Author: M McDonnell Bodkin
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: A year or two ago, in pursuit of Victorian detectives, I began searching for the Paul Beck stories, which ran in Pearson's Magazine and were of course later published in various collections. The first Beck collection published was this one, but all I could find was a cover, and a contents list. A little later I found a couple of stories from this volume and put them up in "Past Masters" pending finding the rest. Then I found some later volumes: "The Capture of Paul Beck", "The Quests of Paul Beck", and "Young Beck", which I was able to post here. Now thanks to Roy Glashan's Library, where Matt

PAUL BECK

THE RULE OF THUMB DETECTIVE

M. McDonnnell Bodkin

1898

Contents

1. The Vanishing Diamonds

2. The Miniature Halter

3. By a Hair's Breadth

4. Murder by Proxy

5. Greased Lightning

6. The Dog and the Doctor

7. Under His Own Hand

8. The Poisoner

9. The Slip Knot

10. The Slump in Silver

11. Cabinet Secrets

12. The Two Kings

_________________

1: The Vanishing Diamonds

SHE was as bright as a butterfly in a flower garden, and as restless, quivering down to her finger-tips with impatient excitement. That big room in the big house in Upper Belgrave Street was no bad notion of the flower garden.

There were just a few square yards of clear space where she sat alone—on a couch made for two—patting the soft carpet with a restless little foot. The rest of the room was filled with long tables, and oval tables, and round tables, all crowded with the pretty trifles and trinkets that ladies love. It seemed as if half a dozen of the smartest jewellers and fancy shops of Regent Street had emptied their show windows into the room. The tables were all aglow with the gleam of gold and silver and the glitter of jewels, and the bright tints of rich silk and painted fans, and rare and dainty porcelain.

For Lilian Ray was to marry Sydney Harcourt in a week, and there was not a more popular couple in London. Her sweet face and winning ways had taken the heart of society by storm; and all the world knew that warm-hearted, hot-headed Harcourt was going hop, step, and jump to the devil when she caught and held him. So everybody was pleased, and said it was a perfect match, and for the last three weeks the wedding presents came pouring into the big house in Upper Belgrave Street, and flooded the front drawing-room. Lilian was impatient, but it was the impatience of delight, the trouble of the crumpled rose-leaf that helps to keep one's enjoyment awake.

No wonder she was excited, for her lover was coming, and with him were coming the famous Harcourt diamonds, which had been the delight and admiration and envy of fashionable London for half a century. The jewels had gone from the bank, where they had lain in darkness and safety for a dozen years, to the glittering shop of Mr. Ophir, of Bond Street. For the setting was very old, and the vigilance of the tiny silver points that guarded the priceless morsels of bright stone had to be looked to, and a brand-new case was ordered to set the precious sparklers off to the best advantage.

A sudden knock at the door starts her again to the window, the cobweb silk flying behind. But she turns away petulantly like a spoiled child.

"Only another travelling bag," she says; "that makes seven—two with gold fittings. I wonder if this has gold fittings. I have set them all there in a row with their mouths open, and their gold or silver teeth grinning. There is not room for another one. I wonder do people think that——"

The sentence was never finished, for at this moment a hansom cab came sharply round the corner in full view of the window. She caught one glimpse of an eager, young face and a flat parcel, then she dropped back into her couch, panting a little. There came a second knock, and a foot on the stairs mounting four steps at a spring. She heard it, and knew it, but sat quite still. Another moment and he was in the room. Her eyes welcomed him, though her lips still pouted.

"You are ten minutes before your time, sir," she said, "and I am terribly busy. What have you got there?"

"Oh! you little sly boots. You know you have been longing for me and the diamonds, especially the diamonds, for the last hour. I've a great mind to carry them off again."

He dropped into the seat beside her and his right arm stole round her waist, while he held the jewel-case away in his left hand. She blushed and laughed, and slipping from his encircling arm, made a dash for the diamonds. But he was too quick for her. He leaped to his feet and held the case aloft, eight feet in the air. Straining to the utmost of her tip-toes she could just reach one hand to his elbow; she placed the other amongst his brown curls, making ready for a leap. Her face was close to his and quite undefended. What happened was, under the circumstances, inevitable.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, in quite a natural tone of surprise, "how dare you, sir!"

"Payment in advance," he retorted, as the precious case came down to her desiring hands; "over-payment, I confess, but then I am ready to give change to any amount."

But she fled from him, with her treasure, to the couch. "Now do be sensible for one short moment, if you can, and hand me the scissors out of that lady's companion there beside the photograph frame on the table."

The jewel-case was done up in whitey-brown paper with strong cord and sealed with broad patches of red sealing-wax. Quite excitedly she cut through the string, leaving the seals unbroken, and let paper and twine and wax go down in a heap on the carpet together.

There emerged from the inner wrapping of soft, white tissue-paper the jewel-case in its new coat of light brown morocco with the monogram L.H. in neat gold letters on it. She gave a little cry of pleasure as her eyes fell on the lettering which proclaimed the jewels her very own, and he, sitting close beside, watching lovingly as one watches a pretty child at play, made believe to snatch it from her fingers. But she held it tight. Like a bather on the water's brim, she paused for one tantalising moment, drew a deep breath to make ready for the coming cry of rapture, and opened the case.

It was empty!

The slope of the raised centre of violet velvet was just ruffled a little, like a bed that had been slept in. That was all.

She looked suddenly in his eyes, half amused, half accusingly, for she thought he had played her some trick. His face was grave and startled.

"What does it mean, Syd? are you playing with me?"

But she knew from his face he was quite serious even while she asked.

"I cannot make it out, Lil," he said, in an altered voice. "I cannot make it out at all. I brought the case just as it was from Mr. Ophir's. He told me he had put the diamonds in and sealed it up with his own hands. See, you have not even broken the seals," and he mechanically picked up the litter of paper and twine from the floor. "No one touched it since except myself and you, and the diamonds are gone. Old Ophir would no more dream of playing such a trick than an archbishop. Still it must be either that or—  But that is too absurd. He's as respectable as the Bank of England and nearly as rich. It beats me, Lily. Why, the old boy warned me as he gave me the precious parcel. 'We cannot be too careful, Mr. Harcourt,' he said. 'There is twenty thousand pounds in that little parcel, let no hand touch it except your own.' And I did not, of course; yet the diamonds have vanished, through case and paper and seals, into space."

He stared ruefully at the expanse of violet velvet.

"The first thing is to see Mr. Ophir," he said.

"Oh, don't leave me, Syd."

"Well, to write to him then. There must be some ridiculous mistake somewhere. Perhaps he gave me the wrong case. He would never—  No, that's too absurd. Perhaps some one substituted the empty case when he looked aside for a moment. It may be necessary to employ a detective. I'll tell him so at once. Can I write a line anywhere?"

"There are half a dozen writing-cases there in a row on that table."

She sat him down to a pretty mother-of-pearl and tortoise-shell affair, with violet scented ink in the silver-mounted bottles.

Then Harcourt showed a quick impatience, quite unlike his usual sunny manner, which Lilian thought nothing could disturb.

"Do get a fellow some decent ink, Lil," he said pettishly. "I cannot write to an old don like Ophir with this stuff."

She slipped from the room like a shadow and was back again almost in a moment. When she returned she found him on the couch nervously fingering the fragments of paper, twine, and sealing-wax.

"I cannot make it out at all," he muttered. "They seem to have vanished into thin air. However, old Ophir will be able to help us if any one can."

He growled a bit at the dainty feminine pen and paper and began:—

Dear Mr. Ophir,—

A most extraordinary thing has happened. I took the case you gave me, as you gave it to me, straight to Miss Ray, Belgrave Street, and opened it without breaking the seals, by cutting the strings in her presence. The diamonds were gone. There must be some mistake somewhere. Perhaps you may be able to clear up the mystery. If you suspect dishonesty, engage a detective at once. The driver will wait for a reply.

Yours in haste,

Sydney Harcourt.

He ran downstairs himself to hail a cab to take the note. A smart hansom with a smart driver on the box was crawling up the street. He dashed across with sudden alacrity like a startled trout in a stream, when Harcourt raised his hand, almost taking the feet off a sturdy mendicant who was standing in front of the door dangerously near the kerbstone.

"Here, my man. Take this to Mr. Ophir's, in Bond Street. The address is on the envelope. Wait for an answer, double fare if you look sharp."

The driver took the letter, touched his hat, and was off like a shot.

Harcourt threw the grumbling beggar a shilling and slammed the door. If he had waited just one second he would have seen the beggar go off almost as quickly as the hansom and disappear round the corner.

"Oh, Sydney, do cheer up a little," pleaded Lily, transformed from tease to comforter; "they will come all right. If they don't, I won't mind in the least, and your father is too fond of you, and of me, I think, too, to be really angry. It wasn't your fault, anyway."

"Well, you see how it is, Lil; the infernal things— I beg your pardon. Don't mind me; I am terribly put out— you see, they were lost out of my hands. They were a mighty big prize for any one to get hold of, and I have been going the pace a bit before I met you, my darling, and many people think I have outrun the bailiff. So there is sure to be malicious whispering and tattling, and people may say—no, I cannot tell you what they may say, and what is more, I don't care a—dash. You can never say or think or look anything but what's kind, and I would not have a pucker in that pretty brow or a tear in your blue eyes for all the diamonds that ever came out of Golconda. The diamonds may go hang. 'Here's metal more attractive.'"

Wonderful is Love's Lethe. In five minutes the diamonds had vanished from their memory as completely as they had vanished from the case. The sound and sight of a cab whirling to the door brought them suddenly back to the work-a-day world. A footman entered, bearing in the very centre of a silver salver a visiting card slightly soiled. Harcourt took it, and Lilian, peering over his shoulder, read the inscription:—

MR. PAUL BECK,

Private Detective.

"What is he like, Tomlinson?"

"Stout party in grey, sir. Don't seem particular bright."

"Well, show him up."

"Who can he be? What can he want?" muttered Harcourt to himself uneasily when the footman disappeared. "There was no time to get to Ophir and back, much less to find a detective. I cannot make it out."

"Oh, he came to the door like a whirlwind, and you know we never know how time goes when we are talking of—"

"Mr. Paul Beck," cried the discreet footman, opening the door with a flourish.

Mr. Paul Beck did not require much showing up apparently. He slipped furtively into the room, keeping his back as much as possible to the light as if secrecy had grown a habit with him. He was a stout, strongly built man in dark grey tweed, suggesting rather the notion of a respectable retired milkman than a detective. His face was ruddy, and fringed with reddish brown whiskers, and his light brown hair curled like a water dog's. There was a chronic look of mild surprise in his wide-open blue eyes, and his smile was innocent as a child's.

Just as he entered Lilian thought she noticed one quick, keen glance at where the empty jewel-case lay on the table and the tangle of paper and twine under it. But before she could be sure the expression vanished from his eyes like a transparency when the light goes out.

Harcourt knew the man by reputation as one of the cleverest detectives in London— a man who had puzzled out mysteries where even the famous Mr. Murdock Rose had failed— but looking at him now he could hardly believe the reputation deserved.

"Mr. Beck," he said, "will you take a chair? You come, I presume, about—"

"About those diamonds," said Mr. Beck abruptly, without making any motion to sit down. "I was fortunately with Mr. Ophir when your note came. He asked me to take charge of the case. Your cabman lost no time, and here I am."

"He told you the facts."

"Very briefly."

"And you think—"

"I don't think. I am quite sure I know where and how to lay my hand on the diamonds."

He spoke confidently. Lilian thought she saw the trace of a smile on the innocent-looking mouth, and a futile attempt to wink one of the wide-open eyes.

"I am delighted you think so," said Harcourt; "I am exceedingly anxious about the matter. Did Mr. Ophir suggest—"

"Nothing," broke in Mr. Beck again. "I didn't want his suggestions. Time is of importance, not talk. We are running on a hot scent; we must not give it time to cool. Is that the jewel-case?"

"Yes," said Harcourt, taking it up and opening it; "just as it came, empty."

Mr. Beck abruptly closed it again and put it in his pocket.

"That's the paper and twine that was around it, I suppose?"

Harcourt nodded. Mr. Beck picked it up carefully and put it in the other pocket.

"You will observe," said Harcourt, "that the seal is not broken. The string was cut by Miss Ray. But when—"

"I must wish you good-day, Mr. Harcourt," said the unceremonious detective. "Good-day, miss."

"Have you finished your investigations already?" said Harcourt in surprise. "Surely you cannot have already found a clue?"

"I have found all I wanted and expected. I see my way pretty plainly to lay my hands on the thief. When I have more news to tell I'll write. Good-day for the present."

He was manifestly eager to be off on his mission. Almost before Harcourt could reply he was out of the room and down the stairs. He opened the door for himself, and the hansom which he had kept waiting whirled him away at headlong speed.

He had not disappeared five minutes down one side of the street when another hansom, driven at the same rapid pace, came tearing up the other. Lilian and Sydney had not got well over their surprise at his abrupt departure when a second knock came to the door, and Tomlinson entered again with a salver and a card— a clean one this time—

MR. PAUL BECK,

Private Detective.

Harcourt started, and Lilian uttered a little cry, half surprise, half amusement at the sight of it.

"The same man, Tomlinson?"

"The same, sir; leastways he seems a very absentminded gentleman. 'Any one been here for the last ten minutes?' he said, breathless-like, when I opened the door. 'You was, sir,' I said, 'not five minutes ago.' 'Oh, was I?' says he, with a queer kind of a laugh, 'that's quick and no mistake. Am I here now?' 'Of course you are, sir,' I said, looking at him hard, but he seemed no way in liquor; 'there you are and there you stand.' 'Oh, I mean did I go away at all?' 'Fast as a hansom could carry you, sir,' I said, humouring him, for he was as serious as a judge, and seemed quite put out to hear he had gone away in a hansom. 'That's bad, that's bad,' he said; 'ten minutes late. Well, young man, there is no help for it. Take this card to Mr. Harcourt.' Shall I show him up, sir?"

"Of course."

"What can it mean?" cried Lilian. "Surely he cannot have found them in five minutes?"

"Perhaps so," said Harcourt. "He has probably found some clue, anyhow. His sober chaff of poor Tomlinson in the hall looks as if he were in good-humour about something. Gad, I didn't think the old chap had so much fun in him!"

"Mr. Paul Beck, sir."

There was a slight, indescribable change in the manner of Mr. Beck as he now entered the room. He was less furtive and less abrupt in his movements, and he seemed no longer anxious, as before, to keep his back to the light.

"You are back again very soon, Mr. Beck," said Harcourt; "have you got a clue?"

"I wish I had come five minutes sooner," said Mr. Beck, his voice quite changed. "I'm afraid I have lost a clue. I have lost the clue, in fact, and I must set about finding it. Where is the jewel-case?"

"Why, I gave it to you not ten minutes ago."

"To me?" began Mr. Beck, and then stopped himself with a queer smile that was half a grimace. "Oh yes, you gave it to me. Well, and what did I do with it?"

"I don't understand you in the very least."

"Well, you need not understand me. But you can answer me."

"Mr. Beck, you will excuse me, but this is no time for bad jokes, and I am in no humour for them."

"Mr. Harcourt, you will learn later on that the joke in this business is not of my making, and I hope to make the joker pay for it. Meanwhile, I come from Mr. Ophir."

"You said that before."

"Did I? Well, I say it again. I come from Mr. Ophir commissioned to find those diamonds, and I ask you, as civilly as may be, what has been done with the case?"

"What you yourself have done with it?"

"Well, what I myself have done with it, if you like."

Harcourt reddened with anger at this cool audacity, and Lilian suddenly interposed.

"You put it in your pocket, Mr. Beck, and carried it away."

"Was I in a hurry, miss?"

"You were in a great hurry."

"Was I dressed as I am now?"

"Exactly."

"And looked the same?"

"Precisely."

"Figure and face the same?"

"Well, yes. I thought you were more made up than you are now."

"Made up! What do you mean, miss?"

"Well, Mr. Beck, I thought you had been beautifying yourself. There was a trace of rouge on your cheeks."

"And I kept my back to the light, I warrant."

"Your memory is wonderful."

Mr. Beck chuckled, and Harcourt broke in angrily—

"Don't you think we've had enough of this foolery, sir?"

"More than enough," said Mr. Beck calmly. "I have the honour to wish you a very good morning, Mr. Harcourt, and to you, miss." There was a touch of admiration in his voice as he addressed Miss Lilian.

"Oh, Syd!" she cried, as the door closed behind him, "isn't it just thrilling! There never was such a mixed-up mystery. I do wonder which is the right Mr. Beck."

"Which! What in the world do you mean? I was dizzy enough without that. Of course they are both the right Mr. Beck, or the wrong Mr. Beck, whichever you please. They are both the same Mr. Beck anyhow."

Meanwhile Mr. Beck is driving as fast as a hansom can carry him back to Mr. Ophir's, in Bond Street.

He found the eminent jeweller in his little glass citadel at the back of his glittering warehouse. A thrill of excitement disturbed his usual stately dignity.

"Well?" he said, when Mr. Beck stepped into the little glass room, closing the door carefully behind him.

"Well," responded the detective, "I think I have got a clue. I can make a fair guess who has the diamonds."

"Mr. Harcourt was rather a wild young man before this engagement," said Mr. Ophir, smiling an embarrassed tentative smile.

"Who made the new case for you?" said Mr. Beck, changing the subject with unceremonious abruptness.

"Hem— ah— Mr. Smithson, one of the most competent and reliable men in the trade. He has done all our work for the last twenty years. It was a very finely finished case indeed."

"Who brought it here?"

"One of Mr. Smithson's workmen."

"I think you told me this man saw you put the diamonds into the case, and seal them up for Mr. Harcourt?"

"Yes. He was standing only a few yards off at the time. There were two of my own men standing close by also, if you would care to examine them. Brown, will you kindly tell Mr. Carton and Mr. Cuison to step this way for a moment?"

"Never mind," said Mr. Beck, with sharp authority in his voice. "Thank you, Mr. Ophir, I don't want to see them just yet. But I will trouble you for Mr. Smithson's address, if you please. I have an idea his man would be useful, if we could lay our hands on him."

"I don't think so, Mr. Beck; I don't think so at all. He was quite a common person. My own men will be much more satisfactory witnesses. Besides, you may have some trouble in finding him. Though of that, of course, I know nothing whatever."

The detective looked at him curiously for a moment. He had grown quite flushed and excited.

"Many thanks for your advice, Mr. Ophir," he said quietly; "but I think I will take my own way, if you please."

Twenty minutes afterwards the indefatigable Mr. Beck was at Mr. Smithson's workshop cross-examining the proprietor; but nothing came of it. The man who brought the case to Mr. Ophir's establishment was the man who made it. He was the best workman that Mr. Smithson ever had, though he only had him for ten days. His name was Mulligan. It sounded Irish, Mr. Smithson imagined, and he spoke like the man in Mr. Boucicault's play The Shaughraun. But whether he was Irish or Dutch, he was a right good workman. Of that Mr. Smithson was quite certain. He seemed hard up, and offered himself for very moderate wages. But before he was half an hour in the place he showed what he could do. So when the order came in for a case for the Harcourt diamonds Mr. Smithson set him on the job. He worked all day, took the case home with him, and brought it back the next morning, finished.

"I never saw a job done so well or so quick before," concluded Mr. Smithson out of breath.

"But how did he manage at home. You surely did not let him take the diamonds home with him?

"Bless you," cried Mr. Smithson briskly, with a look of surprise at the great detective's innocent, imperturbable face, "he never saw the diamonds, and never will."

"Then how did he make the case to fit them?"

"We had a model— the old case."

"Have you got it still?"

For the first time there was a gleam of interest on Mr. Beck's face as he asked the question.

"Yes, I think it is somewhere about. Excuse me for a moment."

He returned with a rubbed and faded jewel-case covered with what had once been dark green morocco. Inside, the white velvet had grown yellow with age.

"That was our model, Mr. Beck. You see in the raised centre a place for the great star. The necklet ran round this slope."

"I see," said Mr. Beck, and for a quiet man he managed to get a lot of meaning into those two simple words. Then, after a pause: "You can let me have this old case, I suppose?"

"Certainly. Mr. Ophir's instructions are sufficient."

"By the way, Mr. Smithson," he said carelessly, "did Mr. Mulligan— I think you said that was his name— say anything about Mr. Ophir?"

"Well, now, Mr. Beck, now that you mention it, he did. When he came first he asked me did I not do work for Mr. Ophir, and seemed anxious about it, I thought. He was very strong in his praise of Mr. Ophir. He said he thought he could get a recommendation from him if I wanted it, but I didn't. His work was recommendation enough for me. That's my way of doing business."

Mr. Beck put the case in his coat tail pocket, and moved towards the door. He paused on the threshold.

"Good-day, Mr. Smithson," said Mr. Beck. "Mr. Mulligan did not turn up in the afternoon, I suppose?"

"Now how did you guess that, Mr. Beck. He did not. I gave him something extra for the way the thing was done and I fear he may have been indulging. Irishmen do sometimes, you know, Mr. Beck. But how did you guess it?"

"From something Mr. Ophir said to me," replied Mr. Beck.

"But he is coming back in the morning. I have promised him double wages. You see I took him as it were on trial first. He will be here at eight o'clock to-morrow. I can give you his address if you want him meanwhile."

"Thanks. I fear it would not be of much use to me. I fancy I will find him when I want him, perhaps before you do. Good-day again, Mr. Smithson. By the way, I would not advise you to count too securely on Mr. Mulligan's return to-morrow morning."

Mr. Beck had dismissed his hansom when he went into Mr. Smithson's. He was only a few streets from the Strand, and he now walked very slowly in that direction, almost getting run over at the crossing between New Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, so absorbed was he in a brown study.

"He's my man," he said to himself. "He must help whether he likes it or not. It won't be the first time he has given me a lift, though never before in such a big thing as this. By George, he is a clever one! The devil himself is a dunce in comparison. What a success he would be if he had joined our profession, though I suppose he thinks he is better off as he is. I doubt it though. He would be the first detective of the century. Well, no one can say I'm jealous. If he helps me to unravel this business I'll take care he gets his share of the credit."

Mr. Beck laughed to himself as if he had made rather a good joke, and stopped abruptly as he glanced at a church clock.

"Four o'clock," he muttered. "How fast the day has gone by! Four is his hour, and I have no time to lose. I suppose I'll find him at the old spot," and he set off at a double-quick pace, five miles an hour at least, without appearance of effort, in the direction of Simpson's restaurant in the Strand.

Just a word about the man he was going to meet. M. Grabeau was at this time the cleverest and most popular drawing-room entertainer in London. He was a somewhat shy man, and could neither sing nor talk much in public. But for all that he was a veritable variety show in himself. He was a marvellous mimic and ventriloquist, a quick change artist, but above all and beyond all, a conjuror. He could manoeuvre a pack of cards as a captain his company. They were animated and intelligent beings in his hands, obedient to his word of command.

In the construction and manufacture of mechanical tricks and toys he was possessed of a skill and ingenuity almost beyond belief. He had himself devised and constructed, with Mr. Edison's permission, a doll, with a phonograph in her interior, which imitated nature with almost absolute perfection, and sang "Home, Sweet Home," not merely with the voice, but with the manner and gesture of one of the most popular singers on the concert stage. Indeed, there were malicious persons (rivals, for the most part) who insisted that the voice and gestures of the imitation singer were less wooden than the real.

Mr. Beck had met M. Grabeau at some of those social functions where the introduction of a detective, either as a footman or a musician, had been thought a prudent precaution, and the acquaintance between them had ripened into companionship, if not friendship. Mr. Beck's profession had an intense attraction for the Frenchman, who knew all Gaboriau's novels by heart.

"They are so clevaire," he would say, with much gesticulation, to the stolid Mr. Beck; "they are too clevaire. The tangle in the commencement is superb. But what you call the unravel is not so good; the knots do not come undone so—"

Then he would hold up a string tied in a very kink of hard knots, and show it a moment later clean and smooth. It was one of his tricks.

"But the life of the detective, the real detective you will observe, it is charming. It is beyond the hunt of the fox. It is the hunt of the man. The clevaire man who runs, and what you call doubles, and hides and fights too, sometime. It is glorious; it is life."

"Going to waste," Mr. Beck would mutter disconsolately after one of these interviews, when the Frenchman would spy out and pick up an almost invisible clue. "Going to waste. He would make one of the best detectives in the service, and he fiddles away his time at play-acting and trinket-selling and money-making." So Mr. Beck would shake his head over this melancholy instance of misplaced genius.

Naturally, when Mr. Beck got tangled over the vanishing diamond puzzle, he was anxious to consult his friend, M. Grabeau.

"I hope he's here," said Mr. Beck to himself, as he entered Simpson's restaurant.

One look round relieved his mind on that score. M. Grabeau was there at his accustomed place at a corner table, at his accustomed dinner— a plate of roast beef underdone. For M. Grabeau affected English dishes and English cookery, and liked the honest, substantial fare of Simpson's.

A stout, good-humoured man was M. Grabeau, with a quick eye, a close-cropped, shiny black head, blue eyes, and a smooth, cream-coloured face.

He noticed Mr. Beck the moment he entered the room, and put down the pale green evening paper on which a moment before he was intent.

"Hullo!" he cried out pleasantly, "that is you? Bonsoir, Monsieur Beck. I hope that you carry yourself well?"

It was noticeable about M. Grabeau, that though he could mimic any voice perfectly, when he spoke as M. Grabeau he spoke with a strong French accent, and interlarded his sentences with scraps of French.

Mr. Beck nodded, hung up his hat, and seated himself at the opposite side of the table.

"Boiled mutton," he said to the waiter, "and a pint of stout."

"The fact is, monsieur," he went on in much the same tone, when the waiter whisked away to execute his order, "I wanted to have a word with you."

"Ah-hah! I know," said the other vivaciously. "It's the Harcourt diamonds that have come to you, is it not? The wonderful diamonds of which one talked all the evening at the Harcourt reception. They have disappeared, and his lordship has employed M. Beck, de great detective. I thought you would come to me. It's all here," and he handed him across the table the Westminster, with his finger on a prominent paragraph headed in big, black letters:—

"THE VANISHING DIAMONDS."

Mr. Beck read it through carefully.

Quite a sensation has been created in fashionable London by the sudden disappearance— it would perhaps be premature to say robbery— of the famous "Harcourt Heirloom," perhaps, after the Crown Jewels, the most famous and valuable diamonds in London. Our representative learned from the eminent jeweller, Mr. Ophir, of Bond Street, that he had with his own hands this morning put the jewels into a case, sealed up the parcel and handed it to the Hon. Mr. Sydney Harcourt. Mr. Harcourt, on the other hand, states that when the case was opened in his presence by his fiancée, Miss Ray— for whom the jewels were meant as a wedding present— it was empty. If Mr. Ophir and the Hon. Sydney Harcourt both speak the truth— and we have no reason to doubt either, or both— the diamonds must have vanished through the case and brown paper in the hansom cab en route between Bond Street and Upper Belgrave Street. We need not say that in position and respectability Mr. Ophir stands at the very head of his business, and the Hon. Sydney Harcourt, though he ran loose for a while on the racecourse, contracted no serious pecuniary obligations of which the world knows; and his rank, character, and position should protect him from even the smallest taint of suspicion. All these circumstances, of course, heighten the mystery. We understand that the famous detective, Mr. Beck, at the instance of Mr. Ophir, called later on at Upper Belgrave Street. He has a clue as a matter of course. A clue is one of those things that no well-regulated detective is ever without.

M. Grabeau watched Mr. Beck eagerly, reading his face as he read the paper.

"Well," he asked impatiently, when Mr. Beck at length came to an end, "it is all right there?"

"Pretty accurate for a newspaper reporter!"

"And you have got the clue— you, the famous detective."

There was sometimes the faintest suggestion of contempt, a vague hint at a sneer, in M. Grabeau's tone as he talked to Mr. Beck, which Mr. Beck never appeared to resent or even notice in the least.

"Well, yes, monsieur, I think I have a bit of a clue. But I came to hear your notion of the business. I have an idea that you are the man to put me on the right track. It would not be the first time, you know."

Monsieur beamed at the rough compliment. "You must first tell me all— everything."

Mr. Beck told him all— everything— with admirable candour, not forgetting the doubling of his own character at Belgrave Street.

"Well," he said at last, "what do you think, monsieur?"

"M. Ophir," said M. Grabeau shortly, and closed his mouth sharply with a snap like a trap.

"No," cried Mr. Beck, in a tone of surprise and admiration. "You don't say so! You don't think then there is any truth in the hint in the paper that young Harcourt himself made away with the stones to pay some gambling debts?"

"No, my friend, believe me. He of them knows nothing more than he has said. It was not what you call the worth of his while. His father, he is rich; his lady, she is beautiful. I have seen her. Respectable Mr. Ophir gives to him the jewels. The risk is too great, even if he have debts, which is not proved."

"But how did Mr. Ophir get them out of the case?"

"He did not ever put them in, my friend."

"I thought I told you that three people saw him put them in— two of his own men and the messenger, a Mr. Mulligan, who came from the case-maker."

"That messenger— you have seen him then?"

"Well no. He had not come back to his place of employment when I called."

"And he will never come. He has vanished. M. Ophir perhaps could tell where he has vanished, but he will not tell you, believe it well."

"But the other two men saw the jewels packed. There were two others besides the messenger."

"Hélas! my great detective, are you not a little— I will not say stupid— a little innocent to-day? You will not think harm of M. Ophir. Très bien. But that which you object, it is so simple. Give me for a moment your watch and chain."

He leant across the table, and as if by magic Mr. Beck's watch and chain was clean in his hands. A heavy gold watch with a heavy gold curb chain that fitted to the waistcoat buttonhole with a gold bar.

"Now observe; this will be our case." With rapid, dexterous fingers he fashioned the copy of the Westminster Gazette into the semblance of a jewel-case with a closely fitting lid. He opened the box wide, put the watch and chain in, so that Mr. Beck could see it plainly inside, and closed the lid with two fingers only.

"There was no deception."

He pushed the box across the tablecloth to Mr. Beck, who opened it and found it empty. The wide eyes and bland smile of the detective expressed his astonishment.

"But where has it gone to?" he cried.

"Behold, it is there," said M. Grabeau, tapping him on the capacious waistcoat.

The watch was comfortably back in Mr. Beck's waistcoat pocket, for which, by the way, it was a pretty tight fit, and the gold bar of the chain was again securely fastened in his waistcoat buttonhole.

"I could have sworn I saw you put it into the case and leave it there."

"Eh bien! So could the men of this M. Ophir of whom you speak. I put it in your pocket, he put it in his own. Behold all the difference. His plan was, oh! so much easier."

"But, monsieur, M. Ophir has the name of a most decent and respectable man."

M. Grabeau snapped his fingers in contemptuous anger. "This man," he said, "I know him, I have had what you call shufflings— dealings— with him. He is cold, but he is cunning. He called me— me, Alphonse Grabeau, one cheat. Now I, Alphonse Grabeau, call him, M. Ophir, one thief, and I will prove it. He has stolen the diamonds. I will help you, my friend, to run him up."

"I am much obliged, monsieur. I rather thought from the first you could give me a lift in this case. Where can I see you to-morrow if I have anything to say to you?"

"I will be in my leetle establishment until two hours of the afternoon. At four I will be here at my dinner. In the evening I will be in the saloon of the Duke of Doubleditch. At any time I will be glad to talk to you of this case— of this M. Ophir, the thief. But you must be punctual, for I am a man of the minute."

"Quite sure you are going to the Duke's in the evening?"

"It is equally certain as a musket."

"Oh, very well, if I don't see you at the shop I will see you at dinner."

M. Grabeau drained the last drops of his glass of whisky and water cold, picked up his cane and hat and gloves, took a cigarette from his neat little silver case, and stuck it in his mouth unlighted.

Mr. Beck rose at the same moment.

"Good evening, monsieur," he said admiringly, "I must shake hands with you if it was to be the last time. I always thought you were almighty clever, but I never rightly knew how clever you are until to-night. It is a thundering pity that—"

"What?" asked M. Grabeau sharply, for Mr. Beck paused in the very middle of his sentence.

"That— that you are not one of us; that your talents didn't get fair play and full scope in the right direction."

M. Grabeau beamed at the compliment, and went out beaming.

Mr. Beck called for a second helping of boiled mutton, and ate it slowly. His face and manner were more vacuous than ever.

Something of special importance must plainly have detained Mr. Beck, for it was a quarter past two next day when he walked with a quick, slinging step up to the "leetle establishment" of M. Grabeau, in Wardour Street. He paused for one moment before the window where all sorts of ingenious and precious knick-knacks and trifles were temptingly arranged, then walked into the shop.

There was a young man of about nineteen years alone behind the counter; a young man with a long nose, very fleshy at the top, and an unwholesome complexion, and a pair of beady black eyes of preternatural brightness.

"Good-day, Jacob," said Mr. Beck. "Master out?"

"Just gone a quarter of an hour ago."

"Coming back?"

"Not this evening."

"Oh, well, I'll see him later on. By the way, Jacob, that's a new thing you have got. The coral necklet and brooch there in the window. Will you let me have a peep at it?"

Jacob took the case from the window and set it on the counter. The set was a fine specimen of carved coral linked with fine gold, in a case of faded brown morocco and dingy white velvet that looked as old as themselves.

Mr. Beck inspected the trinkets carefully for full five minutes with intent admiration, turning the case round several times to get a better view. He seemed much interested in a smear of what looked like damp gum on the edge of the leather.

"What's, the damage, Jacob?" he asked at last.

"Not for sale, sir. Master cautioned me four different times—not for sale, no matter what price I might be offered. Not likely to be tempted much, I should say; there is not half a sovereign's worth of gold in the lot."

"Ah!" said Mr. Beck meditatively. Then persuasively: "Well, it is not so much the red affairs I want as the box they are in. My aunt desired me to get her one for a brooch and necklace she picked up cheap at a sale, and this would about do. You were not forbidden to sell the box, were you, Jacob? It doesn't seem to fit these things as if it were made for them, does it?"

"It fits them most beautifully, Mr. Beck. But there, don't go. I don't say I won't sell it to oblige a friend of the master, if I get a fair price for it."

"What do you call a fair price?"

"What would you say to a sovereign now?"

Mr. Beck said nothing to a sovereign. He said nothing at all. But he produced the coin in question from his waistcoat pocket and placed it on the counter, turned the contents of the case out in a jingling heap, put the case itself in his pocket, and walked out of the shop.

The smart-looking assistant gazed blankly at the stout figure moving rapidly down the street.

"Holy Moses!" he exclaimed, his triumph tinged with disappointment, "I am sorry I didn't ask more. He'd ha' given thirty bob like winking for the old case, and a misfit at that. The Gov. can make a new one in an hour. He'll be pleased, anyhow."

Whether the "Gov." would be pleased or not was a matter of which the sharp-looking shopboy was (perhaps) the best judge. But somebody else was plainly well pleased. Mr. Beck's placid face wore a look of innocent contentment. He whistled softly to himself as he walked, and presented all the outward and visible signs of a respectable tradesman whose week's takings had been well above the average. Mr. Beck let himself in with a latchkey, and walked noiselessly upstairs to his own pretty little sitting-room on the drawing-room floor. He took the old case from his pocket and set it beside another old case—the one he got from Mr. Smithson—on the round table in the centre of the room. There were flowers on the table, and Mr. Beck sniffed their fragrance approvingly; he seemed on this particular afternoon to be pleased with everything.

The two cases were alike, though not identical in form; he opened them. Inside the shape was almost precisely the same. Mr. Beck gave a short assenting nod at them, as if he was nodding approval of something he had just said himself. Then he walked to the door, closed it softly, and turned the key in the lock. Any one with an eye to the keyhole—such an eye as Sam Weller graphically described in the witness-box—might have seen Mr. Beck drop into an easy-chair with one of the two cases in his hand, turning it slowly round and round with that look, puzzled yet confident, which so many people wore when that delightful problem "Pigs in Clover" was the rage.

A little later any one with an ear to the keyhole might have heard Mr. Beck draw a deep breath of relief, and chuckle quietly to himself; then, if the ear was preternaturally acute, might have heard him lock something in his own pet patent safe which stood in a neat overcoat of mahogany in a corner of the room.

"OH! how can people be so mean?" cried Lilian Ray, in a voice that quivered with indignation.

She was standing in the middle of her own drawing-room, and the tattered fragments of the "extra special" edition of the Evening Talebearer fluttered round her like a pink snowstorm. She stamped on the bits of paper with angry little feet.

"Easy, Lil, easy!" cried Harcourt from the sofa where he sat, a gloomy look on his handsome face. "Take it quietly, my pet. It's the nature of the beasts. Besides it's true enough—most of it. I have been as they say, 'a wild young scamp.' 'No one knows the amount of my debts'—because there aren't any. 'Mr. Ophir is a gentleman of unimpeachable respectability.' 'This is a most unpleasant mystery for the Hon. Sydney Harcourt.' There's no denying that's true, anyway."

"I wonder at you, Syd—you, a great strong man, to sit there quietly and hear such things said!" She turned on him sharply, her blue eyes very bright behind the unshed tears.

"But I haven't heard them, Lil."

"Oh, well, you know what I mean. Why don't you stamp this thing out, and teach those vile slanderers a lesson they would never forget? Why don't you go straight to their low den, wherever it is, and—and—oh, how I wish I was a man, for their sake!"

"Glad you're not, Lil, for my sake," he answered, in a tone that brought the quick blood to her cheek. "It's because you are a woman, and the dearest little woman in the world, that you flare up like this. But you must not think I'm not riled by the half-lies of those cads, though I try to grin and bear it. There are lots of people will take the lies for gospel truth. I'm so thankful that you——"

"Is it me? How dare you dream of such a thing, sir? The notion that I'd——"

She ran to him impetuously, and played with his curls as she bent caressingly over him. "My poor boy, I am so sorry to see you worried. If there was anything in the world that I could do! Now, now, don't take an unfair advantage because I was good to you. I would much rather sit on the sofa, please."

A sharp knock came to the door, and Lilian was certainly sitting on the sofa, and at the extreme end of it, panting a little, when the footman entered.

"Mr. Beck, sir," said the footman.

"Show him up. 'What does the fellow want now, I wonder?"

"I won't detain you a moment, Mr. Harcourt," said the imperturbable Mr. Beck, walking quietly into the room.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Beck," stammered Harcourt, "I did not know; that is to say, I was engaged."

"So I see, sir," said Mr. Beck drily, with a look at Lilian that sent the blood in a sudden flame to her cheek. "But I think the young lady will spare a moment or two from other business for what I have to say and to show."

"You have got a clue, then?"

"Well, yes, I think I may say I have got a clue."

He took from his coat-tail pocket the old jewel-case which he had purchased for a sovereign, and set it on the table, pushing aside some costly trifles to make place for it, in the full gleam of the electric light.

"You see this, miss. Is it at all like the case that came with the diamonds?"

"The case that came without the diamonds you mean, Mr. Beck," said Lilian smiling. "It is just like it in shape, but the other was quite new and shining."

"That is a detail, miss. A clever hand could make that little change of new to old in half an hour. Now will you kindly open it?"

As Lilian opened it she thrilled with the sudden unreasonable notion that the diamonds might be inside. But it was quite empty; faded and empty.

"The inside is just the same, too," she said, "only this is so faded. Anything else, Mr. Beck?"

"Would you oblige me by taking the case in your hands for one moment. No, don't close it. Now will you kindly put your thumb here, and your other thumb here on the opposite side?"

Mr. Beck guided the slender little thumbs to their places while Harcourt looked on in amazement.

"Now, miss, kindly squeeze both together."

Lilian gave a quick, sharp gasp of delight and surprise. For suddenly, as if by magic, there blazed on the slope of faded velvet a great circle of flashing diamonds with a star of surpassing splendour in the centre.

"Oh! oh! oh!" she cried breathlessly. "They are too beautiful for any one. Oh, Syd," turning to her lover with eyes brighter than the jewels, "did you ever see anything so beautiful? They dazzle my eyes and my mind together. I cannot look at them any longer," and she closed the case with a snap, and turning to the placid detective: "Oh, how clever you were to find them, Mr. Beck; wasn't he, Syd? Do tell us how and where and when you managed?"

She so bubbled over with delight and admiration and gratitude that even the detective was captivated. He beamed like a full moon and bowed with the easy grace of a grizzly bear.

"Will you open the case again, miss," was all he said. She raised the lid and was struck dumb with blank amazement.

The case was empty.

"A trick case," said Harcourt, after a pause.

"Just so, sir, that's the whole story in three words. About as neat a bit of work as ever came out of hands. No wonder. Twenty thousand pounds, more or less, was the price the maker wanted for it. The closing of the case works the spring, as you see, sir. That's the notion of it, and not a bad notion either."

"And the diamonds are safe inside," cried Lilian; "they were there all the time, and I have only to squeeze with my thumbs and they will come out again. It's wonderful! wonderful! I declare I like the case as much as the jewels. I hope the maker will be well paid, Mr. Beck."

"He'll be well paid, miss, never you fear," said Mr. Beck, a little grimly, "though not perhaps in the coin he expected."

"But however did you find it out? You must be most wonderfully clever. I suppose you have worked up some marvellous system that nobody can understand but yourself."

Mr. Beck actually blushed under this shower of compliments.

"A little common sense, miss, that's all. I have no more system than the hound that gets on the fox's scent and keeps on it. I just go by the rule of thumb, and muddle and puzzle out my cases as best I can."

"'When did you guess the diamonds were in the case?" said Harcourt.

"I guessed it, sir, when I saw Mr. Ophir, and I was sure of it when I saw you. You see how it is, sir; if Mr. Ophir put the diamonds into the case and no one took them out, it stood to reason they were still there, whatever might be the appearance to the contrary."

"It sounds quite simple," murmured Lilian:—"when you are told it."

"Of course, when I found my double had been for the case, it made certainty doubly certain."

"Your double! Then you were right, Lilian; there were two Mr. Becks."

"Of course; I am always light."

"Might I ask, sir," continued Harcourt, "which you are?"

"He's the second Mr. Beck, of course, Syd. How can you be so silly? But I want to know where is the first Mr. Beck, the man with the beautiful hands?"

"The first Mr. Beck, miss, otherwise Mulligan, otherwise Monsieur Grabeau, is in gaol at present, awaiting his trial. He was arrested this afternoon by appointment at Simpson's restaurant by the second Mr. Beck."

_______________________

2: A Miniature Halter

"VERY neat, very neat indeed!" muttered Mr. Paul Beck approvingly.

His tone was precisely that of a good-natured master-workman contemplating the handiwork of a particularly smart apprentice. It was after midnight, and Mr. Beck was sitting in the parlour of his snug lodgings in Chester—he always liked to make himself as comfortable as possible—reading that morning's Daily Telegraph.

Right on the prize place on the paper, on the fifth page, close to the leaders, under five headings, in a beautiful variety of type, was the account that attracted his benevolent approval.

DAYLIGHT BURGLARY

Clever Capture

THE RAVISHED RUBY

Unaccountable Escape

were the most conspicuous of the headings that caught and held the professional eye of the detective.

"The Kubla Khan Ruby," so ran the report, "has disappeared as suddenly and mysteriously as it was discovered. Our readers are acquainted with the recent history of that unrivalled jewel. It has been already told more than once in these columns, how young Viscount Mervel having lost his fortune at play, and his heart in earnest, with the characteristic pluck of an Englishman set out for Ceylon to make his fortune, and made it. The story of his return with the peerless Ceylon ruby, which had been missing for more than ten centuries, has for the last fortnight been the talk of the town, though few have heard the secret and wonderful history of its discovery. There is no doubt at all it is the famous ruby which Marco Polo described in the close of the thirteenth century long after it had disappeared, the identical stone which Kubla Khan coveted, and which the Ceylonese King refused his ambassador to sell for a city.

"The ruby was in the form of a six-sided prism, terminated on either side by a six-sided pyramid. It was of the purest pigeon blood colour, and without a flaw, nearly three inches long and over an inch in diameter, so the tradition which described it as a span in length and as thick as a man's arm was not so far out as such traditions usually are.

"It was almost as hard to discover a purchaser for this peerless jewel as it was to discover the ruby itself; but a syndicate was in progress of formation to buy it for half a million— about four times the estimated value of the Koh-i-Nur— which price had been fixed by a jury of experts as reasonable.

"Meanwhile the gorgeous gem lay blazing with red flame in its case of white velvet, the centre of attraction in the shop window of Mr. Bolas, of Bond Street, perhaps the most eminent jeweller in London—that is to say, in the world—who was chairman of the syndicate. It was plain that the capital for the purpose would be speedily found. Already, it is said, three crowned heads have been, if the expression is not derogatory to their dignity, nibbling at the glittering bait, and a question had been asked by Mr. Thomas Bowler, M.P., suggesting the advisability of securing it for the British Crown, to which an evasive answer was returned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

"Now all these fine schemes vanish into thin air with the vanished ruby, and Viscount Mervel is as poor as when he started on his adventurous quest. The Kubla Khan Ruby has been captured by audacious burglary at noonday in one of the most frequented streets in London, under the very noses of the guardians of our city, who, however, it is only fair to say, were in no way to blame in the business.

"Naturally the unique gem had excited a vast amount of curiosity and speculation, and the street in front of the shop was daily thronged with sightseers. But the most elaborate precautions had been taken against the possibility of robbery. Two of the most efficient of our admirable police force were stationed night and day in front of the window. The plate glass was of double the ordinary thickness, and as an additional precaution a strong netting of steel wire was secured between the window and the peerless ruby. All these precautions have, however, proved utterly futile, and the ruby and the daylight burglars have disappeared together.

"The following are the circumstances of this most daring robbery, gathered by our representative from the lips of civilian eye-witnesses, for the police are naturally very reticent on the subject. About noon yesterday when the throng of sightseers was densest round the window, two gentlemen arm-in-arm, well dressed and smoking cigarettes, were observed forcing their way somewhat rudely through the crowd, which consisted largely of women and children. Before the police could interfere a sudden altercation arose. Instantly there was a scene of the wildest confusion. Amid the shrieks of women and men sticks were waved and blows struck. The excited crowd swayed again and again against the great glass window. While the police were forcing their way through the dense throng a crash of breaking glass was heard, and instantly the red light of the ruby had vanished, nobody could say how or where.

B ut a moment afterwards the police had laid strong hands on one of the gentlemen who had helped to originate the disturbance, and had been most active in its progress. At his feet was found what proved to be a heavily-loaded bludgeon, though in appearance only a gentleman's ordinary bamboo cane, and his wrist was slightly rasped as if by broken glass. A great hole was broken in the window, plainly by design, straight opposite where the ruby had lain, and the strong wire netting was torn away by main force. The police at once searched the prisoner carefully, but found no trace of the missing gem.

"The strange adventure does not end here. The custodians of the peace proceeded towards the police-station with the prisoner, who from the first contented himself with protesting his innocence and offered no resistance. They had not, however, got well clear of the crowd when they were suddenly set upon by a gang of desperadoes, by whom they were brutally maltreated and their prisoner rescued. Such at least is the account of the police themselves, who were found lying in a heap together in the kennel, one bleeding from a cut in his forehead, and both much bruised and shaken. But they have not even yet recovered from their fright and ill-usage, and their story is, as might be expected, vague and contradictory. They confess they would not be able to identify any of their assailants, and, stranger still, so judiciously was the spot chosen and so sudden and well organised the attack, that up to the present it has been found impossible to discover a single independent witness of the rescue. The whole affair is involved in the deepest mystery, and has created the wildest excitement in London. The police are working with a will, and hope to be soon on the track of the marauders. A reward of £5,000 has been offered for the recovery of the jewel."

"H'M," SAID MR. BECK, as he finished the account and took a comfortable pull at his tumbler of rum punch with a slice of lemon in it.

He glanced down the next column. There was nothing to interest him there.

A STARTLING TRANSFORMATION.

Signor Madaveski has considerably startled his admirers by appearing at last evening's recital with his hair cut short, brushed smooth, and neatly parted in the middle. Many of the audience, especially amongst the ladies, found the performance as disappointing as his appearance, and hinted their belief that his strength lay where Samson's did."

THE STRONG MAN OVERTHROWN.

Don Coloso, 'The Modern Atlas,' who has been amazing London by his feats of strength and activity, tossing hundredweights about like india-rubber balls, and crushing stones with his naked hands, was announced to appear to-night in his famous feat of leaping a five-barred gate with a huge globe of burnished steel on his shoulder. But his admirers were disappointed at the non-appearance of their favourite. The rumour goes that he has been stricken down with the influenza. Don Coloso certainly combines in a not particularly big human frame the strength of an elephant and the activity of an antelope. But it would appear there is a 'grippe' stronger than his.

MR. BECK'S eyes ran listlessly down the gossip, and then came back to the robbery.

"It is too bad," he said, in gentle discontent, "too bad I am away. It's just the little job that would suit me."

It was the mild melancholy of a musical amateur who is compelled to miss a favourite opera.

Mr. Beck had come down from London on what he modestly called "a simple, commonplace little job," a bit of bank-note forgery. But simple as the job was, it had bothered not merely the local police, but two particularly smart and up-to-date scientific detectives who had preceded Mr. Beck from London. Before he was a week in Chester, Mr. Beck had laid a heavy hand on the criminal. "More by good luck than good management," his colleagues declared.

"Old Beck has the luck of the old boy," they were wont to observe good-humouredly, for he was a general favourite. "No system, no nothing. He just blunders through somehow like a blind man in a fog, when those who use their eyes get run over. The proofs drop into his mouth of their own accord. He keeps it half open on purpose."

To all of which chaff Mr. Beck, with responsive good-humour, would reply: "Luck is better than brains, boys, when it is as steady as mine."

Stolidity was Mr. Beck's strong point. He had nerve to any amount, but no nerves. It was almost impossible to excite him about anything, yet he was plainly excited now. He puffed at his briar-root pipe in quick, short puffs, quite unlike his usual long, luxurious inhalations, and he gulped, rather than sipped, his rum punch. All the time he slowly spelt out, over and over again, the newspaper paragraph about the wonderful ruby and the wonderful robbery, reading a good deal more there with those wide-open eyes of his than was ever written by a reporter or set up by a compositor.

His restlessness grew upon him.

"I wish I was back in London," he muttered again; "I rather think I could get on the track."

He picked up a railway guide from a side table and glanced at it with practised eyes.

"First train to-morrow at 1.20 for London. I'm there."

BUT for once Mr. Beck broke his appointment. He was not there. He was on the verge of an event so exciting and mysterious as to banish even the great ruby robbery from his mind, or rather to relegate it to a back chamber of his brain. For his tenacious memory never let go anything it had once got tight hold of.

The time-table was still in his hands. By mere accident, as it seemed, he glanced at the other page.

"Down train in at 12.38 to-night." He looked at his big turnip of a watch. "Half-past! Just in time. I'll turn down to the station and meet it and get the London evening papers. There may be some more news." He turned his shaded reading lamp down to a glimmer, put his pipe aside, lit a strong Havanna cigar, and strolled out into the dark, quiet, starlit night. There were very few persons on the platform, but amongst those few was young Nat Perkins, one of the smart detectives of the new school, who had come down from London about "the little forgery job," and was plainly restive in the dull atmosphere of a provincial town.

He nodded to Mr. Beck with a curious mixture of patronage and respect, and Mr. Beck returned the salute with the beaming good-humour of a stage father. They strolled together, smoking, up and down the platform, Perkins talking thirteen to the dozen and the other listening. Beck did a great deal of listening and very little talking as a rule.

Perkins had a brand-new theory about the ruby robbery. It was done, he insisted, by an assistant in the establishment. The row in the street was either the chance opportunity or a carefully prepared blind.

"You see how it is, Mr. Beck," he insisted, with a slight touch of the lecturer in his tone, "there was no wire netting on the inside, and the assistants were doubtless all men of the most trustworthy and respectable character. In a case of this kind, I always make it a rule to begin by suspecting people of the most trustworthy and respectable character, because, you see—"

The shriek of the railway whistle chopped his logic off short. In another moment the long train burst with a shock and jar into the station and woke up the people on the platform. The porters ran along by the carriages, shouting at the very top of their lungs.

Then one man, a young, florid-faced porter, stopped short at the door of a first-class carriage close to the engine. For a moment he glued his face to the glass, then tried to turn the door-handle. The door was locked.

He slipped out his key, jerked the door open, and bolted into the carriage. Another moment, and the thrilling cry, "Murder! Murder!" rang out in the night air high over the din of the station.

Mr. Perkins and Mr. Beck raced up the platform for the open door, breaking through the crowd that already began to gather, like clipper yachts through a rough sea. Mr. Perkins was young, light, and active, but Mr. Beck was an easy first in the race.

He leaped into the carriage beside the porter, who was in the act of lifting the body of a man from the floor.

"Stop!" cried Mr. Beck, in a quick, sharp tone of authority, and the man stopped.

"Get out!" said Mr. Beck, and the man got out. "Fetch a lantern and call the superintendent," and the man set off on his message, as obedient as a well-trained spaniel.

"Here you are, old man," said Perkins, coming up puffing to the door, "never go without it." He took out from his breast coat pocket a neat little lamp nickel-plated, with a burnished reflector at the back. He "pressed the button," and an electric light flashed out.

"Thanks, my boy," said Mr. Beck. "That old oil lamp overhead is dull. Just keep the door and keep the crowd out for a moment, will you? You shall have your turn next, and I shall do as much for you."

Then, without waiting for a reply, he was down on his knees beside the dead man, who lay on his back on the floor of the carriage, with sightless, half-open eyes, that had a ghastly glint in them in the flicker of the oil lamp.

Mr. Beck's eyes, restless as a wild animal's, seemed to take in all details at once.

THIS is what he saw. It took less than a minute to see what it takes more than twenty to write:

A handsome young man, not more than thirty years of age, of slim figure, quite dead. There was a bullet-hole through his breast, but he had hardly bled at all. The large black eyes were protruding, and the tongue, out a little, showed scarlet through the black moustache. There was a purplish tinge in the livid face.

Mr. Beck looked at his neck. There was a narrow band cutting down into the flesh under the chin and ears. The wooden stick of a Vesuvian match, the head burned off, lay on the floor, and beside it a reading lamp, quenched, and the glass broken. A serviceable Colt's revolver had rolled into a corner half under the seat. Mr. Beck picked it up, and saw at a glance that two barrels had been recently discharged. There was a round bullet-hole in the glass window at the far side of the station, through which a bullet had left or entered the carriage.

The murdered man appeared to have slept at least for some part of the journey, for an air cushion blown out was lying close to the window, and he had on his head a comfortable sleeping cap of black velvet.

Whatever was the motive of the murder, robbery had no place in it. The man had a valuable gold watch in his pocket, a diamond ring on his little finger, and notes and gold to the amount of £20 in his pocket-book. There was a strong smell of burnt wool in the compartment, and sniffing closely where it seemed strongest, Mr. Beck made a last curious discovery. The man's trousers of light-coloured tweed had a round hole burned through on the inner side of the right thigh, well over the knee, and the skin was scorched underneath.

"Hulloa there!" cried an authoritative voice at the carriage door, as Mr. Beck rose from a close examination of his last discovery.

"That the superintendent?" said Mr. Beck very quietly. "Good-night, Mr. Fenton."

"Oh, good-night, Mr. Beck. I did not know you at first. This is a bad business. What do you make of it."

"Murder."

"My God! you don't say so. Make way there," and the superintendent pushed clean through the excited crowd and stood beside Mr. Beck, looking down on the dead man with staring eyes, his jovial face pale with the sudden horror.

"But I do say so, Mr. Fenton. It's murder, and no mistake, and about the cleverest murder I've come across, and I've been mixed up with a good many in my time."

There was a distinct note of admiration in his voice. It sounded a little ghastly in the presence of the corpse, this mild insistence on the ability displayed by the murderer.

"What am I to do?" cried the superintendent in woeful perplexity. "I never had a thing of the kind on the line before. Mustn't there be an inquest or some thing and all that. I'll have the body lifted out into the third-class refreshment-room."

"I think it would be better not to disturb the deceased just at present," suggested Mr. Beck mildly.

"Then what in God's name am I to do?"

"You could not keep the train back?"

"Impossible. If half the passengers were murdered, we must catch the boat."

"Can you take off the carriage?" It was Mr. Perkins who asked this question.

"I'm afraid not; it would take too long."

"And would be very little use if you could," broke in Mr. Beck. "It's the train we want, not the carriage. What's the last minute you can delay the whole train, Mr. Fenton?"

"Five minutes at the outside. That is a quarter of an hour altogether. Luckily we are three minutes before time. Besides, I don't think that I could get my passengers back into their places before that. They seem to have all gone mad. One would think there was a murderer in each compartment."

"A quarter of an hour. It's short, but it must be made do. Let me have your lantern again, Perkins, will you?"

NO one who knew Mr. Beck as a quiet, easy-going man could recognise him now. In an instant he was all over the long train. He climbed like a bear along the roofs of the carriages, he crawled like a serpent under the wheels. He was in and out through all the doors almost, as it would seem, at the same time. The passengers stood back and watched him like a circus performer. All the while the engine kept puffing an impatient accompaniment.

Only one little fact seemed to reward his search. Five compartments off from that in which the dead man lay, the oil lamp was missing from a third-class carriage.

In this compartment were two men— a soldier and a sailor— sleeping the sleep of the just— or the drunk.

They were wakened up and pulled out. The sailor was a thin, wiry fellow, with small head and body. The soldier, who had a corporal's chevron on his sleeve, was almost a giant.

They seemed both frightened and confused. They declared that they had never met before. Neither had noticed the lamp. Could not say if it were lit when they got in at Euston. Neither could say when it was quenched. "They weren't drunk," they said, "nor yet were they sober. They paid for their blooming tickets, and they had a right to their seats, lamp or no lamp. What had they to say to the blooming lamp, anyhow. That was the company's look-out."

Under Mr. Perkins's able cross-examination they grew insolent, and contradicted him and each other with great facility. Ultimately the small man offered to fight him on the platform for a plug of tobacco. Mr. Perkins responded by arresting them both on a charge of murder, and giving them in custody of the local police, to be released next day for lack of evidence.

Meanwhile Mr. Beck was away back at the end of the train, loosening a strong cord which he found tied in a hard knot round the iron rod of the buffer. When he came walking back quickly along the platform the quarter of an hour was overdue, and the passengers were crowding back into their compartments. The engine was puffing more impatiently than ever. But there was neither puff nor impatience about Mr. Beck.

He found the superintendent and Mr. Perkins standing in front of the carriage, where the dead man still lay on his back, ghastly in the flickering light.

There was a smear of damp blood on the forefinger of Mr. Beck, which he examined with interest as he came up to the other two.

"Hello, old man, got a clue?" cried Perkins, in good-humoured mockery.

"I just have," said Mr. Beck; "a clue of worsted."

He held up in his left hand a little thread of fine lamb's wool of light grey colour, stained dark in parts.

Perkins laughed outright and the superintendent smiled feebly, even while he murmured: "Hurry up, gentlemen, please hurry up!"

"And what do you intend to do with that?" said the young detective chaffingly.

Mr. Beck had tied the thin thread at the end of the strong cord he had taken from the buffer, and looped it in a noose. He smiled grimly as he dangled it before Perkins's eyes. "That little halter," he said softly, "is strong enough to hang a strong man with."

Perkins winked in high good-humour at the superintendent, who was growing more and more impatient.

"All right, all right," said Mr. Perkins. "Are you coming along, Mr. Beck?"

"Where?"

"Why, on to Holyhead with the stiff. He and I are to be travelling companions this voyage, and three is better company than two for once in a way."

"No," said Mr. Beck shortly. "I'm done with him," he pointed with a jerk of his thumb at the corpse. "I have learned all he has got to tell me. Now I'm going to look after the other fellow."

"All right," cried Perkins again, "please yourself, I'm off," and he leaped into the compartment as the carriage began to slide slowly along the edge of the platform.

THE door was slammed after him, and the long train sped away into darkness, leaving Mr. Beck on the platform with his head turned in the opposite direction.

The superintendent watched the train until the back light faded to a fine point and disappeared.

Then he turned to his companion. He was nervous, and excited, and unstrung— in fact in that condition in which a man must talk or burst. The coolness of Mr. Beck was an inexpressible relief to him.

"I should be very glad indeed to help," he said, "if there is anything I—"

"Well, there just is. I want to find that missing lamp out of the third-class carriage, or the bits of it. Can you help me?"

"There'll be some trouble about that, I'm afraid. You see we don't know what happened to it. As likely as not they forgot to put it in at Euston."

"Oh no. It's on the side of the line in bits, about midway between two stations, I should think. But what stations I cannot say positively. Probably one or two from this. I want you to telegraph along the line to have it looked for."

"All right; I'll have that done the moment the telegraph stations open."

"And what time may we expect an answer?"

"Not before twelve to-morrow. You see, there is a great deal of ground to be covered."

"Well, I shall look down about twelve. Good-night."

"You are not going," said the superintendent, eager for company and gossip. "Come in and have a little something hot. I always have a drop after the last train goes; I cannot sleep otherwise, and, by George! I'll want it to-night, if I never wanted it before."

"Thanks, but I must be getting back to my lodgings. I have the knack of sleeping whenever and wherever I like. There's no saying when I'll get a good night's rest again after to-night."

So Mr. Beck walked back to his lodgings, imperturbable as when he left it. The Daily Telegraph still lay on his table; but the mysterious murder had completely eclipsed the mysterious robbery, in his mind. He took his little miniature halter from his pocket and laid it on the open paper.

"Strong enough to hang the strongest man in England," he murmured to himself softly again.

Then he turned to bed and slept as placidly as a child, a sound, dreamless, refreshing sleep until half-past ten the next morning.

"Well, Mr. Fenton, any news?"

"The superintendent looked at Mr. Beck with increased respect as he walked leisurely up to him on the platform at noon next day.

"You were quite right, Mr. Beck, the broken lamp was found as near as might be between two stations, Rugby and Crewe. How in the world did you know?"

Mr. Beck laughed a little shy, deprecating laugh at the other's manifest admiration. "Only a good guess, Mr. Fenton. I was always a first-class hand at conundrums. What's the next train for Rugby?"

"One-twenty."

"All right. I want a first-class single. May as well get it now."

"Do you think you'll nab your man there, sir?"

"Rugby? Oh, I shan't look for him. I don't believe he was there, at least to stop. I'm quite certain he's not there now."

"Then why go there, if I may ask, Mr. Beck?" said the superintendent, bursting with excitement and curiosity. He had never, as he said himself, been mixed up in a murder before. "It looks like wasting time."

"So it does, Mr. Fenton. So it does, no doubt," assented Mr. Beck mildly. "But there is an old proverb for which I have a great respect: 'The more haste the less speed.' I like to puzzle about and try and pick up the scent to begin with. Once on the track I manage to stick to it somehow or another. Our boys laugh at me for an easy-going old codger. But good luck and common sense pull me through now and again."

Easy-going as ever, Mr. Beck slipped out of the train at Rugby, with his neatly-strapped Gladstone bag in his hand and his warm rug over his arm.

"Cab, sir?" cried an active porter, making a grab at the handle of his bag.

"No, thank you," said Mr. Beck, dexterously evading the charge. "I'm not going beyond this."

The man turned away with a blank stare of amazement.

Mr. Beck sat down on one of the seats and waited placidly till the bustle on the platform had effervesced through the open doors.

Then he called a porter to him.

"Porter!"

"Yes-sir!"

"I want you to put this bag and rug in a first-class carriage, on the seat with back to the engine in the next down train," and he handed the man a half-crown.

"Yes-sir," said the porter, with a sudden infusion of respect in his voice.

"Stop a moment. You have got to earn the half crown. You have heard of the murder on the line down at Chester?"

"Heard of it, sir! We have heard of nothing else. There were men out at all hours looking for a railway lamp along the line. There was a fight for the London papers when they came in with the news."

"Well, you see, porter, I'm a detective, and I want to pick up any information that's going."

It was always Mr. Beck's way to go to work in the simplest fashion possible, without any pretence to mystery. If he had told the man he was Emperor of Russia he could not have looked more surprised. But detective or not, to the porter he was unquestionably a gentleman who had given him half a crown.

"It isn't much I can tell you myself, sir, beyond seeing the men come back with the lamp. But Tim Rafferty, that big man down there at the end of the station, was the last that laid eyes on the dead man. Leastways, he wasn't dead then, but only asleep."

"If you will send Rafferty to me you will have earned your half-crown and have given him the chance to earn another."

Rafferty came up with a twinkle in his blue eyes, and a smile, half shy, half expectant, on his big, good-humoured face, which showed the message had been faithfully delivered.

"Now, Rafferty," said Mr. Beck encouragingly, "just tell me what you saw."

"Well, it was just nothing, sir— leastways it would have been nothing at the time only for what happened afterwards. It's curious, too, that I noticed him at all, for I've seen lots of gentlemen asleep, and none of them murdered barrin' himself."

"You saw a gentleman asleep in a first-class carriage in the down train last night— a slight, good-looking gentleman, with a dark moustache?"

"Exactly, sir. I read the description in the papers, and it was the same man that was shot beyond in Chester. There was no signs of shooting about him when I saw him. He was sleeping like a year-old babby."

"You are sure it was the same man?"

"Sure and certain, sir. He answered the description in the newspapers like a catechism— every answer right. He was lying fast asleep all by himself with the cushion of which there was word in the papers under his head. ' 'Throth there's not much troubling you, me gentleman,' I said when I seen him, and it's little I thought of the trouble that was cummin' to him so soon."

"You had a good look?"

"The best."

"Did you see a reading lamp there?"

"Not a light or sight of wan, and I think I'd have seen it if it wor there, for the carriage lamp was beamin' uncommon bright."

Mr. Beck seemed much struck by these trivial circumstances, and questioned him closely. But Rafferty was quite clear on the point. The carriage lamp was not dim, and the reading lamp was not there.

"Thank you, my man," he said at last, without the slightest sign in face or manner whether he had got the information he wanted or not, only he made the promised half-crown five shillings. "I'll have time for a cup of tea before the next train?"

"Time and to spare. Good-day, sir, and thanks."

THERE was a little group of porters round the carriage when Mr. Beck stepped into the down train, curiously eyeing him, and their comments as he was whirled away were hardly complimentary to his professional capacity.

"Him a detective!" said Rafferty, with good-humoured pity. "Faith, I'm thinking he wouldn't have the wit to catch a flay, or the heart to kill it if it wor caught. 'Throth, all the detectives I seen or heard of was a cross between a bloodhound and a gimlet. You'd know them a mile off. I'm not denyin' nayther he's a right good sort," he added, with a kindly remembrance of the five shillings in his waistcoat pocket, "but detective, moryah!"

There certainly was very little of the detective about Mr. Beck as he sat with half-closed eyes and drooping underlip cosily muffled up in his railway rugs.

The ticket-collector at Crewe was just as astounded as the porter at Rugby when Mr. Beck mentioned his profession. But he was civil and communicative all the same. It was curious that everybody was always civil and communicative to Mr. Beck. He had got such a pleasant, good-natured way with him.

Yes, the ticket-collector remembered a gentleman who had gone out after all the other passengers from the down mail train the night before, a good five minutes after them he should say. But he had his ticket all right. It was a first single to Holyhead. He had a small black Gladstone bag in his hand, but no other luggage of any kind. A well set-up, good-looking man, with black curly hair and black moustache. A foreigner by the looks of him. He entered into a minute description to which the detective listened attentively.

"He walked a little lame, I think?" put in Mr. Beck quietly at last.

The ticket-collector looked at him in surprise.

"Do you know the gentleman, sir?"

"Well, yes; I think I have a notion. I may be wrong, but I think have a notion who he is."

"He walked very lame, and seemed to be in pain with his right foot. 'Hope you haven't hurt yourself, sir,' said I. He looked at me sharp with a snap in his big eyes. 'Eh, oh no, not at all. Just a touch of the gout, that's all.' But he had not the look of one the gout would be likely to trouble, and the neat side-spring boots he had on did not look like gout neither."

"Side-spring boots," muttered Mr. Beck. "Um— I thought so! You'd know him again, I suppose, if you saw him?"

"I did know him again, sir, when I saw him. He was on the platform for the first train next morning. I knew him the minute I set eyes on him, though the foot seemed considerably better. I had the curiosity to find out where he was going to."

"Well?"

"He took a first single for Liverpool— Oh, thank you, sir! I wasn't expecting anything of the kind. Only too happy to be of any service, I'm sure."

"Just one word more. You'd know this man's photo if you saw it?"

"I'd know it upside down, sir. Have you got his photo?"

"Not here, but I think I can get one without trouble. If I send you the photo by post, will you write yes or no on a sheet of paper and post it to the address I enclose?"

"For certain by return of post. You are not coming back, sir?"

"No, I'm not coming back. I'm going straight on to the end, and I think I see my way pretty clear."

There was a train just due, and without further delay Mr. Beck made his way to the ticket office.

"First-class single for Liverpool," he said.

So those two, the hunted and the hunter, disappeared one after the other into the thick close cover of the great city.

JUST about the same time there were two other new arrivals in Liverpool.

Dr. Palmer Coleman settling down in a quiet street that was neither city or suburb, began to speedily gather to himself a profitable practice. "Homoeopathist" was what he called himself. "Quack" was what the neighbouring practitioners called him. One of his first patients was a sturdy, strongly built loafer, who had taken up his quarters in a somewhat disreputable lane, at no great distance from the "doctor's" reputable habitation. The "doctor," much to his own surprise it must be confessed, succeeded in curing the tramp of St. Vitus dance, by no more complicated remedy than a box of tiny pills compounded in equal parts of breadcrumb and soap. The man paid the full fee of a sovereign, which the doctor strongly suspected he had stolen. But in addition to that his gratitude was so persistent and effusive as to be embarrassing. He got very drunk to celebrate his recovery, and knocked his benefactor up at one in the morning to thank him. He sang the doctor's praise in a gruff voice in every taproom in the locality. Even this did not content him. He was as obtrusive in his attentions to his benefactor as a big slobbery puppy dog, always turning up at inconvenient hours and places, and haunting his house like an unpaid tax-collector.

William Simmons was the tramp's name, he said, when anybody took the trouble to ask him. But he answered freely to the pet name "Bill Pluck," which was bestowed on him in the locality. He did very little work. But it is only fair to say what he did he did very well, with quite unexpected skill and strength.

Dr. Coleman had made him useful in getting his surgery, which was on the drawing-room floor, into order, and in carrying up and settling in their places certain heavy pieces of furniture, which gave respectability to the place, for which service Bill Pluck steadily declined payment.

Dr. Coleman and Bill Pluck, having each made his little splash in the district, followed by a number of bursting bubbles of local gossip, might have been quietly absorbed in the reputable and disreputable strata of society to which they respectively belonged, were it not for a startling incident about three weeks after their joint arrival. About one o'clock on a particularly dark night the policeman whose beat ran closest to Dr. Coleman's house, was startled by a loud crash, followed by three revolver shots, quick and sharp like the cracking of a teamster's whip. As he ran to the spot, sounding his rattle while he ran, he saw a dark figure leap sheer from the drawing-room window of the doctor's house, light in the street, a good eighteen feet below, and whisk like a cat round the corner, though the constable thought that he limped a little as he ran.

The constable followed in quick pursuit, but as he passed under the open drawing-room window, he almost fell over a rope that trailed down on the pavement from above. When he looked again the figure had vanished, and pursuit in the dead darkness of the night was impossible.

A moment later he heard the doctor's voice call him from the open window.

He knocked at the door.

"One moment constable, and I'll come down and let you in," said the voice from the window.

Then there was the rattle of many chains and bolts, and the doctor appeared, candlestick in hand, dressed, or rather undressed, in night-shirt and trousers, straight out of bed as it seemed, with his fair hair all in a wild wisp, and his face flushed and excited.

A splendid figure of a man he showed, broad-shouldered and muscular in this deshabillé.

"A dangerous customer to tackle," was the constable's mental commentary.

"Burglary, constable," said the doctor, "or rather, I should say, attempted burglary. I was just in time to spoil the game."

"May I have a look round, sir?"

"Certainly, if you care to, but I don't think there is much to see. The principal performer has just left."

The doctor led the way to his study on the drawing-room floor. The flickering candle in his hand showed a scene of the wildest confusion.

The constable turned on the gas and lit the four lights in the hanging gasalier, and the confusion seemed ten times more confused.

The heavy door which led from the study to the doctor's bedroom had been burst sheer from its strong hinges on one side and its strong lock on the other, and flung forward, crashing down tables and chairs as it fell. The window was open, and the night air came in coldly, making the lights flicker. Through the central pane of the upper panel were three round holes, close together like the leaves of a shamrock, clean drilled by revolver bullets.

In the corner of the room, farthest from the window, a neat set of burglar's instruments scattered beside a small, strongly made safe, in the entry of which very satisfactory progress had been made, sufficiently indicated the trade and calling of the midnight visitor.

"Very neat tools," said the constable, picking them up and examining them one by one, "and very neat work— very neat indeed," looking with undisguised admiration at the burglar's handiwork on the safe. "That hole was chilled by a clever hand, believe me."

"I came near drilling a neater hole through his clever head," said Dr. Coleman grimly. "I wish I had. I don't often miss."

"Would you mind telling me shortly what happened?" said the constable, his ready notebook out.

"Not in the least, though there is really very little to tell beyond what you see. I had gone to bed at about half-past eleven after a hard day and night's work, and was fast asleep, when I was wakened by the faintest scraping sound, like the scratches of a mouse in the next room. No other man would have minded it in the least, but I hate mice. I suppose I ought to be ashamed to confess it, but they frighten and fidget me like a school-girl. Strange, isn't it, a big, strong fellow like me? I cannot sleep if I hear the sound of one, so I got up quietly, pulled on my trousers, lit my candle at the gas-jet I always keep burning, and turned the handle of the door softly in the hope of catching and killing the thing. The door was locked on the outside. This startled me. I never lock the door inside or outside. I listened again. The same scratchy sound went on steadily— too steadily as I thought for a mouse. I picked up my revolver— I always have one handy— put my shoulder to the door— it's a rickety concern, as you see—and sent the whole thing flying into the other room. Unluckily the rush of air blew out my candle, and the other chap had the gumption to blow out his light. It was pitch dark in the room. I just saw— or thought I saw— a patch of blacker blackness making for the window, and I let drive three shots at it, and missed all three it seems."

"Would you know the man again, sir?"

"Not from Adam. Didn't I tell you the room was as black as the ace of spades, and what's more I don't want to see him or know him again. I would like well enough to drop him to my own shot. But when I missed him he saved his skin so far as I am concerned."

"But in the interest of justice, sir."

"Justice, be blowed. The poor devil risked his life cheap. There was nothing in the safe but some bottles of poison, if he had got it open."

"What does that matter, sir, begging your pardon. The crime was the same. The fellow plainly thought there was something extra valuable in it, and meant to lay hands on it if he could."

"Did he?" a little sharply. "Well, there isn't, that's all. Good-night, constable. I'll finish my beauty sleep."

But the constable, a shrewd and experienced officer, was hot on the scent, he thought, and before an hour was over had arrested "Bill Pluck" in his squalid retreat in Heavenly Lane on a charge of attempted burglary.

There were several suspicious circumstances against the prisoner. He had only come in half an hour before. There was a red scar on his neck, that looked remarkably like the graze of a bullet, and he walked decidedly lame on the right foot.

He took the thing, however, quite coolly.

"Rubbing a safe, is it? What do I know about safes? Rubbing Dr. Coleman, the man who cured me? 'Tain't likely. The doctor and me is too thick for the like of that. You see if he will come again me in the court, neither!"

All the same he was locked up in the police-station for the night, accepting the situation with philosophic contentment, and sleeping like a child.

The constable had his prize down in court early next morning, and was half-way through his evidence when Dr. Coleman appeared.

The magistrate seemed much impressed by the evidence. It appeared inevitable that the prisoner would be either remanded or forthwith committed for trial.

Dr. Coleman was put into the box and examined by the constable. He told the story much as the constable told it. But there seemed a curious, almost imperceptible, leaning in favour of the prisoner in his evidence.

He was sure he did not hit the burglar with any of the three revolver shots, or even graze him.

"Quite sure of that, sir?" said the constable.

"Quite sure."

"It was very dark at the time?" This from the Bench.

"It was rather dark, your worship."

"You cannot identify this man, I suppose?"

"On the contrary, your worship, I can swear positively this is not the man. I could distinguish the outline of the figure, and this is not the figure I saw."

"The man you saw leaped through the window, I understand?"

"He went through the window, your worship. There was no other way for him to go. But whether he leaped or not I cannot say. There was a knotted rope looped to one of the spikes of the iron balcony in front of the window, by which plainly he got up and by which possibly he got down."

"But I saw him jump from the window," broke in the constable, "and he lamed himself by the leap, and this man is lame. How do you account for that, Doctor?"

"I have been lame myself for some time," retorted the doctor sharply, "from an accident, and even yet I am not quite recovered. But that is no proof, I trust, that I am a burglar."

The constable looked sheepish, and the prisoner giggled with curious amusement at the retort.

"Besides," the doctor went on, "I think this man was always lame."

"Is that so, Constable Brunker?" This from the magistrate.

The constable was puzzled. It came to him suddenly that the man did always walk with a slouch and something of a limp. He had got quite a new limp, he thought, since last night, but he did not know how he could explain that to the Court. "Well, you see, your worship, I think he had a kind of limp. But—"

"That will do, constable," interrupted his worship. "I think you have been a little hasty in this business. The prisoner is discharged. Thank you, Dr. Coleman, and good-day."

The prisoner gave a curious leer at Dr. Coleman as he shambled out of the dock— rather an amused than a grateful look, one would say.

The other left the witness-box at the same moment, and the two came together at the court-room door.

"Simmons," said the doctor quietly, "I have a job for you if you will look up in an hour's time. My rooms are in a mess after that ruffian last night."

"Thank you, sir," said Bill Pluck, with gruff civility. "I'll be there."

BILL PLUCK was more under a cloud than ever in the neighbourhood after this occurrence. The neighbours, as a rule, took the constable's rather than the magistrate's view of the transaction, and gave him a pretty wide berth.

But whoever else thought him guilty, it was plain Dr. Coleman did not, for he was kinder than ever to the sturdy outcast. He seemed to make jobs specially for him and was liberal with money, which in Bill Pluck's free translation meant drink. So he seemed in a fair way to drink himself to death or delirium tremens.

Once again things quieted down to a dull routine, when there was a third sensation— the last.

Signor Montifero visited the locality. If his own handbills are to be trusted, everybody must have heard of Signor Montifero. Still, for the benefit of the possible benighted reader it may be worth while to quote briefly from that interesting document by way of introduction of its author, described in big type therein.

"Signor Professor Montifero" it appeared was "the famous disciple of Mesmer the Professor of hypnotism, who had explored the borderlands of life and penetrated their most mysterious arcana, whose multifarious learning and profound research had wedded the occultism of the East and the science of the west in harmonious unison, whose marvellous demonstrations had been witnessed with amazement and delight in the Court of every reigning sovereign, and in the lecture hall of every learned university in Europe."

Considering his accomplishments and reputation, Signor Professor Montifero was a modest man, not in the least puffed up by admiration of reigning Sovereigns and University dons.

He was content with a moderate-sized hall, in what might be called the outskirts of the town, and he even condescended to circulate his own handbills.

Bill Pluck attached himself to Signor Montifero from the moment of his arrival. This was surprising, as the Signor was not particularly free with drink or money. But the mesmerist seemed to have a strange fascination for the loafer, and the loafer, with his local knowledge, made himself useful to the mesmerist. Bill Pluck posted his bills for him and helped him in the arrangements of his hall. Furthermore he gave him, in his own blundering way, the hint which enabled the professor to secure Dr. Coleman as the chairman of his committee of inspection.

The Signor, a dark, portly gentleman, with insinuating manners, had found the doctor a shy fish to land.

"You really must not refuse, Dr. Coleman," he said. "Your name and position— and, if I may be excused for saying so, your appearance— will be invaluable. There is a certain bond between us; we both cultivate outlying fields in the vast regions of science."

"But I dislike hypnotism, and, what's more, I don't believe in it."

"Dislike and disbelief, my dear sir, cannot co-exist. Your dislike, if you will forgive me saying, is a tribute of faith. You would yourself make an excellent medium, if you would allow me."

But here Dr. Coleman was determined, and even angry.

"No power on earth," he said hotly, "would induce me to submit to such mummery."

But the Signor skilfully soothed him, and before he left exacted a promise that he would attend as chairman of the committee on the express promise that the Signor's influence would not be tested on himself.

The same evening Bill Pluck surprised the Signor by a proposal.

"Would you think of trying some new spiratool material, governor?" he said.

"Would I what?" said the Signor, not quite grasping his meaning.

"'Cos if you would, I don't care if you experimentatise on me. Oh, I have been there before. I'm a medium-paced subject, I am."

"You mean you are willing to act as a medium," said the Signor.

"Aye, just! act on the square; and the neighbours knows me, they does."

Signor Montifero jumped at the offer. He carted his mediums round with him as a rule, trained mediums who were so impregnated with mesmerism that they could be relied on. Now and again he was fortunate enough to pick up a peculiarly susceptible subject amongst the audience. But he found it convenient to have subjects to fall back upon, whose susceptibilities were established on the sound commercial basis of weekly wages. But then the wages were heavy, for his men, as they took frequent occasions to explain to the Signor, could not be asked to have pins stuck in them without squealing, and to eat tallow candles the same as sugar-stick, and make bloomin' asses of themselves all over the shop, without it is considered in the screw. Besides, these professional gentlemen were unknown in the district, and their appearance was not calculated to beget confidence in their disinterested devotion to science.

Bill Pluck was not specially prepossessing either but he had the advantage of being known. So when he offered to come on for a bob and a pot of beer a night during the week, the Signor jumped at the offer. As a matter of fact he only performed on the first night of the engagement.

THERE was a very fair attendance that first night. A thick sprinkling on the crimson-covered two-shilling seats, a good show on the one-shilling seats, and the sixpenny places crammed. On the platform sat the committee of inspection round a table, Dr. Coleman conspicuous amongst them.

Right opposite, all in a row, were the hang-dog mediums, Bill Pluck at the outer end in full view of the audience, the target for some rough compliments.

The Signor always began with his property mediums. If he could once get the audience to believe in them, the rest of his work was easy enough, for the mesmerist largely lives by faith. The usual preliminary work was gone through this evening amid much cheering and tittering.

The mediums were— like the delicate Ariel— "correspondent to command." They panted in extreme heat or shivered in extreme cold; they hunted imaginary sovereigns round the stage; they ate tallow candles with a relish; they had pins driven in their legs without any manifestation of emotion, and scalded themselves with cold water in the most natural manner possible. When suddenly awakened in the very middle of some ludicrous escapade, their faces wore the orthodox expression of surprise and horror, and awakened the usual laughter.

Bill Pluck was the last called amid a roar of applause and laughter, and a futile attempt by a pal in the background to raise a chorus: "For he's a right gay fellow."

He was brought forward and seated sheepishly in a chair with a glare of light on his face, in full view of the committee and audience. Dr. Coleman especially watched him with fixed attention. There was a smart young man on the platform— not a member of the committee— who also seemed much interested. He was probably a reporter, for he took out his notebook when Bill Pluck was called, and began writing rapidly in shorthand a moment afterwards.

Signor Montifero bade his subject fix his eyes intently on the revolving mirror, by which he was to be dazzled and dazed into the mesmeric trance.

For a few minutes the man stared fixedly and vacantly as directed. Then his eyelids drooped and closed, and his breathing grew deep and regular.

A thrill ran through the audience as they gazed at the sleeper. The man's rough face was, as it were, transformed by surprise and delight. Dr. Coleman, who knew him best, looking his hardest, could scarcely recognise his features in that sudden change. Signor Montifero himself seemed astounded at his own handiwork.

"Oh! Oh! oh!" cried the figure in the chair, pointing in a kind of ecstasy of delight— "it is wonderful!"

The voice had a hollow, far-off sound in it, not the least like his own. But it was heard at the farthest corner of the silent hall.

The Signor roused himself to meet his good fortune. Here was a man really hypnotised at last.

"What's wonderful?" he said. "What do you see?"

"The Kubla Khan ruby," was the answer in the same hollow monotone.

"His voice was thin, like voices from the grave,

And deep asleep he seemed, yet all awake."

Excitement grew more intense at the mention of the famous jewel, whose mysterious disappearance had been the chief topic of gossip for the last six weeks. The committee turned earnest faces and staring eyes on the man, Dr. Coleman's the most earnest of all. The Signor was trembling from head to foot. The young reporter was scribbling shorthand furiously.

"The Kubla ruby," said the Signor, in a voice which he tried to make steady; "where do you see it?"

"In the shop window of Mr. Bolas, of Bond Street. Look, look! it is a blaze of red light. There is a crowd round the window. See! two men come pushing their way through the crowd."

"Can you say who they are?"

"Let me— let me— yes. One of them is Don Coloso, the Modern Atlas— I know him from his photographs. The other is the small man, Jules Hernandes, whom he used to fly over his head."

Another thrill amongst the audience, for Don Coloso and his companion had disappeared on the night of the daring robbery.

"Yes, I know him," went on the man in the chair, still speaking faintly as from a far distance, "though he has put off his black, curly wig and moustache he wears on the stage. The man on his arm is slight and dark. I know him too. See, they are pushing through the crowd. No wonder the people are angry. Don Coloso knocks them about like ninepins. Oh, oh!"

"What do you see now?"

"Now he strikes with his walking-stick. He has broken the thick glass like paper. He has torn the wire grating like cobweb. See! the little man has grabbed the ruby and slipped off like a weasel through the throng. The police are breaking through the crowd. Now they have caught Don Coloso. They push him roughly about. He goes with them like a lamb."

"Do you follow them?"

"I follow them. They turn down a quiet street together. Don Coloso glances back over his shoulder. There is no one in the street. Now in a moment he flings the police round. They are like children in his hand. He dashes their heads together. He slings them from him in the kennel. He is off like a flash. He has disappeared."

The excitement in the audience was intense. There was a tragic reality about the "manifestation" that held them spell-bound. Signor Montifero rose to the occasion.

"Do you follow him still?"

"No, he has disappeared. I cannot follow him," said the far-away voice.

"Look again— do you see him now?"

"Dimly. He seems waiting in the dark for some one who does not come. He clenches his hands and his teeth. He disappears. I see him again more clearly. It is at the Euston railway station. Now he has a black leather bag in his hand. He is watching some one. It is the slight man who stole the ruby. Don Coloso does not speak to him. The slight man buys a ticket. Don Coloso buys a ticket. The slight man gets into a carriage— first-class— close to the engine. Don Coloso gets into the last carriage at the extreme end of the train. It is a very long train. The two men are very far apart. The train is off."

"Do you follow?"

"I follow. We have stopped at Rugby. I know the station well. The end of the long train tails away from the platform into the dark night. The slight man does not leave his carriage. But see a shadow slip out from the last carriage of the train. How quietly he goes. He is down on the line behind the train. He ties his bag under the buffer with strong twine; he slips off his boots and ties them up with his bag. He climbs like a cat to the roof of the carriage, and so is carried away into the night."

"Watch him."

"I am watching. He crawls like a great cat along the ridge of the rushing train, counting the lamps as he goes. He is close to the engine now. He lifts the carriage lamp from its place and tries to balance it on the swaying curve of the roof, but it goes over with a crash on to the line. I hear the man curse under his breath. But he takes a railway reading lamp from his pocket; he lights it with a flaming Vesuvian, and turns the light down into the opening in the roof. In the carriage below there is a man asleep, sleeping quietly. The light gleams white on his face. Again it is the slight man who stole the ruby.

"There is an evil look in the eyes that gleam down at him, and from the thin lips comes a low growl of joy like a wild beast feeding. Again the man on the roof lights a flaming Vesuvian, poises the morsel of fierce fire for a moment with cautious aim, and then drops it down on the sleeper. There is a slight hissing sound and the tickling smell of burning wool. The sleeping man leaps to his feet with a cry of pain. The sound is choked on his lips. A running noose falls upon his neck, and a strong pull lifts and holds him clean from the carriage floor. The struggle is fierce and short. Now the body hangs limp at the noose. A long arm stretches through the opening and clutches the corpse, feeling eagerly for something. There is the same low growl of delight as the hand draws a small packet from the inner breast pocket of the dead man and carefully secures it.

"A revolver is out now. A crash and a flash, and a bullet goes through the body of the dead man; another, and there is a round hole in the carriage window. The noose is loosened from the neck of the victim; he drops with a dull thud, face upwards, on the floor of the carriage. The lamp and revolver go down after him, and the murderer crawls back on his hands and feet on the swaying ridge of the train. A curse and a growl of pain. He has cut his foot through his stocking on a jagged nail in the carriage roof. A thread of the stocking catches on the nail, a thread of grey worsted. There is blood round it. The man cannot see it in the dark, but I see.

"He goes on limping and growling softly to himself. Five carriages off he lifts out a lamp, and crawling back replaces it in the opening of the compartment where the dead man lies. Then without a pause he turns and crawls away to the end of the train, still growling with pain as he goes. Five minutes later the train begins to slacken its furious speed, and with a shriek and a rattle it rushes into Crewe. Then he steps lightly on to the rails and cuts his boots and bag loose from the buffer. He draws on his boots, crushing the wounded and blood-stained foot in fiercely. A moment after he goes limping past the ticket-collector."

The horror of the audience has reached its culminating point. There is the hush of death in the hall.

Signor Montifero is pale to the lips, and his voice trembles as he falters out: "Do you see him still?"

"I see him again at the Crewe station. He takes train for Liverpool. He is here in this city; here in this hall. I see! I see!"

The man's voice rose and swelled with horror, thrilling the audience.

But at that moment another cry was heard, so full of wild, conscience-stricken fear that it made their hearts stop beating.

Dr. Coleman had fallen back limp and livid in his chair; his face ashen grey, his lips twitching, and his eyes staring with a ghastly glare.

"Enough, enough!" he shouted that all might hear. "The devil is too strong for me. I give in. D—n you all— you staring idiots! I am the murderer! I— I! Jules Hernandes played me false— do you hear? False! I strangled him. If it were to be done again I'd do it."

Before any one noticed, the mesmerised man was out of his chair. There was a metallic clink and a sharp snap; a broad, calm face was bending over Dr. Coleman, and a voice said—

"I arrest you, Don Coloso, alias Dr. Coleman, on a charge of wilful murder of Jules Hernandes. You are not bound to say anything, but whatever you do say may be used in evidence against you."

The face was the face of William Simmons, but the voice was the voice of Mr. Beck.

The shock of the cold official words roused Dr. Coleman from his ague fit of fear to sudden fury.

"Trapped!" he shouted fiercely, and he made one awful effort to burst the shiny bracelets that Mr. Beck had so deftly slipped upon his wrists.

That supreme effort of stupendous strength was terrible to see. The sweat came out in tiny bubbles on his face; the veins on his forehead were like corded network, and the great muscles of his arms strained and swelled and throbbed.

"It's no use," said Mr. Beck soothingly, "no use at all. They are half an inch thick, of solid steel, and they were made specially for yourself."

For answer the prisoner struck fiercely at the detective's head. Mr. Beck dodged the blow. The manacled hands crashed upon the table and shivered it to pieces like the stroke of a sledge-hammer, and the man fell prone and lay like a log.

Mr. Beck bent over him, and with a quick turn of his wrist twisted a small steel key from his watch-chain.

"Take it easy, Doctor," he said, still soothingly. "The game is up," and he handed him over to the charge of the local police, four of whom were ready on the platform. Then or afterwards to the end the formidable captive offered no resistance at all. The audience broke up tumultuously, leaving Signor Montifero alone. They had got their money's worth of excitement. The main part of them, with an ever-gathering crowd, followed the police and prisoner to the station.

Mr. Beck, with his hands buried deep in the pockets of his worn pea-jacket, slipped off quietly in another direction. The young man of the notebook walked by his side. A change had come over the burly detective— Figure, costume, and make-up were still the same, but he had resumed his own identity. He was no longer Bill Pluck or William Simmons, but Mr. Paul Beck.

"You have got it all down, Perkins?" he said to his companion.

"Every word, story, confession, and all. You are in luck again, Beck. By George! You have caught the right man this time. You did lay it on pretty thick over there"— he jerked his thumb towards the hall. "Hanged if I'd have known you myself if I was not in the swim."

"Well, you see," said Mr. Beck, in a half-apologetic tone, "I always had something of a gift in the play-acting line. It comes natural."

"I suppose your story of the robbery and murder was all a flam?"

"Flam!" replied Mr. Beck. "I'm surprised at you, Perkins. Do you think if it was a flam it would take him like that? Every word was true."

"But how the dickens did you know? You did not see the thing done, did you?"

"Well, not exactly," Mr. Beck confessed. "But when you see a footprint in the mud, you can guess that somebody has gone by. This case was as plain as mud from the first."

He drew his miniature halter from his pocket, with the noose of lamb's worsted wool.

"I told you that was strong enough to hang a strong man, and you laughed at me. Still it was."

"But the ruby, old boy. You have not found the ruby yet. I wish I knew where that was."

"You will know soon enough if you come with me to Dr. Coleman's," replied Mr. Beck. "I have known for some time. I had a little try for it before, and I might have got into trouble, but he was as anxious to hush things up as I was, and more so. I hadn't the key then. I have now."

"But where's the ruby, anyhow?"

"The Kubla Khan ruby," said Mr. Beck slowly, "value half a million, reward five thousand pounds, is in the safe in the far corner of Dr. Coleman's sitting-room or I am very much mistaken."

Mr. Beck was not very much mistaken.

_____________________

3. By a Hair's Breadth

AS Mr. Beck went up the broad stone steps of the front entrance of Holmhurst, the stately seat of the Duke of Southern, he passed two men going down rather hastily. One of the two was tall and lithe, with a long, clever face that somehow seemed familiar to Mr. Beck. His companion, who walked a little lame, was shorter, stouter, and duller looking. The tall man was talking vehemently, the short man was listening submissively. As they passed, Mr. Beck heard a fragment of a sentence—

"The conclusion I have come to is the only possible logical and scientific deduction if the Duke only—"

The electric bell tinkled. The gorgeous footman showed Mr. Beck straight through the great hall, crowded with trophies of many centuries, to the room, a small library or large study, whichever you please to call it, which was the Duke's own private sanctum.

His Grace was pacing the floor restlessly, like a particularly active sentinel, backwards and forwards on the same line of the carpet. A handsome, well-set-up man was the Duke, about forty years of age, with broad shoulders, and a kindly face pleasant to look at. But now the pleasant face was clouded by anxiety and anger. So self-absorbed was he that he did not hear the footman call the name; he did not see Mr. Beck softly enter the room, but kept on his restless pacing, muttering to himself as he walked.

Mr. Beck silently dropped into a roomy leather-covered chair, and waited, watching the restless figure narrowly as it passed and repassed within a yard of him.

At length the Duke's eyes lit on the detective suddenly, as he sat there patient and vigilant. He stopped short in the middle of his restless course, and stared at the strange, motionless figure with angry amazement.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, "I have not the honour of— may I ask who?"

"Oh! my name is Beck. You wired to town for me."

"Mr. Beck, the famous detective?" said the Duke, with a polite attempt to hide his surprise at the general appearance of Mr. Beck.

Mr. Beck put aside the compliment with a wave of his big hand. "I will do my best," he said modestly, "and the boys say I'm lucky. What can I do for you, Duke?"

"My dear sir, you can help me out of the biggest trouble of my life. Up to half an hour ago I hardly cared at all, except, of course, for her sake. But now? Did you meet two men as you came up the avenue?"

"I met two men on the steps."

"The same. You recognised the taller of the two?"

"I thought I knew his face."

"Of course you knew the face of the famous detective, Mr. Murdoch Rose. He doesn't object to be called 'famous.' I had hoped that you and he might work this case together. But he has gone off in a temper, and left me in a worse one."

"It could not have worked out any way, Duke," said Mr. Beck quietly. "He doesn't like me. He says— so I'm told— that I am the last of the slow coaches, that my brains are waterproofed against the teaching of science. But what sent him off now at such a tangent?"

The Duke blushed, actually blushed, and ground out a monosyllabic invective between his teeth like a commonplace plebeian.

"I'd rather not say, if you will allow me. It hurts me even to think of it."

Mr. Beck looked persistently inquisitive.

"Well," said the Duke, answering the look, "I am bound to tell you everything, I suppose, like a father confessor amongst the Catholics. But this is grotesque; you will hardly credit it. When Mr. Rose heard all the facts he asked to see me alone, and saw me. He was convinced— or he affected to be convinced for some purpose— that it was my wife herself stole the opal. I kept my temper all through wonderfully— wonderfully. 'But, Mr. Rose,' I said, 'this is idiotic nonsense.'

" 'Nonsense,' he said, 'is often another name for quintessence of reason.'

" 'But there is not a scrap of motive,' I said.

" 'When we have facts we don't look for motive.'

" 'The thing is ridiculous— impossible.'

" 'Impossibility is no answer to truth.'

"Of course that ended it. I was as civil to him as I could be, but I'm afraid that was not overmuch, and he marched off with his head in the air. I cannot tell but he will air his opinions elsewhere. You will readily understand, then, how eager I am to get to the bottom of this business. So that—"

"May I come in?"

It was a woman's voice— a very pleasant woman's voice. Without waiting for an answer a girl, not more than twenty years of age, glided into the room, light and graceful as a young deer.

She was dressed in a dark blue silk that rippled and flashed with changing light, like the clear sea in sunshine and shadow. There were diamonds on her white throat and in her dark hair. Her Grace was American.

"Not a word before her," the Duke whispered hastily as she came towards them. Then aloud, "Mr. Beck, this is my wife."

She gave the detective her little hand frankly, flashing a welcoming smile from her dark eyes.

"Oh! I'm so glad you've come. I have heard of you from my friend, Lily Harcourt— the diamonds case, you know— and I got the Duke to telegraph you at once. I know you will find out who stole my opal. Such a beauty it was, Mr. Beck, you can't think. It was as big as a walnut; yes, as a small walnut, Reggie. There was not another like it in the whole world. The Queen herself could not have one like it if she wanted ever so much. Then it was real lovely to look at, all the glow and colour of the sunset hidden in it. It was my own fault it was lost, of course. I would wear it down here. But I know you will find it for me, Mr. Beck, as soon as ever you can. You found Lily's diamonds in one day after they were stolen— don't you remember? But I must warn you not to begin by suspecting the wrong person. Lucy, my maid, has nothing to say to stealing the opal, nor her sweetheart, either, though they have put him in gaol for it. He couldn't, you see, without her knowing it, and she wouldn't, I know. We were children together— Lucy and I— when I was at home, and she came here with me as my own maid— though she is more companion than maid— when I was married, and she's the very last person in the world who would think of— But I forget, you cannot know in the least what I am talking about, indeed I hardly know myself, I'm so excited. I think I'd better go for Herbert, dear"— this to the Duke— "I left him in the billiard-room. He's so quick and clear, and will tell Mr. Beck the whole story straight out from the beginning."

With the rustle of silk and a flash of jewels, her volatile ladyship vanished.

Mr. Beck and the Duke stood for a few minutes together at the great bow windows looking silently out over the fair, wide prospect. The vivid green lawn sloped down to the edge of a bright lake where swans swam. Beyond, the great demesne stretched to the sky-line, luring the eye with long vistas dappled with light and shade, where deer flitted ghost-like through the aisles and arches of the summer trees.

The lord of all this sylvan loveliness turned suddenly to the detective with sore trouble in his eyes.

"No," said Mr. Beck, in answer to the unspoken appeal, "Ellen Terry or Sarah Bernhardt could not act like that. Your Grace was right— the notion is grotesque."

"Mr. Rose declared it wasn't my gamekeeper," said the Duke, "'because you can never trust a case,' he said, 'that looks too plain.' My wife says the same, because he's the sweetheart of the girl Lucy she's so fond of. But Markham is in prison for it, all the same, with a bullet-hole drilled through his leg by Herbert's revolver. Herbert is my brother, you know. But here they are, and Herbert will give you the facts at firsthand as far as we know them."

The Duchess had brought back with her a very striking-looking man; like the Duke, but taller and handsomer. He carried his height with soldierly ease, for he had been in the Life Guards. The face was frank and resolute; the broad forehead was framed with close, crisp curls of old gold just flicked with silver. He looked like one to win woman's love tenderly or dare man's hate resolutely— one whom danger could not shake nor cunning betray.

Mr. Beck was, in his own way, a believer in physiognomy, "taking stock of a man" he called it. From the first he seemed attracted by the Honourable Herbert Selwyn.

There was the twitching of a suppressed smile about Herbert's handsome mouth when the Duchess presented him to the stolid Mr. Beck, but it in no way marred the perfect courtesy of his manner to the detective.

"Now tell him the whole story," said her Grace impetuously.

Then with a laconic military precision he set the facts before the detective.

"You have heard of the great 'Southern Opal,' Mr. Beck?"

Mr. Beck nodded.

"It has been an heirloom in our family since the days of Queen Elizabeth, and is without match or rival in the world, they say. At the Queen's Jubilee the Rajah of Mangapore offered my brother a quarter of a million for it. Those fellows don't understand things—think that money will buy anything. But that will give you a fair idea of the value anyway. Before my brother's marriage the opal used to be kept locked up in the strong room of the bank. But Ethel—her Grace, I mean—naturally enough took a fancy to wear it. She got a safe let into the wall of her dressing-room under the hangings. There was but one key, which she kept about her night and day."

"This is the key," interposed her Grace, and she put into Mr. Beck's hand a small, slim, steel key with many wards, which he examined curiously.

"It happens," the Hon. Herbert went on, "that my dressing-room adjoins her Grace's. I have exceptionally quick ears. As I was dressing for dinner last evening, I thought I heard the whispering of voices in her Grace's room. I had just left her in the drawing-room only a moment before. My suspicions were naturally aroused. I took a revolver from a drawer, slipped off my boots, and crept quietly to her door. There was no mistake about the voices. One was a man's. I opened the door as softly as I could; the candles were lit. The man was standing with his back to me, close to the corner where, as I have learned, the safe is set. The girl was facing the door, and screamed out when she saw me. The man bolted for the open window, and leapt out twenty feet at least to the ground. I had a snap shot at him as he wheeled round a rhododendron bush. I fired low, and it seems I put a bullet through the calf of his leg. But while I had rushed to the window the woman had fled through the door. I followed to alarm the house, and I met Ethel on the stairs. She had been frightened by the pistol-shot.

" 'You're not hurt?' she gasped out.

" 'I'm afraid nobody is hurt,' I answered. 'The fellow has got clean away.' I didn't know then he was shot.

"'A burglar!' she cried. 'Oh! my opal!' I declare I hadn't even thought of the opal until that moment.

"We went straight back to the room together. The safe was open and the key in the lock. All the other jewels, some of great value, were untouched, but the opal was gone.

"There's the whole story for you so far as it is known."

"And this man?"

"Turns out to be the Duke's head gamekeeper, Markham— William Markham. He came and gave himself up. He was bleeding like a pig. But he protested his innocence. He had not got the opal, of course. His wound was dressed and then he was packed off to prison."

"And the girl?"

"Oh! the girl was Lucy— my own maid, Lucy," broke in her Grace. "She came crying to me and told me all about it. She is the best of good girls. You remember, Reggie, how she nursed baby Archie last year, when they thought he had diphtheria, and every one else was nervous, and I was not allowed to go near him? He loves her next to me in the world, I do believe. She was in my room, Mr. Beck, when I left yesterday after she had dressed me, and the lights were lit. It seems that Markham is her sweetheart, and he saw her at the window, and he climbed in. But she swears that neither of them even so much as thought of the opal, and I really do believe that—"

"Mr. Beck wants only the facts, Ethel," interposed her husband, smiling at her vehemence. "He can draw his own conclusions."

"Can I see the dressing-room?" asked Mr. Beck.

"Certainly."

"And the girl Lucy?"

"I will have her sent to you at once."

Mr. Beck had barely time to cast his eyes round the room, whose walls were hung with pale blue silk, when a timid knock came to the door.

"Come in," said Mr. Beck, and a pretty, pale-faced young girl came in. Her eyes were red with crying, and she was trembling all over so that she could scarcely stand. But all the same, she looked innocent and honest.

"Sit down, my dear," said Mr. Beck very kindly, "and tell me all about it."

"It was all my fault," she broke out incoherently. "Now Willie is shot, and they're going to try him at the 'Sizes, and maybe hang him for it, and he is as innocent of the like as a child unborn."

"It was all your fault! What was all your fault, my dear?" asked Mr. Beck soothingly.

The brown eyes flashed an indignant look at him through their tears.

"It wasn't the opal," she cried. "We never touched the opal if that's what you mean. Oh! I beg your pardon, sir. But I cannot bear to think of it. Indeed, it was not after the opal Willie came, it was after— I bade him begone at once, but he wouldn't till I gave him— he wasn't half a minute here altogether, and neither of us were thinking of the opal, when Mr. Herbert came bursting in with his pistol and shot him. You're a detective, sir, I hear"— this very timidly— "you'll do your best to save him?"

"To save him, my dear, if he is innocent, and to gaol if he isn't."

"I don't ask no better than that," said the girl gratefully. "I know he had neither hand, act, or part in this bad business."

"Now I want you to answer me one or two questions truthfully."

"That I will, sir."

"You know where your mistress generally carried the key of the safe?"

"She wore it on a little gold chain round her neck and hidden in the bosom of her dress."

"Can you remember if she wore it yesterday evening?"

"Well. She dressed early for dinner. I saw the chain round her neck, and the key on the chain before she went down to the drawing-room."

"You knew all about the safe?"

"Of course I did."

"And knew that the Opal was there?"

She paused for a moment and looked him straight in the face, with honest brown eyes.

"If you mean that I could have stolen the key and stolen the opal, that I could any hour of the day or night almost, without help from Willie either. But I didn't, and Willie didn't, though he's down for it, and if you find out the truth of it, that's all we ask. We'll both pray for you to our lives' end."

"I'll do my best, my dear," said Mr. Beck very pleasantly. "Truth is at the bottom of the well they say, and the water's sometimes a bit muddy, but I'll do my best to fish it up. Now, will you kindly tell your mistress— her Grace, I mean— that I would be glad to see her here for a moment or two, if she'd be so kind."

"I'll send to her, sir. I couldn't bear to face her myself with this disgrace on me."

"Well, Mr. Beck, what do you say now?" cried her Grace excitedly, as if the mystery was a conundrum to be guessed or given up instanter.

"I say nothing," said Mr. Beck placidly.

"But you sent for me; you have something to tell me?"

"Something to ask, my lady, not to tell. Have you got the key of the safe you showed me just now?"

"Here it is."

"And the chain it was on?" he continued.

"Here it is."

Mr. Beck examined the chain minutely. It had been snipped across by sharp nippers.

"You don't know when this was done?"

"I cannot say at all. I did not miss the key until I found it in the lock of the open safe."

"Did you bring it down with you to the drawing-room yesterday evening?"

"I think I did, but I cannot be quite sure. I have no special recollection of it."

Then Mr. Beck, with the key in his hand, went straight to the corner of the room where the safe was.

"How did you know it was just there, Mr. Beck?"

"The wrinkles in the hangings. Besides, the eyes of your maid, when I spoke of the safe, told me where it was."

The heavy bars of the lock yielded like a hair trigger to the touch of the slim key, and the massive door opened on smooth hinges.

The safe was a masterpiece of construction; it went in deep and dark into the wall. Mr. Beck could see that it was divided into an upper and lower compartment by a horizontal shelf of fine, closely-woven steel wire. Both compartments were crowded with jewel-cases.

"There was nothing touched except the opal?" he asked.

"Absolutely nothing."

"Where was it kept— in the lower compartment?"

She nodded, wondering how he knew.

Mr. Beck took a small electric lamp from his pocket, opened the slide and touched the spring that lighted it. Then, thrusting his head into the lower compartment of the safe, he examined the sides and bottom minutely with a strong magnifying glass. As he drew out his head he felt something tickle the back of it. He turned up the light and found a little cluster of fine points projecting from the bottom of the wire-woven shelf.

He examined those with such care that her Grace noticed it.

"Oh! that's nothing," she said; "that little flaw in the shelf was there when the safe was first put up. The wires got broken a little. They used to tickle the back of my head too. At first I intended to have it fixed; the ends of the wires cut off or something. But I forgot, and after a while I didn't notice it. I suppose I learnt to keep my head out of the way."

Mr. Beck answered never a word. His head was back again in the safe, and he renewed his examination of bottom and sides with even more care than before.

"No one had any business to go to the safe but yourself?" he asked, after a long pause.

"No one," she answered, and he went on with his examination.

"Well, Mr. Beck?" her Grace demanded impatiently, when he finally drew out his head, and closed his lamp with a snap.

"Well, my lady, I have learned all the safe has to tell me. Its story is very interesting, but it is confidential for the present."

"If the safe has no more to say to you, nor you to the safe"— this with a little touch of petulance in her pleasant voice— "my husband will be glad if you will have lunch with him in the library. You will excuse me. My brother-in-law returns to London by the night mail, and I've got to look after him."

"May I ask, Mr. Beck, have you found any clue?" said the Duke a little anxiously, trifling with his plate while Mr. Beck made excellent play with his knife and fork.

Mr. Beck sipped his glass of ripe Madeira with keen appreciation as he replied—

"There are always too many clues, Duke, the trouble is to disentangle them."

"Would it be fair to ask at this stage what is your theory of the crime?"

"Never had such a thing in my life, your Grace. I go by facts. If you start with a theory you try to force the facts to fit it, and facts won't be forced. There is not any science in detective work. It's like playing blind man's buff— you grope about here and there, turn back when you knock your head against a stone wall, but keep on fumbling till you lay your hands on the man you want— or the woman."

"What would your friend, Mr. Rose, say to all that? He goes in for pure science, doesn't he?"

"I remember when I was a boy, your Grace, reading in a story-book— kind of fairy tale I think it was— of a country where they measured a man scientifically; took his altitude with a quadrant and calculated his length, breadth, and thickness by trigonometry. Well, the common tape measure is good enough for me."

"For a clever detective," said the Duke, "you have rather a poor opinion of your profession."

"Clever, your Grace! I'm not clever; perhaps I'm none the worse for that. A detective may easily be too clever by half. The performing dog in the show is very clever, and his tricks are pretty to look at, but he wouldn't do to catch a fox."

"Can you catch this fox, Mr. Beck?"

"I hope so. I think I am on the scent. I cannot say more at present."

"How long can you stay with us?"

"I must leave by the night mail for London. It is well to throw the thief off his— or her— guard; besides, I've got some business there that won't wait."

"By the night mail? Then you will be up with my brother."

"I knew that. Her Grace told me so. I hope I may be allowed to travel in the same carriage. If I may make so bold as to say so, I have taken a great fancy for your brother. He's clever, cool, and plucky, or I'm no judge. Just the man to help me through with this job."

"He'll be glad to help you if he can, for this wretched business has worried him as much as ourselves. He lives in a flat in London, close to St. James's, and his time is all his own since he dropped out of the army."

"I shan't trouble him more than I can help, but I should like to know he's there if he's wanted."

The Hon. Herbert Selwyn cordially renewed, on his own account, the promise of help made by his brother. "Treat me like an apprentice detective, Mr. Beck," he said pleasantly. "I'm willing to go anywhere and do anything to help you to lay your hands on the opal and the thief. Though for the thief I think myself you need not go beyond Markham in the county gaol."

The Hon. Herbert professed to be very delighted to have Mr. Beck's company to town. His sleeping compartment was abandoned for a first-class smoker. The guard was tipped handsomely to keep out intruders, and he and Mr. Beck smoked and chatted the whole way up to town. Mr. Beck had some curious stories in which his companion was much interested. But, of course, their talk ran chiefly on the opal robbery. They talked it round and over in all its bearings, and the detective frankly confessed he got some very useful hints from his companion. On the other hand Herbert was a little shaken in his certainty that Markham was the man by Mr. Beck's doubt on the point.

The Duke's brother shook the detective's hand cordially as they parted at the terminus.

"Here's my card," he said. "Remember I'm always ready and willing wherever you want my help."

"I won't forget," said Mr. Beck.

But it so happened that Mr. Beck had the first chance of helping.

Two nights later the Hon. Herbert dropped into the Empire Music Hall for the last hour of the performance. As he was passing out through the crowd he suddenly felt his right hand seized. He looked round, and saw a stout, middle-aged woman, dressed in black bombazine relieved by a big, gaudy bonnet on her big head, who at once began shouting: "Polis! Polis! Stop thief! Polis!" and making a furious demonstration with her umbrella.

He wrenched himself free in a moment, but the crowd closed in on him.

"What's your trouble, ma'am?" said a big fellow, who looked like a respectable mechanic.

"The villain has tuck my purse," she cried excitedly, "with nineteen shillings and fippence in it, not to speak of a lucky thruppenny I wouldn't part with for gold. I felt the pull at my pocket, and I grabbed his hand that instant minnit. P'lice! p'lice!"

Two policemen lounged across the street with a dignity all their own, looming large in the gaslight. The crowd made way for them as the waves part before a ship's prow.

"What's all this row about?" said the stern voice of authority.

"I charge him, sergeant, I charge him. I caught him with his hand right in my pocket. It's a brown leather purse with a brass clasp to it, and I'd know it anywhere."

"What have you to say to that?" asked the sergeant of the accused.

"Don't be a fool," said the Hon. Herbert Selwyn incautiously.

The official dignity took fire.

"I'll let you see who's the fool at the station, my fine fellow. I know how to deal with chaps like you. You'd better keep a civil tongue in your head for your own sake. Do you charge this person, ma'am?"

"I charge him. I charge him. Hold him tight, sergeant, the villain of the world; if it was the last breath I had to draw I'd charge him."

Then the heavy hand of the Law fell upon the shoulder of the Hon. Herbert.

His fists clenched instinctively.

"Come, none of that!" said the sergeant, fingering the handle of his baton. "You may fancy yourself in for a row, but we're two to one and help near. Come quietly or come on the stretcher, just as you please, but come you must."

"Do you know who I am?"

"Nor don't care."

"My name is Herbert Selwyn, brother to the Duke of Southern."

There was a derisive howl from the crowd.

"Make it the Prince of Wales, guv'nor!" cried a voice.

"Here's my card."

The sergeant held out his hand, waiting incredulously. The Hon. Herbert fumbled in vain. His pocket had been picked, at any rate—his purse was left but his card-case was gone.

"We've had about enough of this gammon," broke out the sergeant roughly. "You can finish it up if you want to at the station. Come along!"

Herbert had got back his coolness by this time. "I suppose there is no help for this asinine performance," he said quietly, "the sooner it begins the sooner it will be over. I'm ready."

"That's more like it," said the sergeant; "I thought you would come to reason."

The crowd made a move to join in the procession to the police-station, but the sergeant hailed a four-wheeler.

At the station the old lady was voluble and vehement, while Herbert treated the whole performance with quiet contempt. The charge was duly entered on the sheet, and the accused was searched with the minutest care.

A half-sovereign that had slipped into the lining of his waistcoat was brought to light. But, in the language of the police reports, "nothing of an incriminating nature was discovered." The police began to look a little blank. A policeman, however, never confesses he's wrong if he can help it. The Hon. Herbert Selwyn seemed booked for a night in a police cell. But just as the search was completed and all his goods and chattels spread out on the thick deal table in the police-office, he heard a voice he knew speaking to the inspector in the outer room.

"Anything up to-night?" said the voice.

"Nothing of any consequence, Mr. Beck," was the deferential reply. "A swell mobsman caught at the Empire with his hand in an old lady's pocket. Plucky old lady; she collared him on the spot and held on. He's a cool card and no mistake; swears his name is— let me see" (he consulted the charge-sheet) "oh! 'The Hon. Herbert Ulick Selwyn, brother to the Duke of Southern.' Do you know any nobleman of that name, Mr. Beck?"

"I rather think you've put your foot in it up to the hip," observed Mr. Beck drily. Without another word he walked into the inner office.

"Hallo, Mr. Beck," cried the accused, "I'm particularly glad to see you," and he shook his hand cordially.

"You've done it," said Mr. Beck to the sergeant. "Do you know that this is the Duke of Southern's brother?"

"I didn't care if he was the Duke himself," said the sergeant, half sulky, half frightened, "when the old lady charged him I was bound to take him."

"You're a blockhead, sergeant," retorted Mr. Beck cheerfully. "What in God's name would tempt him to steal an old woman's halfpence? Where is your old woman, anyway?"

She had disappeared, unnoticed by the police, who were absorbed in the search.

"This looks bad for you, sergeant," said Mr. Beck.

"I only done my duty, sir," said the sergeant doggedly.

"You should have been more careful," broke in the inspector, taking sides with the Duke's brother and the famous detective.

"Oh! let the poor devil off," interposed Herbert goodnaturedly. "He thought he was doing his duty. Here's the half-sovereign, sergeant, for your trouble. Take it, man; you've the best right to it. It would never have been found only for you."

Midnight was pealing or clanging in a thousand tones from the clocks of London, when Mr. Beck and the Hon. Herbert Selwyn walked out of the police-station together into the cool night.

"I'm ever so much obliged to you," said Herbert frankly, "but for you I might have been locked up in that hole all night."

"You've nothing to thank me for," said Mr. Beck, "nothing whatever."

"Oh! I know better than that. Are you up to any little game to-night? Hunting any daring criminal to death?" He could hardly help smiling at the notion of the placid Mr. Beck hunting a criminal to death.

"No? Then come across to my place and have a B. and S. and a cigar. We'll walk if you don't mind. I want to get a little of the cool air into my blood after that hot hole you pulled me out of. No news of the opal, I suppose?"

"I think I've got a step closer to it to-day, or rather to-night."

"By Jove! I'm glad to hear that; mustn't ask any more, I suppose? For her sake I'm deuced anxious, you know."

"I promise you shall be among the first to know when I have got my hand on the thief."

"Thanks, awfully. Well, here we are; mind, there are four steps there." He turned the latchkey into one of the half-dozen doors of a great block of buildings as he spoke, and they passed into the hall. "The lift is done for the night; we keep decent hours, you see. But it is only the second floor. You won't mind the stairs?" Herbert said, leading the way up a broad, shallow, richly carpeted staircase.

He muttered a little petulant oath, with no real ill-temper in it, when he turned the handle of his own door, and found the room in utter darkness.

"I told my fellow to leave a glimmer of the gas turned on. I can never find the lighter or the matches."

Mr. Beck produced a box of matches from one pocket and a little electric lamp from the other.

"You're a miracle," laughed Herbert, as he lit half a dozen jets. The room was a large one, furnished with exquisite taste, old engravings—plain and coloured—were on the walls, and old massive mahogany furniture, polished and black, and upholstered in flowered damask, was on the thickly carpeted floor.

"There is nothing like electricity," said Herbert, as Mr. Beck turned off his little lamp, and slipped it back into his pocket. "There's a fellow coming to fit up my rooms with electric light to-morrow."

"From Voltage and Bright?" inquired Mr. Beck.

"The same— do you know them?"

"A little. They are said to be the best firm in London; all the most modern appliances. You see, in my trade we have to dabble a little in almost everything; the murderers and the burglars— the high-class ones at least— have begun to study electricity, and we cannot afford to be left behind."

"Will you have brandy? I've a rare brand of old Irish whisky, if you prefer it."

Mr. Beck took the old Irish whisky and a choice Havanna cigar, and sat back in a deep easy-chair, sipping and smoking, the very picture of genial simplicity. "The Duke is coming up to town," Herbert said when he had helped himself in turn. "He will be here the day after to-morrow, and the Duchess with him. She will be rejoiced to hear you have got on the track of the opal."

"Do they stay long in London?"

"Only one day. Business. They put up at the Victoria Hotel, but they have promised to come over to lunch with me. I hope to have the electric light fitted up in time. Her Grace has quite a craze for it. Wants the Duke to get it into Holmhurst. Voltage and Bright have promised to send a man over to show off. It may mean a big order for them. By the way, you might look in while they are here. I'm sure they would be both glad to have a word with you."

"If I can manage it I will, but I shall be very busy, so don't expect me."

"You'll be welcome if you come. Just one glass more; well, have a cigar to see you home. Will you be able to find your own way out? Good-night and thanks, or rather good morning, I should say."

All next day a man was at work installing the electric light in the rooms of the Hon. Herbert Selwyn. When he came home to dress for dinner at seven o'clock he found the man still there. A solid and stolid middle-aged man with a dull, commonplace face, ornamented with mutton-chop whiskers—the last person in the world to associate with the "tricksy spright" that is turning the world upside down and inside out.

"When will you be done here?" asked Herbert.

"Early to-morrow, sir, I expect."

"So soon? I want a man here in the afternoon at half-past four."

"That's all right, sir; they told me at our place. I'm to come back myself."

"You know your business, I expect?"

"Pretty well, sir."

"Have all the latest appliances. There will be a lady here— the Duchess of Southern— anxious to see the best that electricity can do."

"Thank you, sir. I hope to be able to satisfy her ladyship."

"Half-past four, sharp."

"Half-past four, sir. I won't fail."

It was a charming lunch, and the Duchess enjoyed it amazingly. The shutters had been closed and the room lit for the first time with electric light in honour of her visit. She quite bubbled over with admiration and enjoyment.

"It is the first time I heard her laugh since that confounded opal disappeared," the Duke confided to his brother. "She has been breaking her heart over the girl Lucy."

When the man from Voltage and Bright arrived, her Grace could not sit still any longer at the luncheon-table. She left her husband and brother-in-law in eager discussion of the chances of a Derby favourite in the Duke's stables, while she flitted like a swallow round the room, resting nowhere. The man from Voltage and Bright followed her like a slow-winged rook— dull, heavy, harmless.

"Oh, Herbert!" cried her Grace over her shoulder, "what a perfectly lovely writing-desk, so old and heavy and mysterious-looking. I'm sure there are lots of secret drawers in it."

"Don't be silly, Ethel," said her husband. But he said it pleasantly. "And don't bother Herbert; we are talking business."

"Just one word, Herbert; I'd love to have two brackets with shell lights on either side of this desk. They would set off the dainty, satiny wood splendidly."

"I leave it entirely to your taste, Ethel," he answered her carelessly. Then to the Duke: "You think it a ten to one chance?"

"I'd like two lights here and here," she said to the man from Voltage and Bright, "very pretty and new, you know."

"I'll show you the very newest thing, mum— I mean my lady," he answered stolidly. He had in his hand a pear-shaped, pear-sized lamp of thin, clear-glass. He held it by a handle, and from either side of the pear a wire ran to a large electric coil under the table. As the man made the connection a loud crackling sound was heard, and a faint, a very faint, vapour, as it were, of greenish yellow light showed in the glass pear.

"That's not what I want at all," said her Grace. "Why, I can hardly see the light."

The man handed her a kind of pasteboard cylinder, like one of the cases that music is carried in, but closed at one end.

"If you look through that, my lady, you will see it to more advantage."

Without noticing that one end was closed, the Duchess put the open end to her eyes and saw— nothing.

"This is absurd," she said; "it's quite dark."

"Wait one moment, my lady. Beg pardon, gentlemen." He turned the little ivory knob of the electric lights, and in an instant the room was pitch dark. The crackling sound still went on in the glass pear, the flickering glow was the one luminous point in the darkness. The man passed the light behind a solid carved pillar of the old desk. At the same time he moved the end of the music-case, through which her Grace still looked, till it pointed straight towards the hidden light.

Even while she looked the cardboard at the closed end grew strangely translucent, and on the luminous disc she saw a strange, dark shadow projected.

"Oh, oh!" she cried, "this is most wonderful. I see the gold setting of my opal. Quick, Reggie, come here!"

The crackling sound suddenly ceased, and the vision vanished. There was a muttered curse, the sound of a short struggle, ending in a sharp metallic snap. The next instant the electric lamps flashed up again, and the darkness was turned to bright light. The Hon. Herbert was lying in a heap as he had fallen back in his chair, with handcuffs on his wrists and the man from Voltage and Bright was standing over him. The Duke started furiously from his seat. "What's the meaning of this insolent foolery?" he shouted.

"It's all right, your Grace," answered a cheerful and familiar voice. "Here's the thief and there's the opal."

The Duke stared at the man in sudden amazement. The leg-of-mutton whiskers and the grey beard had disappeared. The whole face had changed its character— one might almost say its features. It was the placid, smiling face of Mr. Beck.

The detective pressed a little angle of the carved mahogany of the desk with his finger-tip. As he drew away his finger a section of the carving followed it, pushed forward at the top of a long steel needle, and showed a cavity in the thickness of the wood, tightly packed with jewellers' cotton, which he picked out and set in her Grace's white hand.

The Duchess seized and opened it with a cry of delight, for in the palm of her small, white hand her own peerless opal flickered and flamed with changing inocuous fires, rosy and violet.

But the Duke turned to his brother, who sat sulky and silent after the sharp struggle, when Mr. Beck's practised hands had slipped the handcuffs on his wrists in the dark.

"Well, Herbert," he said, with a sudden sternness of face and voice very strange to him, "what have you to say?"

"Nothing; what's the use of saying. I came a cropper, threatened to be posted, and the quarter of a million packed tight in that opal tempted me. It was a chance those two fools were there at the time, a lucky chance for me, I thought, so I used it, if it were not for that— But where's the use of blowing? the game is up. What are you going to do about it now? that's the question."

The Duke looked appealingly towards Mr. Beck.

"It is all right, your Grace," said Mr. Beck cheerfully; "thought you might like to keep it dark. No one knows except me."

"You will leave England at once, Herbert."

"Was going anyhow. Too hot to be pleasant now that I've missed the coin."

"I'll pay your debts."

"You can do that as you please when I've put the Atlantic between creditors and self; it's no affair of mine."

"And allow you five thousand to start straight in the New World."

"Thanks awfully."

"But if ever you show your face in England again," the Duke's voice grew stern again, "so help me God, you must settle with the law."

He turned on his heel without further word or greeting to the brother who had disgraced their blood. He drew his wife's arm within his. She was pale and bewildered, with tears shining in her wide-opened eyes.

The Duke patted the little hand that lay on his arm softly, and soothingly drew her from the room.

Mr. Beck dexterously slipped the handcuffs from the wrists of the Hon. Herbert, and followed them down the broad stairs.

There was a brougham and pair waiting at the door.

"Get in," said the Duchess excitedly to the detective. "I must hear all about it from the first. Please tell him to drive straight to the hotel, dear," she said to the Duke, as he handed her to her seat.

"You must dine with us. We have not had half time enough to thank you," said her impetuous Grace, almost pushing Mr. Beck down into one of the cosiest chairs in their private sitting-room at the Victoria Hotel. "What a cruel, cruel thing to do! I would not have minded so much except trying to put the guilt on poor Lucy and her sweetheart, and then shooting the poor young man— it was too mean. I sent her a wire the first thing after I got the opal. I should have gone on liking and trusting that awful man all my life but for you. How did you ever come to guess the truth! I could never have believed it."

"'Seeing is believing,' my lady, and you saw."

"But I want you to tell me the whole story. It was awfully clever, I know."

"There isn't any story. I was lucky, as usual, that's all."

"But how did you know the opal was hidden in the desk in Herbert's chambers?"

"I didn't know it— at first. I thought perhaps he might keep it about him, so I laid a little plan to have him searched. I make up pretty well as an old woman, and— But there's no use going into that. When I found he hadn't got the opal about him, I searched his chambers next, of course. But he might have beaten me even there if I hadn't called in Professor Roentgen and the X rays. I have seen many a secret drawer in my days, but nothing like that. It was not to be found by measuring or tapping, and the joining was smooth as satin even under a magnifying-glass. I had looked through the legs of tables and chairs before I came to the desk; but, of course, I was bound to see into every square inch of wood in the room before I gave out, so—"

"But how did you come to suspect Herbert at all?" interrupted her Grace.

Mr. Beck took out his pocket-book, dipped his big finger and thumb into one of the compartments, and held up something bright and shiny to the light. It was a single curly hair, auburn, flecked with white. "It was lucky, my lady, that you did not get those wires in the safe fixed. Do you know what that is?"

"One of Herbert's hairs? Where did you find it?"

"Where it had no business to be— at the bottom of your safe."

"Then you guessed?"

"Then I knew."

_______________________

4. Murder by Proxy

AT two o'clock precisely on that sweltering 12th of August, Eric Neville, young, handsome, débonnaire, sauntered through the glass door down the wrought-iron staircase into the beautiful, old-fashioned garden of Berkly Manor, radiant in white flannel, with a broad-brimmed Panama hat perched lightly on his glossy black curls, for he had just come from lazing in his canoe along the shadiest stretches of the river, with a book for company.

The back of the Manor House was the south wall of the garden, which stretched away for nearly a mile, gay with blooming flowers and ripening fruit. The air, heavy with perfume, stole softly through all the windows, now standing wide open in the sunshine, as though the great house gasped for breath.

When Eric's trim, tan boot left the last step of the iron staircase it reached the broad gravelled walk of the garden. Fifty yards off the head gardener was tending his peaches, the smoke from his pipe hanging like a faint blue haze in the still air that seemed to quiver with the heat. Eric, as he reached him, held out a petitionary hand, too lazy to speak.

Without a word the gardener stretched for a huge peach that was striving to hide its red face from the sun under narrow ribbed leaves, plucked it as though he loved it, and put it softly in the young man's hand. Eric stripped off the velvet coat, rose-coloured, green, and amber, till it hung round the fruit in tatters, and made his sharp, white teeth meet in the juicy flesh of the ripe peach.

BANG!

The sudden shock of sound close to their ears wrenched the nerves of the two men; one dropped his peach, and the other his pipe. Both stared about them in utter amazement.

"Look there, sir," whispered the gardener, pointing to a little cloud of smoke oozing lazily through a window almost directly over their head, while the pungent spice of gunpowder made itself felt in the hot air.

"My uncle's room," gasped Eric. "I left him only a moment ago fast asleep on the sofa."

He turned as he spoke, and ran like a deer along the garden walk, up the iron steps, and back through the glass door into the house, the old gardener following as swiftly as his rheumatism would allow.

Eric crossed the sitting-room on which the glass door opened, went up the broad, carpeted staircase four steps at a time, turned sharply to the right down a broad corridor, and burst straight through the open door of his uncle's study.

Fast as he had come, there was another before him. A tall, strong figure, dressed in light tweed, was bending over the sofa where, a few minutes before, Eric had seen his uncle asleep.

Eric recognised the broad back and brown hair at once.

"John," he cried— "John, what is it?"

His cousin turned to him a handsome, manly face, ghastly pale now even to the lips.

"Eric, my boy," he answered falteringly, "this is too awful. Uncle has been murdered— shot stone dead."

"No, no; it cannot be. It's not five minutes since I saw him quietly sleeping," Eric began. Then his eyes fell on the still figure on the sofa, and he broke off abruptly.

Squire Neville lay with his face to the wall, only the outline of his strong, hard features visible. The charge of shot had entered at the base of the skull, the grey hair was all dabbled with blood, and the heavy, warm drops still fell slowly on to the carpet.

"But who can have—?" Eric gasped out, almost speechless with horror.

"It must have been his own gun," his cousin answered. "It was lying there on the table, to the right, barrel still smoking, when I came in."

"It wasn't suicide—was it?" asked Eric, in a frightened whisper.

"Quite impossible, I should say. You see where he is hit."

"But it was so sudden. I ran the moment I heard the shot, and you were before me. Did you see any one?"

"Not a soul. The room was empty."

"But how could the murderer escape?"

"Perhaps he leapt through the window. It was open when I came in."

"He couldn't do that, Master John." It was the voice of the gardener at the door. "Me and Master Eric was right under the window when the shot came."

"Then how in the devil's name did he disappear, Simpson?"

"It's not for me to say, sir."

John Neville searched the room with eager eyes. There was no cover in it for a cat. A bare, plain room, panelled with brown oak, on which hung some guns and fishing-rods—old-fashioned for the most part, but of the finest workmanship and material. A small bookcase in the corner was the room's sole claim to be called "a study." The huge leather-covered sofa on which the corpse lay, a massive round table in the centre of the room, and a few heavy chairs completed the furniture. The dust lay thick on everything, the fierce sunshine streamed in a broad band across the room. The air was stifling with heat and the acrid smoke of gunpowder.

John Neville noticed how pale his young cousin was. He laid his hand on his shoulder with the protecting kindness of an elder brother.

"Come, Eric," he said softly, "we can do no good here."

"We had best look round first, hadn't we, for some clue?" asked Eric, and he stretched his hand towards the gun; but John stopped him.

"No, no," he cried hastily, "we must leave things just as we find them. I'll send a man to the village for Wardle and telegraph to London for a detective."

He drew his young cousin gently from the room, locked the door on the outside, and put the key in his pocket.

"Who shall I wire to?" John Neville called from his desk with pencil poised over the paper, to his cousin, who sat at the library table with his head buried in his hands. "It will need a sharp man—one who can give his whole time to it."

"I don't know any one. Yes, I do. That fellow with the queer name that found the Duke of Southern's opal—Beck. That's it. Thornton Crescent, W.C., will find him."

John Neville filled in the name and address to the telegram he had already written:

"Come at once. Case of murder. Expense no object. John Neville, Berkly Manor, Dorset."

Little did Eric guess that the filling in of that name was to him a matter of life or death.

John Neville had picked up a time-table and rustled through the leaves. "Hard lines, Eric," he said; "do his best, he cannot get here before midnight. But here's Wardle already, anyhow; that's quick work."

A shrewd, silent man was Wardle, the local constable, who now came briskly up the broad avenue; strong and active too, though well over fifty years of age. John Neville met him at the door with the news. But the groom had already told of the murder.

"You did the right thing to lock the door, sir," said Wardle, as they passed into the library where Eric still sat apparently unconscious of their presence, "and you wired for a right good man. I've worked with this here Mr. Beck before now. A pleasant spoken man and a lucky one. 'No hurry, Mr. Wardle,' he says to me, 'and no fuss. Stir nothing. The things about the corpse have always a story of their own if they are let tell it, and I always like to have the first quiet little chat with them myself.'"

So the constable held his tongue and kept his hands quiet and used his eyes and ears, while the great house buzzed with gossip. There was a whisper here and a whisper there, and the whispers patched themselves into a story. By slow degrees dark suspicion settled down and closed like a cloud round John Neville.

Its influence seemed to pass in some strange fashion through the closed doors of the library. John began pacing the room restlessly from end to end. After a little while the big room was not big enough to hold his impatience. He wandered out aimlessly, as it seemed, from one room to another; now down the iron steps to gaze vacantly at the window of his uncle's room, now past the locked door in the broad corridor.

With an elaborate pretence of carelessness Wardle kept him in sight through all his wanderings, but John Neville seemed too self-absorbed to notice it.

Presently he returned to the library. Eric was there, still sitting with his back to the door, only the top of his head showing over the high chair. He seemed absorbed in thought or sleep, he sat so still.

But he started up with a quick cry, showing a white, frightened face, when John touched him lightly on the arm.

"Come for a walk in the grounds, Eric?" he said. "This waiting and watching and doing nothing is killing work; I cannot stand it much longer."

"I'd rather not, if you don't mind," Eric answered wearily; "I feel completely knocked over."

"A mouthful of fresh air would do you good, my poor boy; you do look done up."

Eric shook his head.

"Well, I'm off," John said.

"If you leave me the key, I will give it to the detective, if he comes."

"Oh, he cannot be here before midnight, and I'll he back in an hour."

As John Neville walked rapidly down the avenue without looking back, Wardle stepped quietly after, keeping him well in view.

Presently Neville turned abruptly in amongst the woods, the constable still following cautiously. The trees stood tall and well apart, and the slanting sunshine made lanes of vivid green through the shade. As Wardle crossed between Neville and the sun his shadow fell long and black on the bright green.

John Neville saw the shadow move in front of him and turned sharp round and faced his pursuer.

The constable stood stock still and stared.

"Well, Wardle, what is it? Don't stand there like a fool fingering your baton! Speak out, man—what do you want of me?"

"You see how it is, Master John," the constable stammered out, "I don't believe it myself. I've known you twenty-one years—since you were born, I may say—and I don't believe it, not a blessed word of it. But duty is duty, and I must go through with it; and facts is facts, and you and he had words last night, and Master Eric found you first in the room when—"

John Neville listened, bewildered at first. Then suddenly, as it seemed to dawn on him for the first time that he could be suspected of this murder, he kindled a sudden hot blaze of anger.

He turned fiercely on the constable. Broad-chested, strong limbed, he towered over him, terrible in his wrath; his hands clenched, his muscles quivered, his strong white teeth shut tight as a rat-trap, and a reddish light shining at the back of his brown eyes.

"How dare you! how dare you!" he hissed out between his teeth, his passion choking him.

He looked dangerous, that roused young giant, but Wardle met his angry eyes without flinching.

"Where's the use, Master John?" he said soothingly. "It's main hard on you, I know. But the fault isn't mine, and you won't help yourself by taking it that way."

The gust of passion appeared to sweep by as suddenly as it arose. The handsome face cleared and there was no trace of anger in the frank voice that answered. "You are right, Wardle, quite right. What is to be done next? Am I to consider myself under arrest?"

"Better not, sir. You've got things to do a prisoner couldn't do handy, and I don't want to stand in the way of your doing them. If you give me your word it will be enough."

"My word for what?"

"That you'll be here when wanted."

"Why, man, you don't think I'd be fool enough— innocent or guilty— to run away. My God! run away from a charge of murder!"

"Don't take on like that, sir. There's a man coming from London that will set things straight, you'll see. Have I your word?"

"You have my word."

"Perhaps you'd better be getting back to the house, sir. There's a deal of talking going on amongst the servants. I'll keep out of the way, and no one will be the wiser for anything that has passed between us."

Half-way up the avenue a fast-driven dog-cart overtook John Neville, and pulled up so sharply that the horse's hoofs sent the coarse gravel flying. A stout, thick-set man, who up to that had been in close chat with the driver, leapt out more lightly than could have been expected from his figure.

"Mr. John Neville, I presume? My name is Beck— Mr. Paul Beck."

"Mr. Beck! Why, I thought you couldn't have got here before midnight."

"Special train," Mr. Beck answered pleasantly. "Your wire said 'Expense no object.' Well, time is an object, and comfort is an object too, more or less, in all these cases; so I took a special train, and here I am. With your permission, we will send the trap on and walk to the house together. This seems a bad business, Mr. Neville. Shot dead, the driver tells me. Any one suspected?"

"I'm suspected." The answer broke from John Neville's lips almost fiercely.

Mr. Beck looked at him for a minute with placid curiosity, without a touch of surprise in it.

"How do you know that?"

"Wardle, the local constable, has just told me so to my face. It was only by way of a special favour he refrained from arresting me then and there."

Mr. Beck walked on beside John Neville ten or fifteen paces before he spoke again.

"Do you mind," he said, in a very insinuating voice, "telling me exactly why you are suspected?"

"Not in the very least."

"Mind this," the detective went on quickly, "I give you no caution and make you no pledge. It's my business to find out the truth. If you think the truth will help you, then you ought to help me. This is very irregular, of course, but I don't mind that. When a man is charged with a crime there is, you see, Mr. Neville, always one witness who knows whether he is guilty or not. There is very often only that one. The first thing the British law does by way of discovering the truth is to close the mouth of the only witness that knows it. Well, that's not my way. I like to give an innocent man a chance to tell his own story, and I've no scruple in trapping a guilty man if I can."

He looked John Neville straight in the eyes as he spoke.

The look was steadily returned. "I think I understand. What do you want to know? Where shall I begin?"

"At the beginning. What did you quarrel with your uncle about yesterday?"

John Neville hesitated for a moment, and Mr. Beck took a mental note of his hesitation.

"I didn't quarrel with him. He quarrelled with me. It was this way: There was a bitter feud between my uncle and his neighbour, Colonel Peyton. The estates adjoin, and the quarrel was about some shooting. My uncle was very violent—he used to call Colonel Peyton 'a common poacher.' Well, I took no hand in the row. I was rather shy when I met the Colonel for the first time after it, for I knew my uncle had the wrong end of the stick. But the Colonel spoke to me in the kindest way. 'No reason why you and I should cease to be friends, John,' he said. 'This is a foolish business. I would give the best covert on my estate to be out of it. Men cannot fight duels in these days, and gentlemen cannot scold like fishwives. But I don't expect people will call me a coward because I hate a row.'

"'Not likely,' I said.

"The Colonel, you must know, had distinguished himself in a dozen engagements, and has the Victoria Cross locked up in a drawer of his desk. Lucy once showed it to me. Lucy is his only daughter and he is devoted to her. Well, after that, of course, the Colonel and I kept on good terms, for I liked him, and I liked going there and all that. But our friendship angered my uncle. I had been going to the Grange pretty often of late, and my uncle heard of it. He spoke to me in a very rough fashion of Colonel Peyton and his daughter at dinner last night, and I stood up for them.

"'By what right, you insolent puppy,' he shouted, 'do you take this upstart's part against me?'

"'The Peytons are as good a family as our own, sir,' I said—that was true—'and as for right, Miss Lucy Peyton has done me the honour of promising to be my wife.'

"At that he exploded in a very tempest of rage. I cannot repeat his words about the Colonel and his daughter. Even now, though he lies dead yonder, I can hardly forgive them. He swore he would never see or speak to me again if I disgraced myself by such a marriage. 'I cannot break the entail,' he growled, 'worse luck. But I can make you a beggar while I live, and I shall live forty years to spite you. The poacher can have you a bargain for all I care. Go, sell yourself as clearly as you can, and live on your wife's fortune as soon as you please.'

"Then I lost my temper, and gave him a bit of my mind."

"Try and remember what you said; it's important."

"I told him that I cast his contempt back in his face; that I loved Lucy Peyton, and that I would live for her, and die for her, if need be."

"Did you say 'it was a comfort he could not live for ever'? You see the story of your quarrel has travelled far and near. The driver told me of it. Try and remember—did you say that?"

"I think I did. I'm sure I did now, but I was so furious I hardly knew what I said. I certainly never meant—"

"Who was in the room when you quarrelled?"

"Only cousin Eric and the butler."

"The butler, I suppose, spread the story?"

"I suppose so. I'm sure Cousin Eric never did. He was as much pained at the scene as myself. He tried to interfere at the time, but his interference only made my uncle more furious."

"What was your allowance from your uncle?"

"A thousand a year."

"He had power to cut it off, I suppose?"

"Certainly."

"But he had no power over the estate. You were heir-apparent under the entail, and at the present moment you are owner of Berkly Manor?"

"That is so; but up to the moment you spoke I assure you I never even remembered—"

"Who comes next to you in the entail?"

"My first cousin, Eric. He is four years younger than I am."

"After him?"

"A distant cousin. I scarcely know him at all; but he has a bad reputation, and I know my uncle and he hated each other cordially."

"How did your uncle and your cousin Eric hit it off?"

"Not too well. He hated Eric's father—his own youngest brother—and he was sometimes rough on Eric. He used to abuse the dead father in the son's presence, calling him cruel and treacherous, and all that. Poor Eric had often a hard time of it. Uncle was liberal to him so far as money went—as liberal as he was to me—had him to live at the Manor and denied him nothing. But now and again he would sting the poor lad by a passionate curse or a bitter sneer. In spite of all, Eric seemed fond of him."

"To come now to the murder; you saw your uncle no more that night, I suppose?"

"I never saw him alive again."

"Do you know what he did next day?"

"Only by hearsay."

"Hearsay evidence is often first-class evidence, though the law doesn't think so. What did you hear?"

"My uncle was mad about shooting. Did I tell you his quarrel with Colonel Peyton was about the shooting? He had a grouse moor rented about twelve miles from here, and he never missed the first day. He was off at cock-shout with the head gamekeeper, Lennox. I was to have gone with him, but I didn't, of course. Contrary to his custom he came back about noon and went straight to his study. I was writing in my own room and heard his heavy step go past the door. Later on Eric found him asleep on the great leather couch in his study. Five minutes after Eric left I heard the shot and rushed into his room."

"Did you examine the room after you found the body?"

"No. Eric wanted to, but I thought it better not. I simply locked the door and put the key in my pocket till you came."

"Could it have been suicide?"

"Impossible, I should say. He was shot through the back of the head."

"Had your uncle any enemies that you know of?"

"The poachers hated him. He was relentless with them. A fellow once shot at him, and my uncle shot back and shattered the man's leg. He had him sent to hospital first and cured, and then prosecuted him straight away, and got him two years."

"Then you think a poacher murdered him?" Mr. Beck said blandly.

"I don't well see how he could. I was in my own room on the same corridor. The only way to or from my uncle's room was past my door. I rushed out the instant I heard the shot, and saw no one."

"Perhaps the murderer leapt through the window?"

"Eric tells me that he and the gardener were in the garden almost under the window at the time."

"What's your theory, then, Mr. Neville?"

"I haven't got a theory."

"You parted with your uncle in anger last night?"

"That's so."

"Next day your uncle is shot, and you are found—I won't say caught—in his room the instant afterwards."

John Neville flushed crimson; but he held himself in and nodded without speaking.

The two walked on together in silence.

They were not a hundred yards from the great mansion—John Neville's house—standing high above the embowering trees in the glow of the twilight, when the detective spoke again.

"I'm bound to say, Mr. Neville, that things look very black against you, as they stand. I think that constable Wardle ought to have arrested you."

"It's not too late yet," John Neville answered shortly, "I see him there at the corner of the house and I'll tell him you said so."

He turned on his heel, when Mr. Beck called quickly after him: "What about that key?"

John Neville handed it to him without a word. The detective took it as silently and walked on to the entrance and up the great stone steps alone, whistling softly.

Eric welcomed him at the door, for the driver had told of his coming.

"You have had no dinner, Mr. Beck?" he asked courteously.

"Business first; pleasure afterwards. I had a snack in the train. Can I see the gamekeeper, Lennox, for five minutes alone?"

"Certainly. I'll send him to you in a moment here in the library."

Lennox, the gamekeeper, a long-limbed, high-shouldered, elderly man, shambled shyly into the room, consumed by nervousness in the presence of a London detective.

"Sit down, Lennox—sit down," said Mr. Beck kindly. The very sound of his voice, homely and good-natured, put the man at his ease. "Now, tell me, why did you come home so soon from the grouse this morning?"

"Well, you see, sir, it was this ways. We were two hours hout when the Squire, 'e says to me, 'Lennox,' 'e says, 'I'm sick of this fooling. I'm going 'ome.'"

"No sport?"

"Birds wor as thick as blackberries, sir, and lay like larks."

"No sportsman, then?"

"Is it the Squire, sir?" cried Lennox, quite forgetting his shyness in his excitement at this slur on the Squire. "There wasn't a better sportsman in the county— no, nor as good. Real, old-fashioned style, 'e was. 'Hang your barnyard shooting,' 'e'd say when they'd ask him to go kill tame pheasants. 'E put up 'is own birds with 'is own dogs, 'e did. 'E'd as soon go shooting without a gun very near as without a dog any day. Aye and 'e stuck to 'is old 'Manton' muzzle-loader to the last. ''Old it steady, Lennox,' 'ed say to me oftentimes, 'and point it straight. It will hit harder and further than any of their telescopes, and it won't get marked with rust if you don't clean it every second shot.'

"'Easy to load, Squire,' the young men would say, cracking up their hammerless breech-loaders.

"'Aye,' he'd answer them back, 'and spoil your dog's work. What's the good of a dog learning to "down shot," if you can drop in your cartridges as quick as a cock can pick corn.'

"A dead shot the Squire was, too, and no mistake, sir, if he wasn't flurried. Many a time I've seen him wipe the eyes of gents who thought no end of themselves with that same old muzzle-loader that shot hisself in the long run. Many a time I seen—"

"Why did he turn his back on good sport yesterday?" asked Mr. Beck, cutting short his reminiscences.

"Well, you see, it was scorching hot for one thing, but that wasn't it, for the infernal fire would not stop the Squire if he was on for sport. But he was in a blazing temper all the morning, and temper tells more than most anything on a man's shooting. When Flora sprung a pack— she's a young dog, and the fault wasn't hers either— for she came down the wind on them— but the Squire had the gun to his shoulder to shoot her. Five minutes after she found another pack and set like a stone. They got up as big as haycocks and as lazy as crows, and he missed right and left— never touched a feather— a thing I haven't seen him do since I was a boy.

"'It's myself I should shoot, not the dog,' he growled and he flung me the gun to load. When I'd got the caps on and had shaken the powder into the nipples, he ripped out an oath that 'e'd have no more of it. 'E walked right across country to where the trap was. The birds got up under his feet, but divil a shot he'd fire, but drove straight 'ome.

"When we got to the 'ouse I wanted to take the gun and fire it off, or draw the charges. But 'e told me to go to ——, and carried it up loaded as it was to his study, where no one goes unless they're sent for special. It was better than an hour afterwards I heard the report of the 'Manton'; I'd know it in a thousand. I ran for the study as fast as—"

Eric Neville broke suddenly into the room, flushed and excited.

"Mr. Beck," he cried, "a monstrous thing has happened. Wardle, the local constable, you know, has arrested my cousin on a charge of wilful murder of my uncle."

Mr. Beck, with his eyes intent on the excited face, waved his big hand soothingly.

"Easy," he said, "take it easy, Mr. Neville. It's hurtful to your feelings, no doubt; but it cannot be helped. The constable has done no more than his duty. The evidence is very strong, as you know, and in such cases it's best for all parties to proceed regularly."

"You can go," he went on, speaking to Lennox, who stood dumfoundered at the news of John Neville's arrest, staring with eyes and mouth wide open. Then turning again very quietly to Eric: "Now, Mr. Neville, I would like to see the room where the corpse is."

The perfect placidity of his manner had its effect upon the boy, for he was little more than a boy, calming his excitement as oil smooths troubled water.

"My cousin has the key," he said; "I will get it."

"There is no need," Mr. Beck called after him, for he was half-way out of the room on his errand: "I've got the key if you will be good enough to show me the room."

Mastering his surprise, Eric showed him upstairs, and along the corridor to the locked door. Half unconsciously, as it seemed, he was following the detective into the room, when Mr. Beck stopped him.

"I know you will kindly humour me, Mr. Neville," he said, "but I find that I can look closer and think clearer when I'm by myself. I'm not exactly shy you know, but it's a habit I've got."

He closed the door softly as he spoke, and locked it on the inside, leaving the key in the lock.

The mask of placidity fell from him the moment he found himself alone. His lips tightened, and his eyes sparkled, and his muscles seemed to grow rigid with excitement, like a sporting dog's when he is close upon the game.

One glance at the corpse showed him that it was not suicide. In this, at least, John Neville had spoken the truth.

The back of the head had literally been blown in by the charge of heavy shot at close quarters. The grey hair was clammy and matted, with little white angles of bone protruding. The dropping of the blood had made a black pool on the carpet, and the close air of the room was foetid with the smell of it.

The detective walked to the table where the gun, a handsome, old-fashioned muzzle-loader, lay, the muzzle still pointed at the corpse. But his attention was diverted by a water-bottle, a great globe of clear glass quite full, and perched on a book a little distance from the gun, and between it and the window. He took it from the table and tested the water with the tip of his tongue. It had a curious, insipid, parboiled taste, but he detected no foreign flavour in it. Though the room was full of dust there was almost none on the cover of the book where the water-bottle stood, and Mr. Beck noticed a gap in the third row of the bookcase where the book had been taken.

After a quick glance round the room Mr. Beck walked to the window. On a small table there he found a clear circle in the thick dust. He fitted the round bottom of the water-bottle to this circle and it covered it exactly. While he stood by the window he caught sight of some small scraps of paper crumpled up and thrown into a corner. Picking them up and smoothing them out he found they were curiously drilled with little burnt holes. Having examined the holes minutely with his magnifying glass, he slipped these scraps folded on each other into his waistcoat pocket.

From the window he went back to the gun. This time he examined it with the minutest care. The right barrel he found had been recently discharged, the left was still loaded. Then he made a startling discovery. Both barrels were on half cock. The little bright copper cap twinkled on the nipple of the left barrel, from the right nipple the cap was gone.

How had the murderer fired the right barrel without a cap? How and why did he find time in the midst of his deadly work to put the cock back to safety?

Had Mr. Beck solved this problem? The grim smile deepened on his lips as he looked, and there was an ugly light in his eyes that boded ill for the unknown assassin. Finally he carried the gun to the window and examined it carefully through a magnifying glass. There was a thin dark line, as if traced with the point of a red-hot needle, running a little way along the wood of the stock and ending in the right nipple.

Mr. Beck put the gun back quietly on the table. The whole investigation had not taken ten minutes. He gave one look at the still figure on the couch, unlocked the door, locking it after him, and walked out through the corridor, the same cheerful, imperturbable Mr. Beck that had walked into it ten minutes before.

He found Eric waiting for him at the head of the stairs. "Well?" he said when he saw the detective.

"Well," replied Mr. Beck, ignoring the interrogation in his voice, "when is the inquest to be? That's the next thing to be thought of; the sooner the better."

"To-morrow, if you wish. My cousin John sent a messenger to Mr. Morgan, the coroner. He lives only five miles off, and he has promised to be here at twelve o'clock to-morrow. There will be no difficulty in getting a jury in the village."

"That's right, that's all right," said Mr. Beck, rubbing his hands; "the sooner and the quieter we get those preliminaries over the better."

"I have just sent to engage the local solicitor on behalf of my cousin. He's not particularly bright, I'm afraid, but he's the best to be had on a short notice."

"Very proper and thoughtful on your part— very thoughtful indeed. But solicitors cannot do much in such cases. It's the evidence we have to go by, and the evidence is only too plain, I'm afraid. Now, if you please," he went on more briskly, dismissing the disagreeable subject, as it were, with a wave of his big hand, "I'd be very glad of that supper you spoke about."

Mr. Beck supped very heartily on a brace of grouse— the last of the dead man's shooting— and a bottle of ripe Burgundy. He was in high good-humour, and across "the walnuts and the wine" he told Eric some startling episodes in his career, which seemed to divert the young fellow a little from his manifest grief for his uncle and anxiety for his cousin.

Meanwhile John Neville remained shut close in his own room, with the constable at the door.

The inquest was held at half-past twelve next day in the library.

The Coroner, a large, red-faced man, with a very affable manner, had got to his work promptly.

The jury "viewed the body" steadily, stolidly, with a kind of morose delectation in the grim spectacle.

In some unaccountable way Mr. Beck constituted himself a master of the ceremonies, a kind of assessor to the court.

"You had best take the gun down," he said to the Coroner as they were leaving the room.

"Certainly, certainly," replied the Coroner.

"And the water-bottle," added Mr. Beck.

"There is no suspicion of poison, is there?"

"It's best not to take anything for granted," replied Mr. Beck sententiously.

"By all means if you think so," replied the obsequious Coroner. "Constable, take that water-bottle down with you."

The large room was filled with people of the neighbourhood, mostly farmers from the Berkly estate and small shopkeepers from the neighbouring village.

A table had been wheeled to the top of the room for the Coroner, with a seat at it for the ubiquitous local newspaper correspondent. A double row of chairs were set at the right hand of the table for the jury.

The jury had just returned from viewing the body when the crunch of wheels and hoofs was heard on the gravel of the drive, and a two-horse phaeton pulled up sharp at the entrance.

A moment later there came into the room a handsome, soldier-like man, with a girl clinging to his arm, whom he supported with tender, protecting fondness that was very touching. The girl's face was pale, but wonderfully sweet and winsome; cheeks with the faint, pure flush of the wild rose, and eyes like a wild fawn's.

No need to tell Mr. Beck that here were Colonel Peyton and his daughter. He saw the look— shy, piteous, loving— that the girl gave John Neville as she passed close to the table where he sat with his head buried in his hands; and the detective's face darkened for a moment with a stern purpose, but the next moment it resumed its customary look of good-nature and good-humour.

The gardener, the gamekeeper, and the butler were briefly examined by the Coroner, and rather clumsily cross-examined by Mr. Waggles, the solicitor whom Eric had thoughtfully secured for his cousin's defence.

As the case against John Neville gradually darkened into grim certainty, the girl in the far corner of the room grew white as a lily, and would have fallen but for her father's support.

"Does Mr. John Neville offer himself for examination?" said the Coroner, as he finished writing the last words of the butler's deposition describing the quarrel of the night before.

"No, sir," said Mr. Waggles. "I appear for Mr. John Neville, the accused, and we reserve our defence."

"I really have nothing to say that hasn't been already said," added John Neville quietly.

"Mr. Neville," said Mr. Waggles pompously, "I must ask you to leave yourself entirely in my hands."

"Eric Neville!" called out the Coroner. "This is the last witness, I think."

Eric stepped in front of the table and took the Bible in his hand. He was pale, but quiet and composed, and there was an unaffected grief in the look of his dark eyes and in the tone of his soft voice that touched every heart— except one.

He told his story shortly and clearly. It was quite plain that he was most anxious to shield his cousin. But in spite of this, perhaps because of this, the evidence went horribly against John Neville.

The answers to questions criminating his cousin had to be literally dragged from him by the Coroner.

With manifest reluctance he described the quarrel at dinner the night before.

"Was your cousin very angry?" the Coroner asked.

"He would not be human if he were not angry at the language used."

"What did he say?"

"I cannot remember all he said."

"Did he say to your uncle: 'Well, you will not live for ever'?"

No answer.

"Come, Mr. Neville, remember you are sworn to tell the truth."

In an almost inaudible whisper came the words: "He did."

"I'm sorry to pain you, but I must do my duty. When you heard the shot you ran straight to your uncle's room, about fifty yards, I believe?"

"About that."

"Whom did you find there bending over the dead man?"

"My cousin. I am bound to say he appeared in the deepest grief."

"But you saw no one else?"

"No."

"Your cousin is, I believe, the heir to Squire Neville's property; the owner I should say now?"

"I believe so."

"That will do; you can stand down."

This interchange of question and answer, each one of which seemed to fit the rope tighter and tighter round John Neville's neck, was listened to with hushed eagerness by the room full of people.

There was a long, deep drawing-in of breath when it ended. The suspense seemed over, but not the excitement.

Mr. Beck rose as Eric turned from the table, quite as a matter of course, to question him.

"You say you believe your cousin was your uncle's heir— don't you know it?"

Then Mr. Waggles found his voice.

"Really, sir," he broke out, addressing the Coroner, "I must protest. This is grossly irregular. This person is not a professional gentleman. He represents no one. He has no locus standi in court at all."

No one knew better than Mr. Beck that technically he had no title to open his lips; but his look of quiet assurance, his calm assumption of unmistakable right, carried the day with the Coroner.

"Mr. Beck," he said, "has, I understand, been brought down specially from London to take charge of this case, and I certainly shall not stop him in any question he may desire to ask."

"Thank you, sir," said Mr. Beck, in the tone of a man whose clear right has been allowed. Then again to the witness: "Didn't you know John Neville was next heir to Berkly Manor?"

"I know it, of course."

"And if John Neville is hanged you will be the owner?"

Every one was startled at the frank brutality of the question so blandly asked. Mr. Waggles bobbed up and down excitedly; but Eric answered, calmly as ever—

"That's very coarsely and cruelly put."

"But it's true?"

"Yes, it's true."

"We will pass from that. When you came into the room after the murder, did you examine the gun?"

"I stretched out my hand to take it, but my cousin stopped me. I must be allowed to add that I believe he was actuated, as he said, by a desire to keep everything in the room untouched. He locked the door and carried off the key. I was not in the room afterwards."

"Did you look closely at the gun?"

"Not particularly."

"Did you notice that both barrels were at half cock?"

"No."

"Did you notice that there was no cap on the nipple of the right barrel that had just been fired?"

"Certainly not."

"That is to say you did not notice it?"

"Yes."

"Did you notice a little burnt line traced a short distance on the wood of the stock towards the right nipple?"

"No."

Mr. Beck put the gun into his hand.

"Look close. Do you notice it now?"

"I see it now for the first time."

"You cannot account for it, I suppose?"

"No."

"Sure?"

"Quite sure."

All present followed this strange, and apparently purposeless cross-examination with breathless interest, groping vainly for its meaning.

The answers were given calmly and clearly, but those that looked closely saw that Eric's nether lip quivered, and it was only by a strong effort of will that he held his calmness.

Through the blandness of Mr. Beck's voice and manner a subtle suggestion of hostility made itself felt, very trying to the nerves of the witness.

"We will pass from that," said Mr. Beck again. "When you went into your uncle's room before the shot why did you take a book from the shelf and put it on the table?"

"I really cannot remember anything about it."

"Why did you take the water-bottle from the window and stand it on the book?"

"I wanted a drink."

"But there was none of the water drunk."

"Then I suppose it was to take it out of the strong sun."

"But you set it in the strong sun on the table?"

"Really I cannot remember those trivialities." His self-control was breaking down at last.

"Then we will pass from that," said Mr. Beck a third time.

He took the little scraps of paper with the burnt holes through them from his waistcoat pocket, and handed them to the witness.

"Do you know anything about these?"

There was a pause of a second. Eric's lips tightened as if with a sudden spasm of pain. But the answer came clearly enough— "Nothing whatever."

"Do you ever amuse yourself with a burning glass?"

This seeming simple question was snapped suddenly at the witness like a pistol-shot.

"Really, really," Mr. Waggles broke out, "this is mere trifling with the Court."

"That question does certainly seem a little irrelevant, Mr. Beck," mildly remonstrated the Coroner.

"Look at the witness, sir," retorted Mr. Beck sternly. "He does not think it irrelevant."

Every eye in court was turned on Eric's face and fixed there.

All colour had fled from his cheeks and lips; his mouth had fallen open, and he stared at Mr. Beck with eyes of abject terror.

Mr. Beck went on remorselessly. "Did you ever amuse yourself with a burning glass?"

No answer.

"Do you know that a water-bottle like this makes a capital burning glass?"

Still no answer.

"Do you know that a burning glass has been used before now to touch off a cannon or fire a gun?"

Then a voice broke from Eric at last, as it seemed in defiance of his will; a voice unlike his own— loud, harsh, hardly articulate; such a voice might have been heard in the torture chamber in the old days when the strain on the rack grew unbearable.

"You devilish bloodhound!" he shouted. "Curse you, curse you, you've caught me! I confess it— I was the murderer!" He fell on the ground in a fit.

"And you made the sun your accomplice!" remarked Mr. Beck, placid as ever.

___________________

5. Greased Lightning

"CAN you run over to Ireland, Mr. Beck?"

"Certainly."

"You couldn't cross by to-night's mail?"

"I could. What must I do when I get there?"

"It's a painful case," said kind-hearted Mr. Warmington, "but I'd best tell you the particulars shortly and let you judge for yourself what's best to be done."

Mr. Warmington was one of the wealthiest and worthiest solicitors in London. He looked it as he stood there toying with his heavy gold guard, with his back to his own fireplace, though it was a sultry evening in early autumn, and there was no fire in the grate.

Like "Lady Jane" of the comic opera, Mr. Warmington was "not pretty, but massive"— six feet two of solid respectable manhood. As a rule he was the heart and soul of good fellowship and good humour. But now a look of uneasiness and perplexity slightly shadowed his broad, benevolent face, like an ineffective cloud on the sun.

"It's a very painful case indeed, Mr. Beck," he repeated, and sipped a glass of rare old port that stood on the chimney-piece beside him as if to mitigate the pain of it.

"You know my brother-in-law, the Honourable Mr. Burton?"

Mr. Beck nodded grimly. He had heard of the Honourable Mr. Burton—not to his advantage.

"Just so. He was always, I am sorry to say, a trouble to his family. My wife— though only a child at the time— remembers some stormy scenes before he went abroad. After our marriage I did what I could for him, but it was very little use. Though then well on in his fifties, he was as wild as a young colt—wild, not vicious, I'm bound to say. Well, 'the devil takes care'— I must not say that— but eight years ago he had the good luck— for him— to marry an heiress, who was young, beautiful, and passionately in love with the elderly scapegrace. He kept straight as a die while she lived, and was terribly cut up when she died about a year ago. She showed her perfect confidence in him by her will, bequeathing to him her whole property, real and personal, 'with perfect confidence,' as she wrote, 'in his loving care for their dear child, Florence.'"

"He plainly meant to go right at first, at any rate; I must say that for him. Within a fortnight after his wife's death he came to me to prepare a deed, 'as tight as they draw them,' he said, assigning his whole property in Wiltshire, a clear five thousand a year and a beautiful house and grounds, to his little daughter, reserving only a moderate yearly allowance from his wife's personal property for himself. 'I cannot trust myself, Warmington,' he said, 'that's the truth of it. If I have money I must splatter it.' You may be sure the deed was stringent as the lawyers could make it, and he signed it without winking.

"He seemed really devoted to the little girl and took her about with him everywhere, even to the theatres. But as luck would have it, my wife— her aunt, you know—thought it would be good for the little one to be with children of her own age for awhile; so last Christmas she had her here for the Christmas-tree, and the pantomime, and all that, with our own youngsters.

"Her father brought her up to town from their place in Wiltshire and left her with us; but he would not stay himself.

"Then, I suppose from loneliness, the Bohemian broke loose in him again. He fell into his old ways, went the rounds of the theatres and music-halls, more often behind the scenes than in front of them. In an evil hour— one of the small hours of the morning most likely— he fell in with Miss Trixie Mordant, the liveliest and at the same time the cutest young lady that graces the boards of the 'Empire.' You must know Miss Trixie, her picture in pink tights is on half the hoardings in London.

"Well, I needn't tell you, when a man of sixty or thereabouts falls in love he comes a cropper. The cunning little baggage quickly coaxed him into an offer of marriage, and then stood out for handsome settlements. She put her sharp eye on the Wiltshire property, but he thought he had no power to touch it, and I didn't enlighten him on the subject, you may be sure.

"He was wild with himself for his 'folly' in having assigned it to his daughter, and left himself without the power of proving his devotion to the 'most adorable of her sex,' Miss Trixie. But Miss Trixie consulted solicitors on her own account, Sharkey and Snippit, sharp fellows as you'll meet with in the City.

"Then the whole truth came out of course. They were not long, you may be sure, putting my precious brother-in-law up to his legal rights. They are now— I have reason to know— preparing marriage settlements, and making over the whole property to Miss Trixie Mordant, 'in consideration of her marriage with the Hon. Pierce Burton.'"

"Surely the law won't allow that," said Mr. Beck, "after he has given it by deed to his daughter?"

The solicitor smiled with an air of superiority.

"My dear Mr. Beck," he said, "it's not for me to speak disrespectfully of the law, but it does queer things sometimes. You see the deed to little Florry—his daughter, I mean— was what is called a 'voluntary deed.' The law has very little regard for 'voluntary deeds.' 'Natural love and affection' is not a 'valuable consideration' in the eyes of the law. Marriage— even with Miss Trixie Mordant—is a valuable consideration. As the law now stands under an old statute of Queen Elizabeth, if the Wiltshire property is granted to Miss Trixie in consideration of her marriage with the grantor, the deed to poor little Florry is not worth the parchment it's written on."

"That's a mighty roguish law."

"You're not the only one that thinks that, Mr. Beck, though you express your views a little more broadly than a famous law lord did the other day on the same point when he said: 'It was perhaps a startling proposition that one man might honestly sell what was not his and retain the price, and that another, knowing all the circumstances, might honestly help him to rob the owner— a proposition, one would think, puzzling to a lay mind, and to a legal mind not wholly satisfactory.'"

"But surely the man will never strain the law to rob his own child?" cried Mr. Beck.

"I'm not so sure of that. I rather think he will in the long run if he gets the chance. His infatuation is having a tough battle with his conscience. But I'm afraid his conscience is getting the worst of it. The cunning jade plays with him like a salmon with the hook tight in his gills. She has run away to a seaside village in the west of Ireland, and swears she won't as much as look at him until the deed is executed."

"And where is he?"

"Oh, he's in Ireland too, at a place called Rathcool, in the south; cannot bear to have the sea between himself and his charmer, I suppose, though at present they are separated by the breadth of the island. There are letters and telegrams flying between them every day. He won't hold out much longer, I'm afraid."

"What are you going to do about it? You couldn't shut him up in at madhouse, I suppose?"

"I'm afraid not. If every man was locked up that went mad about a woman, there would be more in the asylums than out of them."

"Could you appeal to the young lady's better feelings?"

"She hasn't got any."

"The law, you say, is clear against you?"

"Clear as mud; as it stands."

"Then I don't see any way out."

"Well, I think I do. If luck stands to us we may change the law and checkmate the lady. Now I'm coming to the point of the whole matter. I need not remind you that what I say is in the strictest confidence. Should the other side get the faintest inkling of our little game we might as well throw up our hands."

Mr. Warmington leant towards Mr. Beck and instinctively spoke in a lower tone.

"We have introduced a quiet little Bill in the House of Lords which will repeal the old Act of Queen Elizabeth which allows a man to defeat his own grant, and will make 'voluntary conveyances' absolute against what we call in law a 'purchaser with notice.' The Lord Chancellor himself is lending a hand. The instant our Bill gets the Royal assent the property is safe. The Bill is half-way through the Lords. One of the most popular lawyers in the House will steer it through the Commons. Popularity is everything in a case of the kind. The Lord Chancellor has promised the Royal assent— by deputy, of course— the day after the Bill passes the third reading in the Commons."

"It's a race, then, between your Bill and their deed for a live thousand a year stake?"

"Exactly."

"But I don't see where I come in."

"I want you to run over to Mount Eagle, where Miss Trixie hangs out, and keep a sharp eye on her till the business is through. You see, it's like this. Sharkey and Snippit are as sharp as scissors and shut as tight. We cannot tell what they know or don't know. But they are in constant communication with Miss Trixie. Now, if you go to Ireland you may be able to tap the wire at that end. Miss Trixie is as loose and lively as they are close."

"Can't see it. Seems to me that your game is to keep your own secret, not to catch theirs."

"Both, my dear Mr. Beck, both. I do trust you won't refuse to help us. Expense is no object, you know. We just want you to—  Oh! come in."

It was the knock of a very little hand, and the parlour door opening slowly showed a pretty little seven-year-old girl. The gold curls fell over her shoulders like a mane. The blue eyes sparkled roguishly, and the rosy cheeks laughed with dimples.

At the sight of the stranger she turned to run. But Mr. Warmington called out to her kindly: "Come here, Flossy."

"This is our client," he said to Mr. Beck, as the little lady came shyly across the room. "Come here, Flossy, and shake hands with Mr. Beck; he's going to be a very good friend of yours."

Mr. Beck dearly loved children. Some instinct told the little blue-eyed fairy that fact in a moment. She climbed up on his knee and pouted her rosy lips for a kiss.

"Thank you," she said— her notions of friendship were limited— "is it a doll? I have seven children and one black boy, and no mammy for them. I have no mammy myself, you know. She went down dead in a hole in the ground into heaven. But pappy will always take care of me."

Mr. Warmington smiled grimly at this, while Mr. Beck patted the tangle of gold curls with a big, strong, clumsy-looking hand that was gentler than a woman's in its touch.

"That will do, Floss," said Mr. Warmington, "don't bother Mr. Beck any more. Take some of those grapes and biscuits off the table, my pet, and then run away and play; shut the door after you."

She turned at the door with a reminding finger raised for Mr. Beck. "Mind, a mammy doll," she said; and, sure enough, a mammy doll arrived next day from Burlington Arcade addressed to "Miss Florence Burton."

The door closed on the white dress and blue sash and tangle of gold curls.

"I'll go," said Mr. Beck abruptly, "though I don't see yet that I can be of much use. Still, I'd like to do the dainty little lady a good turn if I could."

"The other lady's address," said Mr. Warmington delightedly, "is Grand Royal Hotel, Mount Eagle, County Clare. The hotel is about two and a half miles outside the little town, and close to the sea."

"Well, I'm off. I have three-quarters of an hour to catch the 'Limited Lightning.' My address from tomorrow is 'Jerome Blood-Smith, Grand Royal Hotel, Mount Eagle.' Let me hear by wire when you've anything to tell. I'll do the same."

MISS TRIXIE MORDANT felt particularly dull after the first few days of her voluntary exile in County Clare.

The passionate appeals of her middle-aged adorer were monotonously dismal. "I'm jiggered if five thousand a year would pay for this kind of thing as a permanence," was Miss Trixie's unromantic comment, as she rolled the eight-page letter in a ball and flung it under the grate. "After marriage we'll see," and she smiled, dreamily reminiscent of small-hour suppers with male admirers at the Criterion. But in a moment she grew more impatient than ever at the tantalising thought. She had coiled herself up in a big chair in the drawing-room, and gazed with disparaging eyes out over the Atlantic that stretched blue and broad to the horizon's rim.

Nothing to do and no one to talk to; that was her trouble. There were several clergymen staying at the hotel, and a middle-aged British tourist, with one prim wife and three prim daughters. The festive Trixie, with her "bloomer" costume and diamond-framed bicycle, was cold-shouldered and shuddered at on all sides.

"If I only had somebody to laugh with me at these mugs, I could stand it," she muttered disconsolately.

Then her eye wandered from the sea in front to the tennis ground on the left, and at a glance she knew that Fate had been kind and her prayer was answered.

A young man dressed in the extreme of the fashion— where the "masher" verges into the music-hall artiste— lounged across the ground, carelessly swinging a tennis racquet. His "blazer" blazed hot crimson and yellow in the hot sunshine; a little round straw hat with a rainbow ribbon was perched on the top of his flaxen head. His straw-coloured moustache drooped heavily over a heavy mouth, and his round face wore a look of supercilious inanity. Miss Trixie's heart warmed to him at once as to a kindred spirit. In five minutes she, too, strolled out on the ground in a close-fitting bodice and skimp skirts of cream-coloured serge, finished off with little tan shoes and open-work silk stockings. She was quite fluttered at first when she found a young man on the ground, and glanced at him— oh, so bashfully!— from under her long lashes when he dared to speak to her.

But in two minutes they were in the midst of a lively single of tennis; in two hours they were "Trix" and "Jer," as if they had known each other all their lives; in two days the young "masher" was over head and ears in love with the lively young lady, and followed her about everywhere like a big dog.

"He is just my sort," she wrote to her special friend, Miss Myrtle Montmorency, of the Liberty Music Hall. "Togs first-rate, free of his coin, green as they grow them, and gone a regular cropper on your humble. We are having a real high old time of it. You should see how we shock the mugs in this place; a railway accident ain't in it."

So Miss Trixie led her young man about on a string. He asked nothing better than to be allowed to fetch and carry for her. They played tennis and rode bicycles all day, or "mashed" as she artlessly termed it, "all along the briny." There was something comical, and, at the same time, almost pitiful in the complete enslavement of this stout young man, with his inane pretensions to knowingness and his big round eyes full of appealing calf-love, by this fascinating syren of the music-halls.

That lively young lady was planning a sea-bathing expedition, "à la Boulogne," as she wrote Miss Myrtle of the "Lib."

"The bathing-boxes are the difficulty, my dear. The gentlemen don't use boxes here, or costumes for that matter. It's too awfully shocking. But I will pull my plan off, you'll see, even if I have to lend Jer a pair of my own— oh, fie I don't mention-'ems— for the occasion. It will just give the old tabbies here fits."

"But I say you must," said Miss Trixie to her companion, who was feebly remonstrating as they sat close together all by themselves on the couch in the hotel drawing-room. "I'll manage the costume. Oh! bother you—come in."

It was a telegram for Miss Mordant. A monosyllable escaped from her rosy lips as she read it. Then she pettishly tore the pink paper into pieces and flung the fragments into the "turf-bucket" of polished mahogany that stood empty by the empty fireplace.

"Now what have I done?" she cried repentantly the next moment, "and old Sharkey specially warned me to be careful. Pick up the bits for me, Jer, like a dear love."

Mr. Jerome Blood-Smith instantly buried himself— head and shoulders— in the "turf-bucket." He quietly slipped an old telegram of his own from his pocket, and under cover of the bucket, tore it to pieces in his big hands before he rescued the fragments of Miss Trixie's.

She took the bits he gave her, lit a match, and burnt them to the smallest morsel in the empty grate.

Half an hour afterwards Mr. Jerome Blood-Smith, in his bedroom, with the door locked, made a puzzle map of bits of pink paper on his dressing-table, and this is what he read there:—

JUST DISCOVERED CHILD'S FRIENDS PUTTING BILL THROUGH PARLIAMENT TO SECURE HER IN PROPERTY. HOPE TO PUT SPOKE IN THEIR WHEEL YET. MUST HURRY UP WITH DEED. IS THE OLD MAN WILLING?

SHARKEY.

As he finished reading he saw with the corner of his eye through the window Miss Trixie on her diamond-framed bicycle sailing down the lawn in front of the hotel.

In a moment he was out and after her, making his machine fly. He drew abreast about a quarter of a mile from the post-office.

"On for a spin?" he said, as he crept up to her side— she was going a good twelve miles an hour.

"When I've sent a wire. It was important, and I could not trust it to the hotel duffers."

"Why didn't you ask me?"

"Couldn't find you. Thought you were gone to your little bed. It's all right now, anyway."

She slipped off dexterously behind her machine at the post-office and stepped up to the telegraph counter.

Mr. Jerome Blood-Smith stood at the open door, dutifully holding the bicycles.

The telegraph instrument in the office was one of the old-fashioned affairs that conscientiously taps out its messages. Amongst his manifold accomplishments in another condition of life, Mr. Jerome Blood-Smith had learnt to interpret these telegraph taps. This is what they told him now:—

TO SHARKEY AND SNIPPIT, SOLICITORS, LONDON.

SEND ON DEED AT ONCE. OLD MAN HAS CONSENTED TO EXECUTE.

MORDANT."

The innocent masher's face was full only of blank bovine admiration when she came skipping out of the office, her wire dispatched. She laughed outright at his moon-calf look; her gay spirits quite came back to her, and she made as though she would kick the little straw hat from his head— a feat she could have accomplished with great ease if so minded.

"Hallo! Softy," she cried, "if you stand like that with your flycatcher open, the people will mistake your mouth for the letter-box."

As they went down the slope together on their bicycles Mr. Blood-Smith suddenly remembered. "By Jove!" he said, "I want to send a wire too, if you don't mind. Back-pedal, Trix, I'll be with you in a minute."

"All right," she laughed back to him; "give her my love, dear, and say I'm not jealous."

He wheeled sharp round on the face of the slope— a ticklish feat— and flew back to the post-office. He scribbled five words to Warmington: "Bill blown upon. Look alive."

"Just looks like a chap that would do a little bit of stamped paper at ninety-five per cent," was the comment of the telegraph clerk, reading the message, while the masher sped back along the road in the wake of Miss Trixie.

MEANWHILE the big game for £5,000 a year was being played out eagerly, yet warily, in London. "The Voluntary Conveyances Bill" had slipped quietly through all its stages in the House of Lords. It was set down amid a miscellaneous collection of other unopposed Bills on the order paper of the House of Commons on the very Monday that Mr. Blood-Smith's wire dropped like a bombshell into Mr. Warmington's office.

No wonder the kind-hearted solicitor was in a very fever of anxiety.

"It's all right, my dear sir," said Sir Robert Ridley, Q.C., M.P., the popular Queen's counsel in charge of the Bill, as they walked up and down the inner lobby after the Speaker had gone to his tea. "Our friend, Mr. What's-his-name— Beck— has got hold of some mare's nest. They haven't an inkling of our little game. You'll see, we'll slip the Bill through to-night, and then goodbye to Miss Trixie Mordant."

"Order! Order!" said the Speaker, as the minute hand and hour hand came together at twelve on the clock under the gallery that marks the seat of the Prince of Wales. The member speaking for the moment dropped into his seat as though he had been shot.

"The Clerk will now proceed to read the Orders of the day," the Speaker went on in clear, resonant voice. The time had come for the consideration of unopposed business, the most interesting, curious, comical of all times in the House of Commons. For now the utterance of the vague formula, "I object," by any member can block any business at any stage.

There was a small attendance on this particular night. But every man there— Bill promoters and Bill blockers alike— was on the alert. You might tell at a glance the difference between them by the eagerness on one set of faces and the doggedness on the other. A man's love for his fad is beyond all other loves. To the private member his private Bill is more than fortune, home, or wife or children. It is part of his being; flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. He handles it with tenderest affection in the House. He guards it from the pitiless blocker with the fluttering ineffectual care with which the mother bird guards its young from the weasel. The proudest man will humble himself to kiss the dust under the feet of his bitterest foe in the faint vain hope of advancing his beloved Bill a single stage on its career to the glorious climax of an Act of Parliament.

To-night some champion blockers were off guard, and several Bills got forward a stage, to the delight of their chaperones.

Then there was a turn in the tide of fortune.

"The Religious Opinions Persecution Bill."

"I object."

"The Fruit Identification Bill."

"I object."

"The Mussels Scalps (Scotland) Bill."

"I object."

"The Perambulators Regulation Bill."

"I object."

"The Cats' Meat Adulteration Bill."

"I object."

So the monotonous litany ran.

"The Crossing-sweepers' Remuneration Bill."

The member in charge— one of the brightest, keenest, most cynical in the House of Commons— nervously raised his hat, as form prescribes, in moving the Second Reading.

"The question is," sang out the Speaker, "that this Bill be now read a second time."

"I object."

The voice came from a member whom every man in the House knew to be an object of supreme contempt to the mover of the Bill. His time had come.

But the fond parent made one desperate effort to protect his offspring.

"With the permission of the House," he said, "I would venture to appeal to the kindness and consideration of my honourable friend and entreat him not to persist in his opposition. The Bill is supported on all sides of the House. Without injury to any interest it would confer a great boon, not merely on a most deserving though humble class of public servants, but on the public at large. If my honourable friend would kindly—"

"I object."

"Oh, d—n you!"

The exclamation was audible all over the House. The Speaker alone was judiciously deaf to it. "Order! Order!" he shouted, quelling the uproarious laughter.

"The Voluntary Conveyances Bill."

Mr. Ridley, Q.C., raised his hat.

"The question is that this Bill be now read a second time. As many as are of that opinion will say 'aye'; the contrary 'no.' I declare the 'ayes' have it."

No one had said "aye" or "no" on the question.

"When?" asked the Speaker.

"Now, sir," answered Mr. Ridley.

The Bill had passed safe into the Committee stage.

The Sergeant-at-Arms came pacing up the floor of the House. He lifted the huge gilt mace from its place on the table, and set it on two hooks below.

The Speaker, in beehive, horsehair wig, and black silk gown and tights, skipped out of his great carved chair; and the Chairman of Committee, in plain evening dress, slipped into his humbler seat beside the clerks.

The House of Commons was in Committee.

"The question is that clause one stands part of the Bill," gabbled the Chairman. "As many as are of that opinion say 'aye,' the contrary 'no.' I declare the 'ayes' have it. The question is that clause two stands part of the Bill," and so on to the end.

The Bill had gone through Committee stage without a hitch.

Mr. Warmington, in one of the seats under the gallery, was radiantly exultant.

Again the transformation scene was re-enacted. The Speaker slipped back into his chair. Close behind the Sergeant-at-Arms, as he came up the floor to shift the mace to the table, Mr. Hardy, Q.C., walked hastily, with an open note in his hand, and dropped into a seat almost directly under Mr. Ridley.

The Speaker rose to put the final motion that would send the Bill safe through the House.

"The question is that this Bill be now read a third time."

"I object!" came short and sharp as a pistol-shot from Mr. Hardy, Q.C.

"Perhaps my honourable and learned friend—"

Mr. Ridley began.

"I object!" sharper, if possible, than before.

"If my honourable and learned friend would only—"

"Order! Order!" broke in the Speaker. "The Bicycle Suppression Bill. The question is," &c., &c.

The Voluntary Conveyances Bill was effectively blocked for that night.

"What the devil did you do that for?" said Mr. Ridley to his friend Mr. Hardy a few minutes afterwards, as they walked down the floor of the House together, while the policeman's stentorian cry "Who goes home?" rang through the building.

"Oh, Sharkey wrote to ask me. Couldn't well refuse, you know. Gives me heaps of business. Very near not getting his note in time though. Another second and you were clean through."

"Worse luck. Have you seen this Bill at all?"

"Not I."

"Here's a copy. 'Twon't take you a moment to glance your eye over it."

"Short and sweet. It seems all right. The law about voluntary deeds wants straightening badly. I wonder what old Sharkey meant by asking me to block it."

"I can tell you," and in a few words he told him the whole story.

Mr. Hardy whistled apologetically. "Very sorry, old man," he said. "Beastly shame of Sharkey to get me to do his dirty work. It shan't occur again, I promise you."

"Thanks. But I'm afraid your repentance comes too late. You have done it once too often. Old Sharkey is not likely to give us a second chance."

NEXT morning, away in Mount Eagle, Miss Trixie Mordant was up early and restless. She was at the telegraph office before it opened, with the inevitable Mr. Jerome Blood-Smith, of course, dancing attendance on his enchantress.

This is the message that was ticked out to the "fair large ears" of the attentive masher, as he stood holding the bicycles at the door of the telegraph office while Miss Trixie waited inside:—

ALL SERENE. BILL BLOCKED LAST NIGHT. SNIPPIT STARTS BY THE MORNING MAIL FOR RATHCOOL WITH DEED ENGROSSED FOR EXECUTION.

SHARKEY.

"Hooray!" shouted the irrepressible Miss Trixie when these tickings in the form of written words on pink paper were handed to her politely by the clerk. But when she danced to the door, waving the pink paper triumphantly, she caught a back view of Mr. Jerome Blood-Smith, head well over the handles of his bicycle, flying up the hill back to the hotel.

"My eye!" she exclaimed in amazement, "what's come to that softy? Did a wopse sting my precious pet, just as I was in humour to tickle him up, too? Five thousand a year and a castle, all to my own cheek. It's simply scrumptious. Won't I make the duchesses of the county sit up. I must have a down-hill scorch all by my own little self to work it off, or I'll bust."

MEANWHILE Mr. Beck, for he was Mr. Beck again in spite of the peach-blossom complexion and the amber-coloured moustache, was strangely occupied in his locked bedroom. There was a time-table open beside him, and a big railway map of Ireland spread out on the quilt of his bed, at which he was busy with a pair of compasses and blue pencil.

After a brief study of the time-table, he turned to the map and marked a spot on the Southern Trunk Railway where the high road runs over it on a bridge at the head of the steepest gradient on the line. Then he consulted the time-table again. The spot he marked was almost midway between two stations on the main line.

The third next station further on was the "Rathcool and Knockcrany junction," which branched off thirty miles of narrow gauge, ending at Rathcool. The Lightning Express train would pass the point he marked at about eight o'clock p.m. The local train that met it at the junction was the last that night. The earliest train next day was timed to start at thirty-five past two p.m., and arrive at five past four at Rathcool.

Then Mr. Beck measured the distance carefully with his compass between the blue spot he had marked out on the map and Mount Eagle, in the County of Clare, and ticked the miles off on the scale.

"A little over a hundred," he muttered. "There is time enough to do it. But it's deuced risky work and dead against the law. Well, I've helped the law so often in my day that it must make allowance this once. Besides, the job is Mr. Blood-Smith's, not Mr. Beck's, and it is the last, the very last, chance of helping the little lady. So here goes."

His mind made up, he lost no time in preparation. He thrust himself into a thin, plain, dark-coloured cycling suit in which the great muscles of his legs and arms rolled and swelled. He fished out a strong bicycle bag, fitted with straps to be carried on the handle-bar and packed in a very singular fashion. The two tin cans which held the oil for his bicycle lamp and the lubricating oil for the bearings were Mr. Beck's sole baggage on his projected expedition. These two greasy cans, both quite full, he wrapped up carefully in a couple of Mr. Blood-Smith's large, handsome silk handkerchiefs and crammed into the bag.

Quietly and quickly the bag was fitted to the bars, and Mr. Beck slipped into the saddle at the hotel door and was off at a good steady twelve miles an hour. A strong head wind blew out of the south-east. But he bent his head and shoulders against it and butted his way stubbornly along. "It blows dead against the train, anyhow," he said to himself as he pushed his way through the wind, "that's one comfort. Every little helps in the job I've got before me."

ALL day long on his high-geared machine Mr. Beck pushed on at the same steady, unchanging, untiring pace. Only once, when well over half of his journey was accomplished, he stopped at a wayside "shebeen" for a crust of bread and a pint of stout.

Evening began to close in. His cyclometer marked eighty-four miles already covered. Looking at his watch, of which he could hardly distinguish the figures in the gathering dusk, Mr. Beck found he had still over two hours left. "In good time," he muttered, and slackened speed a little, for the head wind all day was stiff and persistent. But ten minutes later he felt that jarring vibration under him with which all riders of pneumatic tyres are unhappily familiar. He slipped off at once behind his machine. It was a bad puncture; the tyre of the back wheel quite flat and flabby.

To ride it further was impossible; to repair it in the growing darkness was not less so. He was still a good twelve miles from his journey's end. The accident seemed fatal. But Mr. Beck was equal to the occasion. He took a pair of strong forceps from his tool-bag and then perched the machine on its saddle with wheels in the air and felt for the neck of the back wheel valve. There was no nice fitting needed to wrench off the nut. The ready forceps caught it like a pair of iron fingers and twisted it off in an instant.

The inner-tubes of Mr. Beck's bicycle were not like the rest of men's. They were of what is known as the "butted" variety, with the ends closed and detached like a long sausage, and he always carried a spare tube in his bag. No need now to loosen chain or wheel or to find the puncture or to patch it. The injured tube came quietly out and the sound tube went in, and the pump did the rest.

Mr. Beck managed the job with a quickness and dexterity one would never have expected from his thick, clumsy-looking fingers. Five minutes after the first warning he was on the bicycle again, with the black lines of the double hedgerows of the lonely road racing past him through the twilight.

At last! He could just distinguish the steep slope as the road rose abruptly and leapt over the railway. He dropped off at the foot, lifted the bicycle over the wooden railings, and stood it carefully in the shadow of the bridge wall. He took the bag from the handle-bars and walked with it down to the rails. A few stars showed tremulous through the haze. A faint metallic gleam came from the rails that stretched, two threads of light, away into the darkness.

Mr. Beck took one of the silk handkerchiefs from the bag and shook out the folds. He drew the cork of one of the oil-cans with his teeth, soaked the silk as full as it could hold, then bending down over the near rail he began smearing the smooth metal thickly with the oil. So he worked steadily and swiftly for over a hundred yards down the steep gradient until one can of oil was exhausted. He crossed the line and came up mopping and daubing the other rail from the other can in the same plentiful fashion. Then he took his stand right between the rails at the head of the gradient under the bridge, with the cool night wind sweeping past him. There was a curious expression on his face— anxious, expectant, and amused.

"I hope I am safe here," he muttered, "right in the track of the mail train. We'll soon see."

Almost as he spoke there came right before him a steady, white star, distant and low. The wind was blowing almost straight down the line. For a little he heard no other sound than its moaning. The star all the time grew bigger and brighter. Then came a curious vibration in the air and the roar and rattle of the mail train; low at first, it grew and grew like a strong tide of sound forcing itself against the wind. Under a full head of steam the engine of the Lightning Express, with the long train trailing behind in the darkness, came thundering up the incline, slacking speed a little, like a horse out of breath, as it climbed towards the top.

Then all of a sudden the wheels struck oil. There was an instant change in the roar of the train; the rough jar and rattle died out of it. But the acquired momentum still forced the huge weight forward, the wheels sliding like a horse's hoofs on slimy pavement, and taking no grip on the greased metal. The engine came on slowly and more slowly until it was within twenty yards of where Mr. Beck stood at the end of the greased slope. It wavered, stood still for one long second, and then began silently and slowly at first to slip back down the slope, gaining speed as it went. The wheels slid helplessly on the oiled steel. The engine, like a wounded monster, shrieked horribly through the still night. Far away, down at the foot of the long gradient, the train came at last to a dead halt. The sound of the opening and shutting of many doors and the babble of excited voices struggled faintly up against the wind to the listening Mr. Beck. He waited till he heard the guard come almost right up to where he stood laying crackers along the line. Then he knew the train was safe for the night; so he drew his bicycle from its shelter with an easy mind, and with the wind at his back went sailing away swiftly and smoothly along the road he came, which stretched, a faint grey streak, into the night.

NEXT day, at half-past three o'clock, while Mr. Snippit, with the deed in his black calfskin bag, was still a long five miles from Rathcool and was vigorously cursing the go-as-you-please light railway, a very curious performance was in progress in the House of Lords.

The little Lord Chancellor, with cocked hat perched on his huge beehive wig, was seated on the broad, scarlet woolsack. Two other lords, resplendent in scarlet and ermine, were beside him. This "combination company" represented the absent Majesty of England. There were a number of other performers in a variety of costumes. But most remarkable of all was a very tall man wearing a bob wig of particularly white horse-hair, a long black gown, and a face of preternatural solemnity. A shorter man was reading a list of Bills which had passed through the storms of Lords and Commons, and were now sailing peacefully into port. As each title was read the tall man jerked himself half round, like an automaton on springs, bowed to the empty throne, and, with the metallic twang of a phonograph, uttered the magic formula that converts a Bill into an Act of Parliament.

"The Voluntary Conveyance Bill," read the short man.

"La Reine le veut," jerked out the tall man.

In that second the Bill was an Act, an integral part of the law of the land, and the rights of little Miss Florence Burton secure.

ALL that afternoon, at Mount Eagle, Miss Trixie Mordant and Mr. Jerome Blood-Smith waited eagerly expectant of telegrams. It was well on in the evening when two pink envelopes arrived together at last.

There was but one word in each message.

Her word was "LOST"— and his "WON."

__________________________

6. The Dog and the Doctor

THERE was a funeral passing through the streets as Mr. Beck came riding on his bicycle down the steep hill that overhangs the pretty little village of Ballyduff. He was on his way from the more fashionable watering-place, Mount Eagle, where he had just spent a fortnight with pleasure and profit. The funeral roused his curiosity at once. It was a curious funeral, especially for Ireland, for only three persons took part in the melancholy procession down the street. On an outside car closest to the hearse sat a rubicund, good-humoured, middle-aged gentleman, resplendent in white linen scarf and hatband, whom Mr. Beck at once guessed, and guessed rightly, to be the local medical practitioner. A certain smug satisfaction showed on his features through the demure affectation of grief which the occasion prescribed.

Next, but yet not close, to the doctor walked as handsome a young fellow as Mr. Beck had ever set eyes on, and Mr. Beck was a fair judge of a good figure of a man or a woman. He was clean built and active-looking, with crisp, curling dark hair, and blue-black Irish eyes. Unlike the doctor, he wore none of "the trappings and the suits of woe." But there was upon his face a cloud of sadness and discontent which, however suitable to the occasion, seemed foreign to the man.

The procession closed with a stout, elderly woman. Though the glorious autumn sunshine was hot in the throbbing air, and on the dry, white road, she wore a plaid woollen shawl over her head, and a heavy blue cloth cloak over her shoulders. She fingered her beads devoutly as she walked, but her eyes were all the time fixed with a pitying look on the well-set head and broad, straight shoulders of the young man in front of her.

Mr. Beck crept down the hill, back-pedalling steadily, and reached the foot as the funeral moved into the graveyard. He set his machine against the gatepost, leant comfortably beside it and waited patiently till the brief function which gives man back to the earth was over.

He had a good look at the two male mourners as they passed out, turning off, without speaking to each other, in different directions. The woman waited to say "a mouthful" prayer over the newly-made grave. When at last she came out Mr. Beck addressed her.

"Beg pardon, ma'am," he said, with that good-natured simplicity of manner which always impressed strangers so favourably, "but I am a stranger in the town, and perhaps you would be kind enough to direct me to the best hotel?"

"Well, then, bad is the best of them," she answered civilly. "There's Boylan's public-house, that was three weeks ago. It's a 'high-class hotel' it is now, it you plaze. High-class, inagh! 'Throth, there is nothing high-class about it, I'm thinkin', barring the bills; and there's—"

"A very quiet place is all that I want."

"You'll be stayen' some time?"

"A fortnight, I expect."

"Well, then, if that's the way with you maybe I could do for you meself. There's the two rooms that he lived in," she jerked her thumb in the direction of the churchyard, "goin' on thirty years. They're clane and daycint anyhow, though it's meself that sez it that shouldn't say it, and not too dear in the rent."

"Can I see them now?"

"You can just; it's straight home I'm goin'."

Wheeling his bicycle with the knapsack on the handlebars and a fishing-rod gripped in the patent spring lamp bracket Mr. Beck went slowly down the quiet street beside the woman whose tongue went more quickly than her feet.

"The rooms are a bit disturbed at the present time," she went on, "be rayson of the quare sickness that was on the old man; nothing catching, you need not be afraid of that; but rampageous like when the fit tuck him. Howsomever I'll have them nice and tidy for you within the hour. That was a quare funeral," she rambled off in a new direction.

Mr. Beck nodded assent.

"Aye, bedad, and a quare death, and a quare man that died. Most like you never heerd tell of ould Michael Feely in your travels? Well, that was the name the desaysed went by, and a mane ould miser he was, and no mistake. The Lord forgive me for spaking ill of the dead. Rest his soul in peace."

"Rich is it! Throth, rich is no word for it. He was rotten with money, no less. It's a gombeen man he was at the start, then he took to land grabbin', as we call it in these parts. He bought up the whole countryside chape, accordin' as 'The Quality' came to the wall, doublin' the rents on the unfortunate crayturs of tenants. He had four big houses of his own in the long run with domains forninst them. But he stuck to the chape lodgin's wid myself all the time, and he had more talk over a fardin' than the likes of you or me would have over a pound.

"'Widow Muldoon,' he says to myself oftentimes, 'there's a fine take on the mackerel this mornin', ma'am.' It's watchin' them he'd be from his room window in the say below. 'It's chape and plinty they should be. I think I'll use wan for breakfast,' sez he, 'but don't give more than a halfpenny, ma'am, for the best of them. It's three-haypens you sed you gave for the last, and that's wilful waste, Mrs. Muldoon.' Waste, waste, waste— that was the word that was always in his mouth. It's small use his money will be to him where he's gone."

By this time they had reached Mrs. Muldoon's neatly-kept cottage, standing well in from the edge of the cliff, with its back to the town and its face to the sea. There was a small garden in front and a large garden behind, both full of old-fashioned, gay-coloured, sweet-smelling flowers.

"A very desirable resting-place," Mr. Beck thought, as he followed Mrs. Muldoon.

The furniture in the pretty little parlour was, as she said, "a good deal disordered." There was a chair and a china vase lying broken on the floor.

"I'll put things to rights while you say 'knife,'" said Mrs. Muldoon apologetically. "Sure, I've not a minnit I could call me own for the last week. In his last tantrums he broke them things there on the floor. It wasn't the drink; don't think it. He was a sober man always, I'll say that for him. He hadn't the heart to get drunk. Throth, it was quite contrariwise with him in the long run. The very sight of drink of any kind or description, even the innocent cowld wather, put him beyant himself at wanst. Even the cowld wind comen in from the say used to prey on him. He'd got the dog's dizaze with the quare furrin' name— 'High-for-Toby,' I think they call it."

"Hydrophobia."

"Aye, just. His own little dogeen, Jack, bit him goin' on six weeks ago. But it's botherin' you I am with me ould talk, and it's a bit to ait and a sup to drink you'd like, I'm thinkin', aither your drive in the quare-looking wheelbarrow."

"Sit down, Mrs. Muldoon," said Mr. Beck, very kindly. "You have more reason to be tired yourself than I have. I assure you I am quite interested in your story."

He spoke the truth, for Mr. Beck loved a dish of gossip as well as any old maid of them all.

Mrs. Muldoon's heart quite warmed at once to the good-natured stranger.

"In one minnit, sir, if it's plazin' to ye," she said, as she walked to the door.

"Mary," she called over the kitchen stairs, "get a chop and a cup of tay ready at wanst." Then to Mr. Beck— "Maybe it's a pint of stout or a drop of whisky you'd like better than the tay, sir? There's a rale good drop of that same in the house."

"I'd much prefer the tea, thank you, if you'll join me in a cup. So the old man died of hydrophobia, you were saying?"

Mrs. Muldoon loosened the cloak from her shoulders and took the shawl from her head, stroked her hair with either palm, and settled down in an easy-chair for a real good "gosther."

"And shure, it's the truth I was sayin', and the cantankerous little dog that bit him was the wan crayture in the wide varsal world the old man was good to. He fed the little baste with his own hands, and never let it out of his sight night or day. It's the way of the world all over, as I was saying to Mrs. Mullarkey.

"I mind well, sir, the beginnin' of the whole trubble, better than three months ago. It was in May last that Dr. Kilkaddy called in. He's a near cousin of the ould man's, but in no ways like him in his going ways. The docthor is a fine, laughy man as you'd meet in a day's walk, with the kind word always in his mouth for rich and simple. When he seen the ould man with the dogeen on his knee and him not muzzled accordin' to law, the docthor was greatly put about at the time. For he's great skill intirely in the dog's dizaze— high— for— what's its name?"

"Hydrophobia."

"Thank you, sir. Be the same token the docthor cured a young man that nearly got it by sending him out to pasture in Paris, all as one as they put out the horses to grass when they are gone in the legs, and bring them back fresher than ever.

"The docthor wint over himself, every step of the way to put him on the pasture. There was 'nother young man they say afther, that he cured from gettin' it be stickin' pins and needles in him, but I never heard the rights of that story yet.

"Be that as it may, the docthor put up his two hands in front of him all as wan as the priest givin' his blessin' when he seen the ould man pettin' the dogeen.

"'Me dear sir,' he said, 'how can you be so rash to endanger your precious life with that dog unmuzzled and the raw pays prevailin',' sez he. What he brought the 'raw pays' into it for, myself does not know, but that's the word that was out of him.

"'Don't vex me, docthor,' sed the other, snapping him up pretty sharp, 'don't vex me, you'd best not this night of all. Jack and myself are good friends, and I won't have a word sed agin him. Bedad, I'm thinkin' the dogeen is about the only good friend I've got.'

"'Me dear sir,' the docthor began, shocked like, 'I'm sure I—'

"But me own man cut him short again.

"'Don't mind passin' compliments, Docthor,' he sed, 'bekase they're not wanted at present, and waste is the devil and all. I must lave me money some time to some wan, worse luck,' sez he, 'and you're the man,' sez he, 'for want of a bether. You need not thank me the laste taste in the world,' sez he. 'It's that young blackguard, Malachy Kirwan, you have to thank for'— savin' your presins, that was the expression he made use of. 'Nothin' would plaze the omadawn,' sez he, 'but he must go join the Laygue, and the divvil resave the penny of my honest hard-earned money that'll go to wan of the crew that's deludherin' the people, and puttin' them agin payin' their lawful debts,' sez he.

"With that, me dear, the docthor began argufyin' with him in Malachy's regard. But it was all as one rubbin' a cat the wrong way. The more he argued the more outrageous the ould man was agin' Malachy, spittin' curses out of him like fury."

"This Malachy is—"

"Shure, I thought I tould you that. It's stupid I'm gettin'. Malachy is the ould man's nephew right enough. His own sisther's son, no less, and as daycint a boy as ever stepped in shoe-leather is the same Malachy, and the best-lookin' to the back of that. It was he that managed the ould man's bizness for years back, and it was a settled thing he was to have every halfpenny when the ould man wint. He was well liked be the people, and done his best to make things azy wid the uncle. The ould man— God forgive him— was main hard on the tenants. He used always be sayin' that Malachy had 'a foolish drop in him' when he'd try to get time for a tenant or that. But it was not until Malachy joined the Laygue that the ould man became rale bitther agin' him all out."

"This Malachy is a young man?"

"Young, bedad, and handsome. Shure you needn't take my word for it. You seen him at the funeral walking betune the docthor and myself. He had some words, I heard tell, with the docthor, who trated him most polite. But the best of us has our tempers, and small blame to him to be flabbergasted— left widout a farthin', and him goin' to be married and all. Throth you wouldn't know him for the same Malachy that always had the kind word and the smile for every craythure he met."

"You were going to tell me how the old man got hydrophobia?"

"Thrue for you, sir. My wits went wool-gatherin', for I always had a soft corner for Malachy Kirwan. I told you, didn't I, it was his own dogeen Jack that bit him? I mind well the first quare turn the brute took. This was the way of it. The next day but one when the docthor called, he found the ould man nursin' the dog as before. The docthor sed nothin' agin' it good or bad that time. But when he was goin' away he called the dog to himself, and Jack come waggin' his tail while the docthor patted him. But all of a suddin', the brute let a mad kind of whelp out of him and snapped at the docthor's hand, and then ran away cryin' to himself into a corner.

"Nothin' more come of it at the time; but betther nor a month after that I noticed the dogeen goin' more and more astray in his mind. I was out in the garden gatherin' some new pays one hot day, whin I heard a great screamin' and roarin' in ould Mihaul's room. I ran in, you may be shure, as quick as me legs could carry me, and a purty sight met me eyes when I opened the room door. There in wan corner of the room was the little dog Jackeen, with the foam droppin' from his mouth, and the old man had him by the scruff of the neck, lambastin' him with a slipper. With half an eye I seen what had happened. The ould man was badly bit on the hand and on the lip, and the blood was just droppin' from him like rain on the brute that had done it.

"With that, me dear, I stuck me head through the lobby window and roared 'millia murther' down the street.

"The first man that heard me was the docthor himself, who lives near hand, and he came chasing up the street as fast as his legs could carry him. I had the door open for him on the minute, and he went upstairs like a lamplighter to the old man's room.

"The next moment the life was tuck out of me be the shot of a gun in the room. What was it but me bowld docthor that shot the dog clane and clever with a revolver he chanced by the dent of good luck to have in his pocket. I never knew that he carried the like before.

"When I seen the dog was dead all out I tuck him on the shovel and buried him beyont in the corner of the garden near the big gooseberry bush. You can see the spot from the back window.

"Dr. Kilkaddy was as sore and sorry a man as ever I knew when he seen what had happened. The ould man wanted to make light of it. But nothing would serve the other but to send hot-foot for Dr. Molloy, that has the best name of any docthor in the countryside. 'I'll be answerable for the fee, me dear sir,' said our own docthor, quietin' the ould miser.

"Well, the docthors done their best, no doubt; but there's small use in docthors if the death is on a body."

"Did they send him over to Pasteur, in Paris?"

"Dr. Molloy was for it at first; but the ould man said he was 'hanged if he'd waste his money that ways.' Dr. Kilkaddy sed no word, good or bad."

"After that?"

"Bedad, afther that he did pretty well for a bit, and the cuts healed up fine. But afther another while the red marks of them began to get itchy and sore with him; then all of a surddint the madness seized hould of him terrible hard. It would melt the heart of a stone to see the state he was in. For the most part he was lyin' on his bed moanin' and groanin' like a sick cow. Then wanst in a while he'd make an effort to stagger to the window; but the sight of the say and the cool wind in from it drove him mad intirely. The way he'd howl and rampage was like a lost sowl, the Lord betune us and harm. Dr. Kilkaddy is a strong man be nature and must have seen a dale of quare sights in his time. But I've seen him as white as that blind and the tears rollin' down his cheeks at the sight of the ould man when the fit was hard on him.

"To make a long story short, me dear, the ould man died three days ago, lavin' the docthor everything he had in the world. He gave directions in his will the funeral was to be chape and quiet, and the neighbours were willin' enough to indulge him in that anyways.

"But there now, I hear Maria's step on the stairs, and I only hope the things will be to your likin'."

She bustled about briskly, like the kindly housewife she was. "You must ate it while it's hot," she said to Mr. Beck, and Mr. Beck was nothing loth. The chop was done to a turn, the tea strong and well flavoured. He ate and drank with a relish. Nothing ever disturbed his healthy appetite. Mrs. Muldoon was persuaded without much difficulty to join him in a cup of tea, and under its influence grew quite plaintive about the disappointment of Malachy Kirwan and his sweetheart Mary Cassidy, "the purtiest colleen in the whole countryside and as good-hearted as she was good-lookin', God bless her. It's hard to know what to say at all," she concluded, after she had talked a good hour without a check. "The docthor is a fine civil-spoken man, no doubt. But it's hard on the young people; there's no denyin' that."

MR. BECK slept like a top in his room facing the open sea, and woke with the fresh, healthy smack of the brine on his tongue and in his nostrils.

He had a swim before his breakfast, and after breakfast he set out for a ride on his bicycle, with the curious story of the day before still feeling its way blindly about his brain. The country was wonderfully fresh, and the air clear and radiant with autumnal sunshine. He bowled along all day, up hill and down dale, over smooth switchback roads that cyclists love. The sun was at his back, and his shadow lay long before him on the white road when at last he came sailing easily down the long, steep decline that overhung the town.

A short way down the hill a dog suddenly raced across his track.

He wrenched the handle-bar sharply, it came away in his hand, and he was almost jerked from his seat as the machine flew down the decline, zigzagging like a swallow. But he settled himself evenly in the saddle and steadied the machine by his weight, with his feet pressed firmly on the leaping pedals. While the road ran straight he was safe. But half-way down it curved sharply inland, and at the outer curve the cliffs fell away sheer down to the wrinkled sea a hundred feet below. He could catch the gleam of the water through the line of scattered rocks, as the bicycle tore straight down upon them, the wheels leaping from the ground. He felt he could never turn that sharp curve safely, steering by his weight alone. But it was the last chance for life, and he nerved himself for the trial.

Even that last hope left him when the figure of a man started up suddenly from amongst the rocks, right in the track of the rushing bicycle. The rider yelled at him, but the man stood stupidly stock still, heading him off from the one chance of safety. Mr. Beck made ready to fling himself from the saddle as they struck. But the man leaped aside, and as the machine flashed past he grasped the frame with one hand and the saddle-bar with the other, leaning forward to steady himself against the shock.

With a short, fierce strain, in which every muscle in his young frame had a part, he brought the bicycle to a dead halt, right on the verge of the rocks. Mr. Beck slipped off his machine in a second, and turned to thank his deliverer. Something in that splendid figure— head bent and body braced against the incline like the statue of a young Greek athlete— struck him as familiar.

The next moment the bright, blue-black eyes were raised frankly to his own, the white teeth showed in a pleasant smile, and he recognised Malachy Kirwan at a glance.

"I was over but for you, sir," was all Mr. Beck said, but he managed to put a good deal of feeling into that one curt sentence.

"It was a pretty close shave," the young man answered in a very pleasant voice with a mellow touch of the brogue in it. "Allow me, sir. I ride myself." In an instant he fitted the handle-bar, which hung on by the brake rod, back in the upright socket and jammed the treacherous nut tight with the wrench.

"Thank you," said Mr. Beck, "but I don't think I'll mount again just now."

THEY walked down the hill together and in five minutes Malachy Kirwan was talking of his private affairs as freely as though his chance companion were a lifelong friend. There was a benign simplicity and sympathy about Mr. Beck when he chose that coaxed out the shyest secrets.

Malachy Kirwan, as was natural, did not think as highly of Dr. Kilkaddy as did the widow Muldoon. It was Dr. Kilkaddy that first encouraged him to join the League, he said, and it was the doctor who had the news of his joining secretly conveyed to his uncle.

"But there's no use crying over spilt milk," he went on, "or bothering as to how it got spilt. I start for America in a week. I've enough to take me there and give me a start in a small way in the New World, and my girl will wait."

Here the open-hearted young fellow launched out into praise of his sweetheart, Molly Cassidy, to all of which Mr. Beck listened with most flattering attention.

They parted like old friends at Mrs. Muldoon's door. Mr. Beck made him promise to dine with him the next day but one. "I've been to America," he said, "and I can give you some letters that may help— if you go there."

"If I go!" said the other, smiling rather dismally; "when I go, you mean."

"Well, 'when' you go, if that pleases you, but I like my own word 'if' the better of the two. Five is the hour, remember."

MR. BECK did not go out again that evening. After dinner he sat smoking at the open window till bedtime, gazing vacantly over the broad sea. Next morning he walked a little lame when he came to breakfast, and Mrs. Muldoon was quick to notice it.

"I've strained my ankle, I'm afraid, ma'am," said Mr. Beck, and thereupon he told her of the bicycle adventure, to which she listened with many a "musha now" and "glory be to the Lord."

"The blessing of God on me brave boy that stopped the runaway before it leapt into the say!" was her final prayer.

And Mr. Beck in his heart said "Amen."

"But sure it's not out on the whirligig you're goin' ag'in?"

"No, ma'am; I don't feel up to it. I think I'll try a little fishing this morning. Mr. Kirwan tells me there's a nice trout stream close by. If you will lend me a spade I will try if I cannot get some red worms or blackheads in the garden."

"Shure I'll get a gossoon to dig them. Don't you attempt the like, and the foot so bad with you."

But Mr. Beck insisted on digging the worms for himself, and it chanced that he chose the quiet corner near the big gooseberry bush which Mrs. Muldoon had pointed out as the grave of the dog Jack.

In a dozen strokes of the spade he came on the remains of the dog. He drew the repulsive, foul-smelling carcass from the ground, and examined it with curious care and interest, even taking a strong magnifying glass from his waistcoat pocket for the purpose. Then he threw it back into the hole, covered it up, and walked back to the house very lame indeed.

"I knew the diggin' would prey on your ankle," said Mrs. Muldoon anxiously, when she saw him.

"I'm afraid you're right, ma'am. It's a worse sprain than I thought."

"I'd see the docthor about it at wanst, if I was you," said Mrs. Muldoon; "there is no knowing what it might turn to. There was a cousin of an aunt's husband of my own that got a stiff joint out of a thing of the kind be the dint of neglect. There is Dr. Kilkaddy, now, that can't be bet for cleverness."

"Does he live far from here?"

"No more nor a stone's throw. You can see the place from the window; the green door with the brass knocker, forninst the post-office. Shure, you couldn't miss it with your eyes shut."

Yes; Dr. Kilkaddy was at home, Mr. Beck was told when he knocked. Would the gentleman kindly step into the surgery? The doctor would be down in a moment.

Mr. Beck kindly stepped into the surgery. The room was as much laboratory as surgery. There were jars and glass test-tubes littered about, and a gas-stove in a corner and a powerful microscope in a prominent place on the table.

On the corner of the same table lay the doctor's silver lancet-case. Mr. Beck picked it up, opened it, and began fiddling with the lancets. He slid the tiny blades from their tortoise-shell sheaths and examined the points curiously. Then he put the lancets back into their case and dropped the case abstractedly into his waistcoat pocket.

A moment after Dr. Kilkaddy came into the room. The doctor was a tall, portly person, with a pale blue eye and somewhat heavy jowl, but figure and face were somehow suggestive of good-nature and good-humour.

"Well, sir," he said a little pompously to Mr. Beck, "what can I do for you?"

It was noticed that the doctor's urbanity had gone down at least fifty per cent. since the death of Mr. Feely. But no one yet had ever succeeded in being uncivil to Mr. Beck. It is useless and tiresome work beating an air cushion.

"I have come to consult you professionally, Doctor," he said blandly.

"My dear sir, I'm very sorry indeed, but I have practically given up business since—"

"Oh, this is a special case in your own line, Doctor. I'm afraid I'm threatened with hydrophobia, and I understand you have made a special study of the disease."

He had struck the right note. The doctor grew interested at once. The absorbing interest of the specialist in his own pet subject irresistibly asserted itself.

"Sit down, my dear sir," he said. "As you say, this is indeed most urgent. I trust most sincerely you are mistaken." But there was enthusiasm in his voice rather than sympathy or regret.

"When were you bitten?" he went on.

"About two months ago."

"What did you do at the time— cauterised?"

"No."

"Caustic?"

"No. Just tied it up in my handkerchief, and it healed up in no time."

"That's bad," said the doctor. "Let me see it."

Mr. Beck bared a forearm brawny as a blacksmith's. On the fleshy part, midway between the wrist and the elbow, was the white cicatrice of a double row of strong teeth.

The marks were made by the teeth of the notorious burglar Bulstrode whom Mr. Beck had caught and handcuffed single-handed. But Mr. Beck did not mention this fact; perhaps his modesty prevented him. The doctor examined the marks through a powerful magnifying glass, but they kept their own secret.

"Mad?" he asked.

"Very," said Mr. Beck.

The doctor was silent for a minute. He looked grave; Mr. Beck looked uneasy.

"When did it begin to trouble you?" asked the doctor abruptly.

"A couple of days ago. I had forgotten all about it till a couple of days ago. There is no danger, is there, Doctor?"

"I cannot be sure of that. The disease takes time to develop. You have felt the scar itch and tingle?"

"Yes," answered Mr. Beck promptly, with a look of simple admiration at the doctor's sagacity.

"Then a certain numbness set in, extending up the arm?"

"Just so, Doctor," promptly as before. "Can you stop it going any farther?"

"I can try it at any rate, though you have come to me very late, very late indeed. If the mischief is there we must do our best to counteract it. You have heard of the Pasteur treatment, of course. It is your only chance."

"Then I'll have to go to Paris?"

"No, no. Time is too precious; another day's delay might be fatal. I have studied the treatment carefully in the Pasteur institute in Paris, and I have got a supply of the lymph. Your chance is as good under my care as under Pasteur himself— better, in fact, when the delay is taken into consideration."

"No danger of an overdose of the stuff, Doctor?"

"You might as well ask me is there danger of an overdose of poison which we use every day in medicine. Too strong an injection of the lymph, even to a healthy subject, would undoubtedly mean hydrophobia and certain death. But the imminence of the danger is the best guarantee for the doctor's caution. You need not have the faintest fear on that account, I assure you."

"Must I drink the stuff?"

The doctor laughed outright— the amused laugh of superior knowledge. "Not at all, my dear sir. I perform the inoculation with a hypodermic syringe."

"Or with a lancet?"

"Or with a lancet, as you say," a little surprised at the suggestion. "But that's a clumsier method."

"It's very effective though, sometimes, isn't it, Doctor?"

The doctor looked at him with increased surprise. But Mr. Beck's face was a mask of blank unconsciousness.

"Come, come, my dear sir," said the doctor, a little hastily, "you must leave the treatment entirely in my hands. What I want from you are the symptoms. What day exactly did you experience the first revival of uneasiness in the scars?"

"The day before yesterday when I heard the widow Muldoon speak of the terrible death of the old man Feely in the very rooms where I'm lodging. He died of hydrophobia— didn't he?"

There was an inflection in Mr. Beck's voice that made the doctor look at him again curiously. Mr. Beck's drooping under-lip had tightened, and there was a steely glitter in his blue grey eyes.

"Why, yes. Certainly he died of hydrophobia," said the doctor slowly.

"You did not try the Pasteur treatment on him?"

"My colleague, Dr. Molloy, objected to the experiment. But I really don't see what that has to do with your case."

"Wait a bit, Doctor, wait a bit; you'll see directly. It is that that brought me here as your patient. As I was saying, I heard the ins-and-outs of the old man's death from the widow Muldoon. It gave me the jumps, though I am not naturally nervous. A talkative woman, Doctor, is the widow Muldoon, as I suppose you know, with a very remarkable memory. She told me some curious things about the little dog Jack, for example. You remember the little dog Jack, Doctor?"

The doctor cast one sudden keen glance at Mr. Beck's face in the vain attempt to read his meaning there. His own face had grown yellow. He seemed at the same time frightened and angry.

"I don't understand you, sir," he said sharply. "This is mere foolery. My time is of value, and I must wish you a very good—"

"Not for a moment or two more, Doctor, if you please."

The doctor looked at him again, hesitated for a moment, and then sat down close to his desk with his elbow resting on it.

"Of course," Mr. Beck went on blandly, "you remember the little dog jack that was the beginning of the whole bad business. I suppose he was the beginning, Doctor, wasn't he?"

The doctor didn't answer, and Mr. Beck didn't wait for an answer.

"You don't forget how the little dog ran to you one day to be petted, and ran away yelping without any cause— without any apparent cause. That was a curious thing, wasn't it? Mrs. Muldoon remembered it very well."

"Really, sir, I must—"

"Patience. I'm coming to our own case, the case that brought me here, and you had best hear me out— you really had. I was greatly interested myself in this little dog Jack— so interested that I dug up his body this morning and examined it."

The doctor was listening now intently, with his mouth hanging a little open, and a hunted look in his eyes.

"I examined him very carefully indeed," Mr. Beck went on smoothly, "and I found three little scars in the skin of the neck, quite close together. Is that a common symptom of hydrophobia, Doctor?"

"Are you drunk or mad?" broke out the doctor in sudden fury.

"Neither," Mr. Beck replied sweetly. "I'm so sorry it I've bored you. But there is just one little thing I'd like to show you before I go."

He took from his waistcoat pocket a little bit of tissue paper and began slowly to unfold it, with the doctor's eyes intent on him all the time.

Then Mr. Beck held the paper out open for him to see. There was a little fragment of sharp steel in it that glittered like a spark of broken glass.

"I found it in one of these little cuts, and polished it up," Mr. Beck went on. "Curious symptom of hydrophobia, wasn't it? But I have a more curious thing still to tell you." He spoke very slowly now, and there was menace in his voice. "That little splinter of steel fits exactly the broken point of one of your lancets."

The doctor's eyes went round furtively to where his lancet-case had lain.

Mr. Beck caught the look and touched his waistcoat pocket.

Then the doctor's right hand dropped carelessly into the half-open drawer of his desk.

"Stop!" snapped out Mr. Beck sharply. "It's no go. I've mine cocked in my coat pocket and my finger on the trigger."

The doctor's hand came out of the drawer empty.

"Lock it!" said Mr. Beck. He locked it.

"Give me the key!" He gave it.

"I suppose it's the same you got to shoot Jack," said Mr. Beck quietly, as he put the key in his pocket. "It was curious how you guessed that Jack might need a revolver bullet about that time. But then I'm not Jack, you see."

"Then who the devil are you and what do you want? Money, of course. I'm a fool to ask. How much?"

"My name is Mr. Beck. I suppose you never heard of Mr. Beck? But I'm a detective by trade. I've puzzled and muddled out a few things in my time, but never anything queerer than this. I don't want money— that is to say, not for myself."

The doctor looked relieved; the man was to be bribed.

"Not for yourself, of course," he answered sneeringly, "for sorrowing widows and helpless orphans. Let's drop that twaddle, if you please, and come to business. Will half the old man's fortune buy your silence?"

"No, I must have it all, every brass farthing, for the rightful owner, Malachy Kirwan. Sit still," he said sternly, as the doctor started from his seat, "sit still and listen to me quietly; you'd best if you want to keep your neck out of the halter. I don't mince matters, you see, and I know that you murdered old Feely as surely and more cruelly than if you put a knife into him. It was a diabolically ingenious murder," Mr. Beck went on, with a touch of professional appreciation. "I don't deny that. But it has come to light, as one might say, of its own accord. I think I've got enough of circumstantial evidence to hang you. I am almost sure I've got enough. But I'm not quite sure. If I was I'd hang you like a dog. But juries are dull sometimes, and the case is a queer one. If by any chance they let you off you could still hold on to the old man's money and lands. Now I've reasons of my own for wishing well to young Kirwan. Execute a deed of grant to him, and I hold my tongue."

"A grant of everything?"

"Of everything."

"If I refuse?"

"I'll do my level best to hang you. You can calculate for yourself the chance of my succeeding. It will be a close squeak anyhow. I don't like letting you off. You're too clever to be on the loose. But I fancy you won't try any more games of the kind, knowing that I have my eye on you."

"Give me till to-morrow to think it over."

"Willingly. I think I can guess what the answer will be."

But Mr. Beck could not guess what the answer would be.

NEXT morning all Ballyduff was startled by the news that Dr. Kilkaddy, the clever, popular, lucky Dr. Kilkaddy, had died suddenly. An inquest was held forthwith. On the table at his bedside was found a box labelled "Quinine" with some pills in it. The doctor was known to be in the habit of taking quinine. But analysis proved that there was a fatal dose of morphia in each pill. How the morphia got into the quinine pills was a mystery to every one except Mr. Beck.

"He has taken the shortest way out," Mr. Beck muttered to himself when he heard the news of the doctor's death, "and I'm not sorry."

Malachy Kirwan did not go to America after all. The doctor died without a will and the whole property— real and personal— came to him as heir-at-law and next-of-kin. Mr. Beck had a delightful fortnight at Ballyduff, and he has an invitation to go back there next summer for a wedding.

__________________

7. Under His Own Hand

"OH! Mr. Beck, you must take my part now, won't you? He's so headstrong about it; our marriage, I mean. But I have coaxed a promise from him to follow your advice and you must advise him to postpone it."

Marnie Coyle was walking impatiently up and down Mr. Beck's pretty little sitting-room while she spoke, and he was sitting deep back in a huge easy-chair, leaning sideways on one of the arms with his hand under his chin watching her, a kindly, whimsical look on his broad face.

Now she came close up to where he sat, put a little hand caressingly on his shoulder, and smiled down at him with an entreaty in her bright blue eyes hard to withstand.

But Mr. Beck's face remained immovably placid as before, as he leant back and joined his finger-tips.

"Oh! I have no patience with you," she burst out, trying to shake him— she might as well try to shake an elephant. "There you sit and sit, saying nothing and trying your best to look stupid."

"My dear young lady," he said, with gentle amusement at her vehemence, "it's my business just now to hear, not talk."

"You must promise— you must. I have no one I can trust but you."

"Well, then, trust me."

"Oh! I see. You want to hear the— what you call— the facts before you give your advice, and I suppose I must humour you. Only we haven't much time, as he will be here in half an hour. I came early to have the first word with you. Now where shall I begin?"

"At the beginning."

"Well, that's nearly two years ago. We were all walking— we schoolgirls, I mean— two and two in Kensington, and he came riding slowly by on his bicycle, looking at each girl as he passed with a laugh in his eye. Miss Gurdy— our dragon, you know—was just fit to be tied. Some of the girls tittered, and I was laughing myself at Miss Gurdy's starched face, when his eyes looked straight into mine and sent a little thrill through me that killed the laugh. He raised his hat politely and rode straight away, and Miss Gurdy called me a boldfaced minx because I blushed. It was very wrong of course, but I couldn't keep him out of my head for a week nearly, till one day when we were alone in the dormitory little Flossy Burton— you know little Flossy; she knows you, anyway— you got something, or did something for her; something wonderful, but I forget what it was. It was she first introduced me to you— don't you remember, and you found my diamond bracelet for me, and— where was I?"

"In the school dormitory with Miss Flossy."

"Oh! well, she gave me a letter with poetry in it from him, full of praise and love and all that; and ending up beautifully—

"I will your faithful lover be,

Through time unto eternity.

"He had met Floss at her uncle's, Mr. Warmington's, and asked her all about our school, and he knew me by the little dimple on my chin, only think! so she told him I was her favourite of all the girls, and he sent the letter by her.

"Miss Gurdy would have packed us both out of the school if she only knew— at least, she would have sent me packing, but Flossy, you know, is an heiress, and has a first cousin a lord, and she can do just what she likes with Miss Gurdy.

"I had three letters from him before I wrote one little line. But he said he would kill himself if I didn't, so I had to, of course. After that, I think Miss Gurdy began to suspect something. Flossy wanted to go to the dentist so often, and always insisted on bringing me to hold her hand. One day Miss Gurdy nearly caught us— me and Clive, you know. She came suddenly into the reception-room when we were alone together. But luckily we'd just had a tiff and he was sitting at the far end of the room, reading a newspaper upside down, and I was looking out of the window. So—"

Mamie glanced up at the hands of the clock on Mr. Beck's mantelpiece and broke off breathless and bewildered by her own haste.

"Oh! I have only seven minutes more and I haven't told you one thing yet that I wanted to tell."

"Plenty of time," said Mr. Beck, soothingly, for Mr. Beck loved gossip.

"Well, now, I'll just stick to the point. When I left school and went home to live with mamma, he called to see her one day and told her he loved me, and quite won her heart. So now we are engaged— properly engaged, you know— and we can go to places together and— and— and still he isn't satisfied."

"What more can he possibly desire?" asked Mr. Beck, without a smile.

"He wants me to marry him straight away. He's just twenty-three and a half, and I'll be nineteen my next birthday, and he thinks we are quite old enough to get married, and I agree with him in that, but— oh! it's terrible—"

"What's terrible?"

"The way he goes on. You see he is an only son—that is to say, he was an only son, but his father is dead and his mother too, and I don't trust his Uncle Marmaduke, and I never will, what's more."

"Now where does Marmaduke come in?"

"Clive lives with his uncle in a beautiful house in Park Lane, but the house is Clive's—that is to say, it will be Clive's, and he, that's Clive, has a wonderful property in Kent, with woods and rivers and a great park with deer in it, and oh! such a lovely house. I was all over it last week. But there was a cruel thing put in his father's will— that he was not to get the property until he was twenty-five, unless he married before that with his uncle's consent. But if he married before twenty-five without the consent, the property was all to go to his uncle.

"The uncle, Marmaduke Meredith, is a big, pompous thing, with an ugly smile that I hate, and I'm sure he will never give his consent. But Clive says he will, and that anyway he couldn't wait for two years, even for a million. It isn't two years, you know— only a year and a half— and Clive says he'll get called to the Bar and earn lots for us both. I have a little money of my own that would help us. But it isn't the money I care about, but I'm afraid he'd be sorry afterwards and that would kill me. Still, if I don't consent he may think it's his property I care for, not himself. Oh! please do help me, Mr. Beck, I'm very miserable."

She had been patting Mr. Beck's shoulder nervously while she spoke; now she suddenly buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.

MR. BECK'S composure vanished in a moment. He could never bear to see a woman cry. He leapt up from his chair, sat the weeping girl in it, and bent over her, mumbling soothingly in a kindly, awkward attempt to comfort her. It was like a big Newfoundland dog fondling a small child.

Mamie kept on crying bitterly, partly because she wanted to, partly because she knew she was one of the few women who look well in tears, but mainly because she knew it was the most effective method with Mr. Beck. Suddenly Mr. Beck turned his back on her and proceeded to fix a lump of sugar between the bars of his canary's cage, chirping the while.

"A lover's ear," we know on high authority, "will hear the slightest sound." But Mr. Beck's ears were more than human, and it was he—not Mamie—that heard that quick, light step on the thick carpet of the stairs.

The next moment there came an impatient knock at the door.

Mamie leapt from her seat. The sobs ceased suddenly.

"Come in!" cried Mr. Beck, without looking round.

Mr. Beck was more awkward than usual. It was a long minute before he succeeded in fixing the lump of sugar to his liking. When at last he did look round Mamie was radiant, though a tear still trembled on her rounded cheek like a dewdrop on a wild rose-leaf.

A tall, handsome young fellow stood close beside her, looking down upon her smiling face with love and longing in his blue-black eyes.

"Well?" said Mr. Beck, after a pause, for they looked shyly at him without speaking.

"Oh! it's all right," cried Clive Meredith cheerily. "Uncle Marmaduke will do the straight thing, I'm sure. He hinted as much to me to-day. I knew it would be all right when I took Mamie to see him. He fell in love with her, of course, straight away.

"'Clive, my lad,' he said, 'she is a sweet girl, and I congratulate you; I should not like to stand in your way even for a day, if it can be helped. "Gather the rosebuds while you may," says the poet, Tennyson, I think it was, or Walter Scott. Of course I have a solemn duty to perform towards your poor father. Still, if— God bless you, my boy; God bless you!' and the poor old chap actually broke down and blubbered. So you see there is really nothing to advise about, Mr. Beck."

"I don't trust him," broke out Mamie. "He's a crocodile hypocrite. He has some trick in his head. You know he wants money, Clive—you told me that yourself, and there are ugly stories about him. Tell Mr. Beck what you told me, sir."

"Well," said Clive reluctantly. "It's not his fault, you know, if he is hard up, and of course he is dunned and all that. A fellow came about six months ago— an impudent Jewish chap. I was out at the time, but he forced his way into the study where uncle was and insisted on payment. It was a big thing—over a thousand, I believe— and uncle paid him and got a receipt. But the Jew swore that uncle's cheque was only a blank when he came to present it at the bank. He brought an action and told his story in court. But he had to admit on cross-examination he saw my uncle fill in the cheque and sign it. That settled the case. The judge gave him a dressing down he's not likely to forget, and the jury found a verdict for the defendant, and well, that's the whole story."

"Where does your uncle live, Mr. Meredith?" asked Mr. Beck, à propos of nothing.

"In our home— that is in Park Lane, but I don't see what—"

"Of course you can't see," broke in the irrepressible Mamie, "but your uncle sees clearly enough. He has the house, and he has an allowance under the will. It's throwing away both to give his consent to our marriage. Now I ask you, is that likely, Mr. Beck?"

"But I don't mean to get married until I have his consent in writing under his own hand," Clive retorted hotly. "I never thought, Mamie, you were such a prudent little person."

"I'm not prudent. It's for your sake I'm prudent, Clive, dear. You are too confiding. I'm sure he has some dodge in the back of his head."

They were in a fair way for a pretty little lovers' quarrel when Mr. Beck's mild voice fell like oil on the troubled waters.

"Can't you wait just a little longer, Mr. Meredith?" he asked blandly.

"Do you call two years just a little?" cried Clive impatiently.

"Only a year and a half," murmured Mamie under her breath.

"Two weeks will be enough, I think," said Mr. Beck, "if you do what I tell you."

Clive beamed delightedly. "I'm entirely at your service Mr. Beck!"

"In the first place, can you give me the name of the man who swore he saw your uncle sign the cheque that had no signature? I want to have a word with him."

"Will it do to-morrow?"

"Quite."

"All right. I'll send it without fail by to-night's post."

"That's settled. Your uncle has a private study of his own in Park Lane, I suppose?"

"Yes, and a Chubb lock and latchkey for the door."

"So I fancied. I think you said he writes a good deal?"

Clive had not said it. But Mr. Beck knew it. There were few things Mr. Beck did not know.

The young fellow laughed. "Oh! he writes a lot of articles for the magazines and reviews, but they never get in. There was one accepted years ago, and he has written a hundred at least on the strength of that and gives himself airs as a literary man."

"There is gas in his study, I suppose?"

Clive nodded, surprised at the question.

"Do you know where he keeps his cheque-book?"

"No," said Clive, more surprised than ever. "I suppose in his desk in the study."

"Nor who is his gasfitter?"

"Oh! Carver and Picton. But really, Mr. Beck, I don't see what all this has to do with—"

Mr. Beck continued quite placidly, without noticing his protest in the least—"Now I come to my second condition. First, the name of the Jew who got the strange cheque— don't forget that. Secondly, I want you to bore a hole in one of the gaspipes in your uncle's study. Can you do it?"

"I suppose I could if I tried, but in Heaven's name, Mr. Beck, what the—"

Mamie clapped her little hand over his mouth, and shut the word off in the middle, and whispered in his ear, "Now, Clive, you mustn't break out like that. Remember you promised to do what Mr. Beck told you."

"Do you want to blow up the house, Mr. Beck?" asked Clive, when he got his lips free again.

"On the contrary. You must at once call your uncle's attention to the leakage and offer on your way to the club to look in to Messrs. Carver and Picton and have the plumber sent over at once."

"Honestly, I don't see how I am to manage it. I am never in the room without my uncle, and I have nothing to bore lead pipes with."

For answer Mr. Beck opened one of the many doors of a wide mahogany press that almost filled one side of the room. Inside was a miscellaneous collection in pigeon-holes, ticketed like a particularly neatly arranged pawnbroker's shop.

From one of these pigeon-holes he took a round ball of dark wood about the size of a golf-ball. On one side a little cork was stuck. Mr. Beck pulled off the cork for a moment and showed a kind of flat needle about an inch long, very bright and sharp, projecting from the ball. "That will go through lead like butter," he said simply. "They use it in the trade when business isn't brisk enough."

He replaced the cork as he spoke, and Clive took the little instrument gingerly and dropped it into his pocket.

"You will be here to-morrow about one o'clock for your plumber; do you understand that, Mr. Meredith?"

Clive nodded again a little sulkily. He had a vague notion he was being made a fool of.

"All right then," said Mr. Beck, with unabated good-humour. "I'm busy just now, and it's quite possible you two have something to say to each other. Goodbye."

Clive hardly knew whether to be angry or not at this abrupt dismissal. But Mamie kissed her hands beamingly to Mr. Beck at the door.

"What, done already, my man?" he said pleasantly. "That's quick work. Here's sixpence for yourself."

Mr. Meredith was not, as a rule, generous about tips, and it may be safely said that no sixpence from his pocket was, from his point of view, ever so completely misplaced before.

ALL that afternoon, in defiance of omens, Mr. Marmaduke Meredith was in the very best of good-humour and whistled softly to himself at his writing, like one with whom the world goes smoothly.

After dinner, over his fourth glass of sound old port, finding Clive shy and distrait and more or less ashamed of himself, his good uncle kindly approached the delicate subject of the marriage of his own accord.

"I am anxious only for your happiness, my dear Clive," he said, in the most approved heavy-father stage style. (He had a great taste and talent for theatricals.) "But you are very young. Are you sure of your own heart? Are you quite certain your happiness will be secured by this alliance?"

Of course Clive was desperately, fervently, vehemently certain.

"Then I shall be no bar," said his uncle grandly; "you shall have my consent without the asking."

Clive started from his chair in a quiver of delight. "I cannot tell you, uncle," he cried, with simple sincerity, "how grateful I am. I shall take care you do not suffer from your generosity."

But his uncle only put aside his nephew's protestations and promises. "I need no reward," he said, "but the approval of my own conscience and the feeling that I have made two young people happy without any weary waiting for their happiness. People think I have been improvident, Clive, but they are mistaken. I have, thanks to your poor father, for many years enjoyed a handsome income, and I have put by enough to keep me in comfort, if not in luxury, for the poor remainder of my days. But it is not of myself that I want to speak. Life is for the young, and may your life, Clive, be full of all happiness."

He paused for a moment, apparently overcome by his emotion, and Clive sat silent, deeply impressed.

Presently Mr. Marmaduke Meredith recovered himself a little. "When a good thing is to be done, it cannot be done too soon," he said softly. "Drink your wine, my boy, and come with me to my study."

He unlocked the American desk, spread out a sheet of foolscap before him and clipped a gold pen in the little round brown delph bottle of ink. The bottle was fuller than he expected, and a big drop plopped upon the foolscap. Mr. Meredith tore the blotted paper into small bits, threw the fragments into the waste-paper basket, and took another sheet.

In a fine large flowing hand he wrote his consent to Clive's marriage, dated and signed it with a flourish.

"Will that do?" he asked, as he handed Clive the paper.

"How can I thank you, uncle?"

"Don't try."

"Mamie will be so surprised and delighted. I knew I was right all along, but she thought—"

He broke off embarrassed, not wishing to tell his uncle that Mamie regarded him as a "crocodile hypocrite."

His uncle eyed him keenly for a moment, then smiled kindly, taking pity on his embarrassment. "Poor little Mamie!" he said, in his gentlest way, "I suppose she thinks me a wicked monster; a Babe-in-the-Wood kind of uncle. Well, Clive, we must not blame her. She doesn't know me as you do, and she's very young and believes in fairy-tale monsters. We will give her a little lesson though, if you don't mind."

He took the signed paper from his nephew's hand, folded it up and put it into an envelope which he carefully sealed with a big red seal.

"I want to teach her to trust us," he explained. "Do you mind promising me, Clive, that you won't show her the consent— that you won't even open this envelope till after your marriage? You can bring it to the church and open it in the vestry if you like. But mind, I make no conditions. You have my consent anyhow."

"Of course, uncle, I'll do what you wish," Clive answered gratefully. "Mamie will take my word for anything, or"— after a significant pause— "yours either for that matter."

But Mamie was not satisfied when she heard the whole story, and was allowed to look with eyes vainly inquisitive at the outside only of the sealed envelope. "I trust you of course, dear, but I don't trust him. He's too sweet to be wholesome. I'm sure he means to cheat you."

Then Clive petted and kissed and coaxed her, and she meekly agreed with him in everything, and, woman-like, had her own way in the long run.

For a second time Mr. Beck was appointed umpire, and they went straight to his house.

Mamie was just opening a voluble address for the plaintiff in the case, when Mr. Beck put up his big hand to stop her.

"I think I can guess what has happened," he said to Clive. "Your uncle has signed the consent?"

Clive nodded.

"Perhaps he volunteered to sign it?"

"How did you guess that?"

"Never mind. I have guessed more than that in my time. After signing it he put it in an envelope, sealed it and made you promise you would not open it until after your marriage."

Clive was too surprised to answer.

"There, I told you so," cried Mamie. "Mr. Beck has guessed the trick at the first guess. Of course he changed the paper you saw him sign for a blank sheet."

Clive's face darkened. "Nonsense, Mamie," he began. "I'm quite sure I saw—"

Then Mr. Beck quietly interposed. "It's all right, Mr. Meredith," he said, "you can get married just as soon as you like."

"I'll get the license to-morrow," cried Clive delightedly, and Mamie the Wilful submitted without a word.

IT was to be a very quiet wedding, for neither of them wanted to make a society show of their happiness. They were to start almost straight from the church door for Rome and spend Christmas there. This was the suggestion of Mr. Marmaduke Meredith, who, though he kept a good deal in the background, proved himself most kind and considerate, and was as deeply interested— so he told Clive— in the young people's happiness as if it were his own. Even Mamie was softened by his persistent kindness.

The 10th of December was the happy day. The marriage morning was unclouded as the lovers' joy; the sky clear, the sun bright, and a keen, exhilarating snap of frost in the air that made the blood tingle with intense vitality. The little church was brightly lit and gaily decorated with holly, and the best man was well up to time in orthodox wedding garments, with hand nervously fingering his waistcoat pocket to make sure the wedding-ring was safe. Miss Flossy Burton, the ten-year-old bridesmaid, looked bewitching in a white satin dress and big blue scarf and long golden ringlets down her back, and treated the good-natured best man with such demure disdain that he was tempted to catch her up and kiss her, even in the church. Away in a corner the bride's mother was crying softly for her lost daughter, her grief tempered by admiration for her new son, and beside her was the bride's bachelor uncle ready to give away formally the treasure that did not belong to him. Yonder, under the shadow of a pillar knelt Mr. Beck, on whose presence at the ceremony Mamie had imperiously insisted. Bride and bridegroom were both popular, and the body of the church was filled with spectators, mostly young people of both sexes, for whom the ceremony has the same mysterious attraction that the candle has for the moth.

The vivacious Mamie was very quiet now, her fair face was pale under the wreath of orange blossoms and diaphanous white veil, and her sweet lips quivered a little. But joyous triumph was enthroned on her lover's face.

Never did a handsomer couple kneel together before an altar rail.

"And every woman wished her place,

And every man wished his."

TEN o'clock, the hour appointed, came and passed, then minute after minute went slowly by: still one guest was missing, Mr. Marmaduke Meredith, who had faithfully promised Clive to attend, had not yet put in an appearance.

Clive grew impatient, then as the minutes dragged on a feeling of something like dismay stole over him. But he was comforted by the feeling of the precious envelope safe in the breast pocket of his frock-coat.

He whispered a word or two to the best man who knelt beside him, and who got up quietly and slipped away to the vestry. Presently the vicar came out, white stoled, on the altar steps, and the wedding service began. Clive's responses were clear and firm, as befits a man; Mamie's low and sweet, as befits a woman. So the mystery was accomplished that bound two lives together in soul and body. The maid Mamie Coyle vanished from the world, and the bride Mamie Meredith put a timid, confiding little hand on her husband's arm as they walked together to the vestry where the first kiss of wedded love sanctified the contract.

The place was in a quiver of pleasurable excitement, and high over all the little bridesmaid, in the rumpling arms of the best man, was protesting shrilly against the indignity of being hugged.

Mamie Meredith, with trembling hand, has just written the first half of her new name in the register, when the tramp and whirl of a carriage driven furiously thundered to the door, and Mr. Marmaduke Meredith, big, red, impetuous, burst upon the company and gazed round him from face to face in angry amazement.

"My God! I'm too late after all!" he shouted.

Mamie fell back in open-eyed dismay at the sight of him, but his nephew came forward smiling, with outstretched hand. "Not too late to give us your blessing, uncle," he said. "We waited for you till the last moment."

His uncle stared at him like one dumfoundered.

"Don't dare to speak to me, sir!" he cried at last. "What is the meaning of this disgraceful proceeding?"

"Disgraceful proceeding! My marriage! Why, you know you gave your consent to it."

"It's a lie," shouted Mr. Meredith more furiously than ever, losing all control of his temper. "A pretty story, truly, that I would marry my nephew to a baby and a pauper."

The hot young blood flushed to Clive's face and his fingers clenched instinctively, but Mr. Beck—who had crept quietly close to him—laid a restraining hand on his arm.

"Keep cool," he whispered. "The paper."

Clive heard, and plucked the sealed envelope from his pocket.

"I have your consent here," he cried, "your written consent under your own hand. See!" he cried to the astonished guests who crowded round them, "this will show who's the liar."

He tore open the envelope, and held up, that all might see, a sheet of foolscap paper— quite blank.

Mr. Marmaduke Meredith laughed out a harsh, jeering laugh. "Is there any more foolery to be gone through?" he asked scornfully.

"Hold the paper to the fire," whispered Mr. Beck in Clive's ear.

The clear, sharp tone of command was in the whisper.

Stunned and bewildered, Clive mechanically obeyed.

Then slowly, in sight of them all, the words came out on the paper in the large, clear handwriting of Mr. Marmaduke Meredith:—

I hereby give my full and free consent to the marriage of my nephew, Clive Worthington Meredith, to Miss Mamie Coyle.

(Signed) Marmaduke Meredith.

21st November, 1893.

A big final flourish flowed from the last letter of his name. Mr. Meredith's heavy mouth fell asunder, and his face grew yellow and mottled like a half-ripe strawberry.

For a moment in his amazement he struggled in vain for words.

Then he broke out. "What d——n trickery is this?" and made a sudden dash for the paper.

But Mr. Beck's big hand was on his breast like an iron bar.

"Quietly, my dear sir," he said, in his very gentlest tones. "Keep as cool as you can, Mr. Meredith. You have played your little game for a big stake— and lost it. You had a strong hand, but we went one better. I had heard before this of vanishing ink, and maybe you have heard of invisible ink, Mr. Meredith. They make a good blend, and I took the liberty of mixing them in the little brown delph ink-bottle when I was doing a plumber's job in your study about three weeks ago; that's all."

_____________________

8. The Poisoner

WE find that Letitia Woodriff was accidentally poisoned by morphia. How taken or administered there is not sufficient evidence before us to show, and we desire to express our profound sympathy with the afflicted father, Mr. Woodriff, in the sad bereavement that has befallen him."

THE Coroner's jury could reach no deeper than this in the perplexing mystery. Their verdict given, with grave faces and quiet tread they left the father's house, where by special favour the inquest had been held.

Then John Woodriff stole up softly, as though he feared to waken her, to the room where his dead daughter lay, beautiful in death. With a timid gentleness he touched the little hand cold and white on the coverlet. The placid face with the still smile on the pale lips half frightened him. It seemed as if death had lifted his dear little girl— his own familiar pet and plaything— so far above him that even his thoughts could not reach to her now. It was no longer his girl that he had so loved and that so loved him, that lay there so calm and cold. An angel was in the room, pure and placid. His own bright, warm, loving Letty was lost to him for ever.

With a spasm of pain that gripped his very heartstrings, he bent over and kissed those poor chill lips passionately. The ice-cold touch stabbed him with a sudden agony of new grief, though his daughter was now two days dead. He pressed his face upon the counterpane, and his deep sobs shook the bed where the placid dead lay.

Then the door opened softly and a face showed itself at the opening— a young girl's face, wan and white, with red rims under the eyes.

"Father," said a soft voice, replete with tenderness, and Milly Woodriff stole to where her father knelt, shaken by sorrow, and threw her arm round his neck and strove to whisper words of comfort in his ear, though her own heart was breaking.

"Don't, father, don't!" she said; "it would grieve her, even in heaven, to see you thus; she, who was always so gentle, so cheery, and so loving. It's hard to bear, God knows, it's hard to bear, but we have each other left to love and live for until we meet our darling again."

The broken-hearted man yielded like a tired child to her caressing touch, and she led him from the room.

"Thank God, Milly," he whispered, "you are still left to me," as they sat together with clasped hands in the big silent sitting-room, where even the sunlight seemed to come sadly now.

A sudden fear, a pang of sharp remembrance came upon him as he spoke. He caught her hand so tightly that he hurt it. "Oh! my God," he cried, in a sort of frenzy, "must I lose her too!"

After that he sat for a long time looking at her earnestly, softly stroking the brown silky hair, and all the time a yearning, frightened look in his eyes.

Presently he seemed to steady himself with an effort, like one who has a purpose in view.

"Has any one come by the train, Milly?" he asked.

"The train is hardly in yet, father," she answered, with a glance at the marble clock on the mantelpiece, "and it's a good half-hour from town, you know. Do you expect any one?"

"I wired the day before yesterday to London for a detective— a man named Beck— Paul Beck. We were at school together, and great friends then, though we have not met since. I have heard he is the keenest detective in London. I hoped to have had him down for the inquest. If any man can find out how poor Letty died, he can."

"What's the use, father, of worrying over that now? It will only help to keep the wound open in your heart. It won't bring our darling back to us."

"Milly," he said, with such earnestness he frightened her, "I would give my right hand this moment to know how death came to poor Letty."

There was silence again. Presently he asked abruptly, "Where is Susan?"

"In her room, father, utterly broken down. She has hardly eaten or slept since. In some things Susan is like a little child, and she and Letty were such friends!"

"Go to her, my dear. You will comfort each other. I'm restless and impatient for this man to come. I'll walk down a bit of the road and meet him."

MR. WOODRIFF'S house was a tall, red-brick building that looked out from the breast of a wooded slope far over the sea. About three miles inland was the large and prosperous town of Deringham, where Mr. Woodriff, as an ironmaster, had acquired the ample fortune which enabled him to purchase the house and grounds of Merview, and live in comfort on the borders of the sea which he had loved from a boy.

As he strode steadily down the high-road, half-way between the town and his house, a hansom went past him rapidly. One quick glance showed him seated in it a placid, dull-looking man, whom he at once set down as a commercial traveller. But the hansom pulled up sharply before it had got twenty yards past. The dull-looking man leaped out like a schoolboy and ran back towards him, calling his name.

"Don't you know me, Jack?" he cried cordially, with hand outstretched. "I knew you at first sight."

Mr. Woodriff looked for a moment bewildered; then a light dawned on him. "Surely you cannot be little Paul Beck?" he cried.

"Little or great, I'm Paul Beck as surely as you are John Woodriff— the very same Paul Beck you saved from many a basting at school when I was a small boy, and you were a big one. I'm heartily sorry, Jack, that our first meeting again should be such a sad one."

"You got my wire, then?"

"And your letter; both the same time. I was out of town when the wire came or I should have been down for the inquest. What was the verdict?"

"Accidental death."

Mr. Beck glanced at his face. "And what do you think yourself?"

"I really don't know what to think."

Again Mr. Beck looked at him keenly and steadily. "You are horribly cut up, Jack, and all of a shiver. There is something else besides grief troubling you; something frightening you. I'll send the cab on to the house; we will talk this thing out while we walk. I always feel most alone where there are no walls."

They walked on together for a few moments without a word, till they came to a by-path on the left hand that led straight to the sea. They turned off the higher road, still without speaking. Mr. Woodriff's face was haggard and perplexed and his eyes on the ground, and Mr. Beck glanced at him now and again as if striving to read his thoughts. The by-road took them out on a broad stretch of smooth strand. Beyond this to the sky-line the sea lay sparkling, and the long, clear ripples split themselves on the sand, foaming softly like champagne. At their back the cliffs rose in a black wall.

"What is it?" asked Mr. Beck abruptly, as they walked close to the sea's margin.

"I'm afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"I don't know of what or of whom, but I'm in deadly terror that my daughter Milly— my only daughter now— may be taken from me. Letty is not the first that has been poisoned. I dread she may not be the last." He was trembling all over.

Mr. Beck took his arm. "Jack," he said quietly, "if I can help you, I will, for old times' sake, if for nothing else. Things may seem blacker to you than they really are. Tell me straight out what you know and what you fear."

"It's a long story, Paul."

It was curious how naturally the old schoolfellows dropped into the tone and names of a quarter of a century ago.

"I'm in no hurry. Tell it your own way, but tell the whole of it."

"ONLY a year ago my eldest daughter Barbara died suddenly at school in the south of Germany. The telegram announcing her death miscarried, and she was buried before I arrived. The doctor said it was heart disease. I didn't doubt it at the time; I had no reason to doubt it. But now I'm sure she was poisoned with morphia, as poor Letty was poisoned. It happened just the same way. Babs had been quite well all the morning, and breakfasted with the other girls. After breakfast she went to her room to read her letters from home. An hour later they found her lying back, huddled up in an easy-chair. They thought her sleeping, but she was dead."

"Your daughter Letty died in the same way?"

"Precisely. Her twin-sister, Milly, and her cousin, Susan Coolin, who is on a visit with us, were at a young peoples' party at the other side of the town, and stayed overnight. Letty insisted on remaining at home with me. We breakfasted together, and she was full of life and spirits. She was expecting a letter from an old schoolfellow, and she walked into town to meet the postman. We were together as far as the turn to the sea. I went out for a few hours' mackerel fishing. She kept the road towards the town. Twenty yards away she turned smilingly to kiss hands to me as I passed the corner. I never saw her alive again.

"When I returned the house was in an uproar of alarm and grief. The girls had just returned, and found Letty lying half across her bed, as if she had fallen on it, dead. At the inquest morphia poison was proved. She must have taken nearly ten grains of pure morphia the doctor declared— enough to cause death in less than half an hour."

"Had your daughters any love affairs?"

"None that I ever heard of. They are very young— poor Letty wasn't eighteen; a perfect schoolgirl. Did I tell you that she and Milly were twins? Babs was about the same age when she died— when she was poisoned in Germany."

"They were cheery girls, you say?"

"As gay as larks. You may put suicide out of your head, if that is what you are thinking of."

"Suicide and accident dismissed; then we come to murder. Who were in the house when your daughter Letty was poisoned?"

"Family servants, every man and woman of them. I'd as soon think of suspecting myself. Besides, there was no motive, and they all loved her."

Something in the way the word "motive" was said caught Mr. Beck's quick ear.

He turned round and faced John Woodriff there on the lonely sand, breaking off their walk abruptly.

"What are you hiding from me, Jack? What motive do you know for this crime?"

"I know of none."

"What do you guess, then? Come, be frank if I am to help you."

"The very thought is so preposterous— so horrible— that I don't like even to put it in words. Besides, it is impossible."

"Let me judge of that. By clearing the impossibles out of the way we come to the possibles."

"I must go back a bit, then, to explain. You may remember we Woodriffs were five in family; four brothers and a sister. The eldest, Robert, became a doctor and settled down in Liverpool. He put his only son, Coleman Woodriff, to the same profession, and left him his practice— not a very good one, by all accounts— when he died. My second brother, Peter, has been in Chicago for thirty years, a bachelor, doing well and promising every year to pay us a visit. But he has nothing to do with what I have to say to you. The two youngest were myself and Dick. Dick always hated Robert like poison, but he and I were the best of friends till, as ill-luck would have it, we fell in love with the same girl. We fought our battle out fairly, like brothers, for her love, and I won! Poor Alice! No man ever had a better wife, but she died after the twins were born. I loved the little ones the dearer for her sake. Dick never got over his grief. He didn't quarrel with me— he was too decent a chap for that— but he threw up his business; he was doing well as a stockbroker in Liverpool, and went to Australia, and stayed there till he died about three years ago. He speculated recklessly in land and building lots. But everything turned up trumps for him— crossed in love, you know the proverb— and he made a big pile.

"He and I were good friends to the very last. He wrote every other post. He was very fond of the girls— for Alice's sake, I think, as much as mine— constantly sent them handsome presents, and when he died he left them every farthing he had in the world, close on a quarter of a million."

"Share and share alike?"

"Share and share alike, or to the survivors or survivor after they reached the age of eighteen years."

Mr. Beck whistled under his breath. "If none reached the age of eighteen?" he asked, after a pause.

"There was no provision in the will for that. I suppose poor Dick never thought of that. But I have consulted a lawyer about it. He tells me that if my three daughters should die under eighteen there is an 'intestacy,' and as the property is what he calls 'real,' that is houses and lands, it all goes to Dr. Coleman Woodriff, as heir-at-law to the deceased."

"Here's our motive, anyway," said Mr. Beck, "clear enough and strong enough."

"But the thing is preposterous," protested Mr. Woodriff earnestly, "admitting that the man, my brother's son, could be such a devil, and I won't and don't admit it! Still he could have no hand in this. He was in Liverpool when Babs was poisoned in Germany; he was in Liverpool when Letty was poisoned here."

"What kind of a fellow is this Dr. Coleman Woodriff?" persisted Mr. Beck.

"A very decent fellow, by all accounts, and clever, too; though he has been always pulling the devil by the tail. I haven't seen much of him, but I liked what I saw. My sister and his aunt, Mrs. Coolin, who is a widow, and lives in Liverpool, knows him well, and likes him greatly. It's her only daughter, Susan, that I told you is staying with us."

"What does Susan think of Dr. Coleman?"

"Well, she doesn't like him— that's a fact. But it's only a young girl's whim. She's a quiet, shy little body, two years older than Milly, but you'd think she was three years younger— she's like a child in the ways of the world. In spite of her unreasoning dislike of Dr. Coleman, she has nothing but what is good to say of him. Believe me, Paul, if you want to get to the bottom of this thing, you'd best leave him out of your head."

"Humph!" was Mr. Beck's sole comment on this appeal, and there was a long lapse into silence.

"Did your daughter Letty get the letter she was expecting?" he asked presently.

"I cannot say. There was a fire in her room, and we found the ashes of some papers in the grate."

"No trace of poison found anywhere?"

"None. The servants swore that she tasted nothing after her return. I have had her room locked since she died, hoping you would come."

It was only by a palpable effort that the man forced himself to answer Mr. Beck's questions calmly and clearly, keeping down by a strong effort the grief and fear that tortured him. Mr. Beck walked on in silence, with a face as blank as a gravestone, and the other watched him with eyes of helpless, piteous appeal, like a dog's.

In a moment or two John Woodriff's impatience mastered him.

"For God's sake, speak, man!" he broke out.

"I have nothing to say worth saying," Mr. Beck answered quietly.

"You believe there has been foul play. You think Milly is in danger?"

"I fear so."

The self-restraint of the father snapped suddenly, and his grief and fear broke loose.

"You will help me to save her, Paul, my poor little girl— my last? God pity me! For the sake of old times, you will help me to save her?"

A look of deep sympathy came to Mr. Beck's face, transforming it for a moment. For answer he gripped his old schoolmate's hand.

"Steady, Jack!" he said. "You will need all your nerve before this business is through. How old is your daughter Milly?"

"She wants barely a month of eighteen."

"That shortens the job. This elder brother in Chicago— Peter, I think you said— can we have him back at once?"

John Woodriff stared at him as if he had gone suddenly mad.

"I mean, can I be your eldest brother and live with you for a month or so without arousing suspicion?"

"Oh, certainly! No one here knows him, and everybody knows that I have been expecting him."

"That's settled then. The day after to-morrow your eldest brother Peter will turn up unexpectedly from Chicago. But, mind, the secret is between us two. Not a word to a single soul."

"Not even to Milly or Susan?

"Most certainly not! I must be Peter Woodriff to every one but you. Now there is one thing more. I want to have a look at the room where your daughter died before I go back to town."

But Mr. Woodriff objected shrewdly. "If you are coming back as Peter, best not show yourself at all now."

"Does any one know that Mr. Beck, the detective, was expected?"

"No one except my daughter Milly."

"I think I had best put in an appearance," said Mr. Beck. "It's no harm that I should have a look round with two pair of eyes— Mr. Paul Beck's and Mr. Peter Woodriff's. I don't think the young ladies— or any one else for that matter—are likely to recognise me on my next visit. By the way, what is brother Peter like?"

"Like me they say, only taller."

WHEN they got to the house they found Milly Woodriff shy and frightened of the London detective. It was meek-eyed Susan Coolin that saw to his comfort, sat with him at lunch, and showed him to the room where her dead cousin still lay.

"If I can help you in any way, Mr. Beck, please tell me," she said, looking wistfully in his face with guileless blue eyes. "I was very fond of poor Letty."

"I'm sure of that, my poor child," he said gently. "But I do my work best alone."

He locked the room door on the inside, and began his search at once. Nothing escaped his quick eyes and hands. Finally he swept all the dust into a corner and examined it carefully, and then sifted the ashes in the grate through his fingers. In the ashes he found a blob of blue glass, melted to a long needle at one end, and a fragment, half burned, of a white pasteboard box. In the dust sweepings there was a little twisted gold ring of antique make and small value, a strip of narrow white ribbon notched like the edges of a saw; a tangle of bright-coloured silk threads, and innumerable pins and hairpins.

He showed his treasures in the palm of his big hand to John Woodriff just before he started.

"I have a notion," he said, "that there are one or two letters of our riddle here, if I can only manage to pick them out of the rubbish."

TWO days later a tall, loose-limbed man, with unmistakable suggestions of the Yankee in voice, dress, and figure, inquired at Merview for Mr. John Woodriff.

For a moment Mr. Woodriff was puzzled. But when the stranger said in a quiet drawl, slightly flavoured with a nasal twang: "Reckon, John, you don't know your own brother Peter who has come away round the big ball for a squint at you," Mr. Woodriff grasped his hand heartily, and welcomed Mr. Beck with unaffected cordiality.

It was a marvellous make-up. Peter Woodriff, of Chicago, was a very tall man— nearly three inches taller than Mr. Beck, whom he in no way resembled. About the lines of eyes and mouth there was a strong family resemblance to Mr. John Woodriff, which people noticed immediately, declaring they could tell them to be brothers at first sight.

The two girls were called down to welcome their uncle Peter and took to him at once. He was so shrewd and yet so kindly-hearted; so grieved at their grief when he came to know of it, that he won his way straight to their hearts.

Day by day they grew to be better friends. But though he plainly loved them both, Susan Coolin seemed his favourite. The dead load of grief for her twin-sister who was part of herself still lay heavy on the heart of the once gay and frolicsome Milly Woodriff. Now and again for a few happy moments her grief would be forgotten and the bright black eyes would sparkle with their former light, and she would answer her uncle's quaint jests with saucy liveliness. Now and again a gay verse would start from her lips, spontaneous as the wild bird's song. But it was only for a moment; the next the sparkle of her eyes would be quenched and the music of her voice hushed by the sad insistent memory of her sorrow.

But Susan was of a more placid mood. Grief itself could not ruffle the even gentleness of her nature. They were a curious contrast; the big, rough, shrewd man and the quiet, innocent little maid. But the contrast seemed to have its charm for both.

Peter Woodriff passed at once into the inner circle of their home-life. So perfect was the charm of his identity that John Woodriff, who was not good at make-belief, often found himself, quite naturally, speaking to him, and even thinking of him, as his brother.

To Susan, Peter Woodriff was the kindest of uncles, and she repaid his affection with little innocent confidences concerning her home-life in Liverpool, in which he seemed deeply interested. She told him frankly that she did not like her cousin, Dr. Coleman Woodriff. After a while it came out that the doctor had made love to the shy little maid and frightened her. Presently she was filled with remorse lest she had injured her poor cousin with his rich Uncle Peter, and accused herself of prejudice, and praised the young doctor's kind heart and cleverness, and told little stories of his doings amongst the poorer patients that showed her praise just.

SO the weeks slipped by as pleasantly as might be, and Time, the healer, smoothed away the first keen agony of their grief, till even the lurking terror in John Woodriff's heart was half asleep.

Brother Peter seemed to enjoy the society of his nieces more than that of his brother, and brother John contentedly allowed him to take his own course.

The girls had got the habit of walking out to meet the postman on his way from town, and Uncle Peter never missed the chance of being with them on those occasions. There was a red postal pillar-box, about two-thirds of the way into town, on which he would lean, lazily smoking, while his nieces rifled the postman and shared the spoils.

ONE morning in October, a memorable morning for all concerned, there was an unusually large delivery, and there fell to Milly's share, in addition to half a dozen letters, the crowning prize of a wedge-shaped box of wedding-cake, neatly tied in white paper and sealed with pale blue sealing-wax.

The girls carried their treasures back to the house, and, in the big sitting-room before a bright fire, gossiped over their letters, and read the interesting bits aloud for each other, while their Uncle Peter lounged in an easy rocking-chair, specially imported from town for his delectation, absorbed in newspaper and cigar.

The wedding-cake was kept as a bonne bouche for the last.

Milly cut the string and broke the seal, and got out the card box, tied in the orthodox narrow white ribbon edged liked a saw.

Inside the box lay a card with names in silver letters; the bride's maiden name run through with a silver arrow.

"Louisa Thompson!" cried Milly, in surprise and disappointment. "Oh! Susie, look here! I don't know any Louisa Thompson."

"Perhaps some of her friends know you, dear, and sent it. The address is plain enough anyway, and it looks very nice cake."

"Then you shall have half," said Milly generously; "take it yourself, and make a fair division."

Susan took the box, and with great deliberation divided the cake into two parts with an ivory paper-knife. She turned the cake out on a sheet of notepaper, and tossed the box and its wrappings into the fire. Then she pushed the paper towards Milly, offering her the bigger piece for her share. Very inviting the cake looked, dark on the white paper in two solid wedge-shaped slabs, with a deep selvedge of almond sugar at the thick ends.

Milly's fingers were almost on her piece when the big hand of Uncle Peter interposed so quietly and so suddenly that he startled both the girls.

He caught the paper by the corner and shifted it round, so that Susan's piece was towards Milly, and Milly's piece towards Susan.

"You won't mind changing, Susie," he said, "just to oblige me?"

Only that! but his eyes were on her face, and the pretty pink colour fled from her cheeks, and she grew ghastly pale under his gaze. For a moment, as if a mask had fallen, she saw the face of Mr. Beck, and the eyes of Mr. Beck looked straight into her own.

With a cry she caught up the paper of cake to throw it into the fire. But one big hand closed on her wrist— the other recaptured the cake, while Uncle Peter's voice drawled out— "Don't be rash, Susan, my dear, don't be rash. If you are not ready for that piece of cake just now, I'll put it by till it is wanted."

He loosed his hold on her wrist as he spoke, and she vanished from the room like a shadow.

The whole scene passed so quickly that Milly could make nothing of it.

"What have you done to Susan, uncle?" she cried, turning to him in surprise. "And where is my delicious piece of wedding-cake gone to?"

"It was only a little game between Susan and myself, my dear," he answered quietly, "and I don't think that piece of cake would be good for you, Milly." Then he sauntered lazily to the door.

"It's monstrous! Incredible! The thing is too devilish for belief!" said John Woodriff, when the story was told him ten minutes later in his study. "Are you quite sure, Paul?"

"As sure as death," retorted Mr. Beck gravely.

"I cannot believe it. That timid, meek, innocent little thing! Poor Letty! And Milly, too, that she was always so fond of!"

"Yes, as the smooth, gentle little kitten is fond of the bright, gay little birds. I guessed the claws under the velvet almost from the first."

"But, if you are quite sure, why not arrest her at once?"

"Because I don't want to make my haul until my net is full."

"But she may escape, and then—"

Mr. Beck's hand on his shoulder stopped him. "Come from the window," he whispered. "Look! look there!"

A girl's figure flitted round an angle of the house, so swift and silent it seemed a shadow, and disappeared.

"She has escaped," said John Woodriff excitedly.

"Keep cool," said Mr. Beck. "She is off to post a letter in the pillar-box. She'll be back in less than an hour. You'll see."

THE time went slowly by while they waited. It seemed three hours instead of one before they again saw the slight figure flit round the corner, returning to the house. They heard doors open and shut softly, and after a few moments a light step overhead told them that Susan Coolin had got back to her room.

"My turn now," said Mr. Beck. "Wait here for me," and without another word he was off at a brisk pace down the lawn.

Mr. John Woodriff's second wait was shorter than the first, though it seemed longer to his growing impatience.

Well within the hour Mr. Beck was back in the room, panting a little from his run, but quiet as ever.

"I have made my haul," he said, "and captured my fish." He took from his pocket a net of thin silk thread, fine as a cobweb. In the almost invisible meshes of the net there was a letter. "A simple little device," he said. "All clever devices are simple. I got it from the cutest post-office thief I ever met. You drop the net into the opening of the letter-box. The threads are invisible, unless you are looking for them. This fine wire spring keeps the mouth of the net open, and every letter that's posted is caught. I set my trap this morning, not for the first time, when I saw the wedding-cake delivered. I caught five other fish in it besides this, but I threw the rest back. Now, whom do you think is this letter directed to, Jack?"

"Dr. Coleman Woodriff, Liverpool," he answered.

"A straight guess, and the handwriting on the envelope is Miss Susan Coolin's—shaky a little, but unmistakable. Now we will take the liberty of enquiring what Miss Susan Coolin has got to say to Dr. Coleman Woodriff, whom she dislikes so heartily."

He quietly broke the seal and read—

"My Own Darling,

"All is discovered just at the moment of success. The man I told you of— Uncle Peter— has proved a detective in disguise. He stopped Milly with the piece of poisoned cake at her lips. The same moment I recognised him, and his eyes told me he knew all. By what devilish cunning he guessed the well-kept secret I cannot say. Believe me, darling, it was through no fault of mine. Save yourself— save yourself while there is still time. They will learn nothing, be sure, from me. You were my only joy upon earth— the losing you is my only sorrow in leaving it. Before this reaches you I shall be no more. I have tricked the detective with all his cunning. I found where he had hidden the poisoned cake, and—"

Mr. Beck broke off his reading with a muttered curse, and darted from the room, and went up the stairs with a rush, John Woodriff at his heels.

He knocked at Susan Coolin's door. There was no answer. He turned the handle. It was locked. Without a moment's hesitation he put his shoulder to the door, and burst it in with a crash.

The room was quite still. Behind the bright chintz curtains, on the white counterpane, Susan Coolin lay dead— soft, pure, and beautiful as a white lily. The wealth of light golden hair lay scattered loose on her pillow like a saint's halo— a tender smile was on her dead lips. She seemed a statue of sleeping innocence, carved by a master-hand.

Something almost of pity was in both men's hearts as they gazed—so powerful is beauty's spell.

"We are too late," Mr. Beck said at last, very softly. "It's wonderful that a fiend should look so like an angel."

"Thank God, that it is not my poor Milly that lies there!" John Woodriff answered, in a faltering voice. "This wretched girl has died the death she planned for her. She has passed from man's judgment to God's. But for the man who tempted her to this—"

"I will hang the man," interposed Mr. Beck, with a touch of returning cheerfulness.

And he did.

___________________________

9: The Slip Knot

"YOU can't know how I feel about it, Syd."

"I think I can guess, Jack; I have been there myself, you know."

The two young men were sitting together after dinner, sipping coffee and green Chartreuse in the verandah that overlooks the central courtyard of the "Army and Navy" (known to the initiated as the "In and Out," from the words on the entrance pillars), once the private residence of Lord Palmerston, now the cosiest club in all London.

One young man was moody and the other sympathetic, and the conversation went on in fits and starts, with long pauses between.

The club waiter came up with a box of cigars. Each chose a big one with a gorgeous paper "cummerbund" of crimson and gold round its waist, nipped and lit it carefully, and puffed a few moments in solemn silence.

"She used to be the brightest and gayest-hearted girl in all London," Jack Templeton went on sadly; "as frisky as a young thoroughbred filly, and as hard to manage. Now she's just a broken-hearted little mope. She hasn't got a word to throw to a dog— she that was always full of saucy prattle. Just sits and pines away with pale face and wide-open blue eyes that look twice too big for it, as if she were going into consumption, by Jove!"

"When did the change come?" asked our old friend, Sydney Harcourt.

"Cannot say exactly. It was while I was away last year, you remember, after big game in India. You see, we are only second cousins. But we were brought up together like brother and sister by Aunt Julia. It was only when I went away from Mabel that I found I was fond of her not at all in a brotherly kind of way. Then she was riled at my going away, and would not write or anything, which made things worse. I came back before half my time was up, and I found her a poor little gentle, broken-hearted saint— the quick temper and the gay spirit both gone. She's barely twenty-one, and it's just horrible to see her eating her heart away like a dismal old crone."

There was a quiver in Jack Templeton's manly voice as he broke off and puffed his cigar vehemently, when a woman would have sobbed.

Sydney Harcourt laid his hand kindly on his friend's shoulder. The touch was full of sympathy, and the other felt it.

"Don't break down, old man," Sydney said. "There's no use whining. You have got to cure it or bear it. Forgive me for asking. Have you no notion of the cause of this sudden change— in love?"

"I don't know, honestly I don't think it. I wouldn't to-morrow grudge her to any decent fellow she was fond of. It would be a bit of a wrench, of course, but anything would be better than seeing her so miserable. There's Fred Haverlie— handsome Fred Haverlie, you know!— he's desperately gone on her, and I don't believe it's her money either, though he's deuced hard up, of course. But Mab does not seem to care two straws for him. I have seen them together, and, if anything, she's afraid of him. She's afraid of her own shadow these times. About a week ago I caught her crying over a letter as if her heart would break, and when I came in she turned pale with fright and hid it in her bosom. I would have given all the world to comfort her, but she wouldn't let me even speak of it. Sometimes she's so sweet and winning that I get a notion that she cares for me; but at others she's so cold and stand-offish that I'd be angry if the poor little scrap didn't look so wretched. I wish to the Lord I knew what to do. There is some mystery somewhere if I could only root it out."

"Why don't you talk it over with old Beck?"

"I don't think it would be the thing. It's too ticklish a subject to mention to any one but yourself, old man."

"Nonsense, Jack. You don't know the man. He's discretion itself. All the ladies tell their secrets to Paul Beck. He's quite the rage. The Duchess of Southern has taken him, and there's a pretty little mite of a girl with golden hair hanging down the middle of her back Flossy— what's her name?— always on the premises. They have afternoon tea there, and talk gossip. Beck only listens; he's a grave for a secret. Lil tells me all about it; she's constantly there. In fact, I'm growing to be quite jealous of old Beck."

"All the same, Syd, I don't think it would be the straight thing for me to go blabbing about Mab's secrets—the little I know of them."

"Get herself to go, then."

"I wish to the Lord I could, but I don't even know how to set about it. But there's your wife. She's Mab's best friend; perhaps she would try her hand?"

"Lil will be delighted, I'm sure. She believes no end in Beck! And Miss Vernon and she are fast friends, though they have only known each other a few months. Lil is fretting about her like yourself— she told me so, and would be glad to do her a good turn. I'll speak to her about it to-night, if you like."

"Thanks awfully, old man. I'll owe you a good turn for that."

SO it came to pass that three days afterwards Miss Mabel Vernon drove up with the Honourable Mrs. Harcourt in her neatly appointed brougham to Mr. Beck's door at half-past twelve, by special appointment.

"It's like going to the dentist," said Mabel, with a pitiable attempt at a smile. "I'm more afraid than if I were going to have a tooth out. You'll come in with me— won't you, Lil?"

"Don't be silly, Mabel dear. There— don't look so frightened," and she kissed her coaxingly. "Of course you must see Mr. Beck alone. He's waiting for you, and mind you tell him just everything. You could not do that, try as you might, if I were listening. I'll be back in an hour for you."

"Sit down, Miss Vernon," said Mr. Beck, with voice and manner so kind and homely, and withal so respectful, that the poor girl felt something like confidence creeping back to her quick-beating heart.

"Mrs. Harcourt told me you wanted my advice," Mr. Beck went on. "Remember, Miss Vernon, you must be quite frank with me if there is to be the least chance of my helping you."

"That's what Lil— Mrs. Harcourt, I mean— just now said to me. But it's so hard. It's a dreadful story, and I don't know where to begin."

"Tell the hardest thing right away; the rest of the story will tell itself afterwards."

"Well, then," she cried hysterically, "I'm married— secretly married— to a man who deserted me at the church door— a man I hate worse than death, while all the time I—"

She broke down utterly and sobbed like a little child— the saddest sound in all the world.

Mr. Beck let the tears have their way before he spoke again, more kindly than before.

"Try and compose yourself a little, Miss Vernon, and tell me how the marriage came about and how I can help you."

"You cannot help me— no one can help me!" she wailed. "I was a giddy, silly, wicked girl. It was my own fault— that's the bitterest thing of all, and now I must bear the punishment as best I can. I wish I was dead— that would be the shortest way out of it."

"You are too young to talk like that," said Mr. Beck, soothingly, for the poor girl was piteously in earnest. "As you have come to me, give me a chance to help you, if I can. Tell me the whole story?"

"When my cousin, Mr. Templeton, went to America— we had always been together— I felt vexed and lonely and restless and wicked, and I went about everywhere— balls and theatres and even music-halls— many places I shouldn't have gone to, I dare say. I know Aunt Julia was disgusted, but I didn't care. Mr. Haverlie took me about a great deal—'handsome Fred Haverlie'—you must have heard of him?"

Mr. Beck nodded.

"He was devoted to me in those days— just quiet, respectful devotion— not a bit of love-making or nonsense, not a word that Aunt Julia mightn't have listened to. But I knew, of course, and that's what made it so surprising afterwards."

"Made what so surprising?"

"I'm going to tell you. We were sitting alone together in a private box at a matinée at the Gaiety Theatre, when a young man came suddenly into the box behind us— such a handsome young fellow! He apologised for his mistake quite charmingly. It seems he was a chum of Mr. Haverlie's, and thought he was in the box alone. Then Mr. Haverlie introduced him to me, and I asked him to stay, of course, and we had a delightful time of it.

"Mr. Ransome— his name was Claud Ransome— seemed smitten almost from the first, and he was so bright and gay and clever I couldn't help admiring him. We met a great many times after that, and the fascination grew upon me. At first Mr. Haverlie was with us, but after a while we met alone. You see I could go anywhere I liked on my bicycle, and no one was a bit the wiser. Then I was frightened, and I wanted to give him up, but I couldn't— he had got such power over me. He seemed to know my very thoughts as if he were inside my heart, in a way that no other man could. It was a most curious feeling. Even then I was more afraid than fond of him. But he persuaded me and I persuaded myself I was in love, and he enticed me into consenting to a secret marriage."

"But what did your other lover, Mr. Haverlie, say to all this?"

"Oh! he wasn't my lover; not a professed lover, you know. He was most kind and generous and self-devoted; I must say that for him; though, like myself, he was deceived by Mr. Ransome. 'It will be a comfort to me that I helped you to your happiness,' he said one day, 'though it should break my own heart.' I declare I quite felt for him; and he did help us every way he could. So one morning, nearly a year ago, we were married quietly, and the man—my husband—disappeared at the church door, and I have never seen him from that day to this. Mr. Haverlie, who was best man, was most kind and considerate, and got me quietly home and kept my secret. He was just furious with Mr. Ransome; I believe he would have killed him if he could have caught him. But he had completely disappeared."

"Perhaps your husband— Mr. Ransome, I mean— is dead, Miss Vernon?"

"Oh no! I have letters from him every couple of months, mostly for money, with little, mean, unmanly sneers and stabs in them."

"But why should he keep away? Perhaps he was married before?"

"I'm afraid he was too young. He's not more than twenty-two. He's always threatening to come back and make me live with him. I could bear anything but that. His letters are a constant terror. I'm half mad at the very thought of his claiming me. Couldn't I be saved from that by a deed or something? I'd give all I have in the world to be safe from him."

"Yes," said Mr. Beck thoughtfully, "it might be done by a deed of voluntary separation. But the first thing would be to get him over here."

"He won't come."

"I think I could manage it, if you would allow me."

"How? I'd do anything."

"Let me put a paragraph in the Times announcing your approaching marriage with— well, let's say with Mr. Haverlie."

"I wouldn't marry Mr. Haverlie for the whole world. Besides, that would be bigamy."

"A newspaper paragraph is not a valid contract of marriage, Miss Vernon. Then you need not appear in the matter. All I ask is that you won't contradict the rumour for one week. Will you promise me that?"

"Lily Harcourt tells me I must trust you entirely."

"And you may, Miss Vernon. Believe me, you may; I am thinking only how I may best serve you."

There was a kindly honesty in his voice that went straight home to the heart of the poor, persecuted girl, and filled her eyes with tears.

"Do whatever you like," she said simply. "Only promise to keep within call to advise and help me should this man come back."

"It is the very favour I should have asked. I'm proud of your confidence and shall do what I can to deserve it."

NEXT day the following paragraph appeared on the fifth page of the Times:—

"We understand that a marriage has been arranged and will shortly be solemnised between Mr. Frederick Haverlie and Miss Mabel Vernon. The bride-elect is at present staying with her aunt, Lady Julia Filloby at Renvere, the family seat in Kent."

The same day Mabel had a flying visit from Mr. Haverlie, who came down specially from London to see her.

She knew what had brought him before he took a copy of the Times from his pocket and laid it on the library table.

"You could not suspect me," he said earnestly, "of any hand or part in this cruel jest, Miss Vernon. I have come direct from London to tell you how deeply grieved I was at the annoyance it must have caused you."

But Mabel, tutored by Mr. Beck, took the thing very quietly.

"I assure you, Mr. Haverlie, if you don't mind, I don't."

"Then you won't contradict this paragraph, Miss Vernon?"

"Most certainly not. Why should I trouble about what the newspapers please to write about me. I have enough of real trouble without that."

"Oh! Miss Vernon— Mabel," he cried, "if there were some hope for me, that at some time— no matter how distant— the rumour might come true!"

But she turned upon him angrily with heightened colour. "This from you of all men, Mr. Haverlie; you who know my unhappy secret that makes your words an insult."

"But, Mabel," he cried excitedly, "hear me out. If it should happily prove— if I myself could prove that—"

He checked himself suddenly in the middle of an incoherent sentence.

"You are right," he added after a pause, so gently and so sadly that her soft heart was touched, "and I was wrong, but I was sorely tempted. It was my first offence, and shall be my last. May I hope for forgiveness?"

Her anger was over in a moment, and they parted friends. But his words puzzled her, and she repeated them to Mr. Beck, who was established on the premises as the wealthy Yorkshire brewer, Mr. Bolton, with designs on a peerage.

He heard her out with a grim smile.

"Can you have Mr. Haverlie asked to stay on here for a few days? His presence might prove useful."

"Quite easily," she answered, "Cousin Jack— Mr. Templeton, I mean— has a carte blanche from Aunt Julia, who simply dotes on him. He does the honours of the place and chooses the guests."

"And you can manage it with him?" Mr. Beck asked without a smile.

"Yes, I can manage it with him, I think."

TWO days later came the expected letter from Mr. Ransome. The paragraph cut from the Times dropped from between the sheets as Mabel opened the envelope with trembling fingers. The letter was dated from Paris simply. It was short and hard:—

Dearest Wife  (it ran),

Two days ago I saw the enclosed announcement in the Times. I waited for the contradiction, and there was none. Now I am coming over to look after my property. Though I am as sick of our bargain as you can be, still the law must be respected, and the word 'bigamy' has an ugly sound. Your marriage with Mr. Haverlie would be an outrage which I am determined at all hazards to prevent.

Ever yours,

Claud Ransome.

Mabel Vernon was frightened at this savage letter, but Mr. Beck seemed quite pleased, and read the bit about Mr. Haverlie twice over with a pleasant smile.

Mr. Ransome followed his letter with only a day between. He was shown into the library, where Mabel waited for him, faint with fear and excitement.

Husband and wife met after three years' parting with no lip pressure or hand pressure. She bowed to him coldly, and he replied with a scornful stare. He was plainly in a furious temper.

"Pray, madam," he broke out, without further greeting, "what is the meaning of this disgraceful proceeding?"

So far he got when he became aware of a third party in the room.

The eminent brewer, Mr. Bolton, sat there quietly in the shadow, with his back to the window, and his eyes fixed on the handsome face and figure of Mabel Vernon's husband, on whom the full light fell.

A handsomer face or figure Mr. Bolton thought he had never seen. Mr. Ransome was a clean, straight standing young fellow, just over the middle size, square-shouldered, deep-chested, but with hands and feet as small as a girl's. His head was well-set and haughtily carried. His grey eyes were large and bright and cold; a slight, silky moustache half hid a well-shaped mouth, and his small ears, clean cut as shells, ears that tell of breeding, just showed under brown curls, crisp and close as a water-spaniel's.

All this Mr. Bolton's eyes took in at one look when Mr. Ransome broke off in surprise at seeing him there.

"Miss Vernon," Mr. Ransome resumed next moment with quiet insolence, "I requested a private interview. We are not alone."

"This gentleman is a friend of mine," she answered, made bold by her fears. "I won't see or hear you unless in his presence. He knows all— all I say— you can speak plainly before him."

"I have not the least objection, I'm sure," he replied, with a scornful look at the awkward figure and dull face of the eminent brewer. "This kind friend, I assume, will hardly encourage you to bigamy."

Poor Mabel was quite unnerved by the sneering insolence of his manner. She tried to answer, but her white, trembling lips could utter no sound.

Then Mr. Beck quietly interposed.

"This young lady never had the slightest intention of marrying Mr. Haverlie," he said.

"Then I've come here on a fool's errand."

"Not quite, Mr. Ransome."

"What do you mean, sir?" The words were jerked out sharply, as if by anger or fear.

Mr. Bolton was placid as a sleepy cat on a warm hearth-rug. "Have a little patience and I'll tell you. It will not surprise you to hear that this young lady has no desire to live with you, and she is willing to pay for the privilege of your absence."

"I won't let her marry again."

"You can't, I suppose you mean, Mr. Ransome. I have looked carefully into the papers and evidence. The marriage, unfortunately, appears to have been quite regularly performed. A voluntary separation is all she can hope for, and she is willing to pay handsomely for that."

"How much?"

"Half of all she has in the world. Three thousand a year would be your share."

Mr. Ransome's keen eyes lit up with pleasure and greed. It was plain that this scheme had not suggested itself to him now for the first time. Still he hesitated.

"I don't like this flirtation with Mr. Haverlie," he said slowly. "The world will still regard my wife as an unmarried woman."

"Mr. Haverlie is here, and shall be one of the witnesses to the deed, if you desire it."

His hesitation vanished in a moment.

"I accept the terms," he said. "When can the deed be signed?"

"It will be ready for execution the day after tomorrow. Meanwhile you can stay here if you choose."

"I do choose, most decidedly. My things are at the railway station. Can they be sent for?"

"Certainly; and my valet shall attend you, if you haven't got a man of your own."

"Thanks. I don't want spies," was the ungracious rejoinder. "If my things are sent for it will be sufficient."

MR. CLAUD RANSOME looked handsomer than ever as he entered the drawing-room a few hours later in well-fitting evening dress, with a splendid ruby solitaire blazing in his shirt-front. From a quiet corner Mr. Bolton watched his meeting with handsome Fred Haverlie, who started at the sight of him, and ground out something through his strong white teeth. But Mr. Ransome whispered a word or two in his ear that checked his anger like a charm, and the two walked apart for a few minutes, talking rapidly and earnestly before they parted— Haverlie looking nervous and Ransome triumphant.

At dinner young Ransome, who sat close to Mr. Bolton and almost opposite Mabel, was quite jubilant, and brimmed over with lively conversation. His talk was brisk as champagne and as intoxicating. His reckless gaiety frightened poor Mabel; she grew pale and shrunk into herself, like the poor little bird when the bright snake's fascination is upon it. Good-natured "Aunt Julia"— who loved her niece almost as much as her nephew, and whose chief wish in the world was to make those two one— quickly noticed Mabel's wan look and signalled an early retreat to the ladies, much to the disappointment of a lively young matron who sat to the right of the fascinating Mr. Ransome.

Holding the door-handle politely as the gay procession trooped by, Mr. Bolton contrived to whisper to the drooping Mabel Vernon: "Have courage, and wait for me alone in the library."

"Have courage, and wait for me alone in the library."

The ladies' departure was followed by a "movement of adhesion" on the part of the gentlemen; the gaps closed up, and the talk and the wine both flowed more freely.

Mr. Ransome took to chaffing the inoffensive Mr. Bolton, much to the amusement of some of the older men at the brilliant audacity of the youngster.

But he might as well have splashed water on a duck—Mr. Bolton bore the ordeal placid and stolid as ever.

"May I smoke, Mr. Templeton?" he called out in a pause of the laughter that Mr. Ransome's sallies awakened. Jack Templeton, who sat at the head of the table, smilingly nodded his assent.

Thereupon Mr. Bolton took from his pocket a shallow gold snuff-box, now fitted up as a cigarette-case, exquisitely chased, with a medallion by Watteau set in brilliants on the lid. While he selected a cigarette with much deliberation, the box caught the attention of his neighbour furthest from Mr. Ransome. Mr. Bolton handed it to be admired. "It is a gift from the Duke of Southern," he said, "for a slight service I was once fortunate enough to render his Grace."

Amid murmurs of admiration the jewelled box passed from hand to hand round the table— and disappeared.

Mr. Bolton waited with the look of expectation on his face growing into anger.

There was a lull in the conversation, a vague, uneasy feeling that something had gone wrong.

Then Mr. Bolton called out in a nervous voice, addressing the table generally, but glancing in the direction of Mr. Ransome: "Will you kindly send on my box, please?"

Dead silence followed. The guests looked at each other, and at Mr. Bolton, but no one spoke or moved.

Jack Templeton at the head of the table leapt to his feet. "This passes a joke," he cried sternly; "let it end here and now."

Then a confused protest broke out all round the table, with an angry undertone in it, but no one stirred.

Templeton's coolness came back to him.

"We must see this out," he said. "There are no servants in the room. Kindly lock the door, Harcourt. Gentlemen, where there is no exception made there is no indignity. I'm afraid I must ask you to submit to be searched. I will be the first myself."

There was a general murmur of approval, but neither Haverlie's nor Ransome's voices was in it. Haverlie, indeed, opened his mouth as if to protest, but closed it again with a vicious snap. Those who had quick eyes noticed that Mr. Ransome had grown deadly pale.

Templeton threw off his coat and waistcoat, and beckoned to Sydney Harcourt and Mr. Bolton, who searched him closely, feeling up and down with both hands.

"Take the rest in the order in which they sit from your own place," said Templeton to Mr. Bolton; and the next in order was Mr. Ransome, who stood like one stunned. But the moment Harcourt's hand touched his shoulder, he wriggled from his grasp and fell on his knees on the carpet, sobbing hysterically: "Don't touch me; don't touch me! I'm innocent; I swear it!"

Jack Templeton's face grew stern and hard.

"If you are innocent," he said shortly, "you can have no objection to be searched."

There was a second murmur of approval from the guests. Mr. Ransome gave one swift appealing look towards Haverlie, who stood silent with averted face— then broke down completely.

"Oh, don't search me before all these men," he shrieked shrilly; "I confess, I confess! Take me away, and I will tell all!"

Jack Templeton was about to speak again, when Mr. Bolton whispered a few words in his ear that shook him like an electric shock. But he kept his coolness wonderfully.

"Gentlemen," he said, "will you kindly forgive this unpleasant interruption, and pardon me for a few moments. I will ask my friend Mr. Harcourt to fill my place."

Before a reply could be given he and Mr. Bolton had left the room quietly, with Mr. Ransome between them.

SYDNEY HARCOURT took the head of the table. The guests, well pleased that a stranger had proved the culprit, dropped back into their seats—all but one. Handsome Fred Haverlie had glided through the opened door into the hall, caught up the first hat that came to hand, and, dressed as he was in evening clothes and pumps, ran down the avenue through the pelting rain towards the nearest railway station, three miles away.

Much amazed was Mabel Vernon when Jack Templeton and Mr. Bolton marched into the library with Mr. Ransome between them—pale and shivering—a very different person from the gay and insolent Mr. Ransome of a few hours before.

"What does it mean, Jack?" she cried excitedly. He flushed at the sound of his name from her lips, and grew confused.

"Mr. Bolton's gold box was missing—" he began.

"I never took it," burst out Mr. Ransome between his sobs. "Oh! do believe me, I am perfectly innocent."

"I quite believe you," replied Mr. Bolton, in the inimitably placid voice and manner of Mr. Beck, while he coolly took the missing box from his own waistcoat pocket. "I quite believe you are innocent of that, miss."

"Miss?" exclaimed Mabel, in utter bewilderment.

"Well, miss or ma'am," replied Mr. Beck, as coolly as ever. "The lady may be married for all I know, but one thing is quite certain— you are not married, Miss Vernon."

"Oh! Can this be true?" Mabel cried. "Are you quite sure, Mr. Beck?"

"Quite," Mr. Beck replied imperturbably. "I hardly think this lady will venture to deny it. You see, I had my suspicions from the first when I heard that 'Handsome Fred Haverlie'— of whom I know a thing or two— had helped another 'man' to marry the lady he wanted for himself. I was anxious to see this wonderful husband, and I saw him and guessed their clever little game."

"But how?"

"For one thing— gentlemen don't wear earrings in this country, miss," and he pointed to two white pinholes in the delicate flesh colour of Mr. Ransome's little ears. "The gold snuff-box was the final test, and it came off all right."

"You have no hold on me anyway," said the late Mr. Ransome defiantly. "I am no thief."

"You're something a good deal worse, my dear," replied Mr. Beck cheerfully.

"Can I be put in prison for what I've done?"

"Seven years," he replied, with unabated cheerfulness.

"For God's sake let me off this time," she wailed. "Have mercy; it was not my fault. It was Haverlie's— that coward Haverlie, who would not open his lips or help me just now. I met him first behind the scenes at the 'Topsy Turvy' theatre. I was engaged there— Miss Maud Guilfoyle— to play the 'masher' parts. It was that first put the trick into his head. He came constantly and made hot love to me and—and promised to marry me. Then I saw him with Miss Vernon and I guessed, and I was jealous and I hated her; so I fell in with his scheme. I knew he was fond of her and wanted to keep her safe from her cousin, Mr. Templeton, but I meant to keep her safe from Haverlie. To-night in the drawing-room he promised to marry me when the deed was signed. I thought everything secure, but now— Oh! I know I don't deserve any mercy. I treated you horribly, Miss Vernon. But for God's sake don't be too hard on me."

"You hear, Miss Vernon?" said Mr. Beck.

But Miss Vernon did not hear; she was standing apart, talking very earnestly to Mr. Jack Templeton.

She turned as Mr. Beck spoke; her cheeks flushed rosy red, her eyes radiant— as great a contrast to the woebegone Mabel Vernon as the sobbing woman before her was to the débonnaire Mr. Ransome.

"Poor creature! She throws herself on your mercy, Miss Vernon," said Mr. Beck. "She has confessed everything; you are quite free."

"For this once you are wrong, Mr. Beck," retorted Mabel saucily. "I am bound for life, as fast as pledge can bind me," and she gave her hand frankly to Jack Templeton.

__________________

10: The Slump In Silver

THESE ARE the questions that stood in his name:—

1. "Is the Right Hon. gentleman aware that there is a large and increasing quantity of unauthorised imitations of the silver coins of the realm in circulation in the United Kingdom?"

2. "What steps, if any, have been taken to detect the coiner or coiners and withdraw such counterfeit coin from circulation?"

3. "Is it true that these counterfeit coins are made from pure silver, and in view of this circumstance are the Government prepared to consider the adoption of the principle of bimetallism and free coinage of silver as the only effective preventive?"

SIR ROBERT VERDON, the handsome and portly Chancellor of the Exchequer, was plainly nettled by the questions. He showed no trace of his customary good-humour as he rose to reply.

"Her Majesty's Government," he said, "have had their attention directed to the circumstances mentioned in the question of my honourable friend. They are taking active measures for the detection of the offender and the suppression of the offence. But it would not be for the interest of the public service to enter into further detail. In reply to the last paragraph of the question of my honourable friend, the Government are not prepared to propose bimetallism as the alternative to crime."

There was a ripple of laughter below the gangway at the close of the answer; but the men on the front benches did not join in it. The matter under consideration was too serious. It was well known that a vast system of silver coinage, in which the Mint had no concern, was in process for the last three or four years. It was rumoured that the system had, by some mysterious process, extended over the Continent and even to America. But, as it subsequently transpired, even the initiated had but a faint conception of the extent of this gigantic fraud.

About five years before, the persistent slump in silver had brought its price down to under two-and-six per ounce. The intrinsic value of the metal of the silver coins of the United Kingdom was therefore not quite half the face value guaranteed by the Government; in other words, there was less than sixpence worth of silver in a shilling, and so on with the rest.

This slump had, of course, the effect amongst silver owners of intensifying the outcry for bimetallism.

But it had another effect more serious. The bright notion struck some enterprising coiner to make false coin in pure silver. The cost of the metal was less than half the value of the coin, and as his workmanship and material were as good as the Mint, detection of the counterfeit was impossible.

The idea caught on and grew to a vast international system. The counterfeit silver coins slipped mysteriously into general circulation. No one questioned them— no one could question them. To call them "base coin" would be a clear misnomer. They differed from the genuine coinage only in their place of origin. So vast was the system that the increase of silver coinage and the consequent demand for the metal began to tell on the price of silver bullion. It rose gradually from half-a-crown to four shillings per ounce, though the rise was popularly attributed to other causes. Even financial experts never guessed how largely it was due to this practically free coinage of silver.

NO wonder the Chancellor of the Exchequer was annoyed when Mr. Mirabel inconsiderately directed the attention of the House of Commons, and worse still, of the public, to this highly inconvenient and embarrassing question. All the same, he began to regret his curtness, after a bit. Mr. Mirabel, the millionaire banker, was one of the wealthiest, the most generous, the most hospitable, and the most popular man in the House of Commons. He seldom spoke, but always to the purpose, yet without that affectation of superior knowledge which is so irritating to the ignorant. He was a sound Liberal, and his vote and cheque-book were always at the service of the party. To crown all, he was an intimate personal friend of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

On the other hand, Mr. Mirabel did not seem in the least disconcerted by the snub he had received. About half an hour later the division bell rang, and he was sauntering through the "No" lobby with a quizzical smile on his pleasant face, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer, coming behind, took his arm in a friendly way, and drew him into one of the recesses.

"Didn't think me rude, Mirabel, I trust?" he said. "The truth is we are terribly perplexed about this infernal business. Ordinary counterfeit coins, however good the die, are of course easily detected by the metal. But now even the experts cannot tell the difference."

He took a handful of loose silver from his pocket, and jingled it in comic perplexity. "As like as not," he went on, "one-half of these have never seen the Mint. I'll be passing bad coin and defrauding the Exchequer when I pay for my dinner later on."

Mirabel laughed. "So long, Sir Robert, as you will play the game of finance with counters instead of coin you will be liable to this danger. When you make the value of the metal equal to the face value of the coin you will spoil the clever coiner's little game. You don't find any private coiner operating in gold, for example."

"The remedy would be worse than the disease," retorted Sir Robert, a little pettishly. "You cannot fix a state price for silver any more than you can fix a state price for bread. I always wondered how a shrewd chap like you, Mirabel, took up this fad of the bimetallists. Your theory, it seems to me, reduces itself into an absurdity. 'Let's call half-a-crown's worth of silver three-and-six, and things will be all right.' No, my friend, silver must take its chance with other commodities in the open market. I find it sometimes hard to believe you are serious in this craze."

"Serious! My clear Sir Robert, I am backing my opinion for all I'm worth in the world, and that's a tolerably big stake. I'm engaged in what I suppose you would call 'making a corner in silver.' I believe in the future of the white metal, and I'm buying for a rise. The price is beginning to go up pretty quick, as you are aware—"

"Then this private coining hasn't hurt you?"

"In one sense, no. It is undoubtedly driving up the value of silver. Now, I bought most of my stock when it was at bottom prices—a mere drug in the market— and I could clear out, if I wanted to, at a big profit. But I don't want to. I'm still buying, and the rise in price doesn't suit me. I am not only on the deal here at home, but I have given my orders to my branch establishments in France, Germany, and America: 'Buy what silver you can at market prices.' I fancy I am the biggest owner of silver in the world at the present moment."

"But you are driving up the price on yourself by this wholesale purchase."

"That's so, but it cannot be helped. I mean to sell out at a big profit when bimetallism arrives."

"It will never arrive."

"I'll risk that. Meanwhile the price is growing, and I got the first five millions' worth so cheap I can afford to pay a little extra for further supplies."

"Five millions! Surely you haven't got five millions' worth of silver, Mirabel?"

"Nearer to seven millions, Sir Robert, by this time," Mr. Mirabel replied coolly.

"Door! Door!" shouted the impatient tellers at this moment. Mr. Mirabel and the Chancellor of the Exchequer had to run for it, and they passed out amongst the last stragglers of the division into the passage at the back of the Speaker's chair.

Mr. Mirabel and the Chancellor of the Exchequer had to run for it.

"IT'S INCREDIBLE," resumed the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a little out of breath, partly from the run, partly from amazement.

"Come and see for yourself. The bank is worth seeing for its own sake. It was a big private house, you know, with the finest cellars in London. I board all my clerks there, and try and make them comfortable, and stay there myself as often as not. A bachelor, you see, can choose his own home. It's a bit off the track, of course. I don't care to pay a guinea a foot ground rent. But my customers don't complain; men don't mind trouble when they want money. Come over and lunch with me some day— any day that suits you— and I'll show you over the big silver shop."

"Well, we'll see about it."

"Say 'yes' and I think I can give you a helping hand with this coinage business."

"That's a tempting bribe. Wait one moment." Sir Robert stepped into the House through the entrance behind the Speaker's chair, lurking in the shadow. "There's nothing doing here," he said when he came out the next moment. "Come to my room, Mirabel, and we'll talk this over. You have no notion how important it is to us."

"Perhaps not," Mr. Mirabel answered, as they walked down the long passage together; "but I know it is very important to me."

"NOW tell me frankly," said the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when they were alone in the room together with closed doors, "were you serious when you said you could help me to catch my coiner?"

"I cannot myself, of course, but I think I might recommend you the man who can— a detective named Beck. The Scotland Yard chaps are babies to him, by all accounts."

"Beck! Beck! I think I've heard the name before. Why, that is the man the Duke of Southern talks so highly of!"

"And the Duchess raves about; precisely."

"I've a good mind to try him. Do you know where he is to be had?"

"He's in the House at present, if he hasn't left since the division. That's what put his name into my head. I saw the placid face in the Strangers' Gallery, when I got up to ask my question. Shall I send him to you?"

"I will take it as a very great favour."

"All right. Mind that visit is booked," and Mr. Mirabel started off in pursuit of Mr. Beck.

FIVE minutes later Mr. Beck was closeted with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who rapidly explained what he wanted. "I don't conceal from myself or you, Mr. Beck that it is a most difficult task. Scotland Yard has failed to find the slightest clue, though, of course, we have to put the best face on things for the public. The matter is of urgent Imperial importance, and expense is literally of no account whatever in comparison with success."

"I never bargain," said Mr. Beck, "and I have never had any reason to complain. I'll do my best for the work's sake, and take my chance. This present case seems to me to resolve itself into two distinct parts. First: stop the coining. Second: catch the coiner. The first half appears simple enough if the people at the Mint will lend a hand."

"I will give you a letter to Mr. Moulton to assist you in every way. You'll let me know from day to day how you get on. You might also communicate with Mr. Cecil Mirabel, M.P. He's deeply interested in this matter and may be able to help you. You know Mr. Mirabel, of course?"

"The Silver King! The biggest private banker in England! The man that is making the Rothschilds take a back seat. Yes, I know Mr. Mirabel."

Mr. Moulton received Mr. Beck the next day at the Mint somewhat superciliously, but he thawed when he read the warm recommendation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

"Certainly, certainly, Mr. Beck," he said, with as much cordiality as he could assume, but the long, thin hand he offered was limp, and the keen, cold eyes refused to have any part in his ungracious smile. "Certainly we will assist you in every way in our power."

He would have questioned Mr. Beck, but the other, in a quiet, masterful way he could assume when the occasion required took the cross-examination into his own hands.

"This rival manufacture has hurt your business?" he asked.

"Somewhat— not as much as is thought, I should say. It has delayed the issue of silver coinage— that's all."

"Are you going to have a new issue soon?"

"Almost at once; dated the present year of course. It would create suspicion— perhaps panic— to delay it much longer."

"Can I see the 'press room'?" asked Mr. Beck, a little abruptly.

"Certainly; this way!"

Mr. Beck examined the row of huge coining presses with great care. The vast power of each of those big engines he saw was concentrated on the narrow point where the die touches the metal and gives it a new character to wear through the centuries.

Then Mr. Moulton took one of the dies— a half-crown as it proved— from the steel girdle and handed it to Mr. Beck. "The coiner has the facsimile of this," he said. "We cannot tell our own work from his."

"I think I have a plan," said Mr. Beck musingly, "to help you in the future. It's such a silly, simple plan, I'm half ashamed to mention it. But it ought to stop the coining, and perhaps catch the coiner. Couldn't we have a little microscopic private mark on the die, say 'M' for Mint, there on the smooth part of the Queen's neck. It should only be visible, of course, with a strong magnifying glass. The coiner could never suspect: new counterfeit coin could thus be detected at once. When the old coins are gradually called in 'Othello's occupation's gone.'"

Mr. Moulton professed himself delighted at the suggestion. "I'll see about it at once," he said.

"Do nothing hastily," cautioned Mr. Beck; "above all, keep the secret tight. If you could have one half-crown— only one, mind— made for me with the new mark, as a specimen, by to-morrow, I would call in a few days with further instructions."

NEXT day Mr. Beck got his specimen and professed himself delighted with the masterly way his notion had been carried out. The little 'M' was quite invisible to the naked eye, and perfectly distinct under a strong glass.

He called straight-away to show it to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but Sir Robert was not to be seen.

By sheer good luck, however, Mr. Beck caught Mr. Mirabel at the Reform Club. He took the "Silver King" aside, explained his plan to him, and showed him the specimen coin.

Mr. Mirabel was unaffectedly delighted. He chuckled over the ingenuity of the plan and congratulated Mr. Beck. "So this is the first coin of the new issue," he said, as he examined it carefully through the strong glass Mr. Beck lent him. "It's quite a curiosity in itself; I declare it will have a historic interest when the great conspiracy is exposed."

"You can keep it if you want to," said Mr. Beck good-naturedly; "it is of no further use to me."

"Thanks," said Mr. Mirabel, as he pocketed the half-crown.

A FEW days later came the new issue of silver coinage from the Mint. There was a very limited application for supplies to the banks, so great was the glut of coined silver everywhere. Even Mr. Mirabel's bank—the "Silver House," as it was called—took only a very small consignment.

The same morning Mr. Beck walked briskly into the Bank and inquired for Mr. Mirabel. Mr. Mirabel was expected in about half an hour. While he waited Mr. Beck went to one of the compartments at the great circular counter of carved mahogany, and changed a five-pound Bank of England note.

"Four sovereigns in gold, the rest in silver," he said; "half-crowns if you have them."

Then he got away to a quiet corner and examined his eight half-crowns carefully through the strong magnifying glass.

Yes! there was the miniature "M" in its appointed place, clear and distinct under the glass. Mr. Beck gave a quiet little self-satisfied chuckle when he saw it.

Mr. Mirabel came up behind quietly and caught him at work. "Hulloa!" he cried, clapping him on the shoulder. Then more softly: "You are seeing that your trap is properly set, I suppose? Any more news of our money-making mystery?"

"Well, yes," said Mr. Beck slowly, "I think I'm on the right scent at last."

"Bravo!" cried Mr. Mirabel, with genuine pleasure in his voice. "The Chancellor of the Exchequer will be delighted. Have you told him yet?"

"Not yet. I've called twice, but he was out. It was too ticklish a thing to write about. I want him to have the first news, of course."

"Then you are in luck. He is coming here at half-past two to lunch and look round. Can you stay to lunch? We could talk the thing over afterwards."

"You are very kind," said Mr. Beck.

Punctually at half-past two o'clock the Chancellor of the Exchequer arrived, and was warmly welcomed by Mr. Mirabel at the door.

"I've a surprise for you, Sir Robert," cried the banker. "Our prize detective is here. He swears he is on the track of the enterprising coiner." Mr. Mirabel laughed good-humouredly as he spoke.

"You don't seem to believe him," said the Chancellor of the Exchequer, laughing in turn.

"Oh! you see those detectives always have clues. I'll wait until he comes out at the other end before I make quite sure."

"He didn't give you any particulars, then?"

"No; he is waiting to open his budget to you. I have asked him to lunch with us; I hope you don't mind."

"On the contrary I'm very glad of it. I'm deeply interested in this coining mystery, of course. But apart from that, this Mr. Beck must be a most interesting man from all I have heard of him."

THE lunch was perfection, and Mr. Mirabel the most gracious of hosts. Mr. Beck was not one bit bashful at sitting down to lunch with a Cabinet Minister and a multi-millionaire. He entirely justified his reputation as an interesting man. He kept both Mr. Mirabel and Sir Robert entranced with his stories of "dangers, stratagems, and spoils," modestly told as if he were half apologising for his own part in them.

"Have you had no failures, Mr. Beck?" Mr. Mirabel asked.

"I never speak about my failures," said Mr. Beck naively.

"Well, you seem to have been lucky as well as skilful in your cases."

"Much luck and little skill," replied Mr. Beck, with emphasis. "I have always maintained it's a bad thing for a detective to be too clever, particularly when he comes to deal with clever criminals. I remember a story I read when I was a boy, how by the sheer dint of ignorance a man who couldn't fence at all, beat a famous fencer. That's just the way with me. It's always some simple little trick, I find, that throws the very clever man off his guard."

But regarding the case in hand, Mr. Beck could not be induced to utter a word.

"One good thing at a time, Mr. Mirabel," he protested, "and this lunch is a very good thing, if I may say so. The case will come in due course."

At last the lunch drew to an end.

"One more glass of Madeira," said Mr. Mirabel. "There are not fifty bottles of that wine, or it's equal, in the world." He poured the precious liquor into three large goblets of Waterford cut glass, whose facets sparkled like topaz as the yellow glow touched them.

"Here's success, Mr. Beck," he said, raising his glass.

"A very generous toast," said Mr. Beck, nodding approvingly, while he sipped the priceless Madeira.

THEN the two friends, with Mr. Beck following at a little distance, passed through an opening in the mahogany counter, to the back of the great hall, and down a staircase of wrought iron to the vast vaults of which Mr. Mirabel was so proud. The way lay at first through a series of small chambers where the books of the bank were kept in safes, ranged round the fireproof walls. They came next on larger safes in which were stored valuables of great price; for Mr. Mirabel did a good wholesale pawnbroking business amongst the nobility of England.

"There are a great many family skeletons in that cupboard," he said, tapping the door of a huge safe with his walking-stick. "I should not like to let you interview them, Mr. Beck. They could tell many strange secrets of people in high places to those who understand their language. I always attend to that portion of the business myself; it's exciting. But here we come now to what I really wanted to show you, Sir Robert. The rest of the show is more or less commonplace, but this is a sight which I flatter myself can be seen nowhere else in the world."

They were standing in front of a huge iron gate with bars as thick as a man's arm, set in a deep archway of solid masonry. Black darkness was between the thick bars.

Mr. Mirabel fitted to the lock a little key that hung on his watch-chain, and the huge gateway— weighing many tons of solid metal— turned smoothly on its hinges and let them pass.

As they stood at the entrance of this dark cavern they heard the tremulous pulsation of machinery in the distance.

"What sound is that?" Sir Robert asked.

"It is the petroleum engine," said Mr. Mirabel, "that drives the dynamos and lights the lamps, and works the trollies and the lifts, and makes itself generally useful; my slave of all work. I'll show it to you presently; this is part of its work."

He turned an ivory knob and a hundred incandescent lamps flashed out from wall and roof, filling the great vault with blinding white light.

The whole place was crammed with silver! There were blocks of pure metal in big piles, and plump bags, some of them carelessly tied, with the white coins gushing from their open mouths.

Many of those blocks and bags were loaded on trucks that ran on miniature rails down the centre of the vaults, ready to convey them to the upper world:

"The pale and common drudge

'Tween man and man."

ALONG great spaces of the wall were ranged larger oblong blocks of black metal, like peat-ricks in an Irish bug.

"What are these?" asked Sir Robert.

"Silver too," Mr. Mirabel answered, "pure silver straight from the mines."

He struck one of the black blocks with the ferrule of his walking-cane, and there rang out that clear note that is called "silvery" the purest and sweetest of all sounds.

"Truly you deserve your name of 'Silver King,'" said the Chancellor of the Exchequer admiringly.

Fifty feet farther, picking their steps all the way through silver, they came, right at the end wall, on the great petroleum engine, with whose motion the air throbbed as its piston-rods slid smoothly through the cylinders, and the huge fly-wheel whirred.

Mr. Mirabel was plainly proud of his big engine.

"It's the strongest made," he said, "ingenious, but simple in principle as a wheelbarrow. Hitch this engine on to an oil well, and it will go while there is a drop left in the well. This one here has gone for a couple of mouths at a stretch."

Mr. Beck was so much interested and examined the engine so closely that Mirabel called out in alarm.

"Stand back, my friend, and keep clear, or you will come to grief. There was a man had his arm mangled by that wheel the other day as limp as a rope; there was not an inch of solid bone left in it."

Mr. Beck at once stepped back. "Thanks for the caution," he said. "I know all I want to know about it."

"I wish you would let us know all we want to know about that other business, Mr. Beck," said the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

"With all the pleasure in life, Sir Robert, and if you and Mr. Mirabel can spare me your attention for a moment."

He took from his pocket a couple of the half-crowns he had just got at the bank, and handed them to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with a strong magnifying glass. "Will you kindly examine the neck of Her Most Gracious Majesty," he said.

"There is no deception," laughed the Chancellor of the Exchequer, "there's the tiny 'M' you told me about. These coins, I take it, are some of the latest issue from the Mint?"

"These coins," remarked Mr. Beck quietly, "never saw the Mint, Sir Robert, they are home manufacture; they are the work of the once mysterious money-maker."

"Perhaps you can tell us his name," said Mr. Mirabel, smiling.

"Cecil Mirabel is his name," retorted Mr. Beck, and he laid a heavy hand on Mr. Mirabel's shoulder.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer was too startled to speak.

"Don't be an ass, man," said Mr. Mirabel, and there was more surprise rather than anger in his voice.

"The ass has trapped the fox this time, Mr. Mirabel." Mr. Beck answered, placid as ever. "Such a simple trap too. The 'M' on these coins stands for Mirabel, not Mint. There was only one specimen made there!—the half-crown I gave you, because I guessed you wanted it for a model. These were made on the premises."

Mr. Mirabel stood silent for one moment in a brown study, like a chess-player when "mate" is called, trying vainly to find a way out of it.

"Trick and game for you, Mr. Beck," he said quietly, without an atom of malice in his voice, "and very neatly taken I must confess, though of course I gave myself away like a fool."

Then at last the Chancellor of the Exchequer found his voice. "Heavens! Mirabel," he cried, "you don't mean to say you are the coiner?"

"Well, you see there is no use denying it now, Sir Robert."

"But how and where, in Heaven's name, did you work this wholesale coining?"

"Ask Mr. Beck."

"Best show him yourself, Mr. Mirabel," said Mr. Beck civilly. "It will save time and trouble and— row."

"You know, of course?"

"Of course. I have seen that part of the belting of the machinery runs through the wall at the back; there's another vault inside this for private business. As it would take some time and trouble to break through the wall or find the private door, you may just as well show it to us yourself."

"You are quite right, Mr. Beck— you are always right, I believe."

Mr. Mirabel stuck the same little key he had used before into what looked like a chink in the wall, and opened a cleverly constructed iron door, inlaid—so to speak—with stone and mortar. He stepped through in front of them, and for a moment they heard the sharp click, click of a telegraph machine; the next the electric lights blazed up.

"Just a wire to warn my workmen to say the 'game is up,' " explained Mr. Mirabel, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

This second vault they now found themselves in was bigger than the first, and every appliance of the Mint was there; melters, rollers, and coining presses complete.

Mr. Mirabel quietly did the honours of the place. He was as cool as Mr. Beck at his coolest. It was impossible to conceive him a man suddenly detected in a colossal fraud, as he took a cigar-case from his pocket and offered it in succession to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and to Mr. Beck.

Instinctively the Chancellor of the Exchequer selected a cigar, and lit it from the vesta Mr. Mirabel held politely to him. Sir Robert was infinitely the more perturbed of the two, finding it impossible to believe that his intimate personal friend was a colossal swindler.

"Sit down," said the proprietor of the private mint courteously, "if I'm not too curious, Sir Robert, I should be glad to know what you intend to do about this?"

"My duty," said the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

"Of course, of course, that goes without saying; but what is your duty?"

"To hand you over forthwith to the police."

"I think not; I am almost sure not. I should get about ten years' penal servitude, I calculate. Personally I would not enjoy that of course, but I don't want to argue the matter from a personal point of view at all. What do you think would be the result of my trial? Can you face the consequence of the discovery that half the silver coinage of this realm— not to speak of other countries— is false? There would be instant panics and failures, culminating in a wholesale commercial crash in which tens of thousands would be ruined— all to give poor me ten years' penal servitude. I don't think the game is worth the candle— do you?"

The Chancellor of the Exchequer was plainly nonplussed. "'Let justice be done, though the heavens should fall,'" he said. When a man can find no argument he falls back on quotations.

"Aye, though the heavens should fall but not the Government. The theory of punishment is prevention, you know, and it's not wanted here. There is no danger of any one playing my game again, whatever you do with me. My coinage is as good as yours until it is found out. The only trouble is, there's too much of it. You must withdraw it gradually from circulation. That will cost money, of course, but I'll help you to the tune of seven figures at least. You see, ten years of my life is no value to you; but to me it is very valuable, and I'm willing to pay for it."

"It would be compounding a felony," murmured the Chancellor of the Exchequer wavering.

"Not at all. The Executive has a dispensing power. It will be the acceptance of 'conscience money'— that's all. The amount can make no difference in the principle."

"I must consult my colleagues."

"Quite right. I have profound confidence in their common sense, and regard the matter as settled. Mr. Beck's little 'M' will puzzle the coin collectors of the fortieth century."

"The counterfeit coinage must cease."

"Of course. It would be madness for me to attempt it again. But I'll give you my word, if you think that any additional security."

"I don't know why I should after all that has happened, but I do. We have been good friends, Mirabel, and I'm deeply grieved at this discovery. Above all," he went on hesitatingly, for there is nothing a man of the world dreads more than the suspicion of preaching, "I'm deeply grieved to find you callously brazening it out to the last."

"Don't talk nonsense, Sir Robert, like a good fellow," replied Mr. Mirabel airily. "I have been a practical bimetallist— that's all. I had the courage of my convictions and practised what I preached— free coinage of silver— and found it profitable, I must say, while it lasted. I've done a lot of good with my money, and mean to do more, besides having my own fun out of it. There is only one thing in the whole business I regret."

"And that is?"

"Having recommended you Mr. Beck."

_________________

11. Cabinet Secrets

THE Right Honourable James Brandal opened his Times with eager fingers, glanced down the front page, and flung the paper so violently on the hearth-rug that it frightened the big fluffy white Persian cat into hysterics.

"Again," was all Mr. Brandal said, but his wife, who sat alone with him at the comfortably furnished breakfast-table, seemed to understand. She came round to where he sat. With one hand laid gently on his shoulder, and the other playing with his crisp brown curls, now flecked with grey, she looked down upon him with loving sympathy shining in her soft, dark eyes.

"Well, Fanny, I'll try to take it quietly," he said, in answer to her silent, tender pleading for patience. But the cloud was still heavy on his strong, clever face; for worries will worry in spite of man's will.

He could not sit still for the life of him. Leaving his breakfast untasted and the tea cooling in his cup, he began pacing the room restlessly.

"We have had some rough times together, Fan," he broke out again, "since that day ten years ago when you trusted yourself to the briefless barrister who is now Home Secretary of England, but I don't think you ever saw me knock under before. Just listen to this."

He picked up the paper, smoothed it out and read:—

"We are able to state on absolutely unimpeachable authority that at the Cabinet meeting yesterday it was resolved to take the whole time of the House from next Monday. There were only two dissentients to this strong measure, of whom one was Lord Weldon, Secretary for Foreign Affairs."

"Is it true?"

"Absolutely true, darling— that's the devil of it."

"But, Jim"— touching the paper— "does it really matter so very much?"

"This particular disclosure does not matter very much, my pet—it hardly matters at all. But it is the fifth time within the last month that Cabinet secrets have been betrayed to the Times, quite plainly by a member of the Cabinet. The last was a matter of vital importance."

"It's very horrible, of course, dearest, but you can't help it; and I don't see why you should worry about it. It does not affect you."

"But it does affect me, Fanny, most vitally. It affects my position, my hopes, my honour. I hardly know how to tell you, darling, but I feel there is a growing suspicion amongst my colleagues in the Cabinet that I am the traitor."

"You, Jim, you!" There were tears in her dark eyes, but the light of her anger flashed through them. "Who dares to suspect you?"

"The Prime Minister himself, I greatly fear. Lord Weldon, I'm almost certain."

"I don't believe it; I cannot believe it. You are too sensitive. I met Lord Weldon the night before last at a ball at the Duchess of Southern's. He was most courteous, sat out with me for more than an hour, and spoke ever so kindly of you."

"Lord Weldon is always civil to a beautiful woman. You needn't blush, Fan; you must know you were the best-looking woman in the room, not excepting the lively little Duchess herself. His lordship is too straight— I'll do him that justice— to let the wife see he distrusted the husband. You remember, Fan, I was very rough on him in the House when I was graduating below the gangway; too rough, I think now, though I meant it at the time. He has behaved very well to me. I knew he was in favour of my inclusion in the Cabinet, and he has been most civil since we were colleagues. But these things leave their sting, in spite of a man. He wouldn't be human if he hadn't a lurking prejudice against me, however hard he may strive to stifle it. I'm the youngest, the newest, and the poorest member of the Cabinet. The others are tested veterans whose character and position set them above suspicion. The disclosures began the week after I joined. I declare, Fanny, I'm half inclined to suspect myself— on the evidence."

He dropped into a chair with a short laugh that had no mirth in it.

She read in his face anxiety— almost deepening into shame; and the shadow in his eyes was reflected in her own; but she was still true to the woman's rôle of comforter.

"Courage, Jim," she whispered softly, "the truth must prevail. You have never yet failed to face trouble or danger bravely— don't fail now, for my sake."

THE Right Honourable James Brandal was not the only one sorely troubled by this treason in the Cabinet. The Prime Minister was broken-hearted about it. Six weeks of the harassing anxiety of this shameful treachery had told more on his health and spirits than fifty years' fair and square political conflict.

On the afternoon of the same day he was pacing his private study in Downing Street impatiently, as Mr. Brandal paced his breakfast parlour, oblivious of the important papers that lay open on his desk, entreating attention, when a timid knock came to the door.

In obedience to a curt "Come in," a servant entered with a card.

It was a clear sign how sharp was the strain on his nerves, that the Prime Minister— usually the gentlest of men— turned impatiently on the servant.

"Did I not tell you, William, expressly," he began, "that on no account was I to be disturbed? Oh!"— with a quick glance at the card— "Lord Weldon. Show him up at once."

A moment later Lord Weldon came softly into the room. A very handsome man was Lord Weldon. Of about fifty-five years of age, with beautiful pure white hair, but a fresh, clear complexion, and smiling face, that made him seem younger even than he was. There was none of the arts or affectations of the elderly fop about him, and no man living had more gracious manners. He was a ladies' man in the sense that he loved beauty, and many beauties loved him. There were scandals, of course, but they never got beyond the vague rumour stage. He was still a bachelor. The jest ran amongst his intimates that Weldon dare not marry for fear of society suicides.

There is a shadow on the pleasant face that usually shines so genially on the world, as Lord Weldon closes the door carefully behind him, before he returns the cordial greeting of his illustrious colleague.

"You have seen that wretched paragraph, of course, Charles?" said the Prime Minister, nodding in the direction of the Times, which lay crumpled up in a corner of the room.

"I'm sorry to say I have very much worse news than that for you, Arthur. We are being betrayed at home and abroad. I have just had a cypher telegram from the Embassy in Petersburg, to say that the secret expedition resolved on against the Rajah of Rangham is known to the Russian Government in the fullest detail. The news has naturally created intense excitement. There is nothing for it but to abandon the expedition, I'm afraid."

"It's terrible! terrible!" said the Prime Minister, pacing the room in a very ferment of rage. "Never before has the honour of British statesmen been so degraded in the face of the world. Never before has the British Cabinet harboured a sordid spy. We cannot let this matter rest, Charles. What is to be done about it? Have you any notion what's best to be done? It is plain to me, we must either purge the Cabinet of this traitor or find some pretext for resignation, and let the Tories in. There would be no treason in their Cabinet."

"No, you cannot do that, Arthur. You have too big a majority in the House, and a bigger still, as you know, in the country. The Tories couldn't carry on for a day. There would be a general election, as a matter of course, and a general election would send you back stronger than ever."

"Then the one thing left is to catch the spy."

"That's easier said than done, I'm afraid. Have you formed any suspicion who the man is?"

"The thing is so horrible, so utterly vile, that I hate to whisper suspicion of any man, even in my own mind."

"Remember, Arthur, that, disgraceful as the offence is, some member of the Cabinet is unquestionably guilty. We must not let scruples stand in the way of his detection"— Lord Weldon spoke with a stern gravity quite out of keeping with his usual easy graciousness— "we must probe this vile mystery to the bottom at any sacrifice of personal feeling."

"There is one man," said the Prime Minister in a low voice, with manifest reluctance, "at whom suspicion seems to point. Cannot you guess his name?"

Lord Weldon shook his head.

The Prime Minister, though they were alone in the room with closed doors, came a step nearer and whispered the name.

"Brandal!" said Lord Weldon, in a tone of absolute amazement. "It is quite impossible he should stoop to this."

"Impossible we should say that any member of the Cabinet should so degrade himself. But remember, as you said just now, there must be some one! Who is less impossible?"

"I cannot believe it is Brandal. I should as soon suspect myself."

"But why, Charles— why?" urged the Prime Minister, stirred to something like eagerness by this incredulous contradiction. "He is the latest member, for one thing, and the treachery has begun since his appointment."

"Put it on the lowest ground, Arthur; he would not risk it. Brandal has gone far, and is bound to go farther. He is immensely popular and trusted in the country; he is the best debater— except one— in the House of Commons."

"Except none, Charles. I have no false modesty, and no false vanity, I hope. Brandal is the most powerful speaker I have ever heard in the House."

"He has a tremendous hold on the people."

"Deservedly, I should say; or, rather, I should have said six weeks ago. He has stuck to his principles through thick and thin, through evil report and good, and there is no denying that he has, to a large extent, forced them upon us."

"Well, but is such a man likely to risk his great career by petty treason? to give his enemies— for he has bitter enemies, we know— such a handle against him?"

"The danger may seem slight, and the temptation is great. I hate to say it, but Brandal is the only poor man in our Cabinet."

"But it is not the poor that are always greedy. Brandal has never shown any love for money. He married his beautiful wife, Fanny Power, 'The fair maid of Erin,' as she was called, without a farthing. There is no corner in the man's character, Arthur, for suspicion to lay hold of."

The Prime Minister laid his hand kindly on his friend's shoulder. "Charles," he said, "the generosity of your character blinds you. This man has frequently and fiercely attacked you, therefore you feel bound to defend him. He is your sole rival for my place, which, in the course of nature, I cannot hold much longer; therefore you instinctively and chivalrously uphold him. If you had not pressed me on his behalf, he would not now be in the Cabinet; I wish he wasn't."

"Don't say that Arthur; you'll find I'm right."

"I cannot even say I hope you are right. If it isn't Brandal, it's some one else. The matter must be tested, and I have taken the first step in that direction."

"Take no step on mere suspicion, I entreat you."

"I will do nothing without clear proof, you may be certain."

"But how is proof possible?"

"We can only try for it. You remember the man the Chancellor of the Exchequer recommended so warmly, when we discussed the question before?"

"The detective with the queer name— Beck?"

"Paul Beck— the same. I have heard him spoken of in other quarters as wonderfully shrewd, and I have sent for him. I expect him here at two o'clock—less than half an hour. I gave orders I should not be disturbed till he came."

"Am I in the way? Don't hesitate to tell me."

"On the contrary, I am delighted you are here, and beg as a favour you will stay and see the man with me."

"Well, investigation cannot hurt the innocent; but let me beg of you not to give Brandal the slightest inkling that he is suspected. He is terribly sensitive for a man who has had such a rough-and-tumble fight with the world. It would be cruel if he is innocent."

"And most imprudent if he is not. You may trust my discretion, Charles."

THEN the conversation drifted into other channels. But though the matters discussed were of great importance, neither could fix his attention, and it was a relief to both when a second knock came to the door, and Mr. Beck—the most sheepish-looking of wolfhounds— was shown into the room. The Prime Minister motioned to him to be seated.

"Perhaps you can guess why I sent for you, Mr. Beck?"

"Well, yes," answered the detective, bland as ever. "It's that trouble in the Cabinet, I suppose; the whole town is talking of it."

The Prime Minister winced as if he had been stung, and for a moment or two could hardly trust himself to speak.

Then he turned to the imperturbable detective with that impressive dignity that so well became him.

"I have heard," he said, "you have already been engaged in matters of great delicacy and of great public importance, and that your discretion has been equal to your ability"— Mr. Beck acknowledged the compliment with a deprecatory smile— "but never before, let me assure you, in a matter of delicacy or importance comparable to this. The honour of a Cabinet, the fate of a Government, the vital interest of an empire are involved in the detection of this treason."

"I will do my best," said the detective tranquilly. It was his universal formula.

"Need I say that the most absolute secrecy is essential?" said the Prime Minister.

"You need not," said Mr. Beck shortly. "If you want me, you must trust me, of course."

Then very briefly and clearly the Prime Minister set the meagre facts of the case before him. One thing alone was certain—a Cabinet Minister was the culprit. Not a look or tone escaped Mr. Beck while the Prime Minister spoke.

"You don't seem to have made much advance," said Lord Weldon, when this interview was related with perfect frankness next day.

"That's as it may be," said Mr. Beck, "one can never be sure."

"Could we catch the letters to the Times in the Post Office?" suggested the Prime Minister. "It's a hateful expedient, of course, but desperate diseases need desperate remedies."

"I understand the letters are dropped in by private hand," said Lord Weldon.

"Your lordship has guessed quite rightly," said Mr. Beck; "the Post Office cannot help us."

"Have you anything yourself to propose?" asked the Prime Minister, a little impatiently.

"The next step it seems to me," said Mr. Beck quietly, "is to put your suspicions to the test."

"Can you do that effectively?"

"I think I can."

"Without knowing the name?"

"Without knowing the name, if you and his lordship will help me."

"Let us hear your plan?" said Lord Weldon.

"First, I must know, has the suspected man been present at all the Cabinet meetings whose proceedings were betrayed?"

"Not all," answered the Prime Minister; "there were two at least— I am almost certain there were three— from which he was absent."

"Does not that fact alone clear him?"

"I'm afraid not, because he would be entitled to hear, and naturally would hear, from some other member of the Cabinet, what had gone on in his absence. I remember I told him myself on one occasion."

"That brings me straight to my plan. You can arrange, I presume, that he shall be absent from the next meeting. Let him have an account of the proceedings the reverse of the fact, as circumstantial as possible. If this account appears in the Times there will be no doubt who put it there."

The Prime Minister shook his head. "I don't like the notion," he said; "it seems a shabby, treacherous trick."

"To me, on the contrary, it seems perfectly fair," broke in Lord Weldon, "as well as exceedingly ingenious. If the man is innocent, as I believe him to be, it does not hurt him in any way— quite the contrary. If he is guilty, no device is shabby that convicts him. It is an additional recommendation, in my opinion, that there is an off-chance of making a fool of the Times."

"But who is to give the false account to Brandal—there, I've let his name out now," cried the Prime Minister irritably. "I for one will have nothing to do with that. I could not if I tried."

"Then I will," replied Lord Weldon, "if you wish it. I don't share your suspicion, Arthur, and I think the suspected man is entitled to the opportunity of vindicating his character. If an accurate account appears, he's clear of it. At the Cabinet Council, you know, the day after to-morrow, we are to consider the inclusion of compulsory purchase in our English Land Bill. There is intense excitement on the question; it's just the one to tempt a spy. If you can keep Brandal away from the meeting, I'll undertake the rest."

"I'll have no difficulty at all in providing him with an urgent appointment elsewhere," said the Prime Minister.

Mr. Beck rubbed his hands in placid enjoyment of their adoption of his plan.

"It's a step in the right direction," he said, "and it may lead us straight to the heart of the mystery. This is Tuesday. There is nothing more for me to do, I fancy, until the Thursday's Times appears."

BUT Mr. Beck proved quite mistaken in this prophecy. Early on Wednesday he found himself knocking impatiently at the door of Lord Weldon's private house, which was only a short distance from the Prime Minister's residence.

"His lordship is not risen yet," said the footman.

"All right, I only want you to take him a note at once; it is most urgent," and Mr. Beck offered him a note which he had brought written and directed.

Lord Weldon got the note on a salver with his coffee in bed. It ran:—

My Lord,

I think it essential that I should have an interview to-day with the Prime Minister as soon as possible. I did not like to disturb him, so I have taken the liberty of calling on your lordship. Kindly let me have a line to say if you can see him soon to arrange it."

On a blotting pad in his bed Lord Weldon wrote:—

Dear Mr. Beck,

I will see the Prime Minister immediately. If you will kindly call back at about twelve, I will let you know the result.

Mr. Beck smiled a gratified smile as he read the note, and departed apparently well pleased.

AT twelve o'clock he received an appointment to meet the Prime Minister and Lord Weldon at Downing Street at two. When he opened his business it seemed hardly worth the fuss he had made about it. It was no more than a suggestion that the Times letter-box should be watched by a policeman in plain clothes.

"Well, it can be arranged, of course," said the Prime Minister a little testily, "but I do not see what possible good it can do. We cannot arrest every man that drops a letter in."

"Besides," chimed in Lord Weldon, "if the letter is dropped in by Brandal he convicts himself."

"You were quite right to mention it, Mr. Beck," said the Prime Minister, seeing that the detective looked a little crestfallen. "You will excuse me now, but this is one of my busy days."

"That's a hint for me, too," said Lord Weldon, laughing. "Can I give you a seat, Mr. Beck; my brougham is waiting."

At the corner of Trafalgar Square Mr. Beck suddenly remembered an urgent appointment, so Lord Weldon put him down, nodding affably from the open window as he drove away.

Mr. Beck waited till the brougham had disappeared through the traffic in the direction of Piccadilly, then instantly hailed a hansom and drove straight back to Downing Street.

"Important— this time," he wrote on the card which he sent up.

THE Prime Minister received him somewhat coldly, but after the first few words from Mr. Beck grew eager and excited.

"Your first scheme was hard enough to sanction," he said, "but this goes much farther."

"The proofs seem strong," insinuated Mr. Beck.

"That may be, but it is quite impossible that I should take any personal part in this miserable affair."

"Then," said Mr. Beck, with a quiet earnestness that gave dignity to his homely face and figure, "you must forgive me if I decline to have further hand in the business. I will not knowingly make myself the instrument of the punishment of the innocent and the triumph of the guilty. Let me repeat the wise words of Lord Weldon, 'It's a trial I ask for, not a conviction. The man suspected and suspected, too, on such strong proof— is at least entitled to his trial.' "

"Have your own way," said the Prime Minister reluctantly, after a moment's pause. "I feel there is justice in what you say, though the task you have set me is most repugnant to my feelings."

THE Cabinet Council was held in due course the next day, and the Right Honourable James Brandal, Home Secretary, was unavoidably absent on urgent official business. After a very animated discussion, it was resolved that the principle of compulsory purchase should be introduced into the Land Bill, and the Government should stand or fall by its adoption or rejection.

Mr. Brandal got down to the House before the dinner-hour in time for an important division.

Very soon he became sensitively alive to the fact that his colleagues of the Cabinet were strangely cold and reticent in their manner to him— with one exception.

Lord Weldon was cordiality itself, insisted on their dining together, and after dinner gave him the arranged account of the proceedings at the Cabinet Council with great particularity of detail.

"I'm bitterly disappointed, I must confess," said Brandal. "I knew you were against it, my lord, of course. But I thought there was a strong majority in favour of the principle of compulsory purchase. I'm convinced it's the only remedy for agricultural depression and the overcrowding of our towns. I wish I had been there."

"It could not have altered the result, my dear Brandal," said Lord Weldon soothingly; "there was a big majority. What! are you off so soon?"

"Well, yes. I feel a bit done up and depressed, and I'd best get straight home. I have asked the Whips; there is no danger of a division to-night."

BUT he did not go straight home. As he went past the door of the library, an attendant met him with a note from the Prime Minister himself, requesting to see him for a moment in his private room.

It was a brief interview. Mr. Brandal came out from it more cheerful but more bewildered than before.

"A most extraordinary mistake," he muttered to himself, as he lit his cigar with one of the paper spills provided for the legislators in the dressing-room close to the Palace Yard.

Then he walked home at a brisk pace to work off his excitement, and curiously enough passed the Times office on his way.

NEXT morning the political dovecots were fluttered by the following announcement prominently printed in the Times:—

We are glad to be able to announce, on absolutely unimpeachable authority, that at the Cabinet Council held yesterday it was decided by a substantial majority, after a very animated discussion, that the principle of compulsory purchase should not be included in the Land Bill which the Government are pledged to introduce early this Session. The Right Honble. the Home Secretary, who is understood to favour this revolutionary principle, was absent from the meeting.

Then followed a long article in cordial approval of the supposed decision, denouncing the Radical revolutionists who "were eager to devastate the fair fields of England and uproot her ancient aristocracy, whose wealth and privileges were the best guarantee for the stability of the Constitution and the integrity of the Empire."

A GOOD deal of quiet enjoyment was manifest amongst the members of the Cabinet—especially of the more advanced section— at this announcement. It was plain the Times had been badly hoaxed.

But Lord Weldon wore a look of deep distress; the Prime Minister was grave and stern, and James Brandal utterly bewildered. The Prime Minister had met him as he entered the House, and made an appointment after question time in his own room.

"You have seen the Times?" said Lord Weldon softly to the Prime Minister as they sat together on the front bench at question time. There was a touch of genuine distress in his voice. "I could not have believed it possible."

"Nor I," replied his chief. "I have asked Brandal to meet me in my room when questions are over. I desire that you also shall be present."

"I wish you could excuse me. It will be a most painful interview for me."

"I have no doubt; but your presence is essential, and painful duties must be performed."

When Lord Weldon got to the Prime Minister's room, he was a little surprised to find Mr. Paul Beck also there, standing modestly in the background.

"Mr. Brandal and Lord Weldon," the Prime Minister began abruptly, and plainly labouring under strong emotion, "I have summoned you here on a matter in which you are both deeply interested. You are aware that for some time past the Cabinet has been disgraced by a sordid spy and traitor who sold its secrets."

"Don't be too hard on him, Arthur," Lord Weldon whispered. But the Prime Minister went on, with growing anger. "That treason ends here and now. Through the skill and zeal of this gentleman, to whom I desire to convey my deep personal gratitude, that despicable traitor has been exposed. You, Charles Launcelot, Viscount Weldon, are the man!"

Lord Weldon would have spoken then, but the Prime Minister turned upon him imperiously, with a leonine flash in his deep-set eyes that awed him into silence.

"Denial is useless," he said. "The proofs of your treason are conclusive. Tell him"— he beckoned to Mr. Beck— "tell him what you know."

"You see, my lord," said Mr. Beck sweetly, "the word or two you carelessly let drop, showing you knew how the letter had got to the Times letter-box, set me thinking. The subterranean correspondent spelt 'immediately' with one 'm' in the type-written letter I was shown in the office. I managed to coax a little note from your lordship with the same word mis-spelt the same way. Then I felt pretty safe. It was not likely that two members of a Cabinet would make that blunder. But to make surety doubly sure, I took the liberty of asking the Prime Minister——"

"Yes, my Lord Weldon," broke in the Prime Minister, "I did the rest. After you gave James Brandal the false account of the Cabinet proceedings, I gave him the true. You published the false account to convict him of treason, and you have convicted yourself."

No word had Lord Weldon to answer, the sudden shock of the exposure had so stunned him. He leaned with trembling hands against a chair, and his face was as the face of the dead.

But there was no pity in the Prime Minister's stern voice. "False friend and treacherous colleague," he said, "I regret that public interests forbid the exposure and punishment of your crime. But on two conditions only can that exposure be averted. You must, of course, instantly resign your place in the Cabinet, and in the House; and you must write over your own name a full confession of your offence."

"For what purpose?" gasped out Lord Weldon; his first words since the blow struck him.

"To be retained by the man whose ruin you sought; to be retained as a memento of a peril overpassed, and a security for the future."

He pointed to the door, and Lord Weldon crept through it like a whipped hound.

"Mr. Brandal," said the Prime Minister to the Home Secretary, with a look of touching humility on his grand old face, "I have to beg your forgiveness for having wronged your honour, even in my thoughts."

Then as the Home Secretary and the detective passed from the room together, Mr. Brandal whispered to Mr. Beck, "Come and dine with me to-night—only ourselves. My wife must thank the man who saved her husband."

__________________

12. The Two Kings

"ONE game more," said Arthur Darley.

"You have had enough for to-night—I should say for this morning," replied Lord Claverly pleasantly; "give luck a chance to turn, my boy. Well, well, if you will insist, I cannot refuse," and he dealt a hand at écarté. "The same stakes?" he asked before he turned the trump.

"Make it five hundred for a final flutter."

His lordship nodded and turned hearts, took up his hand, and declared the king.

"It's wonderful," said a man at the table to Sydney Harcourt, who stood beside him, intently watching the game.

It was wonderful. Lord Claverly's luck had held without a break on throughout the night into the small hours of the morning. At first there had been a rubber of whist, from which he rose a substantial winner. Then came a brief spell of poker. But when Lord Claverly's luck culminated in a royal sequence, the other men laughingly cried off. About midnight his lordship settled down—not for the first time—to a duel at écarté with young Arthur Darley, who claimed his revenge for a long series of disastrous encounters at the card-table.

Still Lord Claverly's luck held out wonderfully. The court cards flowed in an unbroken stream into his hand, and the IOU's of young Darley, written on the backs of envelopes and other odd scraps of paper, grew to a pile at his elbow.

The boy— for he was little more than a boy— was a plucky loser, who took his losses like a gentleman. The last game went with the rest. His cheek was slightly flushed, and there was the fever of strong excitement in his blue eyes; but he smiled good-humouredly as he tore a scrap off the selvedge of a newspaper that lay on the floor, scribbled an IOU for £500, initialled it, and tossed it over to Lord Claverly.

"You will give me my revenge to-morrow, my lord?" he said cheerily.

"As you please," replied his lordship. "But I'm afraid, Darley, you have hitherto found revenge an expensive luxury."

Darley took the words for a challenge. "I will play your lordship one more game for a thousand."

But Sydney Harcourt laid a restraining hand on his shoulder and whispered, "Not to-night, Artie; the milkmen are in the street; you fellows will get the club a bad name. It's time we were all in bed."

"All right, Syd," Darley replied, with a light laugh, though a keen observer might have noticed his lips quiver. "To-morrow, then, my lord, for a final bout."

Lord Claverly nodded, gathered up the pile of IOU's to the amount of £5,000 into his pocket, lit a cigarette, and walked out.

THE excitement over, a sudden lassitude fell on the group of men still left in the "special" card-room of the Revilton Club. A sense of the lateness (or earliness) of the hour came upon them. There was much yawning and stretching of arms; and faces loomed pale and haggard through the fog of tobacco smoke. Young Darley's nerves were still tingling with reaction from strong excitement. He walked to a buffet, filled himself a tumbler of champagne, and tossed it off at a draught.

Through the glare of electric light in the room the windows showed faintly luminous squares in the grey dawn. Harcourt turned the lights off and threw up the blinds and the windows, and the pure air and the faint, cold gleam of the morning stole into the room.

In spite of his feverish gaiety Arthur Darley's young face was pinched and drawn, a red patch burned in his cheek, and his eyes shone too brightly.

All this Sydney Harcourt was quick to notice with the kindly solicitude of a friend, for Arthur Darley was like a younger brother to him. He kept by his side down the marble staircase, and in the cloak-room, and when they stood together at the club doors, lighting their cigars, Harcourt ran his arm into Darley's.

"Our ways lie together across the park," he said. "We'll walk, Artie, if you don't mind. I want to have a quiet word with you."

A hundred yards from the club door brought them to St. James's Park. For a little while they walked on in silence, for Sydney Harcourt somehow found that "word" of his very hard to say. In the hush of the still morning soft silence brooded over this sylvan scene, set in the heart of the busiest city in the world. The morning air was very keen and pure, and the vivid green of leaf and grass, and the silver glint of the lake, pleasant to their jaded eyes. The sleepy chirping of half-awakened birds was the only sound abroad.

Away in the distance was a jumbled heap of roofs, with church spires pointing high up into steel-grey sky. The twin towers of Westminster, with their massive strength and clear-cut delicacy of outline, had a beauty all their own.

Suddenly the red sun showed half its disc over the horizon, flooding the fairy scene with a full tide of golden light. The friends paused with one accord, drinking in the rare beauty of the wide picture with a delight that was akin to pain.

For a moment, in their intense enjoyment of nature's loveliness, sordid worldly cares were forgotten.

Only for a moment.

"Artie," said Harcourt, finding words at last, while he laid his hands with brotherly kindness on Darley's shoulder, "I'm worried about you."

"Don't, Syd, I'm not worth worrying about. Besides, the devil takes care of his own."

It was the last touch of boyish bravado. The kindness in the other's voice and face broke that boyish spirit that had stood the sharp strain of ill-fortune.

Unable to meet Harcourt's anxious eyes, he turned his face away.

"I'm miserable enough," he said, "without making my friends miserable. I have brought this trouble on myself, and must bear it as best I can. If it were not for the sake of others I could bear it easily enough."

"Drop it, Artie, my boy," said Harcourt very earnestly. "I'm a poor preacher, Heaven knows! I went the pace myself in my day—half-way to the devil. But I never knew what it was to have a really good time till I pulled up sharp. Take my word for it, Artie, the game is not worth the candle. Drop it."

"I cannot afford to drop it— yet."

"Nonsense! Don't you throw good money after bad, and health and honest enjoyment of life after both."

"I tell you, Syd," cried the other fretfully, "if I stop now, I'm ruined."

"That's mere folly, my boy, and you know it. You have only just come into an estate of £3,000 a year— worth £50,000, if it's worth a farthing— and quite clear of encumbrances. A loan of a few thousands is easily enough managed."

But Darley turned to him with a white, scared face, his self-control completely lost at last.

"Oh, Syd!" he whispered, with a sob catching his voice, "I have lost everything in one fortnight. Lord Claverly holds my IOU's for £45,000. The estate must be sold. Worst of all, my sister and mother must be turned out of our old house, and all through my selfish folly. I'm half mad when I think of it."

Sydney Harcourt stopped short in his walk, and his dismay evaporated in a long, low whistle.

"I had no notion things were as bad as that," he said at last; "forty-five thou. in a fortnight is the dickens of a deep plunge."

"Every night I was hoping that luck would turn. I swore to myself I would never touch a card again if I could once get clear."

"That's always the oath," said Harcourt grimly; "I've been there myself."

"But you see, Syd," Darley went on eagerly, "it's no use pulling up now. The five thousand or so that is left is hardly worth keeping. One night of Claverly's luck, if the stakes were high enough, would set me straight again. 'Why shouldn't I have one night, when he has had a dozen? If a coin spins 'heads' six times running, it's long odds it will spin 'tails' next time. The game to-morrow night is my last chance; but I won't say die while there is even one chance left."

"You cannot play with Lord Claverly to-morrow night, anyhow; there's another little game on. There's trouble brewing at the club."

"Trouble! What trouble?"

"Well, it's a committee secret, but you're as safe as myself. You know I have sworn off cards since I was married. What do you think brought me there to-night, and made me see the thing out?"

"I flattered myself it was for my sake."

"Partly, but more for your opponent's sake."

"Lord Claverly! Why, I didn't think you knew him?"

"Very slightly, and the little I do know I don't like. I was there on police duty, as a member of the committee."

"What have the committee to say to this?"

"Well, you see, there have been nasty stories abroad about Lord Claverly. Keep quiet, young man; no one ever suspected you of whining. But the others—and there have been a good many— have not parted so cheerfully. His lordship was stony broke, they say— having made the fortune of half-a-dozen bookmakers when he went to America. Every one thought he was gone for good—his country's good. But he turned up smiling six weeks ago at the 'Revilton,' and he has won back at the card-table what he lost on the turf, with a trifle over, if all accounts are true."

"He plays as straight as a die. I ought to know."

"I think so too, Artie, but everybody doesn't. You know Dicksie Gunter?"

"That tailor-made little cad; a bundle of vulgar self-conceit."

"And cash; don't forget the cash, Artie, it's the best part of him. Well, Claverly eased him of some of that same cash, and Dicksie didn't like parting a bit. He has let his tongue wag here and there and everywhere."

"Who minds him?" said Darley scornfully.

"Oh! any bounder is good enough to start a story. I was dining out the other night, and I took a jolly little bride down to dinner— Marnie Meredith is the name as lively as a bee, with honey and sting. She hates the 'Revilton' because hubby goes there occasionally— once a fortnight or so. 'Oh! Mr. Harcourt,' she chirped, 'I hear you've got a great attraction at your beautiful club.'"

" 'I haven't heard, Mrs. Meredith,' I said, feeling a bit out of it.

" 'Oh! but you must have, you know. You're on the committee, aren't you? and proud of your charming "Revilton," I dare say. You have a wonderful wild beast there on exhibition now, I'm told. Every one is talking about it.'

" 'What kind of beast?' I asked, giving myself away like a duffer.

" 'A spotted cheetah,' she replied, looking up into my face with wide-open, innocent blue eyes.

"Some one must have heard, for the joke was all over the room before the evening was out. The thing has got serious. The story is pretty generally believed. That little bounder Gunter threatens to sue Claverly for his beggarly thousand. The committee have felt bound to take it up. I was against it. Claverly has had the devil's own luck, there's no denying that, but no one has seen the slightest sign of cheating. I'm a keen hand myself, and I've watched him closely. I stayed specially to-night to watch him, but I could detect nothing in the least degree wrong. The committee are anxious, however, to keep Gunter quiet, and he has promised to be satisfied with the test that has been proposed."

"What's the test?"

"Did you ever hear me speak of a chap named Beck?"

"Often; you rave about him."

"Well, it's arranged that I am to introduce Beck to-morrow night—to-night, I mean—as a South African millionaire, Cyril B. Rondel. We will put up a game of écarté or something between himself and Lord Claverly. If Beck doesn't catch him cheating, it's because there's no cheating to catch."

"Well, I back Lord Claverly, Syd. I'd risk my last five thousand that he's on the square."

"Take my advice, Artie—hold on to that last five thousand for the mother's and sister's sake, if not for your own. I'm horribly in earnest about this, old chap; I'd sooner see you knock off now than win back what you've lost. It would be better for you in the long run. It's a sharp wrench, I know. Are you man enough to stand it?"

"I'll try," the other said, stretching his hand to his friend as they parted, and Harcourt felt that firm grasp was a promise to be trusted. Arthur Darley had been his "fag" at Rugby; wild, reckless, daring, but the very soul of truth.

SO Sydney Harcourt walked blithely home through the park, with the pleasant feeling that he had done a good morning's work, whatever might chance later. He slept late into the afternoon, and was still abed when a visitor drove up in a rubber-tyred hansom to his door in Belgrave Street.

A stout, square-built, middle-aged man got out of the hansom; a man with alert grey eyes, and firm mouth and chin, and face tanned by the hot suns of the tropics. He was well dressed, too, though his watch-guard was a little too massive, and a big diamond blazed on his little finger.

The visitor gave his card—Cyril B. Rondel—with "Immediate and important" pencilled on it. In a moment Mrs. Harcourt came to him in the study to which he was shown.

"My husband will be with you in a few minutes, Mr. Rondel," she said, looking all the prettier from her embarrassment. "I knew he expected you. I trust you will forgive the delay; it's all my fault."

Mr. Rondel bowed gravely.

"No apology is needed, I assure you, Mrs. Harcourt."

In some subtle way his voice seemed to claim acquaintance.

"I don't remember that—" she began.

"That you ever saw me before," he added, finishing the sentence. "I'm glad of that."

She stared at him in utter amazement.

"You have keen eyes, Mrs. Harcourt, as I have reason to remember. If you don't know me, it's not likely that others will."

As he spoke the whole expression of his face changed; the firm mouth dropped slightly open, and a placid look stole into the blue grey eyes.

"Oh, Mr. Beck!" Lilian Harcourt cried, "how could I have been so stupid— I mean how could you have been so clever? You were not in the least like yourself. Sometimes I'm puzzled to know which of you is the real Mr. Beck."

"Hallo, Beck!" cried Sydney Harcourt's voice at the door. "I'm only just up; have had a hard night, and have another before me. By Jove! capital!" as he caught sight of his face. "I should not have known you from Adam. Wonderfully clever of you, Lil, to make him out."

With one quick look she swore Mr. Beck to secrecy, even while she smiled superior at her lord and master.

"Now run away, my pet," he added, "we have important business to talk over."

She turned at the door. "I will give you half an hour," she said, "to do all your talking; lunch will be ready sharp at three."

AFTER lunch Sydney Harcourt strolled down to the "Revilton" with his friend the South African millionaire. He put Mr. Rondel's name down as an honorary member, and showed him over the place. It was a palatial building; the home of wealth and luxury. A great staircase of coloured and polished marble swept in smooth curves right up from the hall to the dome. The dining-room was exquisitely painted in panels—landscapes for the most part—by some of the greatest of modern masters.

Smoking-room, reading-room, and library; Mr. Cyril B. Rondel admired them all, till he came at last to the sanctum sanctorum of the "Revilton." A small room—small at least compared to the others—plainly but most comfortably furnished, and without ornament of any kind. It was the "special" card-room of the "Revilton," frequented only by the high-flyers of the club. There were awe-inspiring whispers about in London of the amounts won or lost in that room of a night.

Sydney Harcourt opened the door of solid mahogany, pushed aside the heavy curtains of dark crimson velvet, and let his friend into this devil's shrine.

There were four men at a card-table, deep in their rubber of whist, and three others standing round, watching the play. To these Sydney Harcourt introduced his friend, Mr. Rondel. Rumour had been before him at the club, telling how Mr. Rondel had made a fortune out of diamonds at the Cape, and had come home to spend it. As a friend of Sydney Harcourt, himself pre-eminently popular, he was sure, of a welcome. There was, moreover, something in the simple, frank, unaffected manner of Mr. Rondel himself that was wonderfully attractive. In ten minutes he was on the best of terms with every man present.

Just then the rubber came to an end. One of the players looked at his watch, and rose to go.

"Any of you fellows care to cut in?" said an inveterate player. "We have a good hour yet to dinnertime."

"Try your luck, Rondel," Harcourt whispered, and Mr. Rondel dropped quietly into the vacant chair. He speedily showed himself a consummate master of the game, bold and subtle; at times defying all rules with a splendid audacity that was only to be justified by success.

But he was absurdly particular about the cards he played with. Three packs were discarded in succession, and new ones brought before he was quite satisfied. Now the "Revilton" prided itself on its cards, which were made specially for the club, of the finest quality, with a peculiarly plain blue pattern on the back, and the club monogram in the centre. Mr. Rondel's South African fastidiousness provoked a smile at first, but his consummate mastery of the game disarmed ridicule. In spite of poor hands, his skill pulled off both rubbers played, to the great delight of the veteran who had claimed him as a partner.

"If you play écarté as well as you play whist, sir," he said, "I would like to match you against Lord Claverly. You might, perhaps, break his miraculous run of luck."

THE party all dined at the same table, and over the last bottle of the champagne for which the club was famous, the talk, adroitly stimulated by Harcourt, again ran warmly on a match between Lord Claverly and Mr. Rondel, who professed himself ready and willing for the encounter.

After dinner the party soared up together in a smooth, swift lift to the card-room.

An unpleasant surprise awaited Mr. Rondel as he entered, in the person of the plump, pale, clean-shaved, slightly bald, and exceedingly deferential waiter, who was moving softly about the room. He was thin, florid, with magnificent hair and moustache when Mr. Rondel had last seen him. That was seven years ago in the Old Bailey dock, but he knew the man at a glance as the cleverest card-sharper he had ever met in the course of his diversified career.

A slight start and a frightened look for half a second in the waiter's shifty grey eyes told the detective that he was recognised in his turn, but Mr. Rondel's placid face made no sign. Presently he asked the man to get him a cigar, with a careless unconsciousness that set him quite at his ease.

Lord Claverly was in the room when the party entered; looking on at a game of piquet, and the veteran whist-player tackled him at once.

"We have found your match at last, Claverly," he said, "a fellow that can take the ace of trumps with a deuce. I've only seen him at whist, and that's enough for me. But he says écarté is his pet game. He has made a couple of millions in diamonds in the South African mines, and egad! he is likely to make as much more out of clubs or spades or hearts at the London card-table. He's a wonder. You see that stout chap talking to Harcourt?"

Lord Claverly's handsome dark eyes lit up with pleasurable excitement at the mention of the millions; plainly he was not in the least afraid. Presently he whispered to Harcourt: "Will you introduce me to your card-playing paragon?"

"They tell me you are fond of a little flutter, Mr. Rondel?" said his lordship blandly. "Do you do much of this kind of thing at Kimberly?"

"Now and again. I won this at a game of écarté," and he showed the diamond, as big as a marrowfat pea, blazing on his little finger.

"Then écarté is your game?" said Lord Claverly eagerly.

"Well, I play all games at cards more or less, but I like écarté best."

Just then young Arthur Darley joined the group. Lord Claverly's brows knit with a sudden annoyance as he saw him, but there was no trace of temper in his bland tones when he said— "I should like to take you on for a game or so, Mr. Rondel, but this gentleman has first claim."

"One off," said young Darley. "You're too many for me, Claverly; as you say, revenge is an expensive commodity."

"Then I'm entirely at your service, if you care for a game," said Lord Claverly politely to Mr. Rondel, who nodded his acceptance.

The challenge and response created quite a quiver of excitement in the room. One or two parties broke up their game to watch the battle for big stakes.

From the moment he had entered the room Mr. Rondel had kept a watchful eye on his old acquaintance, the card-sharping waiter, and made sure he had no private whisper with Lord Claverly. Now at last he seemed quite secure. Lord Claverly's chair was set with its back close to the wall. Behind Mr. Rondel, at a small table a dozen feet away, was the suspected waiter. A shaded electric light hung over their heads, there was no mirror in the room.

As the players took their seats Mr. Rondel noticed a quick look of surprise light for a moment in Lord Claverly's dark eyes. At once his large, double-cased watch slipped quietly from his pocket. He touched the spring and the case flew open, but there was no dial or figure where he looked. It was an ingenious watch of his own devising; the inner case was a convex mirror, which showed Mr. Rondel, as he carelessly consulted it, the room in miniature behind him. He was only just in time. Unnoticed by the crowd intent upon the game, the waiter was speaking rapidly on his fingers to the watchful eyes of Lord Claverly.

Mr. Rondel caught the last few words of the sentence—

"—detective. Play straight to-night."

Then the game began.

Fortune took sides almost from the first, and stuck to her favourite to the end. Never was Lord Claverly's luck more conspicuous. His opponent played admirably; he was incomparably the finer player of the two; but no play could stand against that springtide of luck. Every third hand Lord Claverly marked the king.

The pile of notes swelled at Lord Claverly's elbow; the pocket-book of Mr. Rondel grew leaner and leaner. Still he played his cards out pluckily, and lost his money with an imperturbable good temper that won the admiration and sympathy of the bystanders. Lord Claverly, on the other hand, was flushed and excited. Again and again he exclaimed in apparent amazement at his own good luck, and seemed half-frightened at its persistency.

"About played out for to-night," remarked Mr. Rondel at last, with unabated cheerfulness. He drew from his pocket-book eight hundred pound notes, and four fifties, and then smoothed out the leather covers quite flat on the table.

"One last flutter for this, my lord?"

After a moment's pause Lord Claverly nodded.

"I can trust to-night's luck for anything," he said excitedly, and began to deal.

"It's my deal, I think," interposed Mr. Rondel quietly, and his lordship handed him the cards without a word. The excitement of a big stake is contagious. There was a silence and holding of breath amongst the spectators that crowded round the table as the cards were dealt. Diamonds were trumps—the seven of diamonds. The players paused for a moment with the cards before them, as if half afraid to know their fate. Lord Claverly looked first, and smiled triumphant at the array of picture cards in his hand.

"I declare the king," he said, and showed the king of diamonds in his hand.

Mr. Rondel lifted his cards and glanced at them. For a moment he seemed bewildered. Then the men round the table saw his brows meet and his eyes light with a sudden wrath, which quickly passed. Only an ominous tightening of his lips remained.

"This is a bad business," he said slowly at last, and laid his cards face upwards on the table. The king of diamonds was amongst them!

Lord Claverly's face went white as a sheet.

"I swear by God—" he began frantically; but he got no further. There were strong hands on his shoulders. He was flung into a capacious easy-chair, and held there while his coat was roughly torn from his back.

Yes! There in a shallow pocket, a kind of ledge in the silk lining of his coat-sleeve, was a pack of the club playing-cards. They were caught and held together by a neat spring clip, and to the clip was attached a thread of strong elastic, fastened higher up in the sleeve close to the shoulder. Their use was plain!

Then the wild beast passions that lurk in men's hearts, which civilisation can hide, but not stifle, broke loose. Curses and cries of anger were heard, and men might have disgraced their manhood by violence to the helpless wretch that lay there with fear and wonder on his ghastly face; but the calm, strong voice of Mr. Rondel was heard dominating the rising tumult.

"Gentlemen," he cried, "fair play, even for a cheat. Lord Claverly has an urgent appointment elsewhere, and we must not detain him.

" 'He'll stay no more on England's shore,

So let the music play.'

"Make way there, for his lordship, if you please."

The titled cheat took the hint, and skulked from the room, with a grin and snarl like a hunted fox.

"I suppose I may as well resume possession," said Mr. Rondel coolly, "as his lordship waives his claim," and he replaced the notes in his capacious pocket-book.

Some one handed him the pack of cards found in Lord Claverly's sleeve, with the appliances still attached.

He examined them with unaffected admiration.

"You see how it works," he said to the men around, with the air of a professor addressing his class. "The court cards are curved at the edges so slightly that only the most delicate touch could detect it. His lordship was plainly clever at his work. The faked pack came down into his hand; the genuine pack went up by the clip and elastic into his sleeve. It was a clever trick— a very clever trick."

WHILE the men gathered round to see the cards, Harcourt crossed to where Arthur Darley stood by himself, bewildered, hardly realising even yet what had chanced.

"I congratulate you, Artie," he said; "your good resolution has brought you good luck. Your I.O.U.'s are waste paper in the pocket of the convicted cheat. Let me introduce you to the man that pulled you through. Mr. Rondel," he went on, "you must come and have a quiet bit of supper with me to wind up this entertainment. Here's a young friend of mine who wants to thank you. He's forty-five thousand the better for this night's work."

"Your health, Mr. Beck!" said Arthur Darley, when they were comfortably seated at supper at a table by themselves. He raised his full glass of champagne, with beaded bubbles winking at the brim. "You saved me from ruin when you caught his lordship cheating."

"But I didn't catch his lordship cheating."

Harcourt and Darley put down their glasses and stared at him in blank amazement.

"I don't mean to say he didn't mean to cheat, mind you," Mr. Beck went on placidly. "He came with his ammunition ready, but he played quite fair to-night."

Then he told them how he had recognised the card-sharping waiter, and caught him warning Lord Claverly before the game began.

"You must get rid of that waiter, Mr. Harcourt," he wound up; "he is an experienced card-sharper."

"All right," echoed Harcourt abstractedly. "But, I say, Beck, I cannot understand the thing at all. If Claverly was warned, as you say, why did he give himself away?"

"He didn't give himself away."

"Why did he cheat, I mean?"

"Don't I tell you he didn't cheat."

"Nonsense, man! Luck never dealt a man such hands as Claverly held to-night."

"No, I dealt them to him— I can do a little that way."

"Yes, but where did the second king of diamonds come from?"

"From my sleeve."

End

Most of the stories were prepared by Matthias Kaether and Roy Glashan of Roy Glashon's Library, as individual stories with the original magazine illustrations. Others were taken by the compiler from other sources and appeared in early issues of "Past Masters" anthologies. This volume was prepared as a book by "Pulpmeister".

Table of Contents

- 1. The Vanishing Diamonds
- 2. The Miniature Halter
- 3. By a Hair's Breadth
- 4. Murder by Proxy
- 5. Greased Lightning
- 6. The Dog and the Doctor
- 7. Under His Own Hand
- 8. The Poisoner
- 9. The Slip Knot
- 10. The Slump in Silver
- 11. Cabinet Secrets
- 12. The Two Kings