitude to me seemed to be so much out of proportion to my share in the incident that I have since thought that there were far greater issues involved than relief from temporary inconvenience and perhaps some pain. He was thanking me very courteously as we stepped from the darkness of the church porch into the light from a nearby standard, and for the first time I became aware of his identity, although I had never seen him before. I must confess that the disclosure startled me considerably. One might expect to find even an archbishop in the somewhat undignified plight of being caught in a church door, but not the distinguished personage. He evidently was aware that I recognised him, for he said, "Perhaps you would have hesitated to come to my assistance if you had known before."

I replied candidly that the knowledge would have made no difference, as I believed that he was by no means as black as he was painted, and that, so far as he was concerned, the Church seemed to consider that the ninth commandment did not exist.

"The old story," he said, and I think I caught a chuckle in his voice. "If you have no argument, abuse the other side. After all, publicity is everything nowadays, and I am in the debt of the clergy to that extent. However, to return to what I was saying, I would really like to give you some proof of my gratitude."

Although I was sincere in saying that I would have assisted him in any case, I felt that it was another matter to accept any token of his gratitude, even though the service had warranted it, and this service certainly did not. I hesitated, uncomfortably at a loss to reply. He saw my hesitation, and I have no doubt that he understood the reason for it. He smiled a kindly encouragement as he shook his head. "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes," he said, and then he laughed outright. It was so true that denial was out of the question.

"Well, well," he went on still smiling. "I assure you that in accepting some mark of my thanks you commit yourself to nothing. Come?"

I felt that his offer was genuine, but I knew of nothing that he could do for me, and I said so.

He looked at me reflectively for a moment. Then he said, "I think you are a journalist by profession?"

I pleaded guilty. The Distinguished Personage was not one with whom one would care to temporise, in spite of his friendly demeanour

"Good." Then holding my eyes with his he said, "Now supposing I make you a gift. It is this: Once a week, but no oftener, I can give you the power of calling up any person who has lived on earth in the form in which he or she lived."

I caught my breath. "Do you mean to say that they would talk to me, answer questions," I said. "I mean, could I interview them?" My brain whirled at the prospect.

"That," he smiled, "was exactly my idea."

"And," I asked, scarcely able to find my voice, "could I take them about the city with me?"

He thought a moment. "Yes," he said slowly. "There could be no objection, only you will be under one slight disability. The term of their stay will be indefinite. It may be only thirteen minutes, or it may be four or five hours. You must take the risk of embarrassing situations."

There was no need to think, but there was one vague doubt still in my mind.

"And I in no way commit myself, you say?" I asked.

"You mean endanger your soul?" he replied, reading my thoughts.

I nodded.

"My dear friend," he said, and his dark eyes twinkled, "I should hate to hurt your feelings, but the soul of a journalist― we wouldn't use it even for kindling where I come from."

It was a more reassuring than a flattering estimate, but it decided me.

"I accept the offer," I said. "I accept it gratefully."

He held out his hand. "Then it is a pleasure to me to endow you with the gift. All you need do is to call on the name of the person you require three times― but, remember, no more than one a week." As he ceased speaking ha vanished, and the hand that had held his a moment before was clasping empty air.

It was not until later that I awoke to the fact that while it was one thing to possess tho power bestowed upon me it was another thing to make use of it. In certain exalted journalistic quarters I completely destroyed a not too distinguished reputation for veracity by submitting a perfectly priceless and absolutely genuine interview with Queen Victoria. Her Majesty was not pleased by my presumption, and she took no trouble whatever to conceal her feelings. Nevertheless she answered my questions, and the things she said about William II. and Bismarck―

Was I thanked for my zeal? No! I was told that the expressions attributed to Queen Victoria and given them verbatim were simply scandalous. There were some further remarks to the effect that such hoaxes were in very bad taste, and that my claim that the interview was genuine was merely another of many manifestations of an apparently innate lack of veracity. I merely give the sense of the oration, the context of which could not very well appear in print. It was only after much pleading for a test of my ability to call up any of the great ones gone, that exalted personages gave a reluctant consent, to which was added a warning that if I were "leg-pulling" the offence would be regarded seriously. It was agreed, however, that I would be notified in due course of the name of someone known to fame by interviewing whom I must stand or fall.

The blow fell no later than last Wednesday. Without warning I was told by the editor, "Look here! You can interview one of the Brontes, say, about a column and a half."

"Good business," I answered cheerfully. "Great copy, too. I can ask her about her experiences in Australia."

There was astonishment as well as suspicion in his abrupt "What on earth are you talking about?"

"You said Lola Montez―" I began.

"I said 'one of the Brontes,' and I mean one of the Brontes," he cut in severely, "and no funny business, either. I'm coming along again presently to meet her." He conveyed as clearly as possible, without actually saying so, that he was convinced that I was perpetrating a fraud of no small magnitude. Even the way he closed the door expressed disapproval, not only of my claims, but of my character.

It was enough to give even a hardy optimist a pain. One of the Brontes! It would have to be Charlotte, of course. To think of it! With such material as Ninon de L'Enclos*, Catherine II of Russia, and the Borgia girl to be had. Even though interviews with them might need a good deal of "subbing" they would be worth meeting. Any man could learn something from one of them, but Charlotte Bronte! Of course Jane Eyre was considered "hot stuff" in its day, but not a flapper in the world would open it now. Well, it was no use kicking. They wanted Lottie, and they should have her. There was precious little enthusiasm in my voice as I called the name of Charlotte Bronte thrice, In the formula prescribed by the distinguished personage.

_________

(*Notorious French courtesan, intellectual, and author, 1620-1705)

I had arisen from my chair as I spoke. For a moment or two I thought I had failed, and I was rather more relieved than disappointed. Then I heard a deprecatory little cough, and I swung round. Charlotte Bronte in the flesh was seated in my chair! I do not know what I really expected to see, but it certainly was not this tiny figure. She was neatly dressed in some dark material that swept the floor about her feet. Her black gloved hands, little larger than a child's, were folded in her lap. The unprepossessing face turned up to me was framed in a small, tight-fitting bonnet. With her big strange brown eyes staring shyly up at mc, she reminded me more of a mouse than anything else. The only circumstance that in any way reconciled me to the situation was that she seemed to take her environment and myself as a matter of course.

I would have met, say, Miss Borgia, with even pulses, but what to do with this strange-looking, old-fashioned little creature was beyond me. Shy as she was, she was evidently quite self-possessed, and she returned my greeting quietly. At the same time it was apparent that while she was willing to answer questions she had no intention of initiating any conversation. To my inquiry whether she would kindly talk about her work, she bowed her assent. At that my troubled spirit landed me fairly in what is known in Australian idiom as "the soup." I had always contrived to get Charlotte Bronte mixed up with Jane Austen in my mind somehow, but that was no excuse for my remarking that, of course, Pride and Prejudice was her first novel.

There was a stiffening in the little figure as she said primly, "I have always been led to believe that Pride and Prejudice was written by Miss Jane Austen." It was not a pleasant situation to retrieve at the very outset, and there was very little grace in my hasty retreat on Jane Eyre. I could read her thoughts of me very plainly, and I trusted she could not read my views of him who had let me in for the interview.

Then I had a brain wave. Why not take a taxi and run her round the city, then give her afternoon tea somewhere? The jolt over Pride and Prejudice had wrecked my nerve for talking literature. Besides, her opinion of Melbourne would be worth publishing. She accepted the situation complacently, and remarked that she had no doubt that I would prove an able cicerone. Her tone implied very clearly that I might know more about the city than her work― at least she hoped so.

For what followed I accept no responsibility. Had I paused to consider the effect of the impact of 1928 on the 'forties of last century, I doubt whether I would have foreseen the disaster that overtook me. I took my hat and opened the door for her, followed her into the passage, and pressed the lift bell. Charlotte gazed at the glazed doors with patient expectancy. I heard swift footsteps coming along the corridor, and looked up, and the rest happened like a nightmare film produced in Hades under the special supervision of the Distinguished Personage.

The footsteps were those of Miss Kitty, one of the many damsels who inhabit the building between the hours of 9 o'clock and 5 in the evening. She was young and tall and comely, and she carried herself in her brief modern raiment like a young Diana. Me she always favoured with a wide and bright smile on our casual meetings. It was she who paused before the lift door. Both Charlotte and I looked up together. I am sorry that I did not see Charlotte's face. It must have been instructive. Miss Kitty's, as her eyes rested on the figure beside me changed from smiling greeting to round-eyed incredulous astonishment. I heard a small squawk, and Miss Kitty's, "Catch her! Quickly!" and turned just in time to catch Miss Charlotte Bronte to prevent her slumping to the rubber-covered floor.

I lifted her in my arms, bore her back to my room, and placed her in the chair, followed by the girl, expressing her sincere if somewhat amazed sympathy.

"The poor little thing," cooed Miss Kitty. "Whatever happened to her? Wait!" She fluttered off and returned in a few moments with a bottle of ammonia. A man feels an utter fool in such a crisis, and I was true to form.

"Think I'd better get a doctor?" I asked in trepidation.

"No need," said the efficient and cool Miss Kitty. "She has only fainted, has she often done this before?" she went on, looking up for a moment.

"Blessed if I know," I replied a little curtly. "I've never seen her before today."

"I wonder what could have startled her, the quaint, little thing," murmured Miss Kitty, still busy with the ammonia bottle.

I had a pretty fair idea of the cause of the collapse, but I had no intention of putting my thoughts into words. At this moment the editor, true to his promise, entered the room. He surveyed the scene with suspicion and displeasure.

"What has happened?" he asked, turning to me.

"That," I replied, indicating the limp figure, "is Miss Charlotte Bronte, and she has fainted."

"Have you been telling her any of your stories?" he demanded.

The imputation hurt my feelings and I said so,

"Then," he asked, still suspiciously, "what else could have made her faint?"

At this juncture Miss Kitty silenced us with a frown. "She is coming round," she said warningly.

Miss Kitty stood aside as we bent over the figure in the chair. Charlotte opened her eyes, looked up at us for a moment, then asked very distinctly, "Has that very indelicate young person gone?"

I thought for a moment that Miss Kitty had not caught either the question or its implication.

"What was that?" she asked, stepping forward.

As she spoke Charlotte took one glance at her, gave another squawk, and fainted again.

"That," I announced, "has absolutely torn it."

"What on earth is the matter with her?" demanded Miss Kitty. Comprehension was dawning in her eyes. The editor looked distinctly puzzled.

There was no use in  hiding the truth. I broke it as gently as possible.

"The fact of the matter is, Miss Kitty, that our drooping flower is unused to seeing so much girl at either end of a frock. Her views are conservative."

I could both sympathise with and excuse the indignation that flashed from Miss Kitty's eyes. "Indelicate young person! Am I? I did not faint when I saw her, and I might have. You can bring the old frump round yourself." And she stormed out of the room.

"She's taken the ammonia with her, too," I moaned. "What's to be done?"

"Get a doctor," suggested the Editor.

"Not on your life," I objected vigorously. "Don't you see that nothing can really affect her. Leave her alone and she will come round."

"Well, what are you going to do with her then?" he demanded impatiently.

I explained my idea of taking Charlotte for a spin round the city. "But that's off now," I added.

"Can't see that it will make any difference," he retorted.

"Oh, can't you? If she is going to faint every time she sees a flapper the only way to get her round the city that I can think of is in an ambulance with a nurse." I was beginning to feel a little warm.

"Have you got any copy at all from her?"

"Not a line," I answered shortly. I was not going to admit how I had crashed over Pride and Prejudice. "She is too shy to talk about her work."

He nodded comprehension. "She had a reputation for shyness."

"Gad!" I said feelingly, "she's added a bit to it this afternoon, too."

"Well, you'll have to get something from her when she comes round," he said decisively.

"What about having a shot at it yourself," I continued, "since you think her views would be so entrancing in print."

"You've undertaken to do it," he replied, dodging the responsibility.

"Because you forced me to," I answered tartly. "You don't think for a moment I'd have chosen Charlotte wilfully, do you?"

"No, Lola Montez would have been more in your line. Great Scott!" His face had changed from irritation to dazed astonishment. My eyes followed the direction of his. The chair was empty. Lottie had returned to the shadows,

"She's gone!" he gasped.

"And gone for good, too," I added. "Now, if you had only let me choose―"

"Pah!" he came back at me, "what's the good of going over it again. Here I was depending on you for an absolutely unique interview― something priceless and―" he waved his hands. His feelings were too deep for words.

"All your own fault."

There are some men with whom you cannot argue, no slammed the door after him. And how was I to blame because Lottie's constitution couldn't stand the shock of a twentieth century frock?

__________________

Who said all journeys end in lovers' meetings?

11: Even The Valkyrie

Australasian (Melbourne) 15 July 1933

HE was aged barely nineteen years, and  she was bachelor of arts. She had taken honours in pure and mixed mathematics, and held an astonishing record for languages; but as she stood taking a laughing farewell of her hostess she looked none of these things. She was one of Nature's rare experiments—  Tennyson's "Daughter of the gods, divinely tall" incarnate.

She was perfectly proportioned and stood almost six feet in height, and, since it was in the days when women were still women, the helm of burnished black hair she wore made her look still taller. Neither of the two boys, of her own age, who stood watching her was undersized, but both were short of her statuesque magnificence by inches.  In the classic regularity of her features she was imposing rather than beautiful, but the humour and joy of living dancing in the wide brown eyes were purely human and feminine.

Turning, she saw her waiting escort and approached them with her hostess. "I've kept you waiting," she smiled; "I'm so sorry!"

"Don't worry, Jess," grinned Thornton. "We have not been standing here more than fifteen minutes."

"Anyway, we had the view to admire, was Payne's contribution. "Bingo loves magnificent scenery."

"You're a pair of conscienceless fibbers," she retorted; "you were not here five minutes ago." She turned to her hostess for confirmation.

"Don't mind them, Jessica, they're a pair of young ruffians." Then, to the boys,  "I'm trusting you to see Jessica home, so behave yourselves."

"I'll see they do," chuckled the daughter of the gods.

"It will be all right, Mrs. Blades," answered Thornton. "Anyone who sees us will immediately assume that our nurse has called for us to bring us home."

"You impudent young imp," began Jessica.

"Young yourself! You re not six months older than we are," put in Payne.

"Silence, Tommy! The bachelor of arts! speaks with the lips of Juno. Fall in, the escort, or there'll be trouble." Thornton came to attention beside her.

"If anything happens, Mrs. Blades, you can bear witness I did not begin it." Her eves were dancing with mirth.

"Home, the three of you," laughed the hostess from the door. "There is not much to choose between any of you."

The three turned into the moonlit street, and Jessica Lawrence, a boy on each side, kept pace with them easily and swiftly, moving as a daughter of the gods should move. As they went they wrangled and laughed, as careless youth will. The boys chaffed her mercilessly on her intellectual triumphs, and Jessica thrust back swiftly and cleanly. It was Tommy who began the real trouble.

"It's all very well being a B.A., Jess, he ventured, "but have you ever been kissed―"

In an instant the womanhood in her sprang on guard. "Stop that, Tommy, she said, shortly.

"Why, we haven't begun yet," corrected Bingo.

"Better not, either." Her voice was ominous.

"But, Jess," protested the grinning Tommy, "you can't be a bachelor of arts all your life."

"You'll have to begin some time." Bingo spoke with the earnestness of one enunciating a great truth for the first time.

"If I ever do begin, it will not be with a pair of young demons like you." There was no fear in her voice, but an immense scorn, as she paused at the gate of her

"Jess, your young life has been wasted up till now, but―" As Bingo Thornton spoke she read the intention in his eyes. What happened, happened very swiftly. In the brief scuffle Payne had the lesser success, for not more than the cool lobe of her ear was his; but Bingo's kiss alighted just where all good kisses should alight. In almost the same instant Jessica a vigorous hand landed on Bingo where all nice girls hands should land when subject to similar treatment, and Bingo's head fairly rang under the impact. The next instant she was through the gate and turned towards them, speechless, her breath coming swiftly. It may have been all anger that shone from her eyes, but even Bingo's half dazed senses suspected a trace of mirth in them.

"After her, Tommy," he laughed. "She has almost fractured my jaw."

Jessica Lawrence, B.A., turned and fled. Their unfamiliarity with the gate fastening gave her a start, and before they reached the shadow of the wide veranda she was through the door. They could see her face and frock a white blur in the darkness as she turned towards them. Then came the voice of Jessica in a derisive 'Booh!' from her safety, and the door closed, quietly but decisively.

The two boys looked at the uncompromising blankness of the door for a moment and then at one another and slowly turned and went their way. But as they went Bingo Thornton, tenderly caressing a bruised cheek, paid little heed to Tommy's chatter. He was wondering. Now did she, or did she not, return that kiss?

And again and again at intervals for a few days he pondered on the problem, but never found a satisfactory answer.

Now this incident, slightly discreditable to two of its three participants, was enacted in the year of grace 1892. Let us skip the intervening years lightly and come down to 1932. In the interval Queen Victoria celebrated her second jubilee and was gathered to her forbears, and on the nature of that reunion it is not profitable to speculate. The Boer War was fought; Edward VII reigned and passed on; the Great War shook the world and shook down thrones; skirts dwindled almost to nothing, and burgeoned again; women lived to smoke, drink, and swear; some few even learned to play bridge; Tommy Payne married and died in '21. Bingo Thornton remained single and lived; several hundred million girls were kissed more or less willingly, in which activity Bingo had a fair share, and finally after an orgy of glad living the Nemesis of depression overtook the world.

It will be recognised, therefore, that one kiss, however well and truly placed, and one only partially successful, delivered as far back as 1892, does not loom very largely when compared with the events of the ensuing forty years.

Let us inspect Mr. Bernard Thornton, C.M.G.― to his very intimates Bingo― as he sits towards the close of 1932 at the dinner table of his cousin, Clare Langdon, the wife of an eminent specialist. The years have not used him ill. He has retained most of his hair, which is white and smooth clipped. There is a very slight widening of the once slim figure, and the rather lean and hawk-like face is scarcely lined. A stark knowledge of "big business" and the methods used by some of his fellow men in moneymaking have given him a somewhat cynical air, but this is modified, by the humour of the wise grey eyes, which show slight wrinkles of laughter at their corners. There is no stoop in the square shoulders as he bends forward a little to listen to Clare.

"Yon know, Bernard," she was saying. "I do feel a little guilty about letting you in for this, and I won't feel a bit put out if you would rather stay here and really Harry must go. of course."

"Nonsense, Clare," he laughed, "I'll stick it out like a man. I have never yet attended such a joyous ceremony as the speech night of a girls' school, especially such a girls' school as Glendon, and I may never have another chance. Besides, I promised Madge."

"Good for you! Uncle Bingo," came the voice of that damsel from farther down the table― it was plain "Bingo" in her mother's absence― "you'll just adore the Valkyrie."

"Madge!" protested the mother, "How often am I to tell you not to use that absurd name in speaking of Miss Lawrence?" She turned to Thornton. ''I'm tremendously fond of Jessica. She was my first teacher. You'll meet her later, as she has promised to have supper with us afterwards."

But Bernard Thornton scarcely heard her voice. As a bubble rises to the surface from black depths rose a memory through forty years to the surface of his mind, where it arrived with a "plop" he could almost hear. Unconsciously his left hand caressed his cheek. "Jessica Lawrence!" he thought as he remembered, but the face, trained through many emergencies, gave no visible sign of his interest.

"What is Miss Lawrence like, Madge?" he risked.

"Simply gorgeous," came the enthusiastic answer. "You'd just love her."

"Hump!" said Bingo, registering a mental doubt. "Is she strict?"

"In some things, terrifically." Madge had all the love of superlatives of her years. "But in others she's a perfect dear. She can be good fun too."

"But why the Valkyrie?" Madge would have been astonished had she read the curiosity behind the question.

"Oh! That's only for when there is big trouble in the school. Then she is―"   the girl paused, feeling for the right words.

"Pretty tough," suggested her father.

"Pooh! what a silly description." Madge looked from her father to Thornton. "She's― she's"― then with a rush― "She's as terrible as an army with banners."

Both men leaned back in their chairs to laugh at their ease. It was Thornton who was able to speak first. "You mean the Salvation Army, of course, Madge?"

"No, I don't," answered the indignant maiden warmly. "I mean a real army in armour with oriflammes and pennants on their lances, and all sorts of things like that: charging into battle in a thunderstorm. That's what she's like."

"Lord! Madge," gasped Thornton, through his laughter. "Magnificent! That makes her perfectly visible. But I'm afraid I will not be able to adore her as you suggest. She must be an acquired taste."

Madge regarded her father and Thornton with unfeigned disgust. "Anyhow," she reiterated, "the Valykrie is a perfect dear."

Nor was she appeased when Thornton, half speaking and half singing, amended "Iolanthe":

"It seems she is Valkyrie.

And I took her for―

The proprietor―

Of a ladies' seminary."

Nevertheless, there was not one among the assemblage in the brightly lit school hall an hour later who observed Miss Jessica Lawrence, M.A., with a deeper interest than did Mr. Bernard Thornton, as she stood reading her annual report from the palm-decked stage.

Although she would not have recognised in the white-haired, upright Thornton the Bingo of forty years ago, to him she was unmistakable.

"Wonderful!" he mused as he listened to the clear, precise diction. "She must be 59, and looks barely forty." There was a slight powder of grey in the dark mass of her hair. "She wouldn't be fool enough to have that shorn," thought Thornton as he admired the dignity and finish it gave to the stately head. Deep within him bubbled, laughter as the memory of their last meeting of two score years ago returned to him.

"Terrible as an army with banners. Gad! Madge was inspired to think of that. She could be, too. The Valkyrie― apt, by Jove! Very! One can imagine her riding the storm clouds and selecting those about to be slain."

Miss Lawrence gave place to the Archbishop, who said all those things archbishops should say on such occasions. He was mildly facetious at first, and Bingo observed appreciatively how her smile lit the face of Jessica Lawrence. M.A. Then, in due course, the Archbishop deplored gravely the unwise latitude that parents of today permitted their daughters, and proceeded to indicate the correct lines for the training of girls, while Bingo reflected on what a thin time the youngsters would have if the good prelate had his way.

Then the Archbishop was followed by Senator the Honourable Sir Henry Deanwell, K.C.B.E., Federal Minister for Small Affairs, an old friend of Bingo's and a noted orator, Sir Henry was well into his stride on the subject of the, future mothers of the nation when, In the fourth row from the platform, he caught the cold, sardonic, and unwed eye of the last man he expected to see in such a place. Then a number of people wondered why the usually fluent Sir Henry Deanwell gulped, repeated himself, floundered, and sat down without treating the audience to one of his famous perorations.

They would have known the cause of the senator's embarrassment had they heard the fierce, half-whispered epithet he hissed at Bingo as the assemblage broke up, and both the Archbishop and Miss Jessica Lawrence would have been horrified at the exchanges that took place so close to the group of which they were the centre.

For the graceless Bingo returned to the vernacular of youth to paint Sir Henry Deanwell's insincerity, while Sir Henry framed his retorts according to the best traditions of our troops in Flanders. It was Clare who unconsciously separated the combatants by asking Bingo to take Madge home, as the Archbishop had kindly offered to drop Clare and Miss Lawrence at their gate.

A little later, when Mr. Thornton was formally presented to Miss Lawrence by Clare, Bingo observed with satisfaction that there was not a flicker of recognition in the frank brown eyes that he, perforce, looked up to. Madge had been dismissed to her rest, and the elders settled to a quiet chat on the events of the evening. Jessica Lawrence accepted the stranger without reserve, and before long the quiet chat developed into a sprightly argument because of the gentle raillery of Miss Jessica Lawrence by Harry Langdon and Bingo on the rigidity of her views on the training of young girls.

Harry ventured the opinion that a reasonable latitude of association between growing boys and girls was good for both sides.

"Even," he said, "if there is an occasional sentimental kiss― what harm?"

"Impossible and beyond pardon, as was anything that tended ever so slightly to touch the bloom of a girl's self-respect," was the verdict of Miss Lawrence, "You men cannot or will not see the matter in its true perspective. I have been guiding and training girls for thirty-five years, and I should know," she wound up.

Mr. Bernard Thornton looked at Miss Jessica Lawrence, M.A., speculatively.

Then he said, "Do you know, Miss Lawrence, that I think we are not altogether strangers."

Jessica's hand moved toward her cup. "Do you mean that we have met before?"

"Yes," said Bingo gently. "It was quite a long time ago, but perhaps you can recall it. It was at Mrs. Blades's home at Fairmont.  I was Bingo Thornton then."

Jessica's cup was half way to her lips, but for all the wealth of the Indies she could not have raised it farther. Bingo's memory of her had risen like a bubble to his mind; her memory of him burst with the shattering shock of a shell. Nevertheless she returned her cup gently to its saucer, and Bingo's admiration grew as he saw that the hand that replaced it did not quiver. It rose to dizzy heights when, after a thoughtful gaze, she shook her head slowly and said, "I think I remember the dance, but I'm afraid I cannot recall you. There were so many there, if you remember."

The intonation of that brazen fib was perfect, and Bingo admitted to himself that at his best he could not have done better.

Said Bingo, in smiling self-depreciation, "I could scarcely hope you would have remembered me in that crowd, but, if you do not mind my saying it, your figure is too striking to be forgotten easily." The slight, emphasis on the one word was lost on all but Miss Lawrence, as Bingo knew from the slight flicker of her lashes as he said it.

"Not at all," and there was genuine amusement in her light laugh. "I think I should feel flattered at leaving an impression that has endured for so many years." The slight caressing gesture of his hand on his cheek had not passed unnoticed.

At this moment a maid brought a whispered message to Harry Langdon, who rose with a groan of dismay. To Clare's protest he answered, "No use, dear; I must go. You married a doctor and you must take the consequences. Bingo will see Jessica home," And he went from among them blessing Nature and all her works.

It was in vain that a little later Jessica protested she had no need for an escort. Bingo was pleasantly insistent.

"I shall feel dreadfully hurt if you do not allow me to see you home." This, despite the veiled glance he received that indicated he was more likely to be dreadfully hurt if he did. Unconsciously Clare assisted in Bingo's mischief by assuring Jessica that she knew that Mr. Thornton would regard the walk as a pleasure rather than a duty. Bingo could not have put the case better himself. Finally Jessica accepted the inevitable, and of the three Clare alone was unaware with what bad grace the proffered service was regarded.

For the first fifty yards they walked side by side in silence. Occasionally Bingo glanced at the fine but uncompromising profile. Then he declaimed dramatically, "Out of her terrible dead past― the past she thought to be buried and forgotten― rose a spectre to haunt her."

"You idiot!" snapped the much-tried Jessica.

"But my dear Jessica―" he began.

"Mr. Thornton"― (wilful damsels had dissolved into quivering jelly at that voice)― "I consider your use of my first name as an unpardonable impertinence." It was the Valkyrie who spoke.

But Bingo was no damsel, and he had broken strong men to his will. Besides, he was enjoying the encounter immensely. "Well, considering our past tender association and my delightful recollections of it, I did not think you would insist on formalities when we were alone."

"You―"

"Tut, tut. Jessica." he interrupted. "Remember your high office, and, besides, vituperation is not argument."

"Oh, very well." She was still the Valkyrie. "If you like to be an idiot, be an idiot. I think that common decency would have protected me from having that humiliating incident recalled."

"Perhaps I am an agent of Providence."

"An agent of Pro―" gasped Miss Jessica Lawrence, "Don't you think you flatter yourself a little?"

"Well, no." He appeared to consider the question carefully. "An agent of the devil would seriously rebuke self-righteousness."

"Well, of all the― the cheek!" The place of the Valkyrie had been taken by a very human woman.

Bingo chuckled appreciatively. "Now you are yourself again," he said, "I can explain that I thought that considering your own dark past you might be less intolerant with suffering charges"

At this audacity Miss Jessica Lawrence had some little difficulty in suppressing the gurgle of laughter that rose to her throat, "It is because I remember your brutality, and that of your precious friend, that I hold the views I do."

"My brutality?" Bingo's voice bore incredulous amazement. "Why, do you know that for a fortnight I had to pretend I had a gumboil, to explain my swollen face? You to talk of brutality!"

"Did I really hurt you. Mr. Thornton?" she asked with a shade of concern in her voice.

"Bingo," he corrected.

"Bingo," she conceded; and the gurgle came to the surface.

"You caught me a most frightful sock in the jaw," he admitted.

"I'm so glad," said Miss Jessica Lawrence, sedately.

"Really, Jessica, for a Valkyrie you are most delightfully human," was Bingo's amused comment.

"For a what?" she demanded.

"Valkyrie was the word I used. Didn't you know?"

"It's absurd, but of course I did. But I had no idea that you did. That imp Madge, I suppose?"

'No tales out of school, Jessica, but it suits as though it were moulded on you."

They walked in silence for perhaps fifty yards. Then Bingo said, "Jessica, ever since I saw you first on the platform this evening I've had something on my mind. May I ask you a question?"

She glanced at him suspiciously. "What is it?" she asked non-committally.

"I don't want you to misunderstand me, and it is not merely idle or impertinent curiosity. It is something in which I am really concerned." He paused. "You won t be angry?"

"I doubt if anger is any use with you," she smiled.

"Not much use, really," he agreed, "but what I want to know is if anyone has kissed you since that night."

Jessica stopped in her track as one paralysed. She turned towards Bingo and she laughed a laugh of unalloyed amusement. "Bingo!" she gasped. "Of all the―" her speech failed her.

"You are not angry?" he grinned up at her.

"Angry!" the laughter was still in her voice. "It is impudence so sublime that it rises above human emotion. But why? Why?" She moved on as she spoke.

"Well," he replied, falling into pace beside her, "I have some little reputation as an economist, and it seemed to me to be such dreadful waste of magnificent material if it had not been used."

Again mirth got the better of Jessica. When she could speak she demanded, "Do you think for a moment that I am in the habit of permitting that sort of thing?"

"Then, you did permit it in my case," he interposed.

"Oh you― I mean, submit to it," she corrected.

"Then you admit you submitted," he persisted.

She put out her hands, helplessly. "Oh, you creature! You know very well what I mean."

"But, Jessica, I don't," he chuckled. "For a specialist in languages you use words so ambiguously."

"You're enough to make saints blaspheme," laughter getting the better of her exasperation. They had reached the wide gates of the drive into Glendon. "This will do. I can go on by myself now," she said, holding out her hand.

"I must complete my duties as escort," said Bingo, moving on. "And, besides, you have not answered my question."

"Do you really expect an answer?" she asked.

"Why not?" urged Bingo. "Since my interest is purely academic."

"Bingo, you are absolutely incorrigible." Then, after a pause, "Since you must know, I am thankful to answer with an emphatic and grateful No."

"Good Lord!" said Bingo, shocked into amazed but credulous sobriety. "What a dreadfully dull life you have had, Jessica!"

The mass of the buildings of Glendon Girls' School loomed up before them. A light shone through the fanlight above the front door, and a faint streak of light beneath it showed the door was ajar.

They had halted by the low steps when some sixth sense warned Jessica Lawrence of danger. She glanced swiftly at Bingo.

"Don't you dare! Don't you dare!" and her voice was smothered momentarily, and there was a sound as though someone had viciously slain a mosquito. A moment later Miss Jessica Lawrence. M.A., breathless, reached the safety of her front door.

"Jessica! Jessica! Wait a moment," begged a voice from the dark.

"Don't tell me you're attempting to apologise?" she demanded. She scarcely recognised her own voice.

"Apologise be hanged!" came the injured voice of Mr. Bernard Thornton. C.M.G. "What I wanted to suggest it that we make it a regular celebration. I'll be round again in 1972."

There was a brief pause. Then came a sound in which mirth had overcome wrath.

"Booh!" said Miss Jessica Lawrence, M.A. and principal of Glendon. And the great door closed quietly but decisively.

Bingo turned and walked slowly down the drive, gently caressing a smarting cheek. In the street he paused and looked up at the moon.

Then he chuckled softly. "Even the Valkyrie. Even the Valkyrie."

____________________

An alien culture is just that― alien

12: The Social Code

Sunday Mail (Brisbane) 5 January 1941

"I ENVY you, Gray; you don't know how much!" said Tarrant, head of the Commonwealth Astronomical Department. "Think of your chance! Youth, in the first place, and then the bridge we have built for you.

"You're 32 now, with perhaps 35 priceless years in front, and tonight you start. Oh yes. I envy you!"

Warren Gray, the international officer in charge of the Mount Kosciusko Stellascope, walked smartly over the snow to the great circular building that crowned the summit. Tonight, for the first time, he was to take sole charge of that wonder of the age. Chosen for the task from more than a thousand candidates by an international committee, his task was to carry on, to the best of his powers, the work of formulating practicable means of communication between the earth and Mars that the great Barstow's invention had made possible, and to give the results of his investigations to the world. The work was one of tremendous difficulty, on account of the almost entire absence of a basis to work on and the great dissimilarity of the conditions of life existing on the two planets.

Gray nodded good-evening to the two assistants in the ante-room, and passed straight on to the instrument chamber. This was a vast domed apartment, 150ft from wall to wall unbroken by a single pillar; but the great size was dwarfed by the tube of a giant telescope, some 20ft. in diameter, that was reared to the open roof, its muzzle being almost lost in a maze of guys and stays that held it in position. Radiating from the main column ran a series of stands, each bearing its appointed instrument, many of them under glass, all glittering like an array of jewellers' treasures under the steady glow of the electric light.

Gray wandered amongst them with keenly observant eyes— here adjusting a screw with delicate touch, there noting carefully the reading of some beautiful piece of mechanism with anxious precision.

Satisfied at last, he walked to the frame and unveiled a circular reflector, 15ft. across, that was set in it, then took his place in an easy chair some 10ft. away, and busied himself with the array of delicate machinery on a table be-side him. All around were telephone-receivers, speaking tubes, and buttons. He frowned over the reading of a thermometer, and called down a tube that the temperature of the observation chamber was three-tenths of a degree too high. Even that variation affected the adjustment of the instruments that were built for absolute accuracy at 60deg. C. His face cleared only when the mercury receded the offending fractions and became stationary.

At last his critical survey was complete. Gray leaned back in his chair, and, taking up a telephone receiver, gave a few brief orders. Each was followed by a movement through the room as the great telescope slowly picked up its appointed spot in the heavens. A small voice from the receiver told him that his orders were carried out. Then he switched off all the lights in the room, except a carefully-shaded one at his elbow, and as the velvety darkness settled down, the reflector glowed with a soft light.

Gradually the light became brighter, and vast distorted images began to flit across the polished surface— images that became clearer every moment, until they showed a weird and fleeting landscape, as from a great height in a balloon. Seas and lands, cities and rivers, sped past in the field of view in bewildering succession. Gray still held the receiver, and as he caught sight of a familiar mark, his orders altered the movement of the stellascope.

At last a great city spun into view, and was held in answer to a swift call. Reaching his hand in the dark his fingers worked swiftly on screws and buttons. The towered and domed building seemed to rush upwards to meet him. In the midst of all was one of tremendous proportions and Gray worked it swiftly into the centre of the reflector. Nearer und nearer it came. First the reflector held it all, then only the central dome, then only a window-like aperture in the roof, until at last the whole interior was exposed and then Warren saw in the mirror a view of a portion of a room almost the exact counterpart of the one he occupied, except for strange and subtle differences of detail of workmanship and architecture. Practically the instruments were the same, and he knew he was in contact with what was officially known as the No. 10 Martian Observatory, at that time some one hundred and twenty millions of miles away from the earth.

A glance showed him that the chair in front of the reflector was empty, and Gray turned impatiently to a chronometer on the table. It wanted three minutes to the half hour.

"My friend is nothing if not punctual," he murmured to himself, and settled to wait with an occasional glance at the large hand on the clock. Precisely as it touched the point of the half hour there was a movement on the reflector, and a man clad in a long, dark robe stepped into view and faced him. He was below the average terrestrial height, and would pass for perhaps 60 on this planet. His long hair was quite white, and under his high, round forehead were two, dark, deep-set eyes, as brilliant as an eagle's. The face was hairless, and showed a straight, firm mouth, under his thin, hooked nose. It was a stern face, almost cruel, but one that told of great intellectual force. Gray had become familiar with the man's appearance during his probationary period under Tarrant. Tonight, however, he regarded him with keener interest.

He arose from his chair as the Martian stopped and held out both arms towards him in salutation. Warren repeated the action with a nod and a smile, and then each took his seat. The far-off observer seemed quite unaffected by the absence of Tarrant, and gravely commenced to carry out a chemical experiment for the edification of Gray, who watched every movement with close attention. It was by means of such demonstrations that much of the common knowledge of the two planets was made manifest.

WARREN followed the progress of the work, judging from experience and results the chemicals used, and subsequently he repeated the work under the eyes of the Martian, to show that the formula was known on earth, and understood. Sometimes they would come to a deadlock, as some operation foreign to one or the other was uncomprehended, and then would follow an earnest search for the missing link in the chain. It often happened that weeks were spent over some trifling detail, until the solution of the trouble was found.

They usually worked for about five hours, and succeeding nights were much like the first, the only breaks being due to meteorological troubles on the earth that prevented free observation, and this time was utilised by Gray to write up his notes and reports, and to compare them with those of other stations. Six months passed, and left Warren Gray still as far as ever from the faintest clue to the work he had promised himself to undertake.

The Martian observer absolutely ignored all overtures towards elucidation of their social code. Gray had prepared an elaborate series of enlarged photographs of scenes from our everyday work and occupations, and exhibited them to his far-off vis-a-vis. Some were examined with curious care, but others in which women figured always had the one result. The Martian immediately covered his face with the flowing sleeve of his robe— a decided hint that the subject was distasteful, and would not be investigated— and on such occasions Gray swore vividly at the reflector.

He instructed Mars in the use of photography, in the hope that the result would give him a clue. It took three months' hard work, and when the Martian observer proved he had mastered the art he quietly but firmly dropped it. About this time, too, Gray had another annoyance to contend with, for the observer in No. 10 Martian station on several occasions went to sleep at his post. At first Warren was able to rouse him when he nodded by flashing a magnesium lamp, the sudden glare recalling him to his senses, but at other times the man slept for two or three hours, leaving the terrestrial observer in a state of helpless anger.

Then came a wonderful night. Gray had started early, and after an hour's work the old observer nodded and finally sank to sleep. Warren shook his fist at the un-conscious figure, and started to write quietly by the shaded lamp. For an hour he worked, when a movement on the reflector brought him to his feet with a start. For the first time on record there was a second figure imaged in the Martian observatory. Gray held his breath with astonishment. It was a woman! She was leaning over the man in the chair. She was veiled, as was usual, from head to foot, not even her hands were uncovered, but Gray knew from her attitude that she was intently watching the sleeper. Apparently she had not yet noticed the reflector. As he watched her she straightened herself, and as she did so her figure seemed to start with astonishment under the robes. He could see every movement with perfect distinctness, even the quick heaving of her breast.

Gray held out his arm in salute, but the figure remained motionless. He cursed his inability to make her understand. He caught up a rug from his chair, and, throwing it over his head, he suddenly tossed it back, as though unveiling. He saw his meaning was understood from the start she gave. For a moment she bent over the sleeper again, and then turned her back and made as though to leave. Gray threw out his arms in entreaty. Suddenly, almost as she was lost to view, the woman paused, turned, and walked slowly back again.

WATCHING her, Gray commenced in his excitement to speak aloud: "Ye gods! What a chance. Daughters of Eve! She hesitates. They're the same all over the universe! I win! I win! She'll do it!"

The figure had paused behind the sleeping man and bent again, alert intentness in her every attitude. She appeared to be listening to his breathing. As though satisfied, she stood erect. Gray saw the hands moving under the veil. Then, while he scarcely drew breath from anxiety, she paused a moment. Then suddenly two slender white hands parted the shimmering fabric from head to foot, and Warren gave a gasp of mingled pleasure and amazement. He was looking straight into the woman's eyes.

From that moment onwards Gray know he was a changed man. In a second his office and his training were forgotten. Science and the work he was living for, which had hitherto occupied the sole place in his thoughts, fell into a distant background, and in their place was the image of a woman. He could always remember her as he saw her then shadowed in the great mirror. Her pale oval face was framed in the soft folds of the parted veil. Its wonderful, its appealing beauty, and changing expressions of timid curiosity and surprise moulded themselves on his memory. He never knew how long they stood watching each other. He knew that she feared something, for her glance went uneasily now and again to the sleeper, and he realised that she was listening as though for some unseen danger.

Once when he involuntarily held his arms towards her she placed her finger on her lips as though to warn him to silence, not realising the vast gulf that parted them. But across the gulf the man bowed his heart in mute worship of the being whose voice he could never hear, and who could never be more than an intangible shadow in his life. Minute after minute went by. He was wondering vaguely what fascination kept her there, until slowly she held her arms towards him and then let the veil drop forward till it hid her completely, and turned with halting footsteps and disappeared.

It was long before Gray roused himself from the stupor that held him, and sank into his chair with his mind in a whirling hurricane of self-questioning. His first rational action was to work swiftly at an elaborate calculation, and when he finally solved the problem he sat staring first at the figures and then at the reflection of the Martian station in the mirror.

HITHERTO he had looked on the constantly varying space that separated the two planets as merely a scientific fact on which comment was unnecessary. Now, for the first time, he realised its meaning. Between himself and that woman who had so suddenly flashed into his life lay the awful distance of one hundred and twenty three million miles himself of space! The whole idea was monstrous. He was mad, he told himself. What was the woman to him? He would never see her again.

Hours passed, but still he sat there gazing straight before him, with unseeing eyes, one moment feeling the intoxication of passionate love and the next all the despair of its absolute hopelessness. At last he roused himself, and seeing the Martian still sleeping he left his post. Next night he waited anxiously for signs of weariness in the old observer, but quite a month passed before he fell from grace and dozed again; but even then, although Gray wailed eagerly, watching for a sign of her coming, his hopes were unrewarded, and so they remained for three months and then she came once more.

With beating heart he saw her advancing through the gloom. This time she went straight to the sleeper, and, after bending over him and satisfying herself that he was unconscious, she threw back her veil and faced him. To his famished eyes she appeared more beautiful than ever. Her expression was alert, and she moved quickly as with a fixed purpose. She held a scroll in her hands, which she unrolled and held towards him. Gray saw at a glance that it was a rough but accurate chart of the solar system, on which the earth and Mars were deeply ringed with red. She indicated first Mars, and then touched her breast, and then the earth and pointed to him as though to verify her ideas.

Gray nodded in affirmation, and she let the chart fall to her feet. She smiled at him with infinite sadness, realising the gulf that separated them. Then, to his great wonder, she held out her arms to him and slowly sank to her knees. There was no need of spoken word to read her meaning. There is just one language that is formed neither of sounds nor written characters, but is most eloquent to those who have learned it, and that language passed between this man and this woman through countless miles of infinite space.

It was the commencement of the strangest wooing the worlds have ever known. For over an hour that night she stayed with him, but he understood by her rest-less anxiety that there was risk in the meeting, and, though he feared her departure, he began to fear still more for her in staying. At last she went, lingering as though loath to leave him, but he knew she would come again.

For three days after, a storm that forbade work howled round the summit of Mount Kosciusko, and Gray raged with increasing impatience. The storm passed, and Gray was early at his post. The familiar old observer came as usual. They started their work, but in ten minutes the Martian was in the deepest slumber. In ten more the impatient man saw the girl beside him. This time there was no hesitation. She immediately commenced to shake the sleeper vigorously, but without rousing him. Then, being apparently quite satisfied, she stood before him unveiled and smiling. After their first mute greeting she took a metal vessel, and, pointing to the sleeping observer, raised it to her lips as though drinking. Next she rested her face in her hands and closed her eyes in imitation of sleep. Then she looked up laughing merrily, and shook the Martian again. Gray knew that she had drugged the watcher to clear the way for their meeting, and signalled his appreciation.

That night was the first of many. The man was too deeply in love to stop to ask himself where it would end. He was living only in the present. With a speed far beyond his hopes a thorough understanding was established, but the understanding was one that Gray considered would not interest the inhabitants of the earth. They formed hundreds of ways of recording their impressions. Every night a splendid spray of flowers was laid before the girl as an offering, and she never failed to express her delight with them. She learned to kiss the tips of her dainty fingers to her terrestrial lover, and taught him many quaint devices that gave them both infinite amusement. They even quarrelled once, because he was late at the tryst and had kept her waiting. For an hour or more she declined to move the veil from her face, in spite of his entreaties. Then he turned his back in anger, and when he looked again she was standing with tearful eyes, an exquisite picture of penitence, and did not smile until she read full forgiveness in his face.

IN MELBOURNE, Tarrant, head of the Astronomical Department, reading Gray's reports, observed uneasily the frequency of interruption through neglect at No. 10 Martian station. It was not so in his time, and he was worried. Not that there was any falling off in Gray's work; it was always keen and brilliant, but latterly it had become woefully brief, but one day, when Gray wrote asking him to purchase and forward a diamond ring costing over a month's pay and enclosing a cheque for the money. Tarrant did as he was asked, but packed his bags for a visit to Mount Kosciusko.

"Some infernal woman," he said to himself. "I must investigate. We can't afford to spoil so good a man."

Gray's greeting, though warm, did not deceive his old friend. There was something being kept back, a reticence that could only be due to one cause. Over dinner that evening Tarrant boldly taxed his chum with the heinous crime of being in love. He did it not unkindly, but firmly as between father and son.

Gray squirmed and floundered hopelessly, and finally confessed to his amazed hearer the truth of the matter. Warming up to the subject, he raved as only a lover can to a sympathetic friend.

"It's no use, Tarrant," he concluded. "It would kill me if I lost her. I'm only living now to watch for her coming. She's my life, and all there is in it. Don't laugh, old man; it must sound mad to you, but it's all in all to me."

Tarrant listened with increasing gravity. Never did a man feel less like laughing. Ahead he saw inevitable tragedy.

"What is the end to be?" was all he said.

"I haven't dared to think of the end. I simply dare not," was the answer he got.

He would have asked to be present at a meeting between the two, but he knew that Warren would never consent, and therefore his anxiety made him decide to prolong indefinitely a visit he had only intended to last for a few hours. Something warned him that the end was not far off, and that Gray would want him then. The end was nearer than even Tarrant dreamed. That very evening he sat up before the fire long after Gray had left to take up his post at the observatory. He was nearly dozing. The hour was after midnight, when suddenly a furious ring at the telephone brought him to his feet. He snatched the receiver to his ear.

"What? What, Gray? Yes! Yes! Right! I'm coming!"

Without waiting for hat or cloak he ran from the house to the observatory. There was something in the agonised cry from the far end of the wire that told of disaster.

Gray met him at the door of the instrument-room, wild-eyed and with his face deathly pale. He seized Tarrant's arm without a word and hurried him to the reflector. There a strange scene met his gaze.

Crouched on the floor was the cowering figure of a veiled woman, and over her stood, storming with furious gestures, the old Martian observer. His face was twisting with rage. With impassioned violence he was evidently addressing a dozen or more men grouped round him, pointing first at the shivering woman and then at the mirror. When he saw Gray he shook his fist savagely, and looked as though spitting venom in his fury. To the two watchers, helpless as they were to interfere, it seemed like a vile dream. Though they knew they were confronted with a terrible crisis, the very silence of it all appalled them. When he ceased his harangue a man much older than all present stepped forward, and, after first speaking a few words to the old Martian, he looked down on the girl at his feet. He held out one hand over her.

"Some infernal woman," he said to himself.

They saw his lips moving, and as she spoke she rose slowly and stood before him with bowed head. The others closed round her, as though preparing to move her away, but as they did so she broke from amongst them, and swiftly tore her veil aside and faced the reflector, and for a brief moment stood gazing at Gray in mute farewell. Then, with a rush, the men closed on her and dragged her from view.

When they were gone Tarrant heard the story, told in a voice alternating between rage and despair. They had met as usual. The old Martian was apparently soundly asleep. Gray was trying to make the girl understand the significance of the ring he had procured, when suddenly he observed that the man was only feigning sleep, and was observing their every action. Gray had tried, but in vain, to warn her of the danger, when suddenly the man had sprung to his feet and flung her to the floor, and the others had rushed in.

Tarrant persuaded Gray to return to his quarters. Nothing could be done, and they could only await events, but there was no sleep for either that night. Tarrant had a terrible foreboding that he dared not mention to his friend.

With keen anxiety they awaited the night, and when the time came they found the No. 10 Martian station empty. Gray refused to leave the observatory, and Tarrant stayed out of sympathy.

The night dragged on, until in the small hours of the morning a telephone bell broke the aching silence. Gray mechanically picked up the receiver. It was the Singapore station speaking. It reported an unusual excitement in the city in which the No. 10 station was situated. He repeated this message to Tarrant, who grew pale when he heard it.

"Gray, you had better go," he said.

Tarrant was thinking of the one time previously he had seen an unveiled woman in Mars. "I must know." said Gray. "The doubt would be worse than the truth. Turn the instrument on to the great square."

Tarrant obeyed, and then almost wished he had refused to humour his friend. Each one of the Martian cities had this feature in common— an enormous square in its midst, and in the centre of it a cone-shaped mound of dark stone. When it swung into the field of the reflector both the watchers saw that it was occupied by countless thousands of men, and the cone, usually sombre and forbidding, was wreathed and festooned with masses of vivid scarlet flowers.

Tarrant knew his surmise was correct, and the memory of a similar awful scene came back to him. At all costs Gray must be spared the end.

"Gray, you must go."

"No. Tarrant, I'll see her once more if it kills me. I must stop."

Even as he spoke the head of a procession appeared, and the crowd fell back to right and left to give it room. Straight for the cone it came, and parted on each side. Tarrant saw the girl's figure separate from the rest, and again he urged Gray to leave, but the other remained staring into the reflector, rigid and motionless. Then she stood alone on the summit, and as she threw back her veil the thronging thousands fell prostrate.

Gray made no sound or movement, but an involuntary cry of wonder came from Tarrant. On the supremely beautiful face there was no sign of fear. Her gaze turned upwards as though seeking something above her, and her eyes were so full of pride. So she raised her arms as though in signal. Then came a blazing blue flash, but Tarrant had shut out the scene with his hands. When he turned again he saw that Gray was sitting smiling vacantly, and when he realised what had happened he was glad, for he knew that it was not good for a man to see what they had seen and live to remember it.

________________

Be careful what you wish for. You may get it...

13: The Two Vows of Lady Anne

Australasian (Melbourne), Saturday 26 December 1936

"AND so," said the Lord of  Wrotham, "it is Hertford who has added to the charter that Wrotham descends through the female line."

"And therefore the walking wine-sack would be my husband." The glint in Lady Anne's eyes suggested that such a marriage would not mean unalloyed happiness for the Earl of Hertford.

In an age when heiresses were State pawns, the suggested alliance was more normal than exceptional. It was the revolt of clean and splendid youth against the threat of debauched middle age that lit the fires of battle in her eyes. Besides, there was Sir Hugh Daventry to be considered, and Hugh— well, he was Hugh, and that meant her universe to Lady Anne.

Her father watched the flushed, angry face, understanding. "It's a sorry affair, Anne. Though he did not put it in words, Hertford means to have you and Wrotham or the King will not sign the charter."

"But what brings the dog here in such haste? What's afoot?" Anne tapped a small foot impatiently among the rushes on the floor.

"He rode in with the Bishop of Bury but an hour since, with a score of men—"

"Those cutthroats I saw in the yard?" Anne interrupted.

Wrotham nodded. "He said he rode ahead of Henry to warn me that the King would lie at Wrotham till Monday. They ride west— to school the Welsh chiefs."

"And our good bishop? Why does he herd in such company?" Anne asked.

Her father shook his head. "I had no chance for speech with him. Mayhap Stephen scented trouble and came as watchdog."

Ann took a step forward and laid a white hand on her father's shoulder gently. "What must be, must be. I will obey if you command."

With his hand grasping his grizzled beard Wrotham stared before him a moment. Then the old warrior suddenly stood erect and brought his hand smashing to the trestle beside him. "No!" he almost shouted. "Must I peddle my daughter for my land at the bidding of Hertford?

Anne shook her head sadly. "Cross Hertford, dear old wolf, and you go landless. He holds us in a cleft stick."

For a minute Wrotham strode to and fro across the narrow chamber. Then stopped and said resolutely. "Better that than live beneath his hand. There is always France. Phillip would give me Vaux for my allegiance. Listen, Anne! The choice is yours. I am old and little matters for me. Choose as you please!"

"You mean—?"

"Aye! Mean it and will stand by you." Anne stood irresolute, but Wrotham urged her on. "Go, Anne! He is in the lower tower chamber, where he roosts, talking some King's business with Stephen."

BUT Lady Anne did not go directly to Hertford. First she made her way to her own stone-walled, tapestry-hung room, and dismissed the women she found there. Then she flung herself on her couch. For nearly half an hour she lay pondering over the disaster that threatened her life.

Slowly a thought took shape. With closed eyes she lay, testing its every desperate turn, so still that she appeared to be asleep. That morning Lady Anne had arisen from her couch a happy girl, without a care in the world. She rose from it the second time that day a woman— a woman, steel-nerved by an inflexible purpose. With head erect, imperious and splendid, she passed to the lower tower room. By its low arched doorway one of Hertford's cutthroats stood on guard. Leering at her as she paused, the man dropped his pike across her path. The Lady Anne of an hour ago would have shrunk back. The Lady Anne of the moment turned blazing eyes on the guard and hissed— "Would you hang? You dog!"

The pike jerked erect. At a peremptory motion of her hand the man drew aside the leather curtain, and Anne swept past him into the room.

Two torches on the walls and a thick candle on a heavy table lit the small, circular chamber. On one side of the table lounged Hertford. Opposite him, with parchments spread before him, sat Stephen, Bishop of Bury. To him Anne bowed reverently. The two men had been taken by surprise at Anne's unceremonious entrance. Hertford sat twirling, by the stem, a dull and dented silver wine cup. His dark green, velvet robe was marked in front by stains of food and wine. Against the wall beside him lay the mail he had put off.

Stephen had greeted her with a smile. Hertford glowered up at her without moving, and Anne recognised the intentional insolence that he assumed to overawe her. It was Hertford who broke the silence. "Your pardon, Lady Anne, but we are deep in the King's business." There was a curt dismissal in his tone.

"Then the King's business can wait on mine." Hertford gaped, but there was a smile mingled with the astonishment on the Bishop's face as he surveyed a new and surprising Lady Anne.

Hertford scrabbled in his thick, unkempt beard with stubby fingers. "Oh!" he sneered, "since my Lady Anne Wrotham's affairs are greater than King's let us hear them."

Anne smiled over sweetly at the Bishop, and, nodding in Hertford's direction, murmured, "A truly gallant lover, my Lord Bishop."

Hertford sat erect. "Our affairs may rest till another time," he snapped.

"They will not." Her voice was decisive, and she continued, "My father tells me that the Earl of Hertford has offered me the insult of marriage. Better one of our swineherds!"

Anne caught a warning glance from the Bishop as a dark flush spread over Hertford's face. He half arose from the settle, but recovered himself before his almost involuntary outburst of anger. When he spoke again his voice was cool and even.

"Still, I think you will accept my insult, Lady Anne."

"Never!"

Stretching his arm across the table Hertford tapped one of the parchments that lay before the Bishop. "It is the King's will, as well as my own—"

"So," interrupted the Bishop, and his  voice was icy, "that is the real reason for withholding the charter."

Hertford nodded, "A State matter, my Lord. There are wings to be clipped. Wrotham, with his nest of knights about him, such as Daventry, carries himself a little high. Henry would have Wrotham  in safe hands."

"Safe hands!" Anne's voice cut like a knife. "The safe hands of the man who urged four knights to a foul deed at Canterbury, before its altar." The two men sat frozen. Spoken by a man, the words Anne had uttered would have been a death warrant. For it was common talk that Hertford's hand had been behind the murder of Becket.

When at last Hertford found his voice, though he controlled it, he was trembling with rage. "Still will you marry me," he said hoarsely.

"And, if I still refuse?"

"Then your father goes landless!"

Anne tossed her head defiantly. "A small price for such an escape!"

Hertford bent forward, and as Anne looked at his eyes they reminded her of those of a wicked wild boar. "Listen, you pink and white fool," he growled. "You forget— I am Earl Marshal of England and answer for the safety of the King's Grace. Do I not know of the lands in France your father claims, at Vaux? Do I wait like a dolt while a discontented and dispossessed Baron crosses over to France— a traitor?"

Anne drew a deep breath. "You mean?"

"I mean the loss of Wrotham is but part of the price you will pay; and your father will pay."

Suddenly Anne felt very cold. "I must have time to think." she muttered.

Hertford banged his hand on the table. "No," he thundered. "You demanded your business comes before the King's and so it shall. Your answer?"

LADY ANNE gazed blankly at the narrow arrow slot before her, and her heart missed a beat as she glimpsed a knight in mail ride by. It was Sir Hugh Daventry. For all their sakes she must carry out her desperate plan. Inwardly, she prayed for strength.

She bowed with a humility she was far from feeling. "I agree!" she said quietly.

"Then the marriage takes place tomorrow, when the King is here," said Hertford.

Anne held up a slender white hand.

"One moment, my lord. I agree, but on my own terms. You will accept those, or I choose, and choose cheerfully, the worst you can do." There was no mistaking her inflexible determination.

"And your precious terms?" Hertford grunted.

"First, the charter of Wrotham is sealed by the King. Second, that the marriage does not take place until the week after Holy Week."

Hertford spluttered a vicious oath. "Do you think you deal with a page or a ninny? What safeguard have I that you will keep your word, with Holy Week nigh on six months away."

"This," replied Anne calmly. "On Sunday, at High Mass, before the King and his lords, I will swear on the Holy Elements to give you my hand during the week after Holy Week, if the charter is   sealed, and if not to you I will give it to none other."

Hertford thought deeply and then turned to the bishop. "What think you, my lord?"

The bishop, who had watched the scene with increasing anxiety, answered with an edge on his voice. "I think much, but this I say, that vow will bind our Lady Anne faster than steel could bind her."

"Have your way," he snorted at Anne.

Without another glance at Hertford, Anne bowed low before the bishop, asking his blessing, and then, head high, she left the chamber.

BUT Anne swept down the passage until she came on a page dicing with Simon, the captain of her father's horse. It was a forbidden pastime for the page, and at another time would have won swift retribution.

"Boy," she ordered hastily. "Go, find Sir Hugh Daventry and bid him come to me at—" she paused to think, "at the stillroom, and let none hear the message."

Then to Simon: "I need help, Simon. Let Sir Hugh pass through, and then wait near the stillroom lest any of Hertford's cut-throats trouble us."

Simon clanked after her, and a few moments later, as Sir Hugh hurried by, nodded him cheerfully towards the still-room door.

Between Hugh and the Lady Anne, their greetings were likely to be prolonged, because they had been separated for nearly 24 hours. But with a lover's sensitiveness, Hugh recognised the anxiety in her face. The speedily told story sent Hugh's hand to the hilt of his great sword, and his wrath blazed up in a pious desire to hew Hertford into pieces.

But Lady Anne's arms clung about his neck. "Oh, Hugh. I love you for it,  but it is madness," she cried. "Would you play Hertford's game for him? Suppose you killed him, what of the King?"

Hugh paused in his struggle to free himself. "But, dear heart," he said, "if you take that oath we are parted."

Anne stepped back, shaking her head, and smiling a little sadly. "Force is useless. You and my father are a pair— dear fighting blunderers alike. Cannot you see we can only meet guile with guile and cunning with cunning? It will take a woman's wit to beat Hertford."

"But—" he began, bewildered.

Anne's hand sought a fine gold chain about her neck. By it she drew from her bosom a small gold crucifix, rudely formed in the art of the day. "Listen, my dear love," she said gently; then, holding the crucifix before her she went on, "I swear by the body of our dear Lord that in the week following Holy Week I will wed you and none other," and she sealed the vow by raising the cross to her lips.

"But," he protested, "the oath you make before the altar!"

Lady Anne put her arms about him and laughed softly. "Hugh, my lover, there is but small joy in hugging a man in mail—" then, after a moment, "the oath before the altar I will take also." Then, seeing his bewilderment, she said, "Hugh, will you trust me and help me?"

"Both trust and help you with life itself, if need be," he answered fervently.

"Promise."

Hugh nodded emphatically.

"Well, all you have to do is to do all I ask without question or hesitation."

"But, Anne! two such oaths!"

They lived in a day when faith was a more simple and religion more a vital force than it is to-day. Hugh was even more anxious than perplexed.

"I will keep both vows," smiled Anne, and stifling further protest with her soft, pink fingers she said, "Remember, you promised to trust me, but I dare not trust you or anyone else."

Hugh surrendered with a lover's grace. "Your orders, my lady?" he asked.

"Only this— guard jealously your peace with Hertford, and when the King comes tomorrow beg permission from him to ride with him into Wales. With you near him, Hertford's suspicions, if he has any, will be lulled."

"And you, dearest?" he ventured.

"What's a lover's promise worth?" she laughed. "You were to ask no questions. But this I will tell you. Until the Monday after Holy Week I take refuge with the Abbess of St. Albans. And now, dear heart, you must go."

NEXT day Henry came to Wrotham, and in the castle for three days there was high revel. On the Saturday Henry sealed the charter of Wrotham, and on the Sunday, before the King and his lords, Anne made her vow in the chapel, where the Bishop of Bury held the Holy Elements.

It was with nothing short of consternation that Bishop Stephen heard the story of Anne's conflicting oaths. His admonishment, stern and uncompromising, was listened to with more levity than reverence.

"But Anne, my dear child," he expostulated, "you have done a terrible wrong."

"If I keep both vows?" Anne smiled.

"That were beyond the wit of man," countered the Bishop between anger and pity.

The Lady Anne held up her hand, on which gleamed a great ruby, set there by Hertford in the chapel. "But not beyond the wit of woman, an' it please my lord." Then she added after a pause "That is, if a certain gruff, cross, but rather dear Bishop will help me."

"Help you to keep both vows and fool Hertford," he demanded.

"That is what I thought you would be clever enough to understand," murmured Ann.

"To foil Hertford I would—" he broke off his restless pacing and faced her. "Mind you, Anne! I'll take no part in evil of the sacrilege of broken oaths."

Impudently Anne kissed his cheek— "You old dear, all I ask is a parchment giving protection of the Church to all who help, so their help does no hurt to canon law or the law of the King."

He stared at her irresolute for a moment. "Faith! you baggage," he said at last, "Much would I like to know what's in your mind."

"Best not, my Lord," she laughed, "then you can declare so to Hertford and the King with a clear conscience."

Without another word to Anne the Bishop turned to Brother Martin and dictated the protection Anne demanded. When he had signed it and sealed it with his own signet he passed it to Anne, who again kissed him and, with a hearty word of gratitude, fled.

As his Lordship watched the swaying curtain through which Lady Anne had passed, he said: "Brother Martin, we who serve our Lord through His Church have many blessings. But of those blessings, my son, the greatest, I think, is celibacy."

ON the Monday a peace fell on Wrotham. Henry departed, and in his train took Hertford, whereat my Lady Anne was much pleased, and also Sir Hugh Daventry, at which she was by no means pleased, though she had so ordered it.

On the day following Lady Anne entered her horse litter, and, accompanied by two of her women and an escort led by Simon, made her journey to the nunnery of St. Albans. By the way she paused for a long space at the home, half-hut and half-cave, of the hermit, Bernard. For the hermit Bernard was a very wise and a very holy man, who had great repute in those parts also as a leech, for he had studied in France and Rome, and cured the wounds and the ills of all for miles around Wrotham, and what Lady Anne said to the hermit only he knows, but it was clear to those who watched that Bernard did not like what he heard.

It was only after Lady Anne had shown him the Bishop's parchment that she left well contented. But long after she had passed on her way Bernard, the hermit, knelt before his simple altar in profound prayer.

IT was on the Thursday of Holy Week that Henry and his court descended on Wrotham and there kept the fast of Good Friday. That year Easter fell late and spring came early. The whole countryside round Wrotham was ablaze with new life.

None the less there were still three anxious and worried men in the castle. Both Sir Hugh and Stephen of Bury sought news from Wrotham, but beyond that she was well he could tell them no more than they themselves knew.

On the Sunday after evensong, as the Bishop paced the castle wall, there fell into step beside him Sir Hugh Daventry, limping slightly from a wound from a Welsh arrow. Question and answer told that neither knew more than the other.

"Hugh, my son," sighed the Bishop, "my mind is vexed, for I fear some madcap trick that may bring sorrow to her— and mayhap shame."

"Never shame, my Lord," defended Hugh stoutly. "But I, too, am heavy at heart. What may hap to me is nothing, but if Hertford does her harm—" here his hand crept across to the heavy hilt of his sword.

"None of that, my son," said the Bishop sternly. "Anne is right, only guile can defeat the guile of Hertford." Then pausing he looked along the wall and exclaimed "But what ails Simon," for the grim old captain was hovering uncertainly 20 feet away.

Seeing he was noticed, Simon approached. "What news, Simon?" demanded Sir Hugh.

The captain hesitated, staring from one to the other. "For me?" asked Hugh, and Simon nodded.

"Then I had best get beyond earshot," said the Bishop, turning, after exchanging glances with Hugh.

"Well, Simon?"

"From my Lady Anne, Sir Hugh. She bids you wait her at the cot of Bernard the hermit at noon tomorrow, and not to forget your promise." Simon recited a well-learned lesson and took himself off without waiting for an answer.

The Bishop rejoined Hugh. "A message from—?"

Hugh nodded gravely. "I cannot understand."

"I ask nothing, Hugh," replied the Bishop, "but whatever she may desire, obey without question."

Hugh laughed grimly. "You and she have minds alike, my Lord, for she has wrenched a promise from me that I obey her blindly. The devil's in it all."

NEXT day at noon, Hugh, an hour before his time, greeted Anne with a glad heart as her escort of a dozen men, headed by Simon and her litter, came to a halt before the hermit's hut.

Anne waved the escort away, and turned with Hugh into the hermit's hut, bidding her women wait outside. Under her arm she bore a small carved cedar casket, which she placed upon the altar. Then for a few precious moments she lay quiet in his arms, before she drew herself gently free.

"Hugh, there is no moment to waste! For this one hour you must promise blind obedience." Then she smiled up at him gravely. "After that, for all my life, dear one, will I obey you."

"As you please, Anne, and what next?"

"Bernard, we are ready," called Anne to the hermit, who stood aside with his head bowed.

"Your women, my Lady," said the hermit, and Anne called them into the hut.

Then while the castle of Wrotham rang with the roar and bustle of preparation for the marriage of Lady Anne and Hertford, at the hermit's hut was that same Lady Anne wed to Sir Hugh — a bewildered and enraptured Sir Hugh— as fast as the Church could bind them.

When the groom walked into the open air Anne turned to him. "Now is your moment of trial, Hugh."

"I have promised, Lady Anne— Daventry," he added with a happy laugh.

"Then for two hours we part," commanded the bride, "for I must keep my vow to that black dog Hertford."

"But—"

"No buts, my husband— nothing but obedience," said Anne gaily. "You ride alone to Daventry manor. Leave me Simon and the escort, and in two hours I will be with you. Go now, my dear, my dear, or I can never let you go!"

For a second Hugh hesitated, then he stooped and kissed her, and flung himself across his horse.

"Ride, and ride fast," she cried as he turned his horse, and as Hugh spurred across the meadow to the woodland she stood watching him until he was out of sight, her hand pressed to her breast.

Then slowly she turned to Simon and said; "Simon, my friend, there is a grave mission for you. Remember, I trust you."

"Have I ever failed my Lady Anne?" he grinned under his bushy beard.

"Never, Simon, but least of all can you fail me now. I have business with the hermit. When that is done I will pass to my litter, not speaking to you. With me go to Daventry the escort and my women. You will remain here, and take  your orders from Bernard, as from me. You understand?"

"Trust me, my lady," growled the old war dog, and Anne turned away content.

At the door of his hut the hermit awaited her. "My lady," he said gently, "and is your will the same? Your heart still set?"

"Now more than ever," said Anne decisively. "Do swiftly and without fear what is to be done."

She passed into the hut with Bernard, calling her women in with her, and its frail door was closed.

FOR nearly an hour, while the men of the escort diced on, a cloak thrown on the grass, Simon stood in the warm sunlight. No sound came from the hut. He heard nothing but the buzzing of bees in the clover at his feet. Then as the door shook he barked the escort to their saddles as Lady Anne came from the hut, and with her face half-veiled by her cloak took her place in the litter.

As she had said, she neither spoke to Simon nor looked towards him. He watched the little troop and the litter, with the two women pacing beside it, follow the path taken by Hugh, until it too disappeared. Again Simon stood, waiting.

Then suddenly Bernard appeared, and Simon swung himself heavily into his saddle. The hermit bore under his arm the casket that Lady Anne had brought with her, and in his hand a small roll of parchment. "Take these with care, Simon," he ordered, "and place them yourself in the hands of his Lordship the Earl of Hertford at Wrotham. Giving him greetings from our Lady Anne."

Without a word Simon took the casket, and horse and man lumbered creaking and clanking toward Wrotham.

IN the great hall of the castle, at the high table, sat Henry. With him sat Hertford, Wrotham, and the Bishop of Bury, and about them stood a dozen nobles of the Court.

All looked up as Simon clanked his way to the dais and halted before Hertford.

"My Lord Earl Marshal," boomed Simon. "Greeting from our Lady Anne, who bade me place these before your lordship with my own hands." And Simon deposited casket and parchment on the trestle. Then he saluted abruptly and departed, his duty done.

"Ho!" laughed Henry, "a gift from the bride, Hertford!"

His Majesty was in high good humour, and called for a health to the Lady Anne.

Hertford took up the parchment and snapped the silken thread about it testily. "Does she take me for a monk, to read her writing? Here, my lord bishop, please you to be my clerk for the moment."

Stephen, more curious than the rest, opened the scroll eagerly as Hertford fumbled with the lid of the cedar casket.

And this is what Stephen of Bury read aloud to the listening group:—

To my Lord the Erle of Hertforde:—

Greeting from Anne Daventry. My Lord will have in minde how on the bodie and bloode of our Dere Lord did I take oathe that on the weeke next after Holie Week would I give him my hand, and so mine oathe I kyp, and purge me of my vowe before our Lord. — Anne Daventry.

As he was reading Hertford had opened the casket, from which he had taken a small white silken bundle. As Stephen finished reading the last fold of the silk fell away from what it held.

As their eyes fell on what lay before them every man gasped and remained for a little space as though frozen. Only Stephen moved, as he crossed himself with eyes involuntarily closed. Then he broke the silence, his voice hard and relentless.

"My Lord Hertford. I bear witness before God and man that Lady Anne has kept her vow. Remember, my Lord, the cloak of the Church is about her and hers; harm her at your peril." And slowly the Bishop of Bury went from the hall with bowed head.

But as he moved Hertford burst out with a terrible oath. "Fooled, by God!" he shouted, dashing his cup to the table. "Am I to be cheated by—"

In a second Wrotham was on his feet, with his sword drawn gleaming in the torchlight. "Silence, you—"

But Hertford's sword, too, was out.

What Wrotham might have said was cut short by a burst of that terrible Plantagenet rage, against which no man among them dared stand.

"Up swords! Up swords, I say!" thundered Henry, "Is Wrotham Castle a tavern, that you dare to brawl before your King?"

In the silence as he paused the blades could be heard grating into the scabbards. Then he turned to Hertford.

"Your work, my Lord, and foul work!" he hissed, pointing towards the table. "Hear me, Hertford. My cloak also is about Lady Anne and her people. One move against them and your head answers for it. You have what you bargained for— take it." There was bitter scorn in the King's voice.

But my Lord Hertford did not take what was his. He shrunk backwards— for there on the table, whiter than the silk on which it lay, waxen and exquisite, was the severed left hand of Lady Anne. On its third finger gleamed evilly the great ruby which Hertford had set upon it.

That night the Earl of Hertford got drunker than usual, and those who knew the Earl Marshal best regarded that as a notable achievement.

End

Table of Contents

- Introduction
- 1: The Great Mendax Transmitter
- 2: The Invisibility Of Mendax
- 3: The Mendax Gold Saver
- 4: The Rejuvenation Of Slogger Binns
- 5: An Awkward Dilemma
- 6: "Forty Bob Or—"
- 1: The Gift Of Venus
- 2: The Demoralisation of Muriel
- 3: What The Archbishop Knew
- 4: The Cog Wheels
- 5: A Black Cat For Luck
- 6: Her One Aim In Life
- 7: When Kean Funked
- 8: A Matter Of Creed
- 9: Faux Pas
- 10: Charlotte Bronte Is Shocked
- 11: Even The Valkyrie
- 12: The Social Code
- 13: The Two Vows of Lady Anne