PAST MASTERS

SIXTY-ONE

February 2022

Produced by Terry Walker

("Pulpmeister")

Contents

1: Five Minutes to Twelve / Max Brand

2: Lion Heart / Max Brand

3: The Spook of Cornelius / R. A. J. Walling

4: Mrs. Rooth's "Murder" / R. A. J. Walling

5: The Homestretch / Guy Gilpatric

6: "Burglin' ain't the game it was" / Val Jameson

7: The Man Who Was Dead / Thomas H. Knight

8: The Chief of the Loch McCree / Albert Richard Wetjen

9: The Bloomsbury Wonder / Thomas Burke

10: The Great Auk's Egg Affair / Anonymous

11: An Unrecorded Instance / Marie Belloc Lowndes

12: How the Captain Tracked a German Spy / Victor L. Whitechurch

13: Number 17 / Edith M Nesbit

14: Riesenberg / Ford Madox Ford

15: In a Tight Fix / Victor L. Whitechurch

16: The Convict's Revenge / Victor L. Whitechurch

17: "Sir William" / J. J. Bell

18: The Story of the Chief of Police / William Le Queux

19: Arrested on Suspicion / Andrew Forrester Jr.

20: The Willow Walk / Sinclair Lewis

_____________________

1: Five Minutes to Twelve

Max Brand

1866-1946

Cosmopolitan Nov 1936

AT EIGHT in the morning, New York streets are empty, and Harry Main went fast all the way uptown to Carrick's apartment house, the big motor of his car running to a smooth whine. He kept leaning forward over the wheel, grasping the top of it, and it was hard to tell from his face whether he was in a desperate hurry or simply a fast driver by habit, for his expression was eager though his eye was glazed with fat. There had been a time when he was as lean as his old friend Carrick; now Harry Main looked a bit of a pig.

When he reached the address, he pressed the bell button at Carrick's door three times and listened to the hollow buzzing begin and end inside the place. He had time for one sick moment of doubt before Carrick himself pulled the door open. It was early September and quite warm but Carrick was wearing flannel pajamas. Carrick was a fellow who took care of himself.

Main walked in, saying, "Dive into your clothes. We're taking a trip."

"How far?" asked Carrick, yawning till his eyes disappeared. He had a thin, rather hard face that kept him looking an invincible thirty for a dozen years; then time had overtaken him in a wave and washed him gray. "Wait a minute. This is the fourth, isn't it? We're dining together tonight, aren't we?"

"We're taking a trip," answered Main. "South, I guess. Till midnight. Get into your things, Steve."

"A little thing like a full day and six appointments at the office— a little thing like that doesn't matter?" asked Carrick.

Main stared at him.

"All right," said Carrick suddenly. "I'll just step under the shower—"

'For God's sake, jump into your clothes and come!" shouted Harry Main.

Carrick looked at him for two long Seconds until he saw the little quiver of nerves in his lips and cheeks. Then he began to unbutton his pajama coat.

"I'll jump," he said.

Main went over to a dark corner and sat down. He gripped his two hands together, bent his head, and waited with a deep hunger to have the road slipping away beneath the wheels of his car at sixty or seventy an hour. Fear crept out around him from the shadowy corners of the room.

WHEN he looked up, the face of his wife was looking at him from a picture on the wall. He half rose. He wanted to ask Carrick how the devil that picture happened to be hanging there. Then, breathing deeply, relaxing, he realized that no one had a greater right to have a picture of Clara Main.

The memory of the wedding day returned to Harry Main. The cold that had been in his heart then seemed the lineal ancestor of the fear that was within him now. Steve Carrick, his fine, dark, Norman face imperturbably calm, had been a rock of strength, arranging everything, checking everything, putting a reassuring grip on Main's arm just before the ceremony. "You're getting the loveliest girl in the world," Steve had said. In fact, she had not been lovely. The photograph on the wall proved that. There was only a certain youth and that sweetness which benumbs the mind of a lad.

On the wedding day, it had been a relief to surrender all arrangements of details to Carrick; it was an even mightier relief now to be near him. But then it came over Harry Main that he was sitting still— in New York— and New York was a trap!

"Steve! Steve!" he shouted.

"Ready, old fellow," said the quiet voice of Carrick. And they went down to the car at once.

Ten minutes later they went through the tunnel and out on Route Number One, heading south. They turned onto Route Twenty-five where it diverges and heads towards Camden to avoid the great tangle of Philadelphia. When they were on the Pennsville-Newcastle Ferry, Main said softly, "Have you got a gun?"

"A gun?" asked Carrick. He laughed. "Here; take this one," said Main. He passed over a blunt chunk of automatic.

Carrick weighed it, put it away in his clothes. "But what the devil, Harry?"

"I've got another," answered Main. "I'll tell you later on. I'll show you, I mean. Wait till we get through Baltimore."

The road began to soar over the Maryland hills, and Main took the rises so

fast that the car lifted to the top of the springs at every summit. They twisted slowly through Baltimore traffic, then opened out on the Washington Pike. Main picked some papers out of his pocket and passed them over.

"They're in order," he said.

The first one read, "My dear Main, I want to give you a month so you'll have a chance to think over what a blackguard you are. On September fourth, I'm going to drop around and wipe you out."

There was no signature beneath the typewriting. The second message ran, under the date of August twentieth, "My dear Harry, in a couple of weeks I'll be seeing you. With a gun."

And the third slip was simply, "My dear Harry Main, tomorrow is the day."

"Ah, but look here!" said Carrick. "You don't mean to say that a practical joke like this has you on the run?"

The pink jowls of Harry Main wabbled as he shook his head. He said, "It's not a practical joke. Jokers have more fun. They don't cut their letters so short. It's murder, Steve."

"I wonder if you're not right," answered Carrick. "What beats me is why? You've had your fun, Harry. That's all. Why should anybody want to blow you down?"

"It's Clara. It couldn't be anything but Clara. People think she's sweet because she's so quiet. They don't know. It takes ten years of living with her to find out what she's like. You know her a little, though you never came around much after the marriage. Before that I used to think that you wanted Clara.

"You never could stand her, I suppose. Only you're so damn polite. Nobody can find out what you really think of things."

"I don't think so much," said Carrick. "But what was the matter with Clara? Pretty hard on you behind the closed doors?"

"Bah!" said Harry Main. "You take a woman that always thinks she knows. I mean, a girl that don't have to ask questions. I mean, that just bows her head to one side and is a little sad— I never could stand church music, Steve— you take after a few years, I couldn't go to her. I couldn't trust her. I stuck it out ten years before I gave her the gate."

"I wasn't surprised," said Carrick.

"You mean you expected me to run her out?"

"I wasn't surprised," said Carrick.

"Sure you weren't. You knew that the damned sad look she carried around with her was driving my friends away. I used to say: 'For God's sake, loosen up and try to shake out a smile once in a while. J can get along without any of your face but my friends get fed up with the look of you.' But I couldn't change her. She should have been an early Christian martyr. She was nineteen centuries out of date. Suppose I stepped out at night, she'd be waiting up for me... Well, she's gone now."

"Where is she now?" asked Carrick.

"I don't know. I don't give a damn. I wanted to fix her up with alimony. She acted as though my money was green goods, and wouldn't touch it."

"Harry, suppose she still loved you?"

"Loved me? Hell, Steve, I tell you there's nothing but cold poison behind that face of hers. And she's fixed it with this letter writer. She's sure as hell fixed it with him to do me in today."

"You don't think she'd be behind a thing like this, Harry?"

"She'd be behind anything. People that don't talk pile up a head of steam. When it busts open, you never can tell."

They reached the edge of Washington and stopped for gas and hot dogs. Carrick said, "Anyway, we're two hundred and forty miles from Manhattan. Going to put up in Washington?"

"Here?" said Main. "My God, Steve, Washington isn't a quarter of a second by wire from New York."

"This business has got you," said Carrick.

They drove through Washington.

VIRGINIA roads were good; but Harry Main made them smoother with speed. It was seven o'clock and the Richmond lights had begun to shine. Blue silence was sifted over the countryside as they shot onto the Petersburg road.

The trees along the way jumped into the headlights, whirled past them; the stars followed calmly through the sky for all their speed.

"I'll take a nap," said Carrick, as they reached the good Carolina roads.

He slumped down and put his head back. Harry Main flashed a glance at him from time to time.

And after dizzy hours of that speed, Main pushed the fat of his elbow into Carrick's lean ribs. Carrick sat up with a grunt. There was a moon. It showed a  ragged sea of mountains to the west.

"We're getting close to Southern Pines," said Main, "but we don't want to make it before midnight."

"Listen, Harry," said Carrick. "You've got hundreds of miles between you and New York. Put your nerves to bed and let them sleep awhile, will you?"

Main swerved the car onto a narrow lane and drove into the quiet of the back country, stopping in an open wood of second-growth pine. The moon gilded the tops of the trees and poured black tar under them. Carrick got out and stretched. He rested his left elbow on the edge of the door and dropped his right hand into a pocket.

"I never knew a day could be so long," said Carrick. "Have you driven outside of the fourth of September, Harry?"

"There's only ten minutes to go to safety," said Main.

"You think the fellow who wrote those letters will have to keep to his timetable or give you up?" asked Carrick.

"The cold-blooded sort of a devil who wrote those letters," said Harry Main, "would stick to his timetable or die, That's his game, to be precise. That's his dirty sport. There's not seven minutes left, though. Unless he's taken a plane— unless he's going to bomb us out of the air, I guess there's nobody near me but old Steve Carrick. Nobody but—"

He stopped. A bubbling sound came out of his throat. He gripped the wheel with both hands. And then a whisper came from his lips. "It's you! Oh, my God, Steve! You're the man!"

Carrick laid the barrel of the automatic on the edge of the door. "In the pinch, I knew you'd come running to me," he said. "But how could I guess that you'd drive six hundred miles or so to find a perfectly secluded spot for me?"

He lifted the gun with a steady hand and pointed it into the soggy white of Main's face. "It's only five minutes to twelve, so I can still be on time," said Carrick. "Afterwards, she'll be the only person in the world to mourn for you."

_________________

2: Lion Heart

Max Brand

Mail (Adelaide) 25 March 1950

IT was a big day when Rudy Zandor consented to dine with me at Chasen's, because those were the years when he was astonishing Hollywood with a series of super productions; he was another Samson, whose strength lay not in his long hair, but in his perfect self-confidence.

The country he loved, the flag he followed, the god he worshipped, was Rudy Zandor. So I put in the whole day working on my plot and reached the restaurant rather full of hope.

Zandor was hardly an hour later, which seemed a good sign, and then he came in with a yes-man named Gregg and Jimmy Jones, whose real name is Jonascsky.

Zandor raised quite a buzz with his entrance because he always dressed for public appearances. This time he wore corduroy trousers, a riding coat buttoned high round the throat, and four days' whiskers. His friends were in dinner jackets for contrast.

Rudy was almost at my table when another murmer started. All eyes left him. and in came Raymond Vincent Etherton in his black coat and white stock like an eighteenth century ghost. It was rather hard on Zandor to have his entrance messed up like that, for he was completely forgotten as the old man went by, looking straight ahead and failing to see the people who spoke to him. He went to his usual corner, waited for his coffee and cognac, and contemplated the dignity of space.

When Dave Chasen in person brought the brandy, Etherton became gently and kindly aware of him, for he was really abstracted, not merelv high hat. Thirty years before, when he consented to be King Arthur for D. W. Griffith, he must have been a glorious man.

Some of the glory hung about him as Henri Quatre in Ivry or as Richard the Lion-Hearted in The Talisman. He never was cast except as a king and he moved through his parts without the slightest acting, merely lending his presence, as it were. The whisper had it that there was a dash of real royalty in his blood, but no one even in Hollywood dared to suggest the bar sinister to Etherton. Even Hollywood was surprised by the appearance of such a man on the screen. He was more a rare legend than a fact. That was why Chasen's buzzed so this evening. Zandor, in eclipse, looked pretty sour.

'That man,' he said, pointing at Etherton. 'Who is he?'

Jimmy Jones winked at me. It was the yes-man who gave the answer. A celebrity in Hollywood can't help accumulating them as the north side of a tree gathers moss.

'That's Raymond Vincent Etherton.' said Gregg.

'I want him. He has a hungry look. I want him to play Shylock,' said Zandor.

'The Merchant of Venice after the big Western?' I asked.

'Before,' said Zandor. 'I'm not doing the Western.'

My hopes went crash: and at the same moment I heard Gregg ordering caviare.

Jimmy said: 'You can't buy an Etherton. Rudy. He doesn't need money but he acts now and then to raise the level of the screen and show the world what royalty should be.'

Zandor waved his hand at Jones. 'You bother me,' he said. 'Go away.'

Jimmy Jones went away.

'Now got Etherton. Offer him $25,000,' directed Zandor.

His No. 2 boy went over to Etherton and I felt a little sick about Zandor and about myself for being with him.

Etherton was sipping his brandy when the yes-man leaned over his table and started talking. The old fellow showed no sign that he heard a syllable. Presently he laid a bill on the table, stood up. and walked through the No. 2 boy as though the fellow were a thin mist. He passed out of Chasen's and Gregg came back to Zandor astonished.

'Nothing could stop him — not even your name, Rudy,' he said.

'Why didn't you raise the bid?' asked Zandor, furious. 'I don't care what sort of blood he has in him: nobody walks out on me. Why didn't you offer him $50,000?'

'But I didn't have the authority,' said the yes-man.

Zandor looked him over from his chin to the sleek of his hair and turned his shoulder: it was plain that there was one parasite less in his life.

IT was a rotten dinner. I tried to be bright for a while, but gave it up after Zandor had snarled a few times. The great man was preoccupied. In the middle of his chicken he jumped up and left the tableware jingling.

'Show me where this Etherton lives.' he commanded. I paid the bill and took him to Etherton's house, small, sedate, withdrawn from the vulgar world behind a formal Italian garden. The California moon, for we have a special variety out here, was laying cool silver over everything, and the fountain statue left a perfect shadow on the pool.

The door of the house was open. I don't know why this shocked me so much. It was like seeing the great Etherton with his mouth agape.

Zandor leaned on the bell. It made a thin chime of music far inside, and we had no other answer. Zandor went in.

'You'd better not do that,' I protested. 'The old man won't stand intrusions.'

'Look!' said Zandor. 'I knew it ... hungry.'

I followed him a step and saw him pointing to the living-room; there was enough slanting moonshine to show that it was empty The waxed floor shone like water, but there was not a stick of furniture.

Zandor strode through the open door beyond and into the kitchen. There was a rusted gas stove Something scurried away on a shelf, and I saw a bit of nibbled cheese rind and cracker crumbs. But Zandor was moving on through a naked dining-room and into a bed chamber that was furnished with box springs on the floor, a pier glass, and a big, gilded chair in front of the mirror.

In the chair sat Etherton wrapped in a black cloak with his white head thrown back, and his right hand at his breast, supported by something. He looked at us with deeply veiled eyes of contempt and seemed about to make a gesture of silent dismissal. It needed another glance to see that all his gesturing had ended, for what supported his hand was the hilt of the little medieval dagger he had driven through his heart.

I LOOKED away from him to the three big photographs which hang on the walls, and showed me Etherton as the Lion-Hearted in heavy chain mail, as Henri Quatre, with the famous white plume in his helmet, as King Arthur bearded like a saint.

Understanding grew in me. Those rare appearances of Etherton on the screen had not been a casual amusement, but the nerve centre of his whole life. His parts never had been large, but they had made him a kind, and with a child's pitiful sincerity he had enclosed himself within a dream. Rather than step outside it, he had starved. I could imagine with what care he dresesd himself this evening, borrowed the last possible dollar from a pawnbroker, and went out for the final time to see if Hollywood once more would give him a shadowy throne. Instead, it preferred to see in him the wicked moneylender, so he came home and erased himself from the page.

Zandor was triumphant.

'You see? You see?' he roared at me 'I was right. I did spot the hunger in him. 'He's been on a throne for thirty years, but when he got the Shylock offer, he knew that I'd seen the starvation in his face.

'The twenty-five thousand scared him. He was tempted and he almost fell. 'The fifty thousand would have bought him, lock, stock, and barrel. But that fool of a Gregg didn't know how to bargain.'

I ot out into the garden. It ' was a warm June night but I wns shivering. Zandor followed me. The bigness of his voice made the fountain pool tremble.

'He wanted to be a king or nothing, you see?' roared Zandor. 'So he came home and ended his reign. You get it? It's big stuff. It's new. It's a picture. And it's mine.'

___________________

3: The Spook of Cornelius

R. A. J. Walling

1869-1949

Chronicle (Adelaide) 24 Dec 1931

NOT often could Mr. Pinson be induced to tell a story of his own adventures. One of the rare occasions came on the night when somebody at the Parchment Club started a discussion about the psychological effect of ancient surroundings. Roland Greene spoke of the 'historical essences distilled into material things.'

That started Mr. Pinson. When he said, 'I remember—' everybody else stopped talking.

I REMEMBER (said Mr. Pinson) a rather curious little affair which illustrates what Greene says. Two winters ago I had a letter from my friend. Bob Dunsford, inviting me to go and stay the Christmas weekend with him at his house in Iscaster. I don't know whether any of you fellows have ever met Dunsford when you've been down there on circuit. He keeps that bookshop in High-street, not far from the Castle. A very discerning and variously read person.

I'm very fond of Iscaster, for it's got a unique air— one of the few unspoiled mediaeval towns in England. Like every other town, it's contracted a concrete and asbestos rash on its extremities; but so far the post-war vandals have not been allowed to work their wicked will within the walls. Still, I shouldn't have chosen to go down to Iscaster in mid-winter if it hadn't been for Dunsford.

I like Dunsford even better than I like Iscaster. A queer mixture of wisdom and naivete, Dunsford. An astute man of business, a student who's soaked himself in history, a charming gossip.

Greene spoke of historical essences clinging about material objects. There are a few places in England where I seem to breathe those essences— Windsor, Bath, Coventry. But more than anywhere, Iscaster. It's exactly the right sotting for Dunsforrt. And that's why a man who, they say, could have made a big fortune in London, stays in a little city and just lives comfortably. Therefore, when Dunsford said he had something queer to tell me and something still queerer to show me, I sent him a wire giving the time of my train, and shook hands with him on the platform at 2 o'clock on the afternoon of Christmas Eve.

'Had lunch on the train?' he enquired. 'Like to stretch your legs? All right. I'll get your bag sent up. and we'll go for a walk.'

You know that all the railway region of Iscaster and the low lands along the river lie outside the walls. Dunsford took me through these drab purlieus by the shortest cut, and we came but into a main street at the foot- of the steep hill that rises to the city on the south side— no, coming to think of it, and west side, because when we turned off to the left we were going north.

A dismal place we turned into— worse than the mean streets between the city and the river— a kind of back alley at the foot of a dingy cliff of tall and dilapidated houses, with clothes-poles poked out of the windows and all the stigmata of squalor. The houses were not old, but shabby-looking affairs covered with painted plaster, apparently the product of the architectural imagination of an early Victorian jerrybuilder.

About a hundred yards along the alley Dunsford laid a hand on my arm and pulled me into a tiny yard at the back of one of the houses, among the dust-bins and domestic detritus of the half-dozen families who lived in the place. He dragged open a door that scraped along the flagstones, took an electric torch from his pocket, entered what seemed to be a coal cellar, and said to me—

'Come in.'

I followed him into the musty smelling den. He flashed his light about among piles of rubbish; and finally brought it to bear on the wall opposite the door.

'There,' said he, 'is one of the first things civilised man ever made in England. That's the base of the Roman Wall. They started it in the time of Claudius. This is how we treat it! The houses are built on the top of the wall and drop down over the back. Very convenient cellars— with half your foundations and your walls already provided for you by the Romans nearly two thousand years ago. But what I want you to see is this.'

Dunsford threw the beam of his torch on one of the red sandstone blocks and illuminated some carved marks in it. I made out letters, and, tracing them carefully, read the legend:

CORNELIVS MASSILIE

The second was evidently an incomplete word. The sandstone had crumbled or been broken away.

'I dug the plaster off a stretch of the wall here one day when I was prowling around,' said Dunsford, 'and came on this. I'm going to plaster it up again. That preserves the carving. But there you see the sign manual of one of the builders of the wall, Mr. Cornelius Massiliensis, Cornelius of Marseilles, one of our earliest visitors from the Riviera, and a jolly good stonemason, who showed our British ancestors how to put up walls. I'd like to have heard his remarks on the climate.'

Somebody opened a door In a dark corner of the place and cried out:

'Who the ruddy—? Oh! beg pardon, sir,' as Dunsford threw the light of his torch on his own face.

'I was just showing a friend our wall, Mr. Cobbledick,' said Dunsford. 'May we go up through?'

The man stood aside for us to pass, end Dunsford led me through the doorway to a narrow stair cut in. the thickness of the wall. With many exclamations about sacrilege and Hunnishness, he took me through an evil-smelling passage into the street above.

The remainder of our walk was by various narrow ways along the course of the Roman Wall, cut through, built over, despoiled, but still traceable, to the Castle on the great cliff at the north-eastern bend and so to Dunsfofd's house in a terrace facing a green pleasaunce on the city's southern slope.

'Most interesting archaeological afternoon, Dunsford,' said I, as we sat by the teacups waiting for the tea. Dunsford is a bachelor, served by an old housekeeper, wlio mothers him, and a maid, who holds him in awe, 'But you didn't ask me down for that.'

'No— yes. Only partly,' he replied. 'I wanted you to see the wall by as much daylight as can be got on it, and to realise, if you could, that it's nearly two thousand years old, and was built long before Tacitus wrote his entertaining anecdotes of Claudius and Messalina.'

And then, Greene, he began to speculate about the historical essences, much as you were doing. By the by, he exploded a curious question on me.

'Do you believe in spooks?' he said.

I don't believe in spooks, but I parried the question, saying that I was always prepared to believe anything for which evidence could be produced, but nothing else.

That, of course, led to a discussion on the nature of evidence. I didn't consider that the evidence for the Cocklane Ghost was good enough to go tc the jury, and I was not prepared to accept the evidence of the Fox girl that she communicated with the spirit of the murdered pedlar. And so on. I didn't think that the operation of tapping on a piece of wood was made any the more ethereal because Sir William Crookes called the result 'percussive sounds.'

Dunsford listened to me tolerantly: tolerance is one of his characteristics.

'No doubt,' said he, 'you'd like to have the chance of cross-examining a spook and showing up all the flaws in his story. You lawyers always want to put moonbeams through the process or spectrum analysis.'

'And why not?' I asked him. 'If they're good moonbeams and not merely tricks with phosphorus, they come through undimmed.'

Dunsford nodded at this, but. he had something at the back of his mind which he hesitated to bring out in the unsympathetic light of my scepticism. He talked of the aura of history and the persistence of a personality in the thing created, and got into metaphysical regions where I couldn't follow him.

Then suddenly he out it all away, said. 'I'll tell you a tale after dinner,' and proposed that we should play billiards in the meantime.

AT dinner Dunsford talked gaily about a number of things, and didn't mention spooks again. Afterwards, we smoked, he showed me some rare books— among them a Littleton. 'Tenores Novelli,' in the old Norman French— that would have interested you, Greene; and in these pastimes the evening went till the old housekeeper looked in to enquire whether he would want anything more, and he told her she might lock upn and go to bed.

Dunsford then jumped up and put away the books. He looked at the clork on his library wall, which showed eleven.

'I wanted them to get away upstairs,' said he. 'so that we shouldn' t be disturbed. I've had a queer experience lately, Pinson. I think I'm in full possession of my senses. I'm not morbid. I don't suffer from hallucinations. At least, I haven't suffered to my knowledge. But this thing is so strange that I've been questioning my own senses. I wanted a cool mind on it— the more sceptical the better.'

'You're making me look pretty inhuman,' I told him. He smiled at this, and said he would call it an analytical mind, if I liked that better. Anyhow, he wished to put his own experiences to the test of somebody else's judgment, and preferably that of a person who did not live in Iscaster. Once a yarn of this sort got about Iscaster, life would be impossible.

'What's the yarn?' I asked. Dunsford stood in front of the fireplace and told it.

All the vandals of the Middle Ages, and later, said he, did not live in the lower quarters of the town. I had seen what it was in their hearts to do with a precious relic of the past down there. They had done as much, or worse, elsewhere. This very house of his was also a parasite of the wall, quite close to where the East Gate should have stood.

'They cut into it,' he said. 'They sprawled over it. They used bits of it. It's been raped to make garden walks. But it was so big, so deep, so surrounded with the debris of centuries, that they didn't, or rather couldn't, touch the lower courses. Considering the design of the house, I came to the conclusion long ago that at the back of a cellar, underneath and beyond this room, would be found the base of the wall itself, which would probably show Roman masonry in tne same perfection as the builders left it, I had a great curiosity to see it, and some months ago I got in workmen on some pretext to dig in that direction.

'It proved a long job, because all the rubble they dug out, the wreckage of house after house built on the site, had to be brought up through by hand. But we went on till we came to the red sandstone wall, and down till we came to the foot of it. Then I just made them tidy up, and cleared out the workmen. I was satisfied that here stood the most perfect bit of the wall to be found in Iscaster.'

Dunsford went to his writing table and took a portfolio out of a drawer.

'I made some accurate measurements and sketches. Here they are. But I want you only to look at one. This one.'

Dunsford selected a sheet from the portfolio and passed it to me. It was a neat pencil sketch of a piece of wall constructed of large blocks roughly cut. In the middle was a smoothed stone upon which appeared incised letters.

'This is the wrong one.' I said.

'This is the wall we saw this afternoon.'

'No,' Dunsford declared. 'Look again.'

The lettering which caught my eye at first glance was CORNELIVS MASSILIENSIS.

At Dunsford's insistence, I examined the drawing in detail. The name in this instance was complete; and underneath it had been carved a smaller inscription:—

Architectvs Reqviescat a malis

Dunsford looked eagerly at me as I sat dumbfounded by the significance of this discovery.

'No mistake?' I asked. 'It looks very clear in your drawing.'

'You shall see. As clear, clearer than many a modern inscription,' said he.

'Have you—' I began to ask him.

'No, I haven't,' he answered, frowning. 'For a reason. The reason I tried to convey to you. Not that I'm afraid, but that I can hardly believe my senses. I told you that. I thought it all out. 'Cornelius of Marseilles, Masterbuilder. Let him rest free from Evil.' Cornelius was the man who superintended the building of the Wall of Iscaster— at any rate, in the early stages. The inscription is low down in the bottom courses of the wall in each instance. Cornelius died, perhaps, by accident, on this very spot— during the building. Imagine, Pinson! They send for the pollinctores and dress Cornelius in his finest robes. He probably has no women here to beat their breasts. His wife and daughters are far away in Massilia. But he may have sons to go veiled in the presence of his corpse. Who knows? See them building the funeral pile, maybe where we now sit, just outside the wall. See them putting Cornelius on it, plying the torch, feeding the blaze with oil and perfumes, and throwing into it the little things that belonged to him— his brooch, his tablets, perhaps. And in many hours collecting the pile of ash that was Cornelius, and placing it in a sarcophagus that his men have made. And then, Pinson, what more natural than to put that sarcophagus in the body of Cornelius's wall, and to identify him forever with his master building?'

Dunsford was almost breathless, and his eyes grew bright and excited as he spoke.

I looked at him with a little apprehension.

'Very likely, my dear Dunsford,' said I. 'What more natural, as you say? I shouldn't be at all surprised. Are you?'

Noting my manner, Dunsford laughed a little at himself.

'What did I tell you?' said he. 'I want a cool and sceptical mind to help me out of this. Listen, Pinson. When I had formed this theory. I decided to put it to the test. Not without some difficulty, you know— mental difficulty, I mean. I'd been preaching against Huns and denouncing vandals ever since I could remember. However, I determined to be very careful, to do the least possible damage, and none that could not be remedied. The most I should destroy was a pound or two of Roman mortar. I took three nights about loosening that stone. The third night, about midnight. I got it put. Then the thing happened that scared me stiff— I don't mind admitting it to you— and I pushed the stone back- again mighty quick.'

'What was it frightened you?' I asked.

'A sound.'

'Yes, Dunsford? Out with it!'

'It was a sound I can only describe as a moan, repeated regularly rising and falling, till I pushed the stone in again, and then it stopped.'

Dunsford has short grey hair. It seemed lo be almost bristling as he watched for the effect of his statement on me.

'Well, Dunsford, this is where my sceptical mind comes in. Either you had your nervous imagination wrought up to the pitch of hallucination, or else there's a perfectly natural explanation of the fact. It'll take more than the late Mr. Cornelius to frighten me.'

'Well, that may be,' said Dunsford, with a certain relaxation of his tension, 'if so, it's curious that I've had the same experience twice more, and the last time two nights ago, when I wrote to you.'

'The very same?' I asked him. 'You weren't too scared to take out the stone again?'

'No,' he said; 'I'd got over it, or thought I had. By daylight I felt very much as you do— that it must have been an overheated imagination, or perhaps there was some natural explanation. So within a day or two I tried once more.'

'After the servants had gone to bed at night?' I enquired.

'Yes, of course; that was the only possible time. I couldn't play about like that with them in the offing. And the same thing occurred. As soon as I pulled the carved stone out I heard those moans. I couldn't face it, Pinson, 'pon my soul. I stopped the moaning as before, and stood all of a dither, looking at the inscription, 'Requiescat a malis.' I thought to myself, what right had I to be violating the ashes of Cornelius of Marseilles, and insulting his manes? Yes, I'd got to that stage. Remember, I was down there at the bottom of all things, in dead silence at midnight, with a lantern and my thoughts of the long dead-and- gone. Requiescat & malis!' I said, and came up, resolved that I would leave him alone in future. Then in the daylight again there was a revulsion against what I thought was sheer cowardice. And two nights ago I tried again. Same result.'

'And yjat's all?' I asked.

'Yes,' he answered, 'unless—'

Of course, he meant unless I was game to accompany him in a fourth expeiiment. If he had not suggested it I should have proposed it myself. But before he resumed the broken sentence, I asked Dunsford to consider well the question of a natural explanation— water-pipes, or a syphoning gas main. These things often made weird noises. He said he had thought out. all that. But here we were, far below the level of the present town, in a wall perhaps 15 or 20 feet thick, which had not been disturbed for nearly 2,000 years. He would like to believe in a natural explanation, but— and then he made the suggestion that I should go down with him.

'I warn you, Dunsford,' said I, 'that old Cornelius may shriek as much as he likes, but if we take that stone out we aren't going to put it back again till we've found out what's the matter with him.'

'All right, Pinson,' said he. 'I thought that'd be your line— and that's why—'

So we went down to the cellar. Dunsford brought a kind of storm lantern. The way was through the back part of the house, by a door giving on a stone stairway of about 20 steps. You see that it was rather deep. We came out in what seemed to be the foundations of the house— a space some seven feet high under the arches that carried the building. It was open from end to end. At the end opposite the foot of the stairs, which ran from the back towards the front, there was unmistakably the Roman wall, looking much as it had done in the slum we saw in the afternoon. In front of it, for a distance of nine or ten feet, was a deep excavation, perhaps six feet or more deep. At any rate, when we got down there and Dunsford put his lantern on the cellar floor it stood above our heads.

I noticed new concrete had been used to underpin the foot of the last archway. Dunsford said they had gone below the foundations of the house and had to underpin for safety. The inscribed stone was in the sandstone wall near the right side, and about four courses up.

Dunsford had not exaggerated its plainness in his drawing. The letters did not lock exactly new cut, but they were deeply incised and clear. Dunsford had gone about the archaeological part of the business very thoroughly. In the wall above the stone he had driven a stout staple, and on it hung a rope sling. On the ground beneath lay the little heap of mortar which he had punched out.

I suppose it was what you might legitimately call an uncanny scene— two men in dinner jackets at the bottom of a deep, raw hole, with a storm lantern projecting their shadows on the old wall, looking askance at that injunction carved nineteen centuries ago, 'Requiescat' a malis!' It seemed to glare at us threateningly from the stone.

We had no strong intimation of speech. Not that we were afraid of our own voices, but that it seemed desirable to get the business over with as little fuss as possible. Dunsford looked at me. I nodded. He picked up a small, thinpointedcrowbar. He signalled to me to stand by the sling.

Then Dunsford, pale and excited, inserted the bar between the inscribed stone and its neighbor, and prised. He eased it out gently, first one side and then the other. I listened intently for any alien sound, but could only hear the grating of the bar and the rustling of the stone as he levered it out. I stood in front of it with the first loop of the sling ready, and hitched it round the stone when Dunsford had got it out about six inches.

'Half of it!' he said hoarsely, and went on heaving. Then— it's difficult to believe, I know: but this is exact— I'd pushed the first loop home and got the second one round the stone when it swung out of the wall suddenly, and on the instant a sound came out like a cry of pain.

Dunsford said a moan, but I should rather describe it as a faint squeal repeated as though the sufferer expired it with every breath. Dunsford. trembling, gave one look at me and shoved the stone back. Immediately the sound ceased.

'You heard?' he asked, leaning his crowbar against the wall and staring at the inscription.

'Yes, Dunsford,' said I. 'But I warned you that I wouldn't stand any nonsense from Cornelius. Look, here, man!— you hold the sling, and give me the crowbar!'

Dunsford, without a word, picked up the bar and handed it to me, and took hold of the sling. I set my teeth and prised out the stone again, not so gingerly as Dunsford had done. As soon as it was clear of the wall and the light entered the caritythe moaning or squealing began again. I could feel Dunsford trembling as he stood touching me.

'Lower it,' said he, 'and hold the lantern here.'

When the yellow light was thrown into the hole I saw at the back of It a quantity of loose rubble. I dug this out with the bar, and scooped It on to the floor with my hands. It disclosed a stone of another color. Dunsford, holding the lantern, above his head, peered across my shoulder.

'The sarcophagus!' said he. 'Stand back, Dunsford,' I told him.

'Here goesl'

That moaning note had become maddening. I drew back to get impulse for a mighty plunge of the bar, crashed it into tne edge of the yellow stone, and wrenched sideways. A grating, then a crumbling, and nnally a collapse. The stone broke and fell in several pieces. The moaning rose to great intensity for an instant, and then silence came like a bomb. A little cloud of dust, or vapor, floated out into the light of the lantern and vanished.

Dunsford scaggered against the wail, and leaned there gasping. In the absence of that incessantly pulsating moan, we could hear our own quick breathing. Neither of us said anything for a moment or two. Then, to ease the strain, I remarked:

'It's like the djinn and the bottle, Dunsford. We seem to have done old Cornelius a bit of good by letting him out, eh?'

But Dunsford's nerves had been racked for the fourth time, and he could not take it lightly.

'What have we cone, Pinson?' he said. 'It's a desecration!'

But, I told him, in for a penny, in for a pound. Now that I had started sacrilege, I meant to go on with it. I took the lantern, reached into the hole, and brought out a handful of grey dust.

'Good heavens, man!' Dunsford cried. 'Put it back. You understand what it is?'

But I felt in the cavity among the dust until I came across something' solid, and pulled it forth. In the lantern light we examined it, and it was a very workmanlike pair of dividers in wrought iron, slightly oxidised, but recognisable, and even serviceable.

There was no doubt that we had broken into the sarcophagus of Cornelius Massiliensis. It consisted of six stone slabs, about two inches thick, neatly joined. In it were the ashes of the Master Builder of the Wall of Iscaster, and this implement of his trade had been buried with him. Dunsford was much shaken.

But as we heard the moaning no more, once the tomb had been pierced, he began to recover his nerve. He insisted that everything should be restored. We fixed up the broken slab as well as we could, and placed the inscribed stone in its cavity.

Dunsford, the most abstemious of men, took a very strong dose when we returned to the open air. He was so horrified by the notion that he had desecrated a grave that he pledged me to the most absolute secrecy about the cellar and the stone even, to say nothing of what had happened that night.

On Christmas morning we walked out to attend the Cathedral service. He explained that the wall ran behind the houses all down the pleasant terrace where he lived.

On the other side of it were city streets. Dunsford gave me a motor drive into the country in the afternoon, and on bank holiday we played golf. The  next morning I paid a visit to the local branch of the Great Western Bank, and then I came back to town. On the whole, a very jolly holiday.

'A WEIRD yarn, Pinson,' said Roland Greene. 'Did you bring it to the notice of the Psychical Research people?'

'Oh, no,' protested Mr. Pinson. 'How could I? Dunsford placed me under the most solemn obligation not to mention it.'

'Then it's jolly unsportsmanlike of you to have shouted it in a whispering gallery like this smoke-room,' observed a young member. Mr. Pinson smiled across at him.

'It's splendid,' he said, 'to see youth upholding Incorrupta fides. Justitia soror.'

'Then why- ?

'Look here, Pinson,' said Sir William Anwyn, from his corner by the fire, 'do you keep little bank balances in all the odd branches on the Western Circuit?'

'Only wish I could,' Mr. Pinson replied, shaking his head.

'Then why did you call at the Iscaster branch of the Great Western Bank?'

'Oh, just to say how-de-do to the manager. He wrote to me a day or two later to thank me for the call, and dent me a newspaper cutting. It described what the newspaper called a daring attempt to break into the bank. The strong-room of the bank, it seemed, was a splendid job, of three-inch steel embedded in three feet of concrete. It had been built into the basement at the back of the premises, which rested against the city wall. On Saturday morning, the manager, on going into the strong-room, saw that a small hole had been pierced in the steel, evidently from the outside, and it was long before anybody could divine how the would-be burglars had got at the back of the premises. Indeed, surveyors and mensurators and all sorts of experts had to be called in before the exact position of the back of the strong-room could be located. The police then found that a place called St. Cuthbert's House, next door to Dunsford's, which had been empty for a long time, on account of its size, was taken at a big rent three months before by some people apparently quite respectable, who had now suddenly gone. They seemed, indeed, to have flitted during the Friday night. In the cellar, which backed on to the Roman wall, they had made an excavation into the wall, tunnelled through the middle of it until they reached the back of the bank, and there made what the miners call a stope— a cave big enough to work in. In this cavity they had left a whole equipment of drills and tools, including an oxy-acetylene flame producer. They had cut away the concrete over a space of three feet square, and drilled four holes in the steel, one of which had gone through, and was therefore visible to the manager. The police thought they must have been disturbed in the very last operation they'd undertaken, though what could have disturbed them was a mystery. Another hour or two with the flame at work, and they'd have had a hole in the steel big enough to get through, and would have been able to rifle the strong-room and get away at their ease. The experts estimated that they must have been at work some weeks to accomplish what they did.

'You know the squealing, complaining, jerky noise a hand-worked drill makes in steel, don't you? Dunsford and I know what disturbed them at the last moment, if the police don't.

'It was the spook of old Cornelius Massiliensis.'

___________________

4: Mrs. Rooth's "Murder"

R. A. J. Walling

Sunday Times (Perth) 24 Dec 1933

ONE OF the queerest experiences that ever befell Noel Pinson was the game of golf he did not play on Christmas Eve.

He had meant to be at Sunningdale that day, and to spend Christmas Day at home in London; so that when his friend, Grainger, the inquiry agent at Westport, called on him to present a problem for his solution he was not too well pleased. Nothing, he said, would induce him to take on an investigation that meant missing Sunningdale

"Well, listen, anyhow, Mr. Pinson," said Grainger. "Have you seen anything in the papers about the Rooth case?"

"Not a syllable."

"I'm not surprised. Fortunately, the London papers haven't seemed to get wise to it; but it's a corker."

"Explain, expound, Grainger! Who is Ruth, and what is she?"

"Rooth," Mr. Grainger corrected. "The English surname, not the name of a Biblical female. I'll tell you."

Whereupon Grainger let loose a very queer story.

IN THE autumn a Mr. Sebastian Rooth, said to have made a modest fortune in the East at an exceptionally early age, arrived in Westport with his young wife, and bought a bungalow on the cliffs above Trenhayle Creek, a wooded paradise some six miles out of the town. His neighbors in the scattered houses round about thought him a pleasant, if rather retiring, fellow.

His wife was a tiny bit of a thing, a pretty, dark creature, but fragile and timid. Their relations seemed normal, but the neighbors saw little of Mr. Booth, and obtained most of their impressions from the daily girl, who helped her about the house. The only thing that struck them as very peculiar was that a man apparently so warm as Booth did not keep a larger establishment and give his wife more servants.

Then, all of a sudden, Mrs. Rooth disappeared, and the affairs of the Rooth family came tight into the lime-light. It happened this way:

Rooth had surprised Superintendent Lawton at Longbridge on the fourteenth by walking into his office with; a complaint that his wife had been molested by a man the afternoon before while walking on the cliff path near Trenhayle Point. She ran away, and he followed her, but gave up the chase when she came in sight of her house. That morning, however, she had received a letter containing threats.

"Lawton said I might bring you all the exhibits in the case to see," said Grainger, taking one from a packet of papers. Pinson read from a typewritten sheet:

"Same place, same time, to-morrow afternoon. You know what I want. If I do not get it, beware. Allthough I am a patient man, I do not propose to wait much longer. If yon give warning, or bring any person, or have any person in concealment, you will not see me. Then I shall proceed to business."

"It hath a familiar ring. Grainger," said Pinson. "The blackmailer is a sad plagiarist, and a bad speller, isn't he? Of course, she knew him?"

"That's just what Rooth says she didn't. Wait a bit."

The superintendent put all the usual questions to Rooth (Grainger went on), but be could ofter no explanation himself; he wanted the police to find one. So Lawton arranged a trap for the afternoon. Mrs. Rooth went to the spot Indicated in the letter; but nothing happened.

Next-morning she re-ceived a second typed sheet complaining that she had employed the police. The writer said she should have one more chance the nest afternoon. The puzzled superintendent thereupon decided-on another trial. This time ne concealed his men on the opposite side of the creek with field glasses. Again nothing happened.

He concluded that he had to deal with some half-witted practical joker; but that evening be was rung up by Rooth from the house of his nearest neighbor, one Barbury, and asked to go at once to Trenhayle. This was what had occurred:

Mrs. Rooth had gone into the garden at half-past eight, just as a fine rain began to fall, to fetch a jumper which she had hung on a bush to dry. Rooth, in the dining-room reading, first awoke to the fact that she was staying a long time, then thought she might be in the kitchen busying herself with a little work, which she did after the maid was gone. Coming across something amusing in his reading, he called out: "Nadie! Do listen to this." No reply. The house was silent. He walked into the kitchen; no Mrs. Rooth there. Into the garden, calling "Nadie!" No answer.

Rooth, with the threatening letters in his mind, became alarmed. He ran this way and that, into the woods, calling her name. After five futile minutes he rushed to Barbury's house to telephone. By this time he was frantic.

While they waited for the police Barbury got an electric torch and they made a close search of the garden. They found Mrs. Booth's jumper still hanging on a lavender bush. Then they noticed that a bed of endive between the lavender hedge and the fence bad beer trampled, followed the trail of ruined plants, and came to the fence itself an affair of pliable oak palings joined with wires. Whatever maurauder had destroyed the garden bed had alsc broken down the fence; it was bent back almost touching the ground in one place.

Rooth and Barbury, getting through into the wood, breathlessly traced the marks of a recent passage through the undergrowth, and came out on the edge of the cliff above the creek, when a little strip of turf with a foot-track worn in it separated the trees from the steep descent to the water fifty feet below. Mr. Barbury, flashing his torch light, saw something lying on the grass and picked up an old felt hat.

It was, said Roothm a discarded hat that his wife wore in the garden.

Both in a state of horrible fear, they continued the search. A few feet  further on the ground was trampled and torn as if by a scuffle, and a foot or two of turf had broken off at the cliff edge as if something or somebody had gone over. When Barbury drew Rooth's attention to a fresh smear of blood on the wet grass he collapsed.

This was the state of affairs when the police arrived. They found only one thing more. On a point of shale close to the top of the cliff was a fragment of cloth which Mr. Rooth recognised as being exactly like the material of the tweed skirt his wife had been wearing. Below, the tide was rippling out into the channel at six knots an hour.

AT this point Grainger paused in his narrative

"It's a strange story," said Pinson, "but I suppose there's some more to it?"

"No more story," Grainger replied "but two bits of what might or might not be evidence."

First, a boy playing about at low tide just under the spot where Mrs Rooth was supposed to have gone over found a silver coin. Grainger fished it out of his pocket and handed it to Pinson.

"Belgian franc," said Pinson, returning it. "Well?"

Next, the police, scouting about the wood, had found, two days afterwards  a piece of paper (which Grainger nov drew from his pocket), roughly triangular in shape, with two of the three sides charred. It seemed to b the top of the middle fold of a letter. The burning of the rest had left only a few words visible. Half of then were on the first sheet of the document and half on the second, thus:

er Heyst

sbeke

n Haen.

This was discovered in the wood no far from the garden fence. Rooth had by this time gone off to London on some legal business, leaving his address with Barbury. Lawton wrote to ask whether this find suggested any thing to him. He replied from Bloomsbury hotel that it didn't.

"Got his letter?" said Pinson.

Grainger passed over the last of bi exhibits, a brief note on hotel paper:

Dear Mr. Lawton.

I don't think this has any connection. Can't think of any. I hope to return next week if I can finish business with lawyer in time. Till then letters or telegrams will allways find me at this address.

Yours truly. Sebastian Rooth.

"Well," said Pinson, "have you arrested him?"

"Good lord, no! Why?"

''Surely lt was elementary. Have you seen him?"

"No, he's left the hotel. But you can't be serious. Mr. Pinson. Booth's been candor itself— begged the help of the police brought the letters..."

"Clever. Grainger, but not quite clever enough. If Mr. Booth wrote this letter from the hotel, then he also typed the other two himself."

Grainger scratched his head.

"Plain as St. Paul's," said Pinson. "The author of the typewritten slips and of the hotel letter had reached precisely the same stage in the science of orthography. One says 'although' with a double 'I,' and the other 'allways' with a double 'l'.  I never deny the possibility of coincidences, Grainger, but this one has too long an arm."

Grainger never liked to doubt Pinson's theories, but thought be had a stumer this time.

''Like me to test it?"

"I should," said Grainger.

"Very well. I'll give up my golf at Sunningdale, but only to change my course. I'll just have a game, and tell you by Monday whether I'm right or wrong."

ON WEDNESDAY Pinson, with a suitcase and a bag of golf sticks, caught the ten o'clock train from Victoria to Dover landed in the afternoon at Ostend, and took a taxi to Le Coq, whose golf course among the dunes, he had been told, was one of the best In Europe.

The big hotels were closed, but he found a smiling welcome at a little one In the brand new yellow, red and white square of Le Coq, and one or two people who, like himself, were bent on doing thirty-six holes on Christmas Eve.

While the light yet remained Pinson sallied out to the tramway station, bought a paper, and was informed by Mademoiselle where he could find Monsieur le Maire of Le Coq.

He arrived at that dignitary's villa just as he was about to dine, and apologised profusely for his inopportune visit. Much to the Mayor's regret. Pinson did not want to buy a villa and become a citizen of Le Coq; he merely wished to inquire whether the Mayor knew of a family of Van der Heysts In the Commune. He did. They were farmers, and they lived away back beyond the dunes in the level country at the farm of Sluisbeke. If Monsieur would follow the road leading south from the Square foi two kilometres, anybody he met would be able to direct him to Sluisbeke.

Pinson overflowed with thanks, and returned to his hotel. He talked golf  and took a hand at bridge until bed-time. The next morning he went ou before the golfers were astir, wound his way through the dips between the sandhills where Le Coq was feverishly getting itself built, and so to the flat and seemingly endless plain of West Flanders and along the straight road to the south.

No need to ask for Sluisbeke. The lock across a broad dyke and the foot bridge alongside sufficiently indicated the farm. No need, either, to worry the Van der Heysts, as it happened for, as he approached the neat group of farm buildings, looking as if they had sprung right out of a picture, two people crossed the footbridge an walked along the road towards him— a tallish man in plus fours and a little woman wrapped Jn a big fur coat. They passed without noticing him, going towards the dunes.

When their figures had decreased t the size of dolls Pinson followed, note I the point at which they turned froi I the road into the dunes, and half a hour later came upon them lookln over the greenish sea and shelterfn from the wind behind the breastwor of one of the old German gun enplacements.

Pinson sheltered there from the win as well, raising his bat. saying "Good morning," and adding something about the weather.

The man answered him pleasantly. The woman's dark eyes looked at him solemnly out of a little oval face, but she said nothing.

Presently they turned away.

"Don't go for a moment; Mr. Rooth said Mr. Pinson.

The man shot round to face him ai the'woman shrunk under his arm.

"I surprised you," said Mr. Pinson. "Sorry! There's no need for alarm.  Here's my card. Will you introduce me to the late Mrs. Booth?"

Mr. Booth took the card and stared at Mr. Pinson for a full minute.

"I don't know how you're going to do it," he said at last, "but I should like to know how you justify this intrusion."

"I admit it seems eccentric," said Mr. Pinson. "It's entirely due to the anxiety of a Mr. Lawton about the circumstances of the late Mrs. Rooth's death. Now that I've satisfied myself that Mr. Lawton can never discover how Mrs. Booth departed this life well, Mr. Lawton will have to be satisfied, too."'

"Then it's a friendly intrusion?" said Mr. Booth.

"It has been since I arrived at this spot," said Mr. Pinson, with a bow the little woman. "If, however, I had found you alone, Mr. Booth, it might have been less so."

Mr. Booth plucked a reed from a coping and twisted it round his finger,  frowning at the North Sea.

"However friendly," said he, "it's extremely embarrassing for me."

"Why?" Mr. Pinson inquired. "You diddled the police very completely, but so far as I can see, you've commited no crime. It only needs for me to go back to England and forget all about you with the hope that, whatever the danger was which Mrs. Rooth feared, has been perfectly staved off by an untimely death."

The little woman shrank still closer to Mr. Rooth, looking fearfully at Mr Pinson the while.

"It beggars me entirely," said Rooth, "to imagine how you've wormed your way into this affair. But when you get back to England, if you make inquiries at Trenhayle, and can add two and two together as successfully, I think you'll see that the danger was not fanciful."

''That's easy to see. Nobody would have gone to the expense and trouble you've taken for the fun of mystifying Mr. Lawton. What was it?"

"Shall I tell him, Nadie?" Mr. Booth put an arm round his wife aa be looked down at her.

"If you please," said she.

"Then, briefly, when we married in India, not only did I cut my own painter away from European society, but she offended powerful people of her own race. We've been fugitive for nearly two years. I thought we'd successfully concealed ourselves in that little comer of the West, but a few months after we got there we learned that the hiding-place was known."

"Was it so bad as that— a question of life and death?" Mr. Pinson asked.

"Absolutely. It was a personal as well as a racial feud. You understand?"

"Some jealousy, perhaps?"

Mr. Rooth nodded. "Anyhow, she wasn't safe once her whereabouts  were known. We thought first of putting them off the scent with a faked suicide, but decided that it wouldn't be convincing enough. Then came the idea of a death that could be officially established. We worked up what we thought would be a perfect deception. I came over here, because I knew the country and the Van der Heysts, and fixed up the sort of refuge where we'd be least looked for. The night my wife was supposed to have been killed she was on her way to London, and the next day young Van der Heyst met her at Ostend."

"Very neat," said Pinson. "You'd thought of most things— even of supplying her with Belgian money before she left."

"Yes; but, good lord! how did you know that?"

"Because when you leant over the edge of the cliff to plant the bit of stuff from your wife's frock you dropped a franc, you must have had some of the change in your pocket— ticket pocket, I presume."

"Ah! That gives you Belgium. But what makes you suspect me at all?"

"Oh, the usual error," Pinson replied, "committing things to paper. More people hang themselves or get into gaol by learning to write than in any other way."

Mr. Rooth looked puzzled.

"You see," said Pinson, "when a type-written letter to Mrs. Rooth and a pen-written note to Mr. Lawton show the same peculiarities of spelling it's a fair inference that the same artist accomplished both."

"By Jove," cried Mr. Booth. "I wouldn't like to steal a turnip if you were within a hundred miles. But though you suspect me and you guess Belgium, and although Belgium to not a very big country, I still don't see how you got here."

"You should have invested in an electric torch like Mr. Barbury's," said Pinson.

Mr. Booth shook his head.

"Or, at any rate, you should look at the paper you use for a torch before  you throw it away. I suppose the flicker of a match wasn't enough to show you whether you had broken down the railings with sufficient artistic skill, so you took a piece of paper from your pocket and lit it for a flare. It happened to be the letter Van der Heyst had sent you, I assume, in answer to your announcement that your wife would be here on a certain day. There wasn't much left except a part of the name Den Haem, which is, curiously enough, the Flemish equivalent of The Cock, and a part of the name of Van der Heyst— But there you are— and here I am in consequence."

"It's extraordinaryr" exclaimed Mr. Booth.

"Not at all." said Pinson. "Experience shows me that it's practically impossible for any man to cover up his tracks so completely that they can't be seen."

"Will you walk back with us, and perhaps take a country lunch?"

"With great pleasure." said Pinson. "I was going to play a round of golf, but there won't he time for that if I'm to eat my Christmas dinner at home."

IT WAS a fortnight later when Mr. Grainger called again on Pinson in London.

"You weren't so successful as you expected that week-end," said Mr. Grainger.

"No; but I had an excellent round of golf," Pinson replied.

"Meanwhile, a visitor's been to Trenhayle— just come and gone— that Lawton would like to have got hold of."

"Gosh!" said Pinson with a start. "The visitor was, I suspect, a gentleman of color?"

"He was; but how did you guess?"

"It wasn't a guess. Tell me about him."

"One of those yellow-skinned chaps," Grainger said, "with tablecloths tied round their beads, selling carpets. Prowled around the bungalows, asked about the empty one. Was told the tale of Mrs. Rooth's death by one of the servant girls. Still prowled about, and was discovered by Barbury trying to  break into Booth's place.

"Barbury got suspicious, remembering the threatening letters, and made a grab at him. Plucky, when you think of it, eh? But the fellow was off like a rocket into the wood, and hasn't been seen since. Lawton thinks he may be the man that did for Mrs Rooth, come back looking for whatever it was he demanded from her. It's a theory," said Grainger.

"Eye of the Indian idol, or the green jade god, or the temple ruby? What d'you think, Grainger?" Pinson laughed

"I don't think. What do you?"

"Tell you what, Grainger, whoever killed Mrs. Rooth, I'm certain it wasn't  the carpet seller."

"I'm not so sure," said Mr. Grainger.  "Anyhow, your own theory didn't work this time, Mr. Pinson."

"No, Grainger; but as an eminent ornament of the Church once said, none but a fool is always right."

___________________

5: The Homestretch

Guy Gilpatric

1896-1950

The Saturday Evening Post, 10 March 1945

It was an evening of full moon, soft breeze, and gentle sea, so pleasant that Mr. Colin Glencannon paused on his way up from the engine room to enjoy it. Ahead and to starboard of the Inchcliffe Castle he could make out the silver-edged silhouettes of a dozen other ships of the convoy, seesawing lazily as they rode the swell across the broad, bright path of the moon. Far away on the quarter were intermittent flashes that looked like heat lightning playing below the horizon but which actually came from the beacon on Cape St. Vincent, at the southwest tip of Portugal. It was, he reflected, precisely such a night, such a spot, and such a target as had gladdened the hearts of U-boat skippers for a weary tale of years— indeed, until only a few short months before. But then the tide had turned and great things begun to happen. Soon the Huns were going down to Davy Jones in such gratifying numbers that even the octopi had gagged on the diet. And now, praises be, the tale was all but ended!

"Aye," Mr. Glencannon murmured happily, continuing up to the lower bridge, "as I and Muster Churchill have so neatly phrased it, we're on the homestretch noo!"

"Yes, yes, ker-hem, quite so!" came a voice from the shrouded porthole beside him. "That's exactly what I sent for you to discuss about. Come in, Mr. Glencannon, do."

Stepping into the master's cabin, the engineer found Captain Ball seated at his desk, clad in a suit of pongee pajamas and with a magazine called Bloody Detective Stories propped upright on his considerable paunch. Either the pajamas had shrunk or the paunch increased in amplitude since their purchase, for jacket and trousers were filled to capacity and straining at the seams. "Sit down, Mr. Glencannon." He waved the magazine toward a chair. "Yes, ker-hem; we're finally on the homestretch, exactly like you were saying. We're on two of 'em, you might say, the homestretch of the war and the homestretch of this voyage. And that— well, that's what's got me so blasted worried!"

"Worried? Ah, foosh, sir, ye amaze me!" said Mr. Glencannon. "Mysel', I'd say we were on the verge o' a season o' great rejoicing! As a matter o' fact—" he produced a bottle from his overall pocket and placed it upon the desk— "as a matter o' fact, I can see no reason why we shudna onticipate history a wee and do a spot o' rejoicing richt here and noo." He took the tumbler from the rack above the washbasin, emptied it of a pinkish liquid and Captain Ball's Sunday teeth, and set it on the desk beside the bottle. "Come, pour yersel' a snort and cheer up, sir!" he invited.

"M'm! 'Duggan's Dew of Kirkintilloch'," Captain Ball read the label with a wistful eye. "Well, I won't pretend I wouldn't relish a dollop of it, Mr. Glencannon, but I've heard you say a thousand times it's full of proteins and vitamins and all like that, so it's really out of the question. Having the end of the war in sight is bad enough, but going home to London after all these years is even worse!" He puffed out his ruddy cheeks and emitted a long, high-pressure sigh.

Mr. Glencannon looked at him perplexedly as he filled the tumbler for himself. "Fronkly, sir, I canna mak' heads nor tails o' what ye're driving at! Why shud ye worrit aboot the war ending, why shud ye worrit aboot getting home to London, and what have the proteins and vitamins in yon whusky got to do with it anyway?"

"Everything!" said Captain Ball. "Everything! Why, don't you realize, Mr. Glencannon, that as soon as this war's over, there's going to be hell's own slump in the shipping business? Remember how it was after the last war!"

"Aye, but I still canna see what connection ..."

"Ah! As soon as this slump comes, which you mark my words it will, a lot of old shellbacks like me, that have held our jobs only because of the war, are going to be left high and dry on the beach. The Mercantile Marine'll go back to competitive operation and jobs for shipmasters my age will be scarcer than hen's teats! And then— well, what's going to happen to me and poor old Missus B. then, heh?" He turned and blinked at a framed photograph of himself and his lady holding hands on the vine-shrouded steps of Kozey Kottage, No. 12, Cowslip Lane, the Vicarage Lower Acres, Weybridge, Surrey. "It was taken on our thirty-fifth anniversary, just before the war," he said, musingly.

"Oh, but surely, sir, ye dinna think our owners would be so ungrateful as to sack ye, after all yere years o' faithful sairvice to the line! I'm confident that Muster Hazlitt..."

"Hazlitt! Faugh! That weasel!" Captain Ball snorted and his paunch vibrated with emotion. "Hazlitt is exactly the reason why I dread getting back to London next week! Please remember, Mr. Glencannon, Hazlitt hasn't set eyes on any of us for nearly three years—and you know how much older a person always looks when you haven't seen him for a long time! Well, what's Hazlitt going to think when he sees me? What's he going to do when he notices how bald I am, how gray my mustache is and how, er, how developed my physique has got? Yes, ker-hem, my physique most especially, Mr. Glencannon! My physique is why I'm cutting down on vitamins and proteins, like you've just seen."

Mr. Glencannon strained a mouthful of whisky through his walrus mustache and eyed his commander appraisingly. "A-weel, captain, there's no concealing the fact that ye're carrying more than yere fair share o' the white mon's burden, especially in front. But losh, I sumply canna believe e'en such a nosty auld gimlet as Hazlitt wud fire ye merely for wearing a few extra bucketfuls o' suet aroond yere midriff!"

"You don't? Heh! Then you don't know Hazlitt!" said Captain Ball, grimly. "Oh, he's had it in for me for years, old Hazlitt has! And besides—" he leaned forward and lowered his voice, "—besides, Mr. Glencannon, there's a— a certain individual right here in this here ship who is planning his damndest to steal my job out from under me. He'll try even harder, once we get to London!"

Mr. Glencannon stiffened and erupted a blood-curdling oath. "Ho! Ye mean the mate! Aye, Captain Ball— there I can believe ye! Muster Montgomery is a sniveling snipe and a snirtling twirp, ower-weeningly ombitious and utterly unscrupulous! He's had his hungry eye on yere job for a lang, lang time. And o' late, come to think o' it, he's been referring to ye behind yere back as Auld Swellbelly, Captain Blubberguts and a muckle o' other names e'en more vividly descriptive o' yere contours."

"Oh has he, he has, has he? Well—" Captain Ball's brow beetled and the back of his neck flushed rapidly from pink to purple. "That just goes to show what a subtile reptile he is! Hell's bones!" He clenched his fists and shook them over his head. "With Montgomery as well as Hazlitt out for my scalp, you can see why this 'homestretch' business is such a shocking bad business for me! But that brings us back to the crux of the matter I wanted to talk to you about in the first place. Here, look." He opened the copy of Bloody Detective Stories to a full-page advertisement and thrust it across the desk. "As a scientific bloke, what's your opinion of this?"

Mr. Glencannon saw that the main illustration of the advertisement portrayed a most distinguished personage, obviously a statesman, a bishop, or a captain of industry, clad only in Roman sandals and what appeared to be a pair of sheet iron bathing trunks. Zigzag sparks of lightning were shooting out from his elegantly moulded middle, his eyes radiated the joy of living, while from his mouth came the words, "I knocked off 20 inches and 20 years in 20 seconds!" Below was the headline:

YES!— HE WEARS DR. ZOGLICK'S

ABDOMINAL STREAMLINER,

THE GARMENT THAT

GUARANTEES GIRTH CONTROL!

This was followed by a block of text extolling the virtues of the Streamliner in banishing the bulge from the bilge and by three smaller pictures. The first of these showed a gentleman in evening clothes who appeared to be harboring a bass drum within his trousers; he was standing lonely and forlorn beneath a potted palm while a bevy of lovelies in strapless gowns danced by in the arms of wasp-waisted fighter pilots. All these carefree young folk were pointing and simpering at the luckless outcast and shunning him as though he had just come in from skinning a skunk. Lettered above their heads and expressing the cynical consensus was: "POOR OLD EDGAR! NOBODY LOVES A FAT MAN!" "Trogic! Trogic!" Mr. Glencannon murmured.

The second picture revealed the same gentleman— but now, presto! he was glum and globular no longer. Reshaped and rejuvenated, he was whirling the strapless belle of the ball through the intricate figures of an exhibition dance while the rest of the haut monde cooled their heels on the sidelines and viewed the miracle in envy and admiration. "EDGAR MAILED THE COUPON TO DR. ZOGLICK AND NOW HE'S THE CATCH OF THE SEASON!" they were whispering, in their sophisticated society manner. And well they might, for the lady was wearing the Kohinoor, the Hope, the Cullinan, the Victoria, and the Orloff diamonds, and it was plain from her worshipful expression that Edgar, his tripe department streamlined by the Zoglick magic, could have them, her, or all six for the asking.

Mr. Glencannon was deeply impressed. "Ah, whurra!" he breathed, the breath combining reverence and alcohol, "What wonders hath God wrought!" He directed his attention to the third picture. This was a detail drawing of the garment, with arrows pointing to its various patented gores, gussets, straps, and elastics. He studied it carefully, then read the explanatory data beneath. "A-weel," he announced, "as one savant speaking o' another, I think I can say in all sobriety that Dr. Z-ick! Dr. Zoglick has confaired upon monkind the greatest single boon since the invention of whusky. I believe his Abdominal Streamliner is the solution o' yere prublem, Captain, and I strongly advise ye to buy it the vurra minute ye get to London."

"Ah, but I can't, I can't— that's just the point!" cried Captain Ball. "That there is an American magazine I borrowed off a Yankee chap at Gib, don't you see? The Dr. Zoglick Abdominal Streamline Control Laboratories, Incorporated, are way out west in Cincinn- however- the-hell- they-pronounce- it, in Ohio. Why, by the time I mailed the coupon all that distance and got the gadget back, Hazlitt would have fired me ten times over and Montgomery would be sitting right here in this very chair, wiping his nose on his new gold stripe!"

"But..."

"But look!" Captain Ball heaved forward ponderously, his paunch well in the lead. "This is a desperate matter, Mr. Glencannon— desperate! We'll probably get to London some time Thursday. When we tie up in Limehouse Docks and Hazlitt comes aboard, I've simply got to be wearing one of those streamline thingummies or my job won't be worth a pin's fee.— And you, Mr. Glencannon— you have got to make it for me!"

"I? Ah, foosh, Captain— I ne'er made such a controption in my life! Why dinna ye let me mak' ye a nice set o' bross knuckles instead, and use them to wean Muster Montgomery back into the paths o' loyalty?"

"Because cracking Montgomery's jaw would ruin me worse than ever with Hazlitt, that's why! Oh, come, Mr. Glencannon— you don't mean to say the job is beyond you, do you?"

Mr. Glencannon was stirred by the challenge. He referred again to the whisky and then to the advertisement. "A-weel, noo, let's see," he murmured, frowning at the detail drawing. "This picture mak's the prunciple clear as crystal, but I'm wondering about the materials."

"Materials? Why, don't you remember the lovely set of teeth you made for me, that time when my factory ones fell overboard at Havana? All you had to make 'em out of was a rubber heel for the gums and some old toothbrush handles for the gnashers. Surely, surely, a genius of your caliber could knock out a pair of these here simple streamline drawers in no time!"

"H'm, why yes, captain," the engineer nodded pontifically, "on second thocht, I dare say I can monnage it for ye. Indeed, if it took Dr. Zoglick only twenty seconds to knock twenty inches and twenty years off this Yonkee pork baron, Dr. Glencannon ocht to be able to knock theerty inches and theerty years off you between noo and next Thursday!"

"Ha! Fine! Oh, I knew you'd help me!" Captain Ball reached over and slapped him on the shoulder. "Why, just to hear you say it has lifted a terrible weight off me.— Off my mind, I mean, ha-ha! Er—" he turned and leered at the bottle, "I really don't suppose a few little vitamins and calories will show on me, once I'm wearing the thing, do you?"

"Losh, o' course they won't!" Mr. Glencannon assured him. "Pour yersel' a sowp o' it, captain, and then just strip off yere pyjamas. I'll have to mak' a vurra careful drawing o' the garment with indelible pencil, directly on yere pairson. Then I can scale doon the measurements to exactly the size ye ocht to be."

"Yes, yes, scale 'em down, by all means!" said Captain Ball, jovially, stepping out of his trousers.

THE FOLLOWING day but one, Mr. MacQuayle, the second engineer, went to the after well deck to overhaul a winch. There he found Mr. Montgomery and Mr. Swales, the second mate, deep in a whispered discussion. The chief officer looked up and beckoned him eagerly.

"I say, Mr. Mac, you're the very cove we wanted to see!" He cast a cautious glance behind him. "Mr. Swales and I was just now saying there's some kind of monkey business going on in this 'ere ship and we was wondering if you'd noticed anything unusual in the engine room."

"—Especially as regards Glencannon," added Mr. Swales.

Mr. MacQuayle scratched his head with his Stillson wrench. "Um, weel, he's quit making those counterfeit half-crown pieces, if that's what ye mean. He said something aboot taking on a special rush job for the captain."

"For the captain? Ah-ha!" Mr. Montgomery nudged Mr. Swales. "Now we're getting somewheres! Just exactly wot is this special rush job he's doing for the captain, Mac?"

"I havena the slichtest idea," said Mr. MacQuayle. "Most of the time, ye see, he wurrks on it up in the Auld Mon's room. However, yesterday I did hear him osking the bosun to lend him the loan o' a sail needle."

"A sail needle!" Mr. Montgomery slapped the rail exultantly. "There, gor-blimey— that just about confirms our theory!"

"What theory?" Mr. MacQuayle demanded. "Fronkly, I dinna ken what the pair o' ye are clashering aboot."

"'Ere, I'd better tell 'im from the very beginning," said Mr. Swales. "Listen, Mac! The night before larst, when I was coming down off the bridge, I 'appened to 'ear Captain Ball talking and larffing fit to kill, inside there in 'is cabin. Welp, arfter the 'orrible grouch the old buffer's been nursing, ever since 'e's been on 'is diet or 'unger strike or wotever it is, I wondered wot could be myking 'im feel so 'appy, all of a sudden. So I peeps in through a little crack between the blackout shield and the edge of the port'ole and wot— wot d'yer s'pose I saw?"

"Yus— tell 'im wot yer saw!" Mr. Montgomery urged.

"I saw Captain Ball standing there naked as a jail bird! And Glencannon—now get this, Mac— Glencannon was drawing some sort of a design around 'is middle with an indelible pencil. Why, so 'elp me, if I 'adn't seen it meself, I couldn't 'ave believed me own eyes! And all the time the pair of 'em was guzzling whisky and guffawing like a couple children!"

Mr. MacQuayle whistled softly. "Weel, so far, it's all vurra peculiar, I must say. But what's the rest o' it? And what aboot the sail needle?"

"Simply this," said Mr. Swales. "The design which Glencannon was drawing on the Old Man's pod was a lot of lines and crisscrosses, like the tattooing the New Zealand Maoris wear. Well, now that you've told us about Glencannon borrowing the sail needle, it's all as plain as day!"

"Yus, lawks, just imagine!" Mr. Montgomery sneered. "—Getting tattooed at 'is age, especially around the tunkus! Wot's the silly old terrapin thinking of? And wot'll Mr. 'Azlitt think when 'e 'ears about it— which I guarantee 'e will?"

Mr. MacQuayle reached over his shoulder with the Stillson and thoughtfully scratched his back with it. "A-weel, I dinna think yere theory holds water," he declared. "If Glencannon was going to tattoo the Auld Mon, he wudna use a sail needle but an ordinurra fine needle.— Argh, guid losh, mon!— Dinna ye realize what it wud feel lik' to get a big, blunt sail needle stuck into ye?"

"Ouch! I 'adn't thought of that," Mr. Montgomery nodded reluctant agreement. "Come to think of it, if anybody was to jab the captain with a sail needle, he'd go phut! like a toy balloon. But-but if Glencannon isn't tattooing 'im, wot in the world is 'e doing?"

"That I canna tell ye," said Mr. MacQuayle. "However, as ye obsairved at the beginning, there's certainly some kind o' funny business afoot."

"Yus, welp, there always is, aboard this sorry swill-barge!" growled Mr. Montgomery. "With that fat old lump o' lard in command of it, 'ow could it be otherwise? The example 'e sets, it's a wonder I can maintain the discipline and run the ship at all! 'Ere, you!" he roared at a seaman who was swabbing the deck, "take both hands for that job, you pansy-fingered son of a one-armed chamber maid! Wot d'yer think you've got there, anyway— a feather duster?"

"No, sir," said the sailor, "but I've got to use one 'and to 'old up me breeches till I finds a bit o' rope."

"Rope?" Mr. Montgomery stamped furiously. "Rope, what for? Where's yer belt, man? Where's yer braces?"

"I 'aven't got no belt, sir," said the sailor. "And look— please look, sir— 'ere's orl that's left of me bryces." He indicated the six neatly-severed leather tabs that were fastened to his trouser buttons, then wagged his head and lowered his voice mysteriously. "It did the syme thing to the bryces of every man in me watch, sir!"

"It?" Mr. Montgomery fumed. "Wot d'yer mean, 'it'?"

"The— the ghost or wotever it was, sir! It sneaked into the fo'c's'le larst night and cut the elarstic parts off of every pair of bryces it could lay its ruddy 'ands on!"

Mr. Montgomery's mouth was open and all set to bellow, but the bellow failed to emerge. "Oh!" he said feebly. "Oh, yus, I see." He turned to Messrs. Swales and MacQuayle and spread his hands in futile exasperation. "Welp, now we've got some more funny business to contend with! If it ain't a bloody one thing in this ship, it's a ruddy other! But wait till we get to London, gempmen— just wait till we get to London! Then you'll 'ear a certain fat somebody go phut! and it won't be because 'e's been jabbed with no sail needle, neither!"

ON WEDNESDAY evening the Inchcliffe Castle came through the mine fields and into a dense fog that blanketed the Thames Estuary. She groped her way westward as far as Sheerness and there prudently dropped anchor. Grumbling at the delay but secretly overjoyed by it, Captain Ball left the bridge and hurried down to his room. "How's it coming, Mr. Glencannon?" he asked tensely.

The engineer held up a crude but reasonable facsimile of Dr. Zoglick's Abdominal Streamliner, fashioned for the most part of heavy, brown-tarred canvas. "Here, feast yere eyes on it!" he invited. Though his voice was exultant, his demeanor was that of a man sorely jaded by days and nights of unremitting toil. "Just as soon as I file doon the rough edges on some o' these rivets, we'll be ready for the foormal loin-girding ceremonies."

"Thank goodness it's finished in time!" breathed Captain Ball. "Yes, and thank goodness for this here fog! Now I'll be able to sit around in it awhile this evening and give it a good, thorough try out." He took off his dripping oilskins and hung them in the showerbath.

Mr. Glencannon shook his head wearily. "Weel, it's been a near thing, all the same," he said. "I'll confess there've been times when I feared the tosk wud prove too arduous for me. A ship at sea affords vurra meager facilities for the fobrication o' cumplicated scientific tummy-snubbers, especially in war time. But noo, sir, if ye'll just doff yere breeks and climb into the little beauty, I think ye'll see that genius has prevailed."

"Ha! Right-o!" Captain Ball peeled off his trousers excitedly and dragged the garment up around his midships. He fumbled at the buckles with trembling fingers. "M'm! Ow! I must say this dam tarpaulin hatch cover you made it out of is shocking stiff and scratchy. Listen to it crackle!"

"Oh, that's merely because it's new," Mr. Glencannon assured him, with an airy wave of the hand. "A garment o' this sort has got to be brukken in, exoctly lik' a new pair o' shoes. Wait, sir— let me help ye tighten that upper strop.—There, how's that?"

"Oooff! Uff!" Captain Ball grunted, then peered eagerly down his forward slope. He pinched up bountiful handsful of himself, here and there, and watched them as they melted slowly back into place. His face fell. "Well, ker-hem, I hate to say it, Mr. Glencannon, but I— I really can't see that it makes my physique very, er— streamline."

"Ah, but swith, captain— ye havena got these lower strops half tight enough! Wait, I'll give ye a hond!"

"Ow! Ouch! Whoa!" The captain winced, though somewhat soggily, and again surveyed the rolling landscape south of his chest. "Well, yes," he admitted, "That does seem to have reefed me in a little. But, phew! my physique feels like it had got slammed shut in a drawbridge. Look, Mr. Glencannon— isn't there something wrong with these here elastic pieces on the sides? When I try to take a breath, there isn't any stretch in 'em. Huff! Huff! Huff!" At the third huff, the elastics tore loose as one. The garment slithered down his legs like the final curtain of some starkly dismal tragedy.

"Weel, weel, weel, and wud ye look at that, noo!" Mr. Glencannon cocked his head to one side and considered the catastrophe with a mixture of bitter chagrin and keen professional interest. "Tsk, tsk, tsk! It's exoctly what I've been dreading all alang. Ye see, sir, every last piece o' those braces I stole was so auld and rotten that its coefficient o' resiliency was insufficient, following subjection to tensional strain, to induce a normal spuntaneous readjustment to the original molecular structure and, hence, to the exteernal physical form o' the member itsel'. A-weel, captain, there's a muckle o' truth in that auld saying aboot 'live and lairn'!"

"Yes," said Captain Ball miserably, "and there's a muck more of truth in that other old saying about 'a yard is long and time is fleeting!' It's fleeting dam fast, Mr. Glencannon, so let's call a truce to all this fruitless philosophosising! You'd better sneak right down and pilfer some more braces!"

Mr. Glencannon bit a wisp of bristles from the fringe of his mustache and chewed them thoughtfully. "I regret to report there's only one pair o' braces left in the ship— Muster Montgomery's. Having exomined them vurra carefully and by stealth, I can assure ye they're no worth stealing."

"Ker-huff! Well, I wouldn't wear 'em if they was— no, not that leper's! But please, please!" Captain Ball's voice throbbed with anxiety. "You've got to think of something!" From forward came eight fog-muffled strokes of the Inchliffe Castle's bell. "Hark! It's midnight already! What are you going to do, Mr. Glencannon?"

The engineer gathered up the garment and tucked it under his arm. "A-weel," he said, "feerst I shall provide mysel' with a virgin bottle o' a ceelebrated brond o' whusky. Then I shall hie me doon to the engine room and toil through the stilly nicht. And some time before the telegraph rings off the engines in Limehouse Docks tomorrow, I shall fulfill my promise to knock theerty inches and theerty years off o' that vurra plentiful gentlemon, Captain John Ball." He bowed with a flourish and stepped out into the fog.

NEXT DAY, the S.S. Inchcliffe Castle plodded into No. 3 Basin of the Limehouse Commercial Docks like a weary old plough horse returning to rest in its own familiar stall. Presently Mr. MacQuayle came out on deck and stood viewing the grimy roofs and chimneypots of Limehouse and the great black gaps left by the bombs. He was joined by Mr. Montgomery.

"Ah, London, London!" sighed the mate. "In spite of all, the dear old town is a treat for sore eyes, ain't it, Mac?"

"It is," agreed Mr. MacQuayle, "and I must say, Chauncey, ye're looking vurra swonk and hondsome yersel'." He proceeded to take admiring stock of the other's shore-going costume, which consisted of a bowler hat with a dozen quill toothpicks arranged as a cockade in the band, a pea-green necktie, a pin-striped suit, and a pair of banana-colored oxfords. "Mon, mon— ye're all togged oot like a doshing young squire o' dames!"

Mr. Montgomery smirked complacently. "Ain't I, though?" He gave the crown of his bowler a pat and snapped a shred of lint off his sleeve. "I dare say I'll manage to squire quite a few of 'em! But first— welp, Mac, first I'm going to fix things so's that when we leave this port, I'll be in command of the ship!"

Mr. MacQuayle raised his eyebrows and spat over the side noncommittally.

"Yus, you can jolly well depend on it!" the mate continued, warmly. "This 'ere monkey business 'as gone beyond all patience, and Mr. 'Azlitt's going to 'ear about it! Can you tell me what Glencannon was mucking about in the engine room all larst night for?"

"I wish I cud," said Mr. MacQuayle. "But when I tried to approach the wurrk bench to find oot, he made some vurra discouraging gestures at me with his bross knuckles. He seemed to be tired and owerstrung. However, I did see him winding piano wire aroond a half-inch steel rod, making a dozen spiral springs oot o' it. And later on, I saw him riveting these springs to what appeared to be a feed bag for a hippopotamus."

"But 'e doesn't own no 'ippopotamus! 'As 'e gone completely off 'is chump?"

"Ye can sairch me!" said Mr. MacQuayle. "All I know is that this whole dom voyage has been too mysterious for my taste."

Mr. Montgomery smacked his right fist into his left palm. "It's been too mysterious for everybody's! Why, ever since all them braces was filched out of the fo'c's'le, the crew's been lying awake nights worrying about spooks. They, er... Look, Mac, look!" he pointed at a taxi approaching through the dockyard. "That must be Mr. 'Azlitt! I'll just nip down and get a word in before 'e sees the captain!" He scurried across the gangplank and snatched open the taxi's door even before the vehicle had come to a stop.

"Well, well, Mr. 'Azlitt, sir!" he cried unctuously, snatching off his bowler and bowing like a flunkey. "'Ow are you, Mr. 'Azlitt, sir, 'ow are you? 'Ere—just let me relieve you of that dispatch case and walking stick, sir, and permit me to 'elp you out, sir!"

"Ah, thank you, Montgomery!" Though Mr. Virgil Hazlitt, Managing Director of Clifford, Castle & Co., Ltd., was a frail old gentleman, he stepped from the taxi unaided and with a most surprising briskness. "Glad to see you, Montgomery." He removed his gold-rimmed pince-nez, polished it with his handkerchief, and set it back on the bridge of his knife-thin nose. "Er—yes, and I'm glad to see you looking so well! For you do look well, by Jove—surprisingly well! To see you, one would never think there'd been a war on! Remarkable, I mean to say! Remarkable!"

Mr. Montgomery bowed, scraped, beamed, and rubbed his hands. He even tried to blush. "It's very kind and perlite of you to say so, sir! As a matter of fact, the war 'asn't bothered me a bit— no, not me, sir! But of course, Mr. 'Azlitt," his eyes narrowed, "I'm not the only orfficer aboard the Inchcliffe Castle!" He cleared his throat. "Captain Ball is..."

"Yes, yes— splendid chap, isn't he? I realize that with such an able commander, things were much easier for you." He trotted up the gangplank and paused on deck for a moment to watch the seamen who were uncovering the forward hatches. They were gaunt, hollow-eyed, as though deprived of sleep. "Tsk! Tsk! Now, there, Montgomery— those poor lads have felt the strain and they show it!"

"Yus, they 'ave, sir— and they've 'ad good reason to!" said the mate, again attempting to drive in his wedge. "They're as brave a crowd o' chaps as I ever sailed with, sir— under normal conditions. But..."

"But war is war! Precisely, Mr. Montgomery!" Mr. Hazlitt mounted the ladder to the lower bridge and tapped on the captain's door. After a considerable delay, it was opened by Mr. Glencannon. Captain Ball, buttoning his jacket, stalked slowly forward and inclined himself in a stiff, almost imperceptible bow.

"Good morning, Mr. Hazlitt," he said. His voice was weak and he spoke with obvious effort. "It's really very kind of you to come down to welcome us home, sir."

"John!" Mr. Hazlitt pressed the captain's meaty hand between his own two boney ones. "Good old John! Here, stand off and let me look at you, m' boy! Well, well, well, it's been a long time, hasn't it? And Glencannon! How are you, Glencannon?"

"I'm vurra weel indeed, sir," the engineer assured him. "That smell ye smell is only hair tonic."

"Ah? You look tired." Mr. Hazlitt eyed him solicitously, then turned again to Captain Ball. "Come, come, now, John!" he said, with a kindly smile, "It's— it's frightfully sporting of you and Glencannon to put on this brave front, and I admire you for it. But, well, I know you've felt the tension of these past few years, just like all normal people. You show it in your faces, in your voices, in your manner. God knows, it's nothing to be ashamed of! And John— you've lost a good bit of weight, haven't you?" He grasped the slack in the front of the captain's jacket. "Why, good heavens!" he cried in alarm, "You've wasted away to a shadow! I can actually feel your ribs! They feel like a skeleton's!"

"Ouch!" gasped Captain Ball, retreating stiffly.

Mr. Hazlitt clucked his tongue sympathetically. "Come, John, sit down. Yes, let's all sit and relax a bit, while you spin me some yarns about the trials you've been through."

Moving jerkily, Captain Ball attempted to sit. He stopped abruptly at the halfway mark, like an automaton whose gears have jammed. "Uff!" he grunted, trying to get his breath. "I really pref-f-fer to stand, sir." His neck was purple and rivulets of sweat trickled down it into his collar.

"But John!" Mr. Hazlitt pleaded. "Now that you're home, you've got to ease up, man! You've got to relax from the strain you've been under— from the awful responsibility, day and night, that you've felt for this ship and for the interests of the firm! When I report to the directors how faithfully you've ... Whup! Catch him!"

With a mighty thud, Captain Ball slumped unconscious to the floor. He lay there breathing raspingly, his mouth opening and closing like that of a gaffed codfish.

"Welp, there you 'ave it, Mr. 'Azlitt!" blurted Mr. Montgomery triumphantly. "Like I was just now trying to tell you, sir, Captain Ball is really a very old man. 'Is arteries ..."

"Old?" Mr. Hazlitt's tone was glacial and his blue eyes gleamed like arctic ice. "—Old? Why, John Ball is almost two years younger than I am! But if you were worth your salt, you lazy shirker, you'd have shared his responsibility, lightened his burden, and eased the strain, just as Glencannon, the crew and everyone else on this ship has done! Instead..."

With a mighty, convulsive heave and a gasp that drowned out the sound of ripping canvas, Captain Ball expanded himself to his fullest capacity. "Ah!" He opened his eyes and smiled. "Yes! The— strain!" he murmured feebly, "The— strain— was— terrible! But— it's— all— right— now!"

Mr. Hazlitt knelt beside him. "Quick, Montgomery!" he snapped. "Don't just stand there, you dude! Run and fetch some whisky from the steward!"

The mate turned and scurried toward the door.

Mr. Glencannon looked after him and shrugged. "Weel, pride goeth before a fall!" he prophesied oracularly. "He boasted that his nairves were immune to strain, but I can guarontee that his braces are not!" He winked at no one in particular and fell to trimming his fingernails with a nicked and rusty, but apparently very serviceable, razor blade.

_____________________

6: "Burglin' ain't the Game it Was"

Val Jameson

Guyra Argus (NSW) 5 Jan 1911

Valerie J Jameson was an Australian songwriter and author who flourished in the 1900s-1920s; nothing is known of her since 1930, when she appeared in a copyright lawsuit. This story, as published, had no title. I made one up.

DROOD AND DARNLEY were clever detectives and intimate friends. Many puzzling crimes they had unravelled togother and brought the perpetrators to the courts of justice. Drood possessed a wonderful memory, never forgetting a face or voice once seen or heard.

That day he had arrested a man whose finger-prints he had registered two years before.

'There's no intricate problem to solve here,' he remarked, comparing the finger-prints, of the burglar, professionally known as 'Buster,' with those of the 'wanted.'

Two nights previous Sir Peter Medcombe's mansion was raided by a burglar who, apparently disturbed at his nefarious work, had dashed the old man to the floor with a terrific death blow, and vanished with the contents of  burglar-proof safe.

Sir Peter was an elderly bachelor known to possess miserly characteristics.

He never entertained, and lived a surly, secluded life attended solely by a queer old crone, who was at! first strongly suspected of complicity in the crime. She it was who, with ashen face and shaking liinbs, reported the murder.

Yes, it was all perfectly clear. Buster was a criminal with a record. The discovery of his finger-prints exonerated the domestic. When arrested on the dual charge he exclaimed:

'I cracked the crib, Drood, but I ain't guilty of murder— God's truth, I ain't; I'm a bad egg, I know; but them ain't bo blood on these 'ands yet!'

'You'd better keep that information for the jury,' advised Drood, though it had not changed his opinion in the least.

There was no intricate problem to solve. Buster's finger-prints, obtained from the polished door of the room where the murdered man lay, were indisputable testimony against him. Darnley exarninod a silver match-box found almost  concealed in a fleecy hearth-rug beneath Sir Peter's head. He scmtinised it closely.

'P.M., of course, are Sir Peter's initials. His own property, evidently. There is nothing else to provide a clue in support of Buster's assertion. Anyhow,' glancing at his watch; 'let's go and hear the fellow's story. Everyone may claim a right to be heard, however unreliable.'

Buster, confined in durance vile awaiting the dreaded trial, while his imagination sketched the-ghastly noose dangling above his head; was mightily  relieved by permission to tell his story.

He was a short, thick-set man in the prime of life. Bullet-shaped head. His face was more expressive of a weak intellect than viciousness or depravity.

As he told his story his hands worked nervously, as if planing his knees.

'It was the softest job I ever 'ad. I got in through one o' them long windows by slippin' the catch, easy as winkin'.

'Then I worked round quietly till I struck the safe, which I knew where to Iocate, 'cos I did a job of window-cleanin' one day for the 'ousekeeper in exchange for a dinner. The dinner was a sell, but I got all the plan I needed.

'Well, I got to work on the lock o' that burglar-proof safe till it went dog on the manufacturer. Once I fancied I heard voices and a sound of somethin' heavy fallin'.  Fearin' someone might be promenadin' around, I got under the couch as flat as a beetle; but there was mo more sounds, so I reckoned it was just fancy. I got all I wanted out o' that safe. Only sovereigns— near a hundred an' fifty. Pore old Peter kep' 'em there to look at. I didn't touch no papers. The gold was good enough for me. An' away I went, puffeckly satisfied. But what a mighty shock I got when I wag gittin' aloug one o incin passages to see tne 'lectric light floodin' out o' the room where I left the open window! I didn't feel too comfer'ble...

' "Who the devil," I says to. myself, "is in that room?" Not a sound came out of it. So I crept up to. the door, which stood ajar, an' popped my head through for a quiz. I'm not easy shook off me feet, but when I saw that dead man lyin' there, starin' up at the gas, which was electric I mean, I felt green all over an' shook like, a bloomin' jelly.

'I thought o' them voices an' the muffled fall I heard some time before, but I didn't go lookin' round no corners for the other feller.

'I didn't stop to argue over she swag what I had worked for. I made one bolt through the room an' outer the window.

'That's God's truth, gentlemen; take it or leave it. I cracked the safe; but I've told you all I know of the murder!'

THAT NIGHT, wliile perusing some documents found in Sir Peter's private desk, Darnley gave particular attention to one dated three days before the murder and requesting in urgent terms the loan of £60.

This epistle was signed, 'Your affectionate nephew, Paul Medcombe.'

'P.M.,' repeated the detective, softly. 'This may belong to you, Mr. Paul Medcombe. If so?—Ah!'

His alert eye detected a fuint smudge in the left-hand corner of the note. 'Ya-ra-ra- ra-ra-de-dar!'.

Darnley had a peculiar habit of humming a tune when smitten by a new idea

On the following day Drood founding able coadjutor seated at his desk briskly driving the pen.

'Anything fresh?' enquired the visitor.

'Buster won't go to the noose.'

'Aha! Who's the deputy?'

'We won't go so far as that,' laughed Darnley. 'There's just a finger post— or, rather, a finger-print, to save him.'

'He's no save!' said, Drood. 'But, it's quite possible. I've been thinking over, too.  It's possible that two criminals with similar motives unconsciously, dove-tailed their operations. In that case the actual murderer will screen himself behind Buster.'

'Exactly!'

Darnley produced the nephew's letter.

'You will observe a faint smudge in the left-hand corner of that letter.  That and the print obtained from the match-box are duplicates of one another.'

Surprise flashed into Drood's eyes, but was quickly veiled.

'The match-box, we concluded, was sir Peter's.'

'I've changed my opinion,' said Darnley, 'and, as you see, the finger prints confirm it.'

Drood smiled as Darnley laid the photographed prints before him.

'You've outpaced me this time. We must trice' this impecunious lH'gKni who styles himself "Your affectionate nephew." '

At a small table in His Majesty's dining-room, Melbourne, sat two men— one pale and shaken by the after-effects of a spell of insobriety, his hands trembling as he made a poor pretence of eating.

His vis-a-vis was a fine specimen of manhood, who did not allow his surveillance of the other to spoil his evidently fine appetite.

'Shocking affair, that murder,' he remarked suddenly .

The fork dropped noisily from the other's palsied grip. 'For God's sake, talk of something else. That's no subject for a dinner-table.'

'But I don't believe that Buster did it,'  insisted the detective.

'Your d—— opinion won't get Buster off,' sneered the other.

'Won't it? P'raps not. But Sir Peter's nephew might throw some light on the matter.'

The red-rimmed eyes darted a suspicious look at Darnley, then dropped guiltily before that keen scrutiny. He rose from the table, quaking visibly, and staggered from the room, closely followed by the detective. After feeble resistance, he was compelled to accept Darnley's escort to the police-station.

Subsequently, when confronted with the convincing evidence of his own finger-prints, he confessed his crime, stating that he paid a late visit to the house for the purpose of coaxing a loan from his niggardly relative. The blow, he declared, was struck in a fit of ungovernable rage, and not intentionally fatal.

Imprisonment for life was the sentence awarded Paul Medcombe.

After serving his term for the acknowled burglary, Buster became a prosperous wood and coal merchant, strictly honest, and on good terms with the guardians of public peace.

'Burgling ain't the game it was,' he laments, 'since fingerprints came into fashion.'

________________

7: The Man Who Was Dead

Thomas H. Knight

1892-1949

Astounding Stories April 1930

IT was a wicked night, the night I met the man who had died. A bitter, heart-numbing night of weird, shrieking wind and flying snow. A few black hours I will never forget.

"Well, Jerry, lad!" my mother said to me as I pushed back from the table and started for my sheepskin coat and the lantern in the corner of the room. "Surely you're not going out a night like this? Goodness gracious, Jerry, it's not fit!"

"Can't help it, Mother," I replied. "Got to go. You've never seen me miss a Saturday night yet, have you now?"

"No. But then I've never seen a night like this for years either. Jerry, I'm really afraid. You may freeze before you even get as far as—"

"Ah, come now, Mother," I argued. "They'd guy me to death if I didn't sit in with the gang to-night. They'd chaff me because it was too cold for me to get out. But I'm no pampered sissy, you know, and I want to see—"

"Yes," she retorted bitingly, "I know. You want to go and bask in that elegant company. Our stove's just as good as the one down at that dirty old store," continued my persistent and anxious parent, "and it's certainly not very flattering to think that you leave us on a night like this to—Who'll be there, anyway?"

"Oh, the usual five or six I suppose," I answered as I adjusted the wick of my lantern, hearing as I did the snarl and cut of the wind through the evergreens in the yard.

"That black-whiskered sphinx, Hammersly, will he be there?"

"Yes, he'll be there, I'm pretty sure."

"Hm-m!" she exclaimed, her expression now carrying all the contempt for my judgment and taste she intended it should. "Button your coat up good around your neck, then, if you must go to see your precious Hammersly and the rest of them. Have you ever heard that man say anything yet? Does he speak at all, Jerry?" Then her gentle mind, not at all accustomed to hard thoughts or contemptuous remarks, quickly changed. "Funny thing about that fellow," she mused. "He's got something on his mind. Don't you think so, Jerry?"

"Y-es, yes I do. And I've often wondered what it could be. He certainly's a queer stick. Got to admit that. Always brooding. Good fellow all right, and, for a 'sphinx' as you call him, likable. But I wonder what is eating him?"

"What do you suppose it could be, Jerry boy?" questioned Mother following me to the door, the woman of her now completely forgetting her recent criticisms and, perhaps, the rough night her son was about to step into. "Do you suppose the poor chap has a— a— broken heart, or something like that? A girl somewhere who jilted him? Or maybe he loves someone he has no right to!" she finished excitedly, the plates in her hand rattling.

"Maybe it's worse than that," I ventured. "P'r'aps— I've no right to say it— but p'r'aps, and I've often thought it, there's a killing he wants to forget, and can't!"

I HEARD my mother's sharp little "Oh!" as I shut the door behind me and the warmth and comfort of the room away. Outside it was worse than the whistle of the wind through the trees had led me to expect. Black as pitch it was, and as cold as blazes. For the first moment or two, though, I liked the feel of the challenge of the night and the racing elements, was even a little glad I had added to the dare of the blackness the thought of Hammersly and his "killing." But I had not gone far before I was wishing I did not have to save my face by putting in an appearance at the store that night.

Every Saturday night, with the cows comfortable in their warm barn, and my own supper over, I was in the habit of taking my place on the keg or box behind the red-hot stove in Pruett's store. To-night all the snow was being hurled clear of the fields to block the roads full between the old, zigzag fences. The wind met me in great pushing gusts, and while it flung itself at me I would hang against it, snow to my knees, until the blow had gone along, when I could plunge forward again. I was glad when I saw the lights of the store, glad when I was inside.

They met me with mock applause for my pluck in facing the night, but for all their sham flattery I was pleased I had come, proud, I must admit, that I had been able to plough my heavy way through the drifts to reach them. I saw at a glance that my friends were all there, and I saw too that there was a strange man present.

A very tall man he was, gaunt and awkward as he leaned into the angle of the two counters, his back to a dusty show-case. He attracted my attention at once. Not merely because he appeared so long and pointed and skinny, but because, of all ridiculous things in that frozen country, he wore a hard derby hat! If he had not been such a queer character it would have been laughable, but as it was it was— creepy. For the man beneath that hard hat was about as queer a looking character as I have ever seen. I supposed he was a visitor at the store, or a friend of one of my friends, and that in a little while I would be introduced. But I was not.

I took my place in behind the stove, feeling at once, though I am far from being unsociable usually, that the man was an intruder and would spoil the evening. But despite his cold, dampening presence we were soon at it, hammer and tongs, discussing the things that are discussed behind hospitable stoves in country stores on bad nights. But I could never lose sight of the fact that the stranger standing there, silent as the grave, was, to say the least, a queer one. Before long I was sure he was no friend or guest of anyone there, and that he not only cast a pall over me but over all of us. I did not like it, nor did I like him. Perhaps it would have been just as well after all, I thought, had I heeded my mother and stayed home.

Jed Counsell was the one who, innocently enough, started the thing that changed the evening, that had begun so badly, into a nightmare.

"Jerry," he said, leaning across to me, "thinkin' of you s'afternoon. Readin' an article about reincarnation. Remember we were arguin' it last week? Well, this guy, whoever he was I've forgot, believes in it. Says it's so. That people do come back." With this opening shot Jed sat back to await my answer. I liked these arguments and I liked to bear my share in them, but now, instead of immediately answering the challenge, I looked around to see if any other of our circle were going to answer Jed. Then, deciding it was up to me, I shrugged off the strange feeling the man in the corner had cast over me, and prepared to view my opinions.

"That's just that fellow's belief, Jed," I said. "And just as he's got his so have I mine. And on this subject at least I claim my opinion is as good as anybody's." I was just getting nicely started, and a little forgetting my distaste for the man in the corner, when the fellow himself interrupted. He left his leaning place, and came creaking across the floor to our circle around the store. I say he came "creaking" for as he came he did creak. "Shoes," I naturally, almost unconsciously decided, though the crazy notion was in my mind that the cracking I heard did sound like bones and joints and sinews badly in need of oil. The stranger sat his groaning self down among us, on a board lying across a nail keg and an old chair. Only from the corner of my eye did I see his movement, being friendly enough, despite my dislike, not to allow too marked notice of his attempt to be sociable seem inhospitable on my part. I was about to start again with my argument when Seth Spears, sitting closest to the newcomer, deliberately got up from the bench and went to the counter, telling Pruett as he went that he had to have some sugar. It was all a farce, a pretext, I knew. I've known Seth for years and had never known him before to take upon himself the buying for his wife's kitchen. Seth simply would not sit beside the man.

AT that I could keep my eyes from the stranger no longer, and the next moment I felt my heart turn over within me, then lie still. I have seen "walking skeletons" in circuses, but never such a man as the one who was then sitting at my right hand. Those side-show men were just lean in comparison to the fellow who had invaded our Saturday night club. His thighs and his legs and his knees, sticking sharply into his trousers, looked like pieces of inch board. His shoulders and his chest seemed as flat and as sharp as his legs. The sight of the man shocked me. I sprang to my feet thoroughly frightened. I could not see much of his face, sitting there in the dark as he was with his back to the yellow light, but I could make out enough of it to know that it was in keeping with the rest of him.

In a moment or two, realizing my childishness, I had fought down my fear and, pretending that a scorching of my leg had caused my hurried movement, I sat down again. None of the others said a word, each waiting for me to continue and to break the embarrassing silence. Hammersly, black-whiskered, the "sphinx" as my mother had called him, watched me closely. Hating myself not a little bit for actually being the sissy I had boasted I was not, I spoke hurriedly, loudly, to cover my confusion.

"No sir, Jed!" I said, taking up my argument. "When a man's dead, he's dead! There's no bringing him back like that highbrow claimed. The old heart may be only hitting about once in every hundred times, and if they catch it right at the last stroke they may bring it back then, but once she's stopped, Jed, she's stopped for good. Once the pulse has gone, and life has flickered out, it's out. And it doesn't come back in any form at all, not in this world!"

I was glad when I had said it, thereby asserting myself and downing my foolish fear of the man whose eyes I felt burning into me. I did not turn to look at him but all the while I felt his gimlety eyes digging into my brain.

Then he spoke. And though he sat right next to me his voice sounded like a moan from afar off. It was the first time we had heard this thing that once may have been a voice and that now sounded like a groan from a closely nailed coffin. He reached a hand toward my knee to enforce his words, but I jerked away.

"So you don't believe a man can come back from the grave, eh?" he grated. "Believe that once a man's heart is stilled it's stopped for good, eh? Well, you're all wrong, sonny. All wrong! You believe these things. I know them!"

His interference, his condescension, his whole hatefulness angered me. I could now no longer control my feeling. "Oh! You know, do you?" I sneered. "On such a subject as this you're entitled to know, are you? Don't make me laugh!" I finished insultingly. I was aroused. And I'm a big fellow, with no reason to fear ordinary men.

"Yes, I know!" came back his echoing, scratching voice.

"How do you know? Maybe you've been—?"

"Yes, I have!" he answered, his voice breaking to a squeak. "Take a good look at me, gentlemen. A good look." He knew now that he held the center of the stage, that the moment was his. Slowly he raised an arm to remove that ridiculous hat. Again I jumped to my feet. For as his coat sleeve slipped down his forearm I saw nothing but bone supporting his hand. And the hand that then bared his head was a skeleton hand! Slowly the hat was lifted, but as quickly as light six able-bodied men were on their feet and half way to the door before we realized the cowardliness of it. We forced ourselves back inside the store very slowly, all of us rather ashamed of our ridiculous and childlike fear.

But it was all enough to make the blood curdle, with that live, dead thing sitting there by our fire. His face and skull were nothing but bone, the eyes deeply sunk into their sockets, the dull-brown skin like parchment in its tautness, drawn and shriveled down onto the nose and jaw. There were no cheeks. Just hollows. The mouth was a sharp slit beneath the flat nose. He was hideous.

"Come back and I'll tell you my yarn," he mocked, the slit that was his mouth opening a little to show us the empty, blackened gums. "I've been dead once," he went on, getting a lot of satisfaction from the weirdness of the lie and from our fear, "and I came back. Come and sit down and I'll explain why I'm this living skeleton."

WE came back slowly, and as I did I slipped my hand into my outside pocket where I had a revolver. I put my finger in on the trigger and got ready to use the vicious little thing. I was on edge and torn to pieces completely by the sight of the man, and I doubt not that had he made a move towards me my frayed nerves would have plugged him full of lead. I eyed my friends. They were in no better way than was I. Fright and horror stood on each face. Hammersly was worst. His hands were twitching, his eyes were like bright glass, his face bleached and drawn.

"I've quite a yarn to tell," went on the skeleton in his awful voice. "I've had quite a life. A full life. I've taken my fun and my pleasure wherever I could. Maybe you'll call me selfish and greedy, but I always used to believe that a man only passed this way once. Just like you believe," he nodded to me, his neck muscles and jaws creaking. "Six years ago I came up into this country and got a job on a farm," he went on, settling into his story. "Just an ordinary job. But I liked it because the farmer had a pretty little daughter of about sixteen or seventeen and as easy as could be. You may not believe it, but you can still find dames green enough to fall for the right story.

"This one did. I told her I was only out there for a time for my health. That I was rich back in the city, with a fine home and everything. She believed me. Little fool!" He chuckled as he said it, and my anger, mounting with his every devilish word, made the finger on the trigger in my pocket take a tighter crook to itself. "I asked her to skip with me," the droning went on, "made her a lot of great promises, and she fell for it." His dry jaw bones clanked and chattered as if he enjoyed the beastly recital of his achievement, while we sat gaping at him, believing either that the man must be mad, or that we were the mad ones, or dreaming.

"We slipped away one night," continued the beast. "Went to the city. To a punk hotel. For three weeks we stayed there. Then one morning I told her I was going out for a shave. I was. I got the shave. But I hadn't thought it worth while to tell her I wouldn't be back. Well, she got back to the farm some way, though I don't know—"

"What!" I shouted, springing before him. "What! You mean you left her there! After you'd taken her, you left her! And here you sit crowing over it! Gloating! Boasting! Why you—!" I lived in a rough country. Associated with rough men, heard their vicious language, but seldom used a strong word myself. But as I stood over that monster, utterly hating the beastly thing, all the vile oaths and prickly language of the countryside, no doubt buried in some unused cell in my brain, spilled from my tongue upon him. When I had lashed him as fiercely as I was able I cried: "Why don't you come at me? Didn't you hear what I called you? You beast! I'd like to riddle you!" I shouted, drawing my gun.

"Aw, sit down!" he jeered, waving his rattling hand at me. "You ain't heard a thing yet. Let me finish. Well, she got back to the farm some way or another, and something over a year later I wandered into this country again too. I never could explain just why I came back. It was not altogether to see the girl. Her father was a little bit of a man and I began to remember what a meek and weak sheep he was. I got it into my head that it'd be fun to go back to his farm and rub it in. So I came.

"Her father was trying out a new corn planter right at the back door when I rounded the house and walked towards him. Then I saw, at once, that I had made a mistake. When he put his eyes on me his face went white and hard. He came down from the seat of that machine like a flash, and took hurried steps in the direction of a doublebarrelled gun leaning against the woodshed. They always were troubled with hawks and kept a gun handy. But there was an ax nearer to me than the gun was to him. I had to work fast but I made it all right. I grabbed that ax, jumped at him as he reached for the gun, and swung—once. His wife, and the girl too, saw it. Then I turned and ran."

The gaunt brute before us slowly crossed one groaning knee above the other. We were all sitting again now. The perspiration rolled down my face. I held my gun trained upon him, and, though I now believed he was totally mad, because of a certain ring of truth in that empty voice, I sat fascinated. I looked at Seth. His jaw was hanging loose, his eyes bulging. Hammersly's mouth was set in a tight clenched line, his eyes like fire in his blue, drawn face. I could not see the others.

"The telephone caught me," continued our ghastly story-teller, "and in no time at all I was convicted and the date set for the hanging. When my time was pretty close a doctor or scientist fellow came to see me who said, 'Blaggett, you're slated to die. How much will you sell me your body for?' If he didn't say it that way he meant just that. And I said, 'Nothing. I've no one to leave money to. What do you want with my body?' And he told me, 'I believe I can bring you back to life and health, provided they don't snap your neck when they drop you.' 'Oh, you're one of those guys, are you?' I said then. 'All right, hop to it. If you can do it I'll be much obliged. Then I can go back on that farm and do a little more ax swinging!'" Again came his horrible chuckle, again I mopped my brow.

"So we made our plans," he went on, pleased with our discomfiture and our despising of him. "Next day some chap came to see me, pretending he was my brother. And I carried out my part of it by cursing him at first and then begging him to give me decent burial. So he went away, and, I suppose, received permission to get me right after I was cut down.

"There was a fence built around the scaffold they had ready for me and the party I was about to fling, and they had some militia there, too. The crowd seemed quiet enough till they led me out. Then their buzzing sounded like a hive of bees getting all stirred up. Then a few loud voices, then shouts. Some rocks came flying at me after that, and it looked to me as though the hanging would not be so gentle a party after all. I tell you I was afraid. I wished it was over.

"THE mob pushed against the fence and flattened it out, coming over it like waves over a beach. The soldiers fired into the air, but still they came, and I, I ran— up, onto the scaffold. It was safer!" As he said this he chuckled loudly. "I'll bet," he laughed, "that's the first time a guy ever ran into the noose for the safety of it! The mob came only to the foot of the scaffold though, from where they seemed satisfied to see the law take its course. The sheriff was nervous. So cut up that he only made a fling at tying my ankles, just dropped a rope around my wrists. He was like me, he wanted to get it over, and the crowd on its way. Then he put the rope around my neck, stepped back and shot the trap. Zamm! No time for a prayer— or for me to laugh at the offer!— or a last word or anything.

"I felt the floor give, felt myself shoot through. Smack! My weight on the end of the rope hit me behind the ears like a mallet. Everything went black. Of course it would have been just my luck to get a broken neck out of it and give the scientist no chance to revive me. But after a second or two, or a minute, or it could have been an hour, the blackness went away enough to allow me to know I was hanging on the end of the rope, kicking, fighting, choking to death. My tongue swelled, my face and head and heart and body seemed ready to burst. Slowly I went into a deep mist that I knew then was the mist, then— then— I was off floating in the air over the heads of the crowd, watching my own hanging!

"I saw them give that slowly swinging carcass on the end of its rope time enough to thoroughly die, then, from my aerial, unseen watching place, I saw them cut it— me— down. They tried the pulse of the body that had been mine, they examined my staring eyes. Then I heard them pronounce me dead. The fools! I had known I was dead for a minute or two by that time, else how could my spirit have been gone from the shell and be out floating around over their heads?"

HE paused here as he asked his question, his head turning on its dry and creaking neck to include us all in his query. But none of us spoke. We were dreaming it all, of course, or were mad, we thought.

"In just a short while," went on the skeleton, "my 'brother' came driving slowly in for my body. With no special hurry he loaded me onto his little truck and drove easily away. But once clear of the crowd he pushed his foot down on the gas and in five more minutes— with me hovering all the while alongside of him, mind you— floating along as though I had been a bird all my life— we turned into the driveway of a summer home. The scientific guy met him. They carried me into the house, into a fine-fitted laboratory. My dead body was placed on a table, a huge knife ripped my clothes from me.

"Quickly the loads from ten or a dozen hypodermic syringes were shot into different parts of my naked body. Then it was carried across the room to what looked like a large glass bottle, or vase, with an opening in the top. Through this door I was lowered, my body being held upright by straps in there for that purpose. The door to the opening was then placed in position, and by means of an acetylene torch and some easily melting glass, the door was sealed tight.

"So there stood my poor old body. Ready for the experiment to bring it back to life. And as my new self floated around above the scientist and his helper I smiled to myself, for I was sure the experiment would prove a failure, even though I now knew that the sheriff's haste had kept him from placing the rope right at my throat and had saved me a broken neck. I was dead. All that was left of me now was my spirit, or soul. And that was swimming and floating about above their heads with not an inclination in the world to have a thing to do with the husk of the man I could clearly see through the glass of the bell.

"They turned on a huge battery of ultra-violet rays then," continued the hollow droning of the man who had been hanged, "which, as the scientist had explained to me while in prison, acting upon the contents of the syringes, by that time scattered through my whole body, was to renew the spark of life within the dead thing hanging there. Through a tube, and by means of a valve entering the glass vase in the top, the scientist then admitted a dense white gas. So thick was it that in a moment or two my body's transparent coffin appeared to be full of a liquid as white as milk. Electricity then revolved my cage around so that my body was insured a complete and even exposure to the rays of the green and violet lamps. And while all this silly stuff was going on, around and around the laboratory I floated, confident of the complete failure of the whole thing, yet determined to see it through if for no other reason than to see the discomfiture and disappointment that this mere man was bound to experience. You see, I was already looking back upon earthly mortals as being inferior, and now as I waited for this proof I was all the while fighting off a new urge to be going elsewhere. Something was calling me, beckoning me to be coming into the full spirit world. But I wanted to see this wise earth guy fail.

"For a little while conditions stayed the same within that glass. So thick was the liquid gas in there at first that I could see nothing. Then it began to clear, and I saw to my surprise that the milky gas was disappearing because it was being forced in by the rays from the lights in through the pores into the body itself. As though my form was sucking it in like a sponge. The scientist and his helper were tense and taut with excitement. And suddenly my comfortable feeling left me. Until then it had seemed so smooth and velvety and peaceful drifting around over their heads, as though lying on a soft, fleecy cloud. But now I felt a sudden squeezing of my spirit body. Then I was in an agony. Before I knew what I was doing my spirit was clinging to the outside of that twisting glass bell, clawing to get into the body that was coming back to life! The glass now was perfectly clear of the gas, though as yet there was no sign of life in the body inside to hint to the scientist that he was to be successful. But I knew it. For I fought desperately to break in through the glass to get back into my discarded shell of a body again, knowing I must get in or die a worse death than I had before.

"Then my sharper eyes noted a slight shiver passing over the white thing before me, and the scientist must have seen it in the next second, for he sprang forward with a choking cry of delight. Then the lolling head inside lifted a bit. I— still desperately clinging with my spirit hands to the outside, and all the time growing weaker and weaker— I saw the breast of my body rise and fall. The assistant picked up a heavy steel hammer and stood ready to crash open the glass at the right moment. Then my once dead eyes opened in there to look around, while I, clinging and gasping outside, just as I had on the scaffold, went into a deeper, darker blackness than ever. Just before my spirit life died utterly I saw the eyes of my body realize completely what was going on, then— from the inside now— I saw the scientist give the signal that caused the assistant to crash away the glass shell with one blow of his hammer.

"They reached in for me then, and I fainted. When I came back to consciousness I was being carefully, slowly revived, and nursed back to life by oxygen and a pulmotor."

THE terrible creature telling us this tale paused again to look around. My knees were weak, my clothes wet with sweat.

"Is that all?" I asked in a piping, strange voice, half sarcastic, half unbelieving, and wholly spellbound.

"Just about," he answered. "But what do you expect? I left my friend the scientist at once, even though he did hate to see me go. It had been all right while he was so keen on the experiment himself and while he only half believed his ability to bring me back. But now that he'd done it, it kinda worried him to think what sort of a man he was turning loose of the world again. I could see how he was figuring, and because I had no idea of letting him try another experiment on me, p'r'aps of putting me away again, I beat it in a hurry.

"That was five years ago. For five years I've lived with only just part of me here. Whatever it was trying to get back into that glass just before my body came to life— my spirit, I've been calling it— I've been without. It never did get back. You see, the scientist brought me back inside a shell that kept my spirit out. That's why I'm the skeleton you see I am. Something vital is missing."

He stood up cracking and creaking before us, buttoning his loose coat about his angular body. "Well, boys," he asked lightly, "what do you think of that?"

"I think you're a liar! A damn liar!" I cried. "And now, if you don't want me to fill you full of lead, get out of here and get out now! If I have to do it to you, there's no scientist this time to bring you back. When you go out you'll stay out!"

"Don't worry," he grimaced back to me, waving a mass of bones that should have been a hand contemptuously at me, "I'm going. I'm headed for Shelton." He stalked the length of the floor and shut the door behind him. The beast had gone.

"The dirty liar!" I cried. "I wish—yes—I wish I had an excuse to kill him. Just think of that being loose, will you? A brute who would think up such a yarn! Of course it's all absurd. All crazy. All a lie."

"No. It's not a lie."

I TURNED to see who had spoken. Hammersly's voice was so unfamiliar and now so torn in addition that I could not have thought he had spoken, had he not been looking right at me, his glittering eyes challenging my assertion. Would wonders never cease? I asked myself. First this outrageous yarn, now Hammersly, the "sphinx," expressing an opinion, looking for an argument! Of course it must be that his susceptible and brooding brain had been turned a bit by the evening we had just experienced.

"Why Hammersly! You don't believe it?" I asked.

"I not only believe it, Jerry, but now it's my turn to say, as he did, I know it! Jerry, old friend," he went on, "that devil told the truth. He was hanged. He was brought back to life; and Jerry— I was that scientist!"

Whew! I fell back to a box again. My knees seemed to forsake me. Then I heard Hammersly talking to himself.

"Five years it's been," he muttered. "Five years since I turned him loose again. Five years of agony for me, wondering what new devilish crimes he was perpetrating, wondering when he would return to that little farm to swing his ax again. Five years— five years."

He came over to me, and without a word of explanation or to ask my permission he reached his hand into my pocket and drew out my revolver, and I did not protest.

"He said he was headed for Shelton," went on Hammersly's spoken thoughts. "If I slip across the ice I can intercept him at Black's woods." Buttoning his coat closely, he followed the stranger out into the night.

I WAS glad the moon had come up for my walk home, glad too when I had the door locked and propped with a chair behind me. I undressed in the dark, not wanting any grisly, sunken-eyed monster to be looking in through the window at me. For maybe, so I thought, maybe he was after all not headed for Shelton, but perhaps planning on another of his ghastly tricks.

But in the morning we knew he had been going toward Shelton. Scientists, doctors, and learned men of all descriptions came out to our village to see the thing the papers said Si Waters had stumbled upon when on his way to the creamery that next morning.

It was a skeleton, they said, only that it had a dry skin all over it. A mummy. Could not have been considered capable of containing life only that the snow around it was lightly blotched with a pale smear that proved to be blood, that had oozed out from the six bullet holes in the horrid chest. They never did solve it.

There were five of us in the store that night. Five of us who know. Hammersly did what we all wanted to do. Of course his name is not really Hammersly, but it has done here as well as another. He is black-whiskered though, and he is still very much of a sphinx, but he'll never have to answer for having killed the man he once brought back to life. Hammersly's secret will go into five other graves besides his own.

___________________

8: The Chief of the Loch McCree

Albert Richard Wetjen

1900-1948

Observer (Adelaide) 6 April 1929

(Collier’s 16 Feb 1929)

IT was just past 4 o'clock when he came on deck and the dawn was still far off. Within the murky drab circle of the horizon the sea was a sullen slaty colour, running from south to north in long, low swells, and decked with sickly ripples of foam. The sky was a greasy white, and the March wind hurried thin scud across it.

Everything seemed desolate, cold, and sullen in the half light, even the little collier tramp Loch McCree ploughing west with the sprays showering her foredeck, occasional drizzles of rain blowing through her rigging and her hull creaking dismally to her every lurching movement.

The chief engineer, hastily called from his warm bunk, made his way half-bent to the bridge companionway. and with what seemed like excessive caution mounted the wet steps.

Two men stood on the navigation bridge, sea-booted, shrouded in oilskins and sou'westers, glasses to their eyes, and their bodies swaying back and forth as the deck shifted beneath them. One man, the mate, was stocky and red-haired, as broad as he was tall. The captain, beside him, was a tower, a monument, a giant for height and thickness. His massive shoulders were squared to the rain and wind like a rock before the tide. The set of his Lend was arrogant. His every attitude, his every motion spoke of strength and a certain contempt for life. He turned on the approach of the chief engineer. and for a moment or two stared silently.

The chief was a small man, small and lean and mild-looking. Almost a child he seemed before the massive captain. He had watery blue eyes slightly protruding from under sandy brows, and his somewhat pale, leathery skin was dotted with frpclcles. Freckles covered his hands and bony wrists, speckled his throat and scrawny chest, even appeared here and there on his face or what part of it a straggling sandy moustache and a rapped pointed beard left open to view. He had a mild voice, in keeping with his general appearance, and it was something of marvel to others that he had survived the long, hard climb up through many engine rooms, had battled shoulder to shoulder with the reckless, gay ruffians who tend marine engines, until at last he was entitled to wear the four gold bands of a chief's rank, and need keep a throttle watch no longer.

"Take a look," said the captain after a while. He thrust liis glasses into the chief's hands, then turned and pointed away on the starboard bow. The chief ad lusted the lenses with care, Winked once or twice, and saw grow into the circle of enlarged vision a rain-smeared picture of a ship, a big ship, a ship with two long passenger decks above the main, with a rakish red-painted smoke-stack, twin slender masts, a long grey-painted bull.

She was acting strangely, too. One moment her whole beam would be presented to the glasses, and the nest only her stern would Jie visible, tossing up and down in a welter of foam. Some part of her seemed always covered with foam. She wallowed in the troughs and spray broke over her very bridge; water streamed from her scuppers.

"Out of control." said the captain, briefly. "She's, flying signals. Too far to read 'em yet. It's likely she'll want help. Maybe we'll tow her."

"Yes?" said the chief mildly. 'He banded back the glasses. The captain rubbed his chin and frowned.

"We'll need all the power we can get... and all the time. Glass's dropping."

"Yes?" said the chief. He seemed vaguely concerned.

"So it's up to you," concluded the captain hoavilv. "Fat salvage if we get her in."

"I see," said the chief. He decided there was no further need of him on the bridge, so he went below again, very cautiously because the steps were wet and slippery, shivering a little in his thin uniform iacket. half unbuttoned, hie thl serge pants and his floppy bedroom slippers, while the wet wind played havoc with his sandv hair and beard.

"Well," said the captain grimly when he had gone. "I hope he doesn't crack. It'll be a tough job."

"He's a new man." observed the mate, "an' he ain't much t' look at. Collects postage stamps in his spare time. Got his room full of books an' such. Crazy, if you ask me. Maybe he knows his job though."

"Maybe," said the captain morosely. He focussed his classes again. The light was growing better, brightening wanly behind the scud, and the Loch McCree was nearer the wallowing liner whose distress rockets she had sighted above the dim horizon on hour or so before.

"Aye, she's asking ua to stand by. I can read her signals now. Well get us close as we can and talk with her. Pity we don't carry wireless-— All right. Port a bit!"

IN THE stokehold there was noise and heat, the reek of sweat and coal and hot steel: clanginge of shovels, slice bars, furnace doors: raspings of ashes and clinkers dropped into canvas hags: oaths and muffled shouts of men; vague washings of the tumultuous sea outside the reeling, sweating walls of the hull; brilliant shafts of orange light dimming the pale electric globes as furnace doors opened; smoky; whorls of coal slid cleanly from shovels into fiery glowing hearts; labouring bodies, stripped to the waist, sleek and wet, shiny and dirt-streaked. Inferno!

In the engine room, it was cooler, but still uncomfortably hot. The long shiny piston rods raced up and down with a low muttering thunder; the eccentrics mumbled and traversed their small orbits, in intimate ' contact; the feed pump sobbed slowly and moved, as if in pain; the condenser ran smoothly; magnetos; hummed. A greaser in a torn cotton singlet, wet dungarees, a sweat rag for a belt, a tight-fitting black cap on his head, squirted, mixed oil and water from a long syringe on to the glistening guides; another greaser filled the oil cups from a fat can with a snaky spout, and with his free hand caught tbe upswing of the great bearings, barely to touch them and judge of their heat.

The third engineer stood by the throttle, one hand bracing him against the movements of the greasy deck beneath, him, the other on the throttle to ease the propeller when it raced. Before him the big round gauges were set in rows: high pressure; intermediate; low. pressure; vacuum. Behind him were other gauges. He watched them all, a mechanical turn of his head on occasion, a quick look and then back to his throttle.

He, too, was dressed like the greasers, a cotton singlet, dungarees, a greasy blue uniform cap on the back of his bead. Everything was in order, working smoothly, and the chief of the Loch McCree, passing mildly through this world of moving steel which changed angles from second to second as the ship lifted and rocked and plunged, observed as much to his third.

'It's a big strain, but she's holding up well. Twelve hours now." He blinked at the gauges, nodded to himself, and wandered off looking rather absurd in dark brown overalls a trifle too big for him

"I ain't got him figured out yet," the third observed to the second when he was relieved. "There ain't even any sign he knows his job. He jest prowls around and blinks at you and you never know when he's goin' t' pop up. Hardly says anything."

"It's a wonder be ain't up tending to his stamps," said the second, who, like the captain, was a big, broad-shouldered man, and possessed of a vague contempt for such as were not. "Well, we should worry long as he don't bother us. She's sure making dirly weather of it. B'rights we shouldn't be tryin' t' tow that big hog in this sea. You can't get along deck at all for th' water."

This was literally true. Steaming as near to the liner (her name was the Bengal City) as was safe, the captain of the Loch McCree had learned, via the megaphone and semaphore, first that she had blown her cylinder heads and was helpless, and secondly, that for some reason she had been unable to pick up any other ship with her wireless. Could the Loch McCree get a line aboard and tow her into St; John's, or, failing that, keep her clear of the coast until such time as she could get her engine in shape again?

The Loch McCree could and would.

The weather, freshening hour by hour, thwarted the first attempts to set a hawser aboard, but eventually, with the judicious use of oil, a small line attached to a lifebuoy was floated down to the helpless ship, and by means of this a stronger line, and eventually the Loch McCree's great towing wire was , hoisted aboard and wade fast. The little tramp took the strain then, and the fight began.

After barely an hour the collier's master reluctantly gave up the idea of getting the Bengal City into St. Johns. The storm, driving up from the south, was setting both ships down on the iron Newfoundland coast which lay behind the rain and murk some thirty miles to the north.

The Loch McCree was no hugely engined salvaged tug, merely a rather ancient and not any too seaworthy freighter, and it rapidly became apparent, that about all she could do was to head into the teeth of the weather and hold the Bengal City from destruction. To fight that inexorable drift, that was the thing! To pound full speed into the smother, gaining not an inch but losing not an inch; keeping the strain on the hawser.

"If we can't keep up full power now, we're gone," said the captain grimly when his ship at last pitched full into the teeth of the storm. "I wish I had my old chief along. You never know what a new man can do. Might get scared and want us to drop the tow. And then it's a question if he's used to handling the sort of men he's got in the fire room. There's no saying how long they'll stick."

"Can't imagine a guy who collects stamps handiin' much of anything," grumbled the mate, wiping spume from his face and making a sudden grab at the rail as the deck dipped.

By mid-afternoon the collier looked a wreck. Nearly all the steampipe casing from the fo'cstle-head to the galley had teen ripped clear. The five-ton spare anchor chained to the deck near the foremast had been washed into the port alley near the saloon door. Everything movable had been moved or else stripped clear away. Four fathoms of rail along the starboard bow had gone; wire reek had been twisted; what few small ventilators had been left unshipped were budded; a temporary wooden deck house for stores erected near No. 2 hatch was matchwood; 12 drums of case oil lashed round the foremast had gone in twos and threes, the heavy spare derrick kept always in chocks in the port scupper was jammed athwartships between the rail and the hatch combing of No. 2.

Everything had felt the hand of the sea! Even a winch had been jarred in its bed. It was a physical impossibility for a man to get from the fo'c's'le to the bridge to relieve the wheel or do anything else. The fo'c's'le door remained bolted from the inside, and the men below passed the time as best they could, somewhat with the feeling of being rats enclosed in a trap. From first to last they were out of it.

On the Loch McCree's bridge were the mates, the captain, the helmsman, and a spare seaman the mate had ordered to stand by just before the ship commenced making her foredock untenable. Six men all told. These steered by turns, slept by turns, and held the ship through. They had plenty to eat  because the lazaretto hatch opened on the pantry deck. The men in the fo'c's'le subsisted on canned corned beef and some biscuits which the steward had sent for'ard early that'morning in case of just such an emergency as this. Nothing came from the galley. Both cook and scullery boy were bolted in there, and no man came to trouble them.

The greatest hardships fell upon the Loch McCree's black gang.  There was no food to be had except for a few scraps left in the mresroom. One man, toward the last did attempt a dash from the fiddles door to the saloon, hut before those within heard his hammering he was smashed to the deck and then washed over the rail. No one else tried to reach the saloon after that.

From catheads almost to the mainmast the solid water swept the Loch McCree. while from her mainmast to her rudder she was a smother of spray. It was sheer good luck that the towing hawser held. Had it gone it would have been a question whether the Loch McCree could have put a new eye or bightaboard the Bengal City. Almost, certainly the liner would have ended on the iron coast rocks.

The weather grew steadily worse until it was blowing with hurricane force. The coming of night was hard to determine, the sky was already so dark. There were no stars, no moon, nothing! Nothing but roaring and wetness and choking air and movement.

On the tramp collier's bridge the six grim men took turns about to watch and steer and doze. In the stokehold and engine-room the strain was greater: No fresh trimmers, no fresh firemen or greasers came from for'ard and a long rest to relieve the workers, and it took every man below to keep the steam steady in the gauges. The engineers were the only spare workers, and which ever three did not happen to have the throttle watch helped the men.

The night passed like an evil dream.

The Loch McCree's black gang was not drawn from Spartans, heroes, or gentlemen; not even from a reasonably sound stock. Men of worth preferred, other lines to the killing labour of the stokehold. It was the sweepings of Europe that signed for such work. Here, and there perhaps an iron spirit stood out, but generally the men were soft, morally, spiritually. They whimpered at the harsh toil, the lengthened hours. They, swore and complained. Where were the fathers, who had been so long in the; fo'c's'le? Why didn't they come and relieve them?

"If any man feels like going for'ard and seeing for himself he may do so,"  said the chief mildly. One or two went up to the fiddly doors, forced them open, took one look, and came tumbling; below again, wet and breathless.

"We've got to keep things going for our own sake," said the chief, more than once. "If we don't the ship may be lost. And then there are those women and children on that liner."

They snarled at him there in the reeking stokehold, snarled and threatened and reeled with exhaustion. Some of them began sobbed in impotent rages. What did they care for women and children or any liner? Let her go! Cut the wire! Why should they die because another ship was in trouble?

"Go and rest a while," the chief would say to the worst offender. He was always soothing, mild, unmoved, even smiling through his grease-streaked beard. Then he would seize the man's shovel or coal barrow and labour for half up hour or an hour until one of the engineers relieved him, when he would wander elsewhere. Once the whistle blew in the brass speaking tube from the bridge.

"Yes?" said the chief.

The captain's voice was faint and thin—

"Gettin' worse... More steam. Force her into it... Tough... What! Can you See it through?..."

"Yes," said the chief, and calmly plugged the tube.

"Hope he can!" shouted the captain into the mate's ear. The wind seemed to choke the words back into his lungs. He stared into the inky smother where at long intervals the lights of the liner holding on astern would show. "If he cracks we'll have t' cut... If he says we can't stand th' strain it's the end.... Up to him.  New man, too..."

"Aye," said the mate. '"Damned stamp collector..."

Toward morning the storm reached its height. In quick succession seas mounted the Loch McCree's very fiddley house and sent tons of water through the small openings beneath the engine room sky-lights on to the cylinders below. The skylights were screwed down after that, but water vomited into the gaping months of the great ventilators, and once the wind-lifted crest of a giant sea toppled over the edge of the funnel itself.

Water roared and hissed  everywhere below, filling the place with steam. It swished back and forth on the greasy iron deck, filled the crank pits so that each revolution of the webs threw up blinding oily spray, it flooded the  stokehold, covered the piled coal against the bunker bulkhead, and washed around the men's ankles. The hull reeled and shook terrifically. More water cascaded below. Men grew frantic, crying out, throwing away shovels and slice bars. The stoke-hold was choking with steam.

And then the dynamos stopped and the lights went out. A lot of things happened at once. Standing at the throttle the third engineer heard the second spit in the darkness.

"I guess that's the finish," said the second. The resigned calmness of his voice steadied the third's leaping heart and stiffened his trembling- knees. It is no glamorous or glorious thing to die in the dark and the steam, trapped in the bowels of a storm-ridden ship.

"What do we do?" cried the third.

"There might be a chance on deck; but down here..."

"Ease her when she races." said the second evenly. "What the hell do you think you're here for? It's likely the chief's cracked. I'll see."

He moved away and the third gripped the throttles ever tighter and swore in a monotonous undertone into the blackness to keep his nerve up. The piston rods were plunging still somewhere before him, he could hear their low thunder and feel the oily spray the webs threw up. The eccentrics were mumbling as usual, the feed pump-sobbing. There was still steam then.

In the inky stokehold where the furnace doors glowed red, the men gathered in a knot for a brief. minute, huddled like sheep, crying out, clinging to each other for comfort. And then a voice lifted itself. They must get on deck. They were like rats trapped here below. On deck to the air and the sea! Better be drowned than scalded to death. The boilers might go. The water was washing almost to the fires.

The rush was in process of being born when the second engineer arrived in the doorway that led from the stokehold to the engine room, a hurricane lamp in one hand, a 14-inch shifting spanner in the other, his great body tense and his face white but determined. He licked his lips, and was just about to speak when a white beam stabbed the shadows the lamp cast near the steel ladders that led up to the fiddley. A small, clear voice began to speak.

"Steam's dropping," it said, "Stay with it, men. We'll have some light here in a minute."

The second's jaw dropped. The chief was standing there behind the white beam which was his electric flash lamp. He still looked slightly ridiculous in his overlarge overalls, but there was something about his eyes which caused that to be forgotten. In his free hand something glinted, and it was quite a shock to the second to realize it was a revolver.

There was a moment's tense silence except for the ship noises, the inky water washing shin-deep now in that steam-filled pit, the boilers hissing, men breathing bard. Abruptly the Loch McCree yawed to a sea aud sagged down' on her beam-ends and men went sprawling and panic-stricken to leeward, unprepared. The second engineer was staggered and almost fell. His chief appeared unmoved and the white beam never wavered. The men grouped together again, hysterical, wavering terror-stricken, and, as if moved by the same string, they started toward that quiet little figure that barred the way to the deck. The glinting revolver lifted.

"He'll never shoot," whispered the second to himself, his eyes bulging. "He hasn't th' guts t' shoot."

An orange flame stabbed the shadows, and a big Dutchman suddenly screamed and put a hand to his shoulder. The rest paused, wavered. Smoke trickled from the revolver muzzle, and there was a plain reek of cordite. It was then the second woke to life and sprang forward, using his shifting spanner as a man might use his knuckles or his elbows in a crowd. Men were too valuable to knock unconscious.

"Come on! Come on!" he shouted, half crazed himself. He raged through the stokehold like a cyclone. "Get hold of them shovels! Steam! More steam!... She's dropped an atmosphere while you've been foolin'. Come on! Come on!"

In five minutes work was under way again.

"Get me some waste and any rags you can find," the chief was saying, a little hysterically now. "I'll bandage this man's shoulder."

"It can't keep up," groaned the second. "My God, we're not machines!"

"It must be kept up," responded the chief, blinking at him and looking very dishevelled and tired. The strain was sapping him physically though his will had not flinched.

"I know," whispered the second then. "That's the hell of it." He rocked away to the engine room to find more lamps

"What happened," said the third at the throttle, his voice shaky, thinking he had been left to die alone. He had not heard the shot because of the engine noise right before his face. "My God, this... darkness! What happened?"

"He cracked!" said the second, laughing wildly as if at a huge joke. "He cracked all right!"

What else transpired through the long hours until men eventually came from for'ard along calmer decks to relieve those below no one seemed to have any clear idea. The second thought he remembered much water still coming down from above and rising so high in the stokehold it put out some of the lower fires and dropped the pressure again. Afterward of course it was known that the hull had been strained and water was coming from below as well.

But behind it all there was a queer little figure in brown, wet overalls far too big for him. Idiotic he looked! From one front pocket there jutted and sagged the black butt of a revolver. From the other protruded a bottle neck. And in one hand this queer figure held another bottle, and in the other hand a tin pannikin. And he croaked continually:—

"One more atmosphere! Just one more atmosphere and you get a drink!"

Every so often men would look up at the gauges and croak themselves and laugh— and then stagger through the washing inky water to reach at the pannikin. The second had an idea; he went back to the engine room after that and leaned on the fourth's shoulder as he stood by the throttle.

"One more atmospnere," he croaked. "One more and you get a drink! See? That's how it's done... An' we said he'd crack! "

"She's got black hair and a dimple in her chin," said the fourth solemnly. "See her sitting on the main bearing?... Don't touch me. There's a fire just under my skin." His eyes burned in the murk.

"That's how it's done," insisted the second. "One more atmosphere and you get a drink!... But why don't he crack?"

"STILL SICK, is he?" said the captain in St. John's harbour two days later. The Loch McCree had towed the Bengal City in after the hurricane had died, both ship's half-wrecked. The chief had been carried up from the engine room when fresh men managed to get midship to relieve the others and the strain was over. The long hours of wetness and heat, lack of food and rest had rocked him. And they later found he had head wounds where some half-insane man had struck him with a shovel maybe.  No one seemed to know exactly.

"Well," said the captain, "call an ambulance and have him sent up the hospital. I didn't think he could stand much."

"The old man thinks it was me pulled him through," said the second to his chief, as the ambulance men came with their stretcher. "I'll get that straightened out, sir."

The chief did not hear because he was talking to himself and making vague motions with his hands as if he was pouring something from a bottle.

AT THE hospital nurse confided to the doctor. "He says such strange things. All last night he kept sitting up in bed and shouted out. I suppose it's the fever."

"What was he shouting about?" enquired the doctor absently.

"Something to do with the atmosphere as far as I could gather. Quite ridiculous, don't you think? Atmosphere!"

"Quite," said the doctor. "He's had a hard time. I believe, and he's not very young. These frail men always go to pieces under a strain, anyway."

________________

9: The Bloomsbury Wonder

Thomas Burke

1886-1945

Mandrake Press, 1929

First published as a novella in a slim volume; later re-discovered by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine,  May 1942; this scan and OCR from  "The Giant Book of Modern Crime Stories", 1994, US title The Omnibus of Modern Crime Fiction 1991.

AS THAT SEPTEMBER morning came to birth in trembling silver and took life in the hue of dusty gold, I swore.

I had risen somewhat early and was standing at the bathroom window of my Bloomsbury flat shaving. I first said something like "Ooch'" and then I said something more intense. The cause of these ejaculations was that I had given myself the peculiarly nasty kind of cut that you can only get from a safety razor, and the cause of the cut was a sudden movement of the right elbow, and the cause of that was something I had seen from my window.

Through that gracious gold. which seemed almost like a living presence blessing the continent of London, moved a man I knew. But a man I knew transformed into a man I did not know. He was not hurrying, which was his usual gait. He wasn't even walking. He was sailing. I never saw such a schoolgirl step in a man. I never saw such rapture in the lift of a head. He was not tall, but he was so thin, and his clothes fitted so tighdy, that he gave an illusion of height. He wore a black double-breasted overcoat, buttoned at the neck, black trousers and nondescript hat. He held his arms behind him, the right hand clasping the elbow of the left arm. His slender trunk was upright, and his head thrown back and lifted.

In the dusty sunlight he made a silhouette. I saw him in the flat only. And I realised then that I always had seen him in the flat; never all round him. The figure he Clit in that sunlight made me want to see round him, though what I should fmd I did not know and could not guess. And to this day I don't know and can't guess.

ii

IN CONVENTIONAL society, 'I suppose, he would have been labelled a queer creature, this Stephen Trink; but the inner quarters of London hold so many queer creatures, and I have so wide an acquaintance: among them, that Trink was just one of my crowd. I forget how I came to know him, but for about two years we had been seeing each other once or twice a week; sometimes oftener. I liked him almost at once, and the liking grew. Although I was always aware in his company of a slight unease, I took every opportunity of meeting him. He charmed me. The charm was not the open, easy charm of one's intimate friend, for we never reached that full contact. It was more spell than charm; the attraction of opposites. perhaps. His only marked characteristic was a deep melancholy, and now that I try to recall him I find that that is the one dear thing that I can recall. He was one of those men whom nobody ever really knows.

Stephen Trink would have been passed over in any company, and at my place always was. Only when I directed my friends' attention to him, did they recollect having met him and examine their recollection; and then they were baffled. I once asked five friends in turn what they thought of him, and I was given pictures of five totally different men, none of whom I had myself seen in Trink. Each of them, I noted. had to hesitate on my question, and stroke his hair, and Say: "M... Trink. We-el, he's just an ordinary sort of chap— I mean he's a— sort of—" Then, although he had been with us ten minutes ago. they would go on to draw a picture as from hazy memory. They seemed to be describing a man whom they weren't sure they had seen. Their very detail was the fumbling detail of men who are uncertain what they did see, and try to assure themselves by elaboration that they did at any rate see something. It was as though he had stood before the camera for his photograph, and the developed plate had come out blank.

In appearance, as I say, he was insignificant. and, with his lean, questing face and frail body. would have passed anywhere as an insipid clerk. He stressed his insipidity by certain physical habits. He had a trick of standing in little-girl attitudes-hands behind back. one foot crooked round the other-and of demurely dropping his eyes if you looked suddenly at him; and, when speaking to you, looking up at you as though you were his headmaster. He had, too, a smile that, though it sounds odd when used of a man, I can only describe as winsome. The mouth was sharp-cut. rather than fum, and drooped at the comers. The lower jaw was drawn back. His hair was honey-coloured and plastered down. His voice was thin, touched with the east wind; and it was strange to hear him saying the warm, generous things he did say about people in the sleety tone that goes with spite. To everything he said that tone seemed to add the words: Isn't it disgusting? His eyes, behind spectacles, were mild and pale blue. Only when the spectacles were removed did one perceive character; then, one could see that the eyes held curious experience and pain.

Wherever he might he, he never seemed to he wholly there. He had an air of seeming to be listening to some noise outside the room. He would sit about in attitudes that, since Rodin's Penseur. we have come to accept as attitudes of thought; but if you looked at his face you'd say it was empty.He was not thinking; he was brooding; Though indoors he was languid and lounge-y, and his movements were the movements of the sleepwalker, in the street his walk was agitated and precipitous. He seemed to be flying from pursuit. One other notable point about him was that, quiet, insignificant, withdrawn as he was, he could be a most disturbing presence. Even when relaxed in an armchair he somehow sent spears and waves of discomfort through the air, sucking and drying the spirit of the room and giving me that edge of unease.

What his trouble was— if his melancholy arose from a trouble— he never told me. Often, when I urged him, ftippantly, to Cheer Up, he spoke of This Awful Burden, but I disntissed it as the usual expression of that intellectual weariness of living which we call "modern."

He had private means by which he could have lived in something more than comfort, but he seemed contented with three rooms in the forlorn quarter where Bloomsbury meets Marylebone— well-furnished rooms that one entered with surprise from the dinge of Fitzroy Square. He was a member of two of the more serious clubs, but used them scarcely twice a year. His time he employed in the Bloomsbury and Marylebone fashionas an aimless intellectual. He occupied himself writing metallic studies for all sorts of hole-and-corner Reviews; and all the time he was doing it he affected to despise himself for doing it and to despise the breed with whom he mixed. He attended all their clique and coterie gatherings-teas, dinners, Bloomsbury salons, private views-and took part in all the frugal follies of the Cheyne Walk Bohemia. You saw him, as they say, everywhere. Yet, at all these affairs, though he looked younger than most of the crowd, he had always the attitude of the amused grownup overlooking the antics of the nursery. I can't think how even their pallid wits didn't perceive that embodied meer at them and their doings.

Although not physically strong he had immense vitality, which he exhibited in long night walks through London. This was a habit which I shared with him and which, begun in childhood, gave me my peculiar and comprehensive knowledge of the hinterland of this continent of London. I believe that it was on one of these night wanderings that we ftrst really met, though there must have been a perfunctory introduction in somebody's flat.

Knowing that I was an early riser, he would sometimes, at the end of one of these rambles, knock me up at half-past seven for breakfast, and then go to sleep on my settee. Glad as I always was to have his company, he was a difficult guest. He had a disorderly mind and Japanese ideas of time. A "look-in" often meant that he would stay for four or five hours, and an arrangement to dine and spend the evening often meant that he would look-in for ten minutes and then abruptly disappear without a word about  dinner. He had a habit of using in casual conversation what is called bad language-a certain sign of uneasy minds— and his talk was constantly agitated with purposeless use of "blasted" and "bloody" and "bastard." In all other matters he was gentle and thoughtful. He would not, as they say, do anything for anybody, but for a few people his time and labour and influence were available in full measure. He was so kind of spirit, so generous of affection, that sometimes I thought that his melancholy arose from a yearning to love and be loved. At other times this would be contradicted by his self-sufficiency.

And that, I think, is all I can tell you about him. He eludes me on paper as he eluded me in life. So with this light sketch I pass on to the real matter of this story-to his friends, the Roakes; for it was by his friendship with them that I was brought into contact with horror.

Another of our points in common was a wide range of friendships. Most men find their acquaintance among their own "sort" or their own "set," and never adventure beyond people of like education, like tastes, and like social circumstances. I have never been able to do that, nor Trink. We made our friends wherever we found them, and we found them in queer places.

An assembly of all our friends at one meeting in our rooms would have surprised (and dismayed) those of them who knew us only as writers in such-and-such circumstances. I· had, of course, a number of close friends among fellow-authors and among musicians, but my most intimate friend at that time, who knew more about me than any other creature, was an old disciple of Madame Blavatsky. who devoted his spare time to original research on the lost Atlantis. Trink's was a shopkeeper; a man who kept what is called a "general" shop at the northern end of Great Talleyrand Street.

Despite my own assorted friendships. I could never quite understand this friendship, for the man had no oddities, no character, no comer where he even grazed the amused observation of Trink. It may· have been, of course -and this fact explains many ill-assorted friendships-that they liked the same kind of funny story. or walked at the same pace in the streets. I don't mow. Friendships are bound by slender things like that. Or it may have been-and I think this is what it was-that they were bound by love. I am sure there was more in it than mere liking of each other's talk and company, for Trink, being what he was, could have found no pleasure in the pale copy-book talk of Horace Roake. I thought I could perceive on either side an essence or aura of devotion, and if the devotion were at all stronger on one side, it was on the side of the cultivated man of brains rather than the tired, brainless shopkeeper. I spent many evenings in their company, either at Trink's fiat or in the shop parlour, and I noted their contented, long silences, when they merely sat together and smoked, and their quick, voiceless greeting when they met. Trink seemed to be happier in Roake's shabby room than anywhere. Why was one of his mysteries.

Although the public spoke of Roake's shop as a General Shop, he did not himself recognise that style. There are traditions in these matters. In tradelists there are no drapers, or milkmen, or greengrocers, or ironmongers. The man we style milkman styles himself dairyman, though he may never have seen a dairy. The greengrocer is a pea and potato salesman. The bookmaker is a commission agent. Drapers and ironmongers are haberdashers and dealers in hardware. The butcher is a purveyor of meat, the publican a licensed victualler. So Mr. Roake, who kept no pastas or Chianti, or bolognas or garlic, styled himself an Italian warehouseman. His shop stood, as I say, at the northern end of Great Talleyrand Street, between Woburn Place and Gray's Inn Road.

This is a district of long, meaningless streets and disinherited houses. Once, these houses were the homes of the prosperous; today they have only faded memories. They lie, these streets and houses, in an uneasy coma, oppressed by a miasma of the secondhand and the outmoded— secondhand shops, secondhand goods, secondhand lodgings, filled with secondhand furniture, and used by secondhand people breathing secondhand denatured air. When Roake set up his shop here, he blunderingly chose the apt setting for rumself and his family. They belonged there. They were typical of a thousand decent, hardworking, but stagnant families of our cities. For four generations the family had not moved its social level. A faint desire to rise they must have had, but rising means adventure, and they feared adventure. On the wife's side and the husband's side the strain was the same-lukewarm and lackadaisical. There they had stood, these many years, like rootless twigs in the waste patch between the stones and the pastures; and there, since the only alternative was risk and struggle, they were content to stand.

Roake himself, if I saw him truly, had the instincts of the aristocrat hidden in the habits of the peasant. One of life's misfits. He had the fine feature and . clean eye of that type, but though he looked like what is called a gentleman, npbody would have mistaken him for one. His refinement of feature and manner came really, not from the breeding of pure strains, but from undernourishment in childhood. He had a mind of wide, if aimless, interests, and a certain rough culture acquired by miscellaneous reading. His wife was largely of his sort, but without the culture. Her life had been a life of pain and trial, and it had taught her nothing. Her large, soft face was expressionless. The thousand experiences of life had left not even a fingerprint there, and she still received the disappointments and blows of fortune with indignation and querulous collapse.

There were two boys and a girl. The girl had something of her father's physical refmement. Her head and face were beautiful; so beautiful that people turned to glance at her as she passed in the streets. Her manners and voice were— well, dreadful. She would often respond to those admiring glances by putting out her tongue. She was wholly unconscious of her beauty, not because she was less vain than her sex, but because her beauty was not to her own taste. She admired and envied girls of florid complexion and large blue eyes and masses of hair and dimpled mouths-chocolate box beauties— and her own beauty was a glorious gift thrown to the dogs. To see that grave dark head and those deep-pool Madonna eyes set against those sprawling manners and graceless talk gave one a shudder.

Of the two boys, one might say that they saw life as nothing but a programme of getting up, going to work, working, eating, going to bed. Only it wouldn't be true. They saw life no more than a three-months' old baby sees life. They were clods.

These were the people Trink had chosen as friends, and by all of them he was, not adored, for they were incapable of that, but liked to the fullest extent of their liking. He was their honoured guest, and on his side he gave them affection and respect. The two boys worked together in a boot and shoe factory, and the shop was run by Mr. and Mrs. Roake and the girl, Olive. Olive knew enough about the business to do her bit without any mental strain, and she had a flow of smiles and empty chatter that in such a shop was useful.

These General Shops— often spoken of as "little gold mines"— are usually set, like this one, in side streets. It is by their isolated setting that they flourish. The main streets are not their territory, and such a shop in a main street would certainly fail, for these streets hold branches of the multiple stores as well as shops devoted singly to this or that household necessity. Your successful General Shop, then, chooses a situation as far from competition as possible, but in the centre of a thicket of houses. In that situation it wins its prosperity from the housewife's slips of memory. She arrives home from her High Street shopping, and finds that she has forgotten salt or custard powder or bacon, and to save a mile walk she sends one of the children to the General Shop. It is for this that it exists; not. for regular supply but as convenience in emergency. Unhampered by other shops and encircled by hundreds of forgetful households, the well-conducted General is certain of success, and many of these shops have a weekly turnover, made up of pennyworths of this and ounces of that, near two hundred pounds.

So the Roakes were doing well. Indeed, they were very comfortable and could have been more than comfortable; but they were so inept, and knew so little of the art of useful spending, that their profits showed little result in the home. If they could not be given the positive description of a happy family, at least they lived in that sluggish sympathy which characters only faintly aware of themselves give each other; and that was the feeling of the home— lymphatic and never quite. The wireless set worked, but it was never in perfect tone. The sitting-room fire would light, but only after it had been coaxed by those who knew its "ways." The hot water in the bathroom was never more than very warm. The flowers in the back garden were never completely and unmistakably blossoms. The shop door would shut, but only after three sharp pressures-the third a bad-tempered one. They bought expensive and warranted clocks, and the clocks took the note of the family, and were never "right." New and better pieces of furniture were frequently bought for the sitting room, but it never succeeded in looking furnished. If you saw the house, you could imagine the family; if you met the family, you could imagine the house.

Hardly a family, one would think, marked out for tragedy, or even for disaster; yet it was upon these lustreless, half-living people that a blind fury of annihilation rushed from nowhere and fell, whirling them from obscurity and fixing their names and habits in the seatlet immortality of the Talleyrand Street Shop Murder.

It was about the time when those gangs called "The Boys" were getting too cocksure of their invulnerability, and were extending their attentions from rival gangs and publicans to the general public, that the catastrophe came by which Stephen Trink lost his one close friend. Beginning with sub-Post Offices, the gangs passed to the little isolated shops. From all puts of London came reports of raids on these shops. The approach was almost a formula. "Give us a coupler quid. Come on," or "We want a fiver. Quick. Gonna 'and over or gonna 'ave yer place smashed up?" Given that alternative the little shopkeeper could do nothing but pay. He might have refused, and have had his place smashed up, and he might have been lucky enough to get the police along in time to catch two or three of the gang and get them six months or twelve months each. But that wouldn't have hurt them, since their brutal and perilous ways of life make them utterly fearless; and he would still be left with a smashed shop, pounds'-worth of damaged and unsaIeable goods, the loss of three or four days' custom during repairs, and no hope of compensation from anybody. So, as a matter of common sense, he first paid up, and then reported the matter to the police; and serious citizens took up his grievance, and wrote to the papers and asked what we supported a police force for, etc., etc.

Then, sharply on top of a dozen of these shop raids, came the murder of the Roakes.

iii

MARVELLOUS and impenetrable is the potency of words. Hear the faint spirit-echo of Shelley; the cold Englishness of Shakespeare,· the homespun strength of John Bunyan. And so it is with ideas; and so, patticularly, with that idea for which sign and sound is MURDER.

Now, by long association, murder is linked in our minds with midnight, or at least, with dark; and these two conceptions of the cloaked side of nature combine in dreadfulness to make deeper dread. Again, poetic justice.

But harmonious combinations of dreadfulness, though they intensify each other, are dreadfulness only, and are therefore less potent to pluck at the heart than dreadfulness in discord with its setting; for there comes in the monstrous. Rape of womanhood is dreadful but understandable. Rape of childhood goes beyond the dreadful into depths that the mind recoils from sounding. Murder at midnight, though, it will shock as it has shocked through centuries of civilisation, is a shock in its apt setting. But murder in sunlight is a thought that freezes and appals. It bares our souls to the satanic shudder of blood on primroses.

One can catch, then, the bitter savour of a certain moment of a sunny afternoon in Great Talleyrand Street. From the few horrified words of a neighbor I am able to reconstruct the whole scene.

iv

IT WAS just after three o'clock of a September afternoon— a September of unusual heat; hotter than the summer had been. The heat made a blanket over the city, and in the side streets life was in arrest, bound in slumber and steam and dust. In Great Talleyrand Street carts and cars stood outside shops and houses as though they would never move again. Even the shops had half-closed their eyes. Errand boys and workless labourers lounged or lay near the shops, sharing jealously every yard of the shade afforded by the shopblinds. The faded Regency houses stewed and threw up a frowst. Through its dun length, from its beginning near Gray's Inn to its nebulous end somewhere in St. Pancras, the heat played in a fetid shimmer and shrouded either end in an illusion of infinity. The gritty odours of vegetable stalls, mixed with the acrid fumes of the cast-off·clothes shops, were drawn up in the sun's path to float in the air and fret the noses of the loungers. The ice-cream cart, zones with the Italian colours, made a cool centre for the idle young. A woman was offering chrysanthemums from a barrow piled high with that flower. Her barrow and her apron made a patch of living gold against the parched brown of the street.

Then, into this purring hour,came a figure and a voice. From the upper end of the street it came, crying one word; and the blunt syllables of that word went through the heat and dust, and struck the ears of those within hearing with the impact of cold iron. The street did not stir into life. It exploded.

Those nearest scrambled up, crying— not saying; such is the power of that word that it will always be answered with a cry— crying: "Where? Where?" "In there— there— three-ninety-two." And the man ran on to Tenterden Street, still crying, "Murder!" and those who had heard the word ran in a trail to number 392.

The shop, with its battling odours of bacon, cheese, paraffin, spice, biscuits, bread, pickles, was empty. The runners looked beyond it. A small door led from the shop to the back parlour. The upper half of the door was of glass, and this half was veiled by a soiled lace curtain. Its purpose was to screen the folk in the parlour—where they sat at intervals between trade rushes— from the eyes of customers, while those in the parlour could, by the greater light of the shop, see all comers. But since the curtain served a purely workaday office— the private sitting room was upstairs— it had been allowed to overserve its time, and frequent washings had left it with so many holes that its purpose was defeated. People in the shop could, by those holes, see straight and clearly into the parlour; could see the little desk with account books and bills, and could often see the cashbox and hear the rattle of accountancy. It was proved by experiment that a man on the threshold of the shop could, without peering, see what was going on in the shop parlour.

The leaders of the crowd looked hastily about the shop and behind the two small counters; then, through those holes, they had the first glimpse of what they had come to see.

The sun was at the back. It shone through the garden window, and made a blurred shaft of dancing motes across the worn carpet and across the bloody body of Horace Roake. He lay beside his desk. The back of his head was cleanly broken. By the door leading to the inner passage lay the body of Mrs. Roake. She lay with hands up, as though praying. Her head was flung violently back, disjointed. Of the two boys, who had been spending the last day of their holidays at home, the younger, Bert, lay in a comer by the window, almost in a sitting posture. His head hung horridly sideways, showing a dark suffusion under the left ear. The leaders looked and saw; then someone said, "The girl!" They pulled open the door leading to passage and kitchen. In the sun..;flushed passage lay the twisted body of Olive Roake. Her head, too, was thrown back in contortion. One glance at the dark excoriations on her neck told them how she had met her death. Three glances told them of the dreadful group that must have made entrance here: one to kill with a knife, one with a blow, and one to strangle with the hands.

For some seconds those inside could not speak; but as the crowd from the street pushed into the shop. and those in the shop were pushed into the parlour, those inside turned to push them back; and one of them, finding voice, cried uselessly, as is the way in dark moments: "Why? Why all this— these nice people-just for a pound or two? It's— it's unnecessary!"

He was right, and this was felt more strongly when it was found that this thing had not been done for a pound or two. The desk was locked, and the cashbox and the two tills in the shop were intact. Clearly this was not haphazard killing for robbery. 'There was a grotesquerie about the scene that hinted at more than killing: an afterthought of the devilish. These people, who had led their ignoble but decent lives in ignoble back streets, were made still more ignoble in death. The battered head of Roake, the crumpled bulk of Mrs. Roake, the macabre mutilation of the gracious symmetry of youth and maidenhood, were more than death. Not only were they dead, but the peace that touches the most ugly and malign to dignity, the one moment of majesty that is granted at last to us all, was denied them. The temple of the Holy Ghost was riven and left in the derisive aspect of a dead cat in a gutter.

So they lay in the floating sunshine of that afternoon, and so the crowd stoad and stared down at them until the police came. Who had done this thing? How did they do it in an open shop? How did they get away? Then someone who knew the family cried. "Where's Artie?" And some went upstairs and some went into the little garden. But all that they found was an open bedroom window and signs of a flight. No Artie.

v

IT WAS BETWEEN three o'clock and half past of the day when I had given myself that nasty cut that Trink made one of his "drop-in" calls. I was accustomed to these calls. He would come in, potter about, turn over any new books or periodicals I had make a few remarks about nothing, disturb the atmosphere generally, and then slide away. But this afternoon he didn't disturb the atmosphere. He seemed lighter and brighter than usual. Something of that morning mood that I had seen in him seemed to be still with him. Tired and pale he certainly was— the result of his night-walk. I guessed— but there was a serenity about him that was both new and pleasing. For almost the first time I felt fully at ease with him; no longer conscious of the something that I had never been able to name. In that quarter of an hour I seemed to be nearer to him and to know him better than I had ever known him. To put it into a crude colloquialism, he seemed more human. He stayed but a short time, not fidgeting, but sitting restfully on the settee in that complete ease that one knows after long physical exercise. I remarked on this. I told him that I had seen him from my window, bouncing through the square, and told him that the bouncing and his present mood proved that plenty of exercise was what he needed, and that he would probably find, as George Borrow found, that it was a potent agent for the conquest of accidie— or, I added, liver. He smiled; dismissed the diagnosis of his trouble, and soon afterwards went, or, rather, faded away, so that when I resumed work I was barely certain that he had been with me at all.

About an hour later I became aware that I was disturbed, and when, half-consciously and still at work, I located it as something coming from the street; a sound that came at first from below the afternoon din, then rose to its level and spilled over it. It was the cry of newspaper boys. As my flat is three floors up (no lift) I did not send out for a paper, but I rang up a friend on the Evening Mercury, and asked what the big story was.

He gave me the story so far as it had then come in.

After the first shock, my first thought was of what it would mean to Trink. Terrible as the fate .of that family was, they meant little to me, and I could only feel for them the detached and fleeting pity that we feel at any reported disaster. For you will have noted, as a kink of human nature, that nobody ever does feel sympathy for a murdered man. All our interest— yes, and a perverse, half-guilty sympathy— is on the murderer. But for Trink,  their friend, it would be a blow. and a keener blow since it came with such ghastly irony on top of his happy, swinging mood of that day. He had just, it seemed, found some respite from his customary gloom, only to be brutally flung back into it, and deeper. I thought at first of going round to him, and then I thought not. He would want no intruders.

Meantime, the papers were publishing rush extras, and as the news had withdrawn me from work, and I could not return to it, I went out and bought the three evening papers, and sat in a teashop reading them. There was no doubt that the affair, following on the large publicity and discussion given to the shop-raids, had stirred the press and alarmed the public. I saw it on the faces of the home-going crowd and heard it reflected in the casual remarks of stranger to stranger in the teashop and around the buses. All that evening and night the word Murder beat and fluttered about the streets and alleys and suburban avenues, and wherever it brushed it left a smear of disquiet. Accustomed as London is to murder, and lightly, even flippantly as it takes all disturbances, the details of this one moved them, for clearly it was no ordinary murder of anger or revenge, or for the removal of inconvenient people for gain. How could these little people have offended? Who would want them out of the way? If it was the work of "The Boys," it might be anybody's turn next. If it wasn't the work of "The Boys," then, said the press, it must have been the work of wandering lunatics of gorilla's strength and ferocity. And if they were loose, nobody would be safe. Private houses and people in the streets would be wholly at the mercy of such fearless and furious creatures as these appeared to be. In the meantime they were loose; even now, perhaps, prowling about and contemplating another stroke; sitting by your side in train or bus, or marking your home or shop for their next visit. They were loose, and while they were loose. they spread their dreadful essence as no artist or prophet can hope to spread his. Scores of mothers from the streets about Talleyrand Street, hearing the news and seizing on the press conjecture of wandering madmen, ran to schools in the district to meet their children. They were always aware of peril from the filth that hovers about playground gates; they were made aware of a more material and annihilating peril.

Through all the thousand little streets of the near and far suburbs went the howl of the newsboy, and its virulent accents went tingling through the nerves of happy households. To people sitting late in their garden, veiled from the world, came at twilight a sudden trembling and sweepmg of the veil as the wandering Chorus stained the summer night with: Shawking Murder in Blooms-bree—' Pur!' London Fam'ly, Mur-der.—Purr!" It broke into the bedrooms of wakeful children, and into the study of the scholars, and into the sick room and across quiet supper tables and wherever it fell it left a wound. The press, having given the wound, went on to probe and exacerbate it with the minutiae of horror; ending with the disturbing advice to householders to see to their bolts and fastenings that night. It was the "splash" story of the day. and each paper had a narrative from neighbours and from those who were near the shop at the time of the crime's discovery. At late evening the story was this.

Artie Roake had been quickly found and interviewed. He frankly explained his absence by the regrettable fact that he had run away. Some information he was able to gIve, but none that m any way helped the search for the murderers.

As that day was the last day of the holidays, he. had, he said,. been taking things easy. and after the midday dinner had gone Upstairs to lie down. He left his brother in the garden. His father and sister were in the shop-parlour, and his mother was in the shop: From two o'clock to five o'clock was a slack time with them. Most of the business came before twelve or from five o'clock to closing time; the afternoon brought mere straggles of custom. He remembered lying down on his bed, with coat and waistcoat off, and remembered nothing more until he suddenly awoke, and found himself, he said, all of a sweat. His head and hands were quite wet. He jumped up from the bed and stood uncertainly fora few moments, thinking he was going to be ill. And well he might have been ill, seeing what foul force was then sweeping through the air of that little house. Out of the sunlight something from the neglected corners of hell had come creeping upon it. to charge its rooms with poison and to fire it with the black lightning of sudden fear. At the moment he awoke this creeping corruption must then have been in the house and in its presence not the thickest and most wooden organism could have slept; for by some old sense of forest forefathers we are made aware of such presences. We can perceive evil in our neighbourhood through every channel of perception; can even see it through the skin. The potency of its vapours, then, must have worked upon the skin and the senses of this lad, as the potency of the unseen reptile works upon the nerves of birds. and he awoke because an alien and threatening presence had called him to awake. It must have been that, and not a cry or a blow, that awoke him, because he said that, during the few seconds 'when he stood half-awake and sweating, he heard his mother's voice in a conversational murmur. It was some seconds after that that the sweat froze on his face at the sound of his father's voice in three plodding syllables-"Oh… my… God!"— and then of a noise such as a coalman makes when he drops an empty sack on the pavement. And then, almost simultaneously with the sack sound, he heard a little squeak that ended in a gurgle; and overriding the gurgle an "Oh!" of surprise from his brother, and soft, choking tones of terror saying "No— no— no!" And then silence. And then he heard two sharp clicks, as of opening and shutting a door; and then a moment's pause; and then swift feet on the stairs. Had he had the courage to go down on his father's first cry, his courage, one may guess, would have been wasted. Hands would have been waiting for him, and he too would have ended on a gurgle. But if he had had the courage to wait before he fled until the figure or figures on the stairs had come high enough to give him one glimpse, he might have had the clue to one of the men that would have helped the police to the others. But he didn't wait. He bolted. He offered the reporters no feeble excuse of going to raise the alarm or get help. He said" that those sounds and the sort of feeling in the house so affected him with their hint of some unseen horror that he didn't think of anybody or anything; only of getting out. Peering from his door, he said, just as the sound of the feet came, he could see part of the staircase, and the sunlight through the glazed door between shop-passage and garden threw a shadow, or it might have been two shadows, half-way up the stairs. He could hear heavy panting. In the moment of his looking, the shadow began to swell and to move. He saw no more. In awkward phrases (so one of the reports stated) he tried to say that he felt in that shadow something more than assault ending in killing; he felt something horrible. From later information I understood this. It was horrible; so horrible that even this vegetable soul had responded to it. So, driven by he knew not what, and made, for the first time in his life, to hurry, he turned from the house of dusty sunshine and death to the open world of sky and shops and people. He bolted through the upper window and over the backyard, and did not stop or call for help until he was four streets away; at which point the cry of Murder led to a pursuit and capture of him.

He made his confession sadly but without shame. He knew, he said, that it was all over; that he could be of no use; that they were all dead. But when they pressed him how he knew, he relapsed from that moment of assertion into his customary cowlike thickness, and they could get no more from him than a mechanical, "I dunno. I just knew."

He was detained by the police for further questioning, and it appeared later that the questioning had been severe. But though there was at first an edge of official and public suspicion of him, he was able to satisfy the police that he knew nothing, and was allowed to go home to an uncle's.

No weapons were found, no fingerprints, no useful footprints. Nor had any suspicious characters been seen hanging about; at least, none markedly suspicious to the district; for in these misty byways queer characters of a sort were a regular feature, and its houses were accustoined at all hours of day and night to receiving furtive strangers. Taking it, at first sight, as gang work, the police, it was said, were pursuing enquiries in that direction, which meant that for the next few days all known members of North London and West End gangs were rounded up and harried out of their wits by detentions, questionings, and shadowings. Already, at that early hour, reports had come in of the detention of unpleasant characters at points on the roads from London— Highgate, Ealing, Tooting. Communications had been made with all lunatic asylums in and near London, but none could report any absentees. All those on the police list who might have been concerned in it— the shop and till specialists— were being visited and questioned, and many, knowing that they would be visited anyway, were voluntarily coming in to give satisfactory accounts of themselves.

One bright "special" had put his mind to the case and lighted the darkness of the police with a possible culprit. He learned that Horace Roake was 55, and from his study of "our medical correspondent" he knew that 55 was the male climacteric, the age when men of formerly sober life— particularly quiet men of Roake's type— go off the rails into all sorts of jungles of unnamable adventure. Was it not worth asking, he said, whether Mr. Roake might not "have been doing badly in business, and being at that age had…?

But a rival paper, in a later issue, took this torch and extinguished it by bank evidence that Roake was not doing badly in business, and by private police-surgeon information that neither Roake nor any other of the victims could possibly have died by suicide.

There, that evening, it was left. Next morning there were further details, but nothing pointing towards an arrest. From some of these details it was dear that the affair, if planned at all, had been most cunningly planned and timed, and swiftly done; for the people were seen alive a minute and a half before the cry of Murder had been raised. The more likely conjecture, though, was that it was the impulsive act of a wandering gang.

A woman volunteered that she had visited the shop just after three— about ten minutes after— and had been served by Mrs. Roake. Nobody else was in the shop. She left the shop and went a little way down the street to leave a message with a friend, and having left the message she repassed the Roakes' shop. and saw a man whom she did not closely notice standing at the counter rattling some coins and calling "Shop!" Her own home was twelve doors from the shop. She had scarcely opened and closed her door, was, indeed, still on the mat, setting down her shopping basket, when she heard the cry of Murder. In the immediate instant of silence following that cry she heard a church clock strike the quarter past three, which meant that only three minutes had passed from the time of her being served by Mr. Roake, and one minute from the time of her seeing the man.

Another statement came from a man whose house backed on to the Roakes'. He was on a night shift at the docks, and went on at four o'clock. By daily use he knew exactly how to time himself to get there punctually from his home in Frostick Street; the time was fifty minutes; and he left home regularly at ten minutes past three. He was putting on his boots, he said, when, happening to glance through the window, he saw Mr. and Mrs. Roake in the shop parlour doing— well, as he put it, clearly without any intent of flippancy, carrying-on and canoodling. They must then have remembered that they were open to curious eyes, for they immediately moved away from the window into the darker part of the room. At half past four the evening paper came into the docks, and he saw that the family had been discovered dead five minutes after he had seen this little husband and wife moment.

One of the morning papers gave me a particular irritation. There was a solemn youth named Osbert Freyne (recendy down from Cambridge) who used to come into my place at odd times, though I never made him welcome. He used to sit and blither— talk one could not call it. I don't know why he continued to come, because I was always as rude to him as I can allow myself to be to anybody; put he did come and he did meet Trink, and he knew of Trink's acquaintance with the Roakes.

Well, one of the papers had an appendix to the Talleyrand "story"—an appendix by ·this solemn youth. Like most of his unbalanced kind, though he affected to despise modem writing, he wasn't above making money out of it when he could. The fellow had had a talk (or blither) 'Yith Trink, and had·sold it to the paper as an interview with "an intimate friend of the unfortunate family." The result was that Trink had been visited and questioned by the police on the family's history and habits and their friends, and other journalists had followed the police, and altogether the poor fellow's miserable day had been made additionally miserable.

I knew what he must be feeling about it, for I myself began to be moved by it, though quite unwarrantably. I had scarcely any interest in those people, yet whenever I thought about the affair I suffered a distinct chill, as though I personally were in some way touched by it; an entirely unreasonable chill which I could not shake off because common sense could not reach it.

Among the first to be examined were the witnesses who were in the street at the time the alarm was given. This again brought nothing useful; mdeed, the result was only confusion on confusion. Seventeen people who had been near the spot were asked— Who was the man who rushed from the shop crying Murder? None of them knew him. They were then asked —What sort of man was he? Not one could make a clear answer. Eleven were so surprised that they didn't look at him. The other six-who, if they bad looked at him, hadn't seen him but wouldn't admit it— gave six different descriptions. One saw a tall firmly built man with a red face. One saw a short man in a mackintosh. One saw a man in shirt and trousers only— obviously a confusion with the fleeing boy, Artie. One saw a fat man in a gray suit and a bowler hat. One saw a medium-sized man in cloth cap and the strapped corduroys of the navy. One saw a black man. It seemed fairly certain, though, that the man who cried Murder could not have been the murderer, for two witnesses had seen members of the family alive within less than two minutes of the murders; and one man could not have been responsible for that wholesale slaughter in that space of time. The man who ran out must have been the man who had been seen by the woman witness standing there and shouting "Shop!" and as that was only one minute before the alarm, clearly he could not have been the murderer. He had not come forward, but then, there might be many innocent explanations. of that. He might have been a man of nervous type who had received such a shock from what he had seen that he wished to avoid all association with the matter. Or he might have been a quiet, shy fellow who would hate to be mixed up in any sensational public affair. Having given the alarm, and having no useful information to offer beyond what the crowd-saw for themselves, he might have considered that he had done his duty.

Generally, it was felt that it must have been the work of a gang— either a gang of thieves who were disturbed by the alarm before they could get at the cash, or, as suggested, a gang of drunken or drugged Negroes— the gang must have entered from the back, or someone in the street would have noted them. It was the Negro suggestion that caught the public, chiefly because it seemed obvious and because it afforded a pious opportunity of shaking what they liked to think was an un-English crime on to those who were un-English. In talk around the streets the police were criticized for not concentrating on the Negro quarter. It was all very well to say that the Negroes questioned had accounted for their movements. If the public were in the police's place, the public would know what to do, and so on.

The evening papers of that day brought more news, but none of it led anywhere. More suspicious characters on the outskirts of London had been detained, and two men— one a soldier at Sheerness, the other a tramp at Gerard's Cross— had given themselves up for the murder, only to be thrown out an hour later. People in the neighborhood now began to remember strange and significant happenings centering on the Roakes, which they hadn't remembered the day before. Queer visitors, letters by every post, sudden outgoings, late home-comings— all the scores of commonplace family happenings which, when isolated and focussed and limelit by tragedy and publicity, assume an air of the sinister and portentous. If Mrs. Roake had gone out in a new hat the day before they would have seen that as a possible clue.

Day by day the story mounted, and all fact that was thin was fortified by flagrant conjecture and by "sidelights" and comparison with similar crimes. The police were following a clue at Bristol. A broken and stained bicycle pump had been found behind the mangle in the scullery and was being examined by the Home Office experts. Three of the leading yard men had left London for a destination unknown. The writer of an anonymous letter, received at Bow Street the day after the murders, was asked to communicate with any police station under a pledge of the fullest protection from all consequences. The Flying Squad had spent a whole day combing the road from Stoke Newington to Waltham Cross. Watch was being kept at Gravesend, Queenboro', Harwich, Grimsby, Hull, and Newcastle for two men, believed to be Norwegians. The police were anxious to get in touch with these men. Blandly and hopefully they invited these two men to visit the Yard. But despite these invitations, despite official rewards and newspaper rewards running into many hundreds of pounds, no outside help was secured, no "splits"— those ever-present helps in baftling crimes— came forward to give their pals away.

Then, at the end of the week, the Sunday papers had a plum. All these minor diversions were cancelled and the men called off. The new story was that the District Inspector, with a detachment of officers in an armoured police car, had left for Nottingham; and the story was given out with such a note of assurance that the thing appeared to be settled. And it was. Press and public waited eagerly on the result of this expedition. And they waited. After two days, as the result of waiting, the press was proudly silent on Nottingham. There was no report on the Nottingham expedition, but in its place a calm ignoring of it, as though it had never been. Nottingham was still on the map of England but it was out of the news. The public heard nothing. Not a word. Somewhere between London and Nottingham the Great Talleyrand Murder Mystery faded away; crept into the valley of undiscovered crimes, and died as mysteriously as the Roake family had died.

Thereafter public and press interest declined. From being a "splash" story it came to an ordinary column; then, from the main page it passed to the secondary news page; then it fell to half a column, and at the end of three weeks it had no space at all. The mystery that had been the subject of talk in offices, shops, trains, restaurants, and homes was forgotten. The best brains had been at work upon it and had failed; and although I, in common with other amateurs, had my theories about it, not one of them bore steady examination.

Today I know the solution, but I did not arrive at it by my own thought or by thought based on the experts' labours. We were all looking for madmen, or, if we dismissed madmen, then for some possible motive; and in looking for motives we were looking for the ordinary human motives that we could appreciate, and that appear again and again in murder. None ·of us thought of inventing a new motive; and that was where the solution lay. It was not the experts, but Stephen Trink, the dabbler, who showed me where to look; who took my eyes off a gang, and showed me how all this death and disaster and stretching of police wits could have been the work of two hands belonging to one man. He even pointed to the man.

vi

IT WAS about a month after the affair had died down that I found among the morning mail on my tea tray a letter from Trink. It was dated from a hotel in the New Forest, and was an unusually long letter from one who scarcely ever addressed more than a postcard. And a queer letter. I read it in bed, and for some long time— an hour, I should think-I could not bring myself to get up and face the day. When at last I did, I found work impossible. All that day and night I was haunted by a spectre of forbidden knowledge, and I went perfunctorily about my occasions with a creeping of the flesh, as when one discovers a baby playing with a boiling kettle, or touches something furry in the dark. I knew then what it was that the boy Artie was trying to say.

But as the letter requires no editing or pointing, I give it verbatim.

"Dear T.B.,

"As we haven't met for some time I thought you might like a word from Stephen Trink. I've been down here for a week or so among the pines. seeking a little open-air massage for jangled nerves. You understand. It was a dreadful business, and I didn't want to see anybody, especially friends. I'm here doing nothing and seeing nothing-just breathing and drowsing.

"I suppose they've got no farther with it. Strange that the police, so astonishingly clever in making up really baffiing and complicated cases, are so often beaten by a simple case. But you, as an artist, know how often a subtle piece of work which the public imagine to have been achieved by laborious and delicate process, was in fact done with perfect ease; and how often the simple piece of work has meant months of planning and revision. I don't know if you've thought about it at all, but it seems to me that tbey·ve been misled all alnng by the matter of time. They assumed that that little time, for such a business, must imply a gang. No sound reason why it should, though. As Samuel Nicks established an alibi by accomplishing the believed impossible-committing a crime at Gad's Hill, Kent, early one morning and being seen at York at seven o'clock the same evening, so this man deceived public opinion. The public of the seventeenth century held that it was not possible for a man to be in Kent in the moming and at York in the evening; all the horses in the kingdom couldn't carry him that distance in that time. Therefore, it hadn't been done, and Sam Nicks hadn't been in Kent that day. But it was done. And so here. Four murders by different means had been accomplished in a few seconds over a minute. Therefore, say the public (the experts, too), arguing from the general, it must have been the work of a gang. They were satisfied that no one man could do it, and if no one man could do it, then no one man had done it. But public opinion is always saying It Can't Be Done, and is always eating its words. You and I know that what anyone man can conceive, some other man can do. I can imagine that this could be the work of one man, and I'm satisfied that it was the work of one man. It was done by the exception to the rule, and I'll show you how he could have done it, and how he got away. As to getting away, of course he got away by running away. If you say that a running man at such a moment would attract attention, well, we know that he did attract attention. He was clever enough to know that in successfully running away, it depends how you run. He covered his appearance and his running by drawing the whole street's attention to himself. He knew enough about things to know that his cry would blind everybody. They might be looking, but they wouldn't be seeing-as we know they weren't. All their senses would gather to reinforce the sense of hearing. As soon as he was round a comer he could slip his hat in his pocket and put on a cap. Nothing makes a sharper edge on the memory, or more effectually changes a man's appearance, than the hat. Then he could fling his coat over his arm, and go back and join the crowd.

"The affair had to the public, as we know, the air of being the work of a brilliant and invincible gang of schemers, who weren't playing by any means their first stroke: or else of a gang of crafty madmen. It was this that increased its horror. But it was no planned affair, and no gang affair. It was the work of a man momentarily careless of results. Being careless, he made no mistakes. As often happens, he. the inexpert, achieved casually what trained minds arrive at step by step.

"Now as to how. Really very simple. The core of the mystery is this: he was a man of unbelievable swiftness of act and motion. That's all.

"People don't seem to realise that taking human life is a very simple matter. They seem to think that it involves thought, planning, struggle, and mess. Nothing of the kind. It can be done as easily as the slaughter of a rabbit— more easily than the slaughter of a hen. A pressure with two fingers on a certain spot, or one sharp flick on a point at the back of the neck, and the business is done. It's part of the irony that plays about the creature, Man, that the neck, which supports his noblest part, should be his weakest part. You could do it Without fuss in the club, on top of the bus, at Lord's, or at the theatre, or in your own home or your victim's. You remember that morning when you were showing me your collection of Eastern weapons? Among them you had a case of Burmese poison darts. You took these out of their cylinder and showed them to me. I was leaning forward with my hands on your desk, and you were turning them about between finger and thumb. One minute movement of a minute muscle of your forefinger, and the point would have touched my hand, and Trink would have been out. Supposing you'd been not feeling very well— liverish— and my face or my voice had irritated you to the point of blind exasperation. A wonderful chance. Accidents often happen when things like that are being shown round. You may have seen the chance. If you did, only common good nature can have restrained you— supposing that you were irritated by me— as nothing but good nature restrains me from slapping a bald head in front of me at the theatre. One second would have done it, where shooting and throat-cutting not only take time but often cause disorder and fuss, besides involving extravagant use of means. One stroke of a finger directed by a firm wrist achieves the result without any stress or display. Many people are killed by four or five stabs of a knife, or by a piece of lead shot from an instrument that has to be loaded, and in which a lever has to be released, causing a loud bang. Unnecessary, and possibly wasted. Because no result can be achieved unless that piece of lead goes to a certain spot. And there's nothing that that piece of lead can do that four fingers can't do. You could have six friends in your room looking over your curios, and with merely the movement of the arm that an orchestral conductor makes in directing a three-four bar, you could, holding one of those Burmese darts, touch the hands of those friends. In five minutes you would have changed your warm gossipy room into a sepulchre. And yet people still think of murder as implying revolvers, knives, arsenic; and murderers still take five minutes over throttling from the front with both hands, when two seconds with the side of one hand will do it from the back. It is because of this that the unintelligent conceive murder as terrific, demanding time and energy; and still think that all murder must leave obvious traces of murder. Not at all. For every one murder that is known to be a murder, I am certain that six other people, who meet Accidental Death or are Found Drowned lose their lives by murder.

"This man, as I say, was swifter than most of us. He strolled into the shop. Calling 'Shop!' he went to the parlour door. There he met Roake. One movement. Mrs. Roake would turn. Another movement. The girl was coming through the door leading to the passage. Two steps and another movement. The boy comes through the garden to the shop. A fourth movement. One movement with a knife on the back of Roake's head. One pressure with the thumb to Mrs. Roake. One movement with both hands to the girl. One sharp touch on the boy's neck. And the foul thing was done in a matter of seconds. A movement overhead. The other boy stirring. He waits for him to come down. The boy doesn't come. He hears the noise of his flight. Then he makes- his own by running full tilt into the faces of a score of people and crying his crime.

''That's all.

"Looking over this, I'm afraid it reads as though I'm writing with levity. But I'm not. I'm just analysing the situation and the probable attitude of the man. The whole thing is too frightful for me to treat it as seriously as I naturally feel about it; or, rather, in trying to treat it as a problem, I've forgotten that these poor people were my friends.

"Now as to why any man not a natural criminal or lunatic should havecreated this horror of destruction-this isn't going to be so easy. Here I'mon dangerous and delicate ground,.and before I can present what looks tome like a reasonable explanation I must ask you to empty your mind of your reason and of all that knowledge of human nature on which people base their judgment of human motive and human behaviour. It should never be said that 'people don't do these things' or that such and such a thing is contrary to human nature; because people do anything and are always going contrary to our accepted notions of human nature. You must see it as clearly as one sees a new scientific idea-without reference to past knowledge or belief. It means trespassing into the forbidden, though I think you've peeped into more secret comers of the mind than the ordinary man. Or not peeped, perhaps. I think you've always known without peeping.

"It's difficult to put the presentation of it into assured and assuring phrasing. But I'll try.

"What I offer is this. This man had a motive for this wanton slaughter. But not a motive that would pass with common understanding. Neither hate nor,lust nor the morbid vanity that sometimes leads stupid people to the committal of enormous crimes. Nothing of that sort. And he wasn't a madman without responsibility for his actions. He knew fully what he was doing and he did it deliberately. He committed more than a crime; he committed a sin. And meant to. Most men think that sin is the ultimate depth to which man can sink from his gods; but this man didn't sink. He rose, by sin, out of something fouler than sin. That something is the spirit of unexpressed. potential evil; something that corrodes not only the soul of man in whom it dwells, but the souls of men near him and the beautiful world about him. This evil doesn't always— indeed, seldom does— live in what we call wicked people. Almost always in the good. In comparison with such people the wicked are healthy. For these people, the germ carriers, are more dangerous to the soul of the man than a million criminals or a thousand sinners. They can penetrate everywhere. We have no armour against their miasma. They do no evil, but they're little hives of evil. Just as some people can spread an infection without themselves taking the disease, so these good people can, without sinning, spread among the innocent the infection of sin. They lead stainless lives. Their talk is pure. Yet wherever they go they leave a grey trail that pollutes all that is noble and honest.  They diffuse evil as some lonely places— themselves beautiful— diffuse evil. You must have met people of this sort— good people— and have been faintly conscious, after an hour of their company, of some emanation that makes you want to open spiritual windows. Happy for them, poor creatures, if they can discover and prove themselves before death for what they are. Some do. For those who don't, who only discover the foulness of their souls after death, God knows what awaits them.

"There's something in these people. Some awful essence of the world's beginnings. Some possession that can only be cast out in one. way— a dreadful way. Where it began one cannot say. Perhaps strange sms, projected in the cold hearts of creatures centuries dead, projected but never given substance, take on a ghost-essence and wander through the hearts of men as cells of evil. And wander from heart to heart, poisoning as they go, until at last they come to life in a positive sin, and, having lived, can die. Nobody knows. But that's my explanation of these people— tbey're possessed. Possessed by some radioactive essence of evil, and before they can be saved they must sin. Just as poison is necessary to some physical natures and, denied it, they die, so sin may be necessary to these spiritual natures. They must express and release that clotted evil, and they can no more be cleansed of it before it's expressed than a man can be cleansed of a fever before it's reached its climacteric. Once expressed. it can be met and punished and pardoned; but abstract evil can't be met. Even God can't conquer Satan. There's nothing to conquer. Satan lives in these million wandering fragments of potential evil, and until that evil is crystallised in an act, all the powers of good are powerless.

"Let's suppose that this man was one of these, consciously possessed of this intangible essence of evil, conscious of it as a blight upon him and upon those about him; tortured by it like a man with a snake in his bosom, and for many years fighting its desire for expression and release until the fight became unbearable. There's only one way of escape for him-to sin and to sin deeply. Always he's haunted by the temptation to sin. His whole life's been clouded by visions and lures of unnamable sins, and by agonising combats to escape them. Always he fights this temptation, and so, continuing to shelter the evil, he gives it time to grow and to make his own emanations stronger. When his only real hope of conquering it lies in giving it life...

"And then at last he yields. There comes, one day, the eruptive, whirlwind moment of temptation, stronger than any he has known. All his powers of resistance go down in an avalanche. With a sigh of relief he yields. And suddenly, with the. disappearance of resistance, and with the resolve to sin, he would find, I think, the serenity of resignation filling his whole being, and setting his pulse in tune with erring humanity. He would walk the streets with a lighter step than he has known since childhood. All his temptations would have been towards the foulest sin he could conceive, the lowest depth; and at last, driven by the importunate fiend, it's this sin: that he commits. It may be that he was led farther than he meant to go. He may have intended to murder only one, but in committing the one murder, his fiend broke out in full power, and led him deeper and deeper into maniac slaughter. That's how it looks. But the thing was done, the sin committed, and in the satanic moment he frees himself forever from his fiend, not by binding it, but by releasing it. Like a long-embalmed body exposed to the air, it has one minute of life, and the next it crumbles into dust, and he is free.

"That's my theory. This man, without sin, would have died here and hereafter, for his soul didn't belong to him at all. Indeed, he was a man without a soul. Now he's a man with a stained soul which can be purified. He has seen himself as he is, on this earth, in time to prepare himself for his next stage. By that sin he can now, as a fulfilled and erring soul, work out his penance and his redemption.

"I guess I've said enough. You may dismiss this as a far-fetched and ludicrous fancy. But it im't a fancy; it's a statement. You may say that no man could, under the most overwhelming temptation, do this appalling act of murdering, not an enemy, but a friend; or, having done it, could live under its burden. I can't argue with you as to what man can and can't do. I only see what is done. It's useless to tell me that this couldn't have happened. I can only say that it did.

"Whatever you may know as to the reactions of humanity to this or that situation, I know that, after years of torment, I'm now, for the first time, at peace.

"Yours,

"S.T."

___________________

10: The Great Auk's Egg Affair

Anonymous

Daily News (Perth) 17 May 1910

WHEN HE first met Mr. Owen Ormston, Sexton Blake thought that he had never seen a human being who so strongly resembled a bird. The hooked nose, fluffy side-whiskers, and large, short-sighted, round eyes peering from behind heavy-rimmed spectacles, gave the owner of Croom Court an amazing resemblance to a large amiable owl.

Mr. Ormston's name was familiar to Blake. He had read his monograph on British shore birds; but of the reason why he himself had been so hastily summoned to Croom Court he was ignorant.

'I am glad to see you, Mr. Blake,' said Mr. Ormston, with nervous, eagerness. 'Come, in, please! Lycett'— speaking to the footman— 'take this gentleman's luggage to his room.'

He led the detective into a large, comfortable apartment, which seemed half-study, half work-shop. There was a big desk littered with papers, tall bookshelves full of works on bird lore, and one wall was hidden by beauty-fully-constructed collector's cabinets, each drawer neatly labelled. Below was a long line of glass-topped cases, in the compartments of which lay clutches of eggs, neatly displayed upon cotton-wool.

'You take an interest in wild birds' eggs, Mr. Blake?' began Mr. Ormston.

'A very amateurish one, I'm afraid,' replied Blake.

'It is about one of these eggs that I have requested your services,' said the other eagerly. 'I have had a dreadful loss, Mr. Blake. The gem of my collection; my great auk's egg, has mysteriously vanished.'

'But' returned Blake, in surprise, pointing to one of the compartments where, in solitary glory, a large, mottled egg, some five inches long by three wide, 'surely this is the egg you speak of— the egg of the long extinct Alca Impennis!'

Mr. Ormston shook his head sadly.

'That' he said, 'is only an imitation in plaster of Paris. The real egg was far too precious for casual exhibittion. I kept it carefully locked in a special metal-lined drawer. Yesterday, when I opened the drawer, it was gone.'

His tones were pitiful. Blake felt a sudden sympathy for the kindly old man. He knew there is no grief like that of the ardent collector robbed of his greatest treasure. And as he was aware that there are in existence only sixty-eight specimens of the egg of this extinct bird, and that these are valued a about three hundred pounds apiece, he could quite understand Mr. Ormston's emotion.

'When did you last see the egg?' he asked.

'Six days ago,' was the prompt reply.

'Have you any suspicions as to the culprit?. You must he quite open with me,' he added, as he saw the other hesitate.

'Very well, I will tell you all I know,' replied Mr. Ormston, with sudden de-cision. 'It is a dreadful thing, but I fear it is my nephew, Trevor Ormston, who has taken the egg. On Friday last, the very day after I last looked at the egg, I opened a letter addressed simply 'Mr. Ormston,' and read it through before I realised that it was meant, not for me, but for my nephew.

'This letter was from a bookmaker, and demanded in curt terms a cheque for £130.

'I had no idea that Trevor gambled, and I was angry. When he came down to breakfast and I handed him the letter, I spoke to him very sharply, and told him that I made him a good allowance, and had no intention of paying his gambling debts. He answered angrily that I had better wait until he asked me to do so, and left the table without finishing his break-fast.'

'But that is not evidence,' said Blake, as Mr. Ormston paused. 'Your nephew may have had the money to settle the debt.'

'Wait!' exclaimed the other. 'I happened to know that Trevor's account at his bank was overdrawn. He is an extravagant youngster, though, so far as I am aware, not vicious. On Monday it occurred to me that l had been hasty, and I wrote to the book-maker, enclosing a cheque for the amount. Yesterday— Wednesday— the cheque came back with a civil letter, saying that the account had been settled.'

Blake pursed up his lips. 'Even that does not connect your nephew directly with the theft.'

'Heaven knows that the last thing I desire is to connect him with it! But there is, unfortunately, further evidence against him. In the first place, he is the only person in the house besides myself who has free access to this room. I am so particular that I always lock the door when I am out of it, and when it is swept and dusted, my old butler, Moreland, stands by, and supervises the maid who does the work. In the second place, Trevor went up to town for the day on Tuesday. Worse than all, Mr. Blake, when I asked him where he got the money to settle with the bookmaker, he got red and confused, and refused to tell me.'

Blake's face assumed a serious expression. 'You are right, Mr. Ormston. 'What you have just told me puts a very different complexion upon the case. A great auk's egg is not like a piece ot jewellery, which you can dispose of at any pawnbroker's. It is such a rarity, that the sale of a specimen creates a small sensation in the ornithological world, and is usually chronicled in the papers. How could your nephew have disposed of the egg?'

'Your question is a sound one,' replied Mr. Ormston approvingly. 'But when I tell you that Nelson Q. Gedney is in London, you will appreciate that fact.'

'Gedney, the American collector?' exclaimed Blake.

'The same. He is a millionaire, Mr. Blake; and, what is more, is a unscrupulous as he is rich. He has not got a good specimen of the great auk's egg, and I am certain that for one like mine he would pay full market price, and ask no questions.'

Blake nodded. 'You are, probably right, Mr. Ormston.' He stopped, and considered a moment. 'I think the best thing that I can do is to stay here at Croom for the present. There are inquiries which I must make upon the spot, and I also wish to meet your nephew. One other question, Mr. Ormston. Have you told anyone of your loss?'

'No one besides yourself. Not even Moreland.'

'Your butler, you mean?'

'Yes. He is almost more than that, Mr. Blake. One of those old family servants whom one may class as friends. He too, is a collector, but of fresh-water shells, not birds' eggs. If you want to win his heart, you should ask him to show you his collection.'

'And your nephew?' asked Blake. 'You have not mentioned the disap-pearance of the egg to him?'

'I have not said a word to him.'

'I am glad of that. And does your household know anything of my identity?'

'Probably not, for this is an out-of-the-way part of the world. And even if they do, it is only the guilty one who could connect your presence here with your profession. I told Moreland that you were a brother collector, in-terested in my work.'

'Very wise,' said Blake, approvingly.

AT LUNCHEON Blake met Trevor Ormston, a well-set-up young Englishman with a tanned face, and dressed in a rough suit of grey tweeds. There was nothing to distinguish him from a thousand other products of the public school and university. Certainly there was nothing about him to connect with a crime; but Blake knew too well to judge by first appearances.

The luncheon was well cooked and well served. Moreland, the grey-hair-ed butler, was assisted by Lycett the footman who had taken up Blake's luggage. After the meal, Trevor offered to show him over the farm. Blake accepted the invitation, but after an hour's stroll excused himself on the plea of letters for the post, and came back alone.

The door was locked. Moreland answered the bell. Blake engaged the old man in conversation, and presently said:

'Mr. Ormston tells me that you, like him, are a collector.'

A gratified smile crossed the butler's face.

'In a very humble way, sir,' he an-swered. 'If you take any interest in such things, sir, I should be more than pleased to show you my little collection.'

'I shall be delighted,' said Blake cordially; and followed Moreland to the back regions.

An hour later, Blake, who had apparently forgotten all about his letters, was sitting in a little summer-house in the garden. He was evidently deeply wrapped in thought. He sat there for a long time, and then at last got up, and began strolling casually through the well-kept grounds and shrubberies which surrounded the house.

That evening and the next day Blake never left the house for long at a time, but for all the effort he appeared to be making to solve the mystery he might, indeed, have been a guest.

On the second evening, Lycett, the footman, asked leave to go to Southampton next day, in order to see his brother, a soldier, whose regiment was leaving England for India.

The following morning at breakfast Trevor Ormston announced his intention of running up to town for the day.

'Got a bit of shopping to do,' he explained, 'and I have to see my tailor.'

Blake made no remark, but after breakfast: Mr. Ormston found a note on his writing-table, addressed in Blake's characteristic hand. 'I am going away for the day,' it ran. 'I hope to be back for dinner. I have taken the liberty of borrowing your artificial great auk's egg.'

When the dinner-gong sounded, Blake was waiting in the drawing-room, perfectly turned out, as usual, in irreproachable evening-dress. Trevor, too, was there, looking rather pleased with himself. The two men were chatting easily when Mr. Ormston came in. The latter hoped that after dinner Blake would offer some explanation, but he was disappointed.

MR. ORMSTON lay awake that night, worrying over the whole business, with the result that next morning he was late for breakfast. He found Blake down before him eating kidneys and bacon with a zest which spoke well for his health and appetite. Of Trevor there was no sign.

Mr. Ormston sat down heavily in his place, and languidly raised the cover of the silver breakfast-dish in front of him. Then he leaped from his chair with a shout In the dish lay the great auk's egg, safe and sound as when he had last seen it the week before in his cabinet.

'Forgive me,' said Blake, with a laugh. 'I had no business to startle you, but I could not resist the opportunity for a small practical joke.'

'Forgive you! I'd forgive you more than that, my dear fellow, for restoring my treasure. But how— how in the name of wonder have you accomplished this miracle?'

'It was really a very simple matter,' replied Blake modestly. 'In the first place, let me assure you that your nephew, who, by the by, has breakfasted early, and gone out, had nothing whatever to do with the theft.'

'Thank Heaven for that!' exclaimed Mr. Ormston earnestly. 'But who, then, was the real thief?'

'I'll come to that in a minute. You remember telling me that Moreland was a collector?'

'I do.'

'I acted upon your suggestion, and asked him to let me see his shells. That gave an opportunity for a talk, and I told him that you were anxious about your nephew and feared he had run into debt beyond his means. I told him, in fact, about the bookmaker's letter. He was oddly confused, but begged me to believe that Mr. Trevor had come by the money in a perfectly legitimate manner. I drew my own conclusions, and went out into the garden, which I explored thoroughly.'

'The garden!' exclaimed Mr. Ormston, amazed.

'Yes. I was already nearly certain of the identity of the thief, and I had made up my mind that the egg was in all probability concealed— buried most likely— in the grounds. Presently I found that there was just one spot which was not commanded by any of the windows. It is that plantation of deodars on the north-west side of the house. Choosing the time when I knew that tea was being brought in, I made a thorough search, and sure enough found the egg, buried at the root of a tree. It was in a box, well wrapped in wool. I covered it up again, and left it exactly as I had found it.'

Mr. Ormston stared in stupefaction. 'Left it! Good heavens, why did not you bring it in at once?'

'That would never have done. Remember, I had to clear your nephew, and, for that reason, if for no other, it was necessary to have proof against the real culprit.'

'I see. And then?'

'Then I waited. I knew that the thief must take his spoil to market. The night before last I learnt from Moreland that the footman, Lycett, had asked for leave to go away for a day.'

'Lycett! Then he is the thief?'

'Yes, as I had suspected almost from the beginning. I got a clue the very first day I was here. At luncheon I noticed the remains of a green-moss stain on the left knee of his livery trousers. It had been well brushed, but there was quite enough left to give him away.

'As soon as I knew what Lycett was after, I borrowed the sham egg, and substituted it for the real one, and next morning followed the man. Just as I expected, it was the London train which he took, not the Southampton. I followed him to Waterloo, and from there to the house which Mr. Gedney has taken in Hans Place. I watched him ring the bell, and enter, and then I came away.'

'Came away! But why didn't you arrest the scoundrel at once, and hand him over to the police?'

Blake laughed, and handed his host a morning paper. It contained an account of how a man who called him-self Green, had been handed over to the police by Mr. Nelson Q. Gedney, for endeavoring to swindle him by selling him a sham great auk's egg.

Mr. Ormston was so pleased and excited that some minutes elapsed be-fore it occurred to him to ask Blake from what source Trevor had got the money to pay off the bookmaker.

'Surely that is clear enough,' smiled Blake. 'Moreland lent it to him. The old man has a very snug nest-egg of his own, and is devoted to your nephew.'

'He shall not lose by it,'' said Mr. Ormston warmly.

And Moreland found that he kept his word.

___________________

11: An Unrecorded Instance

Marie Belloc Lowndes

(1868-1947)

Hutchinson’s Mystery Story Magazine August 1925

HETTY Mingle sat on an iron chair on a side path of the picturesque public garden of famous Lackston Spa, most agreeable and least spoilt of English inland watering places.

It was a beautiful July day, yet this visitor to Lackston Spa felt, as she would have put it to herself, very lonesome, and that though she was living in a nice cheerful boarding-house, where she was only paying four guineas a week with no extras. One reason why Hetty Mingle felt unlike her generally placid self, was owing to the fact that to-day was her birthday. If gave her a slight pang to reflect that only yesterday she had still been thirty-two, and that now, to-day, she was thirty-three. She did not look her age, though she had a somewhat thickset figure; but she had always had that.

A year ago Hetty's clever, sharp-tongued mother had still been alive, and she had almost more to do than her poor brain could stand. Mrs. Mingle, though a great invalid, would only tolerate her daughter about her when there was something she wanted Hetty to do. Even then she would often say crossly, "Why, I've never met such a butter-fingered soul as you, my dear! Can't you be a bit more nippy?"

Hetty had always been frightened of her mother; sometimes, deep in her heart, she had longed to rebel against her. For one thing she had been dumbly hurt at being always treated as a child— never as a grown woman, and at times she had even vaguely thought of running away, and looking for something to do.

But oh, how she missed her mother now! How strange it was to know—Hetty always knew, rather than felt, things—that she hadn't a friend in the world, except Mr. Quin, the old lawyer who provided her income in the form of a hundred and thirty-six pound cheque, paid quarterly—as had been her mother's wish.

This cheque she, Hetty, at once paid into some local branch of the big London bank where Mr. Quin had arranged she should have an account, and the bank always wrote and told the lawyer the money had been banked. Not that Hetty Mingle was foolish or extravagant— that indeed was far from being the case— about money.

Just after her mother's death, eight months ago, over five hundred pounds a year had seemed to Mr. Quin's client an enormous sum— the sort of income one young woman could never spend! But Hetty knew better now. She had learnt the fact that money has a way of slipping through one's fingers, as a funny lady had once put it to her. All the same she was very comfortable, with no one to spend her income on but herself.

And now, sitting in the almost solitary garden, for it was getting on for one o'clock, Hetty opened her red-leather bag— she was fond of bright colours— and took out of it a thick envelope.

As she read the superscription, tears welled up in her china-blue eyes, for on the envelope was written:

"To my daughter Hetty Mingle, to be opened and read after my decease."

She hadn't looked at what was in that envelope since the day after her mother's death. But now, because it was her birthday, she had made up her mind that she would read, once more, what was written there. So she took out the three big sheets of paper, and read over her mother's last words, knitting her brows in her effort to understand everything that was written there, quite clearly.

"Though my illness has been a great trial to you, I know that you will miss me, Hetty. So I am writing down a number of things which will, I trust, be a help to you.

"Lodgings will never be of any use to you, and the lodging-housekeeper would just live on you; hotels will be too expensive. So, to please me, I beg you always to try and live in some nice boarding-house in a healthy town. When you get tired of one place, you can move on to another.

"I have always kept myself to myself, and I advise you, my dear, to do the same. The sort of people who try and make friends with other people generally end by wanting to get something out of them. You can be just nice and friendly to everybody, without ever being familiar with anyone.

"Never you go and lend a penny of your money to anybody. If you feel sorry for someone, you give them a little present right out. Short reckonings make long friends. When in any money difficulty go straight to Mr. Quin. But don't bother him too often. He doesn't like it.

"What I am now going to write down is important.

"Don't believe those silly folk who run down single life. Marriage isn't all it seems to be. I hate to write the words down, my dear, but I've got to do it. You're not the sort of young person any man will ever live for herself.

"If I didn't know myself to be dying, I wouldn't say such a disagreeable thing. But that's the one thought that is worrying me, Hetty. I'm afraid that some bad man will try and marry you for your money. I never taught you to lie, and I don't like beginning to do it now, but those who ask no questions hear no lies. And if any man is so impudent as to ask you about your money, answer quick that you've only got a small annuity.

"I've had a hard life. Harder than I've ever let you know.  I should like to believe what religious folk say— but I don't. If however they do happen to be right, you may feel quite sure of one thing. That is that so far as I can, I'll always be as near to you as I'm allowed to be, watching over you.

"Read over, now and again, all I've written down for you, my daughter. It's all true, if it isn't all pleasant."

Her mother's arid philosophy of life, long before her mother's death, had been constantly impressed on Hetty Mingle; and the one thing she did resent in Mrs. Mingle's valedictory letter, were those unkind words as to no one being likely to want to marry her for herself. Why, since her mother's death, a very nice gentleman had said he just doted on her, and that his one wish was to make her his wife! But he was over thirty years older than herself, and she hadn't liked him at all. Still, he had been what her then landlady had called "very persistent," and, as a matter of fact, she had left Bath, where they had been together in the same boarding-house, mainly because he had worried her so.

"A very nice day, and not too warm for the time of year, isn't it?"

Hetty Mingle turned, to see that a pleasant-faced, youngish-looking fair man, had drawn a chair up close to where she was sitting.

"I'm a stranger to this town," he went on in a deep, caressing voice, "and I'm wondering if you could tell me the location of the best picture-palace in Lackston, madame?"

Most questions of that kind left Hetty without an answer. But she did happen to know where there was a splendid picture-palace, for it was close to the boarding-house where she was staying. So, feeling rather pleased with herself, she tried to explain, unsuccessfully, exactly where it was.

"I can see that you've not come to this town to be cured of any ailment," went on the stranger, smiling. "You look, if you'll excuse my saying so, quite wonderfully healthy."

This remark pleased Hetty, and she would have liked, but she had not a ready tongue, to answer his compliment by another; for he, too, with his chubby face, bright hazel eyes, and fair moustache, looked in the pink of condition. But instead of saying anything, she suddenly burst out laughing.

Hetty Mingle often did that, when she didn't quite know what to say.

"I'm here on business," he said genially. "My business is looking out for what's called antiques. They're often to be picked up cheap, in this sort of town."

"Fancy that!" she exclaimed.

"If you could put me on to anything of the kind— I'd be prepared to pay a handsome commission for same."

Hetty was more used to people who wanted to be given money, than to offer money, and her heart warmed to the speaker of those pleasant words.

"Now wherever you may happen to be staying, in rooms or an hotel, maybe?" He looked at her insinuatingly. But she only smiled, foolishly. And he went on, "—there may be some nice little bit of furniture, a lady's work-box, say? I mean the kind that has legs; or a pretty painted chair or two?"

And then at last Hetty Mingle did speak. "There's nothing of the sort where I'm living," she observerd; and there was a tone of regret in her voice. "It's a boarding-house; but of course I haven't been into all the bedrooms. There might be something of the sort in one of them  "

The stranger looked just a little disappointed. He had supposed his new acquaintance— he thought her a widow— to be an hotel visitor, for she was very nicely dressed, though In a rather old-fashioned way. Her gown was made of expensive grey stuff, and her black satin cape was fastened with a real diamond brooch. As a matter of fact, Hetty Mingle's long dead father had been a jeweller,

"You find a boarding-house more comfortable and homey than an hotel, I expect?" he observed.

"I hate hotels," she announced with sudden spirit. "You don't get the value there for your money you ought to do in such places."

"Right!" he exclaimed, "I'm beginning to see that you're a very sensible young lady."

Hetty bridled. It was pleasant to be called "a very sensible young lady."

"Do you often come out here— I mean into this garden?"

She gave a sudden loud laugh. "There isn't much else to do in the morning, is there ? I mean in a place like this."

"Ever go to the Pictures?" he asked, leaning towards her.

"I do, now and again." Then she hesitated, for already she did not want him to think her mean. "But those sort of places run away with a lot of money," she said regretfully.

"Would you think me presuming if I asked you to come with me to the Pictures to-morrow? I mean, of course, with me standing Sam?"

A look of real pleasure flashed into Hetty Mingle's face. When a couple staying in her boarding-house asked her to go to a cinema they always meant her to pay for herself; and sometimes, as she had found with dismay, they actually expected her to pay for them!

In spite of her strict adhesion to her mother's advice concerning questions as to her income, and so on, advice which had often been uttered by the departed Mrs. Mingle during her lifetime, as well as written down to be read after her death, Miss Mingle's fellow boarders generally ended by forming a correct idea as to her fortunate circumstances. So it was a delightful, as well as a novel, experience, to find someone, especially an attractive young man, actually wanting to treat her to something.

Even so, she looked at him helplessly, wondering, in a muddled, anxious sort of way, when and how they were to meet. She wouldn't for the world have allowed him to call for her at the boarding-house. Hetty hated and feared what she called "tittle-tattle," and she was painfully sensitive to any form of ridicule. Meanwhile the stranger was looking at her very hard out of the corner of his eye.

"My name's Grantham," he said, "Jack Grantham."

He waited a bit, and, as she said nothing, he asked, with a peculiarly ingratiating smile, "May I ask your name?"

"My name?" She was a little taken aback by the question. Still, what could she do but answer it? "My name is Henrietta Mingle."

"Is it Miss— or is it Missis?"

"I'm Miss Mingle," she replied, with a trace of reluctance. At once he said— for he was the kind of man who always prefers to tell an untruth, if it be equally convenient— "That's funny! I felt sure from the first that you were a single lady!"

"Are you married?" asked Hetty inquisitively. She really felt she would like to know.

"Not me!" he answered gaily, "though I've plenty on which to keep a wife— which is more than some chaps can say in these hard times. But yours truly never met the lady yet that I wanted to make Mrs. Grantham."

And then, all at once, the clock on the town-hall tower struck one. Hetty got up, and so did Mr. Grantham.

"Shall we say just here, to-morrow, at two?" he asked abruptly. "Then we might go a little turn before the Pictures. There won't be any hurry, for I shall take our seats in advance."

Thus began, in that apparently casual careless way, the one great adventure of Hetty Mingle's life. Her first outing with Jack Grantham, the two hours spent with him at the Pictures was, in itself, a unique experience. She even thinks of it, sometimes, now. It was the first time, in her thirty-three years, that a man had ever held her hand.

Day by day her acquaintance with this new friend grew closer and closer— so close, indeed, that any other young woman than poor Hetty would have felt no surprise when he asked her, as he did when their acquaintance had lasted a little over a fortnight, to marry him.

And yet, though she was so simple, Hetty Mingle was as cunning as only the very simple can be.

Not a single person in the boarding-house where she was living, had even a suspicion of what had been going on. True, Miss Mingle was out a great deal, but then all the boarders were out a great deal in this beautiful summer weather. But while the others went long char-a-banc excursions, Hetty and Mr. Grantham, as she went on calling him, spent their time in the old curiosity shops of the town, and in motoring round the villages near by where, now and again, a good little piece could be picked up cheap.

In sixteen days Jack Grantham expended— and he kept a careful record of all his expenditure— twelve pounds, fourteen shillings, and sixpence, on his courtship of Hetty Mingle. In return she had told him everything there was to tell about herself and, during a lightning visit to London, he had spent a. very useful shilling at Somerset House, reading Mrs. Mingle's will. During those same sixteen days Hetty had fallen, deeply, pathetically deeply, in love, with the only pleasantly mannered man who had ever taken the trouble to make himself agreeable to her. And when, at last, the two became engaged, she willingly assented to her lover's proposal that they should go south, and be married in Canterbury.

On one occasion, while they were happily discussing their joint future, he had observed: "On the day we're married we shall each have to make a new will, my dear. I'll leave you everything I've got— quite a tidy little bit, I'm glad to say— and you'll likewise do the same by me." She had not made him the eager answer he had expected. But he had got used, by now, to such omissions, and he had not supposed he would have any trouble with her.

Neither did he. After leaving the little Canterbury church where they had been married—she had agreed that it would be much nicer and more respectable to be married in a church than at a register office— they had proceeded to a local lawyer's office, and each made a short will, leaving to the other all that he, or she, should die possessed o£.

Hetty's husband urged her to do something else on her wedding-day and, rather to his surprise, she had jibbed at doing it. But in the end she had obeyed him. This which he made her do was to write, at his dictation, a careful, though not too intelligently worded, letter, acquainting the lawyer, Mr. Quin, with her marriage to a gentleman named Grantham, who dealt in antiques.

The bridegroom had pondered over carefully the question of what address his bride should give Mr. Quin— the more so that they meant to move about a bit, before settling down. Then, all at once, he had exclaimed: "I must be getting dotty! You need only give him the name of the bank here, in Canterbury, where you've just paid in his cheque, ducky. We've got to keep in touch with that bank, and your old rascal"— the speaker considered all lawyers rascals— "will know it in any case, once his cheque has been passed through."

ii

DR. POMFRET-SMITH was the one medical man in the lovely sea-side Sussex village of Trimling. From a doctor's point of view, both the old-world hamlet, and the mushroom bungalow town on the strip of shingle which lay above the beach half a mile away, were almost unpleasantly healthy. Indeed, but for the fact that his delicate little wife had three hundred pounds a year of her own, they could never have stuck it out.

As so often happened, the doctor was sitting to-day in the study which was also his consulting-room, idly reading a book, when he was told that a Mr. Grantham wished to see him. He jumped up, and a moment later the visitor walked through into the room looking, as a man is apt to in such circumstances, just a little foolish.

Dr. Pomfret-Smith felt a twinge of disappointment; for Mr. Grantham was the sort of man who could only be described as extraordinarily ordinary.

The stranger was a fair, stocky man, and Pomfret-Smith, who prided himself, as doctors are apt to do, on his power of human diagnosis, told himself that the man standing before him was probably a prosperous commercial traveller. His visitor looked, but this was a mere detail, remarkably healthy, a fact further proved by his first words, which were: "I've not come for myself, for I'm always O.K. I've come to ask you just to see my wife, doctor; she doesn't seem quite the thing, and I'm a bit uneasy about her."

Dr. Pomfret-Smith insensibly thawed, for the stranger had a soft, attractive voice.

"What's the matter with Mrs. Grantham?" he asked kindly.

"She's been having awful headaches, and that seems quite wrong in a place like this. Also, she turned faint yesterday."

The doctor looked at the young man thoughtfully. "Perhaps she was doing too much before she came here. Have you just started your holiday.?"

A somewhat embarrassed smile came over Mr. Grantham's face, as he replied, readily enough, "The truth is, doctor, that we're still on our honeymoon! We were married at St. Olave's church in Canterbury, just three weeks ago."

"I see. Is Mrs. Grantham well, apart from headaches? Quite cheerful, and so on?"

"Very cheerful," was the eager answer. "Quite merry and bright, if I may so express it."

"Well, I'd better see her."

Dr. Pomfret-Smith felt just a little surprised, when Mr. Grantham brought his new-made wife into the consulting-room. He had expected to see a nervous-looking girl, wearing, more likely than not, very high heels, and one of those foolish little hats which give no shade to a young feminine face. Instead, he saw before him a stoutly-built young woman, who appeared older than her husband, and who was sensibly dressed in good clothes. She was very plain, and her bright green mushroom hat did not add to her attractions; still, she looked good-humoured and kindly, though her expression was somewhat vacant.

"Well, Mrs. Grantham— I hear you have not been very well? Perhaps the sea air has upset you. It does some people."

She began to laugh— "He! he! he!"— as if the; doctor had said something humorous. Then she said, with a trace of defiance, "I've often lived by the sea. Never did me any harm, I just feel queer, don't I?" and she turned to her husband with a nervous look in her china blue eyes.

"Perhaps your wife would like to see me alone, Mr. Grantham?"

There came a sudden change over Dr. Pomfret-Smith's new patient. A look of alarm, almost of suspicion, flashed across her large pink and white face. "Oh no!" she cried. "I'd rather my husband stayed here."

The doctor smiled an inward smile. His unspoken question was answered. This odd-looking young woman was evidently very fond of her husband. They were on excellent terms the one with the other.

He said soothingly: "The sun's been very hot these last few days. I expect you've been sitting out on the beach, and that you've simply got what I call a sun-headache. I'll write you out a prescription for something that I hope will do you good."

He made out a prescription for a soothing mixture, and handed it to the lady's husband. "By the way, where are you staying?" he asked.

"We've taken the Old Bungalow for two months, sir."

"I'm sorry you've done that! It's a horrid, ramshackle little place. Why, it hasn't even a bathroom. But then I suppose you bathe a lot in the sea?"

"Why yes." The man smiled broadly. "We do do that, doctor. But all the same— as there's plenty of fresh water laid on, I'm hiring a bath and having it moved in."

He turned to his wife. "Now then, Hetty ? I think we left your parasol in the other room. Will you go and wait for me there?"

She went off obediently, and then Mr. Grantham turned to the doctor. "I'm very much obliged to you, doctor!" he exclaimed. "I expect she'll be as right as a trivet, to-morrow."

Then to the surprise of Dr. Pomfret-Smith, the speaker laid a ten-shilling note on the table. "I hope this is right, sir? Short reckonings make long friends— don't they?"

In spite of himself the medical man felt pleased. He knew only too well what a difficult and sometimes unpleasant job it is to collect small accounts in a place like Trimling Bay. So "Thank you very much," he observed. It was pleasant to have earned ten shillings in as many minutes, with practically no trouble.

"I'd like you to see my wife again, doctor, if she doesn't get better in the next day or two?"

"I shall be delighted to see Mrs. Grantham any time," replied Dr. Pomfret-Smith cordially. "If you don't want to come all the way to the village, you've only got to send me a message, and I'll come round to the Old Bungalow at once."

Four days later, on a fine sunny morning, Hetty Grantham, as she was now, wandered out, at about eleven o'clock, on to the veranda of the Old Bungalow. The weather-beaten, squat grey building stood by itself, quite a way from the row of new one-storey, red and white dwellings each filled now, with a full complement of cheerful holiday-makers.

Hetty felt queerly lonely, and even depressed, no doubt because this was the first time her husband had left her since their wedding-day. And that wasn't all! Something had altered her dear "hubby," as Jack Grantham had taught her to call him. He had been sharp and impatient on their way to the doctor, while trying to make her understand what she was to say when there. But he had begun to really change in his manner after that visit. It wasn't that he was unkind; it was simply that he was no longer affectionate; and she wondered hazily whether she had offended him in any way. He had become so glum, and yesterday afternoon he had spent a long time in writing a letter, and she had caught a glimpse of the address.

It was to a "Mrs. Somebody" in London, N.W., and it had made her feel vaguely jealous. Then, this morning, he had suddenly said that he had to go away for a night on business; and, as he was going off, when she put her arms round his neck, he had pushed her away quite roughly, with, "There, that'll do! Even new married folk can't always be kissing and cuddling one another."

Though Hetty could not have echoed the old philosopher's assertion: "I think. Therefore I am," she was capable of very real mental pain and distress, and she was so suffering acutely, now. For one thing, the hundred and thirty odd pounds she had received just two days before her marriage, and which Jack Grantham had persuaded her to put into the Canterbury branch of Mr. Quin's bank, was melting— and melting far too quickly to her mind. Her husband had begun by making her draw out twenty- five pounds in cash, when she had registered her new signature, and, as she had never drawn to "self" so big a cheque before, it had made her feel quite nervous. Also, though she had kept that fact to herself, she had not liked it when her lord and master, as he had called himself more than once in joke, had assumed the charge of the money. She had always been used to keeping her cash in a stout little jewel-box of which she always wore the key round her neck.

All this being so, imagine Hetty's horrified astonishment when twelve days after her marriage, her "hubby" had casually observed one morning that as their "oof" was running out, she had better make out another cheque for twenty pounds. That suggestion had seriously upset her, and it had led to their first quarrel.

But in the end she had given him the cheque, although she had begun by vehemently declaring that nothing would make her do so. And then, a few days ago, he had made her draw yet another cheque! But this time she had understood the reason, for it was for half the rent in advance of this horrid, ramshackle, not over- clean, bungalow, on the veranda of which she was now sitting staring out at the dimpling sea— dotted, to her right, with jolly bathing figures— with puzzled, anxious eyes.

It may have been an hour later when there fell on her ears the discordant peal of the old-fashioned bell of the Old Bungalow. Who could it be? They didn't know anyone, yet, in this funny place, and they did all their own shopping. Hetty made her way into the one living-room, which was called the lounge, and opened the front door.

Right across the threshold lay a huge white bath, while outside, on the half-made road, stood the cart whence, obviously, had come the bath.

Now she had secretly thought it a very silly thing of her "hubby" to want to have this kind of a bath in this tiny place. There was a large tin basin which the people who had been there before had found good enough. But Jack Grantham had been set on having what he called "a proper bath"; and he had arranged to hire one for two months from the local plumber. Hetty had been with him at the time he had chosen it, and she remembered, now, that the plumber had very honestly pointed out that they would have a bit of a job emptying that sort of bath, as there was nothing to take off the water.

But the new tenant of the Old Bungalow had been quite sharp about it. "That's my business!" he had exclaimed. And then, laughingly, he had added, "I do like a nice drop of clean fresh water, after I've had a dip in the sea." And the man had answered, "Why yes, sir. Most people do, I fancy."

She came back, with a mental jerk of annoyance, to the present.

Three men were now slouching along on the narrow dusty path; and one of them asked, not over pleasantly, "Well now, missus? Where are we to put this 'ere hobject? The gentleman said as it wasn't to be delivered till to-morrow; but we was coming down this way with the cart, so we brought it today. It takes three of us to move that bath, and it's a bothersome job; but you won't forget us on such a 'ot day as this?"

Now Hetty was not sure where exactly her husband did wish this tiresome bath to be placed. As a matter of fact there were two cold-water taps in the bungalow: one in the kitchen, one in a kind of tiny scullery. It would be equally inconvenient, not to say impossible, to have this big bath under either tap.

As she stood hesitating, and muttering half to herself, "He's away to-day, and I don't know where he does want it put," the most intelligent of the three men sized her up— as the saying is. He looked over her shoulder. "Hadn't we better just dump it down in this 'ere hall ? When your good gentleman is back, I'll send down two of our chaps to help to move it; 'tisn't as if there were stairs,"

She nodded listlessly; and, after they had put the bath in a corner of the lounge, opposite her own bedroom door, Hetty unwillingly produced a shilling.

As the three went off, without thanking her, she felt just a little sorry she hadn't made it two shillings. But when she remembered how quickly her money was going, she reminded herself of a Victorian proverb her mother had been fond of quoting.

This Victorian proverb runs: "Be just, before you are generous."

At about eight o'clock that same evening Jack Grantham came home. He looked very tired; and, to his wife's astonishment, and yes, extreme horror, when he saw the place where the bath had been put, he began to swear furiously. Poor Hetty had not known there was such language in the world!

At last she began timidly to remonstrate with him, and he turned on her with a fresh volley of oaths. Then, suddenly, he realised how much he was scaring her, and he pulled himself together.

"I'm not blaming you, my dear! Of course I'm not. I'm cursing the blasted fool who sent the thing here to-day, and his blasted fools who dared to leave it in such a place as that. Why, it stands to reason we want it where the other old tub stands, in the scullery— that's the place for a bath!"

"I'm very sorry," she murmured, still shaking with fear. "I'll walk up to the village to-morrow morning, and get them to send the men down again."

"You'll do nothing of the kind!" he cried angrily. "I'll get in a couple of chaps from off the beach; give 'em sixpence each; and lend a hand myself. That  plumber 'ud go and charge quite a lot, for sending his men here again."

iii

AT TEN O'CLOCK that same night Hetty felt, as she always did feel at about that time, overwhelmingly sleepy. Her husband had recovered his temper, though he had been very sarcastic when she had had to confess that she had no idea how something tasty could be made out of what remained of the cold meat on which they had now lived for two days.

At last she said nervously, "Don't you think it's about time for bed?"

He answered at once. "You go to bed, my dear. As for me, I'll go out for a turn and a cigar before turning in."

He kissed her in a perfunctory way, and she went off into her room feeling much happier.

Now very early in their married life, in fact the day after they were married. Jack Grantham had explained to her that he couldn't sleep in a room with anyone else there; so since then they had always occupied separate rooms. In the hotels where they had stayed he had always taken, as a matter of course, the better of the two apartments, but here, to Hetty's grateful surprise, her husband had insisted that she should have the best bedroom, that overlooking the beach, in the Old Bungalow.

To-night, after she had undressed, there suddenly came over her a most curious and frightening feeling or sensation. This was that her dead mother was close to her— an invisible, while yet an almost palpable, presence. And the effect of this curious, extremely disturbing, sensation, was that it made her feel as if she was still Hetty Mingle, and that her marriage to Jack Grantham had been a dream.

She got into bed, and after awhile she went fast asleep. It may have been a few minutes, or it may have been an hour, later, when all at once she awoke with a start to hear, or so it seemed to her, her dead mother's voice saying close to her right ear, what her mother had so often said in life, "Try and think, Hetty. Try and think for yourself, my dear."

Oppressed and bewildered, she sat up in bed; and then, to her extreme surprise, she saw a line of gleaming light beneath her door. The Old Bungalow, in common with all the other newer and smarter bungalows, had had the electric light put in the year before.

Apart from that narrow thread of light beneath the door there was also, higher up, a shaft of diffused brilliance like that produced by the bull's-eye of a small lantern. Though it looked oddly eerie in the otherwise dark room, Hetty did not think it so, for she knew what caused that bright spot of light. The bedroom door was made of cheap, grained, foreign wood, and one of the knots in the wood had gone, leaving a round hollow hole. The owner of the Old Bungalow had pointed this fact out with a smile to Hetty, observing as he did so, "Anyone standing the other side of the door can see into this room through that hole, so my wife generally hangs a skirt, or something of the sort, on one of the hooks. That makes it quite all right."

She told herself, now, that her hubby must have left the light on, when he had come in and gone to bed. What a waste! Surely she ought to get up and turn it out, even at the risk of waking him, for, unlike herself, he was a light sleeper.

She slipped out of bed very quietly, and then, all at once, she heard him moving about in the lounge! What could Jack be doing there, at this time of night?

As is the case with all those poor humans dowered with Hetty's peculiar mentality, there was an inquisitive, as well as a cunning, streak, in her nature. So instead of opening the door, as an ordinary woman would have done, and ordering her husband off— good humouredly or otherwise— to bed, she crept across the floor to her door, and looked through the round hollow hole into the lounge.

And then―

And then the sight which met her eyes was so extraordinary and unexpected, that she nearly burst into a loud guffaw of laughter— nearly, but not quite, for she felt exceedingly curious to see what it was that her hubby was going to do next! What he was doing now was funny enough, for Jack Grantham was taking off his outdoor shoes, and in his stockinged feet he was capering about on the floor with a most queer kind of expression on his fleshy face. It was just as if he were hugely enjoying some silly secret joke, all to himself.

Suddenly he scampered over to the place where stood the bath, What queer creatures men were— what babies, after all! Several times Hetty had heard people say that men were nothing more than grown-up children— but she had never believed it till to-night.

Whatever was he going to do now? She had not long to wait, for Hetty's husband, with the quick agility of a monkey, swung himself into the big white empty bath.

Now he was sitting in it, of course fully dressed, his face convulsed with silent mirth.

He sat up! He lay half down! He leapt about in the big white dry cavity! Once he so entirely disappeared under the rim that she could not see him at all from where she stood concealed, fascinated by his queer antics.

But at last he leapt out of the bath, and walking quickly over to the wall, turned out the electric light.

A moment later she heard the sound of the other bedroom door shutting, very very quietly.

Jack Grantham was very nice to Hetty the next morning— nicer than he had given himself the trouble to be since they had gone to see the doctor.

They walked up to the village together, and went into several of the shops; and at the butcher's, he chaffed her so funnily about her ignorance of housekeeping, that everybody in the shop laughed aloud. And at last he waggishly exclaimed, "She's new to it, you know, my little wife. Why, we've only been married about a fortnight!" And he won the butcher's heart, too, by saying that he only liked English meat— no old dead stuff for him, even if it was Empire produce.

After they came home to the Old Bungalow he himself cooked the piece of undercut they had brought with them. And Hetty was taken aback, even felt really mortified, to find how well her hubby could cook.

"You'll find I can do most things, old girl," he said cheerfully, flattered by her surprise.

But after they had had and enjoyed their nice little meal he suddenly exclaimed, "I'm afraid I'll have to go away again this afternoon, ducky! I've got to meet a man over Arundel way, to look at a wine-cooler. They fetch a lot, when good."

"I did think you'd stay with me to-day," she said complainingly, and on the brink of tears. "It's awfully dull here, all by myself."

"Business must come first." he answered tartly. "You cheer up, and remember that care killed the cat! I shan't be gone long this time. We might have a dip in the sea when I come back, and I'll hot you up a nice bath to-night! Now you'll like that?"

"Well, yes," she said, wiping her eyes, "I shall like that. I always had a good look at the bathroom before going into a new boarding-house; and till we came here I always had a nice hot bath every night. But won't heating the water give a lot of trouble?"

"Only trouble to me," he said gallantry. "And I'd do a good bit more for you than that, my dear, any day. By the way, the lady who lives at the third bungalow from here— her name's Jones— good old name— is coming to see you today. I said you'd be in to see her about three o'clock. I didn't think you'd want the bother of getting tea for her."

"I don't feel as if I want to see anyone," she said grumpily.

But to that he replied sharply, "Nonsense! It's always a mistake not to get on with one's neighbours. And mind you give your hubby a good character!" And this time he gave her a really affectionate kiss.

She smiled— it was a more intelligent smile than her usual smile— and he said, quickly: "Hullo! What's the laugh about?"

"Only something I'm thinking of."

She had remembered, suddenly, his extraordinary antics of the night before; and long after he was gone, she went on smiling to herself, and feeling happier than she had felt for several days.

Mrs. Jones duly came in, and her coming did cheer Hetty up a bit, for Mrs. Jones told her new neighbour all about the local politics of the place. She explained that most of "the beach-combers," as they were locally styled, wanted to start some kind of co-operative arrangement about food. To do that would save a lot on every woman's household bills.

Now this was a point that Hetty not only understood, but keenly appreciated, and she promised to enlist her husband's sympathy with the scheme, explaining proudly that he was a very clever man— as to which indeed, she spoke more truth than she knew.

Mrs. Jones stayed a long time. Perhaps she was hoping for a cup of tea. But if so, she was disappointed. After she had gone, Hetty, who always found anything like a long-sustained conversation very tiring, lay back in one of the two shabby wicker chairs on the veranda, and fell fast asleep. And just as had been the case the night before, she must have begun dreaming of her mother, for she awoke with a start to hear her mother's voice sounding quite near to her, and that familiar voice uttered what had once been such familiar words: "Hetty, my dear, be careful... Look where you're going, my child."

She stood up, feeling a bit dazed, and turning, went into the bungalow. Then, in the lounge, there came over her such a funny feeling! It was as if something was inwardly urging her to the right, towards the place where stood the empty bath. In Hetty's eyes the bath looked so odd and wrong, without any proper taps, and with its squat iron feet still swathed in straw and paper.

A stronger breeze than usual was blowing in from the beach, and tiny wisps of straw were flying all over the floor. Too bad of those three men not to have taken away all that stuff! She told herself that had she noticed this omission on their part, she would not have given them the shilling. There was one thing she could now occupy herself in doing— she could take away all that nasty straw and old paper. So, fetching a knife from the kitchen, she knelt down, rather heavily, and began sawing through the strong cords which bound the straw and paper round the nearest iron foot of the bath.

Though she was wide awake now, she still felt as if her mother was around; and though she knew it was only her fancy, she found it a most peculiar, disconcerting feeling.

Now Mrs. Mingle, unlike Hetty, had been a great one for reading, and it gave Mrs. Mingle's daughter quite a turn when she saw that the big sheet of crumpled paper she had just unwound from the iron foot of the bath was part of an old News of the World, her mother's favourite paper!

She took up the wide closely-printed sheet, and smoothed it out flat on the floor.

And then, all at once, Hetty began to laugh, though what was printed there, staring up at her, was really very sad, come to think of it:

BRIDE DIES IN HER BATH

Last Tuesday morning, at the Eastbourne Coroner's Court there was opened an inquest on Mary Anne Ludlow, the wife of John Ludlow, who was found dead in her bath. The circumstances were very sad, for Mr. and Mrs. Ludlow were only married three weeks ago.

Dr. Pember, of 32 Marine Parade, gave evidence that he had attended deceased a week before her death. But she had only been slightly indisposed, and there had been nothing really wrong with her. He had made a post-mortem examination, and he could but conclude that she had turned faint in the water, and that, slipping down in the bath, her head had become immersed, and so she had been suffocated. Many women, he added, allowed their bath-water to become a great deal too hot.

Hetty told herself, smiling, that she, too, liked a very hot bath. She must be careful not to have her bath-water too hot to-night. Just then there came a loud knock at the door, and she pulled herself up on to her feet by the edge of the bath. She was curiously inactive and heavy, for a woman of her age.

Opening the door, she saw that the postman stood there. It was the first time he had called at the Old Bungalow, since the Granthams had taken it.

"Mrs. Grantham?" he asked questioningly; and, saying "Yes," she held out her hand to see, with a slight feeling of misgiving, that it was a letter from the lawyer, Mr. Quin, sent on from the Canterbury bank.

Shutting the door, she opened the envelope.

Mr. Quin's letter was a short, rather dry, typewritten letter, marked "Private." The writer began by saying that he had been away on holiday and expressed surprise at the news of his client's marriage. He concluded by saying that he hoped she would find it convenient to come soon to London, as he wished to see her concerning the re-investment of a portion of her capital.

And then there came another knock at the door, and this time it was a telegraph-boy. As he held out the buff envelope: "It can't be for here," she said crossly.

"Aren't you Mrs. Grantham?"

"Why yes, I am," and she opened the telegram to find it was from her husband saying he couldn't be back till the morrow. By now poor Hetty felt very much upset and flustered. She told herself that this behaviour was too bad of Jack— in fact really unkind. Still, two could play at that game! She wasn't going to stay in this queer place all by herself to-night.

Resentfully she decided that she would go to London to see Mr. Quin, this very afternoon. There was a nice boarding-house near the British Museum where they always found room for her. She could see Mr. Quin to-morrow morning, and be back here in the afternoon, probably well before her husband.

Slowly, deliberately she put on her best clothes, feeling it a pleasant sensation not to be made to hurry; and then, all at once, she remembered that she must leave word she had gone. After all, her hubby might come home before her? And if he did, he might be very angry at finding her gone. Still, Mr. Quin was her own lawyer, and he wanted to see her about her own money. All the same, she might as well write her lord and master a nice letter, one, maybe, that would make him laugh? So cutting out that funny little paragraph, about the bride who had died in her bath, from the sheet of the News of the World, she took a piece of the nice shiny notepaper Jack Grantham always used, sat down at the one table in the lounge and wrote what for her was quite a long note:

Thursday.

My DEAR JACK,

I am going up to London this afternoon to see Mr. Quin. He wants to see me about my money. I expect I'll be back to-morrow about six o'clock.

Isn't this a funny bit I've cut out of an old paper? Having that bath here makes me think of it. Your affectionate wife,

HENRIETTA GRANTHAM.

She put the letter and the cutting into an envelope, and addressing it to "Mr. John Grantham," left it on the one table there, which she laboriously dragged into the middle of the room, so that he couldn't miss seeing the letter.

The next morning Hetty's interview with Mr. Quin was on the whole quite a pleasant one. The old lawyer hadn't much to say after all, though he did scold her somewhat for not having let him know, before it took place, about her marriage. As for the business he had wanted to see her about, it was soon settled to both their satisfaction.

But no one was more surprised than was Mr. Quin— not even his client herself— when he ultimately learnt what had happened when Hetty went back to Sussex that same afternoon; for, astounding to relate, she had found the front door of the Old Bungalow bolted and barred against her, and her husband— gone!

What had happened soon became all too clear, even to the bewildered Hetty.

After coming back that same morning, Jack Grantham had locked up the house, taking away not only all his own things, but, oddly enough, his wife's jewel-box along with him. Then he had gone all round the village, leaving word with the various tradesmen, as well as with the house-agent, that when Mrs. Grantham returned from London, she would pay up and follow him. He had even had the bath moved back to the plumber's shop!

But though she did pay up everything, even on Mr. Quin's advice to the extra month's tenancy of that horrid bungalow, Hetty found it impossible to follow her husband, owing to the simple reason that he had left no address.

Much surprised and distressed, poor Hetty, again acting on Mr. Quin's advice, had costly advertisements inserted in the agony columns of all the daily papers. But they brought no news either of him, or from him. And, after a certain time had elapsed, for a reason that the old lawyer did not regard it as at all necessary to impart to his client, he urgently recommended that Hetty drop the name of Grantham, and call herself, instead, Mrs. Mingle, her dear mother's name.

And so it is that now, Hetty, known to those about her as Mrs. Mingle, is again leading a placid life, first in one nice boarding-house, and then in another.

As time goes on, the memories connected with her great adventure become fainter and fainter. But in her heart she is aware it is to that strange, and now dim, interlude, that she owes her solid satisfaction in what old-fashioned married ladies still call "brevet rank."

____________________

12: How the Captain Tracked a German Spy

Victor L. Whitechurch

1868-1933

From "The Adventures of Captain Ivan Koravitch", 1925

CAPTAIN Ivan Koravitch had invited two English friends, whom he had known before the Great War, to dine with him in his rooms. He was in a particularly happy frame of mind that evening, for, somehow or other, he had managed to procure a bottle of vodka. His friends, after tasting it, preferred their coffee without the assistance of stimulants, but the captain, disclaiming a liqueur-glass, filled a small claret tumbler more than once with the fiery spirit. Before him on the table lay a box of his inevitable Russian cigarettes, brown, and of very small size. His eyes sparkled, and his gestures were quick and descriptive as he talked. He always was a talker at ordinary times, but vodka loosened his tongue still more.

Something had been said on the subject of espionage. One of the Englishmen remarked—as Englishmen will remark in times of peace—that the stories of espionage were much exaggerated; that while it might be possible—and was—to procure bits of valuable information, it was scarcely probable that complete epitomes of the armaments and defences of a nation could be compiled.

Captain Ivan Koravitch, elbows on table, placed his right forefinger on the side of his nose. His face took on that sly and cunning smile that generally heralded a relation of facts or theories worth hearing. Then he exclaimed—

"You think so ? Ah—well, it does not matter now. I will show you something perhaps you have never seen before—there are few who have seen it. Wait!"

He sprang to his feet, drew a bunch of keys from his pocket, and walked quickly across the room. Standing by the wall was a box clamped with metal. He threw himself on his knees, unlocked the box, and began to rummage among the contents. The other two men, as they smoked, saw him take from it a grey tunic, the flash of a row of medals, as, for a moment, he opened a case, a Mauser pistol, an old haversack, and one or two other articles. Having at length found what he wanted, he bundled the Other things back into the box, and returned with four small but bulky volumes, which he placed on the table. He lighted a fresh cigarette.

"Now, see! I do not mind showing you these to-day. They are no longer of use. Besides"— and he gave a deep sigh and shook his head sadly—"I shall not betray my Government. Alas! my friends, the Government in Russia to-day... but I will not speak of it—I—who am now an exile. Bah!" and there was confusion to all Soviet Governments in his eyes as he tossed down the vodka.

"Well, then, behold! Yes, I know. These three are printed in Russian, and you cannot read them—but the pictures—look—an infantry soldier of the 38th Regiment—his uniform—even a diagram of his buttons—his rifle—three plates—all the mechanism —his bayonet— these figures are their weights. Turn over—so!— a field-gun showing the positions of its crew in action—every detail—splendid!

"But, regard now this fourth book. Printed in German, yes! Do you see ? It is your own army, before the war, that is described. Here are pictures of your Grenadier Guards, their strength, their equipment—everything. And here—a diagram of a machine-gun. Yes—it is full of interesting details.

"What are they and how did they come into my possession, you ask? Br-r-r-r," and he shrugged his shoulders. "The three books in Russian were compiled by our military intelligence department. They are an epitome of the German army. Ah, of course, they are spy books. I was authorised to possess them. Had they been found on me when I was in Germany before the war, it would have meant ten years in a fortress. The other book? Ah, my friends, that is a story. I am pleased at the way by which I came by him. Splendid!"

He refilled his glass with vodka, took another cigarette, lighted it, blew out a volume of smoke, laughed a low little laugh, and went on

"You have often wondered what I was doing in England the year before the Great War broke out; is it not so? Me! An officer in the Imperial Russian Army, idling my time in your country! You remember I took a leetle cottage in a village. I shoot a leetle with my gun. I got to know the village priest and the farmers—they were all very kind to the poor ignorant foreigner. The priest, he invited me to dine with him, and the farmers invited me to see pigs killed or to play cards with them.

Splendid! Sometimes I find the country life very dull, and then I ran away for two—three weeks, and the people said, 'Captain Koravitch has gone to London to enjoy himself but"—and the sly look came into his face as again he put his finger to the side of his nose—"I did not always go to London, and I did not always enjoy myself. For I was doing some strange work in your country. I was a spy!

"No! You need not frown and look so cross. I was not here to do you any harm. Listen! I was acting in the secret service of my Government, it is true. But I was not here to make plans of your fortifications or to find out about the guns you put on your ships, or, in truth, to trouble myself about your country at all. My business was with your enemies. For they were your enemies long before the war. Have you not a proverb which says, 'Set a thief to arrest a thief? I was sent to spy on German spies in England!

"You wonder why! Oh, it was very simple. At the time you would have refused to understand, and would have laughed— most of you Englishmen—if I had spoken of spies at all. That was one reason. England was a very safe place for spies to remain at liberty and to arrange their rendezvous. And not all of them were seeking to find out about your country. There were others who found it more easy to give in to some agent in England reports about other countries than to take them direct to Germany. Why, I will show you.

"Our frontier stations and seaports were carefully watched. It would have been risky, let us say, for a German spy to carry a document from Moscow to Berlin by rail. But not so difficult for a German sailor on an English tramp steamer to convey it from Odessa to London. And then—oh, my friends, you were blind! It was very easy to transmit secretly from England direct to Germany. Not much risk. Yes! Also with France. There were many, many German spies in France. And it was often more safe for them to communicate with Berlin by crossing the Channel first to England. The Channel boats, say you, were watched? Pouf! There were other methods. But, do not hurry me. Please!

"Now you will have seen something of my secret work. You will also remember that France was our friend. It is wise to obtain information about one's friends as well as about one's enemies. Therefore you will see it was not unimportant to watch in more directions than one. Yes?

"Now I will be like one of your English policemen. I have heard them give evidence in a court of law. A big fat man in blue goes into the witness-box with his helmet under his arm. So!"

Springing to his feet, he stuck out his chest, puffed his cheeks, and assumed a very solemn look.

"And he begins with the words, 'From information received.' And neither the judge nor the advocate asks him how he received the information. You, my friends, must now be the judge and the advocate. You must not ask me how I received the information. But it was this," and he sat down once more.

"A very clever agent of Germany, Otto Schuster, was known to be in Paris. Also it was suspected that he had obtained from Russia a plan of the mechanism of a new quick-firing field-gun with which our artillery were experimenting. And I was warned to take notice if Otto Schuster came to England. While he was in Paris it was not my business, but I had to take precautions. There were men I knew who could help me—a leetle French chef in a hotel in Newhaven, a barber of mine own country—who passed as a Frenchman—at Dover, and a man who kept a music-shop at Folkestone, each of them, you will observe, situated on one of the three main routes to Paris. It was necessary for me to see them all personally, so I took one of my leetle holidays. I dined with the priest the night before I went away, and he ask if I am going to London to make myself amusements. I tell him no; this August weather is so hot I shall spend a few days on the coast, and take off my boots and socks and wash my feet in the sea. Splendid!

"It took me but an hour to do my business at Newhaven. From there I take the train to Folkestone. Ah, your English railways! I am hardly seated at Newhaven before we arrive in Lewes. 'All change here!' and I get out and wait. Into another train. Presently, at Hastings, it will be again 'AH change here.' Also at

Ashford again, 'All change.' You English love your changes: your changes of Government—your changes of fashion—your changes of air (which is a very funnee expression, for air is always of the same chemical constituents)—your changes of trains. Splendid! Also you love many railway tickets. Often in your leetle island in a leetle journey you have to take two—three— tickets. So at Newhaven they would not give me a ticket farther than Hastings. Change your trains. Change your tickets! It is sometimes very puzzling.

"A leetle before one arrives at Hastings there is—what do you call it where two railway lines intermingle to make one? So! A junction. Yes! It is a junction with a very funnee name— I saw him painted on the box of signals, where the lines intersect themselves— 'Bo-peep Junction!' Is it where the leetle shepherdess of that name about whom you have a historical memory in a song lived, do you think? There is a station just before one arrives at this junction, and we had stopped there. So we were going very slowly. On the other line a train from London, which was late, was drawn up waiting till we had passed, so that it should come after us instead of before.

"There was a man looking out of a window in this other train, and I saw his face very plainly as we went by. Seldom do I forget in my memory a countenance which I have had reason to recollect. And I knew at once who the man was. I had seen him before, and it was my business not to forget him. Who was he? I will tell you. Previously upon a time his name was Carl Von Neglein, but for a dozen years he had been naturalised in England under the name of Charles Netherton. Oh, very funnee! He was a merchant in London, and he had a fine big house out in the country. And he was very patriotic, this Netherton. He subscribed to your hospitals, your games of cricket and football clubs. Because he was rich, your aristocracy allowed him to entertain them. And people said, 'What a very fine fellow! We love him so much!'

"But all the time he was a very dangerous man. I think afterwards your secret service discovered it. We knew it then. He was —what shall we call him?— a chief among the agents. And I said to myself, as my train entered the tunnel just beyond the junction of Bo-peep, 'Aha, my friend—what are you doing here? Perhaps instead of going on to Folkestone I will see if you have come to the coast because Otto Schuster is in Paris.'

"First it was necessary that I should make myself look more English. I will show you how."

Captain Ivan Koravitch took from his pocket a little case, and produced out of it a small mirror and a comb.

"Always I carry this," he explained, "to make my toilet. This leetle mirror and comb have been with me all through the war. Now, behold! Splendid!"

With a few quick turns of his fingers he untwisted his carefully waxed moustache, and then proceeded to comb it downwards over his lips. The effect was astonishing. The walrus hirsute appendage, as it appeared now, completely altered his face, making it look quite heavy and stupid.

"At Hastings I got out and waited for the other train. Out of it descended Mr. Charles Netherton. Like myself, he was only carrying a small bag, with a light coat over his arm. He was dressed in a grey-check patterned suit of very bad cut, and looked just like—eh, what do you call him? Yes—a tripper.

"I followed him from the station, taking care he did not notice me. He went to a large but not at all aristocratic hotel, and entered. Presently I, too, went in, took a room, and asked to have my dinner before I went upstairs to see it. So when he came down and went into the salon he saw me sitting at a leetle table drinking my soup, with a newspaper in front of me— just like a guest who had been there before he came. Splendid!

"After dinner we both walked on the promenade. I saw him read carefully a big notice by the pier. Afterwards I looked at the notice, which said that to-morrow at eleven o'clock a pleasure-steamer would travel to Boulogne. 'Three hours on shore,' and the fare included admission to the Casino. Then I began to make a guess, and I kept away from Mr. Netherton till nearly eleven o'clock the next morning. And then I followed him on to the pier, and bought a return ticket to Boulogne. He had his bag in his hand, but I had left mine at the hotel.

"During the voyage I sat in a deck-chair in a corner, and never took my eyes from the book I read. On arrival at Boulogne I had to be very careful, for I knew he was a clever man, this Netherton, but there was a great crowd of passengers, and it was not very difficult to watch him at a leetle distance. He walked along two or three streets, and then seated himself at a table on the pavement outside a cafe. The cafe was at the corner of the street, with two entrances, and, unnoticed by him, I entered from the other street, and found a place inside, so that I could see him through the window from behind himself.

"Ten minutes—twenty—half an hour I waited and drank beer. And at last the other came! Yes! You have guessed right. It was Otto Schuster. I recognised him as he sat down at the table next to Mr. Netherton. But neither of them took notice of the other. Oh, they were both very clever.

"But through the window I could see. Beside him on the pavement, Mr. Netherton had placed his leede bag and had taken a newspaper from it, leaving it a leetle bit open. Presently Otto Schuster took from his pocket a small parcel covered with brown paper. He stooped to tie the laces of his boot, and as he stooped I saw him drop the parcel into the bag. In a few minutes Mr. Netherton finished his drink, took up his bag, and walked away. And still he did not look at Schuster or say a word to him.

"Very good, I thought. I can do nothing more now. But tonight in the hotel I will try to get that parcel. But for the present I will make myself amusements till the boat departs. So I went to the Casino, Splendid!

"It is always the same when I play. I am never careful. And I cannot help going on while I have the money. It is a bad habit, yes! But often when we know a habit is bad, we love him all the more. My friends, when I came out of the Casino just in time to get on to the boat, I had nothing at all left in my pockets but a sixpence and a few coppers. The croupier had taken all my money. I say to myself, I do not care. When I get back to Hastings I will pawn my watch, which was of gold. It will be what you call 'all right.' Splendid!

"But it was another matter when we arrived at last in Hastings. Mr. Netherton did not go back to the hotel at all. And as I had to keep him in sight I could not go to pawn my watch. He went straight to the railway station. And as I was looking very deeply at a time-table with my back towards him, I heard him ask for a first-class ticket to Portsmouth. I looked at the list of prices of tickets. To Portsmouth, even of the third-class, it was about seven shillings, and I only had tenpence. I had been a big fool!

"But, I say, somehow I must follow this man and try to obtain from him that which is in his bag. The train was just about to depart. I purchased a ticket to the station at the other end of the town—West Marina—it cost only a few pence, and, at all events, it enabled me to get into the train. I saw Mr. Netherton enter a compartment, but with other passengers, so I did not attempt to get in with him. I had thought of the tunnel—it might have helped,—but now it was of no use.

"I have learned over and over again as a soldier never to be in despair if things take a wrong going. There is generally an exit towards a right going if one looks about himself to find one. I smoked two or three cigarettes very hard. And then I made a leede plan.

"I had previously made a journey from Portsmouth to Eastbourne, and I knew that Brighton was one of the stations where every one must change. One went through a gate from the platform, and entered another platform by a second gate, and at each gate stood a man armed with pinchers who demanded to see one's tickets. That was the chief difficulty. If I could surmount him there would be a chance. Already it was late in the evening, and darkness would set in between Brighton and Portsmouth. There would be my chance, if I could find this Netherton alone in a compartment. And if I got that chance, I would hope it would bring success with it—though even now I was not sure how it would. I had in my pocket a leetle pistol I always carried, but I did not wish to shoot this man—it would be awkward, and people might not understand. Awkward, look you, for me!"

And he drew his hand across his neck, and raised it with a jerk.

"For the rest, I was beginning to get very hungry. I had eaten nothing since leaving Boulogne. And I had only a few pence in my pocket.

"From Lewes to Brighton I was alone in my compartment. I took precautions, for I was not sure whether Mr. Netherton had observed me. I twisted my moustache again and put on my over-coat, which I had only been carrying. In the pocket I found an old cap. So I put it on, and threw my hat out of the window. You would not have thought me the same man who had entered the train at Hastings. It was well that I did this, for when we arrived at Brighton I noticed Mr. Netherton looked very carefully along the train at the passengers as they got out.

"Now came the important moment. Holding my ticket to West Marina in my hand, I pushed myself into the midst of a crowd of people who were going through the gate, thrust the ticket almost into the official's face, and cried with excitement, 'Portsmouth—where is the train for Portsmouth?'

"It succeeded! He was so pressed with taking the other tickets that he hardly glanced at mine. 'Number two platform,' he said. Yes! He did not do his duty very thoroughly, and I passed out of the gate. Splendid!

"I rushed to the office and purchased a first-class ticket to the next station—Hove. This was to admit me through the second gate. That left me twopence, which I spent at the refreshment department on those leetle round things with two currants on the top—yes—buns. So! They sufficed for my supper. Splendid!

"Mr. Netherton was a wise man. He evidently knew it was

more safe not to travel alone, for I observed him enter a first-class compartment at the front end of the train after some people had made their way in. My only stroke of fortune just then was that the next compartment remained empty; so I entered it. "It was growing towards darkness when we started, and already the electric lamps in the train were lighted. The journey was very slow. One stopped at every station. I was very careful not to put my head out of the window when we stopped, to see if the other passengers got out, for I knew it might look suspicious. But I thought of a very simple method by which I could see what was going on. I fastened my leetle pocket-mirror to the end of my walking-stick, and by holding it at an angle by the window I could sit back in my seat and see the outside of the train reflected. It was a long time before the three passengers got out, and then it was quite dark. And I could not be quite sure, even yet, if Mr. Netherton was alone. But my mirror helped me. By putting my stick out of the window I was able to see the reflection of the inside of his compartment. At last I satisfied myself that no one else was there. I could see him seated on the left hand of the compartment, facing the engine, and his leetle bag lying on the seat on his right. Splendid!

"And then it was that I made up my mind what I would do. It was a desperate chance, but my life has been full of desperate chances. Yes!

"It was a very hot night, and the window of Netherton's compartment on the right side of the train was open. I took out my leetle pistol, cocked it, and held it with my teeth, for at first I wanted the use of both my hands. I opened the door of my compartment, on the right side of the train, and got out on to— ah, yes—the footboard of the carriage. There was a brass handle between the compartments, and I held on to it and worked my way along, stooping low, till, with my left hand I grasped the handle of the next door. Then I took my pistol with my right hand.

"My friends, there is nothing that takes a man more by surprise than suddenly putting him into darkness. That was my plan. I am a good shot with a pistol—it is a part of a soldier's business, —and as I raised myself I aimed quickly through the open window at the electric light at the top of the compartment, and fired. My pistol was of small calibre, and the noise of the shot was not much compared with the roar of the train.

"Smash! I had hit it. In an instant all was darkness. Very quickly I opened the door and sprang in, reaching towards where I knew was the bag. His hand—for he had presence of mind, this Netherton—grasped the handle at the moment I also held it, but I wrenched it from him. I had intended to try to make an exit again to the footboard and take my chance of a jump when the train went more slowly before the next station. But he was too quick. Even in the darkness his hand found the collar of my coat, and took hold. Then there was a big struggle. Long ago, when I was in Port Arthur before the Japanese War, I had learned some tricks of jiu-jitsu, but I was much prevented from doing my best, because I had to keep my hold on the bag.

"We did not say a word to each other as we fought in that tar-black—eh? Yes—pitch-black compartment. Once I had him down on the seat, but he held me, too. Then the train began to go slow; we were entering a station. Already I caught a glimpse of a dim oil-lamp—the first on the platform.

"He wrenched himself free and made for the door. I saw at once that he meant to give the alarm. But in an instant I was prepared. He assisted my plan by opening the door. The train had not quite stopped when I gave him a big push that sent him sprawling on the platform. And then I immediately, still holding the bag, jumped out on the other side—where I had entered. Splendid!"

Captain Koravitch refilled his glass with vodka, lighted a fresh cigarette, and gave vent to a long chuckling laugh.

"Oh, it was very funnee, that which happened. Listen. He called out loudly, and the guard and two other men, who, I suppose, were the master of the station and a porter, ran to help him. He told them he had been robbed by a thief. 'Quick,' he cried; 'you must catch him. He jumped out of the train on the other side, I think. He is now running away with my bag!' The master of the station, who had a lantern, jumped into the compartment, and held it out at the open door on the other side. 'Yes,' he shouted; 'he has got out here,' and then the passengers put their heads out of the windows, and there was what you call a 'to-do.' Splendid!

"How did I hear all this when I had run away? My friends, I had not run away, I knew better than to stumble about in the darkness and easily to be caught. I had rolled myself underneath the train, and was lying at full length flat on the ground. Splendid!

"Presently the guard said the train must wait no longer. Netherton was very angry, but the guard would not listen. So Netherton said he would stay, and the guard blew his whistle. I pressed myself still closer to the ground, and the train went over me. Immediately afterwards I had rolled myself over the inner rail, and lay close to the edge of the platform.

"I heard Netherton ask—

"'What is this station?'

" 'Drayton, sir,' was the reply.

"The lights on the other platform had been extinguished. Very carefully, for the three men were close by, I found a stone, and jerked it over the line. It fell with a rattle somewhere opposite.

" 'There he is!' cried Netherton, and all of them dashed across the line to find me. This was my opportunity for escape. I got on the platform, climbed a fence behind it, and dropped down into a field. So I was not asked for my ticket! Splendid! And they were looking for me on the other side. Still more splendid!

"Drayton is a very leetle station in the midst of the country. Scarcely a house near. Quite unobserved I made my way across some fields. And presently I came to a big haystack, where I sat down to rest and think. Besides my leetle toilet-case, I carried in my pocket a small electric light. I opened the bag—yes—the parcel was there! But there was something else also there which gave me great joy. A flask of whisky and some biscuits. So I blessed the good Netherton!

"Afterwards I looked into the parcel. It contained the plan of the gun and some notes on the forts of the French frontier. Also, this German 'spy book' of your Army."

And he pointed to the volume on the table.

"For the rest, there is not much to tell. I slept under a haystack—pouf! it was nothing. The night was warm, and I have had much worse bivouacs. In the morning I looked around and saw the spire of a big church, to which I walked. It was the town of Chichester. I waited till the pawnshop opened, and then I got thirty shillings for my watch. After that—a big dejeuner! Then I took the train to London. Just as we were starting I saw Netherton standing on the platform across the way. I suppose he had spent the night in Chichester, and was waiting for a train to Portsmouth. I opened the window—my train was already beginning to move.

"'Herr Von Neglein!'

"Oh, it was very funnee how he started!

"'Here is your bag!' I cried; 'I want him no further.' Yes!

"And I threw it towards him. Ah, yes! I knew that now he would not dare to follow me—to have me arrested by the police. For we were both playing the same game, and it does not do to call in the police when you are playing the game of a secret agent.

"In London I took the plans and notes to my chief, and received some money. The German book on your English Army I kept as a souvenir. Then I journeyed back to Hastings to get my bag at the hotel, and for a few days' holiday, to take off my boots and socks and wash my feet in the sea. There was another day's excursion to Boulogne, and again I took him, this time for pleasure. Again I visited the Casino. Also, again I lost all my money. But I had this time left enough at the hotel to pay ray bill and to purchase tickets to return home. Splendid!"

___________________

13: Number 17

Edith M Nesbit

1858-1924

The Strand Magazine, June 1910

I YAWNED. I could not help it. But the flat, inexorable voice went on.

"Speaking from the journalistic point of view— I may tell you, gentlemen, that I once occupied the position of advertisement editor to the Bradford Woollen Goods Journal— and speaking from that point of view, I hold the opinion that all the best ghost stories have been written over and over again; and if I were to leave the road and return to a literary career I should never be led away by ghosts. Realism's what's wanted nowadays, if you want to be up-to-date."

The large commercial paused for breath.

"You never can tell with the public," said the lean, elderly traveller; "it's like in the fancy business. You never know how it's going to be. Whether it's a clockwork ostrich or Sometite silk or a particular shape of shaded glass novelty or a tobacco-box got up to look like a raw chop, you never know your luck."

"That depends on who you are," said the dapper man in the corner by the fire. "If you've got the right push about you, you can make a thing go, whether it's a clockwork kitten or imitation meat, and with stories, I take it, it's just the same— realism or ghost stories. But the best ghost story would be the realest one, I think."

The large commercial had got his breath.

"I don't believe in ghost stories, myself," he was saying with earnest dullness; "but there was a rather a queer thing happened to a second cousin of an aunt of mine by marriage— a very sensible woman with no nonsense about her. And the soul of truth and honour. I shouldn't have believed it if she had been one of your flighty, fanciful sort."

"Don't tell us the story," said the melancholy man who travelled in hardware; "you'll make us afraid to go to bed."

The well-meant effort failed. The large commercial went on, as I had known he would; his words overflowed his mouth, as his person overflowed his chair. I turned my mind to my own affairs, coming back to the commercial room in time to hear the summing up.

"The doors were all locked, and she was quite certain she saw a tall, white figure glide past her and vanish. I wouldn't have believed it if——" And so on da capo, from "if she hadn't been the second cousin" to the "soul of truth and honour."

I yawned again.

"Very good story," said the smart little man by the fire. He was a traveller, as the rest of us were; his presence in the room told us that much. He had been rather silent during dinner, and afterwards, while the red curtains were being drawn and the red and black cloth laid between the glasses and the decanters and the mahogany, he had quietly taken the best chair in the warmest corner. We had got our letters written and the large traveller had been boring for some time before I even noticed that there was a best chair and that this silent, bright-eyed, dapper, fair man had secured it.

"Very good story," he said; "but it's not what I call realism. You don't tell us half enough, sir. You don't say when it happened or where, or the time of year, or what colour your aunt's second cousin's hair was. Nor yet you don't tell us what it was she saw, nor what the room was like where she saw it, nor why she saw it, nor what happened afterwards. And I shouldn't like to breathe a word against anybody's aunt by marriage's cousin, first or second, but I must say I like a story about what a man's seen himself."

"So do I," the large commercial snorted, "when I hear it."

He blew his nose like a trumpet of defiance.

"But," said the rabbit-faced man, "we know nowadays, what with the advance of science and all that sort of thing, we know there aren't any such things as ghosts. They're hallucinations; that's what they are— hallucinations."

"Don't seem to matter what you call them," the dapper one urged. "If you see a thing that looks as real as you do yourself, a thing that makes your blood run cold and turns you sick and silly with fear— well, call it ghost, or call it hallucination, or call it Tommy Dodd; it isn't the name that matters."

The elderly commercial coughed and said, "You might call it another name. You might call it—"

"No, you mightn't," said the little man, briskly; "not when the man it happened to had been a teetotal Bond of Joy for five years and is to this day."

"Why don't you tell us the story?" I asked.

"I might be willing," he said, "if the rest of the company were agreeable. Only I warn you it's not that sort-of-a-kind-of-a-somebody-fancied-they-saw-a-sort-of-a-kind-of-a-something-sort of story. No, sir. Everything I'm going to tell you is plain and straightforward and as clear as a time-table— clearer than some. But I don't much like telling it, especially to people who don't believe in ghosts."

Several of us said we did believe in ghosts. The heavy man snorted and looked at his watch. And the man in the best chair began.

"Turn the gas down a bit, will you? Thanks. Did any of you know Herbert Hatteras? He was on this road a good many years. No? well, never mind. He was a good chap, I believe, with good teeth and a black whisker. But I didn't know him myself. He was before my time. Well, this that I'm going to tell you about happened at a certain commercial hotel. I'm not going to give it a name, because that sort of thing gets about, and in every other respect it's a good house and reasonable, and we all have our living to get. It was just a good ordinary old-fashioned commercial hotel, as it might be this. And I've often used it since, though they've never put me in that room again. Perhaps they shut it up after what happened.

"Well, the beginning of it was, I came across an old schoolfellow; in Boulter's Lock one Sunday it was, I remember. Jones was his name, Ted Jones. We both had canoes. We had tea at Marlow, and we got talking about this and that and old times and old mates; and do you remember Jim, and what's become of Tom, and so on. Oh, you know. And I happened to ask after his brother, Fred by name. And Ted turned pale and almost dropped his cup, and he said, 'You don't mean to say you haven't heard?' 'No,' says I, mopping up the tea he'd slopped over with my handkerchief. 'No, what?' I said.

"'It was horrible,' he said. 'They wired for me, and I saw him afterwards. Whether he'd done it himself or not, nobody knows; but they'd found him lying on the floor with his throat cut.' No cause could be assigned for the rash act, Ted told me. I asked him where it had happened, and he told me the name of this hotel— I'm not going to name it. And when I'd sympathised with him and drawn him out about old times and poor old Fred being such a good old sort and all that, I asked him what the room was like. I always like to know what the places look like where things happen.

"No, there wasn't anything specially rum about the room, only that it had a French bed with red curtains in a sort of alcove; and a large mahogany wardrobe as big as a hearse, with a glass door; and, instead of a swing-glass, a carved, black-framed glass screwed up against the wall between the windows, and a picture of 'Belshazzar's Feast' over the mantelpiece. I beg your pardon?" He stopped, for the heavy commercial had opened his mouth and shut it again.

"I thought you were going to say something," the dapper man went on. "Well, we talked about other things and parted, and I thought no more about it till business brought me to— but I'd better not name the town either—and I found my firm had marked this very hotel— where poor Fred had met his death, you know— for me to put up at. And I had to put up there too, because of their addressing everything to me there. And, anyhow, I expect I should have gone there out of curiosity.

"No. I didn't believe in ghosts in those days. I was like you, sir." He nodded amiably to the large commercial.

"The house was very full, and we were quite a large party in the room— very pleasant company, as it might be to-night; and we got talking of ghosts— just as it might be us. And there was a chap in glasses, sitting just over there, I remember— an old hand on the road, he was; and he said, just as it might be any of you, 'I don't believe in ghosts, but I wouldn't care to sleep in Number Seventeen, for all that'; and, of course, we asked him why. 'Because,' said he, very short, 'that's why.'

"But when we'd persuaded him a bit, he told us.

"'Because that's the room where chaps cut their throats,' he said. "There was a chap called Bert Hatteras began it. They found him weltering in his gore. And since that every man that's slept there's been found with his throat cut.'

"I asked him how many had slept there. 'Well, only two beside the first,' he said; 'they shut it up then.' 'Oh, did they?' said I. 'Well, they've opened it again. Number Seventeen's my room!'

"I tell you those chaps looked at me.

"'But you aren't going to sleep in it?' one of them said. And I explained that I didn't pay half a dollar for a bedroom to keep awake in.

"'I suppose it's press of business has made them open it up again,' the chap in spectacles said. 'It's a very mysterious affair. There's some secret horror about that room that we don't understand,' he said, 'and I'll tell you another queer thing. Every one of those poor chaps was a commercial gentleman. That's what I don't like about it. There was Bert Hatteras— he was the first, and a chap called Jones— Frederick Jones, and then Donald Overshaw—a Scotchman he was, and travelled in children's underclothing.'

"Well, we sat there and talked a bit, and if I hadn't been a Bond of Joy, I don't know that I mightn't have exceeded, gentlemen— yes, positively exceeded; for the more I thought about it the less I liked the thought of Number Seventeen. I hadn't noticed the room particularly, except to see that the furniture had been changed since poor Fred's time. So I just slipped out, by and by, and I went out to the little glass case under the arch where the booking-clerk sits— just like here, that hotel was— and I said:—

"'Look here, miss; haven't you got another room empty except seventeen?'

"'No,' she said; 'I don't think so.'"

"'Then what's that?' I said, and pointed to a key hanging on the board, the only one left.

"'Oh,' she said, 'that's sixteen.'

"'Anyone in sixteen?' I said. 'Is it a comfortable room?'

"'No,' said she. 'Yes; quite comfortable. It's next door to yours— much the same class of room.'

"'Then I'll have sixteen, if you've no objection,' I said, and went back to the others, feeling very clever.

"When I went up to bed I locked my door, and, though I didn't believe in ghosts, I wished seventeen wasn't next door to me, and I wished there wasn't a door between the two rooms, though the door was locked right enough and the key on my side. I'd only got the one candle besides the two on the dressing-table, which I hadn't lighted; and I got my collar and tie off before I noticed that the furniture in my new room was the furniture out of Number Seventeen; French bed with red curtains, mahogany wardrobe as big as a hearse, and the carved mirror over the dressing-table between the two windows, and 'Belshazzar's Feast' over the mantelpiece. So that, though I'd not got the room where the commercial gentlemen had cut their throats, I'd got the furniture out of it. And for a moment I thought that was worse than the other. When I thought of what that furniture could tell, if it could speak—

"It was a silly thing to do— but we're all friends here and I don't mind owning up— I looked under the bed and I looked inside the hearse-wardrobe and I looked in a sort of narrow cupboard there was, where a body could have stood upright—"

"A body?" I repeated.

"A man, I mean. You see, it seemed to me that either these poor chaps had been murdered by someone who hid himself in Number Seventeen to do it, or else there was something there that frightened them into cutting their throats; and upon my soul, I can't tell you which idea I liked least!"

He paused, and filled his pipe very deliberately. "Go, on," someone said. And he went on.

"Now, you'll observe," he said, "that all I've told you up to the time of my going to bed that night's just hearsay. So I don't ask you to believe it—though the three coroners' inquests would be enough to stagger most chaps, I should say. Still, what I'm going to tell you now's my part of the story— what happened to me myself in that room."

He paused again, holding the pipe in his hand, unlighted.

There was a silence, which I broke.

"Well, what did happen?" I asked.

"I had a bit of a struggle with myself," he said. "I reminded myself it was not that room, but the next one that it had happened in. I smoked a pipe or two and read the morning paper, advertisements and all. And at last I went to bed. I left the candle burning, though, I own that."

"Did you sleep?" I asked.

"Yes. I slept. Sound as a top. I was awakened by a soft tapping on my door. I sat up. I don't think I've ever been so frightened in my life. But I made myself say, 'Who's there?' in a whisper. Heaven knows I never expected any one to answer. The candle had gone out and it was pitch-dark. There was a quiet murmur and a shuffling sound outside. And no one answered. I tell you I hadn't expected any one to. But I cleared my throat and cried out, 'Who's there?' in a real out-loud voice. And 'Me, sir,' said a voice. 'Shaving-water, sir; six o'clock, sir.'

"It was the chambermaid."

A movement of relief ran round our circle.

"I don't think much of your story," said the large commercial.

"You haven't heard it yet," said the story-teller, dryly. "It was six o'clock on a winter's morning, and pitch-dark. My train went at seven. I got up and began to dress. My one candle wasn't much use. I lighted the two on the dressing-table to see to shave by. There wasn't any shaving-water outside my door, after all. And the passage was as black as a coal-hole. So I started to shave with cold water; one has to sometimes, you know. I'd gone over my face and I was just going lightly round under my chin, when I saw something move in the looking-glass. I mean something that moved was reflected in the looking-glass. The big door of the wardrobe had swung open, and by a sort of double reflection I could see the French bed with the red curtains. On the edge of it sat a man in his shirt and trousers— a man with black hair and whiskers, with the most awful look of despair and fear on his face that I've ever seen or dreamt of. I stood paralyzed, watching him in the mirror. I could not have turned round to save my life. Suddenly he laughed. It was a horrid, silent laugh, and showed all his teeth. They were very white and even. And the next moment he had cut his throat from ear to ear, there before my eyes. Did you ever see a man cut his throat? The bed was all white before."

The story-teller had laid down his pipe, and he passed his hand over his face before he went on.

"When I could look around I did. There was no one in the room. The bed was as white as ever. Well, that's all," he said, abruptly, "except that now, of course, I understood how these poor chaps had come by their deaths. They'd all seen this horror— the ghost of the first poor chap, I suppose— Bert Hatteras, you know; and with the shock their hands must have slipped and their throats got cut before they could stop themselves. Oh! by the way, when I looked at my watch it was two o'clock; there hadn't been any chambermaid at all. I must have dreamed that. But I didn't dream the other. Oh! And one thing more. It was the same room. They hadn't changed the room, they'd only changed the number. It was the same room!"

"Look here," said the heavy man; "the room you've been talking about. My room's sixteen. And it's got that same furniture in it as what you describe, and the same picture and all."

"Oh, has it?" said the story-teller, a little uncomfortable, it seemed. "I'm sorry. But the cat's out of the bag now, and it can't be helped. Yes, it was this house I was speaking of. I suppose they've opened the room again. But you don't believe in ghosts; you'll be all right."

"Yes," said the heavy man, and presently got up and left the room.

"He's gone to see if he can get his room changed. You see if he hasn't," said the rabbit-faced man; "and I don't wonder."

The heavy man came back and settled into his chair.

"I could do with a drink," he said, reaching to the bell.

"I'll stand some punch, gentlemen, if you'll allow me," said our dapper story-teller. "I rather pride myself on my punch. I'll step out to the bar and get what I need for it."

"I thought he said he was a teetotaller," said the heavy traveller when he had gone. And then our voices buzzed like a hive of bees. When our story-teller came in again we turned on him— half-a-dozen of us at once— and spoke.

"One at a time," he said, gently. "I didn't quite catch what you said."

"We want to know," I said, "how it was— if seeing that ghost made all those chaps cut their throats by startling them when they were shaving— how was it you didn't cut your throat when you saw it?"

"I should have," he answered, gravely, "without the slightest doubt— I should have cut my throat, only," he glanced at our heavy friend, "I always shave with a safety razor. I travel in them," he added, slowly, and bisected a lemon.

"But— but," said the large man, when he could speak through our uproar, "I've gone and given up my room."

"Yes," said the dapper man, squeezing the lemon; "I've just had my things moved into it. It's the best room in the house. I always think it worth while to take a little pains to secure it."

_____________________

14: Riesenberg

Ford Madox Ford

1873-1939

"The English Review", April 1911

A FEELING OF desolation seemed for Philip Hands to overhang the little German bathing-establishment. The rain dripped down among the all enveloping fir trees; the heavy mists hung all above the deep valley. Geheimer Sanitätsrath Dr. von Salzer with his long flaked beard, his bent back, his scurrying gait and his peering, spectacled eyes, that seemed always to be spying out invisible mice or spiders in unseen corners— the incredible nerve-doctor whom Philip Hands did not know whether to venerate or to desire to kick— had just scuttled for all the world like a large goat over the further edge of the little white Platz and had vanished round the corner into the door of the room occupied by Philip Hands' mother. And Dr. von Salzer's visits to his mother always intensely exasperated Philip. It was like giving over that beloved and tortured lady into the hands of an inscrutable spider. It might be a benevolent spider; it might be a wicked and hateful charlatan. There was not any means of knowing. But at any rate, for the moment everything was disgusting.

You could not make anything out of this beastly foreign place, half of whose inmates at least were miserable creatures tottering on the verge of insanity and ministered to by the other half who might be like Philip Hands himself, devoted children, or paid attendants whose business in life it was to look cheerful, to dress well, to dance to the band and to play skitdes. And indeed normally they kept it up very well in Drieselheim. It was probably— and even in his black mood Philip had to acknowledge it— made up of about the best people you could find in the whole of Europe. For all you had to allow that it is just the best people of Europe, the oldest of families, who provide the greatest proportions Drieselheim could offer to royal and Imperial Princes. The Bath itself was an old and abandoned convent, set down on an embankment that was like a dam across a solitary valley, an immense steep valley covered to the very tips of the ranges with melancholy and weeping firs. Up the valley they were never allowed to go. Upon coming there they were made to give their words that they would not. The official reason given by Dr. von Salzer was that the valley contained quarries where blasting was very frequent, and that in consequence his patients might be crushed by falls of rock. Forhimself, Philip Hands cared very little for this mystery, though he did not in the least believe Dr. von Salzer's explanation. He was inclined to believe with everyone in Bad-Drieselheim that the Grand Duke's Government had there a secret depot for testing new patterns of field guns and high explosives. At any rate, it was none of Philip Hands' business, as a gentleman, who had passed his word, to attempt to interfere with the quarries or the secret, whatever it was.

Annette von Droste, however, took it differently. She was convinced that the mad uncle and predecessor of the Grand Duke of Treves was hidden somewhere in that deep valley, and the thought of this mysterious and eminent person with his romantic career and his absolute disappearance twelve years before, filled Annette with an enthusiastic curiosity, that was the only one of her enthusiasms that Mr. Hands had not been able to share. He had shared almost all her other fancies for as long as he could remember, from the time when he had been fourteen and she eleven in St. Petersburg, or when he had been eighteen and she fifteen in Paris or during the season before last in London—till half-past nine of the night before when she had, with an unaccountable strangeness in her manner, very definitely refused to marry him. That had been the night before.

He had proposed to her about four o'clock. They had been drinking coffee and eating sweet chocolate biscuits made to resemble true-love knots, while all the invalids were taking their afternoon sleeps. She had not said no; she had not said yes; she had been quite gay. She had gone away into the woods as she said, laughing, to talk it over with the mad ex-Duke in the forbidden valley. And Philip Hands had remained to drink more coffee and eat more chocolate biscuits in the autumn sunshine at the litde table in the Platz near the bandstand. The band did not play till five o'clock because till that hour all the invalids rested.

But upon the stroke, it struck up the solemn Chorale with which it habitually got all the patients out of bed. Philip Hands had gone to his mother's room to fetch her for her slow promenade along the gravel walk, in the sunshine of the lower valley. Here they had been joined by old von Droste who, having heard from Philip that his daughter had gone for a walk in the woods, proceeded to tell them the true story of what the Crown Prince of Wallachia had actually done at Tiplitz. The sun had shone; Philip's mother had seemed much better; the eminent and venerable diplomat had been so more than usually cordial that Philip had thought he was beginning to understand something of what was attractive in a place even as dull as Drieselheim.

They dined, as the custom of the place was, each patient in his own room, accompanied by his attendant. Afterwards, for an hour, the attendant was supposed to read the daily papers to his invalid. There there came the night assembly round the bandstand, which was illuminated with small strings of lamps, whilst those who cared for dancing were provided with a small orchestra of their own in the large and ghostly hall that had formerly served the nuns as a refectory.

Philip Hands had not found Annette among the dancers, so he went to look for her on the terrace which was erected, as it were, on a high rampart before the frowning round archway of the old white convent. The moon was high in the South, the valley opened out wide and far below his feet. The black woodlands, all of stiff pines, came down on each side of the terrace. It was very still; it was a warm autumn evening and Philip Hands felt confident that very soon Annette would come to find him. He leant upon the parapet and gazed into the spaces of the moonlight. He was twenty-seven—he was second attache at a first class embassy; he knew he could have the governorship of the Leeward Islands for the asking and he hadn't the least doubt that Annette loved him.

It was very still for a time, and then they began blasting again in the forbidden valley. Philip Hands could hear the familiar but mysterious screams, like human voices of enormous power, heard at a great distance. That, of course, he thought, must be the high explosive. That sort of thing gave off the most extraordinary noises. He remembered to have heard that the explosion of Gelsonite gave an overtone thirteen eighths above its first note, very like the sort of screaming sound that fills the air when great bells are played. They must therefore be using some very high explosive indeed in the forbidden valley. That did away with any idea of quarrying, if they quarried with a high explosive in at all the quantity in which they must obviously be using it to-night, they would blow all the mountains from Drieselheim into the Mosel within two or three hours. So that it was pretty obvious what was going on there. It could not be anything else but the most intensely secret of military operations.

The noises died away again; it became all of a deathly stillness in the valley; only the thin sound of the violins thrilled through the thick wall from the nuns' refectory where they were dancing, and suddenly Philip Hands heard a crackling in the deep woods— footsteps and the splitting of the small dry lateral twigs of the high firs. In the deep blackness his eyes perceived the bluish and as if phosphorescent gleam of a white dress. It came down in the darkness, it reached the terrace; it was Annette coming to him out of the woods.

"Have you been there all this time?" he asked.

She came towards him silently, her hands were stretched out, not as if it were towards him, but as though she were in the darkness feeling her way towards the light.

She had refused him! She had refused him then and there on the terrace in the moonlight. She had not given him any reason, she had said that there was absolutely no reason to give. None at all.

She said only that she could not marry; that she was not fit to marry. That had been the night before!

Philip Hands had been possibly rather complacent, sure of an easy conquest. But he had an amount of emotion during the night that was sufficient to denote a very violent passion. He passed the dark hours in pacing up and down his small room, swearing violently. The whole thing was inexplicable and it was insulting. The girl, gay, high spirited, raven-haired and flushed, had listened to his proposals and had gone off into the woods to meditate on them. Philip Hands hadn't had the slightest doubt that she had gone into those deep woods to sing the song whose first line runs,

"Er der herrlichste von allen"

—words which mean "He the most noble of all!" and a song which the correct German maiden is supposed to sing upon being proposed to by a man who is the noblest work of God. Young Mr. Hands was not German enough exactly to put these thoughts into words. Indeed he was too Anglo-Saxon to put any thoughts into words at all. He had just waited, happy in the sunlight. A pleasant young man, with a pleasant career opening before him, the only danger which his parents or friends could have imagined would overhang him would be that he was so obviously going to marry a dark, passionate, romantically unreasonable young girl who might give him the very deuce of a time.

So that Annette's inexplicable refusal struck Mr. Hands as being not only unreasonable but sharply insulting. She had gone into the wood tidy, with a swinging step, her black hair carefully braided round her head, in a flimsy white dress. She had come out beneath the moon tottering, pallid, her dress torn, and green with the green of tree-trunks, whilst her hair was disordered and furry, a pine twig caught in it falling across her temples, and wetted so that it gleamed in the moonlight. And she had refused Mr. Hands!

Mr. Hands could not imagine that during her several hours of reflection she had discovered that he was unworthy of her. She had known him for too long, and he was not unworthy of her. Similarly, she was not unworthy of him. Their families and fortunes were remarkably well matched! Then it must have been some damned thing that had happened in the damned woods of this ridiculous and damned Grand Duchy. That was all Philip Hands could make of it, in his outraged pride.

He supposed Annette must have gone up the forbidden valley and had seen or heard— what the devil had she seen or heard? What the devil had happened to her? Mr. Hands' mind being distinctly concrete, he could think of nothing but the precautions that the Government of the Grand Duchy would take to conceal its secret armaments, its newly invented firearms or its high explosives. But what silly precautions could the rotten Government of an absurd Grand Duchy take that, supposing she had poked her inquisitive nose into their secrets, could prevent a young lady of good family and excellent prospects from marrying a gentleman of the Diplomatic Corps in every way her equal?

Towards morning, while he paced and fumed, absurd ideas began to get into his mind. Perhaps his Annette, in the forbidden valley, had come upon the mad Grand Duke, that legendary figure of Treves, who had disappeared twenty years before. She must have come upon the mad Grand Duke and have been married to him by force. God knows what! And with his mind fatigued and full of grotesque images, Mr. Philip Hands thought he must be going mad. Annette von Droste must have gone mad. They were in that place, a great old convent building that was full of mad people. For there was no denying that the patients were all mad. They heard voices; they saw shapes; they were troubled by unseen hands, brushed by invisible wings, and in those ghostly cells and corridors, the pressure was too much for the sane people that were with them. This whole place represented a horrible and ghostly manufactory of lunatics, with Dr. von Salzer a spider-like lunatic at the head of them all. And in the darkness the whole ghasdy conventual building, of which he occupied an old nun's cell in the far east corner of the inner courtyard, seemed to whisper and gibber with the brushings of die dresses of long dead nuns. Annette must have gone mad. He himself must be going mad...

In the grey of the morning, Philip Hands heard the hoofs of horses strike hard and clattering on the cobbles of that small inner courtyard. He strode to the window and fell back with an oath of horror that seemed to be shaken out of the very pit of his stomach. He grasped at both his eyes with the palms of his hands.

In the dim white small courtyard stood two grotesque shapes, two indescribable, ghostly, black simulacra of horses. Black trappings covered them from their heads right down to the ground, so that they resembled the sable ghosts of chargers upon which medieval knights must have ridden, whilst from socketless eye-holes they appeared to shed hollow, forbidding, and unspeakably mournful glances. They seemed to be the apparitions of horses that had been dead five hundred years, and for the moment Philip Hands' whole brain seemed to be turning round inside his head.

What was he looking at? There was no knowing what didn't survive, what mightn't survive in this extraordinary, old-fashioned Grand Duchy. It was one half modern quick-firing guns of deadly precision and the other half peasants in three cornered hats, short jackets, knee-breeches and stockings with ribands at the knee, practising the most old-fashioned ceremonials, gifted as they were said to be, all of them, with second sight, and perceiving daily in their thick and fantastic woods all the hob-goblins of Grimm, the spectres of the Brocken and the ghostly charcoal burners of the Harz mountains. There was no knowing what old, forgotten horrors, what dim fragments of the spectral past might not here survive along with the high explosives of the forbidden valley. In Central Africa, as he had read that morning, in a deep lake, they had discovered, still surviving, a monstrous prehistoric lizard that was said to be a survival of the first slime of the world— a monstrous scaled animal like a winged tortoise, as large as a town hall, and with jaws as deep as a cathedral portal. And this absurd forgotten country was as little explored as Central Africa. Why, the peasants still sacrificed mares and buried them beneath the corner posts of their houses, as they had done in the pagan days of Odin, thousands of years before the birth of Christ.

Altogether, Mr. Philip Hands passed a very bad night of it— a night of which not even his morning bath could altogether wash out the traces. Of course, upon taking a second view of the horses, he had perceived behind them an elaborate, ebony, gilded and glazed structure, and shortly afterwards four men in their shirt-sleeves carrying down a coffin of polished brass, with bright steel handles. And he had realised that they were merely carrying away to an early train, for trans-shipment to Berlin, where the funeral was to take place in the Hedwigskirche, the body of Hofrath von Kellermann who had died, according to the official bulletin, of lesion of the brain the day before. But even that, though it was commonplace, was disagreeable. For, in spite of the discreet official silence and the removal of the body in early hours of the morning, the rumour ran among the assistants and servants of the place that the body of the Hofrath had been horribly mangled and crushed out of all human semblance. He was supposed, in fact, to have escaped from his attendants and, wandering into the forbidden valley, to have been crushed by one of the huge rocks that hurtled through space from the blastings in the forgotten fir woods.

Whilst Philip Hands sat in the large courtyard in the rain beneath the awning of the bandstand, waiting in the drip and depression of it all for the Sanitatsrath to come from his mother's room, a new and equally horrible surmise crossed his mind. Supposing that Annette, wandering too, into the deep woods, had been crushed by such a fall of rock, or had even witnessed the death of that unfortunate man? And the thought of this was so much more than he could bear, that he got up and began to pace up and down amongst the wet tables and chairs beneath the dripping awning. From the distant fir woods to right and to left the mysterious sounds of the quarries in the Driesel called from time to time like immense, rustling, human voices.

And suddenly, Mr. Hands perceived Annette von Droste in her white dress, half covered in a brown mackintosh. She came out of the door of her father's rooms on the opposite side of the court-yard, and made for the small nun's postern that gave on to the deep woods.

Philip followed her over the wet gravel of the Platz. He soon checked himself, but he could not have told you exactly why.

Yesterday, perhaps he would have followed her without hesitation; to-day he was a rejected suitor! And yet he could not but feel, he had an irresistible impulse to believe, that in her white dress and brown mackintosh she was going into danger. The idea, indeed, came to him that she was going to meet the mad Grand Duke!

Suddenly, round the corner that led to his mother's room, there came, with an odd air of its being a procession, Dr. von Salzer, with his long, foamlike beard, and Philip Hands' little, old, and much loved, mother. Behind them followed Dr. Salzer's assistant, a short-sighted blond young man with a face like a bun, and large gold spectacles. He was called Schultz, and he was pushing before him a light bath-chair with spider wheels and rubber tyres. It was usual at this hour for Dr. Salzer to approach Philip, and to give him encouraging news of his mother's progress. Today, therefore, Philip hurried towards them. The rain had ceased, though heavy drops fell from all the gutters, and the noises no longer came from the forbidden valley.

Philip's mother was a little old woman, very bent with age, but with a quaint manner that was half dictatorial and half humourous. Her eyes always twinkled; her cheeks were of the texture of a red and shrivelled apple and she spoke always with a very clear and fluting intonation, turning her head a little on one side, like a bird that surveys you from its perch. But for all her quaint precision and her air of tranquil widowhood, Philip Hands was aware that this most sane of creatures heard voices and saw appalling visions of demons that resembled the images of Buddhist temples. She had heard and seen them ever since his father had been murdered beneath her eyes in China.

"Tell Dr. von Salzer," she cried, before Philip had reached them, "that I am perfectly capable of walking two and a half miles. I do not need this grotesque machine to follow behind me."

The Sanitätsrath combed his long beard with three fingers, and holding its ends together, looked with a long glance at Philip Hands. "Ah!" he said. "Yes." He spoke very slowly, but with a sort of lisp. "But this is a very special duty, this is a very special test. This is, if you will be pleased to let me call it so, the great test of the cure that I make."

"Nevertheless," the little old woman piped out, "I am perfectly able to walk two and a half miles."

"Ah, gracious lady," the doctor said, and he surveyed her a long time and enigmatically. "But will you be able to walk back, that is the question?"

"If I am not able to walk back," she replied, "I shan't be worth carrying back upon a velocipede."

The Sanitatsrath slowly shrugged his shoulders up to his ears, and as slowly let them fall. He glanced at her and then quickly at her son.

"But it is I that must take the responsibility," he said, "and I prefer not to take it."

"Then, if I am to faint or do anything unseemly," Mrs. Hands exclaimed in English, "I am not going to have this young man with the spectacles observing me in disorder."

The Sanitätsrath bowed his back so that his beard appeared to be about to sweep the ground.

"Gracious lady," he said, "it was my intention from the first to wheel you back myself, for I do not permit even my excellent colleague Schultz to penetrate into the arcana of my mysteries. Besides," he added, "it is very dangerous."

"If there is any danger for my mother―" Philip Hands exclaimed.

"Very excellent Mr. Second Secretary of Legation," the Sanitätsrath said, very softly, "it is impossible that there should be no danger. In all the things of this life there is danger, and living itself is a dangerous operation. But it is equally impossible that you should accompany us."

Philip's mother's cheek balls were of a flush that indicated very much of inward excitement.

"It's quite impossible that you should come with me," she said to her son. "It's kill or cure, as they used to say with the Kildarragh hounds, and it's not I that am going to cumber the ground."

"Oh, it will be cure, it will be cure," the Sanitätsrath lisped softly, and he appeared to push the little old woman gendy by the arm acros" -lie Platz. They moved away from Philip very slowly, as they were a shooting party going to execution with the pass ye and silent Dr. Schultz pushing the bath-chair in the rear for all the world as if he were carrying the coffin in which to bring back a corpse. They were going towards the main archway along the path that led to Bortshausen. Half-way up this he knew, there was a pathway leading to the left before which, upon a tree, there was a placard with the words

"Entrance Absolutely Forbidden. Very Dangerous Path."

Here also, there was a sort of shelter of boughs beneath which there stood always a man in the grey-green uniform of a ducal forester, with a blond bearded face, and a dark green hat decorated with a tuft of feathers. This man's name was Hans Jorgenheim, and Philip knew him very well; he stopped almost every day to chat with him a little about the deer, wild boar, and wild cat, with which the forest abounded. Philip Hands was going to ask him whether he had seen Annette pass that way, or whether he had heard her going through the woods below, for he knew perfectly well that the forester's keen ears let him know from the cries of disturbed birds whatever passed in the woods immediately beneath his care.

But, even whilst he mounted the steep path, he heard the sound of heavy footsteps descending in a sort of clumsy gallop, as if a frightened beast were coming down the hill. And suddenly there burst upon him Hans Jorgenheim, his honest blue eyes dilated, his mouth open, his face all one great panic,

"Das Fraulein!" he exclaimed, and he caught heavily at a tree trunk to stop his downward career. "Das Fraulein! She has gone up the path amongst the horrible beasts that the Sanitätsrath keeps there."

"And what then, idiot! Dog!" Philip Hands exclaimed. "Why did you not stop her?"

"Could I use physical force? Against an Excellency? A high-born lady? It is unthinkable."

"But, where is she? Why did you not follow her?" Philip Hands shouted.

"That is against discipline," the forester answered. "I have to find the Sanitätsrath and tell him."

"Forester, you are a coward," Philip Hands cried out. "You should have followed the lady, but you were afraid."

The forester let go the tree and drew himself up to his six foot of green and grey.

"Well, yes, I was afraid!" he said. "Very afraid. I have my orders from the Grand Duke. From the Grand Duke himself. Excellency, go you yourself, and if I have the Sanitätsrath's orders I will follow you."

Philip thought quickly.

"The Sanitätsrath," he said, "has gone out with my mother and a bath chair." For it came into his mind that without doubt the forester would know which way the doctor had gone and would thus get orders from him the more quickly.

"Ah, then," the forester exclaimed, "he has gone there by the lower path." And suddenly he plunged in amongst the trees, crashing his way down behind the rear of the convent in the deep woods.

Philip Hands ran quickly up the steep path. It was a very steep ascent for a man not much in training, and the blood drummed in his ears. By the placard that bore the words "Entrance Absolutely Forbidden," he paused to listen. There was nothing but the silence of the deep woods. There was no brook; there were no birds, even the heavy drip from the trees had ceased with the ceasing of the rain and a heavy mist clung all around him.

He turned into the narrow lateral path. He shuffled along as fast as he could, for he was very much out of breath still with the ascent. The path was very norrow and winding, and, as he got deeper in, the woods appeared infinitely old. The trees were black and twisted with age; ghostly lichen seemed to drip from their extended branches. They towered immensely high, so that their tops whispered unseen amongst the mists. And even as he hurried, Philip Hands was overwhelmed with the sense that he was being watched. He imagined that in all the shadows there were eyes, and from behind the stiff columnar trunks, unknown and forgotten men appeared to peep out at him. The doctor kept horrible beasts in these woods! The forester had said it. At any moment he might come upon them.... What might he not come upon?

Two or three times he stopped to listen, but always there was the deep silence. The intolerable silence so absolutely solemn and assured, that it was a folly to imagine for your own comfort a sound that did not exist. Suddenly the path divided into two.

One arm went downwards sharply into the huge pines, and huge pines descended as sharply at his right hand without any path. He must be upon the top of the ridge of the valley divided into two. Before him the other arm of the path wound very steeply upwards, between a desolate underwood of brambles and beneath primeval hornbeams. Amongst flakes of shale and slaty rock, it climbed, almost erect, and zigzagging. There was no doubt about the path. There was a footstep in the black mud of a little rill and some bright scarlet toadstools that had formed a circle were broken, scattered, and gleamed white. Annette's dress had brushed them like that. Annette had gone up that way. He panted up its tortuous steepness.

The bushes gleamed with drops of dew and spiders' webs. In amongst a tangle of brambles he perceived the white skeleton of some beast. From the tusks in the skull it must have been that of a wild boar. Great fragments of rock were crushed all round it. Here and there branches had been ripped from the ancient trees, and white fissures showed down their green-grey trunks. He panted up the very steep and very slippery path. As high as he was, a considerable breeze was blowing and scattered the mist. The trees became thinner like old grey hair. He had glimpses of immense panoramas, of grey mountains, of long marching armies, of black fir woods. He was immensely high— so high up that he could perceive no villages. It was all grey silences and grey heights, and he was highest of them all. He felt himself to be in the highest place in the world, amongst the oldest silences. The path climbed still more steeply and suddenly in a desolate and mournful greyness of sky he came out upon a bare ridge of slate and shale like a hog's back. This ridge descended, with a terrifying, slippery steepness of loose stones, upon each side into an odd, bare valley— each valley like a cup, lined with grey loose slates and thinly clothed with torn and shattered pines. A high ridge; the two desolate valleys— and above all the grey slag!

And forty yards before him, upon a pinnacle of basalt, silent and motionless, like a listening chamois, he perceived Annette von Droste. She gazed down first into one valley and then into another. Then, slowly she put her hands over her eyes. He ran towards her at the end of his breath, hardly keeping his feet upon the slippery and scattering flakes of stone, that seemed hideously set on letting him fall into the cup-like valleys. He would have fallen a hundred feet down into the shattered pines. He climbed the pinnacle of basalt that went up like a building. Up there the footing was at least firm and flat as if it were a platform. He caught her in his arms. She screamed, a shrill and violent sound like the cry of an eagle, that dissipated itself in the tenuous and desolate air.

"Do not touch me," she cried out. "I am mad. I have gone mad. Do not touch me! Look down! What do you see?"

Philip Hands gazed carelessly upon the mountains that marched in a tremendous procession all round and below them.

"Yes,it is very high here," he said soothingly. "It is much too high here. It is enough to turn anybody's brain. Why did you come here? Let us go back."

"I am never going back," she answered. "I tell you I am gone mad. There must be madness in our family. It is a very old family. I could not stand the strain of waiting in that place. That is why I can never marry you. That is why I am here. That is why I will never go away from here."

Philip Hands said: "Oh, come!"

For the moment he could find nothing better to say. And then he pleaded the long agony of his ascent, all the terrible thoughts he had thought. He asked her to remember how faithfully he had followed her; he asked her to look how he had torn his clothes, and at the scratches on his hands.

Whilst he talked, his eyes wandered aimlessly down into one of the valleys, sheer down below their feet. It was a valley, but still it might have been the very top of a mountain— so high it was, like the crater of a very old, a very extinct, a hoary, a cold volcano....

"And after I have followed you so faithfully," he pleaded, desolately, "you are going to throw me over? You can't mean to say you are going to throw me over?"

And then, suddenly, he exclaimed, "My God!" and with an irresistible action, impulsive of protection and of sudden flight, he clutched at her, and:

"The whole mountain's moving!" he cried out.

She looked at him and caught the direction of his eyes. A sudden and incredulous joy appeared to fill her face.

"What do you see?" she called out. "What is it you see?"

"No, no," he said. "Let us get away from here!"

She repeated imperiously, "Tell me what it is you see? Tell me, tell me!"

"What does it matter?" he said fiercely. "The mountain is  moving. It looks like a man rolling over. An immense man!  But it's the mountain moving. We shall be killed."

She caught him by the wrist and dragged him to the other side of the flat platform of their firm rock. A great screaming sound filled all the upper air, dissipating itself thinly in the immense reaches of space. She pointed.

"What is it you see?" she exclaimed imperiously. "What is it you see there?"

"It's the same thing," he said, "the mountain is moving. The whole mountain is moving under our feet. The rocks arc flying about."

And it appeared to him that an immense rock, as large as his father's house, was thrown hurtling slowly into space far above them, to descend, passing right over their heads at a great height, crashing amongst the trees below.

"But what is it you see?" Annette insisted, until her tone had become an agony to his ears. "What is that thing there? What is it that moves?"

"Oh, it's absurd," he answered.

"In the name of God," she cried out. "What is it? My whole life— my reason depends on this."

He answered unwillingly and shamefaced.

"It's all this fantastic mist. It's a great, an immense man. It's a mountain! It's two mountains! One of them is throwing great rocks into the air. The other is scratching its side. That's what makes the noise. Each time it scratches you hear that screaming. Do you see? There's a deer running out of the wood; it looks smaller than an ant. Have we both gone mad?"

"No, no," she answered. "We are neither of us mad. I see it. You see it. Oh, thank my God, I'm not mad. If I had seen it alone r should have been mad."

And she threw her arms round him, and hid her face upon his shoulder that was wet with the mist.

"But the danger," he said. "We're in great danger. They've thrown another rock! Look!"

"Oh, what does it matter?" she answered passionately. "What does ail the danger in the world matter? Don't you understand?  I saw this last night. I thought it was all nonsense about there being danger in this valley, and I was looking for the lost Grand Duke. I wanted to look for the Grand Duke and I saw all this! Don't you understand? I thought I was mad!"

On the lower and easier slope, from the edge of the woods that curled up to the ridge, Philip perceived that there had slowly emerged the goat-like form of Dr. von Salzer. He was pushing before him the bath-chair, the ends of his immense beard brushing his laborious hands. Beside him walked Philip Hands' mother, a little, odd figure, in black.

The Sanitätsrath came along very slowly. He was in his shirt sleeves and with his white arms he pointed energetically first down one slope of the ridge, then down the other, and, with his beard flowing out across his chest, he appeared to address long speeches to Mrs. Hands. Once, when a great rock was passing through the sky he began to run, dragging Mrs. Hands behind him and glancing apprehensively upwards. His motion reminded Philip Hands exactly of the attitudes of people as they ran to take shelter from bomb-fire, he had seen in sieges during the South African war. But the rock, thrown very high, fell far beyond the ridge.

"My God!" Philip Hands exclaimed, "it's hit the other chap on the crown."

The Sanitätsrath and Mrs. Hands were approaching them very slowly so that:

"Gracious lady," his voice came up to them, "if these visions appear as real or seem as unreal as the other visions that you see and if one illusion appears no greater than the other, surely your cure should be completed. For all life is real; or all life is illusions. And who are we to say which are illusions or which are real? When we have such a little bit of life given to us surely it is unworthy of a man or of a woman to trouble about his, or about her illusions! If you hear voices, hear them and there is an end; if you see devils, see them and there is an end of it. Just as if you see and hear these danger zones of mine there is an end of it too. And this is an end of my cure. It is all I can do for you."

He stopped and bowed to the old lady. They were at the very foot of the pinnacle upon which stood Philip Hands and Annette von Droste. And Mrs. Hands walking slowly forward, disappeared right under their feet.

"A bomb-proof shelter," Philip Hands exclaimed, for he recognised that beneath their feet the pinnacle must be hollow towards the west. "A bomb-proof shelter, that's exactly what this place appears to be."

The Sanitatsrath had pushed the bath-chair away in front of him. He stood surveying Philip and Annette looking upwards with an attentive and a bland glance.

"Your two Excellencies," he said mildly, "had better descend. That is not the safest place in the world for tragic explanations."

They found von Salzer and Mrs. Hands in a little alcove that had been carved out of the pinnacle. It was exactly like the summer-houses you find at the top of every German hill. There were wooden seats fitted into the semi-circular wall. In the centre of the horse-shoe was a wooden table painted rusty red, and upon trestles at one side there stood a cask, and on the red table were four glass beer mugs. The Sanitatsrath was wiping his perspiring brow with his white shirt sleeve and Mrs. Hands was fanning herself slowly with a very white handkerchief.

"Yes, that is all there is to it," the Sanitätsrath lisped amiably. He combed his beard with three fingers. He peeped at them all with a queer smile and, bending down, he picked up from the bath-chair his black alpaca jacket which he slowly put on, and his brown straw hat which he crushed down over his eyes.

"So!" he ejaculated comfortably.

Annette had sunk down upon a seat, her head leaning back against the stone wall and her eyes closed. Mrs. Hands was leaning forward towards the table upon which her fingers drummed slowly. And Philip Hands, lost in an Anglo-Saxon amazement at the inappropriateness of the doctor's actions, asked with a slight touch of irritation, "What the deuce is the meaning of it all?"

The doctor glanced at him quickly and negligently across his shoulder. He reached out and took a large beer mug from the table. He put it beneath the tap of the barrel and when it was filled he held it to his lips and drank with deep satisfaction.

"So!" he exclaimed once more. Then he sat down beside Mrs. Hands and slowly extended his spidery fingers to her wrist. "It is a very good pulse," he said. He remained for some time gazing at the ground, then he looked at Annette von Droste.

"So, Excellency," he said, with an air of tender malice, "last night we were mad, and to-day we are sane again?"

Annette slowly opened her eyes.

"Oh, we are all quite sane again," the Sanitätsrath said. He pointed a thin, white and curved forefinger exactly at her nose.

"Listen, you," he said. "I will tell you how it was. You were about to promise to marry his young Excellency the Second Secretary of Embassy. You say to yourself: Now you will have your last moment of freedom! You will come and seek for the lost Grand Duke. For when you are married to this gentleman you will lose your liberty and never will he agree to permit you such a breach of the laws. So you creep up through the woods and you are frightened and alarmed, and after a long climb you come last night upon my two large ones. Last night my large ogres were very merry and noisy. I heard them far down below and you saw them, and you thought you have become mad because of your ancestors, and all such nonsense as I am for ever contesting. So you run back and tell our young friend that you are unfit to marry him. And then again once more this morning in your agony of mind you run here again to see if still the shapes of your madness existed.... Yes, is that not all true."

Annette von Droste gazed with all her large eyes at the Sanitätsrath.

"And I was not mad," she whispered.

The Sanitätsrath slowly crossed his arms in their alpaca sleeves.

"Then there is an end of it," he said, "and it all ends very well."

"But it isn't an end of it at all," Philip Hands exclaimed. "I must have some explanation of all this foolery!"

The Sanitätsrath looked at him penetratingly for a long time. Suddenly he rose and catching Hands by.the wrist in his firm doctor's grasp, he led him swifdy out on to the ridge. He pointed straight down into each of the rocky cups decorated with the torn pines that were below them, one on each hand.

"What do you see?" he said.

Philip answered, "Oh, I know all that."

"They are quite still now," the professor said. "Both large ones. They are asleep. But I will give you a thousand pounds to go down into either of those valleys. I will give two thousand. I will give you ten thousand. I will give you all my fortune if you will bring me the thigh bone of the skeleton that is near the shoulder of the Large One on our left."

"Damn you!" Philip exclaimed. "Don't you know I am just engaged to be married?"

"I do not need the thigh bone," the professor lisped gently. "It is nothing to me. Yet I offer you a quarter of a million marks if you will fetch it for me. And you will not do it.... Then you may tell Her Excellency Annette that you are paying a quarter of a million marks in order to prove her sanity. For if you believed my large ones mere illusions, you would go down and fetch me that thigh bone. Yet now! There! You shudder all over your body and start back when I draw your wrist one-fifth of an inch downwards as if I were about to force you towards the slope."

Philip swore beneath his breath. The Sanitätsrath led him back towards the little alcove.

"So then," he said, "there is an end of it."

Annette leant suddenly forward.

"Excellent Wirkicher Geheim Sanitätsrath," she pleaded, "would it not help in the cure both of myself and Mrs. Hands if you would explain a little more?"

Von Salzer caught all the ends of his beard into his right hand.

"It is all explained that I can explain," he said. "I am a child in these matters.... Oh, oh!" he checked the expostulations that were rising to her lips. "If you could ask the Hofrath von Kellermann— a biologist now! But a mere nerve-doctor like myself!  How can I explain these things? There they are, my two large ogres. They help me to cure my patients of a certain class. My business is to cure patients of a certain class, and that is the end of it, for me."

"But the Hofrath von Kellermann was buried this morning," Philip Hands exclaimed.

"No, no," the doctor answered amiably, "his body was taken to the train. He is to be buried in Berlin in the Hedwigs Kirche in four days' time. There will a great ceremony and many speeches. He was a biologist of world-wide fame."

Over his folded arms the doctor looked reminiscendy at the ground.

"For three years," he said, "on and off for every day the

Hofrath has sat here observing my Large Ones. He had a little donkey cart. It brought up this barrel of good beer that he will never drink again. He has surveyed them with field glasses; he has measured them with geometric projections, he has watched them in their sleep. For hours and hours he has sat here alone, he has sat here with me and never have I known a man of such unflagging industry and of such enormous skill. I wish I could show you the model of the skeleton of one of my Large Ones that he has made by conjecture. They differ, he says, as much from man as from the larger apes, only in the disproportionately enormous length of the spine from the lower ribs downwards."

"But where is the romance in all this?" Annette von Droste said. "Where is all the wonder?"

The doctor smiled at her— a sunny and friendly smile. "Child," he said, "you have heard of Woden and Thor. Well, the Hofrath in consultation with Professor Dr. von Gobel the historian of the University of Isclimgen arrived at the conclusion that my Large Ones gave rise to the legend of Woden and Thor, the deities of the high and wonderful past of us Teutons. I know nothing of these things, for I am neither a historian nor a bioligist. But this opinion is by no means a new one in the Christian world since the convent of Drieselheim, as you will find in any guide book, was built in the year 969 just after the date of the conversion of this part of Germany to Christianity. In order to enclose for ever within these valleys, two immense devils— duo immanes diaboli. And from that date until the convent was shelled during the war between Prussia and Austria and the nuns dispersed—from that date until the year 1866 the convent was never without these brave and courageous sisters who were of the opinion that by their prayers alone they kept back from our beloved nation the horrors of pagan worship."

"But hang it all!" Philip Hands said. "You don't mean to say that these things were really pagan gods, or that the prayers of nuns kept them shut up in a valley?"

"I don't mean to tell you anything, my friend," the doctor said. "These are things for specialists. Specialists in the history of religion will tell you one thing; specialists in biology another; historians another; I, I am a humble nerve doctor. And if I report to you the conclusions of the Hofrath von Kellermann and his scientific colleagues which will be published in a lucid and compendious volume, I don't do any more than give you the faintest shadows of their splendid arguments which, according to my humble lights, I have mastered in order to be of service to my patients. For my business is to assure people who are in doubt as to their sanity that they are sane."

"But the Hofrath von Kellermann " Philip Hands began.

"The Hofrath von Kellermann," the doctor continued, "died here yesterday on his four hundred and twenty-first visit to my Large Ones. How he died is not known. He was found crushed to pieces at the bottom of the mountain. But whether he was killed by a rock falling upon him or whether he himself was taken up and thrown down to this great distance, it is very difficult to say. For my Large Ones are of a placid and amiable disposition. They do not eat nor do they, as a rule, touch any living animal, though, at intervals of about a month, the Hofrath observed that one or the other of them would take a pine tree and grind it between his teeth. But the Hofrath was of opinion that this was not done for the sake of nourishment but more probably in order to while away the time as you might chew the stump of an unlit cigar."

"But―" Mr. Hands began again.

"Excellent Mr. Second Secretary of Embassy," the Sanitätsrath said, "in order to save you the trouble of incessant questions I will try to sum up for you the conclusions arrived at by these eminent professors."

Philip Hands couldn't restrain himself from remarking, "I don't see why you haven't got some American agent to boom these— these giants? It would have been the sensation of the world."

And at the same moment Mrs. Hands exclaimed:

"Don't continue to exhibit yourself as an indomitable ass, Philip!"

The Fraulein von Droste, intent upon her more romantic train of mind, asked:

"And the lost Grand Duke?"

The doctor glanced at her quiedy and amiably.

"Ah, my never to be sufficiently lamented and glorious lord!" he said. "It was his case that set me on to preach the crusade that I am never tired of preaching— the crusade that there is no such thing as madness. They said he was mad but he was a man of grandiloquent schemes and magnificent achievements. It was simply that he was outside the plan of his circumstances. He desired to be greater than Tiberias so he built splendid palaces that his subjects couldn't pay for. He desired to be greater than Alexander so he was perpetually raising forces to prepare for a struggle against Prussia. He desired to emulate Hercules and so he came here to fight with the Large Ones, the secret of whose existence was the heritage of his illustrious position. He came  here, you understand, alone, the sisters of the convent and the officials of his court begging him to desist from the dangerous adventure. And that is all that is known of him! There was never another trace. Where do his bones lie rotting? Who knows? As a young man, being his body physician, I searched every nook of the valley, I climbed in between the legs of the Large Ones as they slept."

"You!" Mr. Philip Hands exclaimed.

"Excellent Mr. Second Secretary," the doctor said ironically, "if you will climb down and examine these beings who appear to be now once more asleep, you will discover that their forms arc covered with a grey-black hair, so coarse that it resembles the plants known as mares'-tails, and the grain of their flesh is so huge that with its indentations and the dirt that is upon it, it resembles a rough and uncultivated field, whilst the warmth that they give out is so considerable that each of these little valleys like cups appears like a greenhouse for heat and the stench is intolerable. If you will only climb you will observe all

"Oh, thanks," Mr. Hands explained, "I am not a connoisseur in stinks!"

"Yet all these things I observed thirty-six years ago," the Sanitätsrath said, "when I was a young doctor, and spent six months in this valley, searching for the lost Grand Duke, of whom no vestige was ever discovered."

"Then he may be still alive— still here!" Annette von Droste exclaimed.

"Assuredly he may be still alive and still here," the doctor said, "who knows? The peasants say say see him from time to time riding all glorious upon his schimmel."

"But, I say," Philip Hands interrupted again. "If these fellows have been here all this time, how is it that nobody has ever talked of them?"

"My friend," the Sanitütsrath answered, "for centuries the peasants have talked of them. Twenty years ago you might have heard from any of these peasants of the feats of what they call the giants. You would hear now, when they desire to tell each other that it is time to light the stove to cook their bread, they thrown great rocks from one side of the mountain to the other, as you have witnessed. The learned Vonggobel interprets this action of theirs differently. He says these actions are the outcome of a rudimentary desire for play, as you would observe the larger apes take up curiously a fragment of straw, and then cast it from them. And you would have heard from the peasants twenty years ago of how, when my Large Ones scratch their sides, it gives off a sound like the screaming of a thousand fiends. In this, the learned Von Kellermann agrees, though he says the sounds more rightly resemble that made by the crushing of metals under the stamp of gold-refining machines— a sort of metallic scream. In short, you have heard it. Twenty years ago you might have heard these things from the lips of the peasants, but now, fearing ridicule, they keep silent, though they talk amongst themselves, as they do of the lost Grand Duke, of great fowls resembling cocks, whose footsteps, twenty yards long, are seen in winter mornings in the snow, and of the Witches' Sabbaths called Walpürgis Nights, and of all the other things of which the peasants discourse in winter, when the snow is high over the roofs and the pine-knots burn merrily and the spinning-wheels turn in those lonely valleys."

"Oh, we know all about folk-lore," Mr. Philip Hands said.

"Then here you have the making of the folk-lore for yourself,"  the Sanitätsrath said, "such folk-lore as you yourself will tell your grandchildren when the snow is thick above your roof and above the limbs of my Large Ones, who do not mind snow upon their mountain-tops. For folk-lore is the interpretation set by common minds to explain facts which they cannot otherwise explain. How you will explain them I do not know."

"Then, why don't you explain them?" the indomitable Mr. Hands exclaimed.

"I do not explain them," the doctor said, "because in these matters I have an uninstructed mind. They have been explained as Woden and Thor, but they are not gods. They have been explained as immense devils, but they are not immense devils, since the existence of gods or devils presupposes a will, and my Large Ones have no wills, having reclined for thousands of years in the same valley. They have been explained as the secret warnings of the Grand Ducal House, since it is said that when one of them cries out, every twenty years or so, a Grand Duke dies. Yet assuredly their purpose cannot have been to warn Grand Dukes of their approaching deaths, since they existed thousands of years before there were any grand dukes. For me, they are the instruments of curing people who imagine themselves mad through the hearing of strange sounds and the seeing of incredible sights. I bring these people up here and I say, 'Listen and behold!' and they hear sounds, and they see sights, stranger than any that they can imagine. Thus by the Grace of God, in Whose hands we all are, 67.3 per cent, of my patients find cures. So you have many explanations afforded to you. For the Early Pagans they were Woden and Thor, and some used their fame for their own purposes. For me they are strange things that exist, and I use them for my own purposes; for the peasant women they are the Giant Brothers, and the peasant women use the stories of them in lulling their children to sleep, which is, perhaps, the most sensible purpose of all."

"But what does it all amount to?" Mr. Philip Hands asked.

"Oh, my excellent Anglo-Saxon friend!" the doctor ejaculated, with his first sign of exasperation. "What does it amount to? The well-known Professor of General Knowledge, von Imhoff zu Reutershausen, is contributing a general preface to the monumental work of the deceased Hofrath von Kellermann. In this the professor says— but I must warn you that he is regarded by his colleagues as romantic and unsound— the professor utters, if I can remember, these words:

" 'Here, therefore, amongst these stupendous and grave vastnesses, there He these grey survivals of a time which went before the very foundations of our splendid Teutonic race, whose destinies have broadened down to the imperial heritage so well known to our own day. It is to be observed (see page 126 of text) that here are two adult males of an unknown and obviously prehistoric race. That there were giants before our days has been observed by many a classical writer. Thus we have the phrase, "Vixerunt fortes ante Agamemnon. And traces of the existence of such giants are to be observed in the mythology and legends of almost every race—"

"But hang it all!" Philip Hands exclaimed. "These chaps appear to me immortal?"

"Immortal these survivors of a heavy antiquity may appear to our limited conceptions, but the flesh of which they are made up is not indestructible. In what cataclysm their fellows perished who shall tell? But traces of many cataclysms are to be observed upon our globe sufficient to have destroyed all that was destructible of these immortal beings. Here, then, these two survivors sit—these two adult males. And if, as Professor von Gagern observes, all life, all will, all emotion, all motion, all passion, all appetite, is brought about by the search of the eternal male for the eternal female, then their listless immobility is sufficiently explained. Here they sit, having exhausted the limits of the globe in the unavailing search for a female of their own species. But all such females are dead— are destroyed. They sit close together in an eternal ennui of immortality, casting into the air from time to time that which comes next to their hands, waiting through the eternal ages! And what shall be the end of them―"

"But, I say," Mr. Hands exclaimed, "if this blessed book about them is published, there will be an end of your practice?"

Dr. von Salzer looked for a long time at the young man.

"The essence of my practice is," he said, "the principle, and the principle will remain. Still, in the world there will be a thousand inexplicable things. For you will never be able to explain to me or any other man how it is that the Fraulein Annette von Droste should desire to unite herself to yourself."

"Oh, I say!" Philip exclaimed. "You don't mean to say that that is a form of madness?"

"I say merely," the Sanitatsrath answered dryly, "that it is inexplicable."

He pulled out his watch and said, "My consultation hour will have arrived in three-quarters of an hour. We have just time to descend the hill."

Annette von Droste rose briskly:

"So that the Grand Duke William," she said, "may be still in these valleys?"

The Sanitätsrath pushed the rubbed-tyred bath-chair out of the opening of the grotto.

"The Grand Duke may well exist," he said. "But you have done with Grand Dukes. Your business is to darn stockings."

"At any rate," Mrs. Hands piped suddenly, "I shall walk down the hill upon my own feet."

"But I say, you haven't explained...?" Philip Hands was beginning.

"My friend," von Salzer answered, "even for the Second Secretary of a Legation, there must arrive a time when he shall stand naked upon the shores of the world and discover that each of us is alone here and without one single companion. Then he must do all his explaining for himself or leave it to God. It is now a very good moment to cross the ridge and descend the hill. The Large Ones arc now slumbering, who can say when they will wake or what perils we should miss when they did awaken? Let us go now towards the naked beaches of the end of the world."

"Now, what the deuce does that mean?" Philip Hands grumbled in the ear of Annette von Droste.

"Oh, the darling Sanitätsrath is so sentimental," she answered. "I wonder if he has ever seen the ghost of the Grand Duke riding splendidly upon his schimmel?"

___________________

15: In a Tight Fix

Victor L. Whitechurch

Albury Banner and Wodonga Express (NSW) 16 Feb 1900

[Strand Magazine, June 1899]

WE WERE STROLLING through the Paris Salon. Tired of passing through endless galleries and gazing at the pictures, we had descended into the great central hall devoted to statuary, where it is permissable to smoke, and had lit our cigarettes.

My companion was only a passing acquaintance, a fellow-countrymen I had met at the table d'hôte, and who, like myself, was passing a few weeks in the French metropolis. He was a slight, delicate-looking young man of about five-and-twenty, a well-read and charming companion. As were entered the hall, with its long rows of statues, I noticed that he turned a little pale, but put it down to the heat of the day. Presently we stopped to admire a gracefully-modelled figure by one of the most eminent exhibitors...

'A very fine piece of sculpture,' said my friend.

'Scarcely that,' I replied.

'It's made out of an appropriate material— plaster of Paris.'

'Plaster of Paris!' he replied, with a nervous start; 'how terrible!'

'Why, what's the matter?' I asked, with a laugh. '

'Ah!' he replied, ' I daresay my exclamation seemed strange to you. But plaster of Paris has an awful meaning to my ears, as you would agree if you heard of an adventure from the effects of which I am only just recovering.'

'Have you any objection to telling me?'

'Not the slightest. Come and sit down over yonder, and I'll explain myself ; then you'll see why I hate the name of plaster of Paris.'

So we sat down and he began his story, which I repeat in his own words as far as possible.

*   *   *   *

JASPER KEEN and myself were chums during the year we were together at Oxford, and our friendship continued after he had gone down through the two years I remained. He was my senior— three or four years older than myself; and, is generally the case in strong friendships, my opposite in many respects. I was a reading man; Keen was more noted for the strength of his arm on the river, and as a desperate 'forward' in the football field. My temper was always one of the mildest; Keen would give vent to paroxysms of anger, and weeks of smothered, revengeful passion. He was a tall, magnificently built fellow, and the man often called us the 'long and short of it,' so great was the contrast between us.

I do not say that there was nothing intellectual about Jasper Keen. On the contrary, he was a genius; only, like most of his species, he worked by fits and starts. When he did work, however, it was to some purpose, as the examiners knew. And with great strength and passion for sport he had a very marked artistic temperament, which showed itself in his love of sculpture and modellings.

His rooms were a curiosity. Very few books— he always sold them the instant he bad finished reading them— prize oars and 'pots' in profusion, and collection of clay busts, modelled by himself. There was a row of college Dons on his mantleshelf, clever caricatures, his intimate friends— and his enemies. If he liked a man, he made an excellent little bust of him; on the contrary, one who incurred his hatred was modelled in some eccentric or repulsive manner, but still with strict regard to a correct likeness so that it was impossible to mistake the man.

When Jasper Keen left the 'Varsity he set up tbe studio in London. He was a man of fairly large private means, and did not care about earning money. He devoted himself still to sport during the intervals when he was not exercising his hobby, and lived a generally easy and comfortable life.

In due time I also went to live in the town, and plunged into the vortex of literary work, to which I determined to devote my life. I constantly saw Keen, and our friendship was as great as ever, until— Yes, 'until'— you guess what I mean.

There was a woman in it, as there always is, and she stepped in between us. Jasper Keen loved her madly, jealoudly. Over and over again he was repulsed, for Ivey Stirling never cared for him. He frightened her with the intensity of his devotion.

One day he said to her:— 'The truth is, you care for another man.'

'And what if I do?' said Ivey boldly.

'What if you do ! Why, this. If I find the man, even if he were my best friend, I'd kill him rather than he should win you!'

He was Keen's greatest friend. The man who was accepted by Ivey Stirling, was myself, and, in spite of all I trust she will be my wife before the year is out.

I may as well say, 'In spite of all.'

When Keen heard of it he was furious. I told him myself. I thought it best that be should hear the news first from the lips of his friend, and I hoped from the bottom of my heart that our friendship would not be destroyed. So went round to his studio, and broke the news to him. He stood for some moments with his whole frame quivering, his nostrils dilated, and his eyes starting forward, like some wild beast held in restraint by a chain. Then he turned to a pedestal on which stood a bust of myself, fashioned by himself in the old Oxford days, and clashed it to the ground. The fragments of clay went rattling over the studio.

'Leonard Fendron,' he yelled, 'as I have broken your bust, so will I break you. You false, traitorous hound, you think you have stolen from me the one object I have to live for. But not yet— do you hear? I could crush you as you stand— I could break every bone in your body with this hand of mine. But that would be too poor a revenge. I will wait— I will make you suffer such agony as you have given me. Go, I say, go, and may the worst of all curses light upon you— the curse of a friend you have wronged.'

It was useless to explain, so I went. Ivey was much disturbed when I told her about this interview ; but to tell the truth, I thought little of it myself. I had seen Keen in a paroxysm of rage before, and I hoped that in time be would see things sensibly for the sake of our old friendship.

For a year I never saw the man. His studio was shut up, and report said that he had gone abroad. Then I suddenly met met him face to face in Fleet-street. I was going to pass him by at first, but he stopped me and shook hands.

'How d'ye do, Fendron?' he said. 'Last time I saw you I was in a bit of a temper. But that's all over now, and I can afford to let the past be buried in the past —if you care to.'

'Certainly,' I replied; 'I'm only too delighted to hear our friendship still exists.'

'That's right,' he said. 'And now come and have some lunch with me. There's a restaurant handy where we can talk.'

So I went with him. He was most friendly and chatty. He told me he had been abroad, but that the last five months he had spent in England.

'I've been living like a hermit,' he said. 'The fact is, I'm engaged one master piece of work. It will bear favourably with, anything I've ever done. Oh, it's a grand thing, I can tell you. I fitted up a studio in the country some months ago, and I've hardly stirred out of it since— simply worked and seen no one. But I've had an end in view, as you shall see for yourself. Now, I want you to pay me a visit, and you shall be the first to see my masterpiece. Will you come?'

'Certainly,' I said; 'what day will suit you?'

'Let me see— it's the 9th to-day. I want a clear fortnight on the work before I finish. Can you come on Friday, the 24th, and stay till Monday? I can easily put you up.'

'With pleasure. That will suit me capitally. Only, you haven't told me where to come to yet.'

'I hardly think you'd find it if I did,' he answered thoughtfully; 'it's a bit awkward to get at, for a stranger. So suppose you meet me at Euston at half past eight on that Friday night, and I'll take you down. It's rather late, but you shall have a good supper as soon as you get there, I promise you.'

To this arrangement I accordingly agreed, and on the 24th I met Keen at Euston. Telling me that he had purchased my ticket, he took me to a local train. We got out at Sunbnry, the station near Wembley Park.

'There's some little distance to walk,' he said, 'so we'd better step it out briskly.'

It must have been a tramp of over two miles that finally brought us to a large house, standing quite alone a little way off the road, somewhere in the direction of Edgware.

Although not many miles from London, the country about here is very lonely, and there was not a house near. It was about ten o'clock and quite dark when Keen opened the door with a latch-key.

'Welcome!' he cried. 'You must be tired and hungry. We'll have supper at once; it's all ready.'

And without further ado he led the way into a good-sized room, lit by the lamp, and revealed a table spread with cold viands. There was a change in his tone of voice that made me feel rather uneasy as he went on:—

'We're all to ourselves, Fendron. I've let the servants out for the evening. But everything's ready for us, so sit down and begin. We must be our own butlers.'

It was an excitable meal. The whole time Keen talked and laughed and joked. He ran on about old times and our college days; he laughed long and boisterously— once I expostulated with him for his noise.

'What does it matter?' he shouted. 'There's not a soul near. That's the beauty of the country. You might yell yourself hoarse in this shanty of mine, and no one would hear you.'

He even touched on my engagement. Leaning across the table, he insisted upon grasping my hand.

'I've never congratulated you yet, old chap, you know. Last time we were on this question I was in a huff. But it's all right now. May you be happy— ha! ha! ha!— as happy as you deserve to be!'

Supper over, and he took up the lamp.

'Come,' he said, 'we'll adjourn to the studio and smoke there. I've got to show you my great work. It will surprise you. Come along.'

He led the way to the very top of the house, and we entered a large room which he had turned into a studio. Lumps of clay, pieces of stone, tools, and half-finished works were lying about in artistic confusion. On a small table was a box of cigars, several decanters of wine and spirits, siphons and tumblers. In one corner of the room was a large .bath, covered with a white powder, while a small shovel and a couple of pails of water stood by it.

In the centre of the room was a very large, hollow wooden pedestal, shaped like a cylinder, and quite as high as my shoulders, such as is used sometimes for standing heavy busts upon. The top, however, had been removed from this cylinder, and there was nothing on it. The room was evidently only lighted by a skylight, and a thick curtain hung over the door, and stretched across what was apparently a recess at the farther end of the apartment was another curtain, hanging in back folds.

Keen gave me a cigar and set me down in a chair.

'Well, what do you think of my work'shop?' he said. 'I've hardly had time to look round, yet,' I replied. 'What's that huge pedestal for?'

'You'll see later on,' he said. Again the ominous change in his voice. ' And what's in that bath ?'

'Oh! plaster of Paris,' he answered, with a laugh; 'but now watch! I'm going to draw the curtain!'

First lighting a couple more lamps, he drew the curtain aside with a sudden jerk.

The result was electrical. There, standing on a small raised platform, life-like and most exquisitely modelled, was a statue of Ivey Stirling, my betrothed. I sprang to my feet and uttered an exclamation of surprise.

'Yes,' shouted Keen, 'there stands the image of the woman you love— and the woman I loved once. She whose image was so graven upon my heart that I was able to mould this statue as you see it; to mould it for you, Leonard Fendron, who have won the prize. Did I not tell you it was a masterpiece?'

'You did. And so it is,' I replied, an indescribable feeling of terror creeping over me. My companion rushed to the table and filled two glasses. One of them ho thrust into my hand.

'A health!' he cried. 'Drain it to the dregs. A health to the fair Ivey, your betrothed! Drink it, Fendron!'

'A health to the fair Ivey — my future wife,' I said, mechanically, drinking the liquor and gazing at the statue.

'Your future wife !' echoed Keen, with a terrible voice. 'Never!'

I turned and gazed.at him. He was foaming with rage and madness. At the same moment my head grew dizzy, and the room seemed twirling round. I made a wild rush for the door, but fell in a dead faint before I could reach it.

WHEN I CAME to my senses again there was an awful feeling of cramp all over me My whole body with my legs and arms seemed to be held in a vice that was pressing upon me at every point.

I opened my eyes. The first thing that met my gaze was the statue of Ivey place opposite me. I was in an upright position, but I could not move. I looked downwards, but not even then did I realise the horrible truth. I was up to my shoulders in the hollow pedestal.

'Hullo! you've come to, have you?' said the mocking voice, and Jasper Keen stood in front of me, the grin of a lunatic on his face.

'For God's sake, what have you done?' I asked.

'I'll very soon tell you,' he replied, with a sneer; 'I've made a statue of you. Listen. You are up to your shoulders in plaster of Paris. Whilst you were insensible from the effects of that drugged wine you drank I placed you in the pedestal, mixed the bathful of plaster and water, and poured it in with you. It took me some time to do, and it's now four o'clock in the morning. By this time it's thoroughly set, and you cannot move hand or foot.'

The terrible situation was dawning upon my mind.

My tormentor went on: 'Did you think, Leonard Fendron, that I had forgotten? Did you expect to get a forgiveness from Jasper Keen? You should have known me better, and not have walked so foolishly into the snare I set for you. I told you I would have revenge. I have waited and schemed a long time now, but the hour of my vengeance has come. Here before the image of the woman you love, you shall die, Leonard Fendron— die a slow and awful death. I shall leave you here, fixed, immovable— a living statue Don't think to escape, for I have planned it well. My servants were discharged two days ago; I told them I was going to leave the house for some months. You can shriek and howl as much as you please, but no one will hear you. I've tested that carefully. In short, unless an angel from heaven comes to release you, here you'll stay to death in cramp and agony.'

'Have mercy—' I began, but he stopped me.

'Mercy? As soon expect to find it at Satan's hands! Here, I'll put this table with the liquor on it close to you. It will be more tantalizing. And now I must be off. I've planned my escape well. Goodbye, Leonard Fendron. I wish you joy with your bride of clay!'

And the madman, for so he was, I am assured, at that moment struck me a heavy blow in the face, turned on his heel, slammed the door, and I heard his footsteps disappear down the stairs.

I was alone and helpless.

I cannot describe the torture as the long hours went by and the light of the lamps slowly faded as the day began to dawn. The cramp in my body and limbs was awful, my throat was parched, and my brain seemed on fire. I yelled and screamed at the top of my voice, listening in anguish for an answering call, but answers came there none. The villain had prepared the plot too well! In my madness I tried to lurch forward and hurl myself to the floor. In vain! The pedestal was fixed! And there, a few feet in front of me, stood the statue of Ivey, so lifelike and beautiful that it seemed at times to my frenzied brain that she was smiling and speaking to me.

Then there came a time when all was dark. I had fainted. Too soon I returned to the fearful reality, and redoubled my screams. It was fruitless. I was in a mental and bodily agony that was awful. How the long hours passed I knew not. It seemed years that I had been fixed there. I seemed never to have lived at all, except in a world of terror. My God! I cannot describe the anguish.

SUDDENLY there came a sound.... Yes... I was not mistaken... A heavy bang on the roof overhead. I listened with straining ears— ah— a footstep !

'For God's sake, help— help!' I cried. Then there came a tap at the skylight overhead, and a voice spoke—

'Excuse me, but may I come in?'

'Come in!' I shrieked; 'in Heaven's name yes, come in!'

'You seem in a mighty hurry,' replied the voice. 'Suppose you open the skylight for me.'

'I can't,' I answered. 'Smash it— do what you like, only be quick.'

Crash! The glass came spattering down on the floor, a foot came through the window, then another, and in a few seconds a man himself stood before me.

'Well, I'm blowed,' he exclaimed; 'what on earth does this mean?'

'For God's sake be quick and set me free,' I begged. 'It's killing me. Give me something to drink first.'

I eagerly drained the tumbler of soda water he held to my lips. Then he set to work. He was a business-like man, and there were some stone chisels and hammers about. In a very few minutes he had split the pedestal down, and was hammering and chipping away at the plaster, which, of course, by this time was quite hard, and came off in flakes and lumps.

It seemed ages to me, but he afterwards told me it took him a very short time to get me free, though large lumps of plaster still stuck to my clothes. I was horribly cramped, and could not stir when it was over.

He undressed me and gave me a tremendous rubbing, until at length the circulation be came partially restored, and the agony began to subside, and I was able to talk.

'Well,' he exclaimed, 'this is the rummiest thing I've ever come across. Goodness only knows what would have happened to you if my parachute hadn't gone wrong.'

'Your parachute?'

'Yes— that's how I came here. I'm a professional aeronaut, and I've been making a balloon ascent and a parachute descent at Wembley Park every Saturday afternoon for a couple of months past.'

'And you landed on the roof?' I exclaimed.

'Exactly. Something went wrong, and I found myself coming down more quickly than I intended. The wind's a bit high, and blew me some distance, and I thought I was going smash against this house, but, as luck had it, I just managed to tumble on the roof, which, luckily, is flat, and here I am. Lucky for you, wasn't it?'

Keen's words had come very nearly true. He had said that only an angel from Heaven could rescue me!

WELL, little remains to be told. I was very ill for weeks; in fact, I am only just getting over it now. The only wonder is that I escaped as I did, but as Keen had put me in the pedestal with my clothes on, and had not pressed down the plaster, the pressure was slighter than it might have been, though that was bad enough.

As for Keen himself he got clean away. You see, he had over twelve hours' start, for it was not until late on Saturday afternoon that the aeronaut found me. I don't know, and I don't much care, what has become of him. I only mean to take good care that he doesn't have another chance of stopping our marriage.

And now, perhaps, you will understand why I feel a little queer at the mention of plaster of Paris.

___________________

16: The Convict's Revenge

Victor L Whitechurch

Broad Arrow Standard 9 April 1898

[The Strand Magazine Feb 1898]

"UGH!" said my companion to me, with a shiver and a little clutch at my arm. "That's a thing I hate."

We were standing by a level-crossing as he spoke. We had almost started to cross the rails, when a rumble and a whistle and the bright glare of the head lights heralded the close approach of a train. So we stood back for a moment or two to let the iron steed and his load pass. The lights from the carriages flashed out upon us, then there was a swirl of wind as darkness came on once more, and the red taillight vanished round the curve beyond.

"Why," I remarked, with a laugh, as we went on again, " surely an old soldier and ex-prison warder like yourself isn't afraid of a passing train!"

"Ah sir, every man has his weakness, and I am not ashamed to confess that I've got mine. And, perhaps, if you'd had an experience that happened to me some ten years ago, you'd flinch a bit when an express train rattled past you."

"Oh there's a foundation for it, is there?"

"There is, sir, and if yon care to step inside, my little place and rest for half an hour, I'll tell you the yarn, such as it is."

I expressed myself only too delighted to pick iip the proffered information. I must explain before I go further that until the evening in question my companion had been unknown to me. I had been staying for a few days at the little cathedral town of Dullminster, and had been on a day's fishing in the neighborhood with no companion save my pipe. It was while pensively watching my float in the quiet little stream that a fine-looking old fellow appeared, bent on the same sport as myself, and took up his position close by. As bites were few and far between, we entered into conversation and when dusk set in, by mutual consent, we packed our traps and set off together over the pleasant fields that lay between us and Dullminster.

He told me something of his past history as we trudged along, from which I gathered that he had begun life in the Army, and afterwards he had been a warder in the well known convict prison of Dartport, from which post he had retired into private life some few years since, and had come to eke out a restful existence on savings and pension in Dullminster, the place of his birth.

A few hundred yards beyond the level crossing we stopped at the door of a little house in one of the streets in the outskirts of the town.

"Come in, sir," said the old fellow. "I am all by myself; yes, an old bachelor, sir. And if you'll condescend to have a cup of tea while I spin vou the yarn vou're welcome to it."

It was a chilly autumn evening, and the bright fire and singing kettle the little sitting room looked rather inviting, so I gladly accepted mine host's invitation.

"And now, sir," said he, when we were comfortably settled, "I'll tell you why I don't like to be near an express train at night."

*    *   *   *

OF COURSE, as you can imagine, we used to have some queer customers at Dartport. Her Majesty's private hotels take all kinds of folk, and we are not particular as to character. One of the worst gaol-birds that I ever remember was a certain convict whom I will call by his old number— 36. He was in for a long sentence— in fact, as far as I know, he's doing time yet ; though if there'd been a little more evidence forthcoming at his trial his term of imprisonment would have been a short one, ending in the prison yard on the scaffold; but as it was, though his list of crimes was a pretty black one, murder couldn't quite be proved, though there were few that doubted he hadn't stuck at that.

From the moment I set eyes on him at Dartport I knew there'd be trouble with No. 36. It wasn't only the size and strength of the man, but a certain nasty look about his eyes that told me this. Nor was I mistaken, for he proved to be one of the most unmanageable brutes we ever had.

He soon took a particularly strong dislike to me, for, as ill-luck would have it. I was the first to have to report him for misconduct, and it was through me that he had his first taste of the cat. When I went to his cell that night he broke the strict rule of silence and hissed out— "You devil of a turnkey, I'll kill you before I've finished with you."

It was a threat I had heard more than once before, and it didn't affect me very much at the time, though I had good reason to remember it afterwards.

Two years passed, and No. 36 showed no signs of improving. He had a marvellous physique, and the prison diet seemed in no way to diminish his strength. He had to be most carefully watched in the quarries, and in fact always, for he had a nasty knack of being dangerous in more ways than one.

At length, towards the end of the summer of the year of which I am speaking, he suddenly turned over a new leaf, and became quiet and iraciable. I felt less sure of him than ever, nevertheless, for I had seen something of this phase of character before, and I knew it generally meant mischief. Nor was I mistaken, for one afternoon, when a fog had come on rather unexpectedly, the sharp crack of a rifle betokened the escape of No. 36. Taking advantage of the mist he had suddenly struck the nearest warder to the ground, hurled a big bit of stone with deadly aim at one sentry, completely bowling him over, taking the chance of a bullet from another—and was off!

A search party was, of course, organiser! at once, but somehow or other lie managed to show a clean pair of heels and escape over the moors. As darkness set in a poor old man was found dazed and half naked about a coupie of miles from the prison, and, after being revived, he told how No. 36 had met him and insisted upon having all his upper garments, so that the runaway had an extra good chance of getting clear.

It was between nine and ten o'clock at night that I, in company with several other members of a search party, halted for a little consultation just by the embankment of the railway, the main "West Southern" line to London, that runs through the desolate bit of country some five or six miles north of Dartport prison.

"I wonder whether it's any use having a look at Westinoor Station," said our chief. Westmoor Station was about two miles up the line from where we were standing.

"Aye," I replied, "its just possible that he might, be lying around there, looking out for a train, though it's my belief that he's making northward— at any rate, it's more likely."

"Well, Davis," said the chief, after a moment or two's thought, "suppose you go to Westwood. It may be worth trying. I think wo ought to go on to Hartwell, or that direction. What do you say?"

"I'm willing to do as you suggest," I answered. "Its just as well to see the stationmaster I think."

"All right. You slip away, then, Davis. You'd better keep along the line— it's the nearest way."

So I started off along the line. It was a very dark night, though the fog had lifted, and it was some moments before I got used to the track. After a bit, however, I made pretty fair progress, walking between the down pair rails on the right-hand side, so that I could see the head-lights of any train coming towards me. I hadn't gone far before I did a very foolish thing. I slung my rifle over my shoulders, so as to leave my hands free.

I had gone about half a mile or more up the line when a great longing for a pipe came over me. I hadn't had a pipe all day, and as you're a smoker, sir, you know pretty well how I was feeling. As I walked along I took out my pouch, filled my pipe, and then felt in my pocket for a match. After nearly turning it inside out I found one solitary wax vesta. Now, there was a bit of a wind blowing over the moor, and fearful lest I should waste my precious match, I refrained from striking it until I could get behind some shelter. The desired object presently appealed, looming through the darkness, in the shape of a little platelayer's hut on the same side of the line as I was walking, the door facing towards the rails. Getting into the shelter of the doorway I struck the match, and was just about to light my pipe when, as I leaned against the door, to my utter astonishment it opened inwards with my weight, almost precipitating me to the ground, and before I could recover myself the light of the vesta revealed to me the hideous face of No, 36, who was hidin within.

With a snarl he was upon me, and had clutched me by the throat with his strong, bony hands. It was all done so suddenly that I had scarcely time to think of what was happening, and had hardly realised the situation, when I found myself sprawling on my back with the ugly brute on top of me. Of course, I made a mighty effort to defend myself, but I was quite power less in his strong grip.

"Ah," he growled with a curse, as he held me pinned to the ground, "it's you, is it? Well, I've got a few old accounts to settle with you, and I don't think there could be a better opportunity."

"You brute!" I ejaculated, trying to twist myself out of his grasp.

"Ah—  would you? Not so fast, Warder Davis. The tables are turned now, and you're the prisoner."

At this moment something flashing bright in the dim star-light fell out of my pocket and clanged on the gravel ballast of the railway track.

"Good," said No. 36, making a snatch at it, "these, bracelets were meant for me I suppose. Perhaps they'd prove as good a fit on your wrists. At any rate, we'll try. And as we haven't a cell handy to fix you in, we'll fasten you down something secure— do you hear?"

And putting forth ail his strength, in spite of my desperate struggles, he half dragged, half rolled me on to the down track close beside us. Then, kneeling on my chest, he forced my right hand beneath the outer rail between the sleepers, and my left arm over the rail, then there was a sharp click, as with a savage chuckle he snapped the handcuffs over both my wrists, and I realized my terrible position. I was handcuffed down to the rail.

"He jumped up in triumph, felt in my pocket, drew out the key of the handcuffs, and hurled it away.

"How now you white-livered skunk?' he snarled. "I could kill you outright with a knock on the head if I chose. But I'm not going to commit murder, oh, no! I'll leave that to the down express. Do you understand? If it runs at the same time as it used to, it ought to come by here about eleven o'clock, and I guess there'll be a bit of obstruction in its way to-night. Ah! I've got to fix you a bit tighter, my friend, just to make sure, you know."

And he went into the hut, reappearing in a few moments with a piece of rope, which he had, I suppose, previously noticed there.

"You'd feel a bit more comfortable if I tie your feet down too, eh?" he sneered: and, to my horror, he put a loop of rope round my right leg, drew it underneath the inner rail, and then made the end fast to my left ankle, above the rail. I was thus fixed right across the track, and escape from a hideous death see.med impossible But the villain had not finished yet.

"There's just a chance that you might call out," he said, "so I'll tie your mouth up. You can say your prayers just as well with it shut as open, and the sooner you sav' them the better, for you never needed to more."

He stuffed part of my handkerchief into my mouth and tied it round with another bit of rope. Then he proceeded to rifle my pockets.

"Got any loose cash about you?  That's right. I'll take care of it, for it won't do you any good now, I reckon, and you'll have the dying satisfaction of having helped me to get off to London. And now, you skunk of a warder good-night! I told you I'd be the death of you one day, but, by Heaven, I never hoped for such a paying off of old scores as this. Remember, you'll see the head-lights of the engine coming towards you, and hear the roar of the train that's going to squash you. It's a good revenge, isn't it! I'd stay here and see the end of it if I could, only I've no time to spare, so now good-night, Warder Davis, curse you."

And with a brutal kick at my defenceless body he started off in the direction of Westmoor. I could see his bulky form for a moment or two in the dim light, and could hear for several minutes the tread of his feet crunching the gravel on the permanent way. I had no doubt in my mind that he had been making for Westmoor previously and had used the old platelayers hut as a hiding place until it was about time to take a chance of getting on one of the up trains.

My situation was a truly awful one. He was quite right about the down express; it was timed to run through Westmoor just about eleven o'clock. It was past ten now, so that there was not an hour between ine and a hideous death. I lay still for some minutes and tried to compose my mind to think a little. Was there anything I could do? Yes! With an effort I might manage to remove the gag. I pushed my head as far as it would go over the metals, and to my joy was able to undo the knots with my chained hands and to get the handkerchief out of my mouth. This was a relief, certainly, but only a very small one, for it soon dawned upon me that if I yelled my loudest there would be no one within hearing on the lonely moor through which the track ran. To get my hands free was impossible, but there might be a chance for my feet. I began to kick them about, and discovered that the wretch had simply passed the rope between my ankles once round the rail, so that by alternately pulling and kicking and pulling with each foot I could draw it backward and forward on the rail. With the energy of despair I began to work with all my might to fray the rope against the rail, and so set my feet free, I must have kicked away over ha}f an hour— kicked and pulled till I was stiff and in agony, and still the rope held, but I could feel it rubbing away and getting thinner, and I tried to work it so that the friction took place where the rail rested in the 'chair' on the sleeper, so as to have a sharp comer to cut. Fiercely I struggled to get free, but the rope was a strong one, and it seemed as if it would hold for ever. A whistle! Hardly discernible in the distance, but still I knew what it meant. The down express was running through Westmoor station. Fresh struggle— and still the rope held. Then came an ominous rumble in the distance, and there half a mile up the track I could see the glimmer of the engine's head-light. A desperate pull! I hung on to the outer rails with both hands, and pulled with arms and legs like a man on the rack of old—every pipscj.e of the body was strained with feapful tension.

Snap!

The rope broke and my feet were free. There was not a moment to lose: the train was little over half a mile away, and in twenty seconds it would be on me. But a desperate man can do a lot in that time. With a quick movement I rolled over to the outside of the track, so that my left arm came under the rail. Then I threw at full length parallel to the track, feet towards the approaching train, and as far from the rail as possible. At the same moment I drew down my hands on either side of the rails so that the short chain between the steel wristlets was on the top of the rail, the centre being on the inner top edge of the rail where the wheels would strike.

With a roar the train was on me. I expected to have one of my hands cut off, and there came a sharp thrill of pain to both wrists as the leading wheel of the engine struck the chain, while the thought flashed across me that I might not be far enough from the rail to escape being struck in the body.

The passing of that awful train seemed to be an hour. Wheel after wheel ran close to my face with a hideous clatter— until the momentary red glare of the tail-light and a big rush of air told me that the danger had passed. For about five minutes I lay perfectly still, and not till then did I discover that my hands were falling further apart. Scarcely daring to hope. I drew them slowly towards me.

Yes! I was free! The heavy train had snapped the swivel-link that joined the handcuffs, and with the exception of a severe bruising in my wrists, I was perfectly uninjured.

Well, to make a long story short, sir, I toddled to my feet with the most profound feeling of gratitude to Providence that I had ever experienced. And then, weak and nerve shattered as I was, there came upon me the intense desire to recapture the brute who had condemned me, to such an awful death.

My rifle was still with me, and uninjured; so, as well as I could, I set forth in the direction of Westmoor, starting in fright after I had gone a short distance at the noise of a heavy goods train that rumbled past me on the up track.

When got to the station, the platform and offices were closed, but this same goods train was being shunted in the yard preparatory to making a fresh start on its journey towards London. Two or three trucks covered with tarpaulins, were detached, and I fancied I caught a glimpse of a dark figure crouching beside one of them. I stopped and watched, smiling to myself as I saw No. 36 climb into the truck, and disappear beneath the tarpaulin.

Then I went quietly to the brakesman and explained. He, the driver of the engine, a couple of shunters, and myself surrounded the truck, and in a few minutes No. 36 found himself brought to bay, with the man whom he thought dead presenting his rifle within a foot of him.

He saw the game was over and gave in, and that's the end of the yarn. Yes, of course, he was pretty severely punished, but that didn't compensate me for my terrible experience: and now perhaps you don't wonder why I should give a bit of a shudder when an express train passes me in the dark!

__________________

17: "Sir William"

J. J. Bell

1871-1934

Watchman (Sydney) 17 Aug 1911

FOR NIGH on fifteen years stout Miss Primrose and her cousin, slim Miss Butterworth, had dwelt together in Auracaria Cottage, chiefly at the expense of their uncle who, for a longer period, had lived alone in Ivy Cottage, immediately adjoining. Throughout their close neighbourship with their benefactor, their disagreements had been confined to petty bickerings in private; but with the old gentleman's death it seemed as though a very necessary restraint had been removed. The two cottages which had been his property were left, along with his modest fortune, and without conditions, to the ladies, his only suggestion being that the ladies might add to their joint income by letting the vacant dwelling.

Miss Primrose and Miss Butterworth, however, either failed to catch, or pretended to miss the suggestion. Already after some squabbling over details, they had decided to divide the goods and money bequeathed to,them, and to occupy a cottage apiece. The truth was that while not, perhaps, leading a positively luxurious existence during their uncle's protectorate they had, at least, found life easy enough and free enough from worldly care to have become exceedingly selfish; moreover, they had apparently forgotten the struggle of their youthful days, due to a railway disaster which had made them orphans with next to nothing to be orphans on. A little trouble might have renewed the fine comradeship of their youth; their uncle's death itself might have done so, for they both mourned him sincerely, had it not meant such an augmentation of the mere creature comforts which they had grown to value so highly.

And so came their last afternoon together in Auracaria Cottage. On the morrow Miss Butterworth would remove next door, wliere most of her belongings had already been conveyed. It had taken time to decide which lady should remove; and it might have taken longer had not Miss Primrose, who really desired to remain where she was, pretended that she had set her heart on Ivy Cottage until she goaded her cousin into stating her luten'tion of living nowhere else. Whereupon the latter was smartly taken at her word, and the matter settled.

The spinsters sat in the parlour, one on either side of the fireplace, which, the season being summer, was filled with sheaves of brilliant curly papers. Miss Primrose was drinking tea; Miss Butterworth, who loved tea, was drinking cocoa. There had been a long pause in the conversation, which, though often awkward, had not been altogether disagreeable, and now Miss Primrose coughed and said—

"Annabella, I have decided to waive my right to the alarm-clock in the kitchen. You may have it."

This was a concession, but it was made with overmuch patronage.

"Waive your fiddlestick," exclaimed Miss Butterworth rudely. "I don't want a clock that doesn't go except when it's on its side.

"That," said Miss Primrose, controlling herself with difficulty, "is not a very nice way to speak of a gift from our late uncle. I shall certainly keep the clock now."

"Welcome, I'm sure! I wouldn't deprive you for worlds, Rebecca! Anything else to waive to-day!" enquired Miss Butterworth, with ponderous levity.

"No. Everything else that I know of has been apportioned. I merely thought you might like to have the clock. You used to I say you liked its tick," replied her cousin, quietly reproachful.

"Well, I'm sure," Miss Butterworth began in a gentler voice, "I'm sure I didn't mean to—"

Just then the door, which had not been fastened, was slowly pushed open a few inches, and a big, pure white Persian cat, mewing querously, entered the parlour.

"Come away, Sir William," cried Miss Butterworth pleasantly. "Puss, puss! Come here Sir William!"

"Chee— chee— chee—chee, Sir William!" said Miss Primrose. "Here's milk for you. Chee—chee—chee! Puss, puss, puss!" She poured some milk into a saucer, which she set on the floor.

"Cake, Sir William! Sponge-cake!" exclaimed the other, proffering a morsel or the dainty to which the Persian was addicted.

Wiiliam eyed the ladles in turn, then hoisted his tail and walked haughtily from tho room.... .

"I knew he wanted fish, muttered Miss Butterworth, hurrying after him.

"No, cheese is what he came for," cried Miss Primrose, reaching the door behind her cousin.

But both ladies were too late. Sir William having passed into the kitchen, had left the house by the open window.

"I know what he wanted," said slender Miss Butterworth as she returned to her chair. "I must remember to order a fish tomorrow."

"What for?" buxom Miss Primrose inquired, seating herself and panting. "You never eat fish!"

"For Sir William I intend to order the fish," said Miss Butterworth stiffly.

Miss primrose hesitated. Then she said with studied calm:

"I intend to order a new piece of cheese."

"You'll be ill, Rebecca!"

"It will not he eaten by me!"

The cousins eyed each other almost fiercely. Strange to say, in all their previous tusslings they had omitted to argue the possession of Sir William.

An uncomfortable silence ensued. At last Miss Primrose spoke.

"I do not care for insinuations, Annabella. Kindly endeavour to speak in plain language."

"Certainly," said Annabella. "I'm going to have the cat."

"You— are— not!"

"Why not?"

"Because the cat does not belong to you."

Miss Butterworth smiled unpleasantly. "Does it belong to you?"

Miss Primrose bit her lip and clenched her hands. Her cousin's smile was really provoking.

"Annabella," she said presently, "do you remember the circumstances attending the cat's coming to— to this house?"

"It didn't come—it was brought!"

"Well, do you remember "

"Quite well! Uncle came Into tills parlour one evening, and took it out of his pocket, and said, 'There's a kitten for you two frisky old maids!' Yes, I remember perfectly."

Miss Primrose winced, but asked in a distinct voice the question—

"To whom did uncle actually give the cat?"

"To both of us. But I don't suppose Sir William would have lived if it hadn't been for me. That's why I intend to—"

Hiss Primrose held up a shaking right hand, and solemnly said: "Our uncle placed the cat in my charge. He laid it in my lap, and—"

"I was mixing his milk and soda just then, so he couldn't lay it in mine," said Miss Butterworth.

The stout lady quivered. "Annabella," she said solemnly, "which of us is the elder?"

"Ask the mirror!"

"I ask you."

"Well, then, you are! Anybody could tell that!"

A spasm disfigured the face of Miss Primrose.

"At least, I don't make up," she said, meaningly.

Miss Butterworth gasped and cried: "I— I never put anything on my face, except for the midges."

"What packet was that you got from the postman yesterday? What empty bottle was that I saw you throwing into the sea the other night? Aha! Annabella, I've found you out! You're as red as can be!"

"I'm not yellow, anyway!" retorted Annabella, adding not altogether inconsequently, "I'm going to have Sir William, see if I don't."

"Ha! ha!"

"Don't show your tooth like that, Rebecca! I am going to have Sir William, and what is more I'm going to leave this house within an hour!"

Miss Primrose made no attempt to prevent her cousin's going, but the evening that followed was a dreadful one. She sat listening to the sounds from the next house, the sounds suggesting that the new tenant was very busy setting the parlour in order.

About nine o'clock she rang for the little maid who had served her and her cousin for the last two years. The cousins, by the way, had never kept maid after she was sixteen. They had a horror of "followers."

"Beatrice," said Miss Primrose to the girl whoso real name was Agnes, "run into Ivy Cottage and ask Miss Butterworth if you can do anything to help her."

"Yes, mum."

"And Beatrice, has Sir William been in to-night?"

"No, mum. Shall I ask Miss Butterworth?"

"No, no! But if Sir William is there, you can let me know."

Beatrice was not long absent.

"Please, mum," she said on her return, "Miss Butterwortli's compliments, and she doesn't need no help, and her maid's coming in the mornin', and Sir William's sitting at the kitchen fire on a sky blue cushion."

"Had he anything to eat:"

"Yes, mum. He have had some ham— I seen the scraps, and he was havin' a piece o' sole stewed in milk when I seen him.'

"Very well, Beatrice. You may go," said Miss Primrose, suppressing a groan. "Stay, Beatrice! Cut some cheese finely and put it on a plate, and put some milk in a saucer, in case Sir William should some in during the night."

The Persian could enter the cottage at any time by way of a hole with a flap which had been specially cut for him in the back door.

"And, Beatrice!"

"Yes, mum."

"See that his bed is nicely toasted before you retire."

"Yes, mum" said Beatrice, and presently carried out the commands of her mistress, secretly hoping that Sir William would make his abode in the next cottage in the future. He was an incurable thief, though neither of the ladies would ever believe it. and blamed the maid for being wasteful in conseIquence.

On the following morning the cousins spoke to each other over the hedge dividing their little gardens.

At the outset they were more friendly than they had been for years.

"There is only one thing I want to say," said Miss Primrose, after several exchanges of commonplace remarks. "Which is, that I think we ought to give people to understand that we are occupying both cottages out of respect for our late uncle's desire."

"Certainly," Miss Butterworth agreed. "I assure you. I never intended to say anything about your temper, Rebecca."

"Nor your ill-nature, I suppose," muttered Miss Primrose. Aloud— "We must avoid any scandal, whatever we do, Annabella."

"I'm not likely to create any."

"Well, I suppose there is no reason why we should not be good friends— now." Miss Primrose stammered a little over the suggestion.

"None whatever. Better friends than ever we've been!"

"Ah, I don't know, Annabella. When we lived together in a wretched little room in town and worked hard for our bread and butter, I think—"

"Ugh! Don't mention it! Did you have a visit from Sir William last night?"

"How could I, when he was with you?" cried Miss Primrose. "I didn't tempt him with sole stewed in milk!"

"Oho!" the other exclaimed, smiling unkindly. "So you sent Beatrice in to spy!"

"I didn't! I sent Beatrice in to—"

But Miss Buttenvorth turned abruptly and entered Ivy Cottage.

"I've done with Annabella," sighed Miss Primrose to herself. "Where's my hanky?"

That night Sir William paid her a visit, doubtless attracted by the fumes of toasting cheese, and after seeing him comfortably settled in his padded basket, with a dish of cream in case he felt thirsty before morning,

Miss Primrose carefully locked the exit of the back door.

At two in the morning the house resounded with hideous squallings, and while Miss Primrose lay quaking, afraid to get up in the dark, and calling upon Beatrice to let Sir William out, she was further distracted by frantic thumpings on the other side of the wall.

When next she met her cousin the latter referred sympathetically to Sir William, and spoke of the S.P.C.A., to which both ladies were subscribers, asking satirically If the former had decided to discontinue her subscriptlon.

To these cruel remarks Miss Primrose could only gulp, and call her cousin a horrid thing— which was not, perhaps the most effective retort possible.

NEARLY a year had passed, and the breach between these two middle-aged ladles, if it had not widened, had certainly not narrowed.

Over and over again they had seemed to be about to give way to milder feelings; and had.it not been.for Sir William, a reconciliation would probably have taken place. But Sir William, foolish as it may appear, stood between them. They had shared everything else, but they could not share the cat in any way satisfactory to them both. They had always been considered rather eccentric by the people in the village, and had made but, few acquaintances and no friends; and since the death of their uncle, their last relative, there had been remarks to the effect that Sir William was the only living object upon which they were capable of bestowing affection.

The Persian, on his part, accepted their respective favours freely, if not gratefully, and did not evince the slightest preference for either benefactress. He appeared to realise that while the one supplied excellent fish, the other provided capital cheese, and that he could choose his meals at any time. If he realised anything more, he certainly gave no indication of his doing so.

ON A FINE evening in late spring, Miss Primrose was seated at the parlour window, knitting industriously and trying not to feel lonely. She had not seen her cousin for several days, but the last conversation, like most of their conversations, had contained something which still rankled in her memory.

Her cousin had hinted only too broadly that cheese was rapidly ruining Sir William's constitution, and that his death would lie at her— Miss Primrose's, door.

"How much cheese can you eat without being ill afterwards?" Miss Buttenvorth had demanded, and Miss Primrose, to whom the mere odour of cheese was upsetting, had nothing to say. And now she could not get rid of the thought that Sir William really had been rather queer of late— more sluggish and less keen of appetite in the past.

Her dismal reflections were Interrupted by the entrance of Beatrice. Beatrice had passed the age of sixteen, but somehow her mistress had not parted with her. After all, familiarity may breed something other than contempt, especially where it is combined with a sense of loneliness.

"Please, mum," said the girl. "have you seen Sir William to-day?"

"No, I haven't seen him for three days. Why?"

"Neither have Miss Butterworth. Her girl—"

"What?" cried Miss Primrose, aghast.

"Her girl says she thinks he's lost, and she heard someone say he were seen up the hill behind the house, chasin' the young rabbits, and Miss Butterworth have gone to look for him. She's afraid he's caught hisself in a trap."

The knitting fell from Miss Primrose's hands.

"A trap! Oh, heavens! Beatrice, bring me my stout boots— quick!"

Ten minutes later Miss Primrose was panting along the hillside, slipping and stumbling, squelching through boggy places.

"Sir William! Sir William! Chee— chee— chee—chee!" She gasped again and again, but no feline cry rewarded her anxiety.

After an hour's frantic search she sank exhausted on a clump of damp moss, and sat with trembling limbs and streaming brows, whispering hoarsely, "Sir William! Sir William! Chee— chee— chee— chee!" in a hopeless, helpless fashion.

It was beginning to grow dark, but she did not notice the change in the sky till her cousin's voice startled and roused her. "Get up, Rebecca, and don't go on moaning and groaning in that silly fashion. What are you doing here?"

"I'm looking for Sir William," said Miss Primrose feebly. "Why! How did you find him?" she cried, jumping up at the sight of the beloved in her cousin's arms.

"Not by sitting and making noises," returned Miss Butterworth. "He was caught in a trap but I think he's more hungry than hurt. I wish you'd take him, and give me your arm. I've twisted my foot."

"Oh, Anna!" exclaimed Miss Primrose, removing her gaze from Sir William to her cousin's white face. "How did you do it?"

"Don't know. Slipped, I suppose. Good thing I'm not your weight, or my leg would have broken. Here! take Sir William, and give me your arm. Don't sympathise— don't cackle— I've enough to bear."

It was a terrible journey, but they reached home at last.

The two little maids were together, talking anxiously, at the gate of Auracarla Cottage and on arriving there Miss Butterworth exclaimed, "I'm a silly thing," and fainted away.

"Into my house," said Miss Primrose,  promptly, and dropped Sir William, who ran on ahead and attacked the cheese awaiting him.

MISS BUTTERWORTH reclined on the parlour sofa and sipped tea, although she had been offered cocoa. Her cousin waited upon her tremulously.

"Is your foot any easier, Anna?" Miss Primrose inquired for the hundredth time.

"Oh, yes; a great deal. You're much more upset than I am. Why didn't you take me to Ivy Cottage when I made an idiot of myself?"

"Perhaps— perhaps," stammered Miss Primrose, "perhaps I shouldn't have taken advantage of— of—"

"My helplessness," said Miss Butterworth with a thin smile.

Miss Primrose gave an unlovely gulp. "I— I wanted to have you in the house again," she said unevenly.

The other appeared about to speak, but checked herself, and there was a heavy silence.

"What about Sir William?" she said at last.

"Sir William?" cried Miss Primrose.

"Good gracious! I forgot—" She rang the bell, muttering incoherently.

Beatrice appeared.

"Is Sir William recovering, Beatrice?"

"I think he have, mum. He ett all the cheese and drank all the milk mum."

"Bring him here, Beatrice."

"Yes, mum."

The door shut.

"Anna,," said Miss Primrose huskily, "you'll stay here till your foot is better?"

Miss Butterworth hesitated. Then she said coolly. "All right, Becky, I suppose I shall."

At the old familiar, ugly name, Miss Primrose was about to burst into tears, when her cousin said quietly and not unkindly—

"Don't be silly, Becky. I've suffered agony, and now I'm almost free from pain, so I may be saying more agreeable things than I really mean. Still—"

The maid entered. "Sir William ran out of the kitchen and up the hill afore I could stop her— I mean he," panted Beatrice, who had evidently been giving chase.

"Oh!" cried Miss Primrose helplessly.

"He'll likely turn up at Ivy Cottage later on," said her cousin. "That's all, Beatrice."

"Just go to bed, Beatrice," said the girl's mistress, recovering her speech.

The cousins were alone again.

Redder and redder grew the countenance of Miss Primrose.

"You don't mind staying here, do you?"

"Not a bit. I'm quite comfortable.".

"I'm glad— Anna; I've something to say to you."

"Yes?"

"I want to say that I— that I waive my right to Sir William. Come back to Auracaria Cottage, Anna."

Miss Butterworth put down her cup.

"It seems to me," she remarked reflectively, "that Sir William waives his right to either of us." Then her voice changed. "Come, here, Becky. It's not good living alone. And it's ten years, nearly, since I kissed you. Thank you; I accept Sir William— on loan."

_______________

18: The Story of the Chief of Police

William Le Queux

1864-1927

Darling Downs Gazette, 15 April 1911

OURS IS TRULY a life crammed full of adventure.

I had been despatched on a secret mission to Nice, the town of violets, mimosa and marrons glaces. Carnival was at its height and as on that sunny February atternoon I sat with my friend Paolo Ferri, the world famous Chief of Italian Secret Police, sipping a mazagran on the pavement before the Cafe de la Regence, a gay laughter-loving world surged up asd down the tree-lined Avenue de la Gare.

My companion, a refined, gentlemanly-looking, well-dressed man with a pair of shrewd brown eyes and dark brown board, smoked his favourite Toscano cigar and smiled at two laughing girls of the people who, in carnival dress as pierrettes, had tripped past arm-in-arm on their way to the Battle of Flowers, which was about to open down the palm-lined Promenade des Anglais, beside the blue tideless sea.

Ferri, of course, knew my position in the British Secret Service, just as I his. More than once in the course of inquiries had we assisted each other. Though I had not told him the reason I was in Nice, just as he himself had been silent regarding the motive of his own presence there, yet I had been despatched from Whitehall at almost a moment's notice with instructions to endeavour to solve a most obscure and delicate problem.

As Henry Hatherleigh, author and traveller, I wandered over the Continent careless, erratic and irresponsible, in order to 'pick up' material for my books, thefore my true calling as secret service agent was never suspected.  The telegrams I so constantly sent to my devoted brother in London usually had a prearranged meaning, and were handed on by special messenger to the calm, clever, discriminating chief of the confidential branch of the service.

Presently draining our glasses, we rose and strolled across the pretty Place Messona— wherein stood the giant enthroned effigy of King Carnival— until we reached the grand stand erected in the Promenade.

The far-famed Battle of Flowers had already commenced. The occupants of the double line of decorated carriages slowly passing each other were engaged in. a battle royal with bunches of violets, carnations, and other spring flowers, while as they passed the grand stand we also joined in the fray. The gay world had run riot on that brilliant afternoon.

For two whole miles there were rows of laughing faces. The sun was bright and warm, the sea a brilliant blue; and the air laden with the sweet fragrance of mimosa and violets.

Standing together, we had been for some time watching the continuous procession of beautiful decorated equipages, when of a sudden, seated in a victoria beneath a canopy of roses, the whole carriage hidden by the blossoms to the spokes of the wheels, came an extremely handsome, dark-haired girl in a cream gown of the latest mode, with a big hat to match. She was not throwing flowers, but held up her sunshade in order to ward off the many bunches of violets flung at her. Her appearance was the signal for a tremendous outburst of applause, for her carriage eclipsed all others in point of taste, while she herself was far more beautiful than any in the crowd of pretty women about us.

As she passed she chanced to catch sight of me and smiled, whereat I lifted my hat.

'Ah! Then you know "La Contessina"— the Little Countess— eh?' exclaimed Ferri in English looking at me in surprise. 'If she knew that I was here, in Nice, she would not dare show herself like that! She would fly by the next train — or probably by steamer to America. I am here to watch her and— well, I may as well be frank with you, my friend—' he whispered in my ear, 'to arrest her on a charge of murder.'

'Murder!' I gasped, staring at him. 'Why, my dear Ferri, Olga Ostrow is a great friend of mine! She is surely not guilty of that!'

But my companion smiled mysteriously, replying:—

'If it were not to arrest her, caro mio, I should not be here, in Nice.'

And the eyes of both of us followed tine rose-embowered carriage as it disappeared around the bend. I took him aside, away from the laughing crowd, and as we walked over the wide asphalted promenade beside the sea, I asked him to tell me in confidence something concerning the affair.

'Well, it's a complete mystery,' he said. 'Briefly explained, it is this. The Countess Olga, with her brother, occupies a pretty flat—'

'In the Via Lombardia in Rome. I've been there,' I said, quickly.

'On the twenty-first of last month there arrived at the Grand Hotel a Frenchman named Jules Delannoy, from Nolay, in the Côte d'Or. Apparently he was a friend of the fair Russian, for it is known that she had called and dined with him at his hotel two years ago, and that she had been seen driving with him in the Corso.  On the morning following his arrival at the Grand the concierge of the house in which she lives called to the Questura and made a curious statement to me. He said that on the previous evening, about eight o'clock, he was passing up the staircase when he heard the sounds of a violent altercation in the Countess's flat. He listened and heard distinctly a female voice uttering reproaches and threats. Following that, he heard a man's loud cry of pain, and then all became silent. Instead of raising an alarm at once he had descended the stairs and watched for somebody to leave the place. In an hour the Countess herself came down, ordered a cab and, carrying only a handbag, left. Undecided how to act the old fellow, who is somewhat lacking in intelligence, waited until the morning before he informed me of the occurrence. I, at once, drove round to the place with two agents of the brisado mobile, and on breaking open the door of the flat found concealed in a small box-room at the rear, the body of the Frenchman Delannoy. He had been stabbed to the heart.'

'Did you discover any motive?'

'Yes. On examining the dead man's dress-coat, I found that the lining across the back had been slit with a knife, while there was another slit behind the left Iapel. The victim evidently carried something in secret, and had been killed in order to secure it.'

'Killed by the Contessina, you allege?'

'Yes. She was the only person there, her maid Anna having been given leave to go to her home at Cologne on the previous day, while her brother— I have ascertained by cabling to Chicago— is there on business. She was the only person in the flat, and the only person who left it.'

'And she came here?'

'Her baggage came on to Nice three days previously. She had made every preparation for a long absence, having told the concierge two days earlier that she was going to Russia, and would not return to Rome again this winter. I spent nine days in making full inquiry before coming here. She has, I find rented the Villa Stephanie up in Carabacel and engaged its staff of servants. She is always popular here, it seems, during Carnival.'

'Your story surprises me,' I exclaimed. 'Suspicion would be very strong against her, or you would not be so confident, I know.'

'There seems no doubt, cara mio,  that the pretty countess has possessed herself of something belonging to this Jules Delonnay, who, as far as I am able to make out, was himself something of a mystery. I am making inquiries regarding him, but cannot find out much, the particulars he gave when registering himself at his hotel being evidently incorrect. Fortunately, however, the Contessina forgot to destroy one thing before her flight. In her photograph-album was his picture, and I found it. Here it is,' and he took a carte de visite portrait from his pockot-book and handed it to me.

I halted, staggered by its sight.

'What!' he cried. 'You know him!'

'Yes,' was my reply.  'But are you sure— quite certain that this photograph is of the dead man?'

'Positive. I myself compared it with the features of the victim.'

'Then you are wrong, my dear Ferri,' I said, decisively. 'The Contessina did not kill him. He was one of her best friends. To him she owed much— her very life in fact.'

'Va bene. You are her champion,' laughed the famous Chief of Police. 'But tell me who and what was this Delonnay.'

I hesitated. To explain was to commit a breach of confidence. Yet I felt that at all hazards, I must prevent the arrest and accusation of that woman who was one of my personal friends. Truth to tell, Olga Ostrow, the pretty dark-haired daughter of Count Paul Ostrow of Vilna, was an agent of the British Secret Service, who had on several occasions supplied us with important information regarding the political undercurrents both in Russia and France.

'Well,' I said rather lamely, 'Delonnay is a man I know— an Englishman of French parentage. His name was George Girdlestone.'

'Benissimo,' cried my friend. 'This is most fortunate! What causes you to be so certain that I have make the mistake— eh? What proof is there of her innocence? They were friends. She know that he curried something concealed in his clothes. They quarrelled and she struck him down. I have the knife— an ancient Venetian stilletto— which has been identified as hers!'

'If she killed him, then what did she intend doing with the body?'

'Probably intended to return in a few weeks with a big trunk, ostensibly to remove some other belongings, and to send it away by raiTin that.'

And, replacing the photograph, he lit a cigarette and turned his face towards where the glorious sun was slowly setting in the calm sea behind Antibes.

'Was he wealthy?' he asked a moment later. 'Where shall I find trace of him.'

'You will find no trace of him, my friend,' was my slow reply.

'You are concealing something, Signor Hatherleigh. Why?' he asked, looking at me sharply..

'Of necessity,' I said, 'This charge against the Contessina has rather upset me,' I added apologetically.

'Naturally,' replied the Chief of Police, 'Five of my cleverest officers have been engaged on the case and all are unanimous. In the house live only three other families— all of them highly respectable Italians. There was no back way out of the house, and the quostion of descending from the window by a ladder has already been dismissed as impossible. No. Depend upon it that your little Russian friend, whom all the gay world here to-day is cheering, killed this man, George Girdlestone, in order to steal either some money or documents which she know he carried. The two cuts in the lining of his coat are sufficient evidence that search was made for it.'

I wanted time to think. What Ferri had just told me had revealed to me something of which I had never dreamed. The truth was that Girdlestone, a captain in the Engineers was, like myself, a member of the British Secret Service. He was missing, and we believed that he had disappeared in Nice. It was from that place he had been sent south to try and obtain news of him. Yet here was undeniable evidence that he had fallen a victim of a plot, and had been foully done to death!

Together we strolled back towards the grandstand close to the Jetee Promenade, or pier, and there we watched the judges award the prizes— the first to the Countess Olga Ostrow.

Flushed with pleasure and excitement the sweet-faced young woman drove slowly up to the judge's tribune, and there received the white-and-gold silk banner for the best decorated carriage— a prize she had secured annually for three seasons in succession. A thousand throats acclaimed her, and amid much clapping of hands and throwing of flowers she slowly passed, again laughing gaily at me over her shoulder, triumphant once more.

At the door of the Municipal Casino I parted company with my friend, arranging to meet him again at seven, and go over to Monte Carlo to dine and spend the evening. Then I walked back to the Hôtel de Franco where I stood pondering. What had poor Girdlestone carried concealed in the lining of his dress coat? What could its nature have been that he should have been killed for its possession? Poor fellow! He had been one of my closest and best friends— a splendid linguist, a smart officer, and a cosmopolitan to the backbone.

THAT NIGHT I dined with the famous Chief of Police at the Hôtel de Paris at Monte Carlo, and afterwards idled about the rooms, hot and overcrowded, as they always are in the height of the season.

'What do you intend doing regarding Olga Ostrow?' I asked him point-blank, as we descended through the moon-lit gardens to the station.

'I have already done as I have intended,' was his brief reply. 'She is under arrest.'

'Arrested?' I gasped, staring at him.

'Si, Signore. She is detained at the central police bureau in Nice, and I have applied for her immediate extradition, and she shall be sent to our frontier at Ventimiglia to-morrow. From thence I shall convey her back to Rome.'

'This is injudicious!' I declared. 'But if you have arrested her I ask one thing— I ask it as her friend. Let there tor the present be no publicity.'

'There has been none. I have made the concierge at the Via Lombardia promise secrecy. Nothing has leaked out to the Press.'

While we walked up and down the railway platform awaiting the express for Nice he told me a number of additional facts concerning the tragedy— facts which I was compelled to admit within myself were very convincing of Olga's guilt.

My intention was to have called at the Villa Stephanie that night, but Ferri had forstalled me by arresting her immediately after her triumph at the Battle of Flowers. On my return to my hotel I packed my traps, scribbled a note to my friend and at eight o'clock next morning left direct for Rome, by way of Genoa and Pisa.

Quickly I went to the big white house with the green sun shutters in the Via Lombardia and discovered the names of the three other residents, none of whom had any knowledge of the strange tragedy which had occurred in the Countess's apartment. They were all persons of the highest repute.

One was Orlandini, the Deputy for Forli, another Floria, a banker, and the third, a well-known member of the Bourse. The further I carried my inquiries, however, the blacker became the suspicion against the Countess. Yet what motive could she have for killing the man who had acted as her friend— the man who on one occasion in Moscow had given her warning of impending arrest after the recent rioting had enabled her to escape from the country. What was it that had been abstracted from the dead man's coat?

Ferri had returned to Rome, and had brought with him the pretty Russian who was awaiting trial. Nobody in the Eternal City was aware of her return, otherwise a great sensation would have been caused in society, where she was so well-known.

I saw the Chief of Police at the Bureau, and he told me that she had protested her innocence, declaring that she was totally unaware of Girdlestone's death.

'She endeavours to prove an extraordinary alibi,' he laughed, as he puffed at:his cigarette; 'one that certainly will not hold water at the Assize Court.'

'You have not discovered what was stolen from his coat?'

'Unfortunately, no,' was my friend's reply, as he slowly stroked his beard. 'She will make no admission, though I have repeatedly interrogated her.'

Next morning I called upon the banker Floria at his office at the Via Vittoria and, representing myself as an agent of an insurance company, inquired whether he knew his neighbour the Countess. He told me that he was not on visiting terms with her. She was a lady who kept herself very much to herself, and the only person in. the house she visited was the Signora Orlandini, wife of the Deputy in question who lived in the flat above the Countess; and, full of apologies, made inquiry regarding her neighbour who, I informed her in confidence, was about to insure her life for a considerable amount.

'Certainly, signore,' replied the stout elderly wife of the Deputy. 'I know the Countess. She is most charming— wealthy, I believe, for she only spends the winter months in Rome. I became acquainted with her through my brother, Hugo Halfinger, who sometimes comes to visit me.'

'Halfinger,' I repeated.

'Yes. He lives in Zurich. Do vou know him?' she asked quickly. 'Here is his photograph,' and she pointed to a framed cabinet standing upon a table in the shadow. I glanced at it, and then, after a few moments reflection remarked—'

'The Countess is on the Riviera just now. I believe. '

'Yes. She left quite recently, and will return this season. She came to say good-bye to me before leaving. Hugo chanced to be staying with us. He was passing through on his way to Palermo. He and she are great friends.'

The Deputy s wife was evidently very proud of her acquaintance with the 'Little Countess.'

So after some further conversation. I demanded a pardon for my  apparent inquisitiveness and left, driving straight to a telegraph office, where I despatched a message in cipher to London, asking for an immediate response. It was handed to me in my hotel just before midnight. and when I slowIy deciphered it I sat staggered at the amazing truth that had now become revealed.

Next day I hastened on to the Bureau of Police and on entering Ferri's private cabinet sombre, green-painted room of secrets, asked a favour— that he would interrogate the Countess in my presence. At first he demurred, but when I explained that I desired to clear up one or two important points he at last acceded, and ringing his bell, told the polico officer who entered to bring the accused before him.

Ten minutes later the Little Countess, dressed in black, very pale and wan, entered between two carabineers. When she saw me she started, exclaiming in French: — 'Ah I M'sieur Hatherleigh! You—you know me— you will speak in my favour, will you not? I beg of you!'

'The Signor Hatherleigh desires to ask you one or two question, Contessina,' said Ferri in that cold, formal voice of his.

'Yes,' I said, standing beside the Chief of Police, who was seated at his table.  'You were friendly, Contessina with Jules Delannoy— or to call him by his right name, George Girdlestone.'

'I was. He was one of my best friends. They say he was found dead in my apartment after I left! But it is amazing. I never saw him. He had not been in Rome for nearly two years— to my knowledge.'

'When did you last see him?'

'In Paris last Octobor. He was staying at the Elysée Palace Hotel.'

'Describe your actions during, say, the last hour you were in Rome, immediately before you left for Nice,' I urged.

'The last hour,' she repeated hesitating reflectively. 'Well, I descended to the next floor to wish farewell to my friend, the Signora Orlandini. Her husband was at a sitting of the Chamber, but her brother Herr Halfinger was there.'

'You know Halfinger— eh? What was his real name?'

'Isaac Goldberg,' she replied. 'I have known him for some years. While we were sitting togetner, signor Orlandini entered and wished me farewell, his wife leaving the room to speak with the servants.'

'And who is this Goldberg?' I asked, adding, 'You can tell Signor Ferri all that you know.'

'I have ascertained only recently that he is a German secret agent.'

'And now,' I said, turning to the Chief of Police, 'I think I can explain the mystery. Last October, in Paris, the Contessina introduced this man Goldberg— who is an unscrupulous, adventurer— to poor Girdestone, who is in the same service as myself. Goldberg had ascertained Girdlestone's intention to visit Rome, and call unexpectedly upon the Contessina. He came at once and told his sister of the impending visit. On the night in question, while the Contessina was wishing farewell to them, the Deputy's wife standing at the window, watched Girdlestone alight from a cab whereupon she once made excuse to leave the room and descended to the Countess's flat, entered with a false key with which she had already provided herself. When Girdlestone rang the bell, the woman Orlandini opened, the door. At first the meeting was a cold one, but quickly there were recriminations regarding an affair which had occurred in Germany when suddenly, without warning, the woman struck him down with the old Venetian stiletto which had hung on the wall in the hall. Then, after securing what she had desired, she hid the body in the back room, whore the Contessina would not see it before her departure, and removed all traces of her crime. Afterwards she quickly slipped upstairs and rejoined her guest.'

'And what actual proof have you of this?' inquired the famous official, his dark brows narrowing.

'This,' and I produced a cipher text, my secret message, which stated that confidential information from Berlin had been received to the effect that the secret agent, Isaac Goldberg, had, a few days ago, sold to the German Intelligence Department for twenty thousand marks a, copy of the cipher used by our British Secret Service, which had been the property of Mr. George Girdlestone. The poor fellow was known to have usually carried the thin little cipher-book sewn in the lining of his dress-coat.'

The Little Countess, who gave answers to Ferri's rapid questions, was a  few minutes later accorded her liberty, while Ferri drove at once to the Via Lombardia to arrest the sister of Isaac Goldberg. He found the door of her bedroom locked, and on forcing it open discovered tne ffuiity women lying m her chair dead from an overdose of choral.

For some months Goldberg was hunted by Ferri and his agents backwards and forwards across Europe, eventually being cornered in Rotterdam, where he committed suicide by throwing himself into the harbour at the Boomjes.

On account of poor Girdlestone's death and the theft of the cipher an entirely new one has now been placed in operation.

_____________________

19: Arrested on Suspicion

Andrew Forrester Jr.

(Pseudonym; author's identity unknown)

The Revelations of a Private Detective, 1863

I may as well say, at once, that this statement never could have been made had I not been, as I remain, an admirer of Edgar Allan Poe; and if ever I have time, I hope to show that his acts were the result, not so much of a bad, as a diseased mind. For one thing, I believe his eyes were affected with an inequality of sight, which, in itself, was enough to overbalance a very exciteable brain.

But Poe has nothing to do with my statement, except as its prompter. My name is John Pendrath (Cornish man, as I dare say you see in a moment), my age is twenty-eight, and I live with my sister Annie. We are all that are left of our family, which you must see by the name was equally good and old. I need not say what I am; because, though I feel no shame for my work, I do not care about it, and hope, some day, when the Lord Chancellor wakes up, to be able to go back to Cornwall.

However, it seems I am writing about myself, and that is not my intention; which, indeed, is to show how much individual good such a writer as even the condemned Edgar Poe can do, and even on this side of the Atlantic.

As I and my sister cannot afford a house of our own, we live in apartments— two bedrooms and a sitting-room, generally second floor; Annie having the room behind our parlour, and I camping in a garret. I do not say we are very happy, because of our chancery affair; but we are generally cheerful— always so, except when we hear about costs, which is all we do hear of our famous suit.

When we had been in Aylesbury Terrace, Bayswater, about six weeks— on the second floor— I was coming home as usual, when, in the ordinary way, I found Annie at the usual meeting-place.

"Annie," said I, "what's the matter? Have you heard any good news?"

"No, Jack; but when I don't come to meet you, and I run down to open the door, you look twice before you give me my Cornwall kiss."

"Why, Annie," said I, "what do you mean?" for I hate a mystery without a statement. This arises, I suppose, through my liking for mathematics.

"Jack, dear," said she, "I have a double."

"No, Annie," I replied, "that can't be, or I shall go courting."

"Upon my word, Jack," said sister Annie, "I felt inclined to ask myself whether I had gone out and come home with a stout lady, aged forty, in black silk, when I saw them come to the door: and now I've left them behind, under our rooms, I ask myself— in fun, you know— whether I have come out to meet you."

Of course then, I understood. Annie had made a statement.

"Oh," said I, "a mother, with her daughter, apparently, has taken the first floor of No. 10, Aylesbury Terrace, and the supposed daughter is certainly something like you."

"That is the history itself, John," said sister Annie, "if you take out apparently; for I heard the younger call the elder, 'ma, dear'; and I am sure they have taken the first floor, because the door was open as I came down, and I could not help seeing that they were eating slices of bread and marmalade."

"Oh!" replied I; for I could say nothing else.

And when I saw the young person come up the house steps next morning (Sunday), it seemed to me that she resembled Annie in some degree; but my sister— like most women I think, had exaggerated the likeness. She would have passed for Annie with a stranger, but not with me.

Annie was also wrong in saying they had taken the first floor. The mother (apparent), alone lived in our house, and the daughter, said to be married, lived elsewhere.

Well, I hope my sister Annie has no more curiosity than most women; but, as I am away all day, and she is lonely, I can't blame her for looking out of the window, though I have, perhaps, sometimes told her it was a pity she could not find something better to do. So, she could not help noticing four daily facts:—

1. That the younger woman came every morning.

2. That the mother and daughter (apparent) went out together.

3. That they seldom left the house two days running in the same clothes, and frequently exchanged their cloaks and shawls on the same day.

4. That the occupant of the first floor always came home alone.

I put these premises before myself— though, perhaps, it would be, as a rule, below a man to interfere in such matters as these— and I came to this conclusion:— That the husband of the daughter had quarrelled with the mother; that, therefore, the mother and daughter went about together, while the husband was away at his business; and that they were rather vulgar, well-off women, who liked to go about and show their finery.

I had no need to tell Annie to avoid Mrs. Mountjoy and her daughter, Mrs. Lemmins. She felt neither was a companion for her. I mention this because Mrs. Mountjoy made advances to Annie, which, however, ended on her side; for in spite of the assurances of Mrs. Mountjoy's respectability by our landlady, Mrs. Blazhamey, Annie and I kept our own opinions.

I suppose Mrs. Mountjoy had been in the house about a month, when I noticed a little blue-stoned ring on Annie's left hand. Of course I said nothing about it, since she did not, though I saw it was new. I am not one of those men who pry into women's actions. You know we do not like them to pry into ours.

Well, the thunderclap came as suddenly as I am about stating its particulars to you. I was at work, when a cab drove up to the door, and out came Mrs. Blazhamey. I shoved her into the waiting-room for the public, and then listened for her to speak. The poor woman seemed quite overwhelmed for some moments, and though I did not move or utter a word, I dare say I was white enough.

"Oh, sir," at last, she said, "Miss Annie's took up for shopliftin'!"

If you ask me how I felt, I cannot tell you. But I am sure of this— that within ten seconds I was thinking wholly of my sister. I know Mrs. Blazhamey believes me to this day a brute; but I hope I am not cynical when I say, that most of the people who give way to a deal of emotion generally seem to have a quantity of big I's mixed up with their grief. I dare say, though, I am a cold sort of man.

What was to be done? See Annie, if possible. It was then ten minutes to four, the hour at which we closed. I obtained an easy permit to leave, and jumped into Mrs. Blazhamey's cab. I did not speak, after learning whither we had to go, till we met a hansom cab, into which I and the poor woman with me exchanged.

Of course, I am not going to give the particulars of the meeting. I have only to state facts, so I will only say that Annie, after a little while, was almost as cool as myself. She had been arrested at three, and now it was half-past four. That she would not be taken before the magistrate till half-past eleven the next morning was the first news I gained. Then I asked the inspector on duty, and the policeman who had brought Annie to that place, for the particulars of the case.

They were these: The prisoner, Annie— do not suppose I am going to conceal any fact, so I say prisoner— had been shoplifting the district for some time, in company with a companion about forty years of age. The prisoner had been identified by a jeweller who had been robbed; and one of the rings stolen from his shop was found on her left hand— it being sworn to by a private mark.

I may tell you that this statement was given to me with mock gravity by the inspector, on my calm representation that it was a case of mistaken identity. I need not add that I know my sister ran no chance of condemnation; but scandal has always got some weight, and therefore I had two ends to meet— her immediate liberation, and the arrest of the true depredators.

I need not state that both Annie and I saw how the ground lay— she had been arrested for Mrs. Lemmins (so called); and in a moment I comprehended the daily change of dress, and the return of the woman Mountjoy alone in order to avoid the greater chance of detection after a robbery by remaining with her companion.

Annie comprehended my warning glance as our eyes met, when the inspector, in the charging-office, stated the case; and I have no doubt he thought we knew the suspicion was strong. But I think I staggered him when I said— "Do thieves usually wear the jewellery they steal?"

"Good bye, Annie," I said; and I could not trust myself to kiss her— nor did she offer to touch my cheek.

Now, what was to be done? Here were the facts. Annie could not be released till the next day, and I had about eighteen hours in which to work for her, and procure the arrest of the women going by the names respectively of Mountjoy and Lemmins. Had they taken the alarm? If so, how long? If not, what extent of time would they require in which to learn how matters stood— when might they infer my sister and I would suspect them? So far, there had passed but two hours and a-half since the arrest. Had they heard of it in that time?

"Can I have a detective in my employ, if you please?" I said to the inspector.

"Two," the official said; who, in spite of the calmness of apparent fact against Annie Pendrath, was, I saw, interested by my action.

"One," I said; and a soft-looking, quiet, almost womanly man, with fair hair and weak, soft blue eyes, a man about thirty-five, was placed at my disposal.

We three— myself, the constable (named Birkley), and Mrs. Blazhamey— left that station in a cab called, and then I said—

"Mrs. Blazhamey, the real thieves are your precious drawing-room lodger and her friend."

"What, Mrs. Mountjoy!" screamed our landlady; "why, she's a lady."

"So she may be, but she's a thief."

"Then out o' my house she goes the moment I gets home."

Of course, this was just the kind of answer I expected. I had balanced it this way: if I do not tell Blazhamey, she will carry the whole history up to Mountjoy the moment we reach home; while if I inform her, she will put the woman on the alert.

"Mrs. Blazhamey," said I, "will you make five pounds? Yes, I see you will. Go to your daughter's at Kensington-park— don't come home till half-past ten, and I'll pay the note down to-morrow at twelve."

Of course, she made a thousand objections; but she was packed off, at last, in another cab, and I and the policeman drove to Aylesbury Terrace.

"Policeman," said I, "if this woman is still in the house, she must only leave it in your company. I'll take the responsibility of charging her; but I don't want you to take her (if she's there) till I give you the word. I want to catch her friend."

"Lor', sir! do yer think her frind'll turn up, and do yer think she's there? Lor' bless yer, sir! they takes an 'int in a hurry. They've hooked!"

"If she is still there," I said, "will you watch opposite till I've put a canary cage in the second-floor front right-hand window, looking into, and not from the street?"

The blue-eyed detective, the most innocent-looking man I ever saw, opened his azure eyes; and the end of it was, that he agreed to my proposal, which was but natural.

"It may be hours you'll have to wait," I said.

"Days," replied the man, with the best laconicism I ever witnessed.

We left the cab before reaching the house, and then separated to opposite sides of the street. It struck seven as I went up the garden path.

There she was, at the window, reading a yellow-covered book.

She could not have taken the alarm, I thought, or she would not be reading. I had up the servant directly. Did she know why her mistress had left the house in the afternoon?

"No," the girl replied. "She was very much flustered, and only said, 'It can't be— it can't be.' "

She (witness) did not know the beginning of the affair, because she had been out on an errand, and when she came back, missus had her every-day bonnet on. She went out with a policeman. I may here add, that Annie had sent the policeman to our lodgings to Mrs. Blazhamey; having forethought enough not to send to me at the establishment. I than asked the girl whether Mrs. Mountjoy was in at the time.

"No," the girl said; "she com'd in at five."

Had any letter arrived for her?

"No— not even a note, mister," the girl replied.

Now, I could have had Mountjoy arrested at once, but I had learnt that the criminal classes are, as a rule of business, very faithful to each other, and therefore I felt that the apprehension of Mountjoy might prevent that of Lemmins. If the latter heard of Annie's arrest first, I felt sure that Mountjoy would be in some way informed of the matter; while if our fellow-lodger was the first to acquire the knowledge, the accomplice would be in some way warned. The priority of information would chiefly depend upon this condition— to the residence of which woman was my sister nearest when she was arrested?

I went to the window, after dismissing the servant, and there was that blue-eyed man, who no one could take for a police-officer, eating nuts, and with a couple of newspapers under his right arm. I saw Mrs. Mountjoy was safe, but it was her accomplice I wanted to encompass.

Nothing occurred up to ten minutes to eight, except Mrs. Mountjoy calling for some warm water; but at that time a woman limped up the garden, and carrying a basket of clothes, which, it seemed to me, was just home from the laundress. She did not come in, but she left the basket, and quietly went her way.

Almost immediately after she had closed the gate, the detective opened it, and before he reached the door I had my hand on the lock.

"Quick!" he said, pushing past me; "that's a 'complice— the letter's in the wash."

The girl was coming out of the drawing-room, having taken in the basket, as I ran down to the door; and as the policeman pushed past me and up the stairs without the waste of a moment, I am quite sure the basket had not been carried into the room more than a quarter of a minute, when the officer followed it.

Half a glance satisfied the man. The linen on the top of the basket had been roughly turned over. There was no letter in Mrs. Mountjoy's hand, but I saw it was trembling. She was seated in the chair near the window, exactly as I had seen her when I came home, but the book she had been reading was on the table.

The officer looked from me to the basket, flinging an expression into his blue eyes I never should have thought could characterize them; and then turning to the woman, he said—

"Come— the game's up."

"I don't understand you," said the woman.

"I does," added the officer; and continued to me— "will you go and fetch a cab, sir? I dare say the lady'ud rather not walk."

Upon the removal and charging of the woman I need not dilate, as those circumstances have nothing to do with my statement.

What I wanted was the letter, which I felt sure, without the help of the policeman, had been brought amongst the linen.

She had not had time to read it, and, therefore, it would not be destroyed, unless she had recognized the policeman's step at the bottom of the staircase, and had managed to annihilate it while he and I were ascending the staircase. The officer appeared to have been aware of the value of the letter equally with myself; for when I returned to the house, he had manacled her hands, as he told me afterwards, to prevent her from touching the letter if she had it about her.

Under the policeman's directions, I kept my eyes on the ground from the drawing-room to the cab— (I seem to be writing the word "cab" very frequently; but the fact stands, that I was in one cab or another by far the better part of the score of hours between Annie's arrest and the end of my statement)— and I was quite sure the letter was not dropped during the passage. Again, when we reached the station-house, the vehicle was closely examined, and even the ground over which we passed to the charging-office.

Then the woman was closely searched. I was told that even her hair was examined minutely, and the basque of her stays taken out. But all to no purpose— the letter was not found. That some kind of communication had been made, or rather attempted, I was certain, for the policeman had recognized the apparent laundress as a hanger-on, and general thieves' go-between.

The conclusion both I and the officer came to before we left the station was, that the letter, or note, was in the drawing-room, and still in the basket.

It was clear she could not have found and read the warning, however short, in the few moments that elapsed while I ran down stairs and up again with the constable. It would take some seconds to reach the chair in which she was seated, and further time in which to hide the communication.

The constable said, "P'raps she swallered it," as a kind of preparation for the worst. But I was not inclined to accept this theory, notwithstanding he urged that it might have been a mere scrap of paper; because it seemed impossible that it could have been found, masticated, and swallowed in the time.

When the officer and I returned to the house, it wanted a quarter to nine. You see, time was progressing.

And now began the search for the letter. And here it was that I think my experience beat that of the police constable; for, after we had ransacked the basket, and were quite sure the letter was not within it, be began the ordinary routine search, while I sat down and began to think. The constable supposed I was broken down, and so he said—

"Chirrup, sir."

Whereupon I answered him—

"Go on, officer; I'm searching, too."

I suppose he was inclined to laugh, for he turned away to the stove. It was summer time (August), and so there was no fire in the grate. The officer, being at the stove, began examining it.

"Any ashes on the ground?" I asked.

"Why, you don't suppose she burnt it? It's hid," the man replied.

"Any soot on the hobs or hearth?"

"No," he replied.

"Then the top moveable flap of the stove has not been moved. Could a letter— take this card— be thrust between the damper and its frame?"

"No," said the man; "there's a hedge to it."

"Then, what are you staying about the stove for?" I asked.

The man turned, looked at me, his foolish-looking jaw dropped low, and then he said—

"You knows a thing or two, mister— you do."

Of course I do not wish to hide from the reader that I was trying to copy Edgar Poe's style of reasoning in this matter; for confessedly I am making this statement to show how a writer of fiction can aid the officers of the law.

"I shall do the regular round," said the officer, beginning to the right of the fire-place.

Now, as I sat, I was exerting all my reason to deduce the probabilities of the place of concealment from the facts known. I remembered that in the case of a search for a letter by the French police, recounted by Poe, that while the officers were hunting for the missive, even in the very legs and backs of the chairs, that it was stuck in a card rack, openly, with a dozen others; and though this knowledge was the basis upon which I built up my argument, yet, of itself, it was valueless, for I felt it would require a mind far beyond the common-place— a condition which did not distinguish Mountjoy— to imagine and rapidly complete a mode of concealment which should be successful by its very candour.

I felt that this woman had concealed the communication— if, indeed, it were not destroyed, a supposition I refused to entertain— in such a manner as a child would conceive, with the superaddition of some dexterity, the result of the shifting and elusive nature of her life.

I was still pondering, when the officer came to the bookcase, which was locked.

"Yere'll be a job, to hunt all through them books," said the blue-eyed, amiable officer, in a confidential tone.

Now, had the bookcase been opened? I got up, and looked at the projecting ledge of the escritoire portion, below the bookcase. The dust had been blowing that day, and the upper part of one of the windows was still open. A glance showed me the case had not been unclosed, for the particles of dust lay equally over the ledge; and I noticed that the opening, or key-door was furnished with an inner green silk curtain, which was shut in, and protruded below the bottom of the panel. Had it been opened, this curtain must have broken the regularity of the dust, which was not disturbed. So, again, the fine, white, pulverous particles lay on the upper part of the two knobs of the escritoire slide— a fact which proved to me that the escritoire had not been opened, as in that case both handles must have been touched.

My argument was so clear, that the officer did not even hesitate to admit I was right.

"And what about the cupboard under the askertor?" he asked.

"Search it," I said, "though I doubt if it's there. She was a stout woman, and would avoid stooping."

"Ha!" answered the officer approvingly; but he examined the cupboard, and found little else than china in it.

Still I sat, for I felt I could thus more easily concentrate my thoughts than by standing. And do not suppose that all this time I did not think of Annie. The fact is, I knew I could best serve her by acting exactly as though I was doing an ordinary duty, rather than one of love. Indeed, if people would but think of themselves a little less than they do, they would often-times get through more work than most men manage.

"Officer," I said, after a pause, in which he had looked over the chairs, under the table-cloth, and in all parts of the ebony inkstand— even fishing in the ink with a pen, and catching nothing worth the taking. "Officer, will you examine the joins of the wall-paper from the ground, to about six feet high?"

"Very well, mister; but will you help me move the heavy things?"

"Only note the joins you can see," I said, adding, with the first smile I had indulged in since the morning, "I don't think she had them out and back again in the time it took us to come upstairs— see if the joins fit and are flat."

This was a long piece of work for the officer, and dusk was coming on as he made half-way round the apartment.

"Look at the cracks in the mantelpiece, where the flat and the top of each pillar come together? Nothing! Well, and now the edge of the carpet all round the room, where the edge can easily be raised."

I dare say you will wonder that I did not help actively to search. I was hunting with my brains. Was it possible, I thought, that always anticipating a visit from the police, she had some easy place of concealment for pieces of jewellery and small articles of value, and into which she had conveyed the letter?— of the existence of which there could be no doubt, for we found that the tumbled linen belonged, some of it to children, and some of it to grown-up men, while a pair of stockings were unfolded, "and," said the constable, "somehow, a stockin' allers is the pest-bag among 'em."

Could such a place of immediate concealment be a slit in the carpet? This might be the case, and I suggested the idea to the officer.

"Then hadn't we better have the carpet up!" he asked.

"It will cause a great waste of time," answered I, "and we will not do so till we have done searching elsewhere."

But I found this idea so clung to my mind, that it impeded the progress of my thought. So, deciding that I must settle this point before I proceeded to another, I sat devising a means of ascertaining if there were a slit in the carpet without hauling it up. Soon I found one. If I took up one end of the carpet, and flapped the air under it, the dust you will always find under a lodging-house carpet would rise, and fly in a little cloud through any cutting.

The officer saw the force of this argument, and it was put into operation.

But nothing came of it; and I think it was at this point that my official friend began to break down, saying—

"Derpend upon it, she swallered it."

Then he began to hunt again— this time behind the pictures, but I soon called his attention from them by saying—

"The moderator-lamp."

"Ha! I didn't think o' the lamp," said the officer.

But we found nothing in the lamp beyond disappointment.

Time, however, had not been lost; for the field of observation was nearly gone over. The letter, or scrap of paper, was not below the wall-hangings, for not one of the seams was loose, or wet with paste or gum. It was not up the chimney, not even concealed in the paper ornament in the stove, nor about the bookcase, lamp, chairs, or table; nor, in all probability, was it under the carpet.

"The tea-caddy," I said, after a pause.

The caddy was easily opened, for Birkley had brought the woman's keys with him; but it was searched to no purpose. And when the night had well closed in, and Mrs. Blazhamey had come home (before her time, though), and hindered us, we were no nearer a satisfactory result than we had been at the commencement of the search. By this time, the carpet had been taken up, the pictures down and out of their frames, every loose book about nearly pulled to pieces with examination, and even the bell-pulls unripped. The sacking of the chairs, the bottom of the fender, the cornice of the bookcase— a hundred spots, nine-tenths of which must have been totally inaccessible to the woman in the time at her disposal, had been examined, and with equal want of success.

"Derpend upon it, sir, she swallered it," said the officer; and I think it was this persistency on his part which intensified my obstinacy in believing that the warning was in the room. I wanted to be by myself, to think without interruption, to follow the action of the woman; and with this end in view, I said to the officer—

"Go to the station, and see if they have heard anything."

"Holl right!" said he; "but, derpend upon it, she swallered of it down."

The officer gone, and Mrs. Blazhamey almost forced out of the room, which by this time looked like a wreck, I sat down in the midst of the furniture, and asked what next was to be done. And then, with that repetitory process which, I am told, is common during intense thought, I began conceiving once more the idea of what the woman must have been about when she first supposed a police-officer in the house.

How many seconds had she been in doubt before the officer and I entered the room? I had accepted Birkley's theory that she had recognised the policeman's tramp when he was at the bottom of the stairs; but was I justified in accepting that theory? How if she had no suspicion till the door handle was turning? If such were the case, the scrap of paper would be within a foot of the right side of the chair in which we found her seated. You see, being left to myself, I was adding to the repetition of my thought.

Suppose I went through her actions from the opening of the linen basket to the entry of myself and the officer?

You may declare this action childish, but you are wrong.

I went to the basket, supposed that I opened a stocking, and then went to the chair, thinking to myself that she, a stout woman, and naturally agitated by the arrival of the warning, would take a seat; and what more natural, since she was going to read by the coming twilight, than to go to the window?

I took the chair, exactly as we had found her, my right side to the window, and then supposed myself startled by the opening of the door. This fright would be followed by the involuntary attempt to hide the letter by the right hand. I flung my hand behind me, and it lodged in the folds of the cord-knotted curtain.

The discovery was far easier than putting on a worn glove— which is sometimes a rather difficult operation. My fingers positively rested on the paper, a mere scrap, torn from a wide-margined newspaper, and which had been easily thrust into the folds where the damask was gathered.

We had been at fault by crediting the woman with too much cleverness. We had supposed that she had anticipated and prepared for our coming when we were at the bottom of the stairs; and acting upon that belief, we had been wandering all round the room when our investigation should have been confined to a square yard.

Nor was I blameless on another score. I had presupposed the woman to be not intellectual enough to avoid a distinct concealment; whereas, the rapidity of our coming had caused her to do by accident that which a clever and prepared criminal would do by premeditation— placing the letter where nobody would think it worth while to look, as being under one's very eyes.

Will you believe the statement that now I had found the scrap of paper I saw that it was visible as it lay in the folds of the curtain, which had positively been unhooked by the constable that he might examine the shutter-cases with facility?

But do not suppose my labours were over. Not that I refer to the perusal of the cipher as a labour; I defy an ignorant cipher to puzzle me. Exactly as you would never dream of looking for a hidden letter in a blotting-case, so a merely confused Roman-letter cipher (if the word in such an instance as this is applicable) is infinitely more difficult to analyse than a system of actual, arbitrary signs. I had always been able to read an arbitrary cipher after a study of twenty minutes. I was only twelve, when I found a little packet in my cousin's room containing a lock of hair and some words in arbitrary cipher, which I analysed in half a minute; for seeing two words flourished all about, I supposed they formed the lady's name, found that the fourth and sixth letters of the first, and the second and fifth of the second, were similar, so successfully guessed, in far less time than it takes to write about, that the MS. and lock referred to our neighbour Pheobe Reade.

Cunning, ignorant people, I am told, always use an arbitrary cipher, almost as easy to read as A B C. I may tell you that Mrs. Mountjoy's letter gave me little trouble. I found it at nearly a quarter-past nine, and at half-past it was written out for the benefit of the police. It was in a simple character.

And as I can have no secret in this matter, if you are willing to learn the process, which has few regular rules, here it is to study. You may acquire it in five minutes.

Now, I dare say all this appears very mysterious to the general reader. There never was a more candid arbitrary alphabet put together. In the first place, the straight-line character of the writing told me it was simple. Alphabets curve as they rise in the thought which they embody. It will be seen that here there is no curved line.

Now, when you are fairly sure you have a simple cipher, and written in the English language, you hold the key to it with this one piece of knowledge— that the most frequently used letter in our language is e. Very well, then, find that character which is most frequently repeated, and you may be pretty certain it is e. In this case, you will find the leading figure is X. It is repeated sixteen times.

Now, we have a more than merely supposed e. The next question is the frequency, if any, with which a series of characters is repeated. You will find that the first word marked by a stop is repeated four times in twenty-seven words, or better than one in seven. This, then, must be a common expression. Take the next newspaper, and you will find the word "the" the most frequently repeated. But here comes an important contradiction. The first word agreeing with "the" has certainly three letters, but then it begins, instead of ending, with X. Now, you will find that the character representing e begins many words in this sentence, and ends none; whereas, the rule in English is, that e rather ends than commences words.

Take this fact into connection with the known truth that the thieves talk "back," or reversed English, and the contradiction is cleared away— each word is begun to be written at the end. We have then three letters, t.h.e. Now, if you go on to the sixth word, you will find we have the characters representing t.h.e, and that they spell (in the right direction) he-e. Now, the only ordinary word with this combination is "here." Therefore, we have now four letters, t h e r. If we now hunt out a word in which all these characters occur, we shall find it at 23, which runs there-. The sixth character must be an s, because it's the only natural terminal to the word there's— short for "there is."

We have now five letters, t h e r s.

We will now take word 24, following "there's." It can't be I—

"There's I" is an impossible phrase. But there is only one other ordinary English word of one letter besides "i"— it is "a." "There's a" is a natural mode of expression. We have now six letters, t h e r s a.

Now, you must settle the short words before you can touch the long. We have got "the" and "a," and the words in which t, h, and e are commonly combined with one another. Let us now pass to other short words. Take 21. One of the letters of this word we already know to be "a"; what is the second? The two commonest words with which a is combined, and at the same time not preceded by the only letter word "i," thus as "I am," which is not the case here— are "as," and "at." Now, this letter is already a direction, in the shape of a warning. Every known circumstance in the case proves this, and therefore the word "at" is more likely to be used than "as," which is a word, when used grammatically, very seldom seen in common letter-writing. We will suppose 21 to represent "at," and then we shall find the same word at 11, which confirms the belief that these characters represent "at." And this conclusion supports the supposition referring to the "s" and "t" character. To continue. The word 22, which follows 21, we now find to stand e--ht; and this partial elucidation reciprocally acts with word 21, to form the likely phrase in such a letter— "at eight."

Then we now have, as discovered letters— t h e r s a i g— eight letters. There are now enough upon which to build up the first skeleton of the revised letter, and thus it stands, the unknown letters being represented by small hyphens, and the words wholly wanting by the figures with which they have been already allied:—

Now, 7 and 8 reciprocally suggest "meet me," and so we add "m" to our list of letters— now nine; and the t - m - rr - - after "meet me" confirms that reading, and which makes this word "to-morrow." This gives the letters "o" and "w," making in all eleven letters. Taking 5, I find "o" and "m" are the second and third characters; therefore, I infer the first is "c." Now we have twelve letters. I also find that the second letter of word 4 is "o," which gives "- o - t," which, taken in connection with the letter being a warning, and the two following words, "come here," I take to be "don't." This rendering yields me two more letters, "d" and "n," which make in all fourteen.

The elucidation now stands:—

Now, putting aside the first sentence, the first words we have to clear up are 13 and 14. Let us suppose it is "something place," and we are right, for the "l" drops into the centre of word 13, and we have "old place." This yields letter "p" and "l," and now we can add a letter to word 3, which from "--own" becomes "-lown."

We now arrive at word 17, where there is one letter wanting, and this we must for the present pass, and come to (18) - nder. This must be "under," and so we add "u" to the list; but it is useless, for it occurs only this once in the entire paragraph.

We now reach word 20, to which we can only add "l," which makes it cli --. And it will be remarked that the two most important words in the letter are still defective. However, the word 20 is soon elucidated, by going on to 25, to which we can now add the letter "l"— thus we get - lower, which, taken with words 26 and 27, gives "flower show on." We therefore find that word 20 is "cliff." The double "f" in word 2, makes it "gaff." We have now only two characters to decipher; the composition standing thus:

"The gaffs -lown. Don't come here. Meet me tomorrow at the old place, the second ca-e under the cliff at eight. There's a flower show on."

Now it is clear the missing letters are two, neither of which is used more than once. Then we have only to find the missing letters, and see which will fit in, to solve the problem. These letters are b, j, k, v, x, y, z.

The only letter which will agree with -lown is b, by which we get the sentence "The gaffs blown"— pure thieves' English, perhaps even something like good Anglo-Saxon. It means, the meeting-place is discovered and overthrown. "Gaff" is doubtless the talking-place, from gabian, to talk; while, probably, the word "blown" is based upon the idea of giving a blow— to blow, when the past participle in Saxon English would be blown— "beaten down."

Coming to the word ca - e, we find that v only will fit, and so we get "the second cave under the cliff at eight to-morrow" as the gist of the missive slipped among the folds of the curtain.

One word before I proceed with my story. Give me little credit for reading that cipher. I did it in less than twenty minutes; though it strikes me I may as well give the alphabet of this cipher, and also the appearance of the missive when reduced to ordinary letters. Here, first, is the alphabet— very simple and elementary:

The back reading stood thus:— eht sffag nwolb tnod emoc ereh teem em worromot dna ta eht dlo ecalp eht dnoces evac rednu eht ffilc ta thgie sereht a rewolf wohs no.

You would hardly suppose this was merely reversed English— would you?

As I have said, the reading of the letter was nothing, but its application was another matter— another business to continue the thread of the clue in the nip of my mind till it was wound off the reel by the re-introduction, under the auspices of the police, of Mrs. Mountjoy to young Mrs. Lemmins.

What were the coming facts before me?

These— that Lemmins expected (since the go-between false laundress had got clear from the house)— Mountjoy to meet her at eight, in the second cave under the cliff, and that a flower show would take place.

Now, it was summer time, and, therefore, I might take the words "flower show" as literally meant; for, in connection with the correspondents, it meant theft at the fête in question. Now, where was this fête to be held? I was at a loss to tell whether it was next day or the following. If next day, the meeting for eight referred to the morning. If the following, it might mean eight in the evening.

But first for the spot. It must be populous, because the flower show was talked of in London, and because thieves thought it worth while to canvass the place. Secondly, it must be at the sea-side, because only at the sea or water-side is the cliff called by that name— at all events by Londoners.

Then I got at these suppositions, or rather facts. That a flower show was to take place either the next day or the following at a seaside place distinguished not only for cliffs, but with caverns, or caves, in them, and that Lemmins would be in the second either at eight in the morning of the following day, or at that hour in the evening.

Was the place far away? It seemed to me not, because the context of the letter so plainly inferred that the recipient could easily reach the spot, since the exact hour was named. Now, if I could only find out, by an advertisement, where a flower show was to take place within a couple of days, the locality being a cliffy, sea-side locality, in all probability full of visitors— for I had heard of thieves going to the sea-side with honest men— why, the chances were that I should trap the woman.

Where was the place, and how could I find it out?

It was clear it could not be on the east coast, because it is flat from the mouth of the river to Hull, or nearly so; neither, if very near home, could it be below Brighton, for thence the shore is level, or if not level, more or less unprovided with cliffs over a wide range of country.

Then the place in question, in all probability, stood either in Kent or Sussex. By this means I got my facts into a very narrow line, for I had but to examine the papers of both counties to ascertain whether or not a flower show was advertised. But here a new difficulty arose. It was now a quarter to ten, and all places of business, all reading-rooms were closed. Perhaps, however, the fête was advertised in the "Times," my second-day's copy of which was in our sitting-room. Ten minutes' search resulted in disappointment; but my eyes had caught an advertisement, all letters to be addressed to some initials, care of Messrs. Mitchell and Co., town and country newsagents, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. The question I asked myself was, whether I should call at this office, in the faint chance of finding it still open, or go on at once to the London Bridge terminus, and take the night-mail to one of the several sea-side places, one of which I believed was the appointed place of meeting. My decision in favour of trying the office rested on the ground that, with a fast cab, to call on my road to the station, it would not delay me more than a quarter of an hour.

The cab (I find I must continually refer to cabs) took me into Fleet Street in considerably under the half-hour, and, to contract this portion of my narrative, for the simple reason that it is commonplace, I found a woman cleaning out the office. She was much flurried, and, I think, somewhat confused, in consequence of being so late at her work. With that extraordinary and simple belief of the very ignorant in the sacred nature of papers, she would not let me lay a finger upon one of the files of papers hung about the office; but with that other belief in the absolute power of money, I applied the great "progressive how much" argument with her, and which, supported by the assurance that print was not writing, led to my triumph upon another step of my journey; for at about the sixth hook I found a pile of (I think) Kentish Observers, or Gazettes, and soon I discovered (the information being in a prominent position) that a flower show was to be displayed on the very next day at the Tivoli Gardens, the context intimating that certain omnibuses would run at regular intervals from Ramsgate and Margate.

The inference stood that "the second cave under the cliff" was either at Ramsgate or Margate, and as I was driven on to the station, I turned over in my mind the various ways in which I could arrive at a just conclusion before I started, or while going down the line.

Absurd as was the question— "Are there any caves in the cliff at Ramsgate or at Margate?"— I put it to several railway porters; but they knew nothing about either place. And I have found generally that railway porters know nothing of their respective lines. In this strait, and after questioning the young woman in the refreshment department, and the policeman on duty, who, I think, felt somewhat inclined to arrest me on general grounds, I bethought me of buying a guide-book to the coast; but the railway book stall was blank with shutters, and the only acquisition I could make was the London and South Eastern Railway time-table; and this publication I was turning over, not so much disconsolately as with vexation, when an outline map fell open before me.

It was but natural that I should look at the relative positions of Ramsgate and Margate; and the investigation of the map formed another link in my chain of— may I say?— circumstantial evidence. The map showed me that the coast about Margate was more exposed to the action of the sea than the other marine town. Knowing that the indentation of the shore by sea water is, in a measure, effected by the formation of channels, or caves, the inference stood, that Margate was more likely to be the goal of my journey than the other town.

To Margate I went, making inquiries, however, when changing trains at Ramsgate, in order to ascertain if there were caves in the cliff of this latter place.

The reader who knows Margate is aware I was right.

But we did not catch our felon till ten a.m., for the tide was up, and the caves, which in the eyes of the children are such enormous caverns of darkness, were unapproachable. And, indeed, when the tide had receded sufficiently to allow of the approach of myself and the policeman I employed, I feared for my success, as I could discover no woman walking towards the "second cave," with her back towards me, and in whom I could trace a resemblance to the person called Lemmins. But the officer was right when he surmised that perhaps she had started from the "other end," referring to the break in the cliff at the point where the Preventive Service Station is built.

She was so surprised at the arrest, that she had not a word to say; for, as I implied from the copy of a telegraphic message we found on her, she had been informed that all was going well.

And as the magistrate of the district police court in which my sister had to appear was more than ordinarily late that morning, we reached the court before Annie was brought forward, and so when her eyes drifted round the court, they met mine. But we had already seen each other at the police cell door, and she knew that the actual thieves were in custody. Seen together, my sister and the younger prisoner were very distinguishable; but had the jeweller's man, upon oath, declared that Annie was Mrs. Mountjoy's companion, I do not think he should have been blamed.

I have now reached the end of my intended narrative. My purpose was to show that action in misfortune is better than grief. I have not referred to any pain, degradation, or consequence, which resulted either to my sister or myself, in consequence of her terrible arrest for shoplifting. I have merely stated, as logically as I could, a series of facts, inferences, and results, with the aim of pointing out that very frequently there is a deal of plain sailing where some people suppose no navigation can be effected.

__________________

20: The Willow Walk

Sinclair Lewis

1885-1951

The Saturday Evening Post 10 August 1918

FROM THE DRAWER of his table Jasper Holt took a pane of window glass. He laid a sheet of paper on the glass and wrote, "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party." He studied his round business-college script, and rewrote the sentence in a small finicky hand, that of a studious old man. Ten times he copied the words in that false pinched writing. He tore up the paper, burned the fragments in his large ash tray, and washed the delicate ashes down his stationary washbowl. He replaced the pane of glass in the drawer, tapping it with satisfaction. A glass underlay does not retain an impression.

Jasper Holt was as nearly respectable as his room, which, with its frilled chairs and pansy-painted pincushion, was the best in the aristocratic boarding house of Mrs. Lyons. He was a wiry, slightly bald, black-haired man of thirty-eight, wearing an easy gray flannel suit and a white carnation. His hands were peculiarly compact and nimble. He gave the appearance of being a youngish lawyer or bond salesman. Actually he was senior paying teller in the Lumber National Bank in the city of Vernon.

He looked at a thin expensive gold watch. It was six-thirty, on Wednesday— toward dusk of a tranquil spring day. He picked up his hooked walking stick and his gray silk gloves and trudged downstairs. He met his landlady in the lower hall and inclined his head. She effusively commented on the weather.

"I shall not be there for dinner," he said amiably.

"Very well, Mr. Holt. My, but aren't you always going out with your swell friends though! I read in the Herald that you were going to be a star in another of those society plays in the Community Theater. I guess you'd be an actor if you wasn't a banker, Mr. Holt."

"No, I'm afraid I haven't much temperament." His voice was cordial, but his smile was a mere mechanical sidewise twist of the lip muscles. "You're the one that's got the stage presence. Bet you'd be a regular Ethel Barrymore if you didn't have to take care of us."

"My, but you're such a flatterer!"

He bowed his way out and walked sedately down the street to a public garage. Nodding to the night attendant, but saying nothing, he started his roadster and drove out of the garage, away from the center of Vernon, toward the suburb of Rosebank. He did not go directly to Rosebank. He went seven blocks out of his way, and halted on Fandall Avenue— one of those petty main thoroughfares which, with their motion-picture palaces, their groceries, laundries, undertakers' establishments, and lunch rooms, serve as local centers for districts of mean residences. He got out of the car and pretended to look at the tires, kicking them to see how much air they had. While he did so he covertly looked up and down the street. He saw no one whom he knew. He went into the Parthenon Confectionery Store.

The Parthenon Store makes a specialty of those ingenious candy boxes that resemble bound books. The back of the box is of imitation leather, with a stamping simulating the title of a novel. The edges are apparently the edges of a number of pages. But these pages are hollowed out, and the inside is to be filled with candy.

Jasper gazed at the collection of book boxes and chose the two whose titles had the nearest approach to dignity— Sweets to the Sweet and The Ladies' Delight. He asked the Greek clerk to fill these with the less expensive grade of mixed chocolates, and to wrap them.

From the candy shop he went to the drugstore that carried an assortment of reprinted novels, and from these picked out two of the same sentimental type as the titles on the booklike boxes. These also he had wrapped. He strolled out of the drugstore, slipped into a lunchroom, got a lettuce sandwich, doughnuts, and a cup of coffee at the greasy marble counter, took them to a chair with a table arm in the dim rear of the lunchroom and hastily devoured them. As he came out and returned to his car he again glanced along the street.

He fancied that he knew a man who was approaching. He could not be sure. From the breast up the man seemed familiar, as did the customers of the bank whom he viewed through the wicket of the teller's window. When he saw them in the street he could never be sure of them. It seemed extraordinary to find that these persons, who to him were nothing but faces with attached arms that held out checks and received money, could walk about, had legs and a gait and a manner of their own.

He walked to the curb and stared up at the cornice of one of the stores, puckering his lips, giving an impersonation of a man inspecting a building. With the corner of an eye he followed the approaching man. The man ducked his head as he neared, and greeted him, "Hello, Brother Teller." Jasper seemed startled; gave the "Oh! Oh, how are you!" of sudden recognition; and mumbled, "Looking after a little bank property."

The man passed on.

Jasper got into his car and drove back to the street that would take him out to the suburb of Rosebank. As he left Fandall Avenue he peered at his watch. It was five minutes to seven.

At a quarter past seven he passed through the main street of Rosebank and turned into a lane that was but little changed since the time when it had been a country road. A few jerry-built villas of freckled paint did shoulder upon it, but for the most part it ran through swamps spotted with willow groves, the spongy ground covered with scatterings of dry leaves and bark. Opening on this lane was a dim-rutted grassy private road which disappeared into one of the willow groves.

Jasper sharply swung his car between the crumbly gate posts and along on the bumpy private road. He made an abrupt turn, came in sight of an unpainted shed and shot the car into it without cutting down his speed, so that he almost hit the back of the shed with his front fenders. He shut off the engine, climbed out quickly and ran back toward the gate. From the shield of the bank of alder bushes he peered out. Two clattering women were going down the public road. They stared in through the gate and half halted.

"That's where that hermit lives," said one of them.

"Oh, you mean the one that's writing a religious book, and never comes out till evening? Some kind of a preacher?"

"Yes, that's the one. John Holt, I think his name is. I guess he's kind of crazy. He lives in the old Beaudette house. But you can't see it from here— it's clear through the block, on the next street."

"I heard he was crazy. But I just saw an automobile go in here."

"Oh, that's his cousin or brother or something— lives in the city. They say he's rich, and such a nice fellow."

The two women ambled on, their clatter blurring with distance. Standing behind the alders Jasper rubbed the palm of one hand with the fingers of the other. The palm was dry with nervousness. But he grinned.

He returned to the shed and entered a brick-paved walk almost a block long, walled and sheltered by overhanging willows. Once it had been a pleasant path; carved wooden benches were placed along it, and it widened to a court with a rock garden, a fountain, and a stone bench. The rock garden had degenerated into a riot of creepers sprawling over the sharp stones; the paint had peeled from the fountain, leaving its iron cupids and naiads eaten with rust. The bricks of the wall were smeared with lichens and moss and were untidy with windrows of dry leaves and caked earth.

Many of the bricks were broken; the walk was hilly in its unevenness. From willows and bricks and scuffled earth rose a damp chill. But Jasper did not seem to note the dampness. He hastened along the walk to the house— a structure of heavy stone which, for this newish Midwestern land, was very ancient. It had been built by a French fur trader in 1839. The Chippewas had scalped a man in its dooryard. The heavy back door was guarded by an unexpectedly expensive modern lock. Jasper opened it with a flat key and closed it behind him. It locked on a spring. He was in a crude kitchen, the shades of which were drawn. He passed through the kitchen and dining room into the living room. Dodging chairs and tables in the darkness as though he was used to them he went to each of the three windows of the living room and made sure that all the shades were down before he lighted the student lamp on the game-legged table. As the glow crept over the drab walls Jasper bobbed his head with satisfaction.

Nothing had been touched since his last visit.

The room was musty with the smell of old green rep upholstery and leather books. It had not been dusted for months. Dust sheeted the stiff red velvet chairs, the uncomfortable settee, the chill white marble fireplace, the immense glass-fronted bookcase that filled one side of the room.

The atmosphere was unnatural to this capable business man, this Jasper Holt. But Jasper did not seem oppressed. He briskly removed the wrappers from the genuine books and from the candy-box imitations of books. One of the two wrappers he laid on the table and smoothed out. Upon this he poured the candy from the two boxes. The other wrapper and the strings he stuffed into the fireplace and immediately burned. Crossing to the bookcase he unlocked one section on the bottom shelf. There was a row of rather cheap-looking novels on this shelf, and of these at least six were actually such candy boxes as he had purchased that evening.

Only one shelf of the bookcase was given over to anything so frivolous as novels. The others were filled with black-covered, speckle-leaved, dismal books of history, theology, biography— the shabby-genteel sort of books you find on the fifteen-cent table at a secondhand bookshop. Over these Jasper pored for a moment as though he was memorizing their titles.

He took down The Life of the Rev. Jeremiah Bodfish and read aloud: "In those intimate discourses with his family that followed evening prayers I once heard Brother Bodfish observe that Philo Judaeus— whose scholarly career always calls to my mind the adumbrations of Melanchthon upon the essence of rationalism— was a mere sophist—"

Jasper slammed the book shut, remarking contentedly, "That'll do. Philo Judaeus— good name to spring."

He relocked the bookcase and went upstairs. In a small bedroom at the right of the upper hall an electric light was burning. Presumably the house had been deserted till Jasper's entrance, but a prowler in the yard might have judged from this ever-burning light that someone was in the residence. The bedroom was Spartan— an iron bed, one straight chair, a washstand, a heavy oak bureau. Jasper scrambled to unlock the bottom drawer of the bureau, yank it open, take out a wrinkled shiny suit of black, a pair of black shoes, a small black bow tie, a Gladstone collar, a white shirt with starched bosom, a speckly brown felt hat and a wig— an expensive and excellent wig with artfully unkempt hair of a faded brown.

He stripped off his attractive flannel suit, wing collar, blue tie, custom-made silk shirt, and cordovan shoes, and speedily put on the wig and those gloomy garments. As he donned them the corners of his mouth began to droop. Leaving the light on and his own clothes flung on the bed he descended the stairs. He was obviously not the same Jasper, but less healthy, less practical, less agreeable, and decidedly more aware of the sorrow and long thoughts of the dreamer. Indeed it must be understood that now he was not Jasper Holt, but Jasper's twin brother, John Holt, hermit and religious fanatic.

ii

JOHN HOLT, twin brother of Jasper Holt, the bank teller, rubbed his eyes as though he had for hours been absorbed in study, and crawled through the living room, through the tiny hall, to the front door. He opened it, picked up a couple of circulars that the postman had dropped through the letter slot in the door, went out and locked the door behind him. He was facing a narrow front yard, neater than the willow walk at the back, on a suburban street more populous than the straggly back lane.

A street arc illuminated the yard and showed that a card was tacked on the door. John touched the card, snapped it with a nail of his finger to make sure it was securely tacked. In that light he could not read it, but he knew that it was inscribed in a small finicky hand: "Agents kindly do not disturb, bell will not be answered, occupant of the house engaged in literary work."

John stood on the doorstep until he made out his neighbor on the right— a large stolid commuter, who was walking before his house smoking an after-dinner cigar. John poked to the fence and sniffed at a spray of lilac blossoms till the neighbor called over, "Nice evening."

"Yes, it seems to be pleasant."

John's voice was like Jasper's but it was more guttural, and his speech had less assurance.

"How's the story going?"

"It is— it is very difficult. So hard to comprehend all the inner meanings of the prophecies. Well, I must be hastening to Soul Hope Hall. I trust we shall see you there some Wednesday or Sunday evening. I bid you good-night, sir."

John wavered down the street to the drugstore. He purchased a bottle of ink. In a grocery that kept open evenings he got two pounds of cornmeal, two pounds of flour, a pound of bacon, a half pound of butter, six eggs, and a can of condensed milk.

"Shall we deliver them?" asked the clerk.

John looked at him sharply. He realized that this was a new man, who did not know his customs. He said rebukingly: "No, I always carry my parcels. I am writing a book. I am never to be disturbed."

He paid for the provisions out of a postal money order for thirty-five dollars, and received the change. The cashier of the store was accustomed to cashing these money orders, which were always sent to John from South Vernon, by one R. J. Smith. John took the bundle of food and walked out of the store.

"That fellow's kind of a nut, isn't he?" asked the new clerk.

The cashier explained: "Yep. Doesn't even take fresh milk— uses condensed for everything! What do you think of that! And they say he burns up all his garbage— never has anything in the ashcan except ashes. If you knock at his door, he never answers it, fellow told me. All the time writing this book of his. Religious crank, I guess. Has a little income though— guess his folks were pretty well fixed. Comes out once in a while in the evening and pokes round town. We used to laugh about him, but we've kind of got used to him. Been here about a year, I guess it is."

John was serenely passing down the main street of Rosebank. At the dingier end of it he turned in at a hallway marked by a lighted sign announcing in crude house-painter's letters: "Soul Hope Fraternity Hall. Experience Meeting. All Welcome."

It was eight o'clock. The members of the Soul Hope cult had gathered in their hall above a bakery. Theirs was a tiny, tight-minded sect. They asserted that they alone obeyed the scriptural tenets; that they alone were certain to be saved, that all other denominations were damned by unapostolic luxury, that it was wicked to have organs or ministers or any meeting places save plain halls. The members themselves conducted the meetings, one after another rising to give an interpretation of the scriptures or to rejoice in gathering with the faithful, while the others commented with "Hallelujah!" and "Amen, brother, amen!" They were plainly dressed, not overfed, somewhat elderly, and a rather happy congregation. The most honored of them all was John Holt.

John had come to Rosebank only eleven months before. He had bought the Beaudette house with the library of the recent occupant, a retired clergyman, and had paid for them in new one-hundred-dollar bills. Already he had great credit in the Soul Hope cult. It appeared that he spent almost all his time at home, praying and reading and writing a book. The Soul Hope Fraternity were excited about the book. They had begged him to read it to them. So far he had only read a few pages, consisting mostly of quotations from ancient treatises on the Prophecies. Nearly every Sunday and Wednesday evening he appeared at the meeting and in a halting and scholarly way lectured on the world and the flesh.

Tonight he spoke polysyllabically of the fact that one Philo Judaeus had been a mere sophist. The cult were none too clear as to what either a Philo Judaeus or a sophist might be, but with heads all nodding in a row, they murmured: "You're right, brother! Hallelujah!"

John glided into a sad earnest discourse on his worldly brother Jasper, and informed them of his struggles with Jasper's itch for money. By his request the fraternity prayed for Jasper.

The meeting was over at nine. John shook hands all round with the elders of the congregation, sighing: "Fine meeting tonight, wasn't it? Such a free outpouring of the Spirit!" He welcomed a new member, a servant girl just come from Seattle. Carrying his groceries and the bottle of ink he poked down the stairs from the hall at seven minutes after nine.

At sixteen minutes after nine John was stripping off his brown wig and the funereal clothes in his bedroom. At twenty-eight after, John Holt had become Jasper Holt, the capable teller of the Lumber National Bank.

Jasper Holt left the light burning in his brother's bedroom. He rushed downstairs, tried the fastening of the front door, bolted it, made sure that all the windows were fastened, picked up the bundle of groceries and the pile of candies that he had removed from the booklike candy boxes, blew out the light in the living room and ran down the willow walk to his car. He threw the groceries and candy into it, backed the car out as though he was accustomed to backing in this bough-scattered yard, and drove along the lonely road at the rear.

When he was passing a swamp he reached down, picked up the bundle of candies, and steering with one hand removed the wrapping paper with the other hand and hurled out the candies. They showered among the weeds beside the road. The paper which had contained the candies, and upon which was printed the name of the Parthenon Confectionery Store, Jasper tucked into his pocket. He took the groceries item by item from the labeled bag containing them, thrust that bag also into his pocket, and laid the groceries on the seat beside him.

On the way from Rosebank to the center of the city of Vernon, he again turned off the main avenue and halted at a goat-infested shack occupied by a crippled Norwegian. He sounded the horn. The Norwegian's grandson ran out.

"Here's a little more grub for you," bawled Jasper.

"God bless you, sir. I don't know what we'd do if it wasn't for you!" cried the old Norwegian from the door.

But Jasper did not wait for gratitude. He merely shouted "Bring you some more in a couple of days," as he started away.

At a quarter past ten he drove up to the hall that housed the latest interest in Vernon society— The Community Theater. The Boulevard Set, the "best people in town," belonged to the Community Theater Association, and the leader of it was the daughter of the general manager of the railroad. As a well-bred bachelor Jasper Holt was welcome among them, despite the fact that no one knew much about him except that he was a good bank teller and had been born in England. But as an actor he was not merely welcome: he was the best amateur actor in Vernon. His placid face could narrow with tragic emotion or puff out with comedy, his placid manner concealed a dynamo of emotion. Unlike most amateur actors he did not try to act— he became the thing itself. He forgot Jasper Holt, and turned into a vagrant or a judge, a Bernard Shaw thought, a Lord Dunsany symbol, a Noel Coward man-about-town.

The other one-act plays of the next program of the Community Theater had already been rehearsed. The cast of the play in which Jasper was to star were all waiting for him. So were the ladies responsible for the staging. They wanted his advice about the blue curtain for the stage window, about the baby-spot that was out of order, about the higher interpretation of the rôle of the page in the piece— a rôle consisting of only two lines, but to be played by one of the most popular girls in the younger set. After the discussions, and a most violent quarrel between two members of the play-reading committee, the rehearsal was called. Jasper Holt still wore his flannel suit and a wilting carnation; but he was not Jasper; he was the Duc de San Saba, a cynical, gracious, gorgeous old man, easy of gesture, tranquil of voice, shudderingly evil of desire.

"If I could get a few more actors like you!" cried the professional coach.

The rehearsal was over at half-past eleven. Jasper drove his car to the public garage in which he kept it, and walked home. There, he tore up and burned the wrapping paper bearing the name of the Parthenon Confectionery Store and the labeled bag that had contained the groceries.

The Community Theater plays were given on the following Wednesday. Jasper Holt was highly applauded, and at the party at the Lakeside Country Club, after the play, he danced with the prettiest girls in town. He hadn't much to say to them, but he danced fervently, and about him was a halo of artistic success.

That night his brother John did not appear at the meeting of the Soul Hope Fraternity out in Rosebank.

On Monday, five days later, while he was in conference with the president and the cashier of the Lumber National Bank, Jasper complained of a headache. The next day he telephoned to the president that he would not come down to work— he would stay home and rest his eyes, sleep, and get rid of the persistent headache. That was unfortunate, for that very day his twin brother John made one of his frequent trips into Vernon and called at the bank.

The president had seen John only once before, and by a coincidence it had happened on this occasion also Jasper had been absent— had been out of town. The president invited John into his private office.

"Your brother is at home; poor fellow has a bad headache. Hope he gets over it. We think a great deal of him here. You ought to be proud of him. Will you have a smoke?"

As he spoke the president looked John over. Once or twice when Jasper and the president had been out at lunch Jasper had spoken of the remarkable resemblance between himself and his twin brother. But the president told himself that he didn't really see much resemblance. The features of the two were alike, but John's expression of chronic spiritual indigestion, his unfriendly manner, and his hair— unkempt and lifeless brown, where Jasper's was sleekly black about a shiny bald spot— made the president dislike John as much as he liked Jasper.

And now John was replying: "No, I do not smoke. I can't understand how a man can soil the temple with drugs. I suppose I ought to be glad to hear you praise poor Jasper, but I am more concerned with his lack of respect for the things of the spirit. He sometimes comes to see me, at Rosebank, and I argue with him, but somehow I can't make him see his errors. And his flippant ways— !"

"We don't think he's flippant. We think he's a pretty steady worker."

"But he's play-acting! And reading love stories! Well, I try to keep in mind the injunction, 'Judge not, that ye be not judged.' But I am pained to find my own brother giving up immortal promises for mortal amusements. Well, I'll go and call on him. I trust that some day we shall see you at Soul Hope Hall, in Rosebank. Good day, sir."

Turning back to his work, the president grumbled: "I am going to tell Jasper that the best compliment I can hand him is that he is not like his brother."

And on the following day, another Wednesday, when Jasper reappeared at the bank, the president did make this jesting comparison, and Jasper sighed, "Oh, John is really a good fellow, but he's always gone in for metaphysics and Oriental mysticism and Lord knows what all, till he's kind of lost in the fog. But he's a lot better than I am. When I murder my landlady— or say, when I rob the bank, Chief— you go get John, and I bet you the best lunch in town that he'll do his best to bring me to justice. That's how square he is!"

"Square, yes— corners just sticking out! Well, when you do rob us, Jasper, I'll look up John. But do try to keep from robbing us as long as you can. I'd hate to have to associate with a religious detective in a boiled shirt!"

Both men laughed, and Jasper went back to his cage. His head continued to hurt, he admitted. The president advised him to lay off for a week. He didn't want to, he said. With the new munition industries due to the war in Europe there was much increase in factory pay rolls, and Jasper took charge of them.

"Better take a week off than get ill," argued the president late that afternoon.

Jasper did let himself be persuaded to go away for at least a week-end. He would run up north, to Wakamin Lake, the coming Friday, he said; he would get some black-bass fishing, and be back on Monday or Tuesday. Before he went he would make up the pay rolls for the Saturday payments and turn them over to the other teller. The president thanked him for his faithfulness, and as was his not infrequent custom, invited Jasper to his house for the evening of the next day— Thursday.

That Wednesday evening Jasper's brother John appeared at the Soul Hope meeting in Rosebank. When he had gone home and magically turned back into Jasper this Jasper did not return the wig and garments of John to the bureau but packed them in a suitcase, took the suitcase to his room in Vernon, and locked it in his wardrobe.

Jasper was amiable at dinner at the president's house on Thursday, but he was rather silent, and as his head still throbbed he left the house early— at nine-thirty. Sedately carrying his gray silk gloves in one hand and pompously swinging his stick with the other, he walked from the president's house on the fashionable boulevard back to the center of Vernon. He entered the public garage in which he stored his car. He commented to the night attendant, "Head aches. Guess I'll take the 'bus out and get some fresh air."

He drove away at not more than fifteen miles an hour. He headed south. When he had reached the outskirts of the city he speeded up to a consistent twenty-five miles an hour. He settled down in his seat with the unmoving steadiness of the long-distance driver; his body quiet except for the tiny subtle movements of his foot on the accelerator, of his hand on the steering wheel— his right hand across the wheel, holding it at the top, his left elbow resting easily on the cushioned edge of his seat and his left hand merely touching the wheel.

He drove down in that southern direction for fifteen miles— almost to the town of Wanagoochie. Then by a rather poor side road he turned sharply to the north and west, and making a huge circle about the city drove toward the town of St. Clair. The suburb of Rosebank, in which his brother John lived, is also north of Vernon. These directions were of some importance to him; Wanagoochie eighteen miles south of the mother city of Vernon; Rosebank, on the other hand, eight miles north of Vernon, and St. Clair twenty miles north— about as far north of Vernon as Wanagoochie is south.

On his way to St. Clair, at a point that was only two miles from Rosebank, Jasper ran the car off the main road into a grove of oaks and maples and stopped it on a long-unused woodland road. He stiffly got out and walked through the woods up a rise of ground to a cliff overlooking a swampy lake. The gravelly farther bank of the cliff rose perpendicularly from the edge of the water. In that wan light distilled by stars and the earth he made out the reedy expanse of the lake. It was so muddy, so tangled with sedge grass that it was never used for swimming, and as its inhabitants were only slimy bullheads few people ever tried to fish there. Jasper stood reflective. He was remembering the story of the farmer's team which had run away, dashed over this cliff, and sunk out of sight in the mud bottom of the lake.

Swishing his stick he outlined an imaginary road from the top of the cliff back to the sheltered place where his car was standing. Once he hacked away with a large pocketknife a mass of knotted hazel bushes which blocked that projected road. When he had traced the road to his car he smiled. He walked to the edge of the woods and looked up and down the main highway. A car was approaching. He waited till it had passed, ran back to his own car, backed it out on the highway, and went on his northward course toward St. Clair, driving about thirty miles an hour.

On the edge of St. Clair he halted, took out his kit of tools, unscrewed a spark plug, and sharply tapping the plug on the engine block, deliberately cracked the porcelain jacket. He screwed the plug in again and started the car. It bucked and spit, missing on one cylinder, with the short-circuited plug.

"I guess there must be something wrong with the ignition," he said cheerfully.

He managed to run the car into a garage in St. Clair. There was no one in the garage save an old negro, the night washer, who was busy over a limousine with sponge and hose.

"Got a night repair man here?" asked Jasper.

"No, sir; guess you'll have to leave it till morning."

"Hang it! Something gone wrong with the carburetor or the ignition. Well, I'll have to leave it then. Tell him— Say will you be here in the morning when the repair man comes on?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, tell him I must have the car by tomorrow noon. No, say by tomorrow at nine. Now, don't forget. This will help your memory."

He gave a quarter to the negro, who grinned and shouted: "Yes, sir; that'll help my memory a lot!" As he tied a storage tag on the car the negro inquired: "Name?"

"Uh— my name? Oh, Hanson. Remember now, ready about nine tomorrow."

Jasper walked to the railroad station. It was ten minutes of one. Jasper did not ask the night operator about the next train into Vernon. Apparently he knew that there was a train stopping here at St. Clair at one-thirty-seven. He did not sit in the waiting room but in the darkness outside, on a truck behind the baggage room. When the train came in he slipped into the last seat of the last car, and with his soft hat over his eyes either slept or appeared to sleep. When he reached Vernon he got off and came to the garage in which he regularly kept his car. He stepped inside. The night attendant was drowsing in a large wooden chair tilted back against the wall in the narrow runway which formed the entrance to the garage.

Jasper jovially shouted to the attendant: "Certainly ran into some hard luck. Ignition went wrong— I guess it was the ignition. Had to leave the car down at Wanagoochie."

"Yuh, hard luck, all right," assented the attendant.

"Yump. So I left it at Wanagoochie," Jasper emphasized as he passed on.

He had been inexact in this statement. It was not at Wanagoochie, which is south, but at St. Clair, which is north, that he had left his car.

He had returned to his boarding house, slept beautifully, hummed in his morning shower bath. Yet at breakfast he complained of his continuous headache, and announced that he was going up north, to Wakamin, to get some bass fishing and rest his eyes. His landlady urged him to go.

"Anything I can do to help you get away?" she queried.

"No, thanks. I'm just taking a couple of suitcases, with some old clothes and some fishing tackle. Fact, I have 'em all packed already. I'll probably take the noon train north if I can get away from the bank. Pretty busy now, with these pay rolls for the factories that have war contracts for the Allies. What's it say in the paper this morning?"

Jasper arrived at the bank, carrying the two suitcases and a neat, polite, rolled silk umbrella, the silver top of which was engraved with his name. The doorman, who was also the bank guard, helped him to carry the suitcases inside.

"Careful of that bag. Got my fishing tackle in it," said Jasper, to the doorman, apropos of one of the suitcases which was heavy but apparently not packed full. "Well, I think I'll run up to Wakamin today and catch a few bass."

"Wish I could go along, sir. How is the head this morning? Does it still ache?" asked the doorman.

"Rather better, but my eyes still feel pretty rocky. Guess I've been using them too much. Say, Connors, I'll try to catch the train north at eleven-seven. Better have a taxicab here for me at eleven. Or no; I'll let you know a little before eleven. Try to catch the eleven-seven north, for Wakamin."

"Very well, sir."

The president, the cashier, the chief clerk— all asked Jasper how he felt; and to all of them he repeated the statement that he had been using his eyes too much, and that he would catch a few bass at Wakamin.

The other paying teller, from his cage next to that of Jasper, called heartily through the steel netting: "Pretty soft for some people! You wait! I'm going to have the hay fever this summer, and I'll go fishing for a month!"

Jasper placed the two suitcases and the umbrella in his cage, and leaving the other teller to pay out current money he himself made up the pay rolls for the next day— Saturday. He casually went into the vault— a narrow, unimpressive, unaired cell with a hard linoleum floor, one unshaded electric bulb, and a back wall composed entirely of steel doors of safes, all painted a sickly blue, very unimpressive, but guarding several millions of dollars in cash and securities. The upper doors, hung on large steel arms and each provided with two dials, could be opened only by two officers of the bank, each knowing one of the two combinations. Below these were smaller doors, one of which Jasper could open, as teller. It was the door of an insignificant steel box, which contained one hundred and seventeen thousand dollars in bills and four thousand dollars in gold and silver.

Jasper passed back and forth, carrying bundles of currency. In his cage he was working less than three feet from the other teller, who was divided from him only by the bands of the steel netting.

While he worked he exchanged a few words with this other teller.

Once, as he counted out nineteen thousand dollars, he commented: "Big pay roll for the Henschel Wagon Works this week. They're making gun carriages and truck bodies for the Allies, I understand."

"Uh-huh!" said the other teller, not much interested.

Mechanically, unobtrusively going about his ordinary routine of business, Jasper counted out bills to amounts agreeing with the items on a typed schedule of the pay rolls. Apparently his eyes never lifted from his counting and from the typed schedule which lay before him. The bundles of bills he made into packages, fastening each with a paper band. Each bundle he seemed to drop into a small black leather bag which he held beside him. But he did not actually drop the money into these pay-roll bags.

Both the suitcases at his feet were closed and presumably fastened, but one was not fastened. And though it was heavy it contained nothing but a lump of pig iron. From time to time Jasper's hand, holding a bundle of bills, dropped to his side. With a slight movement of his foot he opened that suitcase and the bills slipped from his hand down into it.

The bottom part of the cage was a solid sheet of stamped steel, and from the front of the bank no one could see this suspicious gesture. The other teller could have seen it, but Jasper dropped the bills only when the other teller was busy talking to a customer or when his back was turned. In order to delay for such a favorable moment Jasper frequently counted packages of bills twice, rubbing his eyes as though they hurt him.

After each of these secret disposals of packages of bills Jasper made much of dropping into the pay-roll bags the rolls of coin for which the schedule called. It was while he was tossing these blue-wrapped cylinders of coin into the bags that he would chat with the other teller. Then he would lock up the bags and gravely place them at one side.

Jasper was so slow in making up the pay rolls that it was five minutes of eleven before he finished. He called the doorman to the cage and suggested, "Better call my taxi now."

He still had one bag to fill. He could plainly be seen dropping packages of money into it, while he instructed the assistant teller: "I'll stick all the bags in my safe and you can transfer them to yours. Be sure to lock my safe. Lord, I better hurry or I'll miss my train! Be back Tuesday morning, at latest. So long; take care yourself."

He hastened to pile the pay-roll bags into his safe in the vault. The safe was almost filled with them. And except for the last one not one of the bags contained anything except a few rolls of coin. Though he had told the other teller to lock his safe, he himself twirled the combination— which was thoughtless of him, as the assistant teller would now have to wait and get the president to unlock it.

He picked up his umbrella and two suitcases, bending over one of the cases for not more than ten seconds. Waving good-by to the cashier at his desk down front and hurrying so fast that the doorman did not have a chance to help him carry the suitcases, he rushed through the bank, through the door, into the waiting taxicab, and loudly enough for the doorman to hear he cried to the driver, "M. & D. Station."

At the M. & D. R.R. Station, refusing offers of redcaps to carry his bags, he bought a ticket for Wakamin, which is a lake-resort town one hundred and forty miles northwest of Vernon, hence one hundred and twenty beyond St. Clair. He had just time to get aboard the eleven-seven train. He did not take a chair car, but sat in a day coach near the rear door. He unscrewed the silver top of his umbrella, on which was engraved his name, and dropped it into his pocket.

When the train reached St. Clair, Jasper strolled out to the vestibule, carrying the suitcases but leaving the topless umbrella behind. His face was blank, uninterested. As the train started he dropped down on the station platform and gravely walked away. For a second the light of adventure crossed his face, and vanished.

At the garage at which he had left his car on the evening before he asked the foreman: "Did you get my car fixed— Mercury roadster, ignition on the bum?"

"Nope! Couple of jobs ahead of it. Haven't had time to touch it yet. Ought to get at it early this afternoon."

Jasper curled his tongue round his lips in startled vexation. He dropped his suitcases on the floor of the garage and stood thinking, his bent forefinger against his lower lip.

Then: "Well, I guess I can get her to go— sorry— can't wait— got to make the next town," he grumbled.

"Lot of you traveling salesmen making your territory by motor now, Mr. Hanson," said the foreman civilly, glancing at the storage check on Jasper's car.

"Yep. I can make a good many more than I could by train."

He paid for overnight storage without complaining, though since his car had not been repaired this charge was unjust. In fact, he was altogether prosaic and inconspicuous. He thrust the suitcases into the car and drove away, the motor spitting. At another garage he bought another spark plug and screwed it in. When he went on, the motor had ceased spitting.

He drove out of St. Clair, back in the direction of Vernon— and of Rosebank where his brother lived. He ran the car into that thick grove of oaks and maples only two miles from Rosebank, where he had paced off an imaginary road to the cliff overhanging the reedy lake. He parked his car in a grassy space beside the abandoned woodland road. He laid a light robe over the suitcases. From beneath the seat he took a can of deviled chicken, a box of biscuits, a canister of tea, a folding cooking kit, and a spirit lamp. These he spread on the grass— a picnic lunch.

He sat beside that lunch from seven minutes past one in the afternoon till dark. Once in a while he made a pretense of eating. He fetched water from the brook, made tea, opened the box of biscuits and the can of chicken. But mostly he sat still and smoked cigarette after cigarette.

Once, a Swede, taking this road as a short cut to his truck farm, passed by and mumbled, "Picnic, eh?"

"Yuh, takin' the day off," said Jasper dully.

The man went on without looking back.

At dusk Jasper finished a cigarette down to the tip, crushed out the light and made the cryptic remark:

"That's probably Jasper Holt's last smoke. I don't suppose you can smoke, John— damn you!"

He hid the two suitcases in the bushes, piled the remains of the lunch into the car, took down the top of the car, and crept down to the main road. No one was in sight. He returned. He snatched a hammer and a chisel from his tool kit, and with a few savage cracks he so defaced the number of the car stamped on the engine block that it could not be made out. He removed the license numbers from fore and aft, and placed them beside the suitcases. Then, when there was just enough light to see the bushes as cloudy masses, he started the car, drove through the woods and up the incline to the top of the cliff, and halted, leaving the engine running.

Between the car and the edge of the cliff which overhung the lake there was a space of about one hundred and thirty feet, fairly level and covered with straggly red clover. Jasper paced off this distance, returned to the car, took his seat in a nervous, tentative way and put her into gear, starting on second speed and slamming her into third. The car bolted toward the edge of the cliff. He instantly swung out on the running board. Standing there, headed directly toward the sharp drop over the cliff, steering with his left hand on the wheel, he shoved the hand throttle up— up— up with his right. He safely leaped down from the running board.

Of itself, the car rushed forward, roaring. It shot over the edge of the cliff. It soared twenty feet out into the air, as though it were a thick-bodied aeroplane. It turned over and over, with a sickening drop toward the lake. The water splashed up in a tremendous noisy circle. Then silence. In the twilight the surface of the lake shone like milk. There was no sign of the car on the surface. The concentric rings died away. The lake was secret and sinister and still. "Lord!" ejaculated Jasper, standing on the cliff; then: "Well, they won't find that for a couple of years anyway."

He turned to the suitcases. Squatting beside them he took from one the wig and black garments of John Holt. He stripped, put on the clothes of John, and packed those of Jasper in the bag. With the cases and the motor-license plates he walked toward Rosebank, keeping in various groves of maples and willows till he was within half a mile of the town. He reached the stone house at the end of the willow walk and sneaked in the back way. He burned Jasper Holt's clothes in the grate, melted down the license plates in the stove, and between two rocks he smashed Jasper's expensive watch and fountain pen into an unpleasant mass of junk, which he dropped into the cistern for rain water. The silver head of the umbrella he scratched with a chisel till the engraved name was indistinguishable.

He unlocked a section of the bookcase and taking a number of packages of bills in denominations of one, five, ten, and twenty dollars from one of the suitcases he packed them into those empty candy boxes which, on the shelves, looked so much like books. As he stored them he counted the bills. They came to ninety-seven thousand five hundred and thirty-five dollars.

The two suitcases were new. There were no distinguishing marks on them. But taking them out to the kitchen he kicked them, rubbed them with lumps of blacking, raveled their edges, and cut their sides, till they gave the appearance of having been long and badly used in traveling. He took them upstairs and tossed them up into the low attic.

In his bedroom he undressed calmly. Once he laughed: "I despise those pretentious fools— bank officers and cops. I'm beyond their fool law. No one can catch me— it would take me myself to do that!"

He got into bed. With a vexed "Hang it!" he mused, "I suppose John would pray, no matter how chilly the floor was."

He got out of bed and from the inscrutable Lord of the Universe he sought forgiveness— not for Jasper Holt, but for the denominations who lacked the true faith of Soul Hope Fraternity.

He returned to bed and slept till the middle of the morning, lying with his arms behind his head, a smile on his face.

Thus did Jasper Holt, without the mysterious pangs of death, yet cease to exist, and thus did John Holt come into being not merely as an apparition glimpsed on Sunday and Wednesday evenings but as a being living twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

iii

THE INHABITANTS of Rosebank were familiar with the occasional appearances of John Holt, the eccentric recluse, and they merely snickered about him when on the Saturday evening following the Friday that has been chronicled he was seen to come out of his gate and trudge down to a news and stationery shop on Main Street.

He purchased an evening paper and said to the clerk: "You can have the Morning Herald delivered at my house every morning— 27 Humbert Avenue."

"Yuh, I know where it is. Thought you had kind of a grouch on newspapers," said the clerk pertly.

"Ah, did you indeed? The Herald, every morning, please. I will pay a month in advance," was all John Holt said, but he looked directly at the clerk, and the man cringed.

John attended the meeting of the Soul Hope Fraternity the next evening— Sunday— but he was not seen on the streets again for two and a half days.

There was no news of the disappearance of Jasper Holt till the following Wednesday, when the whole thing came out in a violent, small-city, front-page story, headed:

PAYING TELLER SOCIAL FAVORITE—

MAKES GET-AWAY

The paper stated that Jasper Holt had been missing for four days, and that the officers of the bank, after first denying that there was anything wrong with his accounts, had admitted that he was short one hundred thousand dollars— two hundred thousand, said one report. He had purchased a ticket for Wakamin, this state, on Friday and a trainman, a customer of the bank, had noticed him on the train, but he had apparently never arrived at Wakamin.

A woman asserted that on Friday afternoon she had seen Holt driving an automobile between Vernon and St. Clair. This appearance near St. Clair was supposed to be merely a blind, however. In fact, our able chief of police had proof that Holt was not headed north, in the direction of St. Clair, but south, beyond Wanagoochie— probably for Des Moines or St. Louis. It was definitely known that on the previous day Holt had left his car at Wanagoochie, and with their customary thoroughness and promptness the police were making search at Wanagoochie. The chief had already communicated with the police in cities to the south, and the capture of the man could confidently be expected at any moment. As long as the chief appointed by our popular mayor was in power, it went ill with those who gave even the appearance of wrongdoing.

When asked his opinion of the theory that the alleged fugitive had gone north the chief declared that of course Holt had started in that direction, with the vain hope of throwing pursuers off the scent, but that he had immediately turned south and picked up his car. Though he would not say so definitely the chief let it be known that he was ready to put his hands on the fellow who had hidden Holt's car at Wanagoochie.

When asked if he thought Holt was crazy the chief laughed and said: "Yes, he's crazy two hundred thousand dollars' worth. I'm not making any slams, but there's a lot of fellows among our political opponents who would go a whole lot crazier for a whole lot less!"

The president of the bank, however, was greatly distressed, and strongly declared his belief that Holt, who was a favorite in the most sumptuous residences on the Boulevard, besides being well known in local dramatic circles, and who bore the best of reputations in the bank, was temporarily out of his mind, as he had been distressed by pains in the head for some time past. Meantime the bonding company, which had fully covered the employees of the bank by a joint bond of two hundred thousand dollars, had its detectives working with the police on the case.

As soon as he had read the paper John took a trolley into Vernon and called on the president of the bank. John's face drooped with the sorrow of the disgrace. The president received him. John staggered into the room, groaning: "I have just learned in the newspaper of the terrible news about my brother. I have come—"

"We hope it's just a case of aphasia. We're sure he'll turn up all right," insisted the president.

"I wish I could believe it. But as I have told you, Jasper is not a good man. He drinks and smokes and play-acts and makes a god of stylish clothes—"

"Good Lord, that's no reason for jumping to the conclusion that he's an embezzler!"

"I pray you may be right. But meanwhile I wish to give you any assistance I can. I shall make it my sole duty to see that my brother is brought to justice if it proves that he is guilty."

"Good o' you," mumbled the president. Despite this example of John's rigid honor he could not get himself to like the man. John was standing beside him, thrusting his stupid face into his.

The president pushed his chair a foot farther away and said disagreeably: "As a matter of fact, we were thinking of searching your house. If I remember, you live in Rosebank?"

"Yes. And of course I shall be glad to have you search every inch of it. Or anything else I can do. I feel that I share fully with my twin brother in this unspeakable sin. I'll turn over the key of my house to you at once. There is also a shed at the back where Jasper used to keep his automobile when he came to see me." He produced a large, rusty, old-fashioned door key and held it out, adding: "The address is 27 Humbert Avenue, Rosebank."

"Oh, it won't be necessary, I guess," said the president, somewhat shamed, irritably waving off the key.

"But I just want to help somehow! What can I do? Who is— in the language of the newspapers— who is the detective on the case? I'll give him any help—"

"Tell you what you do: Go see Mr. Scandling, of the Mercantile Trust and Bonding Company, and tell him all you know."

"I shall. I take my brother's crime on my shoulders— otherwise I'd be committing the sin of Cain. You are giving me a chance to try to expiate our joint sin, and, as Brother Jeremiah Bodfish was wont to say, it is a blessing to have an opportunity to expiate a sin, no matter how painful the punishment may seem to be to the mere physical being. As I may have told you I am an accepted member of the Soul Hope Fraternity, and though we are free from cant and dogma it is our firm belief—"

Then for ten dreary minutes John Holt sermonized; quoted forgotten books and quaint, ungenerous elders; twisted bitter pride and clumsy mysticism into fanatical spider web. The president was a churchgoer, an ardent supporter of missionary funds, for forty years a pew-holder at St. Simeon's Church, but he was alternately bored to a chill shiver and roused to wrath against this self-righteous zealot.

When he had rather rudely got rid of John Holt he complained to himself: "Curse it, I oughtn't to, but I must say I prefer Jasper the sinner to John the saint. Uff! What a smell of damp cellars the fellow has! He must spend all his time picking potatoes. Say! By thunder, I remember that Jasper had the infernal nerve to tell me once that if he ever robbed the bank I was to call John in. I know why, now! John is the kind of egotistical fool that would muddle up any kind of a systematic search. Well, Jasper, sorry, but I'm not going to have anything more to do with John than I can help!"

John had gone to the Mercantile Trust and Bonding Company, had called on Mr. Scandling, and was now wearying him by a detailed and useless account of Jasper's early years and recent vices. He was turned over to the detective employed by the bonding company to find Jasper. The detective was a hard, noisy man, who found John even more tedious. John insisted on his coming out to examine the house in Rosebank, and the detective did so— but sketchily, trying to escape. John spent at least five minutes in showing him the shed where Jasper had sometimes kept his car.

He also attempted to interest the detective in his precious but spotty books. He unlocked one section of the case, dragged down a four-volume set of sermons and started to read them aloud.

The detective interrupted: "Yuh, that's great stuff, but I guess we aren't going to find your brother hiding behind those books!"

The detective got away as soon as possible, after insistently explaining to John that if they could use his assistance they would let him know.

"If I can only expiate—"

"Yuh, sure, that's all right!" wailed the detective, fairly running toward the gate.

John made one more visit to Vernon that day. He called on the chief of city police. He informed the chief that he had taken the bonding company's detective through his house, but wouldn't the police consent to search it also?

He wanted to expiate— The chief patted John on the back, advised him not to feel responsible for his brother's guilt and begged: "Skip along now— very busy."

As John walked to the Soul Hope meeting that evening, dozens of people murmured that it was his brother who had robbed the Lumber National Bank. His head was bowed with the shame. At the meeting he took Jasper's sin upon himself, and prayed that Jasper would be caught and receive the blessed healing of punishment. The others begged John not to feel that he was guilty— was he not one of the Soul Hope brethren who alone in this wicked and perverse generation were assured of salvation?

On Thursday, on Saturday morning, on Tuesday and on Friday, John went into the city to call on the president of the bank and the detective. Twice the president saw him, and was infinitely bored by his sermons. The third time he sent word that he was out. The fourth time he saw John, but curtly explained that if John wanted to help them the best thing he could do was to stay away.

The detective was out all four times.

John smiled meekly and ceased to try to help them. Dust began to gather on certain candy boxes on the lower shelf of his bookcase, save for one of them, which he took out now and then. Always after he had taken it out a man with faded brown hair and a wrinkled black suit, a man signing himself R. J. Smith, would send a fair-sized money order from the post office at South Vernon to John Holt, at Rosebank— as he had been doing for more than six months. These money orders could not have amounted to more than twenty-five dollars a week, but that was even more than an ascetic like John Holt needed. By day John sometimes cashed these at the Rosebank post office, but usually, as had been his custom, he cashed them at his favorite grocery when he went out in the evening.

In conversation with the commuter neighbor, who every evening walked about and smoked an after-dinner cigar in the yard at the right, John was frank about the whole lamentable business of his brother's defalcation. He wondered, he said, if he had not shut himself up with his studies too much, and neglected his brother. The neighbor ponderously advised John to get out more. John let himself be persuaded, at least to the extent of taking a short walk every afternoon and of letting his literary solitude be disturbed by the delivery of milk, meat, and groceries. He also went to the public library, and in the reference room glanced at books on Central and South America— as though he was planning to go south some day.

But he continued his religious studies. It may be doubted if previous to the embezzlement John had worked very consistently on his book about Revelation. All that the world had ever seen of it was a jumble of quotations from theological authorities. Presumably the crime of his brother shocked him into more concentrated study, more patient writing. For during the year after his brother's disappearance— a year in which the bonding company gradually gave up the search and came to believe that Jasper was dead— John became fanatically absorbed in somewhat nebulous work. The days and nights drifted together in meditation in which he lost sight of realities, and seemed through the clouds of the flesh to see flashes from the towered cities of the spirit.

It has been asserted that when Jasper Holt acted a rôle he veritably lived it. No one can ever determine how great an actor was lost in the smug bank teller. To him were imperial triumphs denied, yet he was not without material reward. For playing his most subtle part he received ninety-seven thousand dollars. It may be that he earned it. Certainly for the risk entailed it was but a fair payment. Jasper had meddled with the mystery of personality, and was in peril of losing all consistent purpose, of becoming a Wandering Jew of the spirit, a strangled body walking.

iv

THE SHARP-POINTED willow leaves had twisted and fallen, after the dreary rains of October. Bark had peeled from the willow trunks, leaving gashes of bare wood that was a wet and sickly yellow. Through the denuded trees bulked the solid stone of John Holt's house. The patches of earth were greasy between the tawny knots of grass stems. The bricks of the walk were always damp now. The world was hunched up in this pervading chill.

As melancholy as the sick earth seemed the man who in a slaty twilight paced the willow walk. His step was slack, his lips moved with the intensity of his meditation. Over his wrinkled black suit and bleak shirt bosom was a worn overcoat, the velvet collar turned green. He was considering.

"There's something to all this. I begin to see— I don't know what it is I do see! But there's lights— supernatural world that makes food and bed seem ridiculous. I am— I really am beyond the law! I make my own law! Why shouldn't I go beyond the law of vision and see the secrets of life? But I sinned, and I must repent— some day. I need not return the money. I see now that it was given me so that I could lead this life of contemplation. But the ingratitude to the president, to the people who trusted me! Am I but the most miserable of sinners, and as the blind? Voices— I hear conflicting voices— some praising me for my courage, some rebuking—"

He knelt on the slimy black surface of a wooden bench beneath the willows, and as dusk clothed him round about he prayed. It seemed to him that he prayed not in words but in vast confusing dreams— the words of a language larger than human tongues. When he had exhausted himself he slowly entered the house. He locked the door. There was nothing definite of which he was afraid, but he was never comfortable with the door unlocked.

By candle light he prepared his austere supper— dry toast, an egg, cheap green tea with thin milk. As always— as it had happened after every meal, now, for eighteen months— he wanted a cigarette when he had eaten, but did not take one. He paced into the living room and through the long still hours of the evening he read an ancient book, all footnotes and cross references, about The Numerology of the Prophetic Books, and the Number of the Beast. He tried to make notes for his own book on Revelation— that scant pile of sheets covered with writing in a small finicky hand. Thousands of other sheets he had covered; through whole nights he had written; but always he seemed with tardy pen to be racing after thoughts that he could never quite catch, and most of what he had written he had savagely burned.

But some day he would make a masterpiece! He was feeling toward the greatest discovery that mortal man had encountered. Everything, he had determined, was a symbol— not just this holy sign and that, but all physical manifestations. With frightened exultation he tried his new power of divination. The hanging lamp swung tinily. He ventured: "If the arc of that moving radiance touches the edge of the bookcase, then it will be a sign that I am to go to South America, under an entirely new disguise, and spend my money."

He shuddered. He watched the lamp's unbearably slow swing. The moving light almost touched the bookcase. He gasped. Then it receded.

It was a warning; he quaked. Would he never leave this place of brooding and of fear, which he had thought so clever a refuge? He suddenly saw it all.

"I ran away and hid in a prison! Man isn't caught by justice— he catches himself!"

Again he tried. He speculated as to whether the number of pencils on the table was greater or less than five. If greater, then he had sinned; if less, then he was veritably beyond the law. He began to lift books and papers, looking for pencils. He was coldly sweating with the suspense of the test.

Suddenly he cried, "Am I going crazy?"

He fled to his prosaic bedroom. He could not sleep. His brain was smoldering with confused inklings of mystic numbers and hidden warnings.

He woke from a half sleep more vision-haunted than any waking thought, and cried: "I must go back and confess! But I can't! I can't, when I was too clever for them! I can't go back and let them win. I won't let those fools just sit tight and still catch me!"

It was a year and a half since Jasper had disappeared. Sometimes it seemed a month and a half; sometimes gray centuries. John's will power had been shrouded with curious puttering studies; long, heavy-breathing sittings with the ouija board on his lap, midnight hours when he had fancied that tables had tapped and crackling coals had spoken. Now that the second autumn of his seclusion was creeping into winter he was conscious that he had not enough initiative to carry out his plans for going to South America. The summer before he had boasted to himself that he would come out of hiding and go South, leaving such a twisty trail as only he could make. But— oh, it was too much trouble. He hadn't the joy in play-acting which had carried his brother Jasper through his preparations for flight.

He had killed Jasper Holt, and for a miserable little pile of paper money he had become a moldy recluse!

He hated his loneliness, but still more did he hate his only companions, the members of the Soul Hope Fraternity— that pious shrill seamstress, that surly carpenter, that tight-lipped housekeeper, that old shouting man with the unseemly frieze of whiskers. They were so unimaginative. Their meetings were all the same; the same persons rose in the same order and made the same intimate announcements to the Deity that they alone were his elect.

At first it had been an amusing triumph to be accepted as the most eloquent among them, but that had become commonplace, and he resented their daring to be familiar with him, who was, he felt, the only man of all men living who beyond the illusions of the world saw the strange beatitude of higher souls.

It was at the end of November, during a Wednesday meeting at which a red-faced man had for a half hour maintained that he couldn't possibly sin, that the cumulative ennui burst in John Holt's brain. He sprang up.

He snarled: "You make me sick, all of you! You think you're so certain of sanctification that you can't do wrong. So did I, once! Now I know that we are all miserable sinners— really are! You all say you are, but you don't believe it. I tell you that you there that have just been yammering, and you, Brother Judkins, with the long twitching nose, and I— I— I, most unhappy of men, we must repent, confess, expiate our sins! And I will confess right now. I st-stole—"

Terrified he darted out of the hall, and hatless, coatless, tumbled through the main street of Rosebank, nor ceased till he had locked himself in his house. He was frightened because he had almost betrayed his secret, yet agonized because he had not gone on, really confessed, and gained the only peace he could ever know now— the peace of punishment.

He never returned to Soul Hope Hall. Indeed for a week he did not leave his house save for midnight prowling in the willow walk. Quite suddenly he became desperate with the silence. He flung out of the house, not stopping to lock or even close the front door. He raced uptown, no topcoat over his rotting garments, only an old gardener's cap on his thick brown hair. People stared at him. He bore it with resigned fury.

He entered a lunch room, hoping to sit inconspicuously and hear men talking normally about him. The attendant at the counter gaped. John heard a mutter from the cashier's desk: "There's that crazy hermit!"

All of the half-dozen young men loafing in the place were looking at him. He was so uncomfortable that he could not eat even the milk and sandwich he had ordered. He pushed them away and fled, a failure in the first attempt to dine out that he had made in eighteen months; a lamentable failure to revive that Jasper Holt whom he had coldly killed.

He entered a cigar store and bought a box of cigarettes. He took joy out of throwing away his asceticism. But when, on the street, he lighted a cigarette it made him so dizzy that he was afraid he was going to fall. He had to sit down on the curb. People gathered. He staggered to his feet and up an alley.

For hours he walked, making and discarding the most contradictory plans— to go to the bank and confess, to spend the money riotously and never confess.

It was midnight when he returned to his house.

Before it he gasped. The front door was open. He chuckled with relief as he remembered that he had not closed it. He sauntered in. He was passing the door of the living room, going directly up to his bedroom, when his foot struck an object the size of a book, but hollow sounding. He picked it up. It was one of the booklike candy boxes. And it was quite empty. Frightened, he listened. There was no sound. He crept into the living room and lighted the lamp.

The doors of the bookcase had been wrenched open. Every book had been pulled out on the floor. All of the candy boxes, which that evening had contained almost ninety-six thousand dollars, were in a pile, and all of them were empty. He searched for ten minutes, but the only money he found was one five-dollar bill, which had fluttered under the table. In his pocket he had one dollar and sixteen cents. John Holt had six dollars and sixteen cents, no job, no friends— and no identity.

v

WHEN THE president of the Lumber National Bank was informed that John Holt was waiting to see him he scowled.

"Lord, I'd forgotten that minor plague! Must be a year since he's been here. Oh, let him— No, hanged if I will! Tell him I'm too busy to see him. That is, unless he's got some news about Jasper. Pump him, and find out."

The president's secretary sweetly confided to John:

"I'm so sorry, but the president is in conference just now. What was it you wanted to see him about? Is there any news about— uh— about your brother?"

"There is not, miss. I am here to see the president on the business of the Lord."

"Oh! If that's all I'm afraid I can't disturb him."

"I will wait."

Wait he did, through all the morning, through the lunch hour— when the president hastened out past him— then into the afternoon, till the president was unable to work with the thought of that scarecrow out there, and sent for him.

"Well, well! What is it this time, John? I'm pretty busy. No news about Jasper, eh?"

"No news, sir, but— Jasper himself! I am Jasper Holt! His sin is my sin."

"Yes, yes, I know all that stuff— twin brothers, twin souls, share responsibility—"

"You don't understand. There isn't any twin brother. There isn't any John Holt. I am Jasper. I invented an imaginary brother, and disguised myself— Why, don't you recognize my voice?"

While John leaned over the desk, his two hands upon it, and smiled wistfully, the president shook his head and soothed: "No, I'm afraid I don't. Sounds like good old religious John to me! Jasper was a cheerful, efficient sort of crook. Why, his laugh—"

"But I can laugh!" The dreadful croak which John uttered was the cry of an evil bird of the swamps. The president shuddered. Under the edge of the desk his fingers crept toward the buzzer by which he summoned his secretary.

They stopped as John urged: "Look— this wig— it's a wig. See, I am Jasper!"

He had snatched off the brown thatch. He stood expectant, a little afraid.

The president was startled, but he shook his head and sighed.

"You poor devil! Wig, all right. But I wouldn't say that hair was much like Jasper's!"

He motioned toward the mirror in the corner of the room.

John wavered to it. And indeed he saw that his hair had turned from Jasper's thin sleek blackness to a straggle of damp gray locks writhing over a yellow skull.

He begged pitifully: "Oh, can't you see I am Jasper? I stole ninety-seven thousand dollars from the bank. I want to be punished! I want to do anything to prove— Why, I've been at your house. Your wife's name is Evelyn. My salary here was—"

"My dear boy, don't you suppose that Jasper might have told you all these interesting facts? I'm afraid the worry of this has— pardon me if I'm frank, but I'm afraid it's turned your head a little, John."

"There isn't any John! There isn't! There isn't!"

"I'd believe that a little more easily if I hadn't met you before Jasper disappeared."

"Give me a piece of paper. You know my writing—"

With clutching claws John seized a sheet of bank stationery and tried to write in the round script of Jasper. During the past year and a half he had filled thousands of pages with the small finicky hand of John. Now, though he tried to prevent it, after he had traced two or three words in large but shaky letters the writing became smaller, more pinched, less legible.

Even while John wrote the president looked at the sheet and said easily: "Afraid it's no use. That isn't Jasper's fist. See here, I want you to get away from Rosebank— go to some farm— work outdoors— cut out this fuming and fussing— get some fresh air in your lungs." The president rose and purred: "Now, I'm afraid I have some work to do."

He paused, waiting for John to go.

John fiercely crumpled the sheet and hurled it away. Tears were in his weary eyes.

He wailed: "Is there nothing I can do to prove I am Jasper?"

"Why, certainly! You can produce what's left of the ninety-seven thousand!"

John took from his ragged waistcoat pocket a five-dollar bill and some change. "Here's all there is. Ninety-six thousand of it was stolen from my house last night."

Sorry though he was for the madman, the president could not help laughing. Then he tried to look sympathetic, and he comforted: "Well, that's hard luck, old man. Uh, let's see. You might produce some parents or relatives or somebody to prove that Jasper never did have a twin brother."

"My parents are dead, and I've lost track of their kin— I was born in England— Father came over when I was six. There might be some cousins or some old neighbors, but I don't know. Probably impossible to find out, in these wartimes, without going over there."

"Well, I guess we'll have to let it go, old man." The president was pressing the buzzer for his secretary and gently bidding her: "Show Mr. Holt out, please."

From the door John desperately tried to add: "You will find my car sunk—"

The door had closed behind him. The president had not listened.

The president gave orders that never, for any reason, was John Holt to be admitted to his office again. He telephoned to the bonding company that John Holt had now gone crazy; that they would save trouble by refusing to admit him.

John did not try to see them. He went to the county jail. He entered the keeper's office and said quietly: "I have stolen a lot of money, but I can't prove it. Will you put me in jail?"

The keeper shouted: "Get out of here! You hoboes always spring that when you want a good warm lodging for the winter! Why the devil don't you go to work with a shovel in the sand pits? They're paying two-seventy-five a day."

"Yes, sir," said John timorously. "Where are they?"

____________________

Table of Contents

1: Five Minutes to Twelve / Max Brand

2: Lion Heart / Max Brand

3: The Spook of Cornelius / R. A. J. Walling

4: Mrs. Rooth's "Murder" / R. A. J. Walling

5: The Homestretch / Guy Gilpatric

6: "Burglin' ain't the game it was" / Val Jameson

7: The Man Who Was Dead / Thomas H. Knight

8: The Chief of the Loch McCree / Albert Richard Wetjen

9: The Bloomsbury Wonder / Thomas Burke

10: The Great Auk's Egg Affair / Anonymous

11: An Unrecorded Instance / Marie Belloc Lowndes

12: How the Captain Tracked a German Spy / Victor L. Whitechurch

13: Number 17 / Edith M Nesbit

14: Riesenberg / Ford Madox Ford

15: In a Tight Fix / Victor L. Whitechurch

16: The Convict's Revenge / Victor L. Whitechurch

17: "Sir William" / J. J. Bell

18: The Story of the Chief of Police / William Le Queux

19: Arrested on Suspicion / Andrew Forrester Jr.

20: The Willow Walk / Sinclair Lewis